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Michael Stevenson's picture

Steps to Education Transformation Step 1: Understand Student-Centered Learning

By Michael Stevenson, Vice President, Global Education - London

Monday, Nov 2, 2009 - 05:22 pm

When we think about the journey toward sustainable change in schools, it’s helpful to think in terms of a series of steps. One of the first and most important steps is for the planning team to articulate a written vision for student-centered learning that includes outcomes and benchmarks and aligns with community goals.

These details then become the project design specifications and serve as a reference point for curriculum, pedagogy, standards, assessments, technology, and professional development.  Although this process requires systematic research and decision-making, it has the potential to be a motivating and team-building experience that is highly positive for all members of the team.  

School systems can start on this process by familiarizing themselves with 21st century skills and deepening their understanding of 21st century learners.  Since there is no universally accepted definition of 21st century skills, systems must generally draw from several sources and work with outside consultants unless a 21st century skills framework has been established in their region.  

Another important piece of this process is for school systems to make a wholehearted effort to discover what today’s students want and need from education, since students’ ideas, experiences, and familiarity with technology will help shape a successful vision. Systems should also solicit the input of local business, government, and community leaders, as well as local colleges and universities.  

This alignment will add relevance and engagement to student learning, help build a workforce prepared to meet real-world job demands, develop a business case for grant and funding requests, and establish community support. 

Accurate baselines and ongoing measurement are vital to project refinement, accountability, and sustainability. Because this process is complex, school systems will often need to work with outside consultants or university evaluation experts to set benchmarks and establish an evaluation process. 

Next time, I’ll discuss Step 2, A Vision of Holistic Transformation.

 

 

 

Comments

Submitted by amowat on Wed, 2010-03-10 05:59.

Thanks for the post Michael...

"Another important piece of this process is for school systems to make a wholehearted effort to discover what today’s students want and need from education, since students’ ideas, experiences, and familiarity with technology will help shape a successful vision."

We have been researching this field since 2001, and we have asked a large cohort of students to describe their ideal school. We continue to receive consistent results, which can be summarised into the five broad 'needs' below:

  1. Safety (physical, social and emotional)
  2. The need to be unconditionally respected (Education 2.0 offers conditional respect)
  3. The need to be listened to
  4. The need to be believed in (ie the capacity to learn)
  5. The confidence in the pedagogical and content-knowledge skills of the teacher

These responses are in approximate order, with the 2-4 being pretty well equal in importance. All are critical for engagement to be deep and learning broad and significant. It seems that much of the debate still orbits around need #5, and it could be argued that the provision of technology as a vehicle for leveraged learning might also fit here.

Student centred learning demands that the student is indeed at the centre. This also means at the centre of the teacher's attention, belief and respect.

The follow up question we ask of students is "when these five needs are met, what happens for you?" The answer is usually "that's easy..." and:

  1. I feel confident in what it is I have to do
  2. I fee reciprocal respect for the teacher
  3. I want to go out of my way not to let the teacher down

Most of us remember at least one teacher where these three things were present for us. Often a favourite, or tagged as our most influential teacher, it will be of no surprise to learn that we also identify that they listened to us, believed in us and were unconditional with us.

Our research backs up the one or two of these teachers (in the 30-50 that we would have had) that we can recall as 'outstanding': only about 1 teacher in 20 is systematically applying the above 5 'needs of engagement'.

For me, the vision of Education 3.0 is to have 50% of teachers, not 5%, being truly student-centred expert engagers.

 

Cheers,

Andrew