Transformational Teaching

Tony Ryan

11th May 2009

You know, all things considered, you are lookin’ fantastic!!!

For this session

• A good time!!

• Some applications for the Key Competencies in your teaching practice.... and in your own life!!

“This year, the answers are different.”

Two critical questions (at least):

Who do we need to be?

What and how do we need to teach??

• What are you most grateful for in your life right now??

• What has your most interesting learning experience in the past three days?

• What are three of your best teaching skills?

Altered paradigms of life and learning

• Lifespan is extending (for the white Western world) - 55 to 78 years in the past century

• The ‘Flat Earth’ is becoming dramatically more electronic - just over one billion new mobiles in 2008

• Learning is now recognised as a significant contributor to personal and national wealth - Learning communities; Learning cities; online Learning worlds; Learning nations

• A comprehensive financial reframing will be enacted over the next few years - with strong implications for all future consumption patterns

Transformational humanities

• Transactional cf transformational humanities

• We will need innovative people who think in a solution paradigm

• We will need people who can manage self, and relate to others

• We will need people who participate and contribute on a local and global scale

Levels of learning• No Change (no learning; ignorance, denial, or

tokenism)

• Accommodation (first order learning, adaptation and maintenance)

• Reformation (second order learning, critically reflective adaptation)

• Transformation (third order learning. creative re-visioning)

• Sustainable Education, Stephen Sterling, 2002, Green Books)

The Changing Face of Learning Delivery??

For You• Significant ongoing professional learning and

dialogue

• Co-development of vibrant learning communities

• Understanding what effective pedagogy looks like. (How do your students best learn?)

• Impetus for change arising from variable student engagement

• Building of quality relationships with students

• Valuing of your professional expertise

For students??• Significant focus on contructivist and connectivist

learning disciplines

• Personalised learning programs

• Single advisory teacher for entire schooling career

• Transdisciplinary approaches that focus on the Key Competencies

• Strong emphasis upon meaningful inquiry-based assessment tasks

• Deep integration of ICT into everyday learning

Key Competency questions for you

• Thinking: How will you advance your thinking and learning this year?

• Using language, symbols and texts: What further texts / symbols / language (especially online) will you explore?

• Managing Self: How will you maintain inspiration for your work?

• Relating to others: How will you enhance your capacity to engage in professional dialogue?

• Participating and contributing: What will be your personal contribution to local and global causes?

Managing Self

How will you

maintain inspiration

for your work?

• It’s not hard work that tires us out.

• It’s a negative attitude that tires us out.

• People make attitude choices in their lives:

• Energy creators

• Energy neutrals

• Energy consumers(Brighouse and Woods; cited in Fullan, 2005)

Manage the attitude

Energy consumers

• Have a negative view of the world

• Resent change and practice blocking strategies

• Use other people’s time excessively

• Don’t feel good about themselves

• Be able and unwilling to critically examine their teaching practice

• Appear not to want to improve on their best

Energy neutrals

• Competent sound practitioners

• Willing to address the task

• Good at ‘maintenance’

• Sometimes uncomfortable accepting examination of their practice by others

• Capable of improving on their previous best

Energy Creators• Are enthusiastic and always positive

• Use critical thinking, creativity and imagination

• Stimulate and spark others

• Practise leadership at all levels

• Are able and willing to scrutinise their practice

• Wish to improve on their previous best

Managing to find some inspiration??

• Managing your Self in four dimensions - physical, social / emotional, mental, spiritual

• How consciously do you get yourself inspired for the start of the day?

• Teaching (and life) can be a mirror - your attitude can be reflected back to you

• Regulate your self-talk to make inspired choices (and show students how to do this)

A. Choose one aspect of your life (physical / social / financial / professional / spiritual)

B. Respond to these questions:

1. What do you need to achieve?

2. What’s happening right now?

3. What could you put into action?

4. What will you put into action?

5. What will be the process for implementation?

6. How will you keep this going??

Adapted from ‘The Leadership Coaching Guide’

Managing Self (with coaching from others)

How will you advance your thinking and learning this year?

Neuroplasticity research + lifelong

learning

• Age‐related memory loss seems almost certainly reversible with the right mental exercises 

• In middle age, many people have a tendency to deceive themselves into thinking that they are learning as they were before

• To keep the mind alive requires learning something truly NEW with intense focus 

• Norman Doidge, The Brain That Changes Itself, 2008

Near-future intellectual directions??

• The rise and rise of creativity

• Artificial Intelligence + Intellectual Augmentation

• An Age Of

• Austerity / Ethics

• Andragogy (Adult Learning)

• New learning delivery mechanisms eg

• Virtual Learning Environments?

• I Tunes U + RateMyTeacher + Second Life?-

• When you have an ‘issue’ in your life, what thinking processes do you use to resolve it?

• How do you best learn eg

• In a session such as this?

• When mastering a new piece of technology?

• What (entirely) new skill / experience have you accomplished so far this year?

• What (entirely) new skill / experience do you intend to accomplish during the rest of 2009?

Your thinking and learning??

Intellectual skills must transfer into authentic contexts

We would like youngsters, and indeed adults, to become alert and thoughtful when they hear an unlikely rumour, face a tricky problem of planning their time, have a dispute with a friend, or encounter a politician’s sweeping statement on television

(Perkins, 2003)

Creative inquiry process

1. Do your research

2. Work out the REAL problem / issue

3. Brainstorm solutions

4. Choose one (or some) of the solutions

5. Put it (them) into action

Your own digital learning??

• What’s your present digital learning ‘project’?

• What further do you need to learn?

• What else could you learn?

• What else will you learn this term?

Higher order thinking1. Students are engaged only in lower-order thinking; i.e., they either receive, or recite, or participate in routine practice and in no activities during the lesson do students go beyond simple reproduction.

2. Students are primarily engaged in routine lower-order thinking a good share of the lesson. There is at least one significant question or activity in which some students perform some higher-order thinking.

3. Almost all students, almost all of the time, are engaged in higher-order thinking.

Using language, symbols and texts

What further texts / symbols / language (especially online) will you explore?

• Strong focus on icons and visual stimuli

• Altered theories on learning.....

• 20th C - Behaviourist / Constructivist / Cognitivist?

• 21st C - Constructivist / meta-cognitivist / Connectivist?

• If you employ digital learning processes, they must advance student learning. Otherwise, why bother?

Digital literacies??

Developing visual literacies

• Many Y and Z Gens are highly visual learners

• Use every possible IWB, data projector, computer screen and chart that you can find

• Visual aids (eg graphic organisers) free up short-term working memory

• Use your own visual collection to reinforce your lessons

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Humour!!

Relating To Others

How will you enhance your capacity to engage in professional dialogue?

Connecting through professional dialogue

• The quality of everyday teacher dialogue will determine the level of professionalism in a school

• Two critical skills in dialogue: listening and paraphrasing

• Paraphrasing? Listen first, then:

• Pause

• Then begin with: “So, you’re saying that....”

Participating and

contributing

What will be your personal

contribution to local and global

causes?

The 50:50 balance in life (Self:Others)

As well as your professional work, how do you intend to offer support to others?

‘Helpers High’ is good for your health

The Ripple Effect: The influence of everyday actions

Everyone?? Every One !!

Your contribution this year??

Text

tonyryan.edublogs.org

delicious/TonyRyan1

Hints for sustaining tonight’s work

• Revisit the notes twice:

• Within two days

• Within one week

• In your diary, add one special idea / action each day for the next two weeks

• Embed new strategies / concepts in everyday planning and units of work

• Specifically dialogue about the new strategies in team discussions

Final Thoughts

•Extra material on file (or the cluster wiki)

• tony@tonyryan.com.au

•Remember that you work in the most important profession on the planet

• Born 1870, died 1940

• Wealthy unmarried socialite

• At age 40, she decided to become an opera singer

• Become very well-known around the US

• Final performance in Carnegie Hall at the age of 70

• Received five standing ovations

Her epitaph??

“Everyone said I couldn’t sing.

But no-one can say I didn’t sing.”