Erica McWilliam
25th IB Annual Conference, Convention Centre, Melbourne,
16 March, 2011
 sage on the stage

guide on the side

meddler in the middle

 
‘A sage steers by
the bright light of
confusion and
doubt’

Chuang Tzu – Taoist,

4AD
In three sentences
or less, explain
your educational
role to others at
your table.
Complex
Complexity
Simple

Short-term Time Long-

term
Complexity

Trainer Procedures manager

•Build routines and habits •Curriculum supervision
•Drilling •Programme leadership
•Template applications •Credentialled and
•Simple rules experienced
•Repetition and •School-wide
memorisation responsibilities
•Testing basic knowledge
and skills

Time
 Crisis leader/manager Innovative Leader

All other quadrants + •Creative generative thinker

•Lead learner
•Good judgment
•Ruthlessly curious
•Quick action
complexity

•Calculated risk-taking
•Sound monitoring
•Active Networker
•Capacity to adapt
•Creative broker

Trainer Procedures manager

•Build routines and habits •Curriculum supervision
•Drilling •Programme leadership
•Template applications •Credentialled and experienced
•Simple rules •School-wide responsibilities
•Repetition and memorisation
•Testing basic knowledge and
skills

Time
How has your
professional work
changed in this
century?

What is good or
bad about these
changes?
Learning and Performing: The
Difference
 Learning, performing or
both?

Performance goals
 winning positive judgment of their
competence and avoiding negative ones

Learning goals
 a desire to acquire new skills, master new
tasks or understand new things
 Learning or Performing?

judgment on achievement of
performance goals is
made by others

while

learning goals require meta-

cognition & self-regulation
A 50/50 ratio of attention to learning
and to performing is ideal
Too much performing, too little
learning?
Do the schools in
your group have the
learning/performin
g balance right?
 Everyone finds 3
individuals from 3 different
countries and reports the
main points of their
discussion.

 One-to-one reporting for 5

minutes, then change.
 Need to talk about what learning is (it is not just
preparing for exams!)
 Can be done through goal setting with students and
with staff (eg, in staff appraisal)
 Students can and should monitor both sets of goals
by editing and evaluating their own progress at key
intervals
 Can be available to parents and be the basis of
parent-teacher meetings
 A template for the student to customise is a useful
start
 Can be stored on-line as a word document
 
Silent singular Reading as a team
reader
Reading for sport
Reading for
enlightenment
Book belonging
Vooks
s
Page- Key-
turning
In-depth tapping
Power
reading
Linear browsing
Linked
texts
Single focus fragments
Interruption
technologies
Oasis of bookish technologies
Space of digital
tranquillity
Correct answers interactivity
Better questions
‘Coverage’ culture Learning culture

 Content-driven  Capacity building

 Test-oriented
 Personalised
 Self-managed
 Packaged in
 Focus is on the
advance
journey
 Pencil and paper
 Virtual and ‘real’
 Imitative routines
have equal status
 Credential is the  Open-ended
prize  Creative
When was this picture
taken?

 1960s (1 finger)
 1970s (2 fingers)
 1980s (3 fingers)
 1990s (4 fingers)
 2000s (5 fingers)
Mandated Dynamic Knowledge
Knowledge
 tentative
 certain  often contested
 agreed  evidence-base is
 evidence-base weak
strong  collaborative in
 largely an production
individual process  social context is
 social context relevant
largely irrelevant
 Knowledge is an accumulation of
known facts and concepts
 Facts are best organised through
disciplines
 Instruction is the most promising
strategy
 Memory and imitation are useful
 Answers are right or wrong
 Test results measure success
 Best evidence of learning = exam
results
Taking play seriously
 What is this idea good for?
 What does it do and fail to do?
 Does it have a future?
 How could it be improved?
 What is the value-add?
Discuss in your group (3
minutes):

Consider the idea of cutting the

legs off a table.

 What is this idea good for?

 What does it do and fail to do?
 Does it have a future?
 How could it be improved?
 What is the value-add?
 High cognitive demand environment
 Clarify and share explicit learning intentions
 Obligatory engagement – no opting out, no ‘hands up’
except to question
 Questions/statements that ‘cause’ thinking
 Practise designing tests, not just doing them
 Formative assessment to feed forward
 Students work harder than teachers
 Broad and deep learning tasks – e-portfolios
 
 High cognitive demand environment
 Clarify and share explicit learning intentions
 Obligatory engagement – no opting out, no ‘hands up’
except to question
 Questions/statements that ‘cause’ thinking
 *Practise designing tests, not just doing them
 *Formative assessment to feed forward
 Students work harder than teachers
 *Broad and deep learning tasks – e-portfolios
If the Answer is 27, what
is the question?

Design one star

question, then a two
star question, then a
three star question
an extended, transdisciplinary investigation of a topic of interest
student-led by negotiation with teacher - involves active engagement with
peers and experts
unfolds as a series of responses to initial questions and the development of
new questions prompted by that knowledge – evidence of a student’s
capacity to develop new questions is as important as the capacity to respond
each response moves from the known to the unknown – begins with a brief
statement of what the student already knows about the question without
reference to any source (this statement is not assessed – it is a reference
point for the learning that follows)
allows incorporation of mandated learning into larger whole.
a tightly edited documentation of the learning journey that demonstrates
growing complexity of thought and skills of editorship – not a simply
repository, nor a folio of internet downloads
amenable to assessment/evaluation.
Students are told they are Rangers for a National Park
experiencing a dramatic increase in the population of hares that
threatens the ecology of the park. They are asked to decide
whether or not to introduce more lynx into the system, and if so,
how many?
Students:
receive, respond to, and initiate simulated communications with
other Rangers who are working on the project, and have
specialised knowledge of the situation;
search the WWW to find relevant information on both hares and
lynxes;
organise and analyse this information and evaluate its quality;
make predictions on the basis of this analysis, test their
predictions with modeling software;
analyse the results, as represented in graphs, tables and charts.
integrate these findings with information from other resources
and create a multimedia presentation in which they make and
defend recommendations, and communicate these to others.
(from Quellmalz and Kosma, 2003)
What sort of pedagogy
would best equip
students for doing this
21st century
assessment task?
 Less More
Rote Problem-solving
Memorisation
Control and command Direction and support

Teacher-driven activity Self-management

Compliance Co-creation

Imitation Risk-taking

Mandated Curriculum Learning to learn

Competitive individualism Dynamic team-based activity

 ‘[The 21st century]…is a world in which comfort with
ideas and abstractions is the passport to a good job,
in which creativity and innovation are the keys to the
good life, in which high levels of education – a very
different kind of education than most of us have had –
are going to be the only security there is.’

US National Center on Education and Economy Report 2007

 
 Vision

Mental Models

Systemic Organisation

Behaviours

Events

(Bill Martin, 2007)

 Vision

Mental Models

Systemic Organisation
____________________

Behaviours

Events
(Bill Martin, 2007)
 Data analysis
2%

Strategic planning
4%

Enrolment matters
1%
Internal policies and procedures
Staff appointments
16%
8%

Staff pastoral care

1%

Student pastoral care

2%

P arent meetings
4% External policies and
procedures
13%

Informal time and community

12%
International organisational
matters
5%

External organisational
mattters
5%
Financial matters
10% P arent concerns
2%
P ropertymatters
10% Staff concerns
5%
 What adjustments do
you need to make to
your attentional
economy as a leader?

How might you go about

doing this?
 Final
Questions
and
Comments