Don Ledingham and Active Learning

Don’s recent entry about a visit to North Berwick High makes for very encouraging reading.

Relevant to the provocative question in his post, we once worked out that to pass Computing at General Level in Standard Grade a pupil needed to know a mere 100 words and yet many schools spend two years making certain that pupils can remember them. It’s no wonder that many pupils get bored. There is more than enough time for them to explore and become active learners among the huge variety of topics in modern computing which are not covered in the exam. If they become really enthusiastic learners, they could mug up the necessary hundred words in a week or so before the exam. It is important to note that to be educated in Computing or any other subject, it has never been necessary for everybody to have the exact same body of knowledge. Every European country has an educated group of inhabitants, but the schools and universities in each country work to different syllabuses. So active learners need not be sheep following the teacher but can pursue avenues that catch their interests and enthusiasms.

When they leave formal education active learning may be the only mode of learning open to them.

Future Schools

I am working on a post about numbers; that excessive numbers cause problems. I know what I am trying to say but it’s not coming easily to the page.

Meanwhile I came across Don Ledingham’s post about Schooling for the Future and the OECD’s scenarios of possible future learning arrangements. Don highlighted the bureaucratic model which I am sure is what Scotland’s education system looks like. He left it there, but I have to say that the later models still involving schools are perhaps more achievable than Don seems to imply.

There are many teachers in Scotland who would be willing to change if given the opportunity. That change does require a huge rethink of our assessment and quality control procedures to emphasise what students can do and can achieve rather than the present system which makes failures of all but the most academic. And we do need to really radically alter the transition out of secondary school and not in the way that England has just proposed. I read recently of a very forward looking school that was linking with its tertiary sector so that timetables meshed and students could be partly at school and partly at college. I taught a course ten years ago which did just that. It only lasted a couple of years because the SQA shifted the goal posts, but while it lasted it really did point to the way ahead for the vast and I mean vast majority of of young people.

We also of course need to re-design how we use our existing resources, classrooms, ICT systems, teaching force, etc.  I don’t think this actually needs much extra money, just more imagination and a willingness to let our learners free.