Activity 6: Contemporary trends in New Zealand or Internationally

Rolfe’s model of reflection is used this week to highlight educational priorities in NZ and internationally.  

What

Seven trends Tangible Media (2018) identify as influencing NZ education in 2018, in order of importance are: Edtech; Those who can, teach; Smaller schools; ELearning; Student debt; Pure research versus the real world. Core Education’s (2018) top ten list is: Learner Agency; Artificial Intelligence; The Cloud; Blockchain; Communities of Learning (COLs); Virtual Learning (VL); Automation; Stem; Collaboration; Data Science. The highlighted italicised concepts have been exhaustingly practiced in my school. The most relevant to my practice at this stage is ELearning, and to some extent VL too. 

What captivates my attention? Why?

‘Those who can, teach,’ and ’VL’ captivate my attention as a Digital Technology teacher because the multiple range of topics/software/undergoes constant transience whether it is changes in programming, software, hardware, technology and frequent NCEA assessment/unit standard updates. Teachers must constantly upskill to the point of a simple course to a whole new degree of study. Crowdsourcing and VL environments are invaluable for this reason.

So what?

What do resources reveal about education nationally and internationally?

Trends shaping education on an international scale are indifferent to our logic of educational importance. The OECD Center for Educational Research and Innovation (2016) identify five educational trends and concerns based largely around Globalisation. Interestingly, key topics ranged from autocracy, to immigration, to military expenditure, to gender gaps, to suicide… obesity… revenge porn legislation……

Oh my gosh!! As a little island in the middle of nowhere perhaps we just more focussed on education, and that specifically as global issues are out of our reach really? What do you think? Feel free to comment on your perceptions and research.

Key opportunities: Leveraging Data the Right Way
Bill Dagget (2014) the founder and chairman for the International Center for Leadership in Education, advocates, ‘Use of Data Analytics to Implement Growth Models.’ He argues that we must stop taking snapshots of learning at a particular time and point of testing, and instead look at a student’s data over a longitudinal period. We cannot adopt a one size fits all approach. Data must be leveraged to better support student development growth models. Alternately, Dagget highlights that rapidly improving schools evaluate students by the amount of improvement. This is one opportunity of leveraging data by manipulating it to enhance performance.

Another example, schools that track student reading ability longitudinally, comparing how they comprehend text in different contexts such as high school, college, recreational, military, workplace, and assessments.


Interestingly, Dagget provides data on preferred tools for VL (see figure 1). Device of choice for VL, eLearning, LMS, online learning etc. 

Figure 1. Comparing grade 3-12 student’s personal, and School provided, 

Now What: Changes I will make from the above data provided: 

• As a secondary school teacher, data from Figure 1 (school provided) highlights that older students prefer to use smartphones. In my previous blog you can link why. On a personal basis they prefer to use laptops. How has this been addressed? Most teachers ban mobile phones in class unless otherwise advised by for instruction. 
• Bill Daggets longitudinal notion would be suitable for long term students in a curriculum such as English, Math, PE/Social Sciences/Science, or learning areas where educators can assess their skill growth over time. It would not work for short term courses. 
• Those who can teach ‘teach’ and VL captured my attention from the start, however comparing our trends to international trends has broadened my focus. It has made me think that our focus is on the prize not on the lottery. It also sparks interest on diving deeper into statistics related to educational success.