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Ms Aine Maher ELTHAM College of EducationEltham, Victoria, Australia
Schools couldn ' t exist without them, yet young people are often the most under-used resource in the average school. This hardly makes sense at all.
Young people want to be very involved in crafting their schooling experience. It is no longer enough to see them as passive recipients of schooling; young people care strongly about their education and they have an enormous amount to contribute.
Educators who provide opportunities for young people to engage in dialogue about education will glean a whole new perspective by listening. Collaboration between students, students and teachers, and across sectors can be a powerful tool to understand and inform almost every aspect of schooling. Young people can distinguish between education and schooling, recognising that education needs to be understood in a lifelong context. Successful schooling provides the critical foundations for the development of lifelong learning skills. Young people see significant contradictions between the purpose of schooling in a life-long context and the enormous emphasis on results and credentialing at the end of it all.
On 28 July 2004, an independent Melbourne school, ELTHAM College of Education, hosted the Youth Vision for Schooling Forum. This event was conceived by ELTHAM ' s student leaders to facilitate discussions between youth leaders from a variety of educational backgrounds. Their goal was to explore their attitudes towards the future of schooling, and to contribute to the education debate in a constructive and collaborative manner.
The State ' s Education Minister, Lyn Kosky, and local state MP Steve Herbert, Chair of the Victorian Education and Training Committee attended the forum to share their perspective with the student leaders. Eleven schools from ELTHAM ' s local district participated, representing three different educational sectors. Students discussed a wide range of topics, showing remarkable insight into the process and purpose of schooling. For schooling to move forward into the future, our students say that we need to:
These are insightful comments by a group of young people who have a great deal to contribute to the educational debate. Not surprisingly, the Youth Forum attracted its fair share of media attention, including local and national print newspapers and local radio airtime.
The world in which our young people find themselves is very different to the worlds in which their parents and teachers grew up and went to school. Our society has changed dramatically and is continuing to alter at an unprecedented rate. Schools have a responsibility to teach for the strengths that will enable young people today to learn, live, work and play successfully, and with confidence, in a global environment of massive change, an environment that is dominated by knowledge and the easy transfer of information. The new paradigm of the knowledge world values different types, and levels, of expertise. Adaptability, decision-making skills, success in multiple dimensions and hunger for lifelong learning are outcomes we must make explicit in our schools, to do anything less is to short-change society.
How do we, as educators, understand this future world? Can we describe it with any degree of accuracy? Hedley Beare (2001), in his book, Creating the Future School, tells the story of Angelica, the five-year-old who sits in our Prep classroom today. It starts:
' Hello. I am Angelica. I am five-years-old. I really don ' t have much of a past. In fact, I am the future. You need to understand what I am learning to believe, how I think about my future, what my world-view is. You and I both want me to be a success in the world in which I am to enter as an adult, and which I will be responsible for. In future days, I will admire you for being able to look forward with me and to help me define what I need to learn ' .
The challenge for us is develop a vision of this future world. However, without harnessing the intellectual capital that is our students, we will struggle.
Some keep to the control paradigm of the industrial era: management control, knowledge and curriculum control, behaviour control and assessment and credentialing control. Others provide the bridge to the Knowledge Era, which for teaching and learning is the Knowledge Paradigm. Of course, translating this into practice is not easy. It means that, for teaching and learning, we must consider two significant areas:
1. Attitude: Ours and Theirs . Can we accept that students may have, and will develop, skills that will be superior to ours, in a range of areas? Can we acknowledge this and use it? Can they accept that we will actually do this, let alone that we have skills? Can we accept that we lose control because our students are becoming empowered, and control and authority are shared?
2. Transforming Teaching. The second area is in the new skills of teachin g and the new classroom culture that emerges. These skills include collaboration and teaming; shared leadership; negotiation; shared expectations; learning management (engaging), rather than classroom management (controlling); knowledge management rather than knowledge imparting; knowledge creation rather than information finding; students teaching; Individual Learning Programs; self-awareness; self-evaluation and self-management.
They are far from being new skills but they are the key skills for the knowledge paradigm.
Leadership has to be bold, making changes so complete there can be no turning back. Within the school, empowering students helps to create the cultural change with staff. If students have an expectation that they will be treated differently, this will happen. If they expect greater control over their learning, teachers will create this opportunity. It is a new perspective on the theories of teacher expectations. If the principal and other senior staff consult with students and make decisions with them, two things will happen. Firstly, students grow in confidence and skill. Secondly, the staff listens, understands and responds, even if with some trepidation at first. Empowering students does not necessarily mean that teachers are disempowered; in fact, it enriches the entire school community. Teachers are very valued as partners, with a great deal to offer.
In a letter written at the end of Term 1 2004, from the principal of ELTHAM to the Year 12 students, he wrote:
' . . . ask yourself and your teachers what you are capable of and what you need to do to get that result. If you are disappointed that teachers are not as positive as you, then it is time to say, ' What would someone who was better than me need to do to get a good result? ' Then, you put the hard yards in ' .
' . . . develop a planner for the rest of the year (until the exams), so you space out your work, organise your assignments and School Assessment Coursework and know when you are doing revision and exam preparation ' .
' . . . talk with your teachers, in fact, demand of your teachers that they teach you how to do an exam in their subject: how to plan the time, how to analyse the questions, how to plan your answers, so that the question actually gets answered, what to do if you run out of time on any question or section of the paper, which sections/topics/issues are going to come up more often in the exams, how to plan time against question value, and so on ' .
At a glance, the letter offers sensible advice to students as they face a tough year ahead. Closer reading reveals a deeper message. It tells students how to use their teachers, what to expect of them throughout the year, what reasonable demands can be placed on them, what their value is to the student as a self managed learner.
This approach places ownership for learning, and the management of that learning, squarely on the student but it clearly outlines the teachers ' role, too. Such advice facilitates a change process, using students as change agents within the school. Students are required to take ownership for their learning; they need to be self-reflective and self-evaluative. They self manage in a collaborative learning environment. They share their expectations with their teachers and they negotiate on a daily basis. Teachers respond by scaffolding the learning experiences for their students and meeting individual needs. They do not abdicate their responsibility as a teacher; rather they work in collaboration with their students to achieve better learning outcomes
Behaviour management is the bane of many schools, and a frequently asked question by parents and teachers. How do you rewrite a Behaviour Management Policy that is consistent with a Knowledge Era philosophy, meets the needs of the many stakeholders and, most importantly, has credibility in the eyes of the student?
Easy, you involve students in the process. Not just at the end stage, where a cursory consultation may seem sufficient, but from the very first meeting. At ELTHAM, such was the success of the involvement of students that they presented the final policy to the entire staff at the beginning of the school year. Students stood before what might be considered a tough audience and told us clearly and succinctly what they expected of us as their teachers. They spoke of consistency, fairness not sameness, and mutual respect. They requested that 2004 be named ' Year of the Other Person ' to formally launch the policy. Not bad for a group of 16 and 17 year olds!
Each year, the Board of Directors and the College Executive works together over two days, reviewing key performance areas, testing the business plan and engaging in ' big-picture ' thinking about education. Our College Captains have been very welcome additions to the first day of this process for the past three years. They read briefing papers, participate fully in the discussion, prevent us from losing perspective and instil some fun and laughter into the process. They, with their partners, join us for dinner in the evening time. Student Leaders meet with the College Board on at least two other occasions during the school year.
College Captains have a weekly meeting with the principal. Communication is two way, with insight and perspective sought of the students on strategic planning, policy development, and trouble-shooting, etc. Students contribute to the whole life of the school, suggesting initiatives, seeing opportunities and shaping the school experience. Student Council meets once a week and the principal attends all of their meetings as an equal participant.
In addition to planning and running the Youth Vision for Schooling Forum, student leaders participate in a range of cross-sector meetings with others. They debate a number of issues, exchanging ideas and perspectives. Life is not always easy for them in the broader world. A school principal recently remarked that meetings involving student leaders needed to be tightly controlled and managed; otherwise they would not yield productive outcomes. That certainly is true in an environment where students are ' seen and not heard ' . It goes without saying that students learn to use meetings effectively when they are real and when the outcomes actually matter.
College Captains often have traditional roles in schools. An alternative model is to see the College Captain as a functional leader, less focused on a job description that specifies tasks and duties and more on developing a personal leadership portfolio, where individual interests and skills can shape and drive their leadership initiative. Such was the case in conceiving and implementing the Youth Vision for Schooling Forum. Edward Browne, one of four captains at ELTHAM in 2004, says of his role:
' The role is what we make of it. It is up to us. Our selection for the position was based on our ability to see the big picture, as well as being representative of the student body. Having lived in a number of different countries, I was aware of the challenges facing international students from personal experience, so I chose ' Internationalism ' as my focus. I spoke at student assemblies to raise awareness and presented a paper to the College Board. I became more aware of the policies and practices in place to support our international students and I worked with the Director of International Students and the International Students Committee to develop a handbook.
Much has been written about differentiated curriculum and individualised learning and those of us in the classroom understand the enormous challenge in delivering on this ambitious agenda. It becomes easier, we believe, when students are taught skills of negotiation, and the skills for self-management. These important outcomes are specific learning objectives across every Key Learning Area.
Offering students a clear choice about what content area they will choose to show their competency in a set of skills, or a choice as to how they will demonstrate their learning gives them opportunity and practice in negotiation. It also requires them to make a commitment to their learning that can be far more powerful than simply completing the task to move on to the next.
The true test of a student-driven curriculum is when subjects are added to the program in response to student interest. Philosophy will be offered at ELTHAM for the first time in 2005 because a small group of students wanted to have this opportunity. They met initially with staff in the Senior School to find out what it would take to make it happen. They followed advice, finding a teacher who would support them and canvassing other students to meet the prerequisite number. Their learning was powerful; they worked in partnership with a number of staff to create a broader curriculum offering that would benefit many others.
The message is simple. There are more student voices in our schools than any other. Harnessing them provides us with the opportunity to learn, to develop genuine perspective and to model to young people effective decision-making skills. Partnerships can be powerful and enduring. Young people open our eyes to their world, they are generous with their time and they remind us of the joy of teaching.
Beare Hedley (2001) Creating the Future School, Routledge Falmer.
Maher, Aine (2002). From Middle School to Middle Schooling. A paper presented at the NMSA 29th Annual Conference and Exhibit.
Warner, David (2002). Leading to Empower Teachers and Students: An Australian Context. A paper presented at the NMSA 29th Annual Conference and Exhibit.
Ms Aine Maher is Executive Director - Curriculum and Learning at ELTHAM College of Education, an independent coeducational school in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. As a member of the school ' s senior management team, she develops policies and action plans to implement a knowledge era paradigm across the school. The involvement of students as partners in their learning is a corner-stone of the practice at ELTHAM. Aine has worked closely with the student leadership team in the second half of 2004. Her very positive experiences have prompted this paper.
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