Winter 2006

The ICT agenda

Follow the yellow brick road

Inspired by his personal ICT journey Phillip Cristofaro documents his learning pathway.

Brunswick East Primary School (BEPS) in inner city Melbourne has been on an amazing journey over the past five years due to participating in ‘Reinventing Education’, a partnership program between the Victorian Department of Education and Training (DE&T) and IBM. This program has had a profound effect on the learning outcomes of students and the professional capacity of teachers at BEPS.

Effecting sustainable change

The Reinventing Education (RE) program has provided schools with support and a framework for change management called the Continuous Improvement Model (CIM). The strength of this model is that it has been developed and implemented by teachers to provide a relevant, targeted and sustainable approach to classroom and whole-school change. Our school’s journey has been a bit like a mystery tour. At times it feels like a roller coaster, sometimes it’s more like a merry-go-round, but the destination is rarely the place we expected.

The bottom line is teachers setting goals; exploring new approaches; sharing their best ideas and strategies about teaching, learning and information and communication technology (ICT); and, not surprisingly, achieving some pretty amazing outcomes for themselves and their students. The CIM approach is an ideal platform for exploring 21st century pedagogies and putting them into practice in the classroom.

RE CIM consists of six elements:

1. Action research—a process that is the cornerstone of the CIM.
2. Targeted professional development—to assist the implementation of action research plans.
3. ‘Teachers as Leaders’—a program to assist teachers to initiate and lead change.
4. Networks—collaboration and sharing across
5. IBM’s Learning Village—a suite of online tools to facilitate all elements of the model.
6. Evaluation.

The action research approach is an excellent starting point:

1. Consider what you already know and think a little about what you don’t know—this is situational analysis.
2. Set some goals you believe are achievable—these are subject to change without notice.
3. Put together an action plan and professional development plan—who, what, how, when, why and how much?
4. Talk to other people and reflect on things along the way—this is closely linked to ‘subject to change without notice’!
5. Share with other teachers, engage in dialogue—rethink, renew, reflect, revise.

Some examples from the classrooms of BEPS demonstrate the success.

Philosophy for Children

In the early days of adopting the CIM, we began looking at various thinking tools as part of a move towards the ‘thinking curriculum’. While teachers were encouraged to adopt a goal-centred (action research) approach, our staff members were skilled in a range of very different approaches. The consensus was that we were lacking whole-school direction. So, while some teachers learnt lots about Gardner’s ‘multiple intelligences’, others focused more on Edward de Bono’s approach or Matthew Lipman’s ‘Philosophy for Children’. Mapping classroom impact was more complex than it should have been.

Last year, a special budget was created. Teachers were invited to make a group submission for funds to support an action research and ‘network’ approach, incorporating ‘high impact and targeted’ professional development. Two groups came forward: one group of five teachers investigating Art Costa’s ‘Habits of Mind’, the other a group of four teachers with an interest in ‘Philosophy for Children’. The latter group’s end of year presentation made a strong impression on staff by highlighting the enormous potential to develop a culture of deep thinkers amongst our students.

The reflections and discussions offered by this group provided a theoretical and evidence-based approach to student progress in the thinking domain. The immediate impact on student learning outcomes helped in taking the philosophy to a wider audience (i.e. a whole staff focus) and, most importantly, it was led by the teachers themselves.

This year, without prompting or coercing, inspired by the results of the earlier group, all BEPS teachers set focusing on the teaching of ‘Philosophy for Children’ as one of their action research goals.

The CIM Teachers as Leaders concept is alive and well at BEPS. The four teachers who started that small network last year are official mentors to those of us who are new to the concept. As is part of the collaborative learning process, each team in the school must present a structured reflection to staff at various points throughout the year.

This process has already generated quite a buzz around the school—the kids love it, teachers get real insight into student thinking and communication skills and it provides a rock solid foundation for growth. Already the teacher who has led this process is talking about creating an external network with teacher-leaders in other schools.

An adult mentors project

Several years ago, one of my action research projects was to have a go at running the ‘Earn and Learn’ (E&L) program in my classroom. It’s a very rich concept whereby students develop a micro-economy. Each desk is considered a one-bedroom flat and students start businesses, pay rent and taxes, take on government roles, etc.

The following year, using all elements of the RE CIM as a framework, I set out to engage the other grade 5 and 6 teachers in E&L and extend it to our local community. We courted local businesses and parents with related occupations to come and work as mentors for the students. Local politicians worked with the ‘government’ students and students visited their mentor’s workplace as one of the designated homework tasks.

This program generated an important new role for students, that of class historian. Historians created a digital record of the program with video and audio interviews, photos, newspapers and a digital portfolio. The richness of this process for all students was evident in the way they led the development of E&L (captured skilfully by the class historians). Confidence grew as did the propensity for the higher-order thinking skills of analysis and synthesis as students applied their learning to a real-world simulation.

It was by far the best fun I’ve ever had in a classroom. And, like the process used to develop philosophy across the school, it is a program with huge potential for growth and expansion.

A global project

Following a visit to the United States in 2003 as a part of a Reinventing Education Study Tour, I met an outstanding American teacher, who has been part of a US RE Program. This meeting established a strong working relationship between our schools, which has resulted in three global exchange projects—‘A Tale of Two Cities’ (2003), ‘International Fantasy Football’ (2004) and ‘A Tale of Three Cities’ (2005).

In all three projects, students used online communication tools to exchange information. This resulted in the creation of student web pages and digital presentations of various kinds. ‘A Tale of Three Cities’ was built on the success of the 2003 exchange and expanded to involve eight teachers, 200 students and three schools in three separate countries (Australia, the UK and the US). The global exchange culminated in a series of video conferences hosted by IBM and DE&T. The excitement and high engagement levels of the students (and teachers) across all three schools was amazing. Students were fascinated by their immersion in a global learning environment and provided a great deal of direct input into the learning process. The powerful online environment was limited only by the communication skills of its users.

This project is a great example of the transformation from pollination of ideas to germination. It used all elements of the RE CIM in its development: action research methodology, targeted professional development, mentoring (by teachers and students), networking, online tools (IBM’s Learning Village) and continual evaluation. Through belonging to the global IBM RE network of schools, there has been great capacity to build international networks for collaboration and unique exchange.

The cycle of sustained and continuous change continues at BEPS. Research presented by a US think-tank called the Centre for Children and Technology (available at www2.edc.org/CCT ) says that even with the strong commitment to the change process of stakeholders and good internal structures in place, organisations don’t see significant fruits of their labour for about five years.

Going into our sixth year of the RE partnership, I can only say that the future looks bright, the vision is clear and momentum is on our side.

For further information, go to http://lvillage.education.vic.gov.au

Phillip Cristofaro is a leading teacher at Brunswick East Primary School.

The author owns the copyright in this article. For information related to the reuse of this work in any form please contact the publisher denise.quinn@curriculum.edu.au