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Interview 3: Looking at weeks five and six
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来自 Commonwealth Education Trust 的课程
Foundations of Teaching for Learning: Learners and Learning
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从本节课中
Four key thinkers
Who are the great thinkers that have shaped our understanding of education and schooling? Whose insights have benefited our thinking and practice often without even knowing it? In this sixth week of the course we will discuss four key thinkers (from Nigeria, the U.S, and Russia). They are Pai Obanya, David Perkins, Abraham Maslow and Lev Vygotsky.
与讲师见面
Associate Professor George OduroAssociate Professor of Educational Leadership
University of Cape Coast, Ghana
Professor John MacBeathProfessor Emeritus
University of Cambridge, UK
[MUSIC]
We've now reached the end of week six of course three,
and it's time once again to ask our presenter,
Dr. George Oduro, and Professor John MacBeath, the director
of the program, to discuss some of the issues
that have happened in the last couple of weeks.
So, the first question is, how important
is parent involvement, in supporting their child's education?
>> You know, the whole business of education is a joint venture.
A venture between the school and the home.
And for that it'll be the teacher and the parent.
Children begin their socialisation at home, with their parents.
So, the school only helps to facilitate the education process and this should be
done jointly. So, parents play a very key role
because if you take the 24 hours, children spend the greater
part of their experiences at home. >> Mm-hm.
>> So, it's very important that parents contribute to their development.
And then, it is why
parents should be concerned that children go to school well-fed.
So, the school will be responsible for planning their
learning with the understanding that they have been fed coming to school.
>> That's a big issue if you're in Ghana, isn't it?
This whole feeding thing and children come to school hungry, and as
we've said previously, it's very difficult for them to engage if they're hungry.
So, there are a lot of responsibilities that fall to parents to ensure
that children are coming to school ready, and well-prepared, and so on, well-fed.
The other side of it, of course, is the responsibilities on the school
to the parents. And I can think back to times in
the UK and elsewhere, where you get signs outside "No parents beyond this point".
And I think in the very best of practice, then
parents are encouraged, not only to come in to school, to talk to teachers,
to work with teachers - as you said, it's a partnership -
but also to encourage parents to work with their children,
to listen, not just to talk to, but
to listen to their children and engage with how their
children are learning, what their children are learning in school.
And I know culturally, that's quite difficult in
some places, because there are so many other demands.
>> Yeah, I agree,
I agree with you.
I think this whole idea of parent-teacher associations, which we have in Ghana, has
at the back of the rationale behind those is to promote what you say.
Parents are expected to walk in to school, during school hours
and classes, to see if their children are really in school,
if the teachers are really teaching.
Recently, in Ghana, there have been instances where, some people within the
community, parents, have physically assaulted some teachers
because they thought that the teachers were not teaching their children well.
They were absent, engaged in other things.
That may be the extreme side of it --
>> Yeah, yeah.
>> -- but this shows the importance that parents play.
>> Sure.
>> The role that parents play in the whole process.
>> I mean, it's a thing that has happened in other countries, too.
I mean, there are instances, even in Cambridge,
of parents coming in and actually assaulting the teacher.
And what that drives schools to do is to put up even greater barriers to them,
you know, to have special kinds of entry.
>> As a follow-up
question to the first one. What are some strategies that could be
used to encourage parents to be more actively involved in supporting their
children's learning? >> One of the things that teachers, or
a teacher, can do to engage parents in the
whole process of a child's learning, is establishing
a good relationship with the teacher. So, the teacher
must know the parents of the child he or she teaches.
The other thing which I have found very helpful
is when the teacher takes time to visit the home of
the child and finds out from parents how children
study at home, what homework, what challenges they have and what the
parent thinks the teacher can do to help. When there's dialogue
between the teacher and the parent on the child's learning
then that also helps bring the parents closer too.
>> Yeah.
>> Then one other thing is, when the teacher has the contact,
in terms of telephone contact, or other means of contacting the parents,
so when the child has any problem in the school or in the
classroom, he or she can easily get in touch with the parents.
>> Mm-hm.
Those kinds of forms of communication
are hugely important, as you say, George.
It's interesting, you know, you talk about teachers visiting
the home in Ghana and it certainly comes across that,
and sometimes, it's extremely helpful and revealing in talking
to teachers in Ghana about what they see. They begin to understand
some of the challenges and difficulties that children face in their home.
They may not have electricity.
They may have all sorts of domestic duties,
they don't have the time, the place, they don't have the resources, etc.
And that is a very interesting kind of thing in the Ghanain context.
Now, if I go to the UK, and I talk about home visiting - which I've done -
teachers will often say, I'm certainly, certainly not
going to do that, that's not in my remit.
Or it is very dangerous because you're liable to meet a large Alsatian
dog at the door, or there're some areas you would never go into.
So, the home visiting thing, I think,
is hugely important, but also hugely problematic.
And I think it depends very much, on the context.
I think it's great, I really do think it's hugely important, to have
that kind of contact on the parents'
territory, rather than on the school territory.
So, the territorial issue -
I'm coming as a guest into your
home, rather than inviting you into my classroom.
But I think it's not something you could easily legislate
across different countries, because the contexts there are so different.
>> I agree with you too.
I think, in Ghana, it works well because of
that traditional notion of community involvement in the child rearing.
There is a notion that parents give birth to a
child, but it is the community that nurtures the child.
>> Yes.
>> That makes it obligatory for the school and the community.
>> A notion of he whole community brings up a child.
>> One of the ways in which parents can help their children, and help the school
at the same time, is to make sure that the children do their homework.
How important is homework?
>> Yes, I think it all boils down to the issue of communication,
creating an awareness for parents to attach importance to homework.
And in the case of Ghana, I
can make reference to the parent-teacher
association, where a teacher can use the platform to
engage parents to see the importance of homework.
Then thereafter, the teacher needs to now
establish a homework support relations with the parent.
Make the parents aware of the things that the child will need.
For instance,
the situations where children are subjected to whole lot of
fatigue in terms of taking on other
responsibilities at home, supporting parents, in selling,
in moving around or doing all other things.
Through the associations, teachers could make parents aware of how
certain things effect the child's learning, or response to homework.
And it helps, and I have cases in Ghana, where certain dialogue has
helped reduce children's involvement in parental support
after school.
Then, there's one other thing done by one of the schools, which is very interesting.
Parents are given a notebook, and what parents are supposed to do,
is to initial that they have seen the homework of their children.
And then you endorse. So, when the teachers take your homework,
they want to see your father's or your
mother's signature there, show they have seen it.
Some parents have complained about that,
they've complained that, well, teachers are paid to teach
so parents should not be compelled to do what teachers should do.
But a number of parents see that as very encouraging.
And, so these
are some of the things I think the teacher can do.
>> I think this touches on a much deeper issue, George,
which is really the value of homework.
You raised the question, and I think you raised it
when you were talking in your lecture,
does homework have any value?
Is it a good thing to be doing in the first place?
Do we need to look at
what the research says, what we know from what children tell
us, from what parents tell us, whether homework is actually contributing and
helping learning or is it actually just an annoying kind of extra
thing that children have to do, and actually interferes with their learning?
And I know, in your own anecdotes, you talked
about because you were working in the market and
you'd come home from school,
you were tired, you were part of the economic structure of the family.
You couldn't be bothered, it was a tedious activity.
Now, we need to take on board those kind of things about homework.
It doesn't mean we abolish homework, but it
does need us to think again very seriously and quite
radically about what do we want children to
be doing when they go home in the evening.
How do we want them to sustain their learning?
And that is the best way, I think,
through conversations with their parents about what they're doing.
Conversations with their siblings, conversations with
their teddy bears or whatever it
is they have, but a way of rehearsing and thinking about their learning.
Doing tasks that make them think, that involve them
in things that are accessible to them, in their community.
Not sitting down with a pencil and paper and going
over a number and more sums, or whatever, in the classroom.
So, the challenge really is to think how do we
use the technologies that are there, the internet, children talking to
each other, children discussing on the phone, rather than seeing it
as just the simple individual task that children have to undertake.
>> Yeah, I
agree with you.
For instance, if a child knows that, or even if he or
she supports his or her parents, and she returns home, her
parents will be there to discuss, to talk through the homework assignment,
you know, that she has to do. That's, in a way, greater fun.
>> Mm-hm.
>> Having the opportunity to talk to parents about homework itself.
>> Yeah, but not necessarily
about a maths question or something.
It could be about what they've been doing in the market
and how it is what you've been doing, if
you're working in the market, you're doing an awful lot
of transaction and you're handling money, and you're talking to people,
using social skills, you're doing all those kinds of things.
Can you use those experiences to build on in terms of the nature of the tasks
you give children to do? To consolidate their
learning in real contexts that make sense to them.
>> Many school systems today use indicators as a way of measuring the
progress of the students but also, have to measure the progress of the school.
Can you talk a little bit more about some of
the indicators that might be really important for classroom teachers?
>> So, indicators are very important for the teacher because
it helps him or her to know why a child will come
to the classroom perhaps weeping.
This could be that the child may have been
bullied by someone, or there might be some home factor.
So, if a child comes into the class
weeping, then obviously you cannot start teaching the child.
>> Yeah.
I mean, if you said to the teacher,
is that one of your indicators? What are you talking about, indicators?
You're saying, well, you've just told me something important,
a key idea, which we often call an indicator
and we use that, to have some form of measurement.
So, in this case, the indicator that
you're talking about, is readiness to learn.
>> Mm. >> And every teacher
would say that is the key.
That's probably the most important thing that we have to pay
attention to in the classroom, that children are ready to learn, otherwise
- as we've talked about, the hierarchy, needs of, all the rest
of it, they're not fed, everything else, - they're not ready to learn.
So, when we talk about indicators, sometimes people talk about this hard
measures, so you would want to measure how well the readiness to learn
is observed in classrooms.
But, we also talk about indicators in another way, and that's
essentially, the way you've just talked about them, as tin openers.
Because when you explore that, you find out the
child hasn't been fed, the child has been weeping.
Why is this child weeping?
Well, something's happened at home. What's happened at home?
And so, as you unpack, as you open the tin, if you like,
you discover a whole lot of things, that lie
behind it.
So, indicators are useful, when they perform that kind of function, I think.
>> Okay.
>> That they open up issues which teachers need to pay attention to,
and, of course, readiness to learn is one of a whole suite of indicators.
And the thing that we did in Scotland many years ago
was when we developed indicators for the Scottish government we said,
let's start with the young people themselves and
ask them what indicators are important to you.
So, a five year old, what indicators are important to you?
Well, we wouldn't use that language -
we'd say tell us what was important to you in your school?
And then they would say, well, we like a
teacher who was friendly, we like a teacher who
will maybe take a joke, we like a
teacher who understands when we have difficulties and so on.
These are the indicators that we've developed and then now they're in
in the whole system.
So, the issue of indicators is relevant, I think.
>> Mm-hm.
>> In every context, but often the language itself is
an inhibition that we need to be able to demystify what we're talking about here.
>> It is.
>> You introduced us to four critical thinkers about education.
How important is it for a teacher
to establish and develop their own philosphy of education?
>> Yeah, philosophy, having a philosophy of
education is very important especially to the
teacher because it helps the teacher to get focussed with what you want to do.
And my own philosophy is that the classroom
needs to facilitate a barrier for a child to learn.
So, whether there's a classroom or not, the teacher
needs to create an environment for learning to take place.
And if I have this at the back of my mind as teacher, I don't
get worried when I'm posted to teach in an environment where there isn't a classroom.
The most important thing is, how do
I facilitate learning, which is very important.
>> So it's an anywhere notion
of learning is taking place and I understand that
learning can take place in all sorts of different contexts
and my job as a teacher is to be able to facilitate that.
Now, if you were to say to your teachers
in Ghana, and you said what's your philosophy of education?
They might be a little bit taken aback and not find that easy.
But they have one, don't they?
Every teacher has what you might call an implicit theory and those implicit
theories work out and, I think, one of our jobs is
to help to make those implicit theories or implicit philosophies, more explicit.
And of course, that's what we're trying to do here in this course, isn't it?
So, we look at these great thinkers.
These great educators. >> Yeah.
>> And saying, how did they help to form and develop your own philosophy?
>> We've now reached the end of course three.
What do you think are the main messages to come out of this course,
and how do you think the teachers can move
forward, in terms of understanding the lives of their children?
>> One of the key things I hope students would have
is the fact that learning takes place in a friendly environment.
Learning takes place when the right things are done at a right time.
So, the teachers should ensure that children's voices
are heard, so they can use that to plan their learning.
They must know their learners, there's a piece that they need to take.
>> I can't argue with that, George.
I would say that's pretty much what we're trying to accomplish
here and of course, the title of course is learners and learning.
And that's a very powerful idea that we need to understand
something about those children sitting in front of us in a classroom.
They are the learners - but also I think a
key point in this is that we are the learners too.
>> This reminds
of one African writer,
[UNKNOWN],
who describes the teacher as a very
big schoolboy, who should constantly be learning.
>> Or a very big schoolgirl, for that matter.
>> [LAUGH]
Well, yes.
>> I'd like to thank Dr. George Oduro for his
presentation of the materials during the course, Learners and Learning.
And I'd also like to thank Professor John MacBeath for his contributions
to the discussions that we've had, during the course of the program.
We look forward to seeing you again, during
course four, when we start to consider issues associated
with curriculum. Thank you.
[MUSIC]
