The obsession with certainty in education is
perhaps a characteristic of our western way of life. We seem to want to know
without doubt that what we teach, how we teach it and how we measure its
efficacy is backed by the evidence. The evidence says that we should do this or
do that in schools and this is how it should be measured and reported on. These
imperatives are thrust upon a weary and disenchanted mob of educators whose
autonomy in the classroom has been surrendered to the experts and the evidence
they claim is true.
Pasi
Sahlberg who is the former director general of the Ministry of Education
and Culture in Finland and a visiting professor at the Harvard Graduate School
of Education, has been appointed professor of educational policy at
UNSW. He says:
“Maybe the key for Australia
is loosening up a little bit, less top down control and a bit more professional
autonomy for teachers.”
Mr Sahlberg on his travels in Oz is
reported to have said that he was broken hearted to see students in schools
buckling under the stress of high expectations, presenting with anxiety and
stress related crying and vomiting. This prompts me to consider how the school
curriculum itself and its reliance on testing and assessment puts undue stress
on the students who we claim ‘are at the centre of all we do’ is an antecedent
to mental ill health.
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| Pasi Sahlberg |
In his neck of the woods standardised
testing is almost universally rejected and there is more of a focus on play. Teachers
are required to have masters degrees and they maintain a high level of autonomy.
Students start school at seven years of age and may never be exposed to any
kind of assessment! Yet Finland when compared to other OECD countries based on
key education metrics including literacy and numeracy (Program for
International Student Assessment – PISA) is the strongest performer!
So what happens in the years before
students start formal schooling at the age of seven? There is a focus on health
and well-being and play is considered to be a natural way for young people to
learn how to relate to others, develop their problem solving capabilities and
to build and maintain positive mental health. All this without ever having been
tested on anything!
Kirsti
Lonka, Professor of Educational Psychology at the University of Helsinki asserts:
‘Without creativity, a sense of wonder and play, none
of the great achievements in science or art would’ve been born. When we know
how to foster these skills in schools, our children have the best opportunities
to grow up to be happy and skilled people.’
Meanwhile back in Australia students start
school at age five, and they are acculturated into the regime of NAPLAN,
ongoing assessment, competition and school league tables where schools are
focused on results and teachers are under too much control. Is it any wonder
that our students from the early years onwards are presenting with issues of
anxiety, depression and anger? Is it possible that the school is a risk factor
for the social, emotional and behavioural problems that children develop?
Since NAPLAN was introduced ten years ago
reading and numeracy have improved slightly and writing skills have gone down and
despite all the resources that have been invested in our system of education we
haven’t hit the lofty heights of excellence we were hoping for.
In New Zealand change is afoot as the new
Prime Minister moves to incorporate aspects of the Finland model into its
approach to education. The National Standards of Literacy and Numeracy has been
abolished for years one to eight and schools will choose their own way to
assess children’s progress, allowing educators more autonomy and control over
what they do. Minister Chris Hipkins says that schools will still collect a
range of data to track student performance but it will not go to a central
database to create school league tables (Labour's
education plans revealed). The aim is to focus more on learning and less on
excessive assessment.
There is a wide body of evidence that a
significant number of children experience a mental (ill) health condition. Educators
don’t need statistics to know this as they work daily with students who present
with a range of emotional and behavioural dispositions. A fair question would
be to ask if these conditions are caused and /or exacerbated by the imposed
learning and assessment regime. Sahlberg and his New Zealand counterparts
might agree with this proposition. Beyondblue
has published the following statistics to consider:
‘One in seven young Australians experience a mental
health condition. Breakdown: 13.9% children and adolescents aged 4-17 years
experienced a mental disorder between 2013-14, which is equivalent to an
estimated 560,000 Australian children and adolescents.’
If the hypothesis above has any credibility
then it may be asked; what is the function of mental health education and
promotion in schools? The answer is always that we want our students to be
happy and successful but perhaps educators and school counsellors might in part
be addressing the response of students to the stressors they experience in the
learning context. In this sense it could be the case that school is bad for
some kids because they have been introduced to formal learning too early and
they haven’t had enough time to build those foundation competencies and
attitudes that are conducive to long term success in a school setting; they’ve
had not enough time to play.
Michael McGowan in the
Guardian, Australia tells us:
‘Research has demonstrated that play in the early
stages of development can engage children in the process of learning and studies in New Zealand have found that
by age 11 there was no difference in reading ability between
students who began formal literacy instruction at age five or age seven.’
This is certainly food for thought for
those who drive and direct what schools do in Australia. Finland and New
Zealand educationalists would perhaps agree with Susan
E Noffke in “Revisiting
the Professional, Personal, and Political Dimensions of Action Research" who
comments on:
-
‘… the widespread influence of neo-liberal policies which have
resulted in a culture of ‘performativity’ (Ball, 2003). One prominent example
is the attempt to reduce the parameters of educational work to doing only that
which results in gains in the narrow band of standardised achievement test, and
the ‘mapping’ of curriculum and instructional strategies against that which is
tested.’ P.18
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| Susan E Noffke |
‘NAPLAN preparation is taking up a lot of time in a
crowded curriculum, that there are other curriculum areas that are seen as not
as important because they’re not tested. That they teach more to the test, so
they make sure that they cover the knowledge that’s on the test, and that means
that they’re not teaching other things.’
This was 2012 and one wonders if anything
has changed? But we persist in our schools to put a heavy premium on assessment
and though unintended the outcomes are plain to see. Perhaps the winds of
change are gathering momentum. The Finnish and New Zealand experiences are
wafting on a breeze of hope for the future.
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