Occasional reflections on geography, education and the world about us.

A lot has been written in the educational press recently about the concept of “spaced learning”. This is the notion that pupils seem to learn best when they are taught in bursts, separated by distraction activities. It is more than just another education theory, as it is being implemented in a number of schools, perhaps most notably in Monkseaton, in Tyneside. The Head there has read the research and seems to believe that this method can deliver real and lasting improvement. The basic structure of a spaced learning lesson involves three “stimulations” separated by two 10 -minute gaps. The research seems to indicate that such a structure significantly improves the way the brain processes then internalises and memorises information.
I am interested in any kind of educational model that can be demonstrated to improve learning; I particularly like the idea of formative assessment (Assessment for Learning) but wonder if AfL has disappeared from current statements on assessment. Where, for example,  is the familiar little yellow triangle symbol for AfL in the new Education Scotland web page on assessment?

So, I’d like to drill down into the notion of spaced learning, and ask a few questions:

1. What is the research evidence for this approach? What are the criticisms?
2. Is spaced learning particularly suited for a specific age and stage?
3. How is this style of learning coordinated at school level, ie who decides the proportion of spaced learning lessons per year group/ per subject.
4. Does spaced learning work better with some subjects than others?
5. Does spaced learning suit pupils of all abilities?
6. How many schools have adopted or are considering adopting spaced learning? (And if not, why not?)

I’d also like to try some spaced learning principles in my S1 and S2 Geography classes; we shall be covering Settlement and Population Studies respectively after Christmas, and I have hour long lessons with them, which fits the timescale needed. I’ll need to see if the topics lend themseleves to spaced learning-or vice versa-and then think carefully how to do this.

In the meantime, I hope to explore this topic further in the next few posts.

http://www.retenda.com/site/spaced-learning

Flying in over an expansive and level agricultural mosaic of elongated strips of greens, browns and golds stretching for miles in all directions, the plane made its final descent to Krakow. A mere 2 ½ hours flight from Edinburgh, we were in a different kind of Europe, redolent with a unique and at times, troubled history. Met by one of our Comenius colleagues, Tomek, we were driven north through woodland and gently undulating farmland, the low ridges on the horizon punctuated by tall chimneys smoking Poland’s black gold, lignite. En route we stop at a traditional wooden inn for our first taste of Polish cuisine.

Our arrival at Radomsko at dusk was touching, as we were greeted like old friends and each presented with a single rose. These roses were a symbol of warmth and kindness which we experienced from each and every person we met. Our abiding memory of the visit is the generosity of the Polish people. Nothing was too much bother, and we were quickly made to feel at home.

Radomsko itself is in many ways unremarkable; a small town with a service economy, it lies on the great Polish plain, on major historic routes between Hapsburg Vienna and Warsaw, near the coalfields of Katowice and close to Medieval Czestochowa, site of the famous Black Madonna. It is surrounded by woodland, which encroach the very suburbs, mostly well kept blocks of flats, and small shops but also ribbons of larger modern villas of the type seen at the edge of many Central European villages. It is dark and quiet at night, with sparse and low powered street lighting. Occasionally a coal train rumbles through the main line, the clanking metal of the trucks echoing and reverberating against the walls of the flats, creating a stereo effect. Yet it is a proud town, with a well resourced museum that tells of a settlement which began in the Middle Stone Age, and which experienced the vicissitudes of history. Most painful, is the story of the Jewish community, once comprising half the town, now nonexistent. Most of this community of traders and craftsmen perished in Treblinka. But the opposition to the Soviets is recalled, too, with an impressive memorial to the patriots who fought a guerilla war against the Russians in the local woods.

The school is lively, newly painted, with students polite and a little shy. We see a few familiar faces from our previous meeting in June, and soon we are telling the English class all about life at Hutchie and in Glasgow. Renata and her colleagues delight in showing us the Comenius garden which they planted, complete with the oak tree we gifted last year. At the local culture centre, we give a presentation to the parents and students, who all receive certificates and hearty applause. Our partnership means a great
deal to the school community and has clearly opened new doors for these youngsters. The gratitude of the parents is expressed in a buffet of traditional Polish fare. At night, we meet with many new colleagues and share experiences in a mixture of English, German and phrasebook Polish.

A highlight was the cycle route through miles of farmland and native woodland, the sun splintering and fracturing between the branches of pine. In a clearing we stop at an apiary for mead and delicious honey cake. Our hostess cannot speak a word of English, but her welcome is warm and sincere, and she takes pride in showing us the collection of traditional wooded bee hives carved into folkloric figures that could have come from the Brothers Grimm. A few miles further on, we stop at a small lake, and are served grilled fish. The route through this forest has interpretational panels, devised by the Comenius students and is a celebration of sustainability, history and local culture.

Our last full day took us on a long journey, in many ways. We explored Krakow, on the Vistula, and especially the impressive Wavel castle, seat of power and prestige, with its ornate Flemish tapestries, Old Masters and Meissen porcelain. The old town was crammed with visitors and the streets ful of boutiques, bars and elegant cafes. Buskers in traditional costume pipe merry tunes, and cockaded horses trot by pulling carriages with young couples. In St. Mary’s Basilica we see the world’s largest Gothic Altarpiece by Veit Stoss, from Nurnberg. Then, a slow journey out of town, west through farmland, factories and forest until we come to a small town with a railway station and many sidings. The station name is Oświęcim. We know it better as Auschwitz.

And so, on a beautiful late summer’s day, with the shadows lengthening on autumnal trees we are given a very personal tour of hell. Our guide is factual, but we sense a latent anger in her accounts of the methodicaland ultimately industrial process devised here for humiliating, breaking and eliminating human beings. First it was Poles and prisoners of war for slave labour, and then it was the Jewish people for extermination. Each prison block, like Bluebeard’sCastle, revealed some fresh horror. In some cases, literally. An expansive glass case full of human hair, a pile of discarded suitcases,shoes. Even such symbols of vulnerability and frailty as artificial legs had been cynically removed and stockpiled. But the real horror was the realisation of being where it had happened, peering into claustrophobic and suffocating cells, sealed boxes where people had to stand all night unable to sit or lie. The wall at the end of the yard where people were shot in the back. Standing in the very gas chambers themselves, and shuddering at sight of the oven doors. “Arbeit macht frei” was indeed a sick piece of irony, and a phrase to chill the heart. No wonder our Polish friends were moved to tears. This was, and is, their soil, their country, their story.

So we made the way back on the bus. Quiet, reflective, seeking solace in the setting sun over the narrow strips of land we had seen from the plane just a few days previously. Clive James tells us we need to remember what we owe Poland: “if history could begin again,” he says, “Poland’s contribution and sacrifice would be too much to ask for one small nation” Suddenly the enormity of Poland’s history strikes me; it is the story of Europe, too often at war, crossed and re-crossed by a score of invaders…a
country which still grieves a grievous plane crash and lost President.

And then, something remarkable. We return to Krakow, and bid a reluctant farewell to friends. There are more gifts of books, jars of local honey and chocolates from people we scarcely knew three days ago. We give a final wave and then head off into the city. It is dark, cloudless and starry. The implacable fortress is bathed in floodlighting. Tourists wander the old streets. A crowd of young people has gathered by the banks of the Vistula. At some unknown signal, first singly and then in flotillas, Chinese lanterns are released. Suspended candles illuminate the pastel coloured paper, the lanterns gain warm air and rise into the sky, catching a wind that takes them far over the city. Soon dozens of lanterns are released, then hundreds, then thousands.

The flickering candles illuminate faces, with eyes shining as the lanterns are launched. There is laughter; a thousand mobile photos of friends are taken; love messages are scribbled on the paper. And the lanterns continue their silent flight over the city. After the horror of Auschwitz, here, of all nights and in all cities is a potent symbol-light, a reminder of life and of the power of humanity to overcome darkness. “Better to light a candle than curse the darkness” was never more powerfully illuminated than that night in Krakow.

Our trip to formally mark the end of the joint school project had become something bigger and more profound.  Here is the justification for travel; not to identify aims and objectives, or to satisfy “national criteria”, but to engage with people, to come up against the unfamiliar or the uncomfortable. To have a dialogue with somebody who sees things differently, who has a whole set of experiences and culture we cannot know about. It is staying and travelling with someone and
seeing the world through their eyes. True understanding, the goal of any learning, arises from the sudden revelation which comes like a jolt on a bumpy road through an old town in ancient Poland, and like Eliot, we see or comprehend things for the first time:

“…The end of
all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.”

Glad to see there will be another TeachMeet as part of this year’s  Scottish Learning Festival.  I have been to the last three, held respectively at the Science Centre, the BBC and, last year,  the Glasgow Auditorium. Alway stimulating, it’s a chance to meet colleagues who are, at other times, just names on a tweet or a blog. It’s fascinating to think of the technological shift, even since September 2007, my first TeachMeet. Blogging was becoming popular, with numerous teacher blogs popping up, some proving very durable indeed. Don Ledingham of East Lothian produced a refreshingly open and detailed blog, outlining the rationale and thought processes behind the decisions of a Director of Edication at a time fo great educational change. Ollie Bray has metamorphosed from geographer to Depute Head to all-round guru, with a prolific blog dedicated to exploring the impact of technology on learning. Ewen McIntosh continues to widen his horizons, exploring all manner of digital thinking on his “No Tosh” site. Today the emphasis is on tweeting, mobile technology, the demise of the PC, cloud computing and apps.

I am hoping to give a presentation on our experiences at Hutchesons’ Grammar of the EU Comenius programme, and in particular, to reflect on the potential of digital photography to bring staff and pupils together to devise a collaborative project. Our school set up a multilateral partnership with schools in Poland and Germany, focusing on change and urban design in our respective cities. This had the effect of galvanising interest in photography and film, too, and brought together a range of colleagues and pupils, who together learned new skills.  In the process we made many new friends, too, and the connections continue, with further exchange trips planned this session.

(Looking foward to the nibbles and refreshments,  too…)

Here is an excellent summation of the purpose of education from the 19th Century. It was written by William Cory, the poet and a master at Eton College.

“At school you are engaged not so much in acquiring knowledge as in making mental efforts under criticism. A certain amount of knowledge you can indeed with average faculties acquire so as to retain; nor need you regret the hours you spent on much that is forgotten, for the shadow of lost knowledge at least protects you from many illusions. But you go to a great school not so much for knowledge as for arts and habits; for the habit of attention, for the art of expression, for the art of assuming at a moment’s notice a new intellectual position, for the art of entering quickly into another person’s thoughts, for the habit of submitting to censure and refutation, for the art of indicating assent or dissent in graduated terms, for the habit of regarding minute points of accuracy, for the art of working out what is possible in a given time, for taste, for discrimination, for mental courage, and for mental soberness.”

Click here to check Google map of city tour of Glasgow

May 23rd saw one of the stormiest days in memory for May. There was considerable damage especially in Scotland, with winds reaching up to 100mph in exposed places. A man was killed near Balloch when a tree fell on to his car. Many homes were without electricity. To make matters worse, the ash cloud from Grimsvoetn is spreading further, leading to major disruption of air travel. In Joplin,Missouri, a tornado has killed over 100 people. This has led to continued speculation that global warming is causing an increase in the frequency of tornadoes, as discussed in the Guardian..

1T2 have reported some incidents from yesterday:

1. Yesterday it was unusually windy. The wind was so strong that it blew over strong things like trees. (Kallum)
2. I live in Glasgow Green where i saw up to 20 trees uprooted (Chris)
3. all trains from Glasgow Central were cancelled due to the adverse weather exept Ayr and Largs. (Jamie)
4. A tree next to train station fell over and landed on electricity lines. (Sarah)
5.

Was reading a recent academic paper which seeks to understand the philosphical rationale for the Curriculum for Excellence. In it, the authors Walter Humes and Mark Priestly, sceptics of CfE, decry its seeming lack of reference or adherence to any specific and coherent philosphy of curriculum design, contending that CfE is a confusing mesh of three “archetypes” curricular models : content, product and process. The role of Education is seem respectively as “transmission”, “instrument” and “development”.
Humes and Priestly see the major flaw being that we have a curriculum which is ostensibly “process based” being made to fit into “product” model, with a strong sequential structure, based on specific levels. CfE, in their opinion is ahistoric and atheoretical. It seems to be a curriculum with no memory and no sense of theoretical context.

Well and good; however, I am not sure that their writing will resonate swiftly and clearly with teachers eager for a brief and pithy precis of the shortcomings of CfE, shot through with the kind of deadening academic language that I find surprising from such writers.

How memorable will teachers find this:

“We argue that CfE is an uneasy mixture…, being essentially a mastery curriculum dressed up in the language of the process model. The issue seems to be a lack of conceptual clarity. The three archetypes co-exist in considerable tension, simultaneously taking a view of knowledge as being something constructed by learners on the one hand and being a prespecified, essentialist body of knowledge to be acquired and tested on the other hand. The operational end of CfE is thus arguably inimical to the underlying purposes of the curriculum as expressed in the four capacities. There are thus tensions between convergent and divergent modes of learning, between teleological and open ended conceptions of education, which may be unhelpful to the process of enactment in the classroom.”

Discuss….

The philospher AC Grayling is perhaps best known for his trenchant criticisms of religion and faith. One sentence from an article he wrote in the Telegraph makes his position pretty clear: “Religious belief of all kinds shares the same intellectual respectability, evidential base, and rationality as belief in the existence of fairies.”
But his writimng covers many fields, as befits a philosopher and public intellectual, and he has some cogent, but at times controversial obervations on education.

In “Education and Gender Difference”, Grayling takes recent GCSE results as his starting point for an essay that examines several strands of education that he feels need addressing:

1. There are gender specific differences in the ways boys and girls benefit from education: “girls are doing better than boys at A Level and GCSE”; “young women get fewer Firsts at Oxford than young men”; “pupils perform better when segregated into single-sex classes”
2. The move towards coursework disproportionately benefits girls. End of term exams favour boys.
3. Parents help pupils condiserably with coursework; this has a distorting upwards impact on grades. It also makes it harder to determine what the base level of intellect and cultural is.
4. Courses are too easy and accessible; there is insufficent depth and challenge. Hence, boredom sets in.

he recommends:

1. Both sexes should be subject to both forms of assessment, ie exam and coursework. A pupil’s best marks should then be the ones that determine future progress.
2. Mixed-sex classes for adolescents are not invariably a good idea.The sexes suffer deficits in learning as a result, with different ways of compensating for them; girls are more likely to make up lost ground later in homework, and therefore suffer marginally less from the knock-on effect of inattention in class. Since most subjects are learned cumulatively, lacunae in knowledge offered in earlier classes make learning in later classes more difficult.
3. Focus on the 3Rs at Primary; adolescents should be free to choose whether to stay at school or work thereafter; and the schools and university should be open to all who, later, wish to profit from them.

It is worth noting that some schools do acknowledge the different learning styles and needs of boys and girls, adopting the so-called diamond system, whereby the sexes start and end school together in Primary and Sixth Year, but diverge into separate streams for boys and girls from S1 to S5. Stewarts Melville, in Edinburgh adopts this approach. See also Dame Alleyns School.

As regards giving adolescents the oportunity to leave school, then this is part of the Scottish Conservative manifesto which aims to reduce school leaving age to 14.

“not all youngsters are suited to further or higher education, and should have the option of taking up an apprenticeship or vocational training if they want to.”……the policy would ensure pupils would not be “wasting their time” in the classroom until they were old enough to leave at 16, and a new generation of plumbers, welders and joiners would benefit the country as a whole in the long run.

Commentators, journalists and academics have raised questions regarding the philosophy and practice of implementing CfE. Many of these are summed up in a Royal Society of Edinburgh paper, responding to the CfE’s impact on the Humanities and Expressive Arts. Likewise Lindsay Paterson has long been critical of CfE, questioning its rigour.

Some of the most common questions include:

Philosophical

Rationale.What is the rationale for five stages? Are stages merely arbitrary?
Progression. What pedagogical theory underpins the progression from level to level?
What is the relationship between discrete subjects and interdisciplinary study?
Coherence.How do we identify the themes that will give coherence across diverse curricular areas? What are the goals of interdisciplinary learning?
Subject integrity. Will subjects continue to be taught in such a way as to allow the detailed unfolding of a discipline which will provide the necessary context for realistic and challenging assessment?
Basics. Is there a systematic approach to linguistics that will provide the grounding for ‘developing critical and creative thinking as well as competence in listening and talking, reading, writing’,

Practical

Timetable. How many subjects will a pupil currently in S1 take in 2014?
Over presentation. Will too many pupils be presented for external National 5 when they should be doing internal National 4? if Intermediate in S5 was a route for a pupil who scraped a Credit in S4 What will such a pupil do after National 5?
Ethical
Status. What status/currency will National Level 4 have?

Values. Is there room for disagreement in terms of accepting the values of CfE, eg can we question the “givens” of sustainability, multiculturalism and enterprise?

Higher/Further Education

Depth. What assurances are there that the outcomes in each area would qualify a student to enter a higher education course in that area?

The Government has produced a detailed list of “FAQs”, which help to address some of these questions.
There is also detailed information on the section of the SQA website dediucated to CfE.

There are some thoughful comments by Rod Grant, the Head of Clifton Hall school, regarding CfE, and other educational matters, on his blog. A more polemical approach is offered by Sunday Times journalist, Joan McAlpline, in a recent article., who describes CfE as “anti-knowledge”, while TESS reported a seemingly corruscating paper published in Oxford Review of Education by Mark Priestly and Walter Humes. Their research led them to criticise a curricuklum based on a set of levels:

“The decision to keep …outcomes organised into sequential levels – has resulted in a curriculum which is “incoherent structurally and which contains epistemological and pragmatic contradictions”. There are also “multiple instances” where progression between levels is “haphazard”.