So, where we? Yes, I was at the The Antwerp International School in Belgium. Was. My family and I had a year there. I held the title IT Director. We have fond memories of living in and travelling around Belgium.
We are now at the British School Muscat in Oman. I am the Head of Computing and Business Studies and we have very exciting times ahead! As of September 2014, Computing is the new ICT. Sadly, ICT was reduced by many to 'learn MS Office'. It was always much more than that but, sadly, its reputation and lack of clarity in what it really meant to many ICT teachers meant it was (rightly) replaced with Computing. Many might say that Michael Gove, the Education Secretary at the time who initiated this change, is not their most popular MP but I think he got this right.
Here in Muscat, I am lucky enough to work with a great team. There are 4 of us in the department and, between us, we cover KS3 Computing, GCSE Business and GCSE Computer Science and A-Level Business Studies, Economics and Computing. We have ourselves a bit of a head-start with KS3 Computing last year by developing a pilot Computing curriculum. As a 1.0 POS, it's very good. Developed by a colleague in my department, it provides a great foundation for 'review and refine' now, rather than wholesale development.
But this is not the point of this blog entry. This is...
At exam-level, we are embarking on developing a Flipped Learning Model for our students. At this stage, there are 2 key comments to make:
- The decision to go 'all in' with the Flipped Learning Model happened in the last 6 weeks of the last school year. As we approach the start of the new school year, we have been aggressively planning, reading, meeting, exchanging ideas and resourcing. We have not embarked on this disruptive pedagogical shift lightly!
- The second comment is that the whole school knows about this shift in learning emphasis! We are now 'front-and-centre' - all eyes are on us!
Why the shift?
The shift to a Flipped Learning Model was borne out of the need to:- Provide students with the support that they really need. Note: Really need
- Shift the responsibility of the learning squarely onto the shoulders of our students (and being sure they are learning!)
Re: Point 1 above (Providing Student Support)
Bloom's Taxonomy. For many of us, (and this is a very simplified example) we deliver a lesson and then we ask our students to 'analyse this text for homework'. Often, analysis, evaluation, synthesis or synopsis are not always well-understood or practiced by students. So why ask them to do this work without (y)our full support? After all, this type of homework might simply reinforce bad habits and/or an unclear understanding will simply remain unclear. Our reason and emphasis here is to move the lower order work out of the classroom. In effect, this becomes the 'homework' and it happens before the start of the unit or new learning. The expectation is that we, as professionals, are then able to support students to move into higher levels of thinking and understanding with our full supported. We can provide in-class Quality Assurance, Formative Feedback and help students develop elements that are higher up the food chain in the Bloom's Taxonomy.For us, and from what I have read, this is highly disruptive to one's own pedagogical comfort zone! Very.
Technology
Technology plays a big part to support this learning. Ubiquitous access to resources (video, audio, websites, presentations, etc) are available to students to develop lower order understanding in their own time, in an environment that suits them, using tools that suit them. These resources are also available in class, of course, but the emphasis is for students to take more charge of their own learning.Which leads us onto point 2.
Re: Point 2 above (Shifting Responsibility)
At British School Muscat, as with many schools around the world, we aim to provide students with Learning To Learn skills, or whichever variation of this characteristic you wish to apply. In my department, we support the school's endeavour by developing what we call the Autonomous Learner (or Learner Autonomy). This is not a cop-out approach to our new mode of helping students in their learning: it is a very serious endeavour, indeed. In many respects, this is the least new of our efforts. After all, I am sure many of us try to develop autonomy on one level or another.The fact is, with our new approach, students will be given opportunities to explore their learning, in and out of the classroom, in ways that may be very new to them. i.e. "It is your role to develop a basic understanding of Topic X with little input from me ... in the first place, at least."
Knowing They Know
With regard to the lower order learning, a key area for development for us, as a team, is Assessment.- How do we know they know?
- How do they know they know?
It seems we may develop Knowledge Tests in this respect. In the first instance, this could be little more than asking for various definitions of key terms. These assessments serve dual roles: a meaningful assessment that demonstrates an understanding of the key language and concepts; and, especially in the early phase of this development, behaviour management ... if you haven't done the work outside class, you will have no hiding place in this assessment. Sanctions apply.
To conclude..
I do not want to be (too) premature about these changes to our pedagogy. As a team, we know we will need to make adjustments to our own current level of understanding of Flipped Learning. We know students will need time to adjust and we will support them during this transition. We also know that by simply saying "We're are flipping our classrooms" won't improve learning. Our work will still be hard, but will be very different (my planning already looks vastly different!).It will be very interesting to see if what we have discussed and planned is a close correlation to what happens in the classroom ... or will our students have a much greater impact on how it develops!?
Recommended Reading:
- Flip Your Classroom by Jonathan Bergman and Aaron Sams
- Who Owns The Learning by Alan November
- Flipping 2.0 by The Bretzman Group
- Why School? by Will Richardson
