Our education system

After spending a few years now in education - i am fast coming to the conclusion that our system of education is a bit back to front. My primary reason for thinking this is that from an early age in rimary school we engage students in whats seems to me in thematic based work where the primary curriculum allows teachers to explore content in a combined way. Whilst when the students get to secondary school we put them in silos seperate subject knowledge and traditionally expect them to learn in 5 or 6 50 min periods.

This creates a real dilema in that we expect students to be able to work independently and make decisions but the way we teach them promotes students who sit and digest learning rather than being active participants in it. It would seem logical to me that at an early age we teach students to make decisions and learn processes in a systematic/ more structured way whilst at secondary level giving them space work at a more independent level

Geography in the secondary curriculum

Have had an interesting day today. I attended a course on the process for gaining the secondary quality mark for Geography at KS3. The whole process focuses on the idea of identifying quality Geography in schools. Obviously one of the benefits of going through this process is that it raises the profile of Geography in your school. One thing that worried me slightly during the day is that in the examples given they did not seem to draw elements of Geography that were taught in other subjects. In other words there was no cross subject mapping. The problem with this is that whilst the quality mark for Geography will promote the importance of Geography within the Geography department it has only a short term effect on the rest of the school. In a way this means we are preaching to the converted within the department and not encouraging the values of a great subject in everything else. This highlights the issues of subjects operating in silos within school. In primary this problem isn't so great because teachers have to teach everything so to speak. My own feeling with the curriculum is that the personal learning thinking skills approach may be the way to go in that it means we focus on the skills and use the content to develop and enhance those skills. Obviously for many secondary teachers myself included this means we need to be far more relaxed about the whole concept of not being the font of all knowledge - but rather as someone who can facilitate and guide students in a particular direction.

Naace 2009

Currently I am attending the Naace conference in Blackpool. An interesting experience if nothing else. One of the concerns I have about the whole BSF/ICT educational agenda is that we seem to be focusing far too much on the technology and not enough on the learning. By creating a conference that has a focus around ICT in learning we effectively create an enironment where the focus is ICT rather than learning. Some of the seminars I have attended seem to fulfil this idea. In my view the key about anything we do in education is that it must enhance learning rather than just using technology because its cool. Take the latest emmerging technology from a well know vendor a large touch surface which can be used to manipulate images, use maps and content. The danger with this innovation is that whilst it is very cool and certainly has the wow factor it maybe that schools go and buy the technology before they have really worked out what we should do with it. We really need to change the culture and make sure we think about things before we do them.