In-service teacher professional development supports the careers of students

In Australia, a new style of teaching young people designed specifically to equip students with the skills not just to cope, but the life-skills to prosper are being taught with great results.

For many children worldwide today, the education they receive is insufficient and incompatible with the ‘real world’.

That’s not the fault of teachers and they too have endured a system that graduates teachers via a process that has little to do with the life-skills they need, rather, it’s a process that prepares teachers to follow curricula that in some cases haven’t changed for 100 years.

The world today is in a fast-paced state of constant change, with this acceleration there is a growing complexity of social and technological processes which result in new and currently unresolved issues directly affecting the evolving education ecosystem. Consequently, in many areas of the world, education is struggling to keep up. A deep ‘learning crisis’ has been highlighted, showcasing that many students are leaving years of schooling with little outcomes to show for it.

These issues have been around since the time of Aristotle. He died in 322BC:

Aristotle wrote; “There are no generally accepted assumptions about what the young should learn, either for virtue or for the best life; nor is it clear whether their education ought to be conducted with more concern for the intellect than for the character of the soul.”

Aristotle’s concept; “through universal education, the citizen will become informed enough to be able to debate the wisdom of public policy and to recognize those who were qualified to be elected as “the guardians” of society and democracy.”

Fast-forward two thousand years and 19th-century industrialization needed a specific format for learning that graduated people who could be applied to the needs of a rapidly developing class of wealthy industrialists.

It’s a veritable tragedy that in the 2020s, school curricula remain focused on producing a person capable of economic self-reliance to the almost total neglect of that which nurtures our soul — creativity and the humanities.

Recent research conducted by hundred.org, a not for profit organization committed to discovering, researching, and sharing inspiring innovations in K12 education, reported a fascinating and rich insight into the opinions of young people aged 13–18 years from nineteen countries regarding their perceptions of education. Highlights include;

• 83% of youth believe learning skills to help them in their future career would improve their education.
• Young people feel unprepared for the ‘real-world’ and frequently share their concern for a lack of preparedness for what they will face after formal education.
• Following this, youth were most concerned with improving: their physical learning environment (61%), learning life skills such as empathy, collaboration & communication (58%), their education being tailored and personalized to their needs (56%) and learning how to live a sustainable lifestyle (53%).
• Sustainability, in the state of the debate, showcased its importance to only 2.78% of the general population, yet in the global youth survey over 50% of youth highlight this as an area to improve.

The research further reported;

“The Finnish way of thinking is that the best way to address insufficient educational performance is not to raise standards or increase instruction time (or homework) but make school a more interesting and enjoyable place for all. Raising student motivation and well- being in school, in general, are among the main goals of current education policy in Finland.” – Pasi Sahlberg

Twentieth and 21st-century school curricula are generally based on the 19th-century philosophy that the primary emphasis of education ought to be on the socialization process and the acquisition of pragmatic knowledge and utilitarian skills.

Since the 19th century, the overarching goal of school curricula was and still is, to provide the individual with the means to comply with the social mores of their community and ideally become economically self-reliant.

From the mid-1800s onwards, education was viewed as a means of perpetuating the national-cultural identity of the country. The system ferreted out a select group of male students who were further educated in the established universities. Thus, an elite corps of intellectual and political leaders self-selected from the general populace, with the primary function of debating and preserving the tenets of the common cultural identity and guiding its further evolution.

The industrialization of the economy required a disciplined and industrious working class. This was achieved by structuring schools on a factory model that focused on the self-discipline of the work ethic, on the knowledge that would be economically beneficial to the individual and to the social economy, and on processes of character building that molded the individual’s character to the moral and ethical standards of the society. These were the requirements of the educational system through which the child developed a relationship to the whole society and came to understand his/her place in that society.

In the 19th-century the emerging common culture in the United States and colonies like Australia was Eurocentric and, essentially, reactive against the cultural influences of imported slaves and the indigenous populations.

Together, these influences gave definition to the common cultural identity of the nation. They also shaped the psychological, pedagogical, and curricular foundations that defined how the individual would assimilate society’s cultural personality and their role and place in their society.

The World Development Report 2018, Learning to Realize Education’s Promise, is one example of research that provides an in-depth overview highlighting the ‘learning crisis’ as many countries continue to provide learning which is neither meaningful nor improving youth outcomes. This report suggests that the best way to equip children and youth for the future is to place their learning at the center and that stakeholders need to explore: 1) education’s promise; 2) shining a light on skills rather than knowledge; 3) understanding how to make schools work for learners; and 4) understanding how to make systems work for learning.

“The world is changing extremely fast and schools need to change as well, but it’s not an easy task because, all over the world, education is happening in silos. Every country is a silo, every state is a silo, every city is a silo and every school is a silo. There are gatekeepers everywhere, so it is complicated to make change happen.” — Saku Tuominen

Yes, the world is indeed changing extremely fast and we need to ask how will school curricula keep pace?

Do you feel that current education methods fully prepare students for the needs of the 21st century?

“No, I don’t think they do very well. We’re in a millennium that’s going to be full of surprises, and technology brings a lot of those surprises. Kids need to be able to cope with solely unexpected problems, it’s really important. At the moment they probably sit in exam rooms and think ‘I hope there are no surprises’ while the teacher is outside saying ‘I hope I’ve prepared them for everything.’ Nothing could prepare them less well for the world they’re going into.” – Stephen Heppell

When we discuss education the focus generally rests on curricula and students, but what of our teachers?

There seems little point in devising curricula that have the goal of graduating young people with improved capacities to thrive in the 21st-century without also devising mechanisms to help teachers adapt to, and deliver, new learning models.

Surely we can’t expect teachers to magically morph into ?? when they are trained to deliver out-of-date curricula?

Given students spend about 20% of the hours in a week attending school, what then is the role of family and peers in the learning cycle?

There’s a wonderful graphic attributed to Elon Musk that perfectly captures what it takes to truly make progress. Elon uses “vectors” and equally we could use “stakeholders”.

It’s clear that no matter the industry or use-case, if the vectors aren’t aligned and pushing in the same direction, then the outcome will be sub-optimal and often a great disappointment.

Assuming the validity of Elon’s premise, it seems reasonable to state that the stakeholders employed in the development of our young talent must not just be aligned in their thinking but must also have evolved the same suite of skills we want our youth to develop.

Meaning curricula designers, academics, teaching staff, school administrators, parents, and politicians need to be pushing in the same direction and to do that they all need to have a level of competence in what we call Life-Skills, aka the humanities.

Students all over the world learn about the history of their culture, often in terms of the battles fought and typically the battles that were won. How is any of that knowledge helpful to a young person graduating high school in 2021?

It’s not just irrelevant, it’s bordering on a criminal waste of time for everyone involved.

It’s fair to argue for some form of overarching awareness of what the clash of religions, civilizations, and tyrants has cost in terms of lives lost. There’s value in that knowledge in a broad sense with some focus on the truly despicable tyranny of people like Hitler, but that’s enough. Provide students with pathways to learn more IF they’re interested.

In 2021, it’s not historical knowledge that will equip young people for the reality of life post their full-time education.

To continue “teaching” young people using 20th and often 19th-century curricula borders on criminal neglect. It really has to STOP.

Recently in Australia, a new style of teaching young people that is designed specifically to equip students with the skills to not just cope, but the life-skills to prosper, are being taught with great results.

“Schools of the future will be driven by children’s needs, not examination results and targets” – Bernard Barker

Those “examination results and targets’ are a convenient means of aggregating industry performance. What a total shame that “convenience” is how the education industry conveys its value to society.

Sure feels like we need to reinvent how we deliver and measure the impact and relevance of education.

Maybe the measure should simply be the youth unemployment rate? Looking at the chart below, showing Youth Unemployment in Australia for the past 20 years, it’s clear that young people are 2x more likely to be unemployed.

Employability is a moving target, much as the economy and lifestyles are a moving target and the changes are fast and dramatic.

That changability is for sure a massive challenge for designers of curricula. However……that doesn’t mean curricula can’t change in sync with the changes in our society. Pace of change can’t be declared as a reason that school curricula doesn’t keep pace with the world we live in.

Teachers can’t be expected to help our youth develop relevant skills if teachers skills aren’t updated.

It’s no longer plausible to process children through 12 years of formal education and graduate them into a world that views their hard earned credentials as irrelevant.

You can read the case study of our recent Life-Skills project at a local high school here: https://www.sevenmile.org.au/blog/pedagogical-thinking-for-teaching-essential-soft-skills

We’d be delighted to help you implement the Life-Skills Schema learning model in your school district.

Get in touch to discuss your ideas.

About the Author:
Greg Twemlow is a Sydney-based Social Enterprise Founder | Startup Mentor | CEO | Writer | Speaker | Host of https://medium.com/consilio