 
Week 3 - Outcomes and Standards
|  | Outcomes and Standards: The Challenge Now is Even Greater |
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Listing of Papers | |
PROF. PHILLIP HUGHES
Canberra, ACT & Paris, France
WE HAVE SEEN an increasing commitment in the last years of the 20th Century towards achieving higher standards in all aspects of schooling. As the 21st begins, this demand for quality education will not diminish. For schools and teachers, seeking to scale these heights, what adds an extra mountain to climb is that the demand for quality is now extended to cover all students, rather than only a selected elite. The demand also extends to a wider range of outcomes.
The very first paragraph of the Report of UNESCO's International Commission on Education for the 21st Century stressed this wider role.
'The Commission does not see education as a miracle cure or a magic formula opening the door to a world in which all ideals will be attained, but as one of the principal means available to foster a deeper and more harmonious form of human development and thereby to reduce poverty, exclusion, ignorance, oppression and war.'
Delors, 1996
It is this extension of the desired outcomes of education, to touch so many areas of life, which make education of such significance personally, as well as socially. For example, changes in the nature of work cause equally substantial changes in the role of education. In the past, a person commencing work could expect to work a 35-40 hour week for a period of 40-50 years, often in one organisation. This is changing dramatically, with people having many careers and working very intensively for short periods. The basis on which these career changes are made is the possession of appropriate knowledge and skills.
Changed Concept of Work
The new situation for work involves: new types of employees, with higher levels of education, greater skills and different expectations for their involvement; new and continually changing technology; new organisation and management structures; and new possibilities for the location of work.
Charles Handy sees education as the necessary means for the development of an intellectual base for work knowledge and skills.
These changes in the nature of work and career are a consequence of the trend awy from labour-intensive manufacturing and towards knowledge-based organisations and the provision of services. An increasing proportion of the available jobs in our community require high-order intellectual rather than manual skills.
(Handy, 1995a)
Effective Education for Complete Citizenship
It is not only the work role which requires effective education. Where formerly our society required relatively few people educated to a high level, it now demands that all who wish to participate actively in its decisions must be adequately prepared. Thus, that preparation must equip for effective citizenship, as well as for vocational choice, and also for the capacity to make healthy and constructive personal choices. The knowledge base for all these choices takes on special significance.
The acquisition and distribution of formal knowledge will come to occupy the place in the politics of the knowledge society that acquisition and distribution of property and income have occupied in the age of capitalism.
(Drucker 1995)
This need to provide for a knowledge base for a broad social role, as well as an extended personal role, poses some demanding questions for education. It is in the solution of these tensions that the International Commission sees education's role in a broader light, 'at the heart of both community and professional development'. To do this, they develop a framework for the process of learning throughout life, a framework built on four pillars: learning to know; learning to do; learning to live together; and learning to be.
Learning to Know is the core general education that is the foundation for life-long learning, together with the in-depth work on selected subjects. This represents much of what we deliver in a good traditional education.
Learning to Do adds another dimension, in its emphasis on the capacity to apply knowledge in a variety of situations, i.e., a similar concept to the generic competencies advocated for Australian education.
Learning to Live Together is conceived as much more than an empty slogan but rather as the serious addressing of a deep need. It involves developing an understanding of others and their history, traditions and spiritual values, and thus helping to achieve a spirit which recognises our society's essential interdependence and the need to work together harmoniously and constructively. Naive? Perhaps so, but more realistic than to believe that education occurs in a vacuum. Of what value are learning and competence in a society torn apart by war and violence?
Learning to Be, the fourth pillar, was the dominant theme for the report by Faure in 1972, a report felt by many to be too idealistic and lacking in practical implications. Delors sees this emphasis as still valid. The emphasis on the spiritual and creative side of humanity, identified in this phrase, is seen as no less important than the other three. The implication of this pillar is that personal fulfilment is an ultimate aim, as is the need to develop qualities of imagination and creativity in children and adults as life-long learners.
The Purpose of Education
These four aspects make a good base on which the purposes of education can be established. One of the interesting aspects of much recent research on school improvement is the coupling of two requirements. The first is a vigorous and continuing emphasis on learning as the true focus of the school. The second is the concept of community in a school, i. e., the development of shared values, a common agenda and mutually agreed modes of operation.
It is where these two emphases are combined that the maximal improvements occur. This is the essence of the four pillars, not separate aspects of the purposes of education but an identification of what is needed in a holistic approach. This provides a base on which we can build our responses.
Is there a tension between the demand for improved performance standards, on the one hand, and greater attention to students' individual learning needs on the other? There is, of course, some tension. The International Commission sees a key role for education in fostering 'a deeper and more harmonious form of human development'. This deeper development implies more demanding requirements than a concentration only on basic skills, for example. The further stress on harmonious development implies that these raised standards apply to all, without discrimination. This must not be an empty slogan but an expression of what individuals require in order to deal with the reality of the world in which we live. It does unavoidably raise the required performance levels for all students and thus also increases the pressure on teachers.
'As schools move into the post-modern age, something is going to have to give. It might be the quality of classroom learning as teachers and the curriculum are spread increasingly thinly to accommodate more and more demands. It might be the health, lives and stamina of teachers themselves as they crumple under the pressure of multiple mandated change. Or it can be the basic structures and cultures of schooling, reinvented for, and realigned with, the post-modern purposes and pressures they must now address. These are the stark choices we now face.'
(Hargreaves, 1994)
Students experience this added pressure, too. As with all people they respond in different ways. Some appreciate the challenge and lift their performance. Others continue without apparent effect. However, too many young people opt out of the process of education, largely at the secondary level. They may do so physically, dropping out without gaining any qualification and with few skills adapted to work. They may do so in spirit, attending but not being really involved and not gaining greatly. For both groups, the key is motivation.
Fostering the Will to Continue to Learn
For too many students, school and their studies are irrelevant to their lives and they see no point in giving their schooling real effort. Motivation for continued learning is a necessity of the same order as having worthwhile courses and experiences from which to learn. If schools are to be part of the continuum of lifelong learning, they must be as concerned for the will to continue to learn as they are concerned to ensure that learning has occurred. Pressure is unavoidable for students, as for teachers, but we need to remember that with these added pressures, there also come added opportunities.
Schools Must Satisfy Dual Need
Barber comments on the unique opportunity which schools now have to satisfy the dual need, not only to be concerned to assess past learning but also to value the achievement of interest in future learning.
'. . . perhaps for the first time in educational history, it is possible to arrive at a curriculum that satisfies this dual need magnificently. The economy and democratic society demand increasing levels of educational achievement from everyone, while the multiple threats to the continued existence of the planet give that drive the ultimate justification. The agenda for education, therefore, could hardly be more motivating. Meanwhile, information technology will provide new and exciting ways of teaching and learning. Moreover, we have, at last, a theoretical understanding of children and young people that will assist teachers in their task.
(Barber, 1996)
What strategies might be employed to encourage teachers to develop integrated assessment tasks, e.g., one significant piece of student work embracing a range of learning areas and key competencies, as distinct from a series of small and unrelated exercises in discrete subjects?
The Importance of Evaluation
Processes of evaluation are always significant, since they play such an important role in the motivation of students. The multiple uses for evaluation add to the difficulty of assessing the value of a particular form. They are used, among other purposes: for public accountability; for certification; for selection; to improve teaching; to improve learning; to increase motivation. It is only in respect to their particular purpose in a given situation that it is sensible to judge their worth. In recent years, continuous assessment has played an increasing role in schools, partly to give quick feed-back to students and teachers on the success of particular teaching episodes, partly through their multiplicity to reduce the unreliability which accompanies single tests or examinations.
Like most other innovations, they are useful for certain purposes, as indicated above, but have their own weaknesses and negative effects. In particular, they sub-divide learning into little packages, often considered separately, so that the effects are piece-meal and different aspects of learning remain unrelated. They also occupy considerable time for their preparation, administration and follow-up: time which might be more profitably devoted to learning.
Integrated Assessment Tasks
Integrated assessment tasks attempt to address some of these shortcomings. Specifically, they seek to highlight the inter-relationship of knowledge and competencies. Ted Sizer, in his work for the Coalition of Essential Schools, recommends 'exhibitions' as a means of assessment. An exhibition is a comprehensive presentation by a student at the end of a learning sequence, in which the totality of learning is demonstrated, rather than a collection of separate parts. The exhibition has obvious links with the arts, where it may be a collection of sculptures, for example, but can as easily be in science, as a project to concentrate on a topic, or in history as a comprehensive picture of a particular period and an analysis of its significance.
Authentic assessment has a similar connotation: it is the term that writers such as Darling Hammond use to describe the process by which those designing or choosing evaluation approaches seek to find 'authentic' situations or tasks for any evaluation. Thus, the teaching of a topic such as citizenship requires the selection or establishment of situations, which show the authentic aspects of citizenship, such as responsibility, the will to act or concern for others. An example is found in the curriculum for the International Baccalaureate Organisation (IBO). The curriculum includes a requirement that all students complete an assignment in community service, to an individual, a group or an institution. The student must report on the assignment in writing, not just to describe what was done but to assess its usefulness. This is authentic assessment at its best, as it considers real responses in real situations.
The Social Outcomes of Schooling
Is sufficient attention being paid to the social outcomes of schooling at present, e.g., personal competence for effective participation in local and global communities?
No, the argument for the continued existence of schools will increasingly depend on the extent to which they can provide an effective social education, as well as preparing young people for work and as individuals.
'Secondary education must be seen as a crucial point in the lives of individuals: it is at this stage that young people should be able to decide their own future, in the light of their own tastes and aptitudes, and that they can acquire the abilities that will make for a successful adult life. Education at that level should thus be adapted to take account both of the different processes whereby adolescents attain maturity . . . and of economic and social needs.'
(Delors, 1996)
Education has a role in all three areas, as the quote from Delors claims. It is by no means self-evident, however, that schooling has a continued role. Its monopoly from the past may not continue for the future unless it can deliver results that are more effective, and also more efficient, than alternative approaches. It is not uncommon now to indicate alternatives to schools for vocational education. Senta Raizen identifies research which points out the strength of 'situational learning', learning in real or realistic situations, as distinct from institutional learning, for many aspects of vocational learning. Learning in a real work site has obvious advantages for developing work skills and understanding.
The Growth of Individual Learning
The Internet also provides unique opportunities for individuals to learn on their own, wherever they may be, rather than gathering in groups in expensive buildings, requiring special and highly qualified staff. More and more, individual learning will occur in that way and already large sums of money are being invested in the prospect of Internet learning. Yet, powerful as these approaches may be for much vocational and individual learning, many aspects of these two, and especially of social learning, need to take place in groups, and in places specially organised for the purpose.
As has already been stressed, the school is a community. It is the only community, apart from the family, of which young people will have substantial experience. In creating a community of learning, schools still have a unique advantage in helping people to learn what it is to be a responsible part of a group which can control its own life and purposes, its own means of growth and self-evaluation. Not all families can offer such opportunities but schools can do so, in ways that will carry over to the wider communities of which we are a part: local communities, regions, nations, international groupings, the global society. At every level, the capacity to live and work together in harmony is demonstrating its importance and the urgency for its creation and sustaining.
'The contemporary world is too often a world of violence that belies the hope some people placed in human progress. There has always been conflict throughout history but new factors are accentuating the risk, in particular the extraordinary capacity for self- destruction humanity has created in the course of the twentieth century. Through the media, the general public is becoming the impotent observer, even the hostage, of those who create or maintain conflicts. Education has, up to now, not been able to alleviate that state of affairs. Is it possible to devise a form of education which might make it possible to avoid conflicts or resolve them peacefully by developing a respect for other people, their cultures and their spiritual values?'
(Delors, 1996)
Noting it Down is not Enough
It will not be enough for schools simply to note this need. They will increasingly have to play a key role in developing the competencies which enable effective and harmonious participation - first in their own setting; next in the local community and nation; inevitably, too, now, in the global society. This is a society in which we all share and which we must learn to manage peacefully and sustainably. We can lay the foundations for this at school.
Internationalisation opens up to us wider horizons - the three challenges of building a productive society, of enhancing its sense of common purpose and meaning, and of enhancing the significance of learning. We need not only to build a common foundation but also to awaken that sense of personal commitment to continued growth, which is the heart of education. The achievement of these aims requires schools which are able to focus on the processes of learning, as well as build a sense of community. The penalty for failure will be high. The prizes for success are less dramatic but more lasting and significant. Handy's words make an appropriate final point.
'The world is up for reinvention in so many ways. Creativity is born in chaos, what we do, why we do it, when we do it, how we do it - these may all be different and they could be better . . . Change comes from small initiatives which work, initiatives which, initiated, become the fashion. We cannot wait for great reasons from great people, for they are in short supply at the end of history. It is up to us to light our own small fires in the darkness.' (Handy, 1995b)
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Professor Phillip Hughes has been a secondary, technical and university teacher, working in Tasmania, Victoria, USA and UK. He was Deputy-Director-General of Education in Tasmania; Foundation Chairman of the ACT Education Authority; Foundation Head of Teacher Education at Canberra CAE; Dean of Education and Chairman of Professorial Board at University of Tasmania; Foundation Chief Executive Officer, Australian Principals Centre. His special interests are curriculum, evaluation and good teaching and he has worked in these fields for UNESCO in Paris, China, Hong Kong, Thailand and the Philippines, as well as in Australia, USA and the UK. He is currently working jointly in Canberra and Paris for UNESCO.
Phillip Hughes can be contacted by email at:
Phillip.Hughes@anu.edu.au
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REFERENCES
Barber, Michael (1996). The Learning Game.
Drucker, Peter (1995). Managing in a Time of Great Change.
Delors, Jacques (1996). The Treasure Within. Report of the International Commission on Education for the Twenty-First Century, UNESCO. Paris.
Handy, Charles (1995a.) The Age of Unreason. Arrow Books, London.
Handy, Charles (1995b.) The Empty Raincoat. Arrow Books, London.
Hargreaves, A. (1994). Changing Teachers: Changing Times. MacMillan, New York.
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