Effective Schools Model 

http://www.education.vic.gov.au/school/principals/curriculum/pages/effmodel.aspx

The Effective Schools Model is the conceptual organiser of the Literacy and numeracy 6–18 month strategy: P–10 improvement schedule for school leaders.

Accountability

Effective schools establish transparent and rigorous systems of accountability by which school and student performance can be evaluated.

Focus on Teaching and Learning

Effective schools are focused primarily on teaching and learning and use student learning data to inform planning and instruction. This focus guides the construction of rigorous and relevant learning for every student.

High Expectations of All Learners

Effective schools expect every student to learn—instruction is adapted to the individual needs of students, including high potential and underperforming students.

Learning Communities

Learning communities include students, their families, all staff and interested members of the wider community. They share common visions, values and objectives and they work collaboratively to enhance the teaching and learning of every student.

Professional Leadership

Professional leadership includes identifying a clear sense of purpose for the school and developing professional learning priorities that reflect the school’s purpose. This provides a window into the learning and growth of each learner and a platform from which to plan.

Purposeful Teaching

Purposeful teaching builds on students’ knowledge and matches the learning needs and styles of each student. Teachers have a strong grasp of the content, skills and pedagogy of their discipline. It is at the core of improving student learning outcomes.

Shared Vision and Goals

Effective schools demonstrate a clear and shared understanding of their goals, which are focused on student learning, sustained improvement and problem-solving. Sharing the vision and goals captures and communicates the school’s core purpose and beliefs.

Stimulating and Secure Learning Environment

Resources, including learning spaces, technologies and staffing, are allocated to develop and maintain classrooms that are conducive to high-quality literacy and numeracy learning and teaching. This space provides students and staff with a secure environment to learn with others.

Cultivating The Entrepreneurial Spirit: Preserve creativity

Granting student to do what they want to do rather than to forcing them to follow directions, to compete what has been prescribe, or to comply with external expectations help to preserve creativity, another quality for entrepreneurs.

Traditional schools have been generally found to be either insignificant or suppressive of creativity. Boston College University psychology Professor John Dacey and his coauthor Kathleen Lennon wrote in their book Understanding Creativity: Thee Interplay of Biological, Psychological, and Social Factors:

Most young children are naturally curious and highly imaginative ....Unfortunately, it is necessary to conclude from the investigation of many scholars, that our schools are the major culprits.  Teachers, peers and the educational system as a whole diminish children's urge to expressive their creative possibilities.

(dacey&Lennon, 1998, p. 69)

This happens because traditional schools demand conformity and obedient. They are held accountable for passing as much of the prescribed content to children as possible. Thus their primary goal is to ensure that children comply with externally defined standard. Excessive focus on external indicators of success such as grades and test score can pressure children, sending the message that academic success is important, not for personal reasons, but to please others (Ablard,1997). As a result, children lose interest. Research has shown that parents of talented children pay little attention to external standards (Ablard & Parker, 1997) And the Summerhill experience shows that when schools do not pay attention to external standards, children become more confident and creative,

Cultivating The Entrepreneurial Spirit: Take initiative

From Yong Zhao- World Class Learner

Allowing student the freedom to choose what to do in school helps children learn to take initiatives, a necessary quality of the entrepreneurial spirit. When student are given the freedom, they have to take the initiative to decide what to do. And when they do what they want to do, they have commitment. In contrast, when asked to follow a prescribed routine, they simply follow direction. The more prescribed the work, the less opportunity children have to exercise their own will. And the more prescribed, the less risk is involved. As a result, children simply become followers who learn to conform,to find correct answers expected by adults.

School Rich environment

One of  the most important elements of a reach environment is the availability of a diverse group of adult talents - staff and others who can serve as a role models, counselors, critics, friends, collaborators, assistants and teachers. In the traditional paradigm, the teaching staff members are selected to teach the curriculum based on their contain knowledge and skills to transmit knowledge, but in the new environment, we need adult to be passionate and talented in working with students as a community member. The more diverse their talents, the richer the intellectual environments is in the school.
Yong Zhoa, The Global Learners: Freedom to Learn

Bayi di Findland tidur dalam kotak kadbod

Equiti di Findland bermula sejak dari bayi. Lahir-lahir sahaja baby di Findland dapat hadiah buku.

Semua bayi yang baru lahir menerima hadiah yang mengandungi satu kota kadbod, diapers, pakaian bayi, berus gigi, buku dan toys. Sekarang ibu bapa mempunyai pilihan untuk menerima kotak hadiah atau gantian wang Euro 140, namun 95% memilih untuk mengambil hadiah kotak bayi.

Tradisi ini bermula pada tahun 1938. Pada tahun 30an Findland adalah sebuah negeri miskin. Kadar kematian bayi adalah tinggi. Sedekad kemudian keadaan bertambah baik. Asalnya kotak ini mengandungi hadiah berbentuk kain ela (fabric) kerana pada tahun-tahun awal kaum ibu berminat untuk menjahit baju anak sendiri. Pada tahun 50an fabik diganti dengan baju siap untuk kanak-kanak. 

Selamat aku tidur dalam kotak ini, takdalah kes jatuh katil.

China Enters “Testing-free” Zone: The New Ten Commandments of Education Reform 22 AUGUST 2013

 

No standardized tests, no written homework, no tracking. These are some of the new actions China is taking to lessen student academic burden. The Chinese Ministry of Education released Ten Regulations to Lessen Academic Burden for Primary School Students this week for public commentary. The Ten Regulations are introduced as one more significant measure to reform China’s education, in addition to further reduction of academic content, lowering the academic rigor of textbooks, expanding criteria for education quality, and improving teacher capacity.

The regulations included in the published draft are:

1. Transparent admissions. Admission to a school cannot take into account any achievement certificates or examination results. Schools must admit all students based on their residency without considering any other factors.
2. Balanced Grouping. Schools must place students into classes and assign teachers randomly. Schools are strictly forbidden to use any excuse to establish “fast-track” and “slow-track” classes.
3. “Zero-starting point” Teaching. All teaching should assume all first graders students begin at zero proficiency. Schools should not artificially impose higher academic expectations and expedite the pace of teaching.
4. No Homework. No written homework is allowed in primary schools. Schools can however assign appropriate experiential homework by working with parents and community resources to arrange field trips, library visits, and craft activities.
5. Reducing Testing. No standardized testing is allowed for grades 1 through 3; For 4^th grade and up, standardized testing is only allowed once per semester for Chinese language, math, and foreign language. Other types of tests cannot be given more than twice per semester.
6. Categorical Evaluation. Schools can only assess students using the categories of “Exceptional, Excellent, Adequate, and Inadequate,” replacing the traditional 100-point system.
7. Minimizing Supplemental Materials. Schools can use at most one type of materials to supplement the textbook, with parental consent. Schools and teachers are forbidden to recommend, suggest, or promote any supplemental materials to students.
8. Strictly Forbidding Extra Class. Schools and teachers cannot organize or offer extra instruction after regular schools hours, during winter and summer breaks and other holidays. Public schools and their teachers cannot organize or participate in extra instructional activities.
9. Minimum of One Hour of Physical Exercise. Schools are to guarantee the offering of physical education classes in accordance with the national curriculum, physical activities and eye exercise during recess.
10. Strengthening Enforcement. Education authorities at all levels of government shall conduct regular inspection and monitoring of actions to lessen student academic burden and publish findings. Individuals responsible for academic burden reduction are held accountable by the government.

World Class Learners: Educating Creative and Entrepreneurial Students

Corwin Press will release World Class Learners: Educating Creative and Entrepreneurial Students in association with the National Association of Elementary School Principal (NAESP) next month, June 2012. The book is about preparing

global, creative, and entrepreneurial talents. It is my attempt to answer a number of pressing questions facing education today. These questions are exemplified by two new stories that have dominated the media recently, one around the Facebook IPO and the other the debt and jobs of college graduates.

100 billion, 900 million, and 28 are three numbers that quickly summarize the story of Facebook Inc.: a 28-year-old CEO who co-founded a company with 900 million users world-wide and is now valued at over 100 billion dollars. The 28-year-old CEO and Co-founder, Mark Zuckerberg, is worth nearly $20 billion dollars and one of the 30 wealthiest people on earth. He was named one of the 100 most influential people multiple times by the Time magazine. Along with Zuckerberg, Facebook has produced a few other young billionaires and created jobs for thousands of people.

1 trillion, 4.9 million, and 23,000 capture the essence three numbers for the latter story: over 1 trillion dollars in outstanding student loans, with an average of over $23,000, and 4.7 million who had gone or graduated from college are unemployed in the United States. “For the first time in history, the number of jobless workers age 25 and up who have attended some college now exceeds the ranks of those who settled for a high school diploma or less,” according to a story in The Investors’ Business Daily on May 17.

No question that Facebook stocks can go up and down, the company could be a bubble and even disappear after a while, just like many others, but at its current value, 10 Facebooks or 50 Zuckerbergs can wipe out all the college debts.  You may not like Facebook or its creator and you may question if Facebook is truly worth that much, but at this time, it sure would be nice to have a few more innovative entrepreneurs like Mark Zuckerberg.

But how come we don’t have more Zuckerbergs? What led to the making of Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook? What’s the difference between Zuckerberg, who dropped out of college but created jobs, and the many millions who finished college but are looking for jobs? Is Zuckerberg a nice accident, a lucky anomaly like Steve Jobs? What role did his schooling play in his success, if any? Did Zuckerberg become Zuckerberg because of or despite his schools? Can we design schools to cultivate creative and entrepreneurial talents like Zuckerberg? If so, what does it look like?

“College and career readiness” is the mantra in the global education reform circle. Uniform curriculum, common standards and assessments, globally benchmarked practices, data-driven instruction, and high-stakes testing-based accountability are touted as the path to edutopia. PISA, TIMSS, and other similar type of international tests are regarded as the gold standard of educational quality and indicators of a nation’s future prosperity. But at a time when college degrees do not guarantee gainful employment or a meaningful life, what is the point of preparing someone to be ready for college? At a time when most of the careers for our children are yet to be invented, how could we prepare them? At a time when seven billion human beings living in vastly different societies that are intricately connected, how could “all children be above average” or winners of the global competition in a narrowly defined game?

This book is the result of my attempts to answer these questions with data and evidence from a variety of sources. Essentially, I reached the following conclusions:

1. The current education reform efforts that attempt to provide a common, homogenous, and standardized educational experience, e.g., the Common Core Standards Initiative in the U.S., are not only futile but also harmful to preparing our children for the future.
2. Massive changes brought about by population growth, technology, and globalization not only demand but also create opportunities for “mass entrepreneurship” and thus require everyone to be globally minded, creative, and entrepreneurial. Entrepreneurship is no longer limited to starting or owning a business, but is expanded to social entrepreneurship, policy entrepreneurship, and intrapreneurship.
3. Traditional schooling aims to prepare employees rather than creative entrepreneurs. As a result the more successful traditional schooling is (often measured by test scores in a few subjects), the more it stifles creativity and the entrepreneurial spirit.
4. To cultivate creative and entrepreneurial talents is much more than adding an entrepreneurship course or program to the curriculum. It requires a paradigm shift—from employee-oriented education to entrepreneur-oriented education, from prescribing children’s education to supporting their learning, and from reducing human diversity to a few employable skills to enhancing individual talents.
5. The elements of entrepreneur-oriented education have been proposed and practiced by various education leaders and institutions for a long time but they have largely remained on the fringe. What we need to do is to move them to the mainstream for all children.