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Nigel Coutts

Change, culture and Cultural Change in Education - The Learner's Way - 0 views

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     Embedded in the very weave of the organisation, culture is the most difficult aspect of an organisation to change and the hardest form of change to sustain 'That's because transforming a culture requires influencing people's deepest beliefs and most habitual behaviours' (Rogers, Meehan & Tanne 2006 p5). Rogers et al indicate that as little as 10% of all organisations that set out to develop a high performing culture achieve their goal.
Nigel Coutts

Learning vs Work in a Culture of Thinking - The Learner's Way - 0 views

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    Earlier this year a group of teachers I work with explored the 'Eight Cultural Forces' identified by Ron Ritchhart of Harvard's Project Zero. In doing so we decided to focus on our use of the term learning instead of the word work. Our goal was to bring our language choices into the spotlight and explore how a more deliberate focus on learning might alter the culture of our classrooms. Two terms later this focus persists and it is worth reflecting on the effect that this has had.
Nigel Coutts

Why didn't that work? Maybe its culture? - The Learner's Way - 0 views

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    n practical terms, any change effort that does not consider the culture into which it is introduced is unlikely to succeed. The worst-case scenario is that the change effort is resisted to such a degree that it is never truly implemented. In many cases, however, the change effort fails to produce the sort of results initially imagined despite the efforts of all involved to adopt the change. Although the new behaviours are adopted, something goes wrong, and it isn't always that the new idea itself is to be blamed. - Maybe it's culture?
Nigel Coutts

The Eight Cultural Forces - The lens & the lever - The Learner's Way - 0 views

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    This unavoidable and irreducible complexity means that schools are challenging place to study, to understand and to manage change within. Even for the teacher who spends everyday inside the school there is so much going on that unguided observations and the plans based upon them come with no guarantee of success. - We need a lens and a lever to manage this complexity. -  Such a lens is offered by the 'cultural forces'.
Nigel Coutts

Educational Disadvantage - Socio-economic Status & Education Pt 1 - The Learner's Way - 0 views

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    The role that education plays in issues of social equity and justice cannot be undervalued. It is acknowledged by the United Nations as a human right, 'Everyone has the right to education' (United Nations, 1948) and as outlined in the Melbourne Declaration on the Educational Goals for Young Australians 'As a nation Australia values the central role of education in building a democratic, equitable and just society- a society that is prosperous, cohesive and culturally diverse, and that values Australia's Indigenous cultures as a key part of the nation's history, present and future.' (Barr et al, 2008). Such lofty assertions of the importance of education as a right and national value should be sufficient to ensure that all Australians have access to an education of the highest standard with equitable outcomes for all, the reality is that this is not the case.
Nigel Coutts

Banishing The Culture of Busyness - The Learner's Way - 0 views

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    At the start of each year we arrive back from our break hopefully rested and energised. The new year brings many new opportunities including new students, new team members and new teaching programmes. We begin again the climb up the hill with a fresh group of learners arriving at our doors full of excitement who will rely on us to meet their learning needs in the year ahead. All of this means we are at risk of starting the year with a certain level of panic. There is so much to do, our students are not accustomed to our routines, we don't know each other well, there are parents to meet, assessments to be done and before we know it we are back to being busy. 
Nigel Coutts

Teaching Dispositions for Learning - The Learner's Way - 0 views

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    Increasingly we aim to teach dispositions but some care in the use of the term is required as it is easily oversimplified. While teaching for dispositions is encouraged it will have little effect if it means doing little other than engaging with the terminology. If we are to encourage the expansion of the desired dispositions, we must be sure to adequately unpack them and understand the implications in store for our culture of learning. 
Nigel Coutts

What messages are we sending about learning? - The Learner's Way - 0 views

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    How can we take more notice of the culture of our classrooms and what it communicates to learners about the value of thinking? 
Nigel Coutts

In Postnormal Times our Students need to be Brave - The Learner's Way - 0 views

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    If we are to cultivate the dispositions required in these times of postnormality and post-truth we need to establish cultures in our classrooms which will allow them to thrive. 
Nigel Coutts

A pedagogy for Cultural Understanding & Human Empathy - The Learner's Way - 0 views

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    How we see ourselves, how we describe ourselves reveals a great deal about how we see 'others'. In May of this year, speaking to the audience of the International Conference on Thinking, Bruno Della Chiesa invited us to consider how we might approach the question of "who we are?". In responding to such a question, what list of affiliations do we invoke to define ourselves?
Nigel Coutts

Finding a new paradise for education in times of chaos - The Learner's Way - 0 views

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    Through any lens schools are complex places. A melting pot of human, social, political, economic, technological, physical and philosophical tensions. At once the stronghold of our cultural traditions and facilitators of our future wellbeing, schools serve as pillars of stability constructed at the event horizon between our now and our tomorrow. Perhaps at this point in time more than ever is this tension between the role that schools play in indoctrinating our youth into the ways of society at odds with the imperative to prepare them for their futures.
Nigel Coutts

Exploring the Changing Social Contexts of Learning - The Learner's Way - 0 views

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    Understanding how mobile, global and virtual social networks influence our interpretation of socio-cultural theories of learning might allow us to better understand the interplay of settings and contexts within which learning occurs and in doing so better understand how learning may be facilitated.
Nigel Coutts

A Question of Scale: Meeting a Global Need - The Learner's Way - 0 views

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    I recently spent ten days in Cambodia accompanying students on a service trip where they developed their cultural understanding and spent time improving the environment of a local school. While laying pavers and digging a ditch I had a chance to reflect on the difficulties facing education in a country like this. I came away with questions, wondering and few answers. 
Nigel Coutts

Language Moves that Encourage Initiative - The Learner's Way - 0 views

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    Why might it be that our students struggle with independence? Maybe it comes from the language moves we make. As with the language of thinking, being deliberate with our choices can help us to create a classroom culture where students demonstrate independence and initiative.
Nigel Coutts

Essential Reading for Teachers Interested in Thinking - The Learner's Way - 0 views

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    If you are interested in building a classroom culture where thinking is noticed, named and celebrated, there are three books which make essential reading. They provide clear evidence for why teachers should focus their efforts on encouraging and normalising thinking and offer research-backed strategies to support this. The books are the result of ongoing research by Harvard's Project Zero and their lead author Ron Ritchhart.
Nigel Coutts

Telling a new story of learning and school - The Learner's Way - 0 views

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    One of the key ways by which we make sense of our world is by analysing the stories that we and others use to describe it. These stories are a construct of our experiences, our beliefs, our cultural perspectives and the interactions between these things. Even when the context in which the story is set is the same, the details and nature of the story that particular individuals or collective share can differ vastly. Only by listening to each story with empathy and genuine desire to understand each individual's telling of this story do we develop true insights. Making sense of the stories of education should be a key process for all educators.
Sheryl Butler

Mrs. Butler's Fun Sites - 2 views

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    Great site aligned to k-6 curriculum for enrichment or remediation. Math, Language Arts, Science, Social Studies and more! Updated regularly! Units include animals, baseball, biomes & habitats, biographies, communities, countries & cultures, economics, electricity, forces and motion, magnetism, government, holidays, just for fun, landforms & geography, light & sound, math games, ,math videos, pi, money, moon & stars, nutrition, muscles & bones, teeth, Ohio plants & animals, plants, rocks & soil, simple machines, spelling & reading, and tools for kids.
Nigel Coutts

Language moves for identity - The Learner's Way - 0 views

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    What changes when we refer to ourselves or our students as members of the community of thinkers and learners that they are apprenticed to? What changes when we are mindful in our use of a language of identity?
Nigel Coutts

What might schools learn from McDonald's? - The Learner's Way - 0 views

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    Walk into any McDonald's, anywhere in the world, and you know where you are and what to expect. For the homesick traveller, the consistency of McDonald's' design aesthetic is comforting. You know how this is going to work, you understand what to do, and you know what you are likely to get. McDonald's requires minimal cognitive load on the customer's behalf.
Nigel Coutts

The Power of Making Thinking Visible with Ron Ritchhart & Mark Church - The Learner's Way - 0 views

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    On Saturday PZ Sydney Network hosted Ron Ritchhart and Mark Church for a conversation about their new book, "The Power of Making Thinking Visible". What follows is a summary of some of the key messages from this conversation. You can watch the whole conversation above. For more learning opportunities like this visit the PZ Sydney Network or follow @pzsydnetwork on Twitter.
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