Fertile Questions as the core to curriculum innovation

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Fertile Questions as the core to curriculum
innovation

• An implementation case study at
• Glen Waverley SC
• Dianne Peck dpe_at_gwsc.vic.edu.au

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• THINK for 2 minutes about the learning process
  that you would love to see in your
  classroom/school?
• PAIR up with the person next to you.
• SHARE your ideas with your partner.
• REPORT BACK on behalf of your partner.

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Characteristics of a Thinking Curriculum

• Supportive individual relationships
• Secure environment for risk-taking in thinking
  and learning
• Emphasis on motivation, cognition and
  self-regulation
• High levels of student decision-making
• Explicit teaching and infusion of thinking and
  learning strategies through all teaching
• Focussed in-depth learning
• Challenging tasks, complex thinking,appropriate
  assessment
• Time for sustained thinking and learning
• Task- and effort- focused culture
• Shared student and teacher beliefs. (Russell,
  2000)

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Two types of pedagogy
Answering Pedagogy
Questioning Pedagogy
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Communities of Thinking (Harpaz Lefstein)

• An Answering Pedagogy
• Learning is about being able to give the teacher
  the right answer.
• Beliefs about Qs
• Questions are superfluous, unimpressive and
  annoying
• Only the ignorant ask questions
• Comfortable, non-threatening does not threaten
  our basic schema.
• Questions used to exercise control over students.

• A Questioning Pedagogy
• Learning is about asking questions to clarify,
  explore, explain, undermine.
• Beliefs about Qs
• Questioning is a creative activity
• Questions reveal involvement in, and a deep
  understanding of, the subject.
• Motivating a source of energy.

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Why focus on fertile questions?

• Questioning involves
• an ability to transcend given information
• an understanding of knowledge
• mental willingness to undermine existing
  knowledge structures and to indulge in the
  construction of new structures and knowledge
• The ability to pose questions to understand
  ourselves and our world is at the heart of what
  it means to be human. Yoram Harpaz

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The word question is taken from the Latin
quaerere (to seek) which has the same root as
the word quest. This makes sense. Questions are
powerful allies on our life journey. They stretch
our mind, body and soul. A very powerful question
may not have an answer at the moment it is
asked It will sit rattling in the mind for
days or weeks as the person works on an answer.
If the seed is planted, the answer will grow.
Questions are alive. And we are more alive when
actively involved with questing and questions.
Keep moving. Keep crossing inner and outer
borders. Keep asking. (Frederic MaryAnn Brussat
Spiritual Literacy (NY 1996)
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What makes a good question?Are all questions
equal?
Characteristics of good questions
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A question that in principle does not have a
definite answer
A question relevant to the life of the learners
A question that undermines basic assumptions and
fixed beliefs of learner
A question that can be researched as information
is available
A question with an ethical dimension
A question that requires grappling with rich
content
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What we wanted to achieve..
Vision and Values
What is it powerful to learn?
What is powerful learning?
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What we wanted to achieve..
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CONSTRUCTIVISM - Learning as making meaning from
experience
Richard Bawden's Visual representation of
Kolb's (Kolb 1984)
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Scaffolding the learning

• CONSTRUCTIVIST MODEL

• TRANSMISSION MODEL

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From supported to autonomous

• Over time, as students are explicitly taught and
  develop these skills and strategies, teachers
  should be able to increasingly expect them to
  determine which skills and strategies are
  appropriate to use in a given context. However
  this level of autonomy will only develop if
  students are given practice in the use of
  appropriate skills and strategies and then
  supported to transfer the application of these
  skills and strategies to other areas.

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Problem Means Solution
Level 1 given given given
Level 2 given given to be found
Level 3 given to be found to be found
Level 4 to be found to be found to be found
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What happened in 2003?
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PLANNING THE FQ UNITS

• The model developed at ASMS by
• Fiona Buley was used as a basis to plan our
  Fertile Question units
• Key features-
• - Immersion activity
• - Reflective journal
• - Summative performance
• - Central part was up to each team to design

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Fiona Buley,GWSC 2002
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YEAR 7 FERTILE QUESTION

• What do we need to survive?

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YEAR 7 FQ TRIAL

• What do we need to survive?

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YEAR 8 FERTILE QUESTION

• Patterns
• (a thematic approach rather than a fertile
  question)
• Why does our brain automatically look for
  patterns?
• Are all patterns helpful? Can patterns restrict
  our thinking?

SCIENCE
ENGLISH
MATHS
SOSE
INFO TECH
How do patterns work and how do we use patterns
in each subject?
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GWSC, 2003
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DURING THE UTOPIA PROJECT.

• Can anything thrive in isolation?

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GWSC, 2003
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DESIGNING THE KEY PARTS

• Immersion activity (the hook)
• - murder mystery
• - animal ages
• Inquiry project (project to enable students to
  answer the fertile question using the different
  discipline areas)
• Online logbook for students to map their progress

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DEVELOPING THE GROUPS

• We used the Hermann Brain dominance activity to
  establish groups with a mix of different
  preference thinkers.

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TIME FOR STUDENTS AND TEACHERS TO WORK

• 8.30-9.00am Wednesday in Library- teachers met
• Shared blocks of time- students to work on Utopia
  project
• - research
• - developing rubric for assessment
• - planning presentation
• - practising presentation
• Teachers donated this time from normal class time

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2 x 2 rather than 1 x 4
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DURING THE UTOPIA PROJECT.

• Development of needed skills
• - 6 steps in research process
• - cooperative group skills (looks like, sounds
  like)
• - presentation skills
• Keeping online reflective log on Intranet shared
  space
• - connections between subjects, FQ and utopia
  project
• - roles and planning
• - needs/requirements of group
• - example of student work Dennis, Jasmine,
  Ashleigh

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AND FINALLY.

• Summative performance in lecture theatre (oral
  presentation with support material- power point,
  models, computer-designed layouts)
• Students designed rubric used by all class
  members to assess presentations
• Principal and A.Ps invited to attend
• Evaluations of both multi-media used and whole FQ
  experience conducted

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What we wanted to achieve..
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OUTCOMESIncreased levels of engagement

• Teacher evidence
• Immersion activity worked well.
• Increased self-directedness and freedom for
  students to explore, greater autonomy.

• Student evidence
• Enhanced level of enjoyment
• It makes me more curious, makes me want to
  learn. The fertile question makes it interesting.
  When I like something, I just get curious, I
  might look it up and facts relating to it

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OUTCOMESImproved levels of metacognition

• Teacher evidence
• Use of intranet assisted metacognition.
• They were actively reflecting on what they have
  done and were being quite critical about what
  they are doing and not doing and seeing the value
  of it
• Students more self-directed.

• Student evidence
• Reflections done by students.

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OUTCOMESEnhanced social relationships

• Teacher evidence
• Fostering positive relationships
• Development of cooperative group skills.
• The groups are working a lot better than they
  used to work
• They are more in tune with allocating tasks to
  each other to enable a collective goal to be
  achieved

• Student evidence
• It helped me to be . cooperative, instead of
  being just like someone who just watches other
  people do the work. It is better to be a part of
  it.
• I learnt that we should communicate with empathy
  instead of cutting each other or shouting over
  each other. We learnt to communicate in a group.

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OUTCOMESDeeper thinking

• Teacher evidence
• Development of skills such as research and
  thinking skills.
• Creating meaningful knowledge across a number of
  KLAs
• . no subject area of course being seen as
  better that any other subject areas, but adding
  more information to a total understanding of the
  world..

• Student evidence
• Some students able to see the connectedness of
  their subjects and the fertile question
• We are using multiple skills from different
  subjects and from this we learn the skills to
  browse more deeply into the questions, into more
  specific parts

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BARRIERSAs identified by trial teachers

1. Time to touch base with other team members
2. Constraints of existing syllabus i.e. is this
   real Maths?
3. Tried to impose it on top of existing curriculum
   lead to frustration due to feeling not meeting
   requirements of existing curriculum
4. Current requirements of assessment and reporting
   framework

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BARRIERSAs identified by trial teachers

• 5. Current mental models of students and teachers
  hard to move from existing paradigm
• 6. Fear of stepping on someone elses toes (in
  your team) maybe due to lack of coherence
  regarding what we were trying to achieve at the
  beginning?
• 7. Timetabling didnt allow team teaching
• 8. Physical space and storage facilities
  available to complete FQ work

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WHAT WED DO DIFFERENTLY

1. Meet regularly as a team
2. Be more organised re timelines, due dates etc.
3. Allow the Fertile Question to drive what we do
   rather than imposing it on top of already
   existing structures and curriculum within the
   school
4. Have flexibility in our assessment framework to
   enable existing demands to be met
5. Decide how we will report on the outcomes of FQ
   project
6. Need greater scaffolding of the deeper thinking
   we require students to do eg. Making links
   between all subjects and FQ

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WHAT WED DO DIFFERENTLY

• Have a clearer picture in our minds of what the
  performances of understanding should look like.
• Use a more coherent framework for the development
  of FQ units required (however, this also must be
  flexible)
• Be more focused on the outcomes we are trying to
  achieve (KLA and skills based)
• Schedule time within the timetable for students
  working on the Fertile Question
• Have more planning time

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Some questions we have

• How to implement interdisciplinary units based on
  FQs that are not perceived to be on top of
  what we already do?
• How to deal with problems of overcrowded
  curriculum?
• How do we give students a greater voice in
  curriculum design?
• How do we better facilitate teachers working in
  teams?

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Our decision

• Keep on trialing..
• Use the Communities of Thinking model
• Defining essential learnings this is really
  hard work!!!!
• Challenging our existing models this is really,
  really hard work!!!!
• Finding additional frameworks to assist us eg
  Educating for Understanding framework
• Exploring alternative delivery models for Years
  7-9.

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Whats happening in 2004?
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Fertile Question
Initiation
Feedback
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2004 trial

• A mix of multidisciplinary and disciplinary
  units.
• Some classes blocked together (to a limited
  extent) with a team of teachers
• Multidisciplinary units
• Year 7 overview , planning outcomes
• Year 8 overview and outcomes
• Year 9 overview and outcomes

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Our current challenges

• Continuing to get our heads around the
  Communities of Thinking framework
• Supporting teachers in trial
• Teaching and Learning coach
• Less extras
• Time to meet timetabled period, scheduled
  meetings
• Build into L.I.P.
• Finalising the essential learnings
• Working on assessment and reporting frameworks.
• Developing evaluation framework