i'm loving matt damon

Matt Damon talks to Piers Morgan about President Obama, audacity and the difference between training and education!

Matt Damon gets it. He understands why "training" is not good enough for our kids.

What about adult literacy practitioners and policy makers? Do we understand the difference between training and education? I think we do.

It seems to me that more and more we are choosing training instead of education for adult literacy learners. Is that true? Is it what adult literacy learners want?

report cards

The news hit the pages of the Globe and Mail under this headline last Friday: Conservatives stop funding for learning organization.

The news is that the federal government will not provide further funding for the Canadian Council on Learning, an organization established in 2004 by a Liberal government with a five-year grant of $85-million to promote lifelong education.

The CCL was established because "In 2004, Canada saw that it had some catching up to do. Canadians were falling behind the rest of the world in some crucial areas. Innovation. Creativity. Skills development. Learning. There was no debate about what we had to do to stop the decline, and begin to improve. We had to figure out what works in education and learning, from early childhood to post-secondary schooling, from job training through adult literacy improvement, and we had to monitor our progress so that we were certain we were always on the right path."

I am not sure that I agree with the basic premise. I see little real world evidence that Canadians are less innovative, creative, skilled and/or learned than their counterparts around the world. In fact, the solutions to our recent economic woes seem to point to a past underuse of the innovation, creativity, skills and learning of many Canadians rather than any deficits in those areas. But the creation of the CCL intrigued me. It seemed to hold promise - perhaps we could create an education think tank that would shine a light on the innovation, creativity, skills and learning of educators in Canada and that this knowledge would inform policy.

The CCL divided its work into 5 knowledge centres: Aboriginal Learning (based in the Prairies, NWT and Nunavut); Adult Learning (based in Atlantic Canada); Early Childhood Learning (based in Quebec); Health and Learning (based in British Columbia and Yukon); and Work and Learning (based in Ontario).

I have had the most experience with the Adult Learning Knowledge Centre. In 2007 I worked on a research-in-practice project that was funded through the ALKC and, in June 2007, I went to an ALKC conference. At the conference I was impressed by the grassroots nature of some of the projects but became aware of a focus on measuring. As time went on, I realized that the CCL was less a "learning organization" and more a measuring organization.

The Globe and Mail article quotes Mr. Cappon about the loss of funding: “What Canada would lose without CCL would be like being a student without a report card of any kind. And we'd be prevented from knowing how far behind the competition we're slipping."

CCL brought us several report cards over the years.

The Composite Learning Index (CLI) measures Canada’s progress in lifelong learning based on statistical indicators that reflect the many ways Canadians learn, whether in school, in the home, at work or within the community. The CLI tells us things like this: "For the first time, Canada's overall score on the Composite Learning Index has declined, dropping two points to 75 in 2009, from 77 in 2008. The decrease is being driven by the Learning to Be pillar, even though there has been an increase on the Learning to Do pillar."

The Projections of Adult Literacy: Measuring Movement (PALMM) provides a statistical “snapshot” of Canada’s adult literacy future through 2031; calculates future adult literacy rates according to province/territory and specific population groups; and generates graphs for incorporating into planning for literacy policy and program interventions. The PALMM tells us things like this: "Although the proportion of immigrants with low literacy skills will decrease by 2031, the actual number of low-skilled immigrants will increase by 61%. However, there will also be an increase in the number of immigrants with higher literacy levels."

The July 2008 literacy educators got a CCL report card. Reading the Future: Planning to meet Canada’s future literacy uses the PALMM to assess the state of adult literacy in Canada and makes recommendations on how literacy programming should be structured and delivered. This report was well discussed on this blog (and here) and in our special bulletin. One of our concerns was that this report makes recommendations about professionalization, teaching methods and time limits that overlook "the rich and varied techniques Canadian practitioners use to teach adults successfully and share in practitioner-based research reports." Reading the Future was a signal to the literacy field that the CCL was not developing knowledge based on the innovation, creativity, skills and learning of educators but was taking a top down approach to develop policy recommendations based on survey data.

In March of last year, CCL presented the adult literacy community with their online literacy assessment tool, also well discussed on this blog. This tool allowed us to develop our own report card on our own IALSS level. CCL told us we could also use the tool to assess learner needs overlooking the fact that the IALSS is a survey tool and is not an appropriate assessment for learning

"In anticipation of renewed funding, CCL had proposed an exciting slate of projects for the coming years."

Many in the list of 10 proposed projects, not surprisingly, seem to be about collecting more data to create more measuring tools. The Literacy Self-Assessments looks to be an expansion of the above mentioned online assessment: "CCL plans to launch a series of free, online tests that will allow individual Canadians to measure their competencies in three areas: prose literacy, document literacy and numeracy. Based on the International Adult Literacy and Skills survey, these tests will also provide teachers and instructors with a convenient means of assessing strengths and weaknesses to ensure programs meet learner needs." Once again CCL is overlooking the folly of using a survey tool to assess for learning and using a standardized test for self-assessment.

That report card argument may resonate in some sectors but I am not sure what literacy workers will think about it. You can probably tell what I think :), but what about you? Do we need these report cards? How do they help us in our work? How do they help learners in their learning? How does the report card argument resonate with you?

leading lights

I am not sure whether adult education teachers are most appropriately grouped with the artists (people-oriented, open-minded, intuitive, and visionary) or the craftspeople (humane, dedicated, knowledgeable, and wise). Probably a little of both. Actually, definitely a LOT of both.

I do know that adult educators do have a lot to offer the “recovery,” -- to the creation and nourishment of strong communities. And so does Dr. Stephen Brookfield, co-author with Stephen Preskill of Learning as a Way of Leading: Lessons from the Struggle for Social Justice. You can listen to what he says about adult educators as leaders here*. You can download a chapter of the book here. (Thanks again to Nancy Friday for linking me to this fantastic, and as she says, affirming resource.)

To get you started, here are what Brookfield and Preskill refer to as the nine learning tasks of leadership:

1. Learning how to be open to the contributions of others

2. Learning how to reflect critically on one’s practice

3. Learning how to support the growth of others

4. Learning how to develop collective leadership

5. Learning how to analyze experience

6. Learning how to question oneself and others

7. Learning democracy

8. Learning to sustain hope in the face of struggle

9. Learning to create community

It seems to me that this comes pretty close to the list of the skills required of adult literacy workers. These are the skills and learning – the crazy wisdom – literacy teachers and learners demonstrate strongly and daily everywhere they work together. It is certainly this list of learning tasks that shows up in the articles in Literacies.

I wonder when literacy workers and learners will take their rightful places in the corridors of power. I do not think that invitations are coming any time soon. I think that the artists and craftspeople and learning leaders are going to have to collaborate and sneak in the back door while the technocrats are busy guarding the front door.

*Sometimes this site requests a user name and password.
I entered abc for both and it let me in.

huffing and puffing part 2

I was catching up on some blog reading and enjoyed this post from Peter Olm over at thought control.

He wrote about accountability and assessment ...and PIGS! in a post called You don’t fatten pigs by weighing them . . .

I apologise in advance if should be crediting someone with coming up with the figurative phrase that happens to be the title of this post. Neither do I liken students to pigs! But the phrase “you don’t fatten pigs by weighing them” has been one that’s come to mind a lot recently, when considering the growing trend towards over-assessment in the education system. It seems that more and more time is being devoted to assessment and data collection and analysis, than there is devoted to developing good pedagogy, curriculum and teaching practices.

huffing and puffing

On Friday I wrote about the National Union of Teachers' position on standardized testing for elementary students in England.

That afternoon I received a newsletter from the Ontario Literacy Coalition pointing me to this release from the Ministry of Colleges, Training and Universities about a "a study on the feasibility of creating an assessment tool, or suite of tools, for the Literacy and Basic Skills (LBS) program."

Why?

• Because no single tool currently exists that meets the assessment needs of all streams and transition pathways;
• To provide a means that is compatible with the Adult Literacy Curriculum [due in 2010] of assessing learner skill attainment as part of the Continuous Improvement Performance Management System (CIPMS);
• To advance the work of the Learning Ministries in developing a common assessment environment based on the Essential Skills between MTCU, Ministry of Education (EDU) and Ministry of Citizenship and Immigration (MCI)
• To provide Ontario with the capability of measuring literacy gains across LBS streams and sectors in a way that is compatible with other jurisdictions in Canada and worldwide, building on the 500-point scale common to both the International Adult Literacy Survey (IALS) and the Essential Skills.

And in plain English?

• we want to create a test that will work in all the learning programs funded by the government
• we want to measure students' achievements against a standard developed by the government
• we want the standard to be the International Adult Literacy Survey (IALS) and the Essential Skills
• we want to be able to compare student achievement in Ontario with student achievement in other provinces and other countries

How?

• Evaluate the requirements of the Learner Skill Attainment assessment framework that will form part of the Adult Literacy Curriculum;
• Analyze MTCU, EDU and MCI assessment needs and requirements;
• Identify the range of assessment needs that could be met through a tool or suite of tools;
• Determine stakeholder assessment requirements, considering factors such as ease of use and length of time for test administration;
• Gauge the capacity of stakeholders to deliver assessment services, their training requirements, and ongoing support needs.

In plain English?

• we will make sure that the test will measure student achievement against standards developed by the government
• we will make sure that the test will meet the needs of the government
• we will make sure that the test is easy to administer
• we will determine what training and support literacy workers (?*) need to learn how to administer the test

Professor Smithers will be truly chuffed.

And just to continue with this incredibly garbled metaphor, here is one of my very favourite You Tube videos:

*I am never quite sure what the term "stakeholder" means from place to place.
In this document it seems to refer to different groups in different sentences.

flying

The workshop yesterday went well. I think. In the morning session people were chatting with each other and with me. People wanted help setting up chat rooms and blogs and the room was buzzing with activity. The afternoon group quietly surfed and clicked. It was a little harder for me to tell what they were getting out of the time. On the other hand, when I reminded them that they had been working for an hour without a break and that they should take one if they felt the need, no one did.

The contrast in the responses of these two groups reminded me that a big part of assessing for learning means enhancing our observation skills so that we can see the subtleties and complexities. And then learning to accept that, in the very best way, there will always be some of it we can't know. I will never know exactly all the ripples that were started yesterday, but I do know that I can trust the wisdom of literacy workers and that they will create something fantastic with and for learners.

Before I went into the workshop, I had been listening to a BBC interview with Christine Blower, acting general secretary of the National Union of Teachers, and Professor Alan Smithers, of the University of Buckingham about Sats (standardized tests) for seven and 11-year-olds in England.

Ms. Blower discussed the teachers' position that these tests result in a teaching-to-the-test that has narrowed the curriculum and puts unnecessary pressure and constraints on teachers and students. She made an argument for assessment for learning as opposed to assessment of learning. She quoted an interview in The Independent with Professor Peter Tymms who warns that the Sats are having "a serious negative impact on the education system" and that they mislead parents as to the performance of their children's schools.

Professor Smithers posited that teachers are too close to students to assess them properly, that the proper people to be determining the shape of education are elected officials, and that it is not the place of providers of education "to attempt to bully their way into having their interests put before those of pupils, parents and the general public."

Whew. The objective testing mantra again. I guess we will be hearing this as long as we work for people who refer to us as service providers, the people who come to learn as clients and the work we do together as service delivery.

You may wonder why I think this video belongs here but somehow this man in wolf's clothing chasing a papier maché pig around his apartment seems appropriate to me.

it is all fun and games until...

The Canadian Council on Learning has posted their online literacy assessment tool.

The tool can be used to assess your IALSS level. IALSS is the International Adult Literacy and Skills Survey:

"The International Adult Literacy and Skills Survey was a seven-country initiative conducted in 2003. In every country nationally representative samples of adults aged 16-65 were interviewed and tested at home, using the same psychometric test to measure prose and document literacy as well as numeracy and problem-solving skills.

• ...The main purpose of the survey was to find out how well adults used printed information to function in society.
• Another aim was to collect data on the incidence and volume of participation in adult education and training, and to investigate the relationships between initial and adult education, on the one hand, and literacy, numeracy and problem-solving proficiency and wider economic and social outcomes, on the other.
• In addition, a subsidiary goal was to provide information regarding change in the distribution of skills over the years since the previous survey (the 1994, International Adult Literacy Survey).
• ...The data are used to inform policy decisions, help effectively allocate resources where needed and inform decisions on the composition and content of remedial skill development course and adult education."

Ever since the first IALS survey in 1994, there has been debate* about what exactly these data tell us, but, until now, I do not think that anyone has suggested that an IALSS-based test, designed to survey a population, ever be used to assess and assign levels to individuals. If they have, they should be thoroughly ashamed of themselves.

A couple of us tried the test. It took ages, the fonts were teeny weeny, the interface did not work in any browser, and it was incredibly dull. I think that the test could take quite a long time to complete. We did not want to spend too long on it so we tried not to get bogged down. We just clicked on our first good idea for the right answer and let it go.

We both scored Level 4 (Strong skills -- individuals at these levels can process information of a complex and demanding nature) in Document Literacy (The ability to find and use information in forms, charts, graphs and other tables).

My colleague scored Level 4 in Numeracy (The ability to use basic math skills in everyday life) and I scored Level 3 (Adequate to cope with the demands of everyday life and work in an advanced society -- roughly denotes the skill level required for successful high school completion and college entry). I must admit I did not feel like doing some of the calculations and guessed at some of the answers but Level 3 is what I would guess is correct for me in any case and, as it turns out, I am a pretty good guesser.

Now the bad news. We both scored Level 2 (A capacity to deal only with simple, clear material involving uncomplicated tasks -- people at this level may develop everyday coping skills, but their poor literacy skills make it hard to conquer challenges such as learning new job skills) in Prose Literacy (The knowledge and skills required to understand and appropriately use information from print materials). CCL recommends that all Canadians need to be at Level 3 if they are to achieve prosperity, health and happiness.

My colleague is very clever and has exemplary prose literacy skills. I am using this fact to cheer myself up a little. I am surprised to find that despite my rather cavalier attitude to this test, the result made me feel a little crappy. I usually feel fine about my ability to understand and appropriately use information from print materials. There are things that challenge me but I have confidence that if I persevere I will get it.

Our Level 2 scores prompted another colleague to wonder, "If the CCL online test is based on or reflects the IALSS test and if [these two] only scored 2 on the Prose test, perhaps the IALSS test is underestimating people’s literacy levels."

One of the questions that has been raised about IALS and IALSS is why the results show such high numbers of people at Level 1 and 2 when people self-assess at a much greater ability to understand and appropriately use information from print materials.

But the biggest question for me remains, “Why do I want to know what IALSS level I am at?” or “Why does anyone want to know what IALSS level any individual is at?”

What we want to know is how do we work with text now and how do we want or need to be able to work with text to do what we want or need to do. To do this we can use a method such as the Canadian Adult Reading Assessment that assesses reading skills and strategies in a manageable, non-invasive, non-judgmental way and demonstrates how learner-centred assessment leads to the development of a learner-centred curriculum that is relevant and effective.

C'mon CCL, stop now before somebody gets hurt.

*For some of that debate see Literacies Issue #2 and the Literacies IALS web forum.

best laid plans

I am pretty sure that anyone who reads this blog also reads Wendell's blog but just in case you do not, check out his new posting, Plans.

Wendell writes about how, when we read intake forms and learner biographies, our minds inevitably drift to planning but

Of course, making plans before meeting the learner is simple folly. It's all too easy to impose my likes and dislikes on the brief biographies contained in the intake forms. What matters is their quality world pictures; their wants, hopes, interests, ideals. Better that I should wait patiently to meet them and talk with them.

because a learner's work and education history is NOT necessarily a predictor of what we want our work and education future to be.

None of this prevents me from scheming in advance of meeting learners. But it does prevent me from taking too seriously the plans I make for others.

I really hope all the policy-makers and -implementers with big plans for slotting teaching and learning into such things as learner-skills-attainment matrices read this post because this is why matrices DO NOT WORK with REAL PEOPLE.

Sorry - someone sent me this and I am feeling a little worn out.

the art of measurement

Background: I am working on a project about reporting requirements and accountability frameworks in adult literacy in Canada.

My coworker was just in New York and went to the MoMA. She saw the Marcel Duchamp sculpture called 3 Standard Stoppages. She described it to me and as she did, I started to see why she thought that this sculpture would resonate with me as I am doing this work. One of the things Duchamp did when building the sculpture was dip a metre length of string in ink and let it drop into what ever shape happened. Each shape was different but each one was a metre. If you cannot see that it is a metre, it is not because it is not a metre, it is just that you are not used to seeing metres that way.

Ahhhhhhhhhhhh! Immediately I felt better. Thank you M. Duchamp. Thank you art. Thank you Tannis.

Here is what it says on the MoMA page:

It is "a joke about the meter," Duchamp glibly noted about this piece, but his premise for it reads like a theorem: "If a straight horizontal thread one meter long falls from a height of one meter onto a horizontal plane twisting as it pleases [it] creates a new image of the unit of length." Duchamp dropped three threads one meter long from the height of one meter onto three stretched canvases. The threads were then adhered to the canvases to preserve the random curves they assumed upon landing. The canvases were cut along the threads' profiles, creating a template of their curves creating new units of measure that retain the length of the meter but undermine its rational basis.

As it pleases!

Music.

...undermine its rational basis!

Poetry.

the (auditor) king is dead

So, Bronwen, what can we do?

We must give to our students a doubled gaze, to enable them to become critically literate, to become citizens at once capable of adapting and becoming appropriate within the contexts in which they find themselves and as responsible citizens capable of critique; citizens who can understand the constitutive work that discourse does and who can work creatively, imaginatively, politically, and with passion to break open the old where it is faulty and to envisage the new. Even more urgent is the task of giving them some personal tools for withstanding the worst effects of neoliberalism, for seeing both the pleasure and the danger of being drawn into it, for understanding the ways in which they are subjected by it. They need to be able to generate stable narratives of identity and to understand the way neoliberal discourses and practices will work against that stability.

We need to work at the level of both rationality and desire. Students must be trained in philosophy--to understand the range of discourses through which they, and others, are constituted, and how those discourses work at the level of reasoned argument and logic. It is essential too that they know how discourse works on desire. Desire goes beyond rationality and, to a large extent, is part of the mysterious, the poetic, the ineffable: in a realm not readily pinned down with words, not readily amenable to logic and rationality .... In various humanist guises, desire has been used as an indicator of who we ‘‘really’’ are, as signifying an essence that is ‘‘natural’’ and personal, as independent of social influence. But desire is spoken into existence, it is shaped through discursive and interactive practices, through the symbolic and the semiotic. Desires are constituted through the narratives and storylines, the metaphors, the very language and patterns of existence through which we are subjected--made into members of the social world. It is not a choice between compliance and resistance, between colonizing and being colonized, between taking up the master narratives and resisting them. It is in our own existence, the terms of our existence, that we need to begin the work, together, of decomposing those elements of our world that make us, and our students, vulnerable to the latest discourse and that inhibit conscience and limit consciousness.

I think what she is saying is that we work to discover each learner's personal What I Need to Learn list and we honour it every day in every class.

long live the (auditor) king

In The (im)possibility of intellectual work in neoliberal regimes Bronwyn Davies writes:

Don Watson describes the all-pervasive language of neoliberal managerialism as ‘‘unable to convey any human emotion, including the most basic ones such as happiness, sympathy, greed, envy, love or lust. You cannot’’ he says ‘‘tell a joke in this language, or write a poem, or sing a song. It is a language without human provenance or possibility’’.

Here is more about that language:
Oppressive state language--that is, currently, the language of neoliberal government--is more violent than its bland, rather absurd surface might lead us to believe. It is at work here, busily containing what we can do, what we can understand. It is the language in which the auditor is king. It is a language that destroys social responsibility and critique, that invites a mindless, consumer-oriented individualism to flourish, and kills off conscience.

And what it means to think critically:
To critique is risky work, not just because it might alienate those who are deeply attached to, or personally implicated in, the discourses to be placed under scrutiny but also because to draw attention to the very terms through which existence is made possible, to begin to dismantle those very terms while still depending on them for shared meaning making--even for survival--requires a kind of daring, a willingness to envisage the not yet known and to make visible the faults, the effects of the already known.

Stay tuned. This story has a happy(ish) ending.

essential skills

I was rereading an old gem from Stephen's Web and thought of you. Here is his list of Things You Really Need to Learn:
1. How to predict consequences
2. How to read
3. How to distinguish truth from fiction
4. How to empathize
5. How to be creative
6. How to communicate clearly
7. How to learn
8. How to stay healthy
9. How to value yourself
10. How to live meaningfully

What do you think? I think that most literacy workers and literacy learners carry personal what-I-need-to-learn lists in their heads. No matter what crazy matrix with no matter what crazy combination of 'essential' skills and IALS levels and outcomes and transition pathways and prescriptions and goals our funders like us to refer to and tell us will lead to success, we all have our own list of skills that are essential to us--lists that probably change from time to time, as our circumstances change and as we learn things.

And part of the poetry that literacy teachers do is to figure out each learners' list, teach to each list even though each learner has a slightly different list, adapt as the lists change and then translate all the musical things that happened into the reductionist prose of those weird matrices funders love to chart and graph and assign significance.

Pip over to Stephen's list to see what he means by each of these--there are some surprises. And have a great weekend. See you Monday.

learners who inherit the future

On October 29th of this year, 120 educators and people with an interest in education from across Canada gathered in Winnipeg for the The Canadian Education Association's Rethinking Adolescence, Rethinking Schools workshop. They have posted audio files of some of the discussions.

Winnipeg Free Press columnist Lindor Reynolds spoke about how the real 'essential' skill is learning to think. She quotes Eric Hoffer from his book Reflections on the Human Condition, "In times of drastic change it is the learners who inherit the future. Learners find themselves beautifully equipped to live in a world that no longer exists."

She goes on to say, "We do not need malleable young people [or people of any age] who are primed to spit out the one correct answer to every question without being able to connect it to a history, a world, or a meaning."

Listen to more here.

The panel then responds to a question from People for Education Executive Director Annie Kidder about how, in education that develops the thinker, the risk-taker and the agent of change in all of us, do we feed the assessment / accountability beast that inevitably narrows learning to the acquisition of flavour-of-last-month so-called essential skills. She phrased it a little differently of course.

Listen to this discussion here.