THEY’LL STILL BE HERE BY 2030

So in recent times, we have heard some shocking news about teachers, the mass sack in Kaduna, the education 4.0 revolution in Nigeria that is gradually leaving teachers behind, and the question is are these people still relevant, do they still matter to the success of the Nigerian education system, should they be replaced by technology or should we get a bunch of whiz youngsters and throw them into the school system and make them teach students?

I watched a video where Dr. Modupe Adefeso of TEP said, we need teachers that look like where we want our students to be in the future, and I totally agree with this, we should attract intelligent people into the system, but we should also be on the look out for intelligent people that have the grit and passion to transfer the love of learning to the students and not just content or being able to mark a grade 6 test without consulting a textbook. And when dealing with different types of kids, this can be quite arduous a task.

Teaching is two sided, it is first the imparting the learning culture into the students, and then transferring contextual knowledge to them, one must also understand that while the knowledge changes per time, the love for learning is a constant that must be upheld. While extremely intelligent graduates and education technology can help with content delivery, only a true teacher can transfer the love for learning.

So one question that’s been going around lately is the future of work, and what will happen to sdg 4 by 2030, how the education system would have transformed and been overtaken by all forms of edtech; AR, VR, AI, Blockchain etc…

But at the core of all forms of educational technologies are two cardinal constants: The teacher and the learner and yes the role of the teacher would morph into the real core of the teacher’s duty, researching on how best to help students learn and be better, that would be their focus.

There is good and bad news, the teachers would not hide behind pedagogical content, because it would be abundantly everywhere, the true mark of a teacher by then would be how he helps every child unlock and hone his genius, and that is a very huge responsibilty.

So maybe the best thing to do is to identify and weed out those that do not have the passion to teach, those who are not driven enough to learn more for their students because if I am really that transformational leader/teacher, then i’ll do whatever it takes to produce the best students.

So should a teacher fear increasing advent of educational technology? no

Education technology is at best the teachers assistant.

Interest Driven Learning

So I heard a statement recently; interest turbocharges our thinking, inspire interest, present the curriculum content and you are sure about engagement, and retention. I thought, this is a bold statement, but then I started reflecting on it and then I had no evidence to negate it. So I have drawn two hypotheses;

My first hypothesis is that when something interest a child, he will learn about it. Interest has been defined as a psychological state of engagement, a predisposition to engage repeatedly with particular ideas over and over. Interest activates the approach urge which takes us out of our comfort zone and makes us try what we haven’t before.

This comfort zone might be of course our knowledge base or our skill proficiency, interest drives us to uncharted waters, and this is the very definition of learning; constant and consistent exposure to new concepts and ideas.

This definition of learning suggest that the action to learning is that of the learner and not of the teacher. What can the teacher do to elicit this action, remember newton’s law, an object stays in a state of inertia until a force greater than the inertial force acts upon it, well interest is that disruptive force that infuses the learner with energy, captivation and enthrallment which pushes the mind to learn. When you fuse these emotions with relevant curriculum content, you drive up learning gains by amazing percentages.

So I have another hypothesis, keep a child interested and the 4Cs will follow (creativity, collaboration, communication, critical thinking). Interest shoots up the socio-cognitive part of learning, at which point it is now the student controlling his learning process and the teacher merely facilitating. The interested student by himself builds learning scaffolds.

So how do we promote interest based learning? To do this we have to first realize that there are thresholds to interest levels and there’s a difference in catching interest and holding interest. Catching interest involves seizing attention and stimulating imagination. Thus it is important that the interest object is novel and complex but comprehensible.

Using interest to focus attention on a knowledge gap inspires a feeling of deprivation ‘curiosity’ and curiosity motivates individuals to obtain the missing information to reduce or eliminate the feeling. To do this you start with a question that stimulates wonder.

To hold attention and interest, infuse the learning content with deeper meaning and purpose.

The power of interest based learning is now being employed in designing non-traditional learning strategies like inquiry based/ project based learning

#learnculture #educationdevelopment

LEARNING FOR RELEVANCE AND SURVIVAL

(A Case For Ambitious Learning and Teaching)

‘La cram, la pour, la forget’ is a phenomenon that learners in this part of the world are all too conversant with, it underrates deep learning, assimilating and applying knowledge but instead emphasizes a verbatim reproduction of what is taught. And would you blame learners, when infact the questions asked just demands a recital of definitions and doesn’t stimulate higher order thinking at all.

Bloom’s taxonomy of learning experience set hierarchical learning as first to remember, understand, apply, analyze, evaluate and create.

The learning experience isn’t complete until you can create out of what you have learnt, whether it’s creating a problem or creating a solution. The learner has learnt only when he has created or can create.

Unfortunately, the traditional schooling requires that we constantly remember when it is supposed to provide a scaffold of the wholistic learning experience.

Fast forward to a work experience and the learner now a worker is chronically disillussioned that the learning strategies he used to get ahead in school is totally irrelevant in the larger scheme of things, the real world. He is constantly being asked to create when he can’t even get beyond remembering.

This disconnect has caused learners to lose complete faith in the ability of the curriculum to prepare them for their future, they’ll rather spend their school time doing more relevant courses and score a 3rd class in ‘traditional school’.

But then there’s an alternative solution, what if this is merged, if the traditional classroom experience is actually a potpourri of experiential learning strategies that prepares learners for what is applicable in real life. This is the basis for new model learning strategies like problem based learning, project based learning, inquiry-based learning. These strategies rightly position the fullstop in the learning experience, after creating.

It is already happening, and the third world is catching on to it, it requires a lot, revamping the curriculum, teacher retraining, it is real hard work and needless to say difficult but it is the way forward, it is the way out of innovation extinction.

Let’s be ambitious in our teaching and learning.

EDUCATION RISES AND FALLS WITH THE GOVERNMENT

So I was travelling across a state and saw a secondary school signpost indicating that a flat in an adjacent bungalow is a full fledged government approved school and I was like whoa? who approved that?

Although education is a shared responsiblity amongst stakeholders, but ultimately the government is responsible for providing the right climate that encourages quality teaching and learning, setting standards and refusing to accept less.

The twin roles of the government are to provide free education and to protect the right to education by maintaining its standards.
Beyond holding government accountable for provision of free education to students, we must also hold them accountable for private school standards.

So the question is how do we hold them accountable?
One school of thought proposed using election as a tool for attaining education goals, but this hasn’t proven successful in previous years, especially for governments that renege on their promises.

Social movement also may have impact on government accountability. However, it is safe to say that Nigeria doesn’t lie on the positive side of this statistic having had our fair share of strikes and protests that have yielded little returns. One reason for this is the poor impact education has had on innovation in the country but on second thought, it’s hard to see improvements in a sector you don’t invest in. You shouldn’t want to reap where you haven’t sown, and governments even shy away from the enormity of the problem not knowing where to begin.

So yes, strikes and social movements have not yielded the results we expect, but there is one that has the potential to but is grossly underused to force government accountabilty in education… the media. This channel is so strong, it can shut down a whole country, and with this same potential, it can put the government in check where education policies are concerned.

The media has huge potential to raise the visibility of education issues, put pressure on education actors to meet their responsibilities. How you say? By exposing evidence and directing focus, they can set the agenda for the public and policy-makers.

In the United States for example, more press coverage of politics resulted in better informed citizens, and a stronger civil influence on policy. Yet to achieve these, the media need to be independent, competent, reflective, democratic and accountable – qualities too often lacking, resulting in public distrust.
So yes, while one of this may bring little returns, the three forces when combined create a formidable accountability process that would keep government on its toes.

WHY I GOT A FIRST CLASS: The Human Factor

In my 300 level, after realizing that I was going to study Physiology for the rest of my time as an undergraduate in University of Ibadan, I decided to face my realities, I would give it my best shot. At 300 level, our only courses were physiology courses and Ganong (a textbook on human physiology) was the recommended text; that edition of Ganong used to be all black and white text and I found that I wasn’t grasping the topics. I knew the facts but the facts wouldn’t help in applying and deducing. A thorough understanding of the concept is the ability to string facts together from different systems and create a story, make meaning. The way Ganong was structured as a text was impeding MY ability to do that (the personal emphasis is deliberate).
At first I started to complain (like every other person) about how they were asking us to read archaic textbooks and blah blah but wisdom soon taught me to analyse my problem, every cause has an effect, so I conducted a cause-check.
The pertinent question was, what was my problem with Ganong? There was a reason I still loved animations. There was a reason I liked to make powerpoint slides with colours, things just sunk better that way. So I found that the best way I learnt was a good mix of pictures and text. So I went on a search for textbooks that offered just that. but I didn’t stop there. Since Ganong was the recommended text, I crosschecked the facts in those books with the facts in Ganong, once they correlated, I dumped Ganong and read through that text. And I was having fun doing that, my brain was mapping the information almost perfectly. So I kept looking for materials and repeating that cycle.
Again I did a check and found that the more I taught people, the more I learnt, so I started looking for avenues to teach others, in class, in my room, walking to my room. I was open to teach and it was a win win situation. They were learning, I was consolidating. 
So when exam came and it was time to write that 8 page essay, I knew how to string the facts into an almost perfect 7.5 page story embellished with facts, case scenarios, problems and solutions. The consistency in probing my concept of learning got me to the top of my class.
The summary of this is I mastered my own learning and this mastery has formed the basis for my curiosity, hunger for knowledge, challenging status quo and as you would soon see factor for success.
Learning is a steady hunger and curiosity of the state of things that engenders a continuous pursuit and acquisition of knowledge. This single art and act of learning positions you as a solution provider and change maker in any and every environment whether or not it is done as a conscious effort.

Quality education is beyond numeracy and literacy, it’s giving every child the privilege to engage the invaluable power of learning. Every child deserves that. 

P.S Let me say this as a caveat, the title of this post was carefully stringed to imply that I do not believe that one factor ensured my success in the university. The other more important factor is a tale for another day.
#learnculture #ambitiouseducation