Encouraging girls to excel in STEM

 STEM, Vocational Training  1 Response »
Jan 092013
 

This post is contributed by Nechama Kenig, Pedagogical Coordinator, World ORT Kadima Mada, Israel. This piece first appeared on eJewish Philanthropy on 9 January 2013.

Science and technology are fundamental factors in the growth and development of every society. And, as Elizabeth Marincola, President of the Washington DC-based Society for Science and the Public, put it recently, strong STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) education is vital to students’ success in an increasingly technological and global economy. It is a critical building block for exploration, innovation, and the economy, and the catalyst to attack problems affecting the world… and it is a catalyst for jobs.

So, it should go without saying that the under-representation of women in STEM fields is a potentially massive loss economically – as well as a black mark against those societies which fail to nurture girls’ abilities.

In general, Israeli women are grossly underrepresented in the higher echelons of industry and business: only five per cent of CEOs, 15 percent of company directors and 18 percent of executives are female, according to Catalyst, an NGO dedicated to creating more inclusive workplaces.

Likewise, the more technological the occupation, the fewer women are working in it: only eight percent of hardware engineers are women, for example, in a country where 49 percent of the overall workforce is female.

About 55 percent of PhD graduates are women, most of them in Education and Humanities, but only 12 percent in Engineering and 25 percent in Science. Meanwhile, 48 percent of lecturers are women but only 19 percent of
professors are – and that figure shrinks to 15 per cent in STEM subjects.

Israel is not the only country with a problem: new research funded by the UK’s Economic and Social Research Council shows that girls in particular are put off science careers because it is ‘geeky’ and male dominated. This may explain the findings of an earlier study, by the Institute of Physics, which revealed that nearly half of England’s state schools did not have any girls studying physics at an advanced level.

In the former Soviet Union and Argentina, World ORT-affiliated educators have been working to overcome the cultural influences which inhibit girls from pursuing science and technology.

However, while some of the factors behind the under-representation of women in STEM appear to be common to many countries, there are some aspects which are unique to the Jewish State.

Israel is a country of stark contrasts – a liberal democratic secular state with an enviably innovative, high-tech industrial sector second only to the United States, many of its citizens have an overarching commitment to ethnic and religious identities and beliefs which can be as conservative as they are enriching.

Motherhood and family are still key social values in Israeli society and, as in other countries, it is usually the women whose careers falter as they become the primary care-givers. In addition, the traditional expectations placed on women in various Israeli communities mean that girls can be deterred from pursuing an education in the first place.

Uprooting a family to pursue post-doctoral research abroad would be a challenge for any family but in Israel, where overseas post-doc is particularly favored, the difficulties can be greatly intensified.

As the British research quoted above shows, girls can be put off science careers by the prospect of being part of a minority in a male-dominated sphere. That feeling is compounded for Arab women who are already part of a minority within Israeli society.

The quintessential Israeli factor is the IDF – most of us cannot think of Israel without an image of a friend, relative or anonymous twinkle-eyed hero shouldering unbelievable responsibilities for their tender age. But it is much more than a “people’s army” – it is arguably the country’s single most influential shaper of social values and economic prospects. Indeed, many a high-tech career effectively started during service in an elite IDF unit. But, until Alice Miller’s landmark petition to the Israeli Supreme Court in 1993 (see page 10 of this document), such units were a no-go zone for women. And while gender equality has improved in the years since, women are still underrepresented among their rank.

The education system could – and should – be part of the solution. So far, however, it has been part of the problem.

In the classroom, boys tend to receive more of their teachers’ time than girls, according to research by Anat Zohar, associate professor at the school of education of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Not only that, they receive
more elaborate answers.

There is every reason to suspect that, in Math, teachers unconsciously transfer fear of the subject and undermine girls’ performance, as described in research by Sian Beilock, professor in the Department of Psychology at The University of Chicago. Indeed, girls tend to internalize failure, blaming what they perceive to be their poor abilities, while boys tend to blame a test as unfair if they score poorly. Just the existence of tired stereotypes which portray STEM subjects as “not girly” create a vicious cycle in which female students’ anxiety undermines their performance.

However, that is not to say that gender does not play a role in the classroom – boys and girls do, for example, have different learning styles. Researchers in Israel found that the 3:1 ratio of boys to girls in a physics class could be put down to two major factors: an over-competitive learning environment and the algorithmic teaching method, both of which favor boys’ learning style.

There is hope, however. Israel has developed many programs over the years, both governmental and non-governmental, which work towards the advancement of women in science and technology, and encourage the education of girls in these fields.

Mind the Gap was established by a group of female engineers from Google Israel in collaboration with the Israeli National Center of Computer Science Teachers. Groups of female high school students are brought into the Google office each month and told about computer science and its applications; they also meet female engineers in informal environment and experience their working environment. After these visits, 40 percent of the girls choose to study computer science.

The Technion, meanwhile, has Electricity in the Palm of Her Hands, in which girls listen to lectures, watch demonstrations, visit laboratories, and meet with female graduate and undergraduate students; they experience the interdisciplinary, multifaceted nature of electrical engineering and the variety of topics it encompasses.

World ORT, as part of its general mission to raise the attractiveness, availability and quality of science and technology teaching in Israel’s peripheral communities, has introduced girls and boys to the joys of robotics and computer programming through its Mabat program. And the Bloomfield Science Museum in Jerusalem has TWIST (Towards Women in Science and Technology), an after-school program featuring Twisty the virtual puppet, inspired by the comments of the many science professionals who say that it was an informal experience that piqued their interest in science and fueled their decision to pursue a science career.

But it is teachers who can have the biggest impact simply in the way they handle the mundane task of class. They can encourage their female students by teaching them that academic abilities are expandable and improvable, by adjusting the learning environment to meet their, as well as boys’, needs; to distance girls from negative stereotypes; and to expose them to female role models.

The changes have to be on the social level by increasing the awareness of the under-representation of women in science, encouraging and supporting mothers in the workforce and in academics, and judging women by the quality of their work and not by the number of hours they spend in the office. We have to help men and women to identify their passion in life.

It’s in the game – Serious Games

 Educational Technology, Pedagogy, Wingate Seminar  No Responses »
Sep 242012
 

Games have been around for millennia and, all, debatably, have a degree of educational merit whether it be strategy, maths or more fundamental understanding of reality, life and culture. But this is not enough. Can games be used to teach deep and specific concepts? Can games make dry subjects enjoyable? Can games give often dislocated concepts a context? Can games focus students and keep them on task in this sound-bite, quick-fix, instant-fame culture they are growing up in?

Gaming Student

There are several attributes of gaming that make it an attractive strategy for education. Games, especially of the electronic variety, enjoy a high ranking in a wide range of people’s choice of leisure time. If more learning could be smuggled into that time (and probably be more effective than sleep-tapes) that alone would extend learning outside of school.

You just have to look at people’s faces to know how engaged they are when playing games. You can guess at the quality of that engagement by the complex manoeuvres, fiendish puzzles and RSI achieved by the gamer. Clever folks like scientists and programmers have co-opted that dopamine rush and turned tedious tasks into successful games such as protein folding and language translation.

Continue reading »

Caine’s Arcade – a powerful combination of social media and technology

 Educational Technology, Pedagogy  No Responses »
Jul 102012
 

In this post, Aviva Landie – a teacher at CIM-ORT Mexico – talks about a Facebook page, a viral video and a subsequent innovative project she carried out with her 2nd and 3rd grade technology students.

“I wanted to do something different and exciting to end the school year. After I came across a Facebook page on “Caine’s Arcade”, I knew exactly what I would propose to my 2nd and 3rd grade technology students.  After I showed them a short 10-minute video clip on “Caine’s Arcade”, they didn’t even let me propose the idea before all of my students with huge excitement asked, “Can we build our own arcade?” I was so happy to see so much enthusiasm. I told them that we would answer a few questions about the video, and then as a class decide exactly what we wanted to do with this project.

They accessed the classroom blog where I had posted a few questions about the video and we answered the questions together as a class. The one question they had difficulty answering was the question about the flash mob. They had difficulties understanding how so many people showed up to surprise Caine in the video, so we discussed what a flash mob is and how anyone with an account can create an event on a social media site like Facebook and invite people from all over the world (similar to how the flash mob was created in “Caine’s Arcade”). I also showed them a few videos of different flash mobs that have been uploaded to YouTube in order for them to see the different kinds of flash mobs that have taken place around the world.

Already knowing the answer to my question, I asked if they would be interested in building their own arcade, and without much surprise the – entire – class actually agreed on the same thing for the first this school year. I asked them to break up into small groups and draw a “design” with a list of materials that they would need to build their arcade. They worked on their design during two different class periods as they began bringing in all the materials. Once they had a well thought-out design, they were allowed to start building their arcade. Groups started creating, taping, painting, and enjoying every minute they put into building their arcade. Students actually asked if they could take their arcade home in order to be able to get together with their groups and work over the weekend! It was truly incredible to see my students so engaged, enthusiastic, and committed to their work.

There are so many pedagogical benefits from this project. My students watched the video on YouTube, accessed the classroom blog, learned about glash mobs, worked collaboratively in groups, and most importantly they were learning by doing. They used critical thinking in determining how they were going to take what they had sketched out in their designs and apply it to the building process of their arcade. Lots of critical thinking and problem solving skills were used in determining how they could make their arcade less challenging or in some cases more challenging in order to attract more people to play. There was a lot of collaboration throughout the entire process. One specific example of this was when they had to decide and assign as a team who would bring what in terms of materials.

I was so happy with such positive results that I joined the group “Caine’s Arcade” on Facebook and posted a few pictures that I took of my students while they were working on their arcade. One day after posting the pictures, one of the pictures I had posted had 260 likes. A few days later, a news reporter from NBC Los Angeles contacted me and asked for permission to use the pictures I had posted in her news report about Caine’s Arcade.

It’s truly incredible how social media and technology connects the world in so many different ways. Caine’s Arcade provided my students the opportunity to create, collaborate, think critically, use technology, and with the opportunity to learn a few things about entrepreneurship. And everything was made possible as a result of the passion and dedication of Caine Monroy, a nine-year old boy from Los Angeles, CA.”

Students Need Time Offline

 Educational Technology, Leadership, Pedagogy  2 Responses »
Jul 042012
 

This post is contributed by Marcelo Lewkow, National Director of ORT Chile.

It often seems as if everyone in the education world today is racing to keep up-to-date with the latest technological developments and to integrate the latest technical gadgets into their teaching. The benefits of using technology to engage students in the classroom are well-rehearsed, and I have no wish to dispute them. Nevertheless, I have been involved in a project which prevents school students from using technological devices in school.  Let me give the background and explain the rationale…

Maimonides School in Santiago, Chile, is an orthodox Jewish school which achieves consistently high academic results. The school makes frequent use of technology where it enhances the teaching and learning environment – both inside of the classroom and for homework/extension tasks. We certainly have all the technological equipment that we need. However, we have decided to ban students completely from using their own communication devices – smart phones, tablets, or anything else – inside school. Of course, much of the received wisdom nowadays is that making use of students’ own devices for positive educational purposes in the classroom will involve them more in their studies.  So why are we going against the grain?

This generation of school students is permanently “connected” – via instant messaging, via Facebook, via music sharing sites and via many other platforms. Absorption in this online world can often come at the expense of developing meaningful face-to-face relationships – for children especially. At Maimonides, we think that schools can offer one of the last places for addressing this and for reducing the “noise” which comes from being constantly connected. We want students to relate to their teachers and peers on a person-to-person level, not always interrupted by technological distractions.

As a by-product, this decision has helped us also to reduce the amount of contact between students and their parents during the school day. Students would sometimes worry or mislead their parents by contacting them immediately after any minor incident that happened at school. This would also result in teachers feeling undermined, if parents knew better than them what had been going on at school. The distance at school between students and their parents is a healthy space for growth, and should remain this way. Our policy has helped to maintain this space.

Much educational research points to the fact that education is an inherently social activity. If there is no real interaction, there is no real learning. Online interaction is great, but it cannot be the only kind of interaction. That is why we are going back to basics at Maimonides and refocusing the way that our students communicate – between themselves, with staff and with their parents.

“The Education Spring” – a presentation by Dr. Jorge Grunberg

 Educational Technology, Pedagogy  No Responses »
Jun 292012
 

“We have reached a point at which educational systems must and might finally undergo fundamental change.”

Taking this view as the starting-point for his presentation, Dr. Jorge Grunberg traces the evolution of classroom technology and charts the current social forces which are shaping fundamental change in education settings worldwide. Using the concept of “disruptive innovation”, he analyzes the potential of various new technologies to stimulate new teaching paradigms.

Dr. Jorge Grunberg is the Rector of Universidad ORT Uruguay in Montevideo.

“The Education Spring” – Dr. Jorge Grunberg

View more PowerPoint from HarrisLorie

Interview with Marina Moiseeva, ORT Moscow Technology School, Gymnasium # 1540

 Leadership, Pedagogy  No Responses »
Jun 012012
 

Marina Moiseeva is the Principal of ORT Moscow Technology School, Gymnasium # 1540. My recent conversation with her focused on two topics:

  • How the school strikes the right balance between a busy state-regulated curriculum and the demands of ORT’s Jewish & technological education.
  • How the school has successfully integrated into mainstream lessons students with special educational needs.

Striking the right balance between a busy state-regulated curriculum and the demands of ORT’s Jewish & technological education

Our school was established in 1994, with the status of a state-funded school. This means that 95% of our budget comes from national and municipal budgets, and only 5% is collected through fundraising (including the efforts of World ORT) and parents’ donations.

Like any other state-funded school, we are obliged to work through a fixed curriculum of compulsory school subjects, developed and approved by the Ministry of Education & Science of the Russian Federation, together with the Moscow Department of Education. This leaves us with only 5 hours per week per student for additional specialist subjects, such as – in our case – computer science and Jewish history & traditions. Some Hebrew teaching can be incorporated as language teaching in the state curriculum, but this still has to be topped up. In practice, our technology and computer science specialism requires 4 hours per week, our Jewish specialism requires a minimum of 5 hours per week alone.

Although these specialist subjects are considered to be very important by the school and by students’ families, none of the subjects are included in the final school exams used as entrance criteria by universities. The formal education system only regards them as “supplementary”. In addition, there are no officially certified teaching programs for these subjects. As a result, inspectors always ask lots of questions about the teaching of these subjects when they visit the school.

It is a real challenge for us to strike the right balance. Our students’ parents expect the school to guarantee good results and a smooth passage to university. At the same time, they specifically chose a Jewish school because they wanted their children to be educated in a Jewish environment.

From a practical perspective, there are simply not enough hours in the school week to fit everything in. Other gymnasiums and lyceums in Moscow actually open on a Saturday and work a 6-day week to fit everything in and to spread the weekly workload more evenly. However, as a Jewish school we would not open on a Saturday. As a consequence, we have to make the school days longer, which is officially not allowed and puts us at risk of being punished! The funny thing is that we have never been punished. Our set-up is something of an open secret.  I think that the city educational authorities know about our specific curriculum and additional subjects, but since they have no clear understanding of what to do with a Jewish school and what the borders of our religious freedoms should be, they just pretend not to see us.

Integrating into mainstream lessons students with special educational needs

We are in the 8th year of our Integration Project, supported by the Jewish Agency and the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, involving several Jewish schools in Moscow. We have learnt a lot and received guidance from outstanding professionals in the USA and Israel. We now have a clear and well-developed system in place to cover enrolment, socialization, learning and teacher training.

Our school specializes in integrating students with Autism and Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). Typically, we enrol no more than 3 or 4 students with special needs in a class of 25. However, this number can increase owing to the fact that some parents may not disclose full details about the educational needs of their child until they have already been enrolled.

In 2011 our first group of students with special educational needs graduated the school successfully, and most of them are now first year students at Moscow universities. This article details the experiences of a visitor from the USA who came to our school and was positively affected by our Integration Project.

Interviews with Lucie Hall & Lenka Tejkalova, Lauder Schools of Prague, Czech Republic

 Pedagogy  No Responses »
May 142012
 

This week the World ORT Education Blog moves to the Czech Republic, and specifically to the Lauder Schools of Prague, with which World ORT is a partner. I first caught up with Lucie Hall, World ORT representative and teacher at the school, who describes the demographic challenge which the school has faced and how it has boosted its reputation in a drive to attract more students.

“Like many schools all over the Czech Republic, Lauder Schools of Prague has been struggling to fill its student capacity since the mid-1990s. As a consequence of the 1989 Velvet Revolution and the subsequent fall from power of the Communist Party, social and cultural expectations of family life changed dramatically. More women decided to pursue careers, before having children at a later stage. This resulted in a significant drop in the birth rate post-1989 and therefore a reduced demand for school places later down the line. For Lauder Schools of Prague, which draws its Jewish students from an already small pool, this sometimes meant having as few as eight to ten students in a school grade. Despite the fact that these small groups of students could benefit from highly individualized tuition, this was neither an economically viable situation for the school nor a socially satisfying situation for the students.

Things have changed in the last five years, thanks in part to a national baby boom.  Our school opened a kindergarten in 2009, which is 100% full with Jewish children. Our primary school is now 90% full, and this surge is working its way up towards the high school: this year we had 58 students apply for the 18 places available in the first grade.

We believe that these increased numbers are not only due to demographic trends, but also due to the reputation of our school improving significantly. Our school has many features which make it attractive to prospective students:

  • We are the only Jewish school in the Czech Republic, giving us an immediate competitive advantage.
  • Classes have a maximum of 20 students, as opposed to the national average of 35. This helps to provide students with individual attention and a highly personalized learning environment.
  • Language classes are streamed according to ability across year groups, rather than across single year groups. This allows for a greater number of ability streams, and encourages students of different ages to get to know each other.
  • The school has a cosmopolitan atmosphere, relative to other schools in the Czech Republic, welcoming students from a variety of countries such as Israel, Russia and Canada.
  • We have a number of good international links. For example, the school is partnered with the Ulus Ozel Mosevi Lisesi School in Istanbul and the Angelo Sacerdoti School in Rome, with the goal of introducing the students to different Jewish communities around the world.
  • 90% of our students successfully apply to university – both at home and abroad.
  • Our facilities – sponsored by ORT – are excellent, for example the Tye and Lauder-ORT Technology Center & PC lab, interactive whiteboards, and interdisciplinary technology labs – including a geographical information systems center.
  • Students are able to attend the World ORT English & Science Summer School in London.
  • Teachers participate in World ORT teaching training specialist seminars.”

 

My second interviewee in the Czech Republic was Lenka Tejkalova – English and Maths teacher for 5 years at the Lauder Schools of Prague – who outlined to me the school’s pedagogical approach to interdisciplinary teaching. Lenka is working on the final stages of her PhD in Mathematical Education, with a focus on Content and Language Integrated Learning.

Can you summarize the theory of interdisciplinary teaching, as implemented at the school?

Interdisciplinary teaching is an important concept in the Czech educational system. A national curricular reform in 2005 prescribed that school curricula should no longer be structured around specific subjects, but rather around larger fields of study which drew attention to the links between subjects. So long as they adhered to this directive, schools were empowered to devise their own interdisciplinary curricula and learning structures.

In response, the Lauder Schools of Prague dedicated several weeks of their teachers’ time to careful design of a new curriculum under the supervision of a specialized coordinator. This gave teachers the opportunity to examine their individual subject syllabi and reorganize them in a way that produced common topics or historical eras that could be approached from the perspective of different subjects at the same time in the school year. For example, a topic like “Romanticism” could be tackled in the same month in language classes, history, art, and quite possibly in science too.

Can you provide specific examples of interdisciplinary teaching at the school?

Aside from the general interconnectedness of the whole curriculum, we have established a specialized subject called “The World in Context” – which is taught for two years at middle school (students aged 14-15) and then for one year at high school (students aged 17). The development of this subject was informed by the theory of CLIL – “Content and Language Integrated Learning” – which specifies the need for content aims, linguistic aims and cognitive aims.

At middle school level, the subject merges English as a foreign language with History and Social Science. Most of the materials the students work with are in English. The topics cover a range of historical events and their influence on the modern world, for example:

  • the early history of America, to illustrate its position in modern world;
  • colonization and decolonization, to explain a number of modern political conflicts;
  • slavery, as a starting point for a debate on racism;
  • influential women in different areas of human interest, to focus on the changing role of women in society.

We ask students from the high school to give sample presentations in English, and we often get students working in groups. The content aim of the subject is to make students aware of the historical background of some modern issues. The linguistic aims are for students to be able to find relevant texts in English, to distil the main point from an un-adapted English text, to follow an adapted lecture in English, and to be able to prepare and give a short presentation on a topic of their own choice. The cognitive and metacognitive aims are to trigger critical thinking in students, to teach them to identify cause/effect relationships from a text, to work with timelines, mindmaps and conceptual maps, to work effectively in a group, and to be able to prepare a poster presentation of a topic of their choice.

At high school level, it is primarily the students who decide the direction of this subject, given that their level of English is good enough to follow un-adapted texts and programs in English. In each fortnightly lesson, the students suggest topics from current affairs that they would like to deal with, discuss their suggestions amongst themselves, and then choose the topic of the next lesson. Each of them prepares an introductory presentation on one of the aspects of the issue at hand. For example, when the topic was the London Riots, the individual presentations focused on: timeline, outcomes, reasons, coverage in official media, coverage on social media, parallels with Brighton Riots from 1960′s, parallels with and differences from current student riots in the Czech Republic. A debate then takes place to identify connections between the individual presentations, and more information is supplied by the teacher to complete the picture – typically statistics, infographics and video input. Native speakers and international studies specialists are often invited to take part in the debate. At the end of the lesson, the students are assigned homework which is invariably a piece of academic writing on the current topic. The content aim is to make students aware of current events and their coverage in the media. The linguistic aim focuses on academic English – to present, to take part in academic debate, and to write academic texts (summaries, different types of essays, critical reviews). The cognitive and metacognitive aims are to teach students how to read statistics critically (both in textual and graphical representations), to work with both formal and informal resources, and to quote correctly.

There is yet a further area in which interdisciplinary teaching and learning features in our school. Each autumn, a school-wide, term-long project is carried out. The topics vary; in past years they have included “Israel”, ”The Maharal – 400 years of Rabbi Low and the Golem” and “Romanticism – the era of Karel Hynek Mácha”. The teachers design a series of workshops, often unrelated to any particular school subject, that approach the central topic from different perspectives. To take Romanticism as an example, one workshop retraced the travels of one of the biggest Romantic Czech author, another one focused on Science in Romanticism, another prepared a show based on Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. During the Israel project, one workshop prepared a book of endangered Israeli species, another one carried out research amongst Israelis from different waves of aliyah, another prepared an original board game with trivia about Israel. The students can choose any workshop they like, and groups are composed of middle and high school students together. At the end of the project, each of the workshops has a major presentation at a whole-school event; reports from each workshop are also published on a DVD and in a booklet.

What do you see as the benefits of interdisciplinary teaching?

The main benefit of the CLIL-based World in Context is that students see English language as a tool to gather relevant and meaningful information. They acquire the language naturally, especially in middle school level where attention is paid to careful linguistic scaffolding. This allows the students to focus on the content and skills. Even low-achievers in English show greater motivation in this subject than in standard English lessons. It gives the students the chance to show their knowledge outside the “box” of individual school subjects. By individualizing their tasks, we give them the chance to contribute from their own experience, which is again a highly motivating factor.

The school-wide, term-long project, with its variety of workshops, provides the students with the chance to see one topic from a number of different perspectives. This is a more realistic view than the standard single-subject approach.  Students also get to work with schoolmates who they do not normally meet or interact with. In addition, students see their teachers leading workshops outside their area of professional expertise, for example their Hebrew teacher is a professional cook or their Physics teacher is a History enthusiast. This helps to create a more intimate school environment and raises students’ interest in a variety of fields.

As far as the curriculum-scale interdisciplinary approach is concerned, the research mapping the effects of this relatively new reform has not yet been finished. However, I am deeply convinced about the positive contribution of this approach to effective learning.  For example, as a Mathematics teacher, it provides me with a valuable chance to synchronize my teaching with a Physics teacher, so that I can pre-teach equations to students before they need them, or so that they can practise dealing with expressions outside of my class.

What do you see as the challenges of interdisciplinary teaching?

The major challenge for both the curriculum scale approach and the school-wide, term-long projects is in the level of detailed planning needed amongst all teachers.  If this goes well, implementation is smooth.

The challenges connected to the World in Context subject are more significant. Since we have only started teaching the subject recently, and given that it feeds off current events, there are practically no pre-existing teaching materials. Teachers need to look up all resources and adapt them carefully. This is extremely demanding, but if not done properly and if the scaffolding is insufficient, it may lead to a complete failure of the lesson. The teacher needs to be aware of the level of different students in both language and content subjects, and to be able to individualize the activities so that weaker English-speakers are not disadvantaged. Yet another challenge is fair evaluation. So far, we have decided to grade the students based predominantly on their portfolios – folders in which the students collect their classwork and homework, together with any other materials they find relevant to the topic discussed. The students can choose to express themselves in Czech when tested; all tests are open-book (especially since they focus on cause/effect rather than data) and employ a variety of non-text-bound exercises (for example, graphic organizers of different types). However, the debate on how much linguistic skills influence students’ performance in such a subject is always an issue, especially if you have an almost native speaker and an elementary student in the same class.

 

World ORT’s next Hatter educational seminar – in October 2012 in London – is on the subject of interdisciplinary learning. Watch this space for materials and feedback from the seminar.

 

Interview with Kalya Hilu – Director General at CIM-ORT, Mexico

 Leadership, Pedagogy  No Responses »
May 012012
 

The World ORT education blog is taking a new direction in the next couple of months.  It will feature interviews with leading ORT educational practitioners around the world, with an emphasis on pedagogical opportunities and challenges that they face in their roles.

The first of our interviewees is Kalya Hilu, Director General since August 2010 at Colegio Israelita de México (CIM) ORT in Mexico City.  CIM-ORT caters for over 650 students, ranging from pre-school age to high school age.  The school joined the ORT network in 2010.  I caught up with Kalya at 07:00 – her usual start time – at the beginning of a busy Friday morning.

Tell me a little bit about your background and what brought you to CIM-ORT.

Until now, all of my working life has been spent in the Israeli education system.  Before coming to Mexico, I was the Principal at the 1100-student Western Galilee Junior High & High School, now affiliated to World ORT in Israel.  During this time, I made big changes in the way that the school’s teaching staff worked with the students.  I am no stranger to change; my Masters Degree at the University of Haifa was on change in educational organizations.

After nine years in the role, I felt that it was time to move on.  Two opportunities opened up to take positions in Mexico, one of which was as Director General at the Colegio Israelita de México.  Since the school already had a good relationship with World ORT, I knew that I would receive the support I needed in this role.

What did you see at the school which needed doing differently when you arrived?  How have you gone about effecting change?

CIM had been known as one of the top schools in Mexico, but when I arrived it was struggling with its reputation and ability to attract students.  I was hired specifically to help the school with boosting its image and improving the quality of education.

I dedicated my first year at the school to changing the way in which the school’s administration and organizational hierarchy worked.  The different schools on the campus – kindergarten, junior high, high – worked very separately.  Given that many of the students stay all the way through from kindergarten to high school, this was not an ideal arrangement for establishing a sense of educational continuity.

My goal was to build a senior management team, with a common vision for the schools.  This was not so easy because it took time for colleagues to understand that I wanted to take decisions with them and that I needed them to give their opinions openly.  I did not want a team of yes-men!

Having put the organizational management in place, it was important to also empower the teaching staff and make them appreciate that they can affect what goes on.  We set up a voluntary focus group of 20 teachers, who were tasked with suggesting pedagogical changes which the school would benefit from.

The main pedagogical change we have made is introducing project-based learning into the classroom – be that the kindergarten, the primary school or the high school.  The high school is developing a methodology of integrated learning, through encouraging students to engage with case studies – like the learning style of Harvard Business School.  The rationale for this is that students do not learn by being passive recipients; they learn through doing.  Case studies are a good way of training students to ask questions, to investigate and to learn independently.

Whilst the original 20 teachers from the focus group were on board with this, we still needed to convince the remainder of the 100-strong teaching staff that this was a positive change of direction.  I believe that 30% of them are with us very passionately.  Another 50% will wait and see how everything develops, and gradually come on board.  Inevitably, the remaining 20% will find it very hard.  We are putting on capacity-building training to support teachers in adjusting to this new way of working.

What differences have you noticed between working at a school in Mexico and at a school in Israel?

One of my primary goals as an educational leader is to foster a strong sense of teamwork in my school.  I worked very hard on this in Israel, but have found it more challenging in Mexico – for a funny reason.  Mexican culture is generally more hierarchical; employees are very obliging and are expected to obey their bosses.  It is very different in Israel, where the first person you disobey is your boss!  Israeli employees need to be convinced of your leadership credentials.  So whilst it may seem easier in Mexico, there is a risk that people have only been won over superficially.  I have therefore stressed the importance of my staff being as open with me as possible.

I have also found that whilst in Israeli schools it is sometimes easy to take for granted the students’ connection with Israel and Judaism, in Mexico this has to be consciously considered and thought about the whole time.

What kinds of relationships have you built between CIM-ORT and schools at both a local and international level?

The Va’ad HaChinuch (Jewish educational council) in Mexico City works hard to bring together the different principals from the different Jewish schools across the city – for example, by conducting visits to each other’s schools.  Developing cooperation is a challenging task because the different schools are effectively in competition with each other: we are all competing for a limited pool of students.  My view is that even though we are competitors, we cannot afford not to cooperate at the same time.

On a wider scale, we are developing relationships with two private Christian schools in Mexico City – one of these projects is focussed on Holocaust education.  We are also participating in a university sports project, which involves a variety of other schools in the city.  I would like to develop more links with local schools.  My sense is that once we re-establish our reputation as a leading educational light in Mexico City, other schools will be more interested in collaborating with us.

At an international level, the school values its membership of the ORT network, but our connection is not as effective as I found it to be in Israel.  We feel ORT’s involvement less in day-to-day matters, probably as a result of our perceived distance from the focus of activities in Israel and the Former Soviet Union.  I would like to establish a closer relationship with ORT organizations in South America, but the physical distances between us are still enormous!  It is still early days.

What has been the highlight of your work so far in Mexico?

Being consciously aware that I am a shelicha – an emissary – from the State of Israel, and that my overriding purpose is to bring the spirit of Israel to Mexico and to develop the best possible Jewish education that I can in Mexico.

Opening learning

 Projects  1 Response »
Mar 072012
 

You don’t need to be an educator or a parent to appreciate that all children have different aptitudes, abilities and needs. Every young child begins a quest for self-identity that is concerned with finding out whom they are and who they might become. Since there are essentially no pre-determined outcomes we can consider this a journey of open-ended learning, characterized by interaction, experience and reflection.

Schooling, by contrast, is generally quite a closed learning experience. There are usually clear criteria by which you are measured, tests that you may pass or fail which in turn open or close doors to new possibilities. Schooling systems across the globe were designed and built to serve a world in which closed learning was the dominant model, with each generation having to study the achievements and discoveries of previous generations to survive and to live more efficiently.

Today, in the developed world, where subsistence is not the main goal of education, we are seeing a shift towards a society where open learning capabilities are more valuable. We are witnessing a rapid and dramatic shift in the value of information, the evolving roles of teachers and students, and familiar pedagogical models are being challenged and branded as obsolete.

The demand for personalisation – helping students to recognise and assess their own needs as well as providing more diverse opportunities for learning – is displacing mass-production. But while every educator has always had a responsibility to identify the potential of each individual student, to nurture it and provide opportunities for its fulfilment, no teacher, school or college in today’s world can meet all the needs of all of their students on their own.

World ORT is faced with a unique opportunity as well as a challenge. We are a diverse network made up of educational institutions of every shape and size catering to a full spectrum of students from kindergarten to postgraduate level as well as lifelong learners. The richness of experience and expertise within ORT worldwide is inestimable.

It is with this in mind that the Education Department of World ORT in London is trying to complete a massive audit of the whole system, in order to compile a database of educational and training activities and projects across the network. We are seeking to create a continually-updated resource that all of our educators will be able to access, to draw on this pooled wealth, and to be able to provide our students with the best start in a competitive world.

Khan we kick it?

 Educational Technology, Pedagogy  No Responses »
Feb 272012
 

In a recent blog post Karim Kai Ani wrote of Khan Academy (and reiterated by Audrey Watters):

“Some even wonder whether it will eventually replace teachers altogether”

Teacherless Classroom Cartoon

Teacherless Classroom, Matt Hall

You don’t have to be a teacher to understand that there is a complex and sophisticated interaction between a teacher and a learner where the teacher sensitively tests, encourages, explains and tries different models until the teacher knows the learner understands.  So I would hope that every teacher and every parent would reject that statement. Repeating some of the viewpoints in the blog’s comments, Salman Khan never argues that Khan Academy should serve as the only source of instruction that a student should receive. If any teachers think that Khan Academy can relieve some of their teaching burden then the criticism should be directed at those teachers.

“Our obsession with Khan Academy may be one of the most dangerous phenomena in education today”

Can our obsession with interactive white boards, ipads, virtual learning environments, mobile, social and other new fangled pedagogies not be more dangerous?  Perhaps, if they remain undeveloped, unfamiliar and only for those schools that can afford them and their infrastructure. But Khan Academy is constantly developing both in terms of technology and pedagogy (and gameification).

Gamification – The New Loyalty from Gamification Co on Vimeo.

If we take the successes of KA for granted and rest on our laurels then perhaps we’ve got something to worry about. Where KA could also be seen as dangerous is when learners work at their own pace and hence cease to be a cohesive classroom where a teacher can bring everyone with her. But then one could argue that the potential to use Khan Academy to enhance differentiated learning (i.e. when students progress at a pace suitable to them, rather than be restricted / pressurized by the class pace) is surely a good thing.  Perhaps teachers can’t expect to bring everyone with them at the same pace and they should use the tools and attitudes that allow them to deal with the challenge of mixed ability classes.

“Maths: “I don’t know what it means or when I’ll ever use it.” This is understandable.”

Can this be understandable as a reasonable attitude for any accomplished maths teacher?  At the very least, basic maths and even some quite advanced maths (compound interest, probabilities, unit conversion, etc.) are, or should be, essential life skills. If nothing else, students need to learn it simply to pass the test but if you want to work in engineering, science, finance, logistics or a host of other roles (including academia) then you’d better understand what it means and when to use it. Most young people will not (and may never) have developed the sense of perspective, maturity, breadth of knowledge and controlled imagination to love maths for maths sake. Numberphile might help though and who could not be moved by the fact that Pascal’s triangle, squares, triangular numbers, the Fibonacci sequence and Sierpiński gasket can be derived (to some extent) from powers of 11. But parents and teachers have the responsibility to ensure that their respective charges understand why mathematics is important and relevant (and fun).

“Khan Academy’s repackaged paint-by-numbers method is ineffective instruction related to ineffective content and is identical to what students have seen — and rejected — for generations.”

Firstly, students are not rejecting KA. Secondly, it is not identical, it is not ineffective and is not paint-by-numbers. What KA may be suffering from is somewhat clumsily constructed questions in some topics due to their digital origins. And questions where the questioner has some purpose in mind and which the student must divine through symbols and various levels of obfuscation are in most textbooks and exams. Even the Centre for Innovation in Mathematical Teaching is guilty of this and while Mathelicious lessons are dressed with multi-media, when it comes to understanding, they’re not that far away either. How does video instruction, providing multiple mental models of concepts, practice within a hierarchical framework of concepts and multiple methods of feedback, reflection and review constitute ineffective instruction?

“the real issue with Khan Academy is its lack of underlying pedagogy.”

Why get wound up about a lack of, say, a constructivist pedagogy [or any other pedagogism] when learners are not even invested in their own learning? By saying that students do not learn maths in any meaningful way is describing them as inside Searle’s Chinese room - Erlwanger’s 1973 study is dated and limited. Teachers at all levels of education can be effective good teachers without any knowledge of Bloom and are arguably better for it (although the world seems to struggle to find good maths teachers – so we should thank Sal for stepping up).  And you can’t expect students to follow an underlying pedagogy when you run student led classes, peer mentoring and transparent teaching. But wait, isn’t self paced gameified instruction just another pedagogy?

There is much more to read and discuss in the, I must say, entertaining and thought provoking blog post of Karim Ani. So if you haven’t already, please read it in full and comment there or here.

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