Volume 7, Issue 2: At a time when education has been paralysed by management speak and business cliches, the spring 2009 edition of Professional Voice attempts to cut through the cant with fresh thinking on the challenges facing education and learning. You can read PV 7.2 on screen - click on the cover to read in full screen mode - or download here.
Editorial: Learning and the accountability culture
By John Graham. Edu-babble has infested our education system, importing a management-speak and accountability culture that stifle creativity without improving outcomes.
What's the point of school?
By Guy Claxton. In the pursuit of good exam results, schools have forgotten their deeper purpose -- to develop confident, inquiring and courageous minds in their students. In this excerpt from his latest book, Caxton argues that schools are letting down the next generation and leaving them ill-prepared for life.
The Five Minds for the Future
By Howard Gardner. A fast changing society marked by increasing power of technology and the greater movement and migration of people and cultures will require new ways of thinking. Howard Gardner outlines his vision of the skills for the future.
The Condition and Future of Primary Education: Behind the headlines of the Cambridge Primary Review
By Robin Alexander. The Cambridge Primary Review is one of the largest studies conducted into the state of primary education and presents some challenging views and proposals. Robin Alexander, its editor, outlines the review's findings, and its concerns about high-stakes testing and a "state theory of teaching".
Learning Through Narrative for Indigenous Children
By Neil Hooley. With most Indigenous students in mainstream schools, attempts to meet the complex cultural and learning needs of these communities have so far largely failed. Neil Hooley offers up a narrative curriculum that respects and uses students' culture and experience to access western learning as a way forward.
Improving Teaching and Learning Through Instructional Rounds
By Lee Teitel. What do you do when changes to teaching methods don't bring about the desired changes to student learning? Lee Teitel walks us through a new approach to classroom observation that helps identify where problems might lie.
A confluence of changes
By Andrew Douch. The days of the teacher as information gatekeeper are over. With students embracing Web 2.0 technologies from iPods and blogs to wikis and YouTube, teachers need to radically rethink what they do, how they do it and why. The good news, Andrew Douch says, is that new technology is easy -- and the outcomes for engaging and learning can be excellent.
Helping Teachers to Recognise Abilities
Therese Pierce, Patrick Griffin, Kerry Woods, Bernadette Coles-Janess and Eileen Roberts. Teachers in mainstream schools often lack the training and skills to work with children with additional needs; yet most will have at least one in their class. Therese Pierce and colleagues describe a new approach that helps teachers focus on what these students can do, rather than what they cannot.
Alan Reid on education under Kevin Rudd
Interview by John Graham.
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