Making Sense of Student Development
I've sent out the next email installment on Integral Theory - this time looking at how various lines of development can be mapped across generic stages of growth. I'm not sure who will have time to read it given that reports are due this week!
PY10 leaders have begun to think about our college handbook for 2006. We need to look at our pre-requisites in terms of the ELs Standards and Progressions - this is no easy task because only a few of us have had time to look at them. Lots of work to be done here.
While on the subject of ELs I've been looking at the new Victorian ELs (VELs) to be implemented by all Victorian teachers in 2006! Also found links to the Northern Territory 'EsseNTials' and the South Australian ELs .
Labels: growth, integral, worldviews
Quotes from the iNET Conference
“In the not too distant future Beijing will become the new New York.”
Jason Yat-sen Li - General Manager Insurance Australia Group
“Students are not choosing DDD jobs - Difficult, Dangerous and Dirty Jobs.”
“50% of current year 7 students will end up in some form of self-employment.“
“The greatest rate of jobs growth in Australia is in the retail industry. But we are not just talking about checkouts - the retail industry has career paths! “
Mary Nicolson - Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry
“We need a unique national student ID to cope with the 80,000 students who move interstate per annum.”
Ken Smith - Queensland Director-General Education
“What if...? dare to make a difference.“
Derek Wise (UK) - Principal of Cramlington Community High School
“Our curriculum is driven by leading edge science and mathematics that will shape Australia's future in the next 25 years.“
"Mathematics is a textbook free zone.“
Jim Davies and Jayne Heath - Australian Science and Mathematics School
“ 'India' CD will be a required English text for the VCE in 2006.”
Kathe Kirby - Asia Education Foundation
“Literacy and numeracy standards have declined nationally. While educators are interested in other literacies these are the only ones for which we have hard data and can therefore draw reliable conclusions. While educators have argued that other aspects of student education have improved this cannot be demonstrated.
Therefore we will stick with what we know. Education standards are declining. There is a crisis in teacher quality.“
Andrew Leigh - Economist and researcher at ANU
“There are many generations of students and teachers:
Builders - born before 1948
Boomers - born before 1963
Generation X - born before 1980
Y Generation - born before 1995
Cyber Generation
How much do educators know about the 'cyber generation'? “
Thao Nguyen - final year at University of Sydney
- Australian Youth Representative to the UN General Assembly in New York (2004)
“The future of Australian curriculum is in Tasmania.“
“A key message I'll take back to the UK is what Queechy and other schools are doing in Tasmania.“
Professor David Hargreaves (UK)
Labels: 21stCentury, curriculum
Earth to Roger...
Photonics, Biomimetics, Nanotechnology, Robotics, Cryptography... These are the leading edge areas of science and mathematics that years 10-12 students and teachers study at a senior secondary school in South Australia.
I have just returned from the
International iNET Conference in Melbourne and my head is still somewhere on another planet! When I do come back to Earth I have decided that I need to go to the
Australian Science & Mathematics School (ASMS) in Adelaide.
In this school the students and teachers learn together about leading edge science and mathematics that is going to transform all our lives over the next 20 years (according to an Australian Government Report). Just briefly some features of the school are:
- Years 10-12 and teachers work together on interdisciplinary inquiry.
- Compulsory 'Central Studies' include study Mathematics and Abstract Thinking, Sustainable Futures, Nanotechnology, The Earth and Cosmos and Biotechnology.
- University modules to be studied include Robotics, ICT, Bioinformatics, The Politics of Energy and Electronics.
- Students go home at noon on Tuesdays so teachers can participate in professional inquiry and research with Flinders University.
- Year 12 students finish with Certificated Accreditation for University entrance.
According to ex-students now at university they are far better prepared for learning that students from other schools.
I wonder if all Tasmanian Colleges can teach science and mathematics in the same way? When I think back to my days at uni what I remember best is the work I did on leading edge science such as holograms - I still have the 3D holograms I made of chess pieces...
More on other conference sessions soon.
Labels: transdisciplinary
