Author Archives: internationalednews

Marc Tucker, president and CEO of the National Center on Education and the Economy (NCEE), responded to a blog post written by Checker Finn on the topic of self-esteem. In his response, which was posted on EdWeek, Tucker takes an international perspective and therefore we are re-posting it her at IEN. While this exchange focuses on “self-esteem,” we note that others, including James Heckman, Richard Reeves, and Angela Duckworth, have taken up the topic of “non-cognitive skills.” This exchange between Tucker and Finn follows an earlier one, which we posted last month. 

On June 28, the Fordham Institute published a blog by Checker Finn titled “Schools Are Still Peddling the Self-Esteem Hoax” that sparked an energetic and interesting debate.  I thought I would weigh in.

In his piece, Checker takes aim at the ‘self-esteem’ movement, and then stands over the dead body of his target to aim his next shot at the ‘social-emotional learning’ movement.

As you know, I tend to come at things from an international comparative perspective, so it won’t surprise you to learn that my take on ‘self-esteem’ is framed in part by the data from the OECD that show that American students, who perform very poorly on mathematics compared to the other advanced industrial countries, think they do quite well at mathematics, while the students from the countries with the best mathematics performance do not rate their knowledge of mathematics as highly. From that perspective, self-esteem is definitely not our problem.  Performance is our problem.

On the other hand, one of the things that has really impressed us about the schools serving very vulnerable children in East Asia is their strategy for dealing with students who all too often grow up in circumstances that teach them not to trust adults—any adults.  These kids often come to school fearful and unwilling to engage.  In places like Hong Kong and Singapore, the faculties of such schools embrace the motto: ‘First the Heart, Then the Head.’  They know they cannot reach these young people in order to engage them in learning until they first do what they need to do to earn their trust.  The faculty in these schools will go to court if they have to intercede on the student’s behalf with a judge, buy them lunch if they cannot afford one on their own, stay in school until 8:00 or 8:30 p.m. if the student has no safe place to go.

None of this invalidates Checker’s point that building self-esteem is pointless if building self-esteem is seen as a substitute for real achievement.  The impressive thing about the schools I am describing is that they are uncompromising on the standards they set for student achievement.  But, at the same time, they will work, sometimes for years, to build the social and emotional foundation on which the student’s cognitive development will then be built.  If a student comes to school believing that no adult can be trusted, the futures available to more fortunate children will forever be denied to them and a life of crime is better than no life at all.

At first, this might appear to run counter to Checker’s argument.  But I don’t think that is the case.  At one point in his blog, he cites the “…traditional obligation of schools to impart academic skills and knowledge.”  One might suppose that this is an invitation to regard anything that does not contribute to that goal as outside the proper role of the school.  But it turns out that his real beef is not with non-cognitive goals per sebut the particular selection of non-cognitive goals embraced by the Collaborative for Academic, Social and Emotional Learning (CASEL). He sees goals like ‘self-confidence” and ‘self-efficacy’ as suspiciously close to the not-so-esteemed goal of ‘self-esteem.’  And he wonders what happened to other goals that the organization might have chosen to mention or to highlight, but did not, like ethics, morality, integrity, courage or honesty.

This made me smile.  It turns out that the debate is not about whether schools should be pursuing non-cognitive goals, but rather which non-cognitive goals should be pursued.  And I find myself in Checker’s corner here.  Perhaps I am very old fashioned, but I see a certain tendency in some quarters toward a rather self-absorbed—on the one hand—and patronizing—on the other hand—outlook that reminds me not a little of what Checker calls the “self-esteem hoax.”

Let’s be clear here.  The social and emotional development of students is not a new goal for education or schools.  It is as old as the hills—or Aristotle.  That set of goals was probably more important than cognitive goals to the headmasters of Eton and Harrow when the Duke of Wellington went to school there.  Self-discipline, teamwork, leadership and moral development were said to be the whole point of playing English rugby, which is why the Duke was famously but erroneously quoted as saying that the Battle of Waterloo was won on the playing fields of his alma mater.  And Checker is undoubtedly right in thinking that the headmasters of those esteemed schools were not so interested in developing their students’ self-esteem or self-efficacy.

The first school to be developed in the United States on the model of the great English public schools was the Groton Academy.  It was to be the prep school of choice for the sons of the great barons of finance and industry as the Gilded Age was coming to an end.  Interestingly, it was these very titans of industry and finance who insisted that the dorms at Groton be cold and tiny and devoid of anything that smacked of privilege and a life of ease.  They did not want their sons to grow up soft and entitled.  They wanted them to be tough and disciplined and self-reliant.  Was that part of the curriculum?  You bet it was.

Americans have often been ambivalent about the non-cognitive goals of education.  We often hear parents say that they want the schools to teach their kids the “Three Rs” and they will take care of the rest.  Or other parents say that they are pulling their kids out of school because the schools are teaching values they don’t share.  This is probably what comes of living in a country largely populated by immigrants from very different places, bringing with them a plethora of religious, ethnic and national backgrounds.  And that’s probably why, when you read schools’ goal statements, they seem so devoid of any serious statement about what that community really values.  Yup, don’t we all believe that all students should reach their full potential, grow up to fully participate in the country’s political life, be prepared for work and to be solid contributors to family and community?

For comparison’s sake, here’s what Singapore’s Ministry of Education has posted on its web site about the goals Singapore has for its students:

The person who is schooled in the Singapore Education system embodies the Desired Outcomes of Education. He has a good sense of self-awareness, a sound moral compass, and the necessary skills and knowledge to take on challenges of the future. He is responsible to his family, community and nation. He appreciates the beauty of the world around him, possesses a healthy mind and body, and has a zest for life. In sum, he is

• a confident person who has a strong sense of right and wrong, is adaptable and resilient, knows himself, is discerning in judgment, thinks independently and critically, and communicates effectively;
• a self-directed learner who takes responsibility for his own learning, who questions, reflects and perseveres in the pursuit of learning;
• an active contributor who is able to work effectively in teams, exercises initiative, takes calculated risks, is innovative and strives for excellence; and,
• a concerned citizen who is rooted to Singapore, has a strong civic consciousness, is informed, and takes an active role in bettering the lives of others around him.

Nothing self-absorbed about that.  Nothing to suggest that self-actualization is more important than learning something.  There will be some among you, I am sure, who will say, “Yes, but isn’t Singapore the place that used to put you in jail for throwing chewing gum on the sidewalk and cane you for using drugs?”  Yes, it was.  But ask almost any Singaporean whether they would prefer to live in Singapore or somewhere else and the answer will come flying back:  Singapore is it for them.

I invite you to read this statement of goals and ask yourself, what do you not agree with?  What is missing?  What is new and what is as old as the hills?  Which goals have always been there for everyone and which are goals that used to be only for a small elite?  Please note that only one of these goals—”communicates effectively”—says a thing about learning anything in particular or to a particular standard. Yet Singapore has consistently been at or very near the summit of the PISA and TIMSS league tables year after year.  Clearly, Singapore places great value on cognitive development.  So, when it comes right down to it, Singapore puts its money on a set of goals for students that speaks directly to some old-time virtues that Checker mentioned, like perseverance, morality, civic consciousness (and by implication patriotism), taking initiative, excellence and responsibility.

If this is what Checker meant, then I stand with Checker.

Dr. Louis Volante

Dr. Louis Volante is Professor of Education at Brock University in Ontario, Canada. He is also an Affiliated Researcher at the Maastricht Graduate School of Governance, UNU-MERIT (United Nations University–Maastricht Economic and Social Research Institute on Innovation and Technology), in the Netherlands. Professor Volante is currently the President-Elect for the Canadian Educational Researchers Association (CERA) and is a former recipient of the R.W.B. Jackson Publication Award, which is awarded annually by CERA for the best English language journal article. 

In this interview, which is part of the Lead the Change Series of the American Educational Research Association Educational Change Special Interest Group, Volante shares his thoughts on how his scholarship aligns with the 2018 AERA theme: “The Dreams, Possibilities, and Necessity of Public Education.”

The necessities of public education systems are rapidly evolving. Nevertheless, if I were to identify one of the most salient areas that is undergoing a pronounced transformation, it would likely be in the broader field of literacy. How one defines and conceptualizes this construct is changing fairly rapidly—often in response to the digital world that most students within the developed world are situated. The increased use of technology in contemporary classrooms presents both opportunities and formidable challenges — particularly as educators strive to promote an engaging learning environment within contexts that may be under-resourced.

This Lead the Change interview appears as part of a series that features experts from around the globe, highlights promising research and practice, and offers expert insight on small- and large-scale educational change. Recently Lead the Change has also published interviews with Diane Ravitch, and the contributors to Leading Educational Change: Global Issues, Challenges, and Lessons on Whole-System Reform (Teachers College Press, 2013) edited by Helen Janc Malone, have participated in a series of blogs from Education Week.

In “Strategies for Strengthening the Technical Workforce, A Review of International Evidence,” a new report shared by the Consortium for Policy Research and Education (CPRE), Katherine Conn, Elizabeth Park, Wakasa Nagakura, Sherihan Khalil, and Thomas Corcoran (Teachers College, Columbia University), aim to help policymakers develop strategies to meet workforce challenges. The authors focus on countries suffering from a shortage of technicians and skilled workers, particularly in the STEM fields. This shortage is attributed to a mismatch between the skills and interests of the students and the needs of the labor market.

In Chapter 1, the authors offer five primary strategies for addressing this challenge. They include various types of career and technical education: vocational education, apprenticeships, cooperative education, career academies, and e-learning. For each strategy is addressed in the report, the authors provide a description of the literature, a summary of the findings, and a brief description of the limitations and implications of the synthesis. In Chapter 2, the authors share literature on strategies that seek to improve access to career and technical education, such as providing high quality information to students, and improving career counseling, and offering incentives to encourage student participation in particular fields.

For more on this issue:

Canadian delegation tours Coast ahead of Sh1.5b polytechnics funding programme http://buff.ly/2tR8Es1

The Long-Term Downside to a Bipartisan Education Initiative http://buff.ly/2sNldzE

Trump to Tout Training, Apprenticeships http://buff.ly/2thzbgu

Queen’s speech confirms introduction of T-Levels http://buff.ly/2thF9Oy

Apprenticeships Key to Solving Workforce Skills Gap, CEOs Say http://buff.ly/2sMSpYb

What #Australia could learn from Hong Kong and Singapore about rebuilding Vocational Education and Training http://buff.ly/2tJtTLN

#Nigeria Vocational skills panacea to economic recession ―Don – Tribune http://buff.ly/2sqG3Wj

Valerie Harwood, Professor of Sociology and Anthropology of Education at the Sydney School of Education and Social Work, University of Sydney, spoke recently at Teachers College about her current research project, Getting an Early Start to Aspirations: Understanding How to Promote Educational Futures, funded by an Australian Research Council Future Fellowship. In this project, she explores the use of social marketing strategies to promote educational futures and legitimize subjugated knowledges of learning in places of significant educational disadvantage through the design and evolution of the Lead My Learning Campaign. In the following interview with Sarah van den Berg, Harwood elaborates on the context for her work and insights into striving for greater educational opportunities from the perspective of critical sociological theory and Aboriginal paradigms of learning, respect, relationships, and reciprocity.

Social marketing techniques are a particular modality, used often in health (campaigns to drink more water, stop smoking, wear seat belts, etc.), to promote behavioral change in particular segment of society. A proposition statement is developed; in which the promoted behavior offers greater benefits and fewer barriers than the current behavior. A campaign is designed through extensive consultation with the target audience to promote this behavior. Over the course of over a year, Harwood and Project Manager Nyssa Murray, a Dunghutti Woman—(a member of the First Nations of Australia)— developed relationships with parents and service providers in the community doing “formative work” to design the campaign. The LML campaign’s proposition statement is that “It is possible to lead your child’s learning. It only takes a little time and can fit in with everyday activities.” Through the promotional materials such as bus station advertisements, free photographs for families, play-time mats for service providers, and a commissioned song for playgroups that show ways of “sharing” and “encouraging” learning that likely already happens amongst their target audience, the LML campaign aims to promote ‘learning moments’ by sending the message that “you can encourage your child’s learning without having specific knowledge AND it gives a child the happy experience of valuing and enjoying learning” (Harwood Presentation).

What particular issue do you aim to target using social marketing strategies in the Lead My Learning campaign?

Strictly speaking, what social marketing is about is behavioral change. So, as a Foucauldian critical scholar, there’s no way I’d say, I’ve got to change everybody’s behavior, but strictly speaking, what social marketing does is this idea of behavior change for social good. Because of the critical framework that I use, I don’t look at people as having a lack or deficit, I’m more of the school of thought that it’s the institutions that have problems. So part of the challenge for us in our campaign is figuring out what are people from our target audience doing to promote learning with their young children and figuring out ways of legitimating what people are already doing. If all the talk is about early childhood being so formative and important—and I’ve got different views as well because I think it’s not the end of the story when they’re ten—then, what are the practices that might be really useful in children who are young for promoting an educational future and building up the possibility of higher education. We’re trying to work against foreclosure, and a lot of the early childhood literature really points to how important parents are in those efforts. But if the parents (parents referring broadly in the Aboriginal paradigm to any adult with parental responsibilities) haven’t had great experiences with education, then education isn’t actually a great product to pitch. Our formative research with over 100 parent participants, shows they value education, but they’re also very uncomfortable with it. So—without using the term ‘education’, we aim to promote educational futures, a term I’ve been using in a book published recently with Hickey-Moody, McMahon, and O’Shea, The Politics of Widening Participation and University Access for Young People, to capture the idea of an openness to education in all of its various guises, instead of foreclosure.

What role do relationships with your participants play in designing this campaign?

Our daunting task was to promote education to people who haven’t had good experiences with education. As we got further into it, we realized that we couldn’t even use the word ‘education’ —that’s why we use the term learning. If you look around the Lead My Learning website, you won’t see the word ‘school’: you’ll only see the word ‘learning.’ We spent time developing really good relationships with our informants, who all said that we cannot use the word education, we’ve got to use the world learning. So with the Aboriginal people, they do so much around learning but it’s a learning that’s completely unacknowledged by society. In our campaign what we’ve tried to do is showcase Aboriginal practices of learning by observing and pitching in (LOPI) so people who are doing it already can identify those strategies and say yep, we’re doing that, as well as to provide tips and tricks to encourage more of it. One of the things that also happens is service providers see very different imagery of people that get described as deficit, so we’ve tried to spin that around so it’s also had an extra effect on service providers to see so much positivity.

What’s important for education researchers that might be doing work in early childhood or community is really building really good alliances with the informants – like the parents and really strong service providers who are doing great jobs and have that affinity with the people they’re working with. We’ve worked closely with service providers, and have learned a lot from our relationships with them. We also honor Aboriginal practices of reciprocity and mutual respect, so we try to give back something that’s useful to them and can carry our message. So we ask, what do you guys need in this early childhood center or playgroup that’s really useful? And they might say that they really need mats. So we get mats made with our brand messaging purchase them from the research budget, and all of our research sites they get mats. And this is Aboriginal protocol, right, about reciprocity and relationship. So you don’t just go into a research site and take a load of data and leave, you’ve got to build a relationship, bring something to it.

What are the next steps for the project?

It’s a four-year fellowship, so the next phase is around sustainability. We do pre- and post-service surveys, individual and group interviews using Aboriginal yarning methodology and service provider surveys. And then, it’s really thinking about how can we possibly sustain it or get it integrated into other kinds of services.

The thing about part of the sustainability is responsibility, because we’ve embedded ourselves in a community and we do our hardest within practical reason to continue in the community if it’s wanted. Sharing what we’re doing is important too. We’ve had service providers in the community talk to us about what we can continue to do. The thing is that we’ve created the brand and the content, but if you want to keep using materials you’ve obviously got to get funding to be able to keep doing that. And part of it is showing how working in this way might be useful—how building these sorts of relationships and adapting social marketing techniques might be a resource that aren’t tapped into as much as they could be.

Because of the intensiveness of the collaboration with participants through the design process, I think a lot of people don’t see us as having created the stuff, it’s very readily accepted. For example, in one of our post-interviews, Ali, a research assistant, was with an Aboriginal grandmother at one of the sites. The grandmother said ‘I don’t know that campaign’ but when Ali pointed to the poster on the wall of the campaign, and the grandmother said ‘Oh yea! Yea, I do that already.’ And for Nyssa and I, that was gold, because what we’d strive to do, was not to be seen as some kind of Expert coming in and saying ‘Let’s do this’, but rather – here’s what you’re already doing it which is helping your child’s learning and you can do more of it.