Diagnostic Teachingin the qualcative age

Individual Literacy – what we hope we all do – address individual learner's individual needs.

Diagnostic Teaching• how we achieve

the above goal

For *Literacy read Literacy/Numeracy/General Education

The Qualcative Age• audit driven,

assessment dominated, “accountable” delivery

New literacies, new contexts, new learnersThis session presents facilitated discussion on

the following points:• Is there a core literacy that underpins the

new literacies?• Is there a core context that underpins the

new contexts?• Is there a core learner that underpins the

new learner?• Is there a core teaching that underpins the

new teaching?

The aim of this session.

The aim of this session is to allow practitioners to reflect on “newness” and “change” and the contemporary socio-economic pressures operating in the literacy field.

Starting pointDacchi (45 years) – PhD

Fine Arts, Griffith University

- time to learn to write his own thesis.

Phil (47 years) – four jobs(cook, aged care, nanny, caterer) manages successfully

- cannot organise ‘learning’ paperwork/spell

- Doing RPL, Cert III Com Cook

Karen – never had a paid job, academically ‘able’ can read, write and spell

- Cannot behave in an adult environment (learning/work)

Eden (15)- cannot spell ‘pit’, ‘pot’, ‘pat’

- can give a cogent description of conservative versus liberal ideology off the top of his head

Qualculation

Qualculation –as the propensity to‘enumerate, list, display, relate, transform, rank and sum’

Qualculation as a process of proliferation - in which entities are detached from other contexts, reworked, displayed, related, manipulated, transformed and summed in a single space.(Callon & Law 2003, p. 13)

Individualised (diagnostic) teaching

• Threats• Rationale• Model

Threats to individualised instructionEconomic rationalismEconomies of scaleUser paysAccountabilityAudit maniaStandardisation

Education in an audit societyContemporary public sector reforms and the ensuing policies in the UK, USA and Australia and elsewhere have led to the development of the ‘audit society’ and ‘audit cultures’ … the major concern has been with issues of public accountability by making practices and processes more transparent as well as efficient, effective and economic. In practice, this has meant that, in its attempts to reduce any risk to the national involvement in its human capital, the state has sought to control and standardise the provision of such essential services as education and health. (Groundwater-Smith & Sachs 2002, p. 341)

Keiko Yasukawa, University of Technology Sydney“Critical Mathematics for Critical Times” ACAL Conference 2009

http://images.google.com.au/imgres?imgurl=http://www.whataboutclients.com/archives/Pillar10-History-French-Revolution-Delacroix.jpg

Individualised instruction- a battle won, but now we may be losing the war.

Individual pre-training assessmentsIndividual learning plansIndividual learning support

http://news.bbc.co.uk/nol/shared/spl/hi/pop_ups/07/europe_eurocartoons/img/8.jpg

Possible paradigm shift??Social Return on Investment – models under

review and consideration - with DEEWR and Productivity Commission, ABS at present.

This means a different way of calculating and measuring the benefits of investing in longer term activity that may return a value to a different sector…. E.g. mental health clients may have reduced costs to health sector if they are included in activities such as training – and further benefits if that leads to a return to the workforce.

Access & Equity Issues and Obligations Or The FAIR GO Section? Suzie Sereda – paper presented at the General Education Conference, 15 October 2009

Who are these individuals?

Intellectual impairment

Learning Difficulties

Broken education

NESB

Substance abuse

Childhood abuse

Unwilling learner

Home schooled

Mental Health Issues

Poverty

While avoiding ‘the deficit model’, we need to acknowledge there are gaps. Then we need to consciously

address how we can assist the learner to bridge them.

Rationale for individualised instruction - idiosyncraticRepeating the same thing over and over

again, expecting different results is commonly known as the definition of insanity.

Barbara Cole The Gifts of Sobriety

Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new.Albert Einstein

To err is human, but it feels divine.Mae West The Wit and Wisdom of Mae West

Rationale for individualised instruction – research based• learning difficulties – difficulty in acquiring

concepts and skills in the domains of literacy and/or numeracy (Van Kraayenoord 1999:56)

• learning difficulties - often associated with higher order cognitive and metacognitive factors as well as motivational and affective problems (Van Kraayenoord 1999:61)

• Learning difficulties/intellectual impairment – same but different – different but same – unproductive theorising? Answer? Deal with the individual.

Rationale for individualised instruction – research based• All students (where possible) (especially

students with learning difficulties) need to become 'metacognitive' and be able to critique their own learning processes. (Kroll 1999:24)

• Need to explicitly teach thinking and problem solving strategies. Good strategy users have sets of strategies and can select and shift them when appropriate. When a strategy does not work, a good strategy user tries something else. (as above)

Rationale for individualised instruction – research based

Make learning explicit.“What have I learned today?”

“What is still difficult?”

“What help do I need?”

More on making learning explicit

• Switching attention – strategic behaviour

• Chatter• Internal locus of

control• Organisation• Time management• Self advocacy

• Excuse making• Princess/diva

syndrome• Classroom escape• Classroom “flow”• Listening• Blame game• Hiding in the group• Using volunteers

Model of individualised instruction

Model of individualised instruction• team teaching• computers• pre and post class 'write-ups' allows the

teaching team to discuss students as individuals, reflect on progress or lack thereof, and develop new strategic approaches

• students with capacity to develop an internal locus of control (maturity)

• classroom culture of independence, tenacity and self responsibility.

Classroom mottos

Classroom mottos

Classroom mottos

Individualised Pre-training assessmentDiagnosticWhere is the student wanting to go?Is their plan realistic? (This needs to be continually

revised)What will they need to learn to get there?Why has the intending student not experienced

success?

Establish motivation of student – tenacity level.

Ascertain level of awareness of student of themselves as a learner.

Assess current levels.

The teacher's roleDiagnosisReflectionAdaptationMonitoringMotivation

Underpinning philosophies Individual differenceLocus of controlIndependenceLife long learningNeuroplasticitySocial justice

Individualised programs – choice of texts

• Teachers need to get to know the students cultural/social background. What they can and can not do, what they like and dislike, what are their weaknesses and strengths.

• From this they can design meaningful experiences around who the students are and what they want to become.

Undertake LearningLearning experienceRewritten textsSimple narrativesIncrease in complexity and/or length (more

abstract)Tasks increasing in complexity but from the

beginning encourage not only factual recall but inferential thinking: What might have caused this? What are some possible solutions? How would you feel if you were in this position?

Individualised texts

The same text can be used for many students but with a different focus

• stimulus to develop sentences• push thinking• increase production/fluency• simply have a go• broaden language skills – vocabulary• increase general knowledge• spell ‘environment’

More on assessment...• Diagnostic approach moves away from teaching where a

student's responses are simply marked as correct or incorrect (particularly relevent when addressing numeracy). It probes the depths and quality of a student's understanding.

• Shifts the student to understand that what they are producing is not to please the teacher but to move their own learning.

• Such an approach values individuals and allows the teacher to harness strengths while addressing weaknesses

• Assessment as integral to teaching – no longer an event marking “the end” of something.

Monitor – assessment .......

• individualised approach – avoids 'cheating' and all work can be considered as formative/summative assessment

• poses problems in the audit society• accountability is necessary but must it

come at such a cost to good teaching

Discussion• As a practitioner in the qualcative age, how

do you manage?• Do you sometimes feel your workplace has

become a setting in a Kafka novel, “marked by a senseless, disorienting, often menacingly complex bureaucracy, by surreal distortion, and often a sense of impending danger”.

Teachers – professionals in the qualcative age?