For today’s post, I thought that I would just pose a few questions for us, especially those in Singapore, and perhaps, for those planning to follow the Singapore model.

How do you get students to become collaborative workers when all they do in school is compete with one another to be in the top schools, classes, university places, and for scholarships?

How do you get students to become life-long learners when in school, learning is done to pass high stakes examinations?

How do you get students to be independent learners when students, teachers, principals and parents expect that they be fed with lots of notes in order for them to do well in the high stakes examinations? In addition how do you do that when you have an army of private tutors trying to do the same thing?

How do you produce daring, creative and entrepreneurial (in memory of Steve Jobs?) adults when all they do in school is engage in rote-learning and mechanical operations? How do you get them to problem-solve when the only problems they face in school are the problems in their school worksheets?

How do you teach them to be critical adult thinkers when the education system does not encourage critical inquiry?

How do you teach them to be curious and be involve in serious scientific inquiry when all that is supposed to be science in our schools is largely rote-learning and mechanical operations?

How do you get students to move out of a silo mentality when in schools, learning is done in an environment where subjects are clearly demarcated and jealously guarded from crossing boundaries?

These are just some thoughts of mine about schooling in Singapore. Perhaps some of you out there would like to share your thoughts here?

In Singapore, passengers of our bus services are allowed to stand and one particular bus service has standing room in the front half of its buses while the seats are located in the rear half. During peak hours, these buses will encounter a jam within the buses as passengers who are standing will clog the front end of the buses and make it difficult for others to board the buses as the entrances are usually located at the front of the buses. The rear half where the seats are mainly located but with grip poles for standing passengers would have no passenger standing. This has led to the drivers having to remind (yell at?) the standing passengers to move to the rear of the bus, usually to little avail. Alighting from the bus is also made difficult as the exit is near the middle of the bus. In my view, the bus services should have just “flipped” the design of the bus and place all the seats in the front half and the standing area at the rear half. Passengers boarding the buses at the front will more naturally move to the rear that is designed for standing only as it leaves them with little option and the appearance of space at the rear will invite them there.

A similar thing can be done to schools. Schools too can be flipped. The flipping here involves the re-thinking on how instruction is done and also the change in emphasis on the collaboration between teachers and students, and also between students and students. A flipped classroom according to Jerry Overmyer is:

“…. a model of teaching in which a student’s homework is the traditional lecture viewed outside of class on a vodcast. Then class time is spent on inquiry-based learning which would include what would traditionally be viewed as a student’s homework assignment. Synonymous with Reverse Classroom.”

Whether it is inquiry-based learning or more traditional classwork is not very important to me. What is important is that the students get more time to work with the teachers and their peers in the classroom, rather than sit passively listening to lectures.

This flip model is made possible with the advances made in ICT. Lectures can be podcasted or “vodcasted“. Recordings of lectures can be done easily and the availability of free online platforms like Moodle to host these online. Email and IM software allows for additional support to be given.

Of course, doing all these is not new. Even in Singapore, it is done by schools. However it is done on an ad hoc basis rather than it becoming central to the delivery of the curriculum. Schools have adopted it as part of the “Teach Less, Learn More” approach. But has never been the main means of curriculum delivery. It is all too often just to pander to “Teach Less, Learn More” where perhaps one week of lessons (out of a possible forty weeks) is transferred online.

A school in the US, Gwinnett School of Mathematics, Science, and Technology, has taken to flipping in earnest and is ripping the advantages of flipping. The advantages of the model are many but two stands out. As Technology with Intention states:

• Flipped teaching means that an educator doesn’t need to guess at what speed to deliver content – with students watching lectures at home they can move at their own speed and review concepts as necessary.
• Without large portions of classroom time spent lecturing, educators can use that time to see students working through projects and assignments that would have previously been done in isolation at home:  break out sessions can occur spontaneously, students can work in mentor-based groupings, jigsaw opportunities, supplemental support, etc.

From the Singapore viewpoint, it can also help address the problem of excessive private tuition that many of its students attend to seek additional assistance. It may also mean a cutting back on the amount of homework. Furthermore, the flexible and more social arrangement inherent will also better reflect a 21st century workplace.

Of course, there are some who will think that such flipping can only benefit the brighter students. What do you think?

Following up on my previous blog post about John Seely Brown’s lecture on ““A New Culture of Learning: Cultivating the Imagination for a World of Constant Change”, I wonder what are the changes needed for schools to reflect how real everyday learning takes place.

Based on JSB’s observations, real learning takes place when there is passion. Passion as I have mentioned previously is the fuel that drives the learning process and, if I may add, the learning aptitude. The existing framework of schools today do not encourage the passionate pursuit of a subject or a skill. Most learning done in school is done in pursuit of examinations or test scores. Not exactly, the kind of goal that will excite most students. So how do we create passionate interests and pursuits if schools today still stick to standard, highly compartmentalized “subjects” that must be covered within a given frame of time and with the ultimate aim of getting their students to pass tests?

How do we also change the in-built time element of traditional schools. The time element concerns a few aspects of traditional schools. The curriculum is almost always dictated by a time element specifying when the curriculum starts and when it ends. This is in turn usually dictated by pressures to meet the demand of summative assessments to meet administrative needs.

The second aspect of time is the breaking of the learning period into fixed, bits usually called periods. Does real learning take place in fixed bits of time or does learning take place according to the learners’ needs? This fixed bits of time are in turn cocooned within the official school (read, learning) hours.

The other aspect of time is that most schools run on the Piagetian approach where learning is closely linked to developmental age (usually conveniently implemented according to the child’s age). Through this implementation, students are placed in the same levels regardless of whether they are of the same ability or otherwise. In general, a seven year old must stick with a seven year old. Do people learn only from people of their age group?

Lastly, do the physical structure of schools also lend to an a real learning environment? Do the walls that compartmentalized the adults in the schools and the students from each other encouraged the formation of groups of passionate people with common learning interests? This reminds me of Marshall McLuhan’s (in?)famous dictum, “The medium is the message.”

These are just some questions that come to my mind due to JSB’s lecture. Do you think those questions are relevant for schools or are JSB’s ideas only for the more (perhaps) fluid adult world and their organizations? If you think JSB’s ideas are relevant to schools, are there other questions that we should ask ourselves?