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?

Most young children are naturally curious and highly imaginative… after children have attended school for a while, they become more cautious and less innovative….Unfortunately it is necessary to conclude from the investigations of many scholars that our schools are the major culprits. Teachers, peers, and the educational system as a whole all diminish children’s urge to express their creative possibilities.

~Dacey & Lennon, 1998

It seems from the quote above, schools dull the minds of our children. To be sure, the demand for control is necessary in schools. Teachers cannot teach if the class is out of control. But then again I believe it is a problem only if we define control as conformity and obedience, which unfortunately, is all too often what is demanded in the classrooms.

Today, we prefer to call it “classroom management” or “class management”. It is not impossible to manage a class in a way that allows for students to show independence. I think one underutilized tool is to use reasoning. All too often that conformity and obedience is seen by students as just a disciplinary issue. Making an effort to reason with the students and coming to a common understanding with the students helps students to take responsibility for what happens in the class.

Taking responsibility implies a choice of options.  It involves decision-making practice. When students are given time and opportunities to make good decisions about their environment, there is less of a that feeling of having to always conform and be obedient to a higher authority, no matter how irrational the latter may seem to be. Besides getting them to discuss and come to a mutually agreeable decision, especially in a non-threatening environment, almost surely will bring about better compliance to whatever that has been agreed upon.

Teachers must be willing to engage their students in a dialog. A dialog would involve questions and answers. Such engagement will encourage students to speak and ask questions. It will not stifle their natural curiosity to question, probe, even test boundaries.

Another important reason why schools dull the minds of the young is the manner that teaching and learning is done. We know of studies which show that most of the questions asked in the classroom is asked by the teachers themselves. The teachers also answer most of their questions. This too depends on whether the teachers give students enough time to think about asking questions. The demands of high stakes testing or examinations usually mean that the “coverage” of the syllabus is foremost on the teachers minds.This usually mean traditional teacher talk (and question).

Furthermore, in such systems the only things that are worth teaching are what will be asked in the tests or examinations. How intellectually exciting and stimulating can this be? How do we fire up the neurons in the students brains so that they go whizzing at high speed if all they ever learn is what will appear in the examinations. Nothing explodes in their head. No “Aha! moment” except maybe “so that’s how you answer this question”. Exploration, experimenting, going off track are not encouraged. There is simply no time for all that. No time for meaningful questions. They are not measured anyway as required KPIs of schools. If they are not measured, then they are also deemed unimportant. Therefore, a move away from examinations or test oriented teaching will go a long way towards removing the clouds of dullness from the classrooms. Let curiosity be an important reason for learning again.

“…most classrooms are characterised by a dearth of students questions and a deluge of student of teacher questions. Over a whole school year the average-rate of student generated questions is one per student per month. One child, having learned too well by observing his teacher, thought that you had to know the answer before you could ask a question.”

~ quoted from “What’s the point of schools?” by Guy Claxton

One of the key skills required to be an effective learner is to learn how to ask questions. Claxton proposes that students become more effective learners when they “grow more ready, more willing, and more able to ask good questions.” To do so students should be taught how to ask questions and also be made aware of the kinds of questions that should be employed on a given subject of discussion.

According to Claxton, the first dimension, that is to “grow more ready” is concerned with getting students “to be alert to the whole range of occasions when asking certain kinds of questions might be a good idea.” So students who ask questions in one class but don’t in others, may be encouraged to see these opportunities to ask questions in these other classes.

The second dimension, “to grow more willing”, is to help students “to be independent of external support and encouragement” to ask questions. No more prodding is needed and more importantly perhaps, the teacher creates an environment that is safe for questions and the teacher also gives time for questions.

The third dimension is concerned with helping students questions to become richer, more flexible and more sophisticated. It is these questions that will stretch their minds and they should be given plenty of room to practise this.

Teachers can turn to Art da Costa’s levels of questioning (which is based on Bloom’s Taxonomy) to teach their students to reach that third dimension of questioning. After familiarizing themselves with the levels of questioning, teachers can model it at work in the classroom (see here for an example).

Bear in mind that the modeling also includes the teachers being ready to say, “I don’t know” without shame. That is a reflection of a teacher who is learning. As Claxton wrote:

“…of course teachers know more about some of those things than young people do…Of course I want my surgeon to be knowledgeable and competent. But I am safer in the hands of a doctor who is still an enthusiastic and unashamed learner than I am with one who closed her mind to new things thirty years ago. And my children are better off in the hands of a teacher who is continually open to wonder and puzzlement than they are being hectored by someone who lacks the honesty and courage to acknowledge a mistake or doubt”