thank you very much isn't it funny how I always choose to
sit back and just brilliant so yeah thanks very much for having me it's a
really interesting journey that have been on over the last one is it now
twenty years spent in education and before that I was at school so I'm never
really known any other environment other than the school environment yet jobs here and there but I've really been
immersed in education ever since I was a kid and it's quite interesting that I
should do that because wh
en I was out when I was at school I spent all but I'm
trying to get out of it I was my career advice for example was you done you are
going to be looking to get so you know it's a damn fine myself twenty years
later being invited to speak to you know people around the world essentially
about how to engage kids it's really quite interesting this so much rhetoric
outweighing the education debate and and the one thing I saw this crazy dream and
that dream is what would happen if educators control t
he education debate
because I reckon we might sort of change our focus a little bit for example how
many of you went into teaching the Big Bend Ind case in point so how many of you went in
to raise victorious not plant schools again probably not many and yet
unfortunately that's how the rhetoric turns turns off focus in schools into
into these albums out come out comes at the expense of engagement and I would
argue along with lots and lots of prominent research is that if we
actually focused on
engaging well-being of kids and of staff and outcomes would
actually take care of themselves but somewhere along the line that goes laws
so that's what I want to kind of explore with you today and share with you some
ideas and share with you some research what I'm not gonna do is tell you what
to do because I'm pretty sure I'm not actually worked with you have never
worked with your kids I'm never worried apparel it's so in that regard I'm certainly no
expert I don't know what it's like to go to
school but what I can do like say
share some ideas and then ask you to be the experts to think critically about
what to think critically about what the research says and say well how can you
can sexualized into your own communities and then we'll take it from there so what I would say is as well as great
as for my self-esteem when I say something you know really thought to see
everyone quickly tweet hour or write it down or take a picture with the phones
of what I would say to the back is the o
nly get all the slides and any links to
any research by going to that website that so you could if you want and you'll
still get but we wouldn't be talking about education if we didn't at least
talk about peace adjust those of you who don't know too much about business the
performances International Student Assessment is run by the OECD everything
they do is they take all the different countries in the OECD and non-party
countries all the performance of the 15 year old kids in standardized tests
in
Australia that bonds us and them very very generously them into league tables and publish said
lee also politicians and the media use those leagues homes to hitler's over and
tell us what a bad job with doing in Australia thank you so what I'd like to
do is just very quickly with the person next to you decide which the peace elite
items that is so you know about so very very quickly so what rush out out mass
wrong now literacy wrong English wrong sorry
funding now salaries of teachers now I'
m not a primo
gases science course now two more guesses sports sport maybe it's the softest and anomalous
it's not support in some places like Australia it's not like last yes teacher
training with the cost of going to school education in the world contact
you know when we say to kids there are no right or wrong answers this is
actually right so it in addition to being able to answer math questions
literacy stuff science and the kids also in the in this particular program have
to answer value st
ands and this is actually a table of the portion of kids
who report that they don't belong with school now in Australia what we find is
that 20% of our kids feel that they don't belong at school now bear in mind
that these are national statistics which means I go to some schools and turning a
bank in that beating down the door at the start and we can get them out of
school at the end of that just because we're boarding school and I but the very
next day I'm by myself in another school where they
would kill for its only be 20
percent of the kids who felt they didn't answer my question is well what what is
in your school the in the air Washington Washington just exploded like
something you've heard of Finland what's interesting is that Finland despite
having a fantastic education system 35 percent of their kids feel they don't
belong in the really really interesting and when Estonia Finland in the math
scores and the media went to the equivalent of the finish and said what
are you gonna
do about the Titans it must you know so the first thing to do
is find out what the kids feel they don't school that's why not because of what
they're doing but because of that mines in Korea, brilliant at maths but forty percent of the
kids feel like they don't belong now I asked you before why is that important why
should we care because school connectedness the extent to which a kid
feels they belong at School is a better predictor of youth well-being and
depression than even how attached the
fell to their parents so when a teacher
tells me I haven't got time for kids well-being, they've lost me. we're more important than parents more
important in determining whether a kid feels good today six months down the
track five years down the track, why is that important? It's bloody hard to learn if you are depressed so
before we get to talk about engaging before we talk about amazing apps
and given an iPad or a lot or whatever we need to make sure they feel like they
belong, relationships,
all this research on student teacher relationships come down to three things, they don't want you to be their best friend, they've got loads of them, (besides that will get you sacked) what they want you to do is care about them respect respect them and trust them so they're actually quite hard concept to go right in school (respect) teachers still tell me kids have to earn their respect, not for me mate, if you want to be a teacher respect for kids should be the
number one prerequisite for goi
ng into this job, care!, do we really care about them or are that things were saying amd things were doing giving them the very real opinion that
actually now that I know and trust our interesting is trust in schools let's be
honest we ban the best bits about technology because we don't trust kids
we need to try and break up but at the very least kids are gonna be able to
answer two questions in your school first one that I feel able to be
themselves and you'll see all on in terms of what they w
ear how
they dress what they look like or what do they feel able to be themselves in
terms of their gender or sexuality their religious beliefs that cultural
backgrounds their aspirations and sometimes other lessons can be hard to
feel a bit tricky being themselves around them they have to be able to feel
that they can be themselves around you second thing is is there an apple in the
organizations which they can go with the serious problem again if they can't
answer yes to those two questions we
need to try and address that's before we
worry about next cool teaching strategy let's talk about the next let's actually
talk more about engaging in a classroom let's let's actually look at what's
happening in our classrooms so this is a graph engagement over time you'll see
that on this end of the graph 55 years of age kids another morning games never
my kids started school last year little bit why he got sticker every day
today Jackson questioning class that would be careful
today that readi
ng picking up litter that's irony right as
those stickers them become literate miles and he has no inclination in picking
them up because I am giving him a sticker to do so but I think that's
something you know bigger reply when we talk about the stickers will come back
but we do know what the research shows over and over again in this is actually
research gallup you do all the surveys that this is a game about time we know
we have a bit of a dip and actually get to the point where near 525 perc
ent the
kids have disengaged from learning now that's not to say they're not turning up
to school that had to be there to take this survey is just they don't really
see the point of why they're there and then we see a continual dip and then
there's a little the ground they don't know how old they are when that happens 1616 ok so every year every time they do
the survey shows here in the UK America you see it around about the time they go
into the final years of study with VCA down here whether i
t's a safe in
Adelaide whether it's just see that there's a little P why we've told them
it's important and they stick their heads up to look around for a few weeks
ago still crap and it it down again so what we find in yet well well one in two kids in your yet
while passes right now at this stuff is a lot you're being honest about it so
what we need to do is to really look at this and say well you know what's going
on furthermore one of the reasons Miami but
nationwide only one in three kids ha
ve a sense of hope for the future only one in three kids feel that that
likely to get a good job when they leave school so all the stuff we put about say no
you'll need this one year older and you know you gonna need you know this is
going to help get some Unicode good job only one in three nationwide actually
believe you again what is it in your school because in some schools I go to
its not even that do you know do you care how can we address so let's talk
about this morning game let's be hone
st it's used a heck of a lot of schools
what does it really mean because if you ask me I think a lot of the songs we
compute conformity and compliance for engagement we look at the kids who are
doing it would be an honest everything we've asked them to do so turn away uniform do the work ask
questions go do the homework take part in sport extracurricular stuff maybe
volunteer in the community is good to give back and and all these things that
tick a box to welcome to reports on with us a little
johnny is engaged or are
they just playing the game you know schools a wonderful place if you're a
slightly outgoing complaint kid really in places you just get rewarded against
the budget by the time you get to you get wonderful references principal the
new government will fly in the face in the workplace or on campus I'm not
saying that those kids who are doing everything we are going to send you a
lot again do we know that we can just keep doing what we're doing is if it's
not broke don't fix
it right so let's think about this in terms of continue
engaging and this works whether you're thinking about your kids yourself your work colleagues anyone in
your life really and it can be contextual so it can be from situation
to situation situation right down at the bottom end of the continuum of engaging
we got rebellion in some schools the middle finger would be raised but we've
got rebellion with the kids who have just gone all doing everything they can to go
poking prodding you getting
its ass kicked them out then what we learn what
we've got is retreat this behavior is now moving up so these are the kids who
turned off but do everything they can to get out of doing whatever it is that
supposed to be doing so I used to be a PE teacher and when I first I these are
the kids who probably also be today I know is done let up again next week and
I used to think that these kids really disorganized but they're not a supremely
organized sure that they have the perfect excuse
to get out
of what it's like realize just how organized how much they
must put in to get out of doing whatever it is it's mostly doing nowadays of
course it's the flat battery to charge the internet was down my house the one
kid who say their work to USB and pull them out without first looking eject and
corrupted the data you know we all get up warning but that the woman did this
actually happened and we can't do much about it how do you prove them wrong
then we've got these passive compliance so I do a l
ot of classroom visits
classroom walls observations deficit Dominic it won't say this rally
in particular is this great moved up in learning intentions on the board success criteria kids are learning how
to achieve success today tell me how do you know if you gonna do it well what
you have to do it so great why you doing it or you'll need this later in life he
tell a group of kids that you know about the quite pragmatic kids are gonna pull
off things which aren't important right now this is real
ly important to me this
one year old but worry about it so it's interesting because these kids are still
doing what we want to do they might still be quite successful in the lower
levels of these are the kids are getting over the line a lot of time will say
that these kids might not be necessarily reaching their full potential but it's
usually a throwaway line in the report there's still room majority want to do
so the machines working then we've got these bunch of kids these kids know what
they
're doing enough to do it and they know why they're doing it everyone
else's and we leverage this quite a bit even from the Lawrence the group that's
the lower levels but then you go to the higher end where you go selective schools for example that main
driving motor voter isn't that they want to learn is because they're freaking is
that the freaking out everyone else is learning more than I don't want to get
better for the second game but there's a big difference in this that's a massive
has ma
ssive impact on well-being of kids and and lifelong learning and all those
kinds of things so what we want to consider is a genuine sense of
engagement the sense of security and absorption engage individual gold the
determination and vitality what does that really mean what does that look
like how engaged to you by that definition of what I would suggest is
that being engaged all the time is probably impossible it could be quiet I
have a friend who was like that all the time just say so when we
look at it like
this why do we then think that kids should be engaged in every single class
if you think about your role I'm guessing that there are some days that
you wake up I'm guessing that when you look at your syllabus for the year
you're not looking at that every single lesson Allwinner there's probably some
stuff in there that's a little bit dry little bit bored so if you'd rather not
and you chose to do this so what about the kids who don't have any choice they
have to call what does th
at mean the wider why we somehow ban on engaging
them in every single lesson and and and let's be honest if we are thinking of
ourselves up for failure or do we just lowered the bar and convince ourselves
with kids as do is with old been we've engaged you know this is when I go to school
would kids turn up even if you don't have to I'm guessing the you guys are
felling look around a lot of people didn't turn out right now because they
didn't have to do what about you classroom would kids turn up
if they
didn't have to what kids do the work yourself even if they didn't have to and
I'm not saying that you have a walkout but I wonder how many empty chairs and
again I asked if you care about or do you go well it's good if those two kids
then turned up as if that's something that might be a fact that your reality schools and organization what can we do
for those two kids because again I don't think we went into teaching just only
teach the good and challenging you and you get that little gl
int in their eyes
you get them just split second and then you come back here later five years and
they looking really strange and different but they remember just keeping
kids on task so actually considering what it might look like if they get into
in task is this is a concept was it's not his
concept car called Jeff funds and Iran project go projects in the education and
basically was talking about is that concept of flight time stands still you
know when you say I'll just be another five minut
es and it's a half an hour or
an hour passes and you're not about anything book what you doing that's
called flow engagement on how often that happens in in our classrooms I also
wonder how many kids are at the opposite end of that spectrum where five minutes
feels like an hour I used to play games are a challenge not to look at the clock
until you halfway through the less they got it wrong the first thing you need
some sense of having a voice and having a choice and it's remarkable how many
kid
s say they feel like they haven't even when it comes to choosing their
electors let's be honest it's a fairly narrow list in the in the you know broad
scheme but depending on how all the kids are you know we might think we can't
give kids anymore so it's all about control but the times have changed
significantly we've spent 23 days looking at all the different
technologies this idea of autonomy means that we can let kids work how they want
when they want where they want with who and yet the stil
l far too many who are
operating at the other end of the spectrum gonna tell you exactly how you gonna
work when you gonna work and working with reason why do we have to let kids
work with the kids the kids sitting across the whole or kids at Wockhardt
kids work in different year groups in different schools in different states in
different countries the answer is we can it's just which is
not cause we tell us and once we start realizing this to our school we start
becoming ever more in relevant
markets because as soon as they go home they're
playing games where they want when they want how they want with you though and
we got there was starting to see this really big disconnect between how kids
and adults as well as our operation in downtime or their own time so when they
come into institution or organization corporate world again hold of this and
understand enough for their employees schools are slowly catching up with
their toys books really like kids but clearly the removal whether
it's the
technology that you're using we've got the power in our hands to give kids more
the reason is cuz its easier but again if we keep lowering the bar owners the
lowest common denominator gonna be missing out the next concert
inside their mastery gain better for the sake of getting better not for the sake
of a great now let me be I'm gonna put us right out there now anytime software
developer season says this is also because kids can see their grades you
can put all the greater I want to th
em because what we know about the whole I
don't freak out but the problem is all the research
around kids knowing their grades is that it is learning if I've got three kids in
him we've studied sonnets of Shakespeare and I give Martin and I give gentlemen
heresy and I give the lady hear what desire does that have on that that there
is a desire to want to write about us on it doesn't needs of shakespeare himself
as it goes on the gentleman has gotta see if we're being honest most people
especiall
y boys will go sweep the back and not tell people things like more
work and put more effort in what is important now they want and they lay
down here just gets a new goes well I can't do and even when we put comments
on obviously be very least give a great I would put useful feedback problem with
that is if you put the feedback with a grade all the research read the comments
on even if they do read the comments they don't believe them because I don't
need to read improve and you don't believe in
improved was great said you
don't so in terms of master mastery should be at the core of what we do in
schools are getting better is still the most common form of feedback we give
kids a great we're wasting our time which is really are very careful when I
say is you'll just written reports last summer but it's something to think about
I be much happier software reports and kids control programs without the need
for a great all all they do need a great make that the
last thing they see as oppose
d to the first thing at least then you got a
chance of them taking on the feedback which have spent hours writing let's not
waste our time and the last thing is aside their purpose we gotta take the
great we're going to focus on grades we don't create lifelong learners if
they're only by grade you don't believe when you set piece of work was the first
question Wednesday June what's it out of is it gonna be on the test and if you
say no it's not actually in when you want guess where it goes into
the list
of priorities genuinely interested are absorbed in
what you doing so we gotta try and break the cycle of its only you know as I said
before Jackson will pick up litter if you get this tikka I've got no problem
with a six year old kid massive Parliament 16 year old kids only choose
it worth their while doing something and if we've got life-long learning anywhere
on our website or whether individuals succeed or anything like that we need to
pay heed to these things otherwise it's just so
what do we mean by purpose well
I'll give you an exam so i i spent time working so hard to reach kids and our
indigenous as we know so large inequities in education and let's be
honest across the whole raft of issues in society and I was working with this
one schools and how we're going to get these kids to read and write and I said
what we're asking them to read and write and again to read and write boring stuff if we
actually went to that we can get kids to read and write about things that the
ir
interests so we're talking about this you know how can we get kids to read
around and the interesting thing about indigenous these kids I was working with
was that they were losing contact with their elders so whilst we have a lot of
teenage kids lose contact with their elders but we're talking about losing
contact with the coaches benefit sixty thousand years and so what if we did
something which enable them to rediscover their culture and what if we
could just going to music and talking abo
ut stuff and sharing shown me stories
and then it kind of hits in this little workshop you were saying wouldn't it be
cool kids could access this a bit sad that for the most part even though every
Australian kidneys to learn about indigenous culture for the most part
they learn it from a walk if we're being honest probably learned it from a white
person what if we can connect these kids so the kids and so these kids a little
bit because they knew they can read and write a little bit I'm sure so
we've so
broken down a little bit so what does it mean to be indigenous anyway why would
we gonna stop and we from our workshop I just tweeted any teacher working within
indigenous group around the world would like to come up with these kids with
about 20 minutes as it's the school in Canada who work with First Nation kids
they were connecting in the sky and the start building stuff then moved on to
Native American kids building these connections understanding what it means
to be indigenous want
ing to share that story taking pride in their stories so
then connect with anyone else who wanted to engage we gave them a sensible
autonomy you know you could choose how you want to do this mass tourism but
were never going to grade their blogs great their Instagram this was something really intrinsically
important to them but also the wider than giving kids an audience and
authentic easiest way to create you know when do you think it's the most entire kids and the third on the airports and
wha
t's interesting is that I put my not because necessarily minecraft is the
game but minecraft is certainly the game changer what I mean by the size of the
games we used to play and i'm looking around this problem too young to
remember but we still have to get this twenty cents to play nothing about pack
14 second those old enough to remember how many choices did you have when you
are when we started so you can go up down left or I could you be a ghost
would you change the color apartment could yo
u go outside the square could
you make your own minds and how many goes to go 33 like banging on the twenty pounds
police one of the reasons I don't understand why kids love game is because
the game we played well crap that's the problem that's why that's why
I don't get it right that gaming experience was rubbish although we
thought it was good at the time but that's why you don't have people have
grown up playing pacman they played a little bit and gave it away with any
games involved right so
opens at five six seven eight years ago called you
call of duty believe she's outside agencies a role in play online with a
Minecraft came out and there was no narrative it just kinda dog complete
creativity and ownership of the game over to the game that's why kids love it
you know why is it kids will fail over and over and over again again keep going
back for more once or twice in maths and give up and
some people sites may ask is there an autonomous online don't want failing and
tell you the
re are kids who are better known on the other side of the world
when they are near the study on campus nothing to do with an emergency and the
second thing is that it's fun it's fun kids are fun as if kids are just playing
games laughing and joking old PC the kid play a game joking any of the time it's hard but
they love it because it's got Altona me mastery and the purposes whatever they
wanted to really capture the imagination how it's going to change who knows who
knows what the next iteratio
n is gonna be like considering what we talked
before about virtual reality I can just see you know actually playing Minecraft
in world is just gonna be unbelievable you know what the games live changed
even more money but the question is OK see kids are playing games but what is
its own Jackson's six when he came to me says that what is up chess the pool was looking for a village
if I get got by a creeper when a respawn now you've got no idea what you just
said what he said to me was that are de
veloped a strategy to deal with
failure i didnt telling moment but that's what he said to me and the point
is why kids develop those strategies in school because they don't go in schools
and end point B C felony against a respawn you reach for my last had
success they know the game successfully got XP points how can we do that we'll
work around growth mindset the moment but still some way I think that's going
to help us understand how we can take the essence of gaming put it into
learning I don'
t know the answer if badges are just replacements for grades
kids don't play games to get those budget or maybe a slight much what the
kids are playing because those reasons we've talked about and I guess kids
playing online it's Who I am all about relationships that's interesting so I
guess I saw alluded to before you know I think we set ourselves up for a bit of a
failure by engaging kids in every single class boring but what if we could second
step back in january 11 lock on interest curious
are you in general goals with
the circulation and if we can do that by taking a step back and looking to engage
kids in there the world around them and their future
so this otherwise you know that life III throwaway comment bus or so you know
I don't think it should go to school I think schools should go to kids and meet
them in their territory so what you mean by that is used the
technologies that they're using why would we not we just come up with a
school version of Facebook or school version
of games is what they're using
yes it's hard but that's why the world around using blogs connecting them to
different cultures gave a talk recently about how did we ever get to a point in
our country where r attorney general says it's a big how did we get to a
point in a country where our prime minister dismisses sixty thousand years
of culture as a lifestyle shows how does that happen kids are told to stop asking questions
so you know you see in supermarkets I'm kids looking at and parents go
all done
being rude you know there's a very famous poet
talks about the very first thing that we still questions and because we just have
to accept blind acceptance acceptance isn't compassion empathy so why not let
others talk about it whether it's intercultural or interrelationship religious or whatever it might be and
then will be quite interesting is that the kids don't know why mums won't go
well they don't know why daddy to certain kind of food so they are going
to find out the interesting
I think it'd be interesting to see what would happen
if in certain areas that's what I mean by engaging kids in the world around
them and finally the future we can talk about the future is it is not important because it's what we can't
have kids developing kids develop in the portfolio
of I get in gauging platforms like freelancer.com publishing on different
platforms so they can actually start shooting things taking courses on
Coursera building those in the course of course into your school cu
rriculum or as
part of the extension cords or poor away to his teacher standing in front of kids
making it different for every single one personalized learning is giving the kids
the tools to personalize it but they're so then making it intrinsically relevant
to them and we've got a technology change our minds and I think if we can
take a step back and think about to order about it rather than just thinking
of Argyll kids doing what about them then we can really start talking about
what it means
to engage kids today that's how you can get hold of me want
to talk thank you so much for your time hope you enjoy the rest of the event
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