Video Andreas Schliecher Pisa - hgunn.uk

 

       Andreas Schlievher preaches the Pisa O.EC.D. gospel in this video. He explains the skills that need to be developed in education. There are persuasive arguments made for the new skills for the 21st Century. There is nothing significant about the need to develop understanding based applied capability.

         Scheilcher explains his vision with reference to countries that are delivering them.

Andreas Schliecher Pisa (Click)

A politician can lose an election on education, but they will never win one on education.

Pisa is not interested in scientific knowledge, but what it is interested in is scientific reasoning.

Andreas Schliecher refers to scientific developments from 2009, but he argues that this is not translating into children developing more scientific thinking skills. The depth of thinking, understanding, has not changing much. 

Schliecher refers to Portugal continuing to improve and that Singapore is moving from good to great. He claims that in respect of Shanghai “You can barely see it on the on the map”.

Considering learning progress in terms of time, Schliecher refers to productivity, and be acknowledges that Finland spends less time on learning.

Schliecher refers to vested interests.and that  his ambition is for all children to develop high levels skills.

He claims there is a need to move from routine cognitive skills to 21^st Century skills. Skills that are not easy to teach and assess.

A lot of countries have made teaching less intellectually challenging.

There is growing inequality. More people are on the move. Pisa concentrates on global capabilities.

We need to create students who can complement artificial intelligence.

Teaching people to read. When they have difficulties encyclopedia offers accurate answers. Google will not necessarily offer an accurate answer.

Teaching is no about providing knowledge. Literacy Is about constructing knowledge not extracting it.

The aim of history should not be factual. There is a need to create historical reasoning.

Schliecher claims there is a need to teach empathy and interpersonal skills.

He claims the virtual world is turning into the real one and there is a need to develop emotional skills.

He defines competency as the need to mobilising our cognitive social and emotional resources.

Student agency: The future is not in children passivy learning, it lies in active learning.

There is need for children to be able to cope with change.

There is a need for students to be open to novel information. Children need to question established wisdom.

Schliecher claims Canada does well on Pisa. They do not do very well on critical thinking. They are good on the communication angle, quite good on problems, but poor on social skills.

He claims critical thinking is not strong in Japan. Social skills are stronger. Teachers there help children to clean their schools. The children's entrepreneurship in zero.

Getting some children to achieve is important, but Pisa wants all children achieve.

Schliecher claims the lowest 10% of disadvantaged children  in Singapore is equal to the average child in the United Kingdom in maths. 

He claims Shanghai put the most talented teachers in their classrooms.

Many countries do not send their bbestteachers into socially deprived area schools.

Routine promotion of knowledge does not need teaching.

Teacher professionalism = knowledge – knowing how children learn their subject and what they know about children.

The needs to be a degree of teacher autonomy and collaboration.

United States and China have the same teacher-student ratio. America teachers have little time to do anything but teaching.

Final statement. The professional status of teachers is very important.

There is strong correlation between the respect that countries have for teacher and countries educational system.

Schleicher's Answer to Questions

  

 We cannot cram into children every detail of the world. Need to create children who can apply skills.

Schliecher refers to high attaining countries concentrate on narrow curriculum.

He refers to reforming curriculum, but not examinations.

He argues that it not necessary to teacher less knolwedge, but rather that creating surface knowledge, there is a need to teach deeper knowledge.  

Review

           Pisa access to children throughout the world is through Pisa surveys and assessment. The problem with surveys is that they do not necessarily reflect the truth. The problem with assessments is the perfect assessment has and will never exist. Pisa assessments as whole are only administered for two hours. The O.E.C.D. have no direct face to face interaction with children.

        Schliecher's claims the lowest 10% of disadvantaged children  in Singapore is equal to the average child in the United Stated in maths appears to be a 'cheap shot' against the United States. He must know this does not apply to state Massachusetts, who receives a separate score. He must know that Shanghai, China scores plummeted when they were combined with three provinces in Pisa, whilst their unofficial score remained unchanged.

           Although Schliecher only showed the claim time students apply to learning science, there is no evidence there are any other countries in the world unlike in Far East like South Korea, where children devote 14 hours each day to their schooling. 

             What Schliecher appears unaware that in the Far East parents are viewed as being responsible for their children's schooling. In the B.B.C. Wales 2016 "School Swap: Korean Style" they interviewed taxi driver in Seoul, who was earning money to pay for his children's night classes (Hagwan's). In Singapore children go to cramming schools. The parents will apply intensive support for their children from a very early age.

          There appears to an  omnipotence about Pisa that the findings are accurate and that high attaining Pisa countries must be developing the claimed high order skills as claimed. Even if they are, it highly questionable that their schools are creating the higher order learning qualities. Research has illustrated that in the Australia school system, Far East children out perform Australian children.

          The fundamental problem with Pisa is that is such a vast range of variables affecting children's attainment across the world. The B.B.C. 3 "Segregated Schools: The American South" featured an school in South Carolina that populated almost at 100% of Afro-Carribean children. The children explained that everyone failed in the school. The harsh reality is that even if the children succeeded in school there  area was so socially deprived were negliable employment opportunities for them. 

  The correlation between working memory and basic skill attainment is well established. There is nothing to suggest that Far East children's brains do not have working memory profiles of western children. There is natural seven year spread of working memory capacity. The evidence that problem solving success that represents the theme of the Pisa assessments is heavily dependent on working memory. This questions validity of Andreas Schliecher conclusions arising from his statistics and his declared ambition for children of learning potential.

   The higher order skills are most difficult to promote and assess. There is the issue of western children take Pisa less seriously than Far East children and their skills are kept less primed. There is the issue of whether Far East children are more primed to take Pisa assessments. They are not novel for them. 10% of all populations will have the highest learning potential. Serious concerns have been raised about the validity of the Chinese Pisa results.

           Cognitive and neuro-science research is more likely to identify how school standards can be improved rather than speculation if countries copy what happens in the Far East that children will receive quality education that will be suited to all children in a country learning needs.