challenging conceptions of education and schooling

1. MLS030 (July 2014)
What
IF
John Yeo, National Institute of Education, Singapore.
Fostering Diagnostic Confidence
in the Creative Problem Solving Process
Creative Problem
solvingInventive thinking
Problem finding
Brainstorming
Divergent
Thinking
Convergent
Thinking
Need to challenge
Assumption!

2. MLS030 (July 2014)
What
IF
John Yeo, National Institute of Education, Singapore.
Fostering Diagnostic Confidence
in the Creative Problem Solving Process

3. WHY MUST SCHOOLS/ TEACHERS/ STUDENTS ....?
What
IF
Fostering Diagnostic Confidence
INNOVATION
PROGRAMME
REVIEWING
Formulating Challenges: In my current
course on Creative Problem Solving, I invited
my students who are Heads of Dept to
conceptualise a Future School in 2020.
From the data thus far, many seemed
curtailed and fixated with old notions of
schooling and not daring to challenge
assumptions, beliefs, systems and structures.
Like to invite you to "play along". Question
and challenge by first asking- "why must
xxx...." or "what’s stopping xxx..." (pls do not
rationalise or refute any question)

5. CURIOUS
MINDS
Creative Problem
solvingInventive thinking
Problem finding
Brainstorming
Testing
IINSPIRING
What
IF
Fostering Diagnostic Confidence
in the Creative Problem Solving Process
MLS030 (July 2014)
John Yeo, National Institute of Education, Singapore.

6. ASKING
WhatIF?
MLS030 (July 2014)
John Yeo, National Institute of Education, Singapore.
What
IF
Fostering Diagnostic Confidence
in the Creative Problem Solving Process

7. “The guiding force
that creates a product
is purpose or intent.”
Perkins, 1981

8. Why must schools have
timetable?
Why must students go
into a school everyday?
STRUCTURES

9. Schools are redundant in the future. Why
should there be schools at all?
Why do schools exist in the first place?
STRUCTURES

10. why must government run schools!?
STRUCTURES

11. Why should schools be defined by the
structures and perceptions of how we used
to be taught rather then redefining the
educational potential of good learning?
STRUCTURES

12. Why must
schools operate
on the FEAR of
failure?
Learning

13. Why do teachers teach vs why
do students learn?
What do teachers teach vs what
do students learn?
When do teachers teach vs
when do students learn?
Where do teachers teach vs
where do students learn?
Who do teachers teach vs who
do students learn from?
How do teachers teach vs how
do students learn?
Learning

14. How can
learning be
more fun?
LEARNING

15. Character building and values based education as a means to achieve its
ends of meeting the purpose of education.This is based on the assumptions
where the following criteria have been met
1. School leaders and core team have travelled wide, long and far
enough to know best practices around the world
2. Community recognized the worth of the brand of education it is
offering (which is not measured in the short term of the first 5 years by
academic results)
3. Parents are worldly enough to know what is the meaning of 'beyond
academics' needs of the 2040 global market
4. School have garnered enough support from the parents (monetary
and expertise) to run its programs
5. Professionalism among staff that sees life long learning and
accountability as part of their personal responsibilities
6. Strong para- educator teams and strong admin team to handle the
mundane work which takes away time and energy from creative
teachers.
7. ICT-enabled to achieve efficiency and efficacy.
LEARNING

16. ASSessment
Why can’t students decide what forms and
what standards they should be assessed if we
are truly focused on student-centred learning?

17. ASSessment
Why must grades be the overall measure of
student learning?
Why must school achievement be based on
quantifiable results when learning is
primarily not quantifiable?
Why must quantity be the standard at
schools; what happened with quality?

18. ASSessment
So, is it literacy(ordinary pass) OR proficiency (merit or distinction)
that is driving our assessment goals? Requiring our students to
complete stacks and stacks of assignments, spend so much time
on practicing incredible amounts of exam papers definitely robs
and kills the joy of learning.
Why must we spend in
inordinate amount of time and
effort to drill our students to
achieve assessment results in
subjects like mathematics and
sciences where the pass rate
and distinction rates are so
high? Why must we expect and
require them to complete so
many sets of exam papers from
their schools and other schools,
to have so many preliminary
exams, etc...

19. Why aren't we looking more closely at
how we are using time in schools?
Why must schools be run
from 8am to 3pm with the
ubiquity of technology?
Tech and Time

20. Why can’t schools run till the night
since some students learn best at
night?
Why can't subjects be taught in 3-hr blocks?
Why must schools operate on the fear of failure?
Tech and Time

21. Why must schools have
'teachers'?
How might we emancipate
teachers and students?
Why are teachers civil
servants?
Why must teachers be
subjected to stack ranking?
TEACHERS

22. Why should teachers still be
organised by departmental
level if we are advocating
authentic applied learning
where students discover
relevance in learning and
problems of tomorrow are
more interdisciplinary in
nature?
TEACHERS

23. What's stopping teachers
from looking at whether
they themselves are
behaving in waits they
expect students to
behave? What's stopping
teachers from critically
examining the ethical
justification behind school
rules?
TEACHERS

24. SUBJECTS
Why can't there be greater
integration among subjects?
Why can't we teach real, proper
ethical reasoning in the
classroom, as a proper subject,
in which students grapple with
real ethical issues in an open,
critical manner? Everyone
seems to agree that we should
teach empathy, so why not
make Literature, probably the
best subject for this,
compulsory at primary and
secondary levels?

25. SUBJECTS
Why are children not given an
option to learn what they want
to learn?

26. SUBJECTS
Why aren't we paying proper
attention to how different
subjects and programmes are
working, or not working,
together to achieve educational
outcomes?

27. Maybe we should have a randomiser
cough up a sequence of curriculum units
from an overall multidisciplinary list every
week. Then teachers are required to
teach those units regardless of content
after one week's lead prep time. Also, the
teachers will be randomised regardless of
subject. Finally, the students will grade
the teachers on ability to improvise.
.
SUBJECTS

28. At the end of the year, all teachers will
have learnt a lot, developed
transdisciplinary and interdisciplinary
sensibilities, and be a lot more creative.
Students will also be more flexible! And
nobody will be able to overanalyse
anything.
SUBJECTS

29. why must children be
placed in classes
according to date of
production?
STUDENTS

30. Why must schools
discourage 'out-of-the-
norm' thinking? Why must
schools force every child to
follow the same learning
pace and demand that they
learn certain things in a
particular order?
STUDENTS

31. STUDENTS
Why can't students put up a list
of the topics they are
interested in and teachers
conduct their lessons based on
that list with more student
participation since the topic
came from them?

32. STUDENTS
Once a child can read, why is
there a need to prescribe set
curriculum that a child *must*
show a high level of mastery
before the child is deemed
competent?

33. BE CURIOUS:
“There must be a
better way.”
SHOW EMPATHY:
“It’s not about me.”
EMBRACE
FAILURE:
“Mistakes are
opportunities for
learning.”
Inspiring Curious Minds

34. “This thread is
poisonous... It's making
me why am I subjecting
my child to school!”
“it is liberating. This is
what education ought to
be, liberating...”
The discourse of whether we are
parents, teachers, administrators or
academics, we can and perhaps we
should, galvanise different
communities in order tomove
education forward in order to stay
ahead of the curve.
Your inputs have provide ways we
can radically disrupt education.
Inspiring Curious Minds

35. click here to start timer
20 minutes

36. Ladder of Abstraction
• After analysing the DATA, pick the one that
YOU feel is the most important to work on.
• Need not be the challenges/ questions with *hits*
• With the chosen problem, analyse it again to
see if it is really the problem that we want.