Category Archives: 1.1 Social Justice

King of the World – Are Adults Paying Attention to the Fundamental Needs of Children?

Recently, I have been working closely and regularly with Early Years level children in a non-classroom based setting. The age range of these children is three to seven. All of these children attend a private, fee-paying school in Edinburgh with excellent staff, beautiful grounds, and an abundance of fantastic resources at their disposal. The school is very well equipped, and offers a wide range of learning and teaching opportunities, from one-to-one music lessons and regular Outdoor Learning lessons taking place in a wide variety of the magnificent school grounds, to regular access to iPads and other wonderful new-age technology. Technology is a huge focus of 21st century teaching, and general life nowadays, so it’s great that they have access to these kinds of materials to help further their learning. As an outsider looking in, you’d see that the pupils of this school are getting a magnificent start in life with regards to teaching and learning, which they certainly are, but is there more to child development and overall learning than this? Is technology perhaps getting in the way of a genuine connection between children and the adults in their life?

If you were King or Queen of the world, what would you do? What would you change? This question was asked to the group of children I have been working with during a drama workshop several weeks ago. It was certainly a thought-provoking question for them – and some of the answers still give me a giggle thinking about them now! Five year old Leo* especially loved this question, and came up with a new answer roughly every 20 minutes (usually after he’d been asked to do something!). If you and I lived in this world under Leo’s rule, it would be imperative that your chocolate bar was eaten before anything else at lunchtime, that sandwiches were always cut diagonally instead of down the middle (this one could land you in jail if disobeyed!), and no one would ever, ever, have to wear shoes in the sandpit. Pretty reasonable requests if you ask me! However, more recently he said something that has stayed with me, and plays on my mind a lot when I’m thinking about my own professional practice:

“If I was King of the World, I’d ban phones.”

This statement took me by surprise a bit, as the majority of younger children I know are usually ecstatic when presented with the opportunity to play the latest smartphone game.

“Why would you ban phones, Leo?” I asked him. He looked at me, very seriously, and replied;

“Because whenever Mummy and Daddy bring out their phones, they don’t play. They always look at their phones, and say they’ll play in just a minute, but they never do. I hate phones.”

This short conversation with Leo really broke my heart. We, as adults, view the invention of smartphones and other technology as revolutionary and efficient – which it is, of course it is – however for this five year old child, his parents’ iPhones were just a brick that took away their attention and time. Now, this has stuck with me personally as I think that a lot of us in this increasingly modern world are guilty of being too ‘plugged-in’, myself included. Watching people walk down the street, how many are texting? How often do you mean to read a book, or start that piece of work, or paint a watercolour portrait of your neighbour’s dog, but get sidetracked scrolling through Facebook instead and before you know it two hours have passed, and your window of opportunity to be productive is gone? How often do you send a text, and find yourself getting frustrated when you haven’t received a response after 12 minutes? I know I am guilty of all of these things. How many things, then, do you think we miss on a day-to-day basis because we are glued to our screens?

You might be asking what on Earth any of this has to do with learning and teaching, and I promise I’m getting to that! Recently, I found out that the fine motor skills of children have declined drastically in the last 10-15 years, along with the level of vocabulary and communication skills seen amongst children of a primary school age. Why? Because children are placed in front of screen after screen in their earliest years and during their most crucial developmental stages. Studies have shown that there has been a massive decline in parents reading to their children, or singing nursery rhymes. These things are vital to a child’s early language capabilities and development. “If you don’t use it, you lose it” has never been more true, and it saddens me to think that early childhood conversation falls under that category.

So, with the ever-expanding development of technology, how can we, as teachers, work to ensure that while we are moving with the times and incorporating this technology into our teaching, that we aren’t losing other valuable skills, and that we are truly nurturing and connecting with our pupils? I believe that there should be time set every day within a classroom for the pupils and teacher to just talk. I would encourage parents and families to do the same in their own homes. I understand that every single person leads a busy life, but even half an hour set aside every day to simply talk to one another can greatly benefit a child’s development – along with their emotional wellbeing (and ours!). So I encourage you; sit down, communicate, connect.

Technology is a wonderful tool, and furthers education in so many rich and diverse ways, and also allows us to connect with people from all over the world. Never stop using technology to help you further your practice – or your life, but while you are connecting with people from the other side of the planet, don’t forget to also connect to those sitting right next to you.

On that note, I will leave you with one final thing to think about. A question I know you have been dying to be asked. If you were King or Queen of the World, what would you do? What would you change? Because the thing is, none of us can ‘rule the world’, but we can control our own lives, and work every day to improve them. I am going to start by switching my phone off for a couple of hours. What steps can you take right now to start achieving your goals?

*Leo is a false name.

Which of the IB’s progressive educational trends align with CfE?

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Trends in education and they way in which children and young people are taught in schools is constantly evolving, and has changed a fair bit in recent years. Teaching and learning used to be centred around test scores and strict academic ability, with very little flexibility within learning methods to allow children to achieve to the best of their ability. With the introduction of CfE, however, teaching and learning is now much more flexible, with opportunities for each individual child to flourish. There is now much more room for different ways to work, and for healthy debates when it comes to a difference in opinion between students.

The progressive educational trends of the IB are as follows:

critical analysis
student choice
transdisciplinary
range of skills-testing
constructivism
child-centred
education of the whole child
criterion referenced
AV and AL (languages)
open-plan rooms
multiple perspectives

More than one of these trends align with CfE, for example, CfE is also a very child-centred curriculum, as it focuses on building up each and every single child to become successful learners, effective contributors, confident individuals, and responsible citizens. It also takes into account that children learn from a variety of visual, aural and kinaesthetic teaching. Incorporating all three of these learning styles into it, CfE shows that it has the best standard of achievement for each individual at its heart. Furthermore, entwined within CfE is GIRFEC, meaning that every decision a teacher makes has to consider how each child in their care will benefit from this decision, conveying CfE’s child-centred mission.

Furthermore, most schools employing CfE incorporate a lot of student choice within their lessons. A lot of IDL topics are left open, so that the children can decide what they would like to know more about, and thus what their topic should be. Similarly, unlike in past times, CfE allows for a lot of student discussion and expression, allowing for multiple perspectives to be expressed and accepted.

A lot of CfE schools nowadays have – or are at least trialling – open-plan classrooms. I have taught CfE in both open-plan and closed-plan classrooms, and in my personal experience, I feel that younger children (mainly primary 1 and 2) benefit from having an open-plan classroom. It allows for access to more different people and resources, and makes that introduction to teamwork and sharing all that much easier and comfortable for children at that young age.

Overall, there is clearly an overlap between the educational trends of CfE and the IB curricula. Both are very clearly centred on placing the child in the middle and working around them to allow each child to flourish to the best of their own ability in a variety of different situations.

How do the IB aims align with the main aims of CfE?

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Upon initial research into the International Baccalaureate (IB), it seems very clear to me that the main mission of the programme is to help shape children and young people into caring, respectful, and knowledgeable individuals who will be able to work seamlessly with people from all over the world without barriers such as language or cultural differences. The IB appears to focus greatly on building up skills and attributes that will help students to build strong relationships and work with others – such as ethical reasoning, environmental awareness, and imagination – rather than a heavy focus on academic ability. These attributes come under the term of the ‘Learner Profile’.

The aim of the Scottish Curriculum for Excellence (CfE) is “to help children and young people to gain the knowledge, skills and attributes needed for a life in the 21st century, including skills for learning, life, and work.” For students aged 3-18, CfE is centred around being a flexible and accommodating way of learning and teaching, with the individual needs and requirements of every child, both emotionally and academically, at the heart of it. CfE and the IB curriculum do differ slightly, however the general consensus of both curricula is to aid individual young people’s learning to allow them to have the highest possible opportunity for personal achievement, and to be able to have fruitful learning experiences.

Under the IB term of the ‘Learner Profile’, students are encouraged to become inquirers, knowledgeable, thinkers, communicators, principled, open-minded, caring, risk-takers, balanced, and reflective. Some of these particular attributes encompass the four main capacities of CfE, for example, IB defines being reflective as thoughtfully considering the world and one’s own ideas and experiences. Working towards understanding our own strengths and weaknesses in order to support our learning and personal development. This is similar to the capacity of ‘successful learners’ within CfE, as to be truly successful in your own learning, you have to be able to reflect on past work, failures and achievements in order to be able to get the most of your learning experience as your progress through it. Similarly, within IB, the terms of ‘inquirers’ and ‘communicators’ are centred around guiding children into being able to think and solve problems individually, and then to communicate these ideas to their peers, while also listening to the ideas of their peers and providing helpful and constructive feedback. These ideas are also a large part of being ‘confident individuals’ and ‘effective contributors’ within CfE. Furthermore, one of the IB’s main aims is to help make the world a better and more peaceful place, doing so by encouraging attributes such as respect and care, also encouraged within CfE’s ‘responsible citizen’ capacity.

When I first read the IB’s mission statement, which included “these programmes encourage students across the world to become active, compassionate, and lifelong learners who understand that other people, with their differences, can also be right”, I was immediately transported back into my own primary 3 classroom. My teacher had been holding up a book to us, her class. The book had a shiny black hardback cover. She had looked at us, and said “this book is pink.” I still remember the chorus of excitement in the room of seven-year-olds as we all rushed to correct the teacher in her hilarious mistake. “No Miss! That’s black!” we’d said. Instead of correcting herself, the teacher looked at the book again, and confused, repeated “this book is pink”. This went on for several moments until eventually she turned the book around, showing us that although the back cover and the spine of the book was black, the front cover was indeed pink. From the angle she was holding the book, we could only see the black part and she could only see the pink. The teacher then put the book to the side and said to us “you were very quick to correct me, even although you couldn’t see the book from my point of view. While you weren’t wrong in saying that the book was black, neither was I in saying that it was pink. Just because you are right doesn’t mean that someone with a different opinion to you is not.” This was my first real taste of developing an understanding about differences of opinion and how people will often disagree with you but that doesn’t automatically make them wrong. It is incredibly important that children learn from a young age that not everyone is the same, be it how they look/think/act, where they come from, or the cultures they follow, and that no one is wrong just because they have a different opinion to you. Everyone should be able to feel welcomed and included. This is encompassed well in the IB mission statement.

Resource Allocation Input

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Recently, our group of MA1 took part in a workshop centred around resource allocation. During this workshop we were split into five groups, and each group was given a resource pack with the intention of using the resources inside to build a support kit for new students starting university. Upon giving us our resource packs, our lecturer asked us to discuss our ideas before opening the envelope. My group – group five – decided to create a student handbook which would contain things like a map of campus, study tips, budgeting tips and other things of that nature, which would allow new students to explore both the social and academic aspects of university. When we did open our envelopes, we found that group one had an abundance of resources in their pack, including coloured paper, coloured pens, pencils, rulers, glue, scissors etc. Group two’s resources were similar, while group three had a little less and group four had even less still. My group, however, had only two sticky notes, a paperclip, and a pencil. Immediately, we noticed that we were at a disadvantage to the other groups, but we tried our best to make the most of what we had.

Our disadvantage seemed only to be emphasised when our lecturer gave his continued support and encouragement to groups one and two, however he tended to ignore the other three groups and made his disdain towards our idea very obvious. When it came time to present our ideas to the room, again groups one and two were met with support, encouragement, and praise. Our lecturer became gradually more disinterested by the presentations as he made his way through the groups, and by the time it was our turn to present he seemed to be paying no attention at all, making our group feel as though not only did we start out with seemingly less than everyone else, but now we weren’t being listened to! Surely this wasn’t a fair way to be treated?

Of course, this was the meaning behind this input: to highlight to us that in our profession we will encounter many different people from an array of different backgrounds, and many of our pupils will come from disadvantaged backgrounds and will may not have all the resources and/or means to be able to achieve their full potential. That we, as teachers, should be encouraging our pupils to work as hard as they can and that their limited resources do not need to stop them from flourishing. Sometimes, education facilities tend to give more support to the students who are doing well and neglecting those who perhaps aren’t doing so well, when in reality it is these students who are more likely to need the support. It is crucial as a teacher to be able and willing to support every child, regardless of their background.

For me personally, a truly eye-opening part of this input was after our lecturer explained the purpose of this input, he asked us all if we had noticed the difference in each groups’ resources and also in his attitudes towards each group. Our group had noticed straight away that we were at a disadvantage, however group one said that they hadn’t noticed at all that they were being given more and treated better until it was explained to them afterwards. Our lecturer went on to explain that often, people in a more privileged position often overlook those who are not. This was something I hadn’t previously thought about in depth and was eye-opening for me to think about.

Overall, this input served as an extremely effective way to let us know how it feels to be at a disadvantage and how to cope with these issues and the attainment gap effectively as teachers.