Words from Germany

This is a post sent from Germany where five members of the ELP team are working with teachers in 9 German cities and one city in Switzerland. This is a press release from the University of Koblenz, which has been translated via Google translates into English. We are experiencing a tremendous amount of interest in Learning Stories. Many of the teachers have been on this journey with us over several years. We are meeting new teachers and also connecting with many we have worked with in earlier times.

Neuseeländische Erziehungswissenschaftlerin Wendy Lee begeisterte mit ihrem Vortrag über Lerngeschichten

Mit einem enthusiastischen und inspirierenden Vortrag über die „Philosophie der Learning Stories“ zog Wendy Lee, Direktorin des neuseeländischen „Educational Leadership Project“, die Zuhörerinnen und Zuhörer an der Hochschule Koblenz in ihren Bann. Rund 300 Personen waren der Einladung des Fachbereichs Sozialwissenschaften und des Instituts für Bildung, Erziehung und Betreuung in der Kindheit|Rheinlad-Pfalz (IBEB) gefolgt, um an diesem Abend von Neuseeland lernen zu können.

Der Präsident der Hochschule, Prof. Dr. Kristian Bosselmann-Cyran, begrüßte die international renommierte Referentin, die gemeinsam mit vier weiteren Mitarbeiterinnen des „Educational Leadership Project“ angereist war, um am Folgetag gemeinsam mit Studierenden der Hochschule in fünf Workshops arbeiten zu können. „Lerngeschichten sind ein ganz zentrales Element der Qualitätsentwicklung und Evaluation“, betonte Prof. Dr. Armin Schneider, Direktor des IBEB und Prodekan des Fachbereichs Sozialwissenschaften, in seinem Grußwort, „es ist wichtig, dass wir wesentliche Merkmale der Lerngeschichten wie Haltung, Diskurs, Familien- und Sozialraumorientierung in eigenen Ansätzen der Qualitätsentwicklung aufgreifen und weiter denken.“

Wie bedeutsam eine respektvolle, ressourcenorientierte und auf Austausch fokussierte Haltung für den Erfolg von Lerngeschichten ist, stellte Wendy Lee in ihrem Vortrag eindrücklich dar. Zahlreiche Foto- und Videoaufnahmen zeigten anschaulich, wie sehr Kinder und ihre Familien davon profitieren, wenn häufig und vor allem auf wertschätzende Art und Weise Geschichten über besondere Momente und wichtige Lernerlebnisse von Kindern aufgeschrieben werden. Für Kinder und Eltern ist es ein besonderer Gewinn, diese Geschichten immer wieder anschauen und lesen zu können. Durch die Dokumentation von Lerngeschichten erfahren Kinder und Eltern eine hohe Wertschätzung und sie können gemeinsam mit den Fachkräften über das Lernen von Kindern sprechen. Dass es hierfür hilfreich sein kann, die Familien der Kinder auch zuhause zu besuchen, wurde von Wendy Lee besonders betont. Notwendig sei es, die kulturelle Vielfalt von Familien zu berücksichtigen und die Teilhabe von Familien zu gewährleisten. Hierfür braucht es in den Augen der neuseeländischen Referentin nicht nur die Öffnung der Kindertageseinrichtungen, sondern durchaus auch neue Wege der Kommunikation mit Familien. Manchmal könne es hilfreich sein, bedeutsame Lernerlebnisse der Kinder telefonisch oder sogar per Email zu übermitteln. „Das Schreiben von Lerngeschichten ist eine besondere Verantwortung, um Kinder und deren Familien mit offenem Herzen und Verstand zu begleiten, um neugierig und engagiert als Gemeinschaft von Lernenden zu wachsen und schließlich auch, um die eigene Professionalität beständig weiter entwickeln zu können“, so Wendy Lee.

Dass es in deutschen Kindertageseinrichtungen jedoch gar nicht so leicht ist, regelmäßig Lerngeschichten von Kindern zu dokumentieren, die auch die Lernschritte eines Kindes transparent machen, zeigte die rege Diskussion am Ende des Vortrags. Pädagogische Fachkräfte kämpfen hierzulande mit unzureichenden strukturellen Rahmenbedingungen, die es fast unmöglich machen, mehr als eine Lerngeschichte im Jahr zu verfassen. „Hier muss einfach investiert werden“, so Prof. Dr. Schneider. Dem stimmte Prof. Dr. Regina Remsperger-Kehm zu, die selbst Mitarbeiterin im Projekt „Bildungs- und Lerngeschichten“ des Deutschen Jugendinstituts war und die als Professorin des Fachbereichs Sozialwissenschaften die Vortragsveranstaltung geplant und konzipiert hat: „Wenn wir es ermöglichen wollen, dass Kinder ihren Interessen vertieft nachgehen können und wenn wir für Kinder eine Lernumgebung schaffen wollen, in der sich Kinder wohlfühlen und sich voll Vertrauen auf das einlassen können, was sie interessiert, dann müssen wir auch für pädagogische Fachkräfte Rahmenbedingungen schaffen, in denen sie die Lernprozesse von Kindern achtsam begleiten können“. Im Gespräch zu bleiben und den Dialog mit Fachkräften, Eltern, Kindern und Verantwortlichen aus Politik und Wissenschaft fortführen, um von Neuseeland lernen zu können, lautet der deutliche Appell der Wissenschaftlerin.

New Zealand educationalist Wendy Lee enthused with her talk about learning stories

09/18/2018

RheinMoselCampus Koblenz TOP University of Social Sciences

Wendy Lee, director of the New Zealand Educational Leadership Project, cast a spell over the audience at Koblenz University of Applied Sciences with an enthusiastic and inspiring presentation on the "Philosophy of Learning Stories". Around 300 people accepted the invitation from the Department of Social Sciences and the Institute for Education, Childhood Care and Support | Rheinlad-Pfalz (IBEB) to learn about New Zealand that evening.

The President of the University, Prof. dr. Kristian Bosselmann-Cyran, welcomed the internationally renowned speaker, who had traveled with four other employees of the "Educational Leadership Project", in order to work together with students of the university in five workshops the following day. "Learning stories are a very central element of quality development and evaluation," emphasized Prof. Dr. med. Armin Schneider, Director of the IBEB and Vice Dean of the Department of Social Sciences, in his welcome address, "it is important that we take up and continue to think essential characteristics of the learning stories such as attitude, discourse, family and social space orientation in our own approaches to quality development."

How significant a respectful, resource-oriented and exchange-focused attitude is for the success of learning stories was impressively demonstrated by Wendy Lee in her presentation. Numerous photo and video recordings clearly showed how much children and their families benefit from it, if and often Appreciative way stories are written down about special moments and important child learning experiences. For children and parents it is a special benefit to be able to watch and read these stories over and over again. By documenting learning stories, children and parents are highly valued and they can talk to the professionals about learning to be a child. That it can be helpful to visit the families of the children at home was emphasized by Wendy Lee. It is necessary to consider the cultural diversity of families and to ensure the participation of families. In the eyes of the New Zealand representative, this not only requires the opening up of day-care centers, but also new ways of communicating with families. Sometimes it can be helpful to convey meaningful children's learning experiences by phone or even email. "Writing learning stories is a special responsibility to accompany children and their families with open hearts and minds, to grow inquisitively and committedly as a community of learners, and ultimately to continue to develop their own professionalism," said Wendy Lee.

However, the fact that it is not so easy in German daycare facilities to regularly document learning stories of children, which also make the learning steps of a child transparent, was shown by the lively discussion at the end of the lecture. Educational specialists are struggling in this country with insufficient structural conditions that make it almost impossible to write more than one learning story a year. "It simply has to be invested here", says Prof. Dr. med. Cutter. Prof. Dr. Regina Remsperger-Kehm, who was herself a member of the project "Bildungs- und Lerngeschichten" of the German Youth Institute and who, as a professor of the Department of Social Sciences, planned and planned the lecture: "If we want to enable children to pursue their interests in depth and if we want to create a learning environment for children in which children can feel at home and confidently embrace what they are interested in, then we also have to create framework conditions for educational professionals in which they can mindfully accompany children's learning processes ". To stay in the conversation and continue the dialogue with professionals, parents, children and political and scientific leaders to learn from New Zealand, is the clear appeal of the scientist.

The role of intuition in learning and teaching

Guy Claxton has always been one of my go to learning hero’s, and teachers who know me well will tell you that “the ability to hang out in the fog, and to tolerate confusion” is one of my favourite quotes.  Recently I have been reflecting on something I read, implying that intuition will only take a leader so far, that it is knowledge and skills that will determine success.  One of the successful attributes of a great leader in my eyes, is their ability to develop, and nurture community.  In such a community everybody is valued as leaderful and are aware of the strengths that they contribute to make a community thrive.  While knowledge and skills are important, Claxton believes that “you either..enable people to harness and develop their intuition, or..neglect it, and so allow it to waste away” (p. 50), What does achieving this balance mean in practice?

Claxton, in his book “The intuitive practitioner” discusses the intuitive “ways of knowing” as expertise, implicit learning, judgement, sensitivity, creativity/problem solving and rumination. (pg. 40).

Let’s look at these “ways of knowing” and what they mean for leaders:

Expertise– the ability to truly be present and responsive to people in the moment, with your mind open to the possibilities; without having to think about ticking off boxes.  Weaving local curriculum, unpacking key documents to make sense of them through the lens of your unique community, your interpretation based on your ways of being. Expertise is about people not accountability to knowledge and skills.

Implicit Learning– always being open to learning, alongside the children, the teachers, your immediate and wider community in ways that you would never image;

Judgement – during the ELP lecture series titled Who said Good is Good  my reflective colleague Lynn Rupe discussed who says good is good? What is right in this moment, for this child, for this family?  Do you make decisions as a collective to ensure synergy?

Sensitivity– listening with your heart, your tummy and your head; what does this look like, feel like, sound like?  Deeply reflective relationships, where everyone is seen as an individual, and responded to as such;

Creativity– developing a ‘yes’ culture, how can we do this?  Let’s push the boundaries of our practice, be innovative and divergent. It is ok to make mistakes, as it is through our mistakes that we learn.  Sometimes the best ideas come in those times of quiet, when we are least expecting them.

Rumination– Claxton refers to “the process of ‘chewing the cud’ of experience in order to extract its meanings and implications”.  I wonder if this could be the new catch phrase for Internal Evaluation?

Claxton’s description of a teacher going about their day “adjusting or even abandoning their actions and intentions as they go, without being conscious of much reasoning, and without being able to say why or how they made the decisions they did, or to what clues they were responding” (pg. 35), resonates with me, and I am reminded of this video clip that was recently shared with me.  

In this now moment where are you?

Is your logical rational brain (left brain) dominant?  When faced with a making a decision do you write down the pro’s and con’s, analyse, think your way to a conclusion?  What you are doing when you think your way to a decision is that you are putting an old vinyl record on, with all your old beliefs, everything that Aunty said to you when you were three years old, and all the things that you thought about yourself when you were 18 months old.  When you think your way to a decision you are replaying everything that has happened to you in your past.  The alternative is to go into that quiet space, it does not matter how you create it, shut down your left brain, step out of your habits of thinking your way through life, and allow the knowing, your intuition to have some space.  

Guy Claxton suggests that judgement is predominantly intuitive.  In his book “Intelligence in the Flesh, why your mind needs your body much more than you think” Claxton also suggests that the human body is “a massive seething, streaming collection of interconnected communication systems that bind the muscles, the stomach, the heart, the sense and the brain so tightly together that no part – especially the brain – can be seen as functionally separate from, or senior to, any other part”.  We know that children are incredibly intuitive. They have a natural ability to engage in the world as it presents itself without limitation.   They have not judged things as being wrong yet.  The implications for us as teacher is that when children express their thoughts feelings intuitively, we need to listen and acknowledge how children are feeling in that moment.  If children, are getting negative approval e.g. don’t be silly that doesn’t exist.   What we are teaching children, is not to trust their instinct.

I wonder then if intuition could be seen as a teacher disposition?  This facet of the disposition towards resilience is built from respectful listening, environments that insist on justice, and adults who are interested in uncertainty and multiple perspectives.    Does intuition flourish in an open to possibilities learning culture, opening up different opportunities and looking holistically for the answers – which result in more natural solutions and answers, found through relationships.  I would suggest that this comes second nature as we acknowledge the importance of attachment relationships through ‘key teaching’ and ‘learning companions’.  “Whanaungatanga goes beyond what we see, but rather what others are trying to tell us” (Vanessa Paki in keynote, 2015).

References:

Atkinson, T., & Claxton, G. (Eds).  (2000). The intuitive practitioner: on the value of not always knowing what one is doing. UK: Open University Press.

Lucas, B., & Claxton, G. (2010).  New kinds of smart: how the science of learnable intelligence is changing education.  UK: Open University Press.

Paki, V.  (2017, July).  Kaupapa transition: The intersections of pedagogial beliefs, practices and philosophies of educators and whanau in educational transitions.  In The Early Years Research Centre Conference: Children in the early years: Pedagogy, policy and community connectedness.

The Conscious Leadership Group.  (15 November, 2014).  Locating Yourself - A Key to Conscious Leadership.  Retrieved 11 September 2018 from http:/ 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fLqzYDZAqCI

Where Has The Carpentry Area Gone?

Harriet O’Sullivan - September 2018

As I spend more and more time in various ECE settings throughout Auckland it strikes me how often ‘the carpentry area’ is missing. The blocks are always there and often there is a table or shelf designated for art resources, although this may be another area for further exploration. I see wonderful Whānau areas and spaces designated for books and reading. However, continuous provision of the carpentry area seems to have been put on the back burner, or perhaps it was never there?

In my work with children I would put trust at the heart of everything that I do. Trust for children to allow them to develop and unfold in their own unique way and be able to lead the way in their own physical and emotional development. This trust evolves as I continue to trust them as learners. Through child-led play opportunities I strive to allow autonomy for the children over their tasks, time, tools and the team that they work with. 

I often find that one of the hardest aspects of learning to truly trust children is first being able to trust ourselves as teachers. Do we trust ourselves to truly let the children take the lead? Yes, we need to spend time connecting and building relationships, we need to be a role-model and use the language of learning to wonder alongside the children that we work with. It is through these everyday aspects of our teaching practice that children are able to build trust in us that, in turn, enables them to fly alone, chose their own course and make their own discoveries. 

In this way, the carpentry area, is one that is filled with trust. Tools and resources are provided for children to use. We need strong relationships with children so that we are able to set up the expectations and boundaries around the use of this area. They trust us to work alongside them during their exploration of the materials and know that we will value their contribution. We, as teachers, are there to model the respect for the tools and the safety precautions that we may need to take as well as ponder, tinker and experiment with the available resources. 

The carpentry area is not about the finished product but about the process. It is learning how to handle the tools, it is about designing and bringing to life something that has been visualised and grown inside our heads. It is about making three-dimensional forms and expressing creativity. It is enabling our children to be able to think about and assess the risks and make a plan to stay safe and approach a project from a different angle. It is about offering countless opportunities for problem solving...’Hmmm is this nail going to fit in this hole? How do I make this wheel move? Is this stick going to be long enough? Which screwdriver fits this screw? Which way does the drill bit turn? Why is this important? If I push harder will the hole get bigger?’ All of these questions and wonderings are encouraging our children’s mathematical and scientific development; their comprehension of length, size, balance and force. They are able to observe, predict and experiment. They are able to tinker with ideas and build a positive view of themselves as a learner; someone who tries hard, takes a chance, gives something new a go, doesn’t give up and plays around with ideas until they reach a satisfactory conclusion. 

Above all it is wonderful to hear the conversations unfolding at the carpentry table. As the children decide and discuss the best course of action. The fabulous examples of the tuakana teina displayed when older children remind, explain and work with the younger ones. 

Collaborating in this way, with each other, on projects in the carpentry area requires intense cooperation. Ideas need to be explained and plans made. All of these interactions are continually developing language skills and when a plan is seen all the way through to completion the sense of pride and achievement is clear from the beaming smiles on the faces before us.

So then, if all of this is true, why are carpentry areas and tables so few and far between? It seems to me, from conversations that I have had with colleagues and teachers, that often it is down to parent perceptions and even teacher perceptions of the space. To this I would say, start talking about it! Take some time to write learning stories about everything that goes on in this area of the curriculum. Start small, have the screwdrivers and screws out, add the hammers and nails a little while later, add the saws after that and keep adding nuts, bolts, hinges, corks, fabric, pegs, buttons, bottle tops, lolly-sticks, stirrers and other loose parts that can be used to add to or decorate the creations and projects.

Be present and help model the expectations of the space but remember to trust the children. They are innately careful and often it is us jumping in and ‘over -rescuing’ them that leads to them not learning to be able to assess and take reasonable risks. It’s amazing what can be achieved when we set the environment both physically and emotionally, the children will know if we trust them or not and the depth of our relationship and connection with them will be reflected in their use of the space. 

Let’s start a revolution and get a carpentry table back into all of our ECE settings. Let’s start with a table and move to an area and soon there will be tinkering sheds galore and the makers, doers and inventors of the future will be inspired to go forth and create. 

  

‘Logic takes you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere’ 

- Albert Einstein