Keynotes

Learning@School is pleased to feature three internationally renowned keynote speakers.

The Fourth Way - inspiration, innovation and sustainability

Andy Hargreaves (USA)

This presentation deals with Professor Hargreaves' new book with Dennis Shirley on The Fourth Way. The First Way of Educational Change gave professionals the money and let them get on with the job. This created inspiration and innovation but also brought a lot of inconsistency. The Second Way imposed consistency through increasing standardisation of content and testing and introduced growing market competition in meeting these standards. This increased consistency and developed some sense of urgency, but at great cost to professional motivation and classroom creativity. We are now in a Third Way of more professional involvement through learning communities and sponsorship of school networks but this is within a context of arbitrary and autocratically imposed narrow targets in literacy and numeracy, obsessions with data and spreadsheets over knowledge of staff and students, and professional distractions with getting short term lifts in performance results.

We need a new way, a Fourth Way of inspiration, innovation and sustainability in which the curriculum is broad, targets are shared rather than imposed, the public is engaged as partners and not just consumers, and accountability is by sample and not by census. In the wake of the greatest economic upheaval for half a century, society is heading away from control by markets and bureaucracy to revitalised professionalism and public democracy. It is time our schools and school systems headed this way too. Indeed, the presentation will show, a number are increasingly and inspirationally already moving in this very direction.

Andy Hargreaves is the Thomas More Brennan Chair of Education in the Lynch School of Education at Boston College. Before this he was the founder and co-director of the International Centre for Educational Change at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (University of Toronto). Until he moved to North America in 1987, Andy taught primary school and lectured in several English universities, including Oxford.

Andy has held visiting professorships and fellowships in England, Australia, Sweden, Spain, the United States, Hong Kong and Japan. He is holder of the Canadian Education Association/Whitworth 2000 Award for outstanding contributions to educational research in Canada. His book, Teaching In The Knowledge Society: Education In The Age Of Insecurity received outstanding writing awards from the American Educational Research Association and the American Libraries Association. His most recent book with Dean Fink, Sustainable Leadership is published by Jossey-Bass/Wiley. Andy was the invited editor of the 1997 ASCD Yearbook. He initiated and co-ordinated the editing of the International Handbook of Educational Change (Kluwer 1998) and he is founding Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Educational Change (published by Kluwer). Andy Hargreaves’ work has been translated extensively into more than a dozen languages.

Professor Hargreaves’ current research interests include the emotions of teaching and leading and the sustainability of change and leadership in education, business, sport, and health. Andy is married, with two adult children. He is an avid hiker and inveterate supporter of Burnley Football Club in the UK.

Teaching and learning: tales from the ampersand

Pam Hook (New Zealand)

The New Zealand Curriculum offers many contexts for exploring teaching and learning. For example, the curriculum says, "put students at the centre of teaching and learning"'; "make them lifelong learners"; "build confident, creative, connected, and actively involved learners"; "explore not only how ICT can supplement traditional ways of teaching but also how it can open up new and different ways of learning"; "encourage all students to learn how to learn".

How curious are we about what is happening in the ampersand of teaching and learning?

Pam Hook is a teaching and learning consultant who works with schools and teachers across New Zealand. Her work, with Hooked-on-Thinking partner Julie Mills, is focused on improving student learning outcomes through helping students know themselves as learners. Their work around SOLO Taxonomy (Structured Observable Learning Outcomes) makes relevant learning connections for both teachers and students. Artichoke's educational philosophy is best captured by a sense of not knowing, by doubt and uncertainty, by paradox, absurdity, and contradiction. She is adamant Arti and Pam should never be allowed in the same room together.

The landscape of 21st century learning: Personalised and differentiated

Wesley Fryer (USA)

Personalised, differentiated learning defines exemplary education in the 21st century. Blended learning models offer teachers and students a diverse menu of content delivery and assessment options which can be tailored to meet individual needs. In this session we will explore how a variety of web-based environments and instructional strategies are permitting educators to provide learners with choices in not only the ways they can access and consume content, but also in the ways they "show what they know" through performance-based assessment methods.

Wesley Fryer is an educator, author, digital storyteller and change agent. With respect to school change, he describes himself as a "catalyst for creative engagement and collaborative learning." Wesley serves as a co-convener for the annual K-12 Online Conference each October and is the co-director of the statewide Celebrate Oklahoma Voices digital storytelling project. His blog, "Moving at the Speed of Creativity" was selected as the 2006 "Best Learning Theory Blog" by eSchoolnews and Discovery Education, and is utilised regularly by thousands of educators worldwide.

Wesley secured $1.3 million in grant funding for West Texas schools participating in the Texas Technology Immersion Pilot Project in 2004-2008. He was named an Apple Distinguished Educator in 2005. He was an elementary classroom teacher for six years in Texas public schools before serving as a college director of distance learning for five years. He worked for AT&T from 2006 - 2008 as the Director of Education Advocacy. Wesley is completing his doctorate in curriculum and instruction at Texas Tech University, studying the impact of podcasting and coursecasting on student learning in higher education. He currently serves as the Director of Technology and Education Outreach for the Oklahoma Heritage Association (a non-profit organisation) in Oklahoma City.

Wesley has published numerous articles relating to education and technology integration in Technology and Learning, Learning and Leading with Technology, District Administrator, Interactive Educator, The TechEdge, and the journal Internet and Higher Education. He also publishes a weekly podcast.