2011年9月5日星期一

The Global Search for Education: New Zealand is Ready!

C. M. Rubin -- If you have a high stakes/low trust model of accountability, then you’re Rosetta Stone Store in trouble before you begin....Prime Minister John Key and young New Zealanders celebrate 100 Days to Go to Rugby World Cup 2011. (Photo courtesy of RWCNZ 2011)New Zealands Stadium of Four Million is ready to host the 2011 Rugby World Cup on September 9.In its world cup bid for the championship, this unique multicultural nation (with the most highly ranked rugby team in the world) promised to provide optimum world class rugby facilities where players would be inspired to perform at their very best. New Zealand also promised to create an environment where players and fans would be safe and welcomed.So how does a country which values its sports so highly support and nurture its younger fans and players in their equally important educational paths? ?It should be noted that New Zealand ranks much higher than the US in the global standardized PISA test (7th in both Science and Reading and 13th in Math).What is New Zealands vision for its teachers, its students, its curriculum, and for learning?I recently got the opportunity to discuss these important questions with Dr. Rosemary Hipkins, the distinguished Chief Researcher of New Zealands Council for Educational Research.What kind of educational system will permit a country to have the people skills needed to compete globally?A system with a high trust/low stakes model of accountability. If you have a high stakes/low trust model of accountability, then Rosetta Stone V3 you’re in trouble before you begin because teachers won’t feel safe enough to be innovative. If you don’t believe that your teachers are professionals and can try things out in different ways, then you are never going to change anything. So I put a system with a high trust and low stakes model of accountability at the top of the list.A system where curriculum and assessment policy are conveyed via flexible frameworks that leave space for local interpretation based on student learning needs. If you have the right model, it will leave space for teachers to interpret and use it based on their learners.The New Zealand Curriculum is a framework that applies some very high level principles that all schools are supposed to use. It specifies why each principle is important but it leaves it to schools to assemble the pieces as they believe they will work for their students. So there are a lot of different models. Each model should be implemented in conjunction with the whole school community so that everybody (parents/teachers/students) understands what the school is trying to achieve. Our secondary school system also has a flexible framework that I think is very unusual around the world. I don’t think many people have been German Rosetta Stone brave enough to do what we’ve done in New Zealand.For an educational system to achieve, it has to involve the whole community. Parents need to understand why schooling is different from the time they were schooled.And again, we need to believe that teachers are professionals and create the conditions that make it possible for teachers to work like professionals.For example, something we’ve been experimenting with in New Zealand is building professional learning networks for teachers, both inside schools and across schools. While this is Rosetta Stone not yet national (roughly about a third of our teachers in secondary schools are in the program), it’s going very well.

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