Nationality Versus Culture
Nationality is not a very meaningful concept. Culture is much more significant. “It is remarkable how fast and how effectively you can construct a nationality with a flag, a few speeches, and a national anthem.” (Taleb, 2008). Nick Taleb, who might be described in these terms as a Lebanese American, is dismissive of nationality, he sees it as a largely meaningless way of defining someone.
School Culture
According to the Ministry of Education (2016), a school's culture consists of the customs, rituals, and stories that are evident and valued throughout the whole school. An effective school culture is one in which the customs and values foster success for all; and where clear boundaries are set, known, and agreed to by everyone. In developing a positive culture, effective principals ensure that educational practices are inclusive. They make certain that students and their families do not feel alienated either from their own culture or from the culture of the school.
New Formations of Whānau
According to Smith (1995), The concept of whānau provides the school with a synergy, enabling students, teachers, family and community members to assume a degree of agency over education, to articulate their aspirations, and to develop their capabilities together. This could provide another perspective on the relationship between school culture and community.
Cultural Literacy and Awareness as 21st Century Skills
Cultural awareness can also be considered part of the 21st century skill set. The following image from the World Economic Forum (2016) includes cultural and civic literacy and social and cultural awareness as 21st century skills.
In class, we'll consider how each of these images might provide analogy of cultural competence and what insight might this give you about how to work and lead effectively across cultures.
International Capabilities
The Ministry of Education (2014) defines international capabilities as the knowledge, skills, attitudes, dispositions, and values that make up the key competencies that enable people to live, work, and learn across national and cultural boundaries. Being internationally capable includes not only the awareness of other cultures, about also the awareness of one’s own culture as particular and specific. It involves the understanding that we all experience our lives through a number of cultural and personal "lenses", and that comprehending and accepting others’ needs and behaviours rests as much on understanding ourselves as it does on understanding them.
Responsive Leadership
The new Leadership strategy from the Education Council (2018) states that "Educational leaders in Aotearoa New Zealand need to be aware and responsive to the nature of the relationship between Māori and government. They must be culturally knowledgeable and adept to lead successfully in the bicultural landscape of our country".
Curriculum Principles
A 2012 report by the ERO looked at how well the eight principles of the New Zealand Curriculum were represented in classrooms The eight principles studied were:
- Coherence
- Community engagement
- Cultural diversity
- Future focus
- High expectations
- Inclusion
- Learning to learn
- Treaty of Waitangi
The report found that “Cultural diversity, future focus and Treaty of Waitangi were the least well represented principles in approximately a third of classrooms. These three principles were not evident at all in about a sixth of classrooms.”(Educational Review Office, 2012).
A lot might have hopefully changed since, but we'll ideate in class how could continue to embed Cultural diversity and/or principles of Te Aho Matua or Te Tiriti o Waitangi in our context and what are the implications for leadership. To do this we'll use these 4 resources to draw ideas from:
- Educational Leadership Capability Framework (2018b) - particularly the second row on the table on page 8, that explains how leaders can 'Ensure culturally responsive practice and understanding of Aotearoa New Zealand’s cultural heritage, using Te Tiriti o Waitangi as the foundation'
- Tapasā Cultural competencies framework for teachers of Pacific learners (2018) - particularly the 3 Turu tables that explain what leader can do relating to them
- Kei Tua o te Pae (n.d.) - don't open the pdf but scroll down the page instead to find the Early Childhood Exemplars and Frameworks for bicultural education
- Tū Rangatira (English) Tū Rangatira (Māori) (2010) - Educational Leadership document that brings together shared ideas, experiences and leadership practices from the Māori medium education sector.
PISA Tests
The Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) is a worldwide study by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) in member and non-member nations of 15-year-old school pupils' scholastic performance in mathematics, science, and reading.
In class, we'll try out one of these PISA 2015 Science or Financial Literacy tasks (You might need to zoom out in your browser using Ctrl -) If a page hangs when loading, just refresh the browser.
Financial Literacy
Changes to PISA since 2015
As an example, the Released Field Trial Cognitive Items document (PISA, 2015) includes an assessment unit where the premise is that a group of international students is coming to visit a school. The student must collaborate with 3 agent teammates and a faculty adviser to plan the visit, assign visitors to guides,and respond to an unexpected problem that arises. The assessment involves the following challenges requiring collaborative skills
- solicit and take into account criteria for assessing the options
- clarify statements made by teammates
- correct misinformation and avoid deadlock
- prompt team members to perform their tasks
- ensure that the final recommendation meets all specified criteria
The student must collaborate with 3 agent teammates, a faculty adviser and respond to an unexpected problem
Wellbeing
2015 was the first time that PISA looked at also to Students Wellbeing. Three indicators werere chosen to make up the educational well-being dimension.
- PISA 2016 country score for education performance, averaged across reading,mathematics and science literacy test scores.
- inequality in achievement around these scores using the ratio of the score at the 90th percentile to the 10th percentileaveraged across the three PISA literacy measures.
- The proportions of 15-19 year-olds not in education and not in employment or training (NEET).
Hauora - Well-being
Hauora is a Māori philosophy of health unique to New Zealand (Ministry of Education, 1999), that could maybe be one of the key concepts on developing more positive school cultures focused around students' wellbeing? The concept is recognised by the World Health Organisation and comprises the following types of well-being:
- Taha tinana - Physical well-being - the physical body, its growth, development, and ability to move, and ways of caring for it
- Taha hinengaro - Mental and emotional well-being - coherent thinking processes, acknowledging and expressing thoughts and feelings and responding constructively
- Taha whanau - Social well-being - family relationships, friendships, and other interpersonal relationships; feelings of belonging, compassion, and caring; and social support
- Taha wairua - Spiritual well-being - the values and beliefs that determine the way people live, the search for meaning and purpose in life, and personal identity and self-awareness (For some individuals and communities, spiritual well- being is linked to a particular religion; for others, it is not.)
Global Competence
The PISA 2018 added also global competence to be one of the assessed aspects (OECD, 2018), and it has these two components:
- A cognitive test about “global understanding”, which assesses knowledge and cognitive skills required to solve problems related to global and intercultural issues
- A questionnaire about students’ awareness, skills and attitudes regarding global issues and cultures, along with information from schools and teachers on activities to promote global competence.
Global understanding is assessed in the cognitive test by asking students to complete several test units based on case studies and scenario-based tasks.
Here is an example of part of the global competence questionnaire (OECD, 2018).
In class, we ask you to fill in this quick (Global Competence) appraisal survey of the Mind Lab Staff, which is based on the on in PISA (2018)
tinyurl.com/TMLGlobalJuly18
The PISA discussion
Even if there are many positive affects in this sort of skills comparison it also provokes strong debate from educators the world over. When it was developed, it was created as a diagnostic tool to bring together education policymakers together to discuss and track education and education improvement. However, in recent years, it has become widely criticised as a league table that is used as a indicator of a country's education health. Sir Ken Robinson criticised PISA for “squeezing out” other more creative subjects and creating an anxiety around education that was “grotesque”. Academics from around the world expressed deep concern in the 'PISA letter' (The Guardian, 2014) about the impact of Pisa tests and call for a halt to the next round of testing.
However, as you have now seen, PISA tests are developed further all the time and they do assess an unprecedented range of learning outcomes and their contexts, including student performance measures, measures of social and emotional dimensions, student attitudes and motivations, equity issues, and parental support. Pearson has been chosen to develop the PISA 2018 Student Assessment 21st Century Framework (Pearson, 2014).
Does money buy strong performance in PISA?
It has been shown that greater national wealth or higher expenditure on education does not guarantee better student performance. Among high-income economies, the amount spent on education is less important than how those resources are used. Successful school systems in high-income economies tend to prioritise the quality of teachers over the size of classes and school systems that perform well in PISA believe that all students can achieve, and give them the opportunity to do so.
References
Smith, G. (1995). Whakaoho Whānau: New Formations of Whānau as an Innovative Intervention into Māori Cultural and Educational Crises. He Pukenga Korero, 1(1), 18–36.
Taleb, N. (2008). The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable. Random House.
