Even though I haven’t finished watching this yet, I need to record my frustrations – as my son has told me to stop talking to the iPad! I feel saddened to think that in South Australia someone has spent a lot of time researching the dominant pedagogy used (in high schools), when most of us could have simply described the practices that we were exposed to, knowing that things haven’t changed that much. What makes me angry is that not only does this seem to me to be a complete waste of time, I am now worried that the rest of the video is going to tell me how to change this practice – which I have been arguing against for a long time. (And is the implication really that practices like these are also being used in the Early Years?)

Surely, as a system when you provide teachers with a curriculum – now a National one, and a description of good teaching practice (TfEL) and then expect teachers all over the state to use their professional experience and knowledge- which would range considerably, to create interesting, engaging programs, you are setting up a system for text book providers to reap the benefits. To then simply take the examples in the text book and re-fashion these lessons into more meaningful experiences for students seems to be to be an ineffective way to address the inadequacies of our system.

Perhaps we could do something more constructive and supportive of teaching and learning by looking to other states/ places in the world. In other states research has been focused on identifying student learning, observing common misconceptions and providing teachers with support structures to diagnose and act on these. Surely in South Australia we could support teachers more in order to improve the learning of students in our care, and I mean deep learning – not just superficial content.

Now I will see if I can watch the rest of the video.

Ahh… purpose identified…”achievable for teachers.”

Is this enough? Is this what our students deserve?

I think “transforming tasks” is a very slow way of getting change happening.