Sunday, April 16, 2023

Doctor of Education Thesis: Connected classes: a case study of one high school's journey from a traditional to a future-focused curriculum. (2022)

 




Just over a week ago I graduated from the University of Canterbury with a Doctor of Education. I walked in the graduation parade and later in the week crossed the stage to receive the actual certificate. I’m incredibly proud of what I have achieved. When people say a doctoral study is full of highs and lows, they are right. The highs are high and the lows, well let’s just say I had an amazing supervisor (Sandra) who on more than one occasion gave me the encouragement to keep going. I’m incredibly grateful to both of my supervisors, Sandra and Alison, and to my examiners. They provided me with support, advice, and guidance which helped me to produce a piece of work that I’m very proud of.

Next steps: now that I’ve had a we bit of a break from writing I am going to try and write an article or two for publication. I’m also working with GrowWaitaha to turn the Connected Curriculum Learning Design Framework into a usable teacher resource.

Below is a copy of the abstract for the thesis and if you feel like taking a look at the actual document, hopefully this link works!

 

Abstract

Today, we live in a knowledge-based economy and educators need to design learning which focuses on the ‘knowledge and skills necessary for the knowledge age and where innovation is a valued commodity (Bolstad & Gilbert, 2012). Using action research with a participatory component and presented as a case study, this research examined one high school’s journey as they moved from a traditionally structured school, based on the factory model of education, to one that is future-focused. Future-focused learning takes into consideration a changing understanding of what knowledge is valued by society and the skills necessary for dealing with uncertainty and change. The New Zealand high school involved in this research provided the opportunity for teachers to change the delivery of curriculum from a traditional single-subject mode of delivery to one that connects the curriculum using a concept-based curriculum, with a focus on 21st-century skills. The three subject areas connected were Science, Social Studies, and English at Year 9 and Year 10 (students aged approximately 13–15). A challenge for the school involved in this research was how to shift to a future-focused institution and support teachers in changing the design of the curriculum and pedagogy. There is a range of literature on curriculum integration but there are limited resources for teachers on how to implement curriculum integration. This research focused on examining the processes the school’s Senior Leadership Team undertook to create a learning institution that is future-focused, which would enable teachers to change their curriculum design and delivery.

The school involved in this research designed and implemented change by having a clear understanding of the school’s ‘Character and Culture’, which then informed the school's systems, pedagogy, and curriculum. Understanding the Character and Culture of the school was about knowing the people currently within the institution, who they are as individuals, the strengths and weaknesses, the diversity of the student population, and the needs of the students and staff. Each school has its own character, such as the history of the school, location, and people within the school, which can change over time. Established schools need to work with the people within the school community to drive change. Before embarking on changes that affect curriculum, pedagogy, and systems, the findings of this research indicate that schools should take the time to understand fully the Character and Culture of the school.

This research not only examined how the Senior Leadership Team created an environment for change but also how teachers at the school, involved in this research, plan, and implement a future-focused Connected curriculum for the subjects of Science, Social Studies, and English. As part of this research, based on the literature and working with the teachers, the researcher designed a new pedagogical framework called the Connected- Curriculum Learning Design Framework. This new Connected Curriculum Learning Design Framework considers 21st-century skills, concept-based curriculum, and specialist-subject pedagogical content knowledge. It is based on students developing and creating knowledge by moving students from surface-to-deep to transference of learning while concurrently developing 21st-century skills by using innovative pedagogical strategies and a concept-based curriculum. This research captured the experiences of three teachers involved with the planning and implementation of the curriculum with a Connected learning class at Year 9 and Year 10.

The two most significant outcomes of this research are the Connected Curriculum Learning Design Framework and an understanding of Character and Culture. The Connected Curriculum Learning Design Framework used in conjunction with practical planning documents provides a method for moving students through three phases of learning: surface-to-deep-to-transference of learning using innovative pedagogies. However, before teachers can redesign a curriculum that is future-focused, it is necessary for a Senior Leadership Team to create an environment for change, and the teachers involved have a coherent understanding of the purpose. The understanding of the Character and Culture of the school is a significant outcome of this research as it provided the ability for the teachers and the researcher, as the coordinator of the Connected classroom, to shift from a traditional form of teaching to one that is future-focused. Schools wanting to make significant change, from a traditional mode of instruction to one that is future-focused, first need to consider the Culture and Character of the school undergoing change prior to implementing new pedagogical approaches. The Connected Curriculum Learning Design framework provides a pedagogical approach for teachers to design and deliver agentic learning programs for students, which include subject-specialist learning, curriculum integration and a focus on 21st century skills.

 

Saturday, January 14, 2023

ChatGPT: an Educators Perspective

ChatGPT

ChatGPT is a conversational AI that follows instructions given via a prompt. ChatGPT has the ability to answer follow-up questions, admit its mistakes, challenge incorrect premises, and reject inappropriate requests”. It can also correct code. (https://openai.com).

A quick search on LinkedIn, YouTube and educational pages on Facebook that I follow reveals a very interesting conversation taking place. These conversations  include everything from how to use ChatGPT for planning lessons to concern around students plagiarising using ChatGPT. The future capabilities of AI are fast becoming a reality and there seems to be equal amounts of excitement and concern!

There are YouTube videos on how to create lesson plans, rubrics, comprehension resources where ChatGPT does the heavy lifting; creating the resources, designing the inference questions, and even providing the answer grid and for the appropriate level (see here https://tinyurl.com/yc8mfwed).

A simple search online for ‘can ChatGPT solve IB maths questions’ turns up this blog post on what questions ChatGPT got right and wrong: https://tinyurl.com/2p8s5pcs. ChatGPT scored 5 with the author noting that with a few tweaks it could easily score higher. It did make some very surprising basic mistakes – but overall was still able to achieve a solid IB Level 5 (a good performance), and it did this in about 5-10 minutes” (Chambers, 2022). 

As far as essays go, just provide a prompt with the context, level, wordcount and question and voila! ChatGPT can even provide feedback on student writing.

This all sounds pretty useful. However, ChatGPT currently has a number of limitations. It will fill in knowledge gaps, make mistakes, and include references that don’t exist. It’s constantly being developed by the users and therefore dependant on the views, opinions etc. of those humans “ChatGPT was trained using a massive dataset of text written by humans that was pulled from the Internet. Thus, the responses can reflect the biases of the humans who wrote the text used in the training dataset”. (Torrey, p7). Because of this ChatGPT can be discriminatory and biased.

ChatGPT is an interesting tool in that teachers can use it to ‘save time’ and essentially students could use it to potentially ‘pass’ with minimal effort. It comes as no surprise that newsfeeds in the edusphere are filled with teachers voicing their concerns (and equally as many showing their support) around students using such technology.

Cyberwise (https://tinyurl.com/2mnazjre) recently produced an article on the positive and negatives of ChatGPT written by ChatGPT itself. This article asked the question of whether students using ChatGPT was plagiarism and the response from ChatGPT was this:

It is generally considered plagiarism to present someone else's work as your own, whether you have copied it directly or asked someone else to produce it for you. This includes using a language model such as ChatGPT to generate text that you then submit as your own.” (ChatGPT)

With all the fuss around this, I’m sure it’s only a matter of time until another digital tool will identify whether the student work is their own or from an AI tool like ChatGPT. But what to do in the interim? Well, in this author’s opinion, perhaps we teachers learn to embrace it.

Research conducted By Susnjak at Massey University, NZ, titled ‘ChatGPT: The End of Exam Integrity’ found that ChatGPT can produce work that demonstrates critical thinking. This raises good questions about exam integrity. According to the article, the area of exam integrity in online assessmentis under researched. An interesting finding in this research was,

 “It is clear from the experimental evidence conducted in this paper that AI technologies have reached exceptional levels and are now capable of critical thinking rather than just information retrieval…One of the most impressive capabilities of ChatGPT is its ability to reason critically, as well as express thoughts and ideas in flawless prose. This technology has demonstrated exceptional competency in these areas, seemingly matching the capabilities of humans” (p13)

The risk identified by this article is “that students could potentially use ChatGPT to cheat on exams, as the technology is able to generate responses that are indistinguishable from humans.” (p.14).

The question that AI such as ChatGPT raises for me is what knowledge and skills are currently of value to communities? My rationale for this is that schools are in the business of providing students with knowledge and skills that are valued by communities - be they tertiary, industry, familial or something else. Overtime, what these communities value in terms of knowledge and skills changes.

I can’t help but go back the OECD Future of Learning 2030 document and agree that:

“Students need support in developing not only knowledge and skills but also attitudes and values, which can guide them towards ethical and responsible actions. At the same time, they need opportunities to develop their creative ingenuity to help propel humanity towards a bright future.

As Andreas Schleicher, Director of the OECD Directorate for Education and Skills, commented in 2019, “Education is no longer about teaching students something alone; it is more important to be teaching them to develop a reliable compass and the navigation tools to find their own way in a world that is increasingly complex, volatile and uncertain. Our imagination, awareness, knowledge, skills and, most important, our common values, intellectual and moral maturity, and sense of responsibility is what will guide us for the world to become a better place” (Schleicher, 2019[2]).”(p6)

So, we have some choices:

·       Status Quo – essentially do nothing! Teachers could use ChatGPT to create lessons and assist with teaching. Students use it in their learning and potentially as a method for producing work that is not their own. This will then result in school policies and consequences to try and curtail the misuse (I use this term in a general sense) of the technology.

·       Embrace the technology – this choice has a lot of potential future scenarios, such as integrating AI into teaching and learning programs, changing the way we evaluate learning, changing our teaching and learning programs and the creation of new knowledge and skills, the list goes on…

Whatever we choose, the fact remains that the technology is here and will only continue to develop.

Embrace the technology but how?

This is a big question and one I don’t have the answer for!

But, I do believe that we need humans who can critically think, be creative, design and solve problems to improve the environment for those that live in it (ethically).

As educators we need to think about the purpose of teaching and learning, the content of the teaching and learning and if how we ‘assess’ is currently a good measure of success in students gaining knowledge and skills. While AI is increasingly able to respond to prompts with in a more human-like manner, we as teachers need to ensure that we don’t create passive citizens but active lifelong learners who have the  ‘attitudes and values to act ethically’. 

So, if our concern as educators is that AI is providing students with the answers – maybe we are asking the wrong questions?

 

 

 

 

Reference

Blakemore, T. (2023). ChatGPT tutorial for Teachers, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gQJOXn4NG40

Chambers, A. (2022). Can Artificial Intelligence (Chat GPT) get a 7 on an SL Maths paper? IB Math Resources from Intermathematics  https://ibmathsresources.com/2022/12/11/can-artificial-intelligence-chat-gpt-get-a-7-on-an-sl-maths-paper/

ChatGPT (2022). Cyberwise https://www.cyberwise.org/post/the-pros-and-cons-of-students-using-chatgpt

OECD. (2019) Future of Education and Skills 2030.  https://www.oecd.org/education/2030-project/teaching-and-learning/learning/learning-compass-2030/OECD_Learning_Compass_2030_Concept_Note_Series.pdf

https://openai.com/blog/chatgpt/

SusnJak, T. (2022). ChatGPT The End of Online Exam Integrity. Massey University Auckland, NZ. https://arxiv.org/pdf/2212.09292.pdf

Trust, T (2022). ChatGPT and Education, https://tinyurl.com/yv6m7ra7