21st century learning


What does the future hold?


Graham Brown-Martin, founder of Learning Without Frontiers, has expressed some pretty radical views on the future of education. Headteacher Update asks for his thoughts on the direction primary education should take and how society is changing in the digital age


Primary education has taken huge strides forward over recent years, and yet you think it’s not fi t for purpose? I wouldn’t say that primary education wasn’t fi t for purpose. In many ways some of the most progressive steps I’ve seen have come out of the primary education sector where there have been more opportunities for teachers and schools to innovate than, for example, in the secondary sector. In the last three years, two of the winners in the Special Achievement


Category (our highest accolade) of the annual Learning Without Frontiers (LWF) Awards have been from the primary sector – Derek Robertson from Education Scotland and Dawn Hallybone, senior teacher/ICT co-ordinator at Oakdale Junior School, South Woodford. Both of these innovative educators had made huge strides in their practice by embracing the kinds of technologies already embedded in the lives and cultures of their learners. Using inexpensive game consoles with off-the-shelf video games. Using games as “contextual hubs” for learning they successfully


“Like road safety it is vital that our


children learn and understand the issues around digital safety but this shouldn’t prevent them using the digital highway.”


engaged their learners in rich, memorable learning experiences that went right across the curriculum from maths to creative writing and collaborative learning. It was their innate understanding of the world in which their learners inhabit that lead to their innovative approaches to learning, and their willingness to openly share their experiences with the teaching community, that justifi ed their awards. The third winner was Sugata Mitra, professor of educational


technology at Newcastle University, who placed computer kiosks in slum villages and allowed children to use it freely and without supervision. He proved that children could be taught through computers without any formal training. This raises deep questions about how we educate children and the infl uence of the kinds of technologies that are now common place in the homes and lives of the young. The structure of primary education lends itself more open to teacher innovation than secondary given it is more discovery focused, more child-


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centred and less geared towards arbitrary assessments, leagues tables and a factory approach to getting learners through a set of exams that have very little to do with learning. That said, there remains a suspicion among the teaching profession in


primary and elsewhere about technology and that is quite understandable given that so much of the technology has been ineffectual at best and a genuine barrier to good teaching at worst. ICT suites, interactive whiteboards, virtual learning environments –


technology so diffi cult to operate that the lessons are over before they have started – and the teaching of computer application skills bearing little relevance to a primary learners future are more than enough to consign technology to the cupboard in favour of more traditional, if outdated, approaches.


What use is a laptop or PC to a child who will never see one when they enter the place of work? What use is PowerPoint to a kid who is already uploading to YouTube? The problem here isn’t technology but the type of technology. We have seen vast investments that reinforce old teaching practice rather than technology that liberates teachers and allows learners to learn in a way that is natural to them. There is an irrational fear about technology in learning but this is


strange given that the majority of teachers in primary schools are already adept in its use in their own lives whether it’s the smart phone in their pocket, their Facebook page, Skyping their friends or playing video games at home. Teachers aren’t an alien species. They too live in the 21st century and, let’s face it, this is the only century a primary school child has ever known. But this should not be an argument over technology but why our


children are at school in the fi rst place. Is it state provided childcare? A socialisation programme? Or something more?


Recent governments have invested large sums of money in primary education; do you think this was a mistake? Compared to the investment government makes in shoring up a failing banking system or installing democracy in other countries, investment in education across the board is derisory. Personally I don’t think we can ever invest too much money in education because this is inextricably


Continued on page 20


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