On Consultation and Engagement

Posted on July 10, 2008 by Jeannine St. Amand

I’ve just returned from a day long meeting hosted by the provincial Department of Education regarding a controversial decision made by the Minister in this province. Near the end of the day a comment was made that the round table discussion seemed to move us beyond “consultation” into the realm of “engagement“. It is a comment that distracted me all the way home.

Stakeholders at each “level” (province, district, school) have the authority to make certain decisions, as well as the capacity to involve other stakeholders in decision making. Every few years we endure swings from centralization to decentralization and each time we create confusion, lack of empowerment, and dis-engagement of stakeholders at all levels. Our public education system is very bureaucratic and protective and though it often consults the public, it rarely engages the public in collaborative decision making.

A greater emphasis on collaborative decisions made through public engagement would mean better decisions and likely greater satisfaction with the results. So while the Minister would have the ultimate authority for any major decision, support for decisions made via a collaborative effort would be greater and the political price for the decision easier to absorb.

How do we move from schools as factories to schools as community learning centres? How do we foster collaborative decision making? How do we engage reluctant participants? How do we make sure students are full participants in the decision-making process? Which decisions do we need to work together on, and which decisions should each of us be empowered to make on our own?

I have more questions than answers, but I hope that what I experienced today was the beginning of citizen engagement in public education in NB.

How much is too much?

Posted on June 3, 2008 by Jeannine St. Amand

Recently Cindy Seibel wrote a post asking the question “Can there be too much information for parents?” (you can read her post “Is it ever too much?” here and read the original story in the NY Times ”I know what you did in Math Class” here)

As a parent interested in engaging other parents in our education system I wondered if these web service companies would go beyond what a parent would need to assess their own child’s performance – could they be used to increase the involvement of parents in schools, and ultimately to engage parents in school improvement planning? I decided to explore a few of these commercial school data systems and as in everything I found there is a wide variety of services – some simply offer parents access to information on grades, homework, and attendance, while others go much further and provide tools for multi-level communication and collaboration.

Those of us involved in education governance often discuss the role of communication in increasing parent involvement/engagement, we talk about the processof communication. Some of us see great potential in using web technology to improve this process – to reach more people where they are, when they want and how they want. Web tools such as blogs, wikis, nings and webcasts provide us with a lot of options for reaching parents (and many of them are free!). So in the absence of an integrated school community management system accessible to parents these tools could be quite useful.

But what kind of information should we be sharing to improve collaboration? What do parents need to know and discuss in order to be engaged in schools?

In my province we are a long way from finding that tipping point from enough information to too much. A large number of parents I talk to do not feel really connected to what is happening with their child in the classroom, and fewer are aware of what is happening educationally on a school wide basis. They want to have more frequent contact with classroom teachers as well as school administrators. Until parents feel there is adequate communication with teachers and principals can we really expect them to feel comfortable in a open, collaborative school improvement process?

Passion Based Learning

Posted on March 26, 2008 by Jeannine St. Amand

Today I read an old post by Konrad Glogowski on passion based learning (found via Remote Access) that stopped me in my tracks. The following passage says so much about what we need to be considering:

Today, however, we tend to think that using online tools that appeal to young people will automatically ensure their engagement. Genuine passion cannot be ignited with a podcast or a blog. Instead, we need to give our students the freedom to learn and engage with ideas that they find relevant and important.

My interest in blogging comes from wanting to learn more about engagement of parents and students. Coming into this I knew ”it’s not the tools, it’s what you do with them“, but I was thinking in terms of having parents and students take greater interest in education because they were participating in it. Now I hope we can go even further – all the way to schools that ignite passion.

I think the idea of giving a student the freedom to find his/her passion resonates with me because my son has the opportunity to pick a subject or topic for a project that he can work on independently when he has completed his regular class work, and he will have access to a computer (not sure what that means in terms of web tools yet).

Problem - our discussion of passion revealed he didn’t really understand what I was getting at. (So I had him look up the meaning of the word online without thinking of how else the word is used - I had to think quickly to get out of that jam). We finally made some progress when we discussed what he was interested in learning about.

In the absence of knowing ones passions can we substitute interests? Perhaps as a child explores interests they will become passions over time. So far we have determined his interests are figuring things out, puzzles, mazes, codes and making things.

As he would like to use the computer for this learning we’ve looked for some possible resources, but so far much of what I’ve found would amount to him “playing” online. He doesn’t really want to do a “history of” research piece – he wants to make something.

So, I’d welcome any suggestions you may have (other than Scratch which he uses a lot at home)…

Engaging Parents

Posted on March 14, 2008 by Jeannine St. Amand

The number of bloggers writing about education, in particular technology in education, is huge. I have more than 30 in my feed-reader that I try to keep up with everyday and I’ve visited hundreds more over the last year. Teachers and technology leaders are definitely engaged in the conversation of learning in the 21 century.

But where are the parents? I’ve seen a few blog commentators that look at things from the perspective of a parent, and of course many teachers/tech leaders are parents too, but it is rare to find people outside the school involved in the conversations.

There is one group of people I’ve found trying to change that. Lorna Costantini, Matt Montagne and Rhoda Cipparone host a webcast called “Parents as Partners” at EdTechTalk. They are using webcasts and associated chat rooms to bring parents together to discuss parent involvement and how social networking tools can help parents support education. (Lorna’s blog found at ourschool.ca has more information on past and future guests and some great links too.)

This webcast truly is a means of using “tools of engagement” when you want, where you want, and how you want. You can listen live or later on, you can chat in the back channel or not, and you can follow the links that are provided to learn more if you choose.

The next webcast is scheduled for March 17 - I’ll be there, will you?