Never mind the technology, where’s the learning?

A big thanks to Mark for drawing my attention to Alan November’s interview with Angela McFarlane which I listened to on my iPod when driving home yesterday evening. In it, she points to the issue of parents doing children’s coursework, and therefore cheating, but also draws on the notion of more creative coursework tasks, through the possibility of group as well as individual work, if they were conducted and supervised in school. The prospect of this is alluring, and for me anyway, assumes that the teacher has control over both the setting and assessment of the task. Maybe I’ve read this wrong, but the new regulations suggest a different scenario. One where the exam boards set the assignments rather than the teachers, with efficiency and streamlining being the stated aim. The complication of assessing children’s collaborative or team work abilities fits uneasily with these objectives.

My concern is not really whether coursework should be done in school or at home, but the notion that learning, quality and responsibility for that learning is something that only happens in school and not elsewhere. Alan November has this idea that school should be more like ‘work’ (which he alludes to in the interview), but ‘work’, as he will also readily admit, no longer regularly takes place in a ‘workplace’. The benefit of coursework for ’showing what students know and can do’ (a popular phrase used during the introduction of GCSE) has been known for over 20 years, but it seems that as we gain the opportunity for ‘anytime, anywhere’ learning through ICT and the internet, we look to solve the issues it raises by closing rather than opening doors.

Image credit: David Otto

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