Minister Perry proposes reforms to Kalistani Schools
Collaborative Learning and Kinesthetic Learning to be introduced in Primary Schools
Eshar, Duchy of Odufaray
August 15, 5463
5th Graders, instructed by Ms. Barbara McKinley, take part in Collaborative Learning Pilot
The Ministry of Education unveiled a new pilot program to take place in all public schools in Odufaray, and then to later be introduced all across the Empire. Minister Perry announced the program in July, and it ihas already started in K-6 elementary schools in the Duchy. Called the "Collaborative Learning Model" this program aims to take a leap at improving educational outcomes not by adjusting the curriculum, but by adjusting the way students are taught.
"The predominant educational model on Terra today is the standard banking model," said Minister Perry, who is Minister for Education in Her Imperial Majesty's Government. "This model is pretty closely tied with liberalism, and consists of students sitting in chairs, facing front, while some teacher, who is presumably, but rarely demonstrably, an expert in some subject matter delivers a lecture. The students are then asked to remember that information until test day when they regurgitate it onto a test. Those who cough up the information well are rewarded with good jobs, an easy life, and material success, while those who do not do that are labeled failures, kept in a life of toil and barred from ease and comfort. We try not to do this in Kalistan, but it happens far too easily, because 1) capitalists desire docile workers, and 2) teachers do not have enough training or imagination to try something different."
The Program actually began 5 years ago, when another pilot program was introduced across several colleges and universities in Kalistan to train teachers on collaborative and cooperative teaching methods. The emphasis in this model is less on individual achievement, and more on relying on those around you to both help an individual student find answers and solve problems, and to teach each other what they may not know. "When a kid goes into the workforce," said Michael Bennots of Kaliburg Imperial University, "they will not be required to answer questions or solve problems without any resources. Teamwork and creativity, especially when it comes to using and improvising tools to solve complex problems, are highly sought after skills in Kalistan's economy. So why do we still make children learn alone and compete with one another. There is no analog to a cold test in the life of an adult. We want adults who, while they might not know an answer, they can figure out how to get to that answer, and who are confident enough to ask their neighbor for help when they need it, rather than being too intimidated by their upbringing to rely on another person."
This pilot program trained more than 750 teachers, all of whom were hired by Odufaray Schools to teach Kindergarten through 6th Grade this year. "Most of the existing staff were given other jobs in the Districts," said Minister Perry, "or offered an early opportunity to retire from the School System. A new frame of mind should be free to establish itself without old ideas cluttering everything up." Following the placement of teachers, they were assisted by college professors, parent groups and school professionals to develop curriculum that 1) met national standards, 2) challenged kids at the respective grade level, and 3) introduced cooperative learning and kinesthetic learning techniques in the class no less than 70% of the day. "Some classes, you just have to talk to students," said Perry. "So we left a bit of wiggle room in the curriculum. But the students will have enough of the cooperative learning, and the learning by doing instruction that we may find that that amount of wiggle room is no longer needed." In cooperative classes, kids will sit in groups and develop their own projects based on the materials. Tests will be developed by both students and teachers, and grades will be aimed at diagnostics, rather than evaluation. "In the Sixth Grade classes, we will allow students to weigh in on their own grades, as well as the marks of their fellow students," said Perry. "You know you know material when you can teach it to others and evaluate others according to rigorous criteria. And when you can hear others' evaluation of you."
The new techniques adopted will allow the Ministry to adequately determine whether this new teaching style encourages learning and retention of material in schools where it is adopted as compared to schools left untouched by the reforms. "We think it will," said Perry. "In our hypothetical model, we will not only see the effects of a single year of cooperative and kinesthetic learning, by comparing the grades of kids who only have it for one year, as opposed to all seven in Elementary school, but also the differences between kids in the same grade but at different kinds of schools, those who have the techniques, and those who do not. And after the 7 year pilot program is completed we should have a really good idea about the difference these different learning styles have on all levels of primary and secondary education."
Meanwhile, Universities and Colleges intend to train more teachers in this method of information delivery. The goal is to staff K-6 Public Schools with teachers trained in the Collaborative Education model all across Kalistan. "We will be training upwards of 425,000 teachers," said Perry. "Most will be retraining, but there will also be a lot of new ones too. Even if we don't adopt the pilot program across Kalistan, we will still have teachers that will have skills to bring at least some of this collaborative type of pedagogy into the classroom."
This is a major step ahead for Kalistani Education and has the potential of putting Kalistani students head and shoulders above students in other neighboring states.
