Transcript
Russell Bishop – School of Education, Waikato University
A number of Māori students told us time and time again that their teachers had lower expectations of them, and they find that really belittling and that they just keep on doing the same work and going round and round in circles and never make any progress.
Tony Renshaw - Teacher Rotorua Lakes High School
I think our Māori kids in particular need a lot of encouragement to have a go at something in a formal classroom setting. Often maybe they are not happy with the way we are delivering their education. And their way of showing that is maybe not appropriate, and it results in some of the statistics we would rather not see. But I believe that, like any kid, they’ve got a huge desire to learn – we’ve maybe got to be a little bit more creative about how we deliver that learning.
Russell Bishop
We’re risking turning out – continuing to turn out – 40% of young Māori people without any formal qualifications whatsoever. What we are risking in schools, and what we are risking as society, is just too frightening to contemplate.
At Rotorua Lakes High School, maths teacher Tony Renshaw has changed what is going on in his classroom. His key aim is to overcome students’ reluctance to participate.
Tony Renshaw
I think these kids sense that if they are going to have to say something it is going to have to be right so they don't say it. They must have possibly had teachers in the past who did chip them or make a negative response to an incorrect reply. I mean, they’ve learned that… shame thing.
Narration
Cooperative learning techniques where students work in small groups, collectively supporting one another's learning, have proven effective and popular with the students themselves.
Tony Renshaw
They’re bouncing ideas off one another. There’s a real engagement between students where they’re assisting one another, where they’re clarifying their own ideas against one another’s ideas. Feeling a little bit confident to have a go in their own peer group, where maybe they wouldn't have a go, say, in a whole class, but in a group of 3 or 4 of them, they are prepared to offer their ideas.
Narration
Students are responsible for becoming expert in particular content areas. They then regroup to tutor their peers.
Tony Renshaw
They have latched onto it naturally. It just seems to be an extension of the way that they’ve probably learned all along, and it’s taken us a while to click onto it. They want to look after their mates. They’re probably more aware of some of their friends’ shortcomings than I am. If they’ve grasped something, and they’ve been able to see it one particular way, maybe they can explain it better to the other student than I can. And maybe the other student is more receptive to hearing it from them than from me.
The kids will be having their normal interchanges as kids do, but the overriding thing in their conversation is still their maths. The new skill that I'm developing is to manage those group dynamics. To see who would assist or work well with someone else; to identify the student who might need a little bit more support. I think the energy’s gone in a lot more to the planning and the pre-lesson sort of work. And that is one of the things that has happened - it’s the focus back on the lesson.
Narration
Tony Renshaw's students have become accustomed with the routine of every lesson beginning with 10 maths questions. Recently students have taken over generating the questions.
Tony Renshaw
One day last week I was late to class. Feeling a little bit guilty, racing down to class. Go to burst into the classroom and – hello! – there is a kid up the front doing the 10 questions. Every single student in the class was engaged. I felt pretty redundant, but I also felt pretty stoked. I thought, “You know, these kids have got it”. They could‘ve easily wasted the 5 or 6 minutes I was late. They knew the drill. One of the kids has the initiative, the confidence and the support of the rest of the class to stand up and run the 10 questions - it was brilliant.
Narration
Ongoing professional development at Rotorua Lakes has staff sharing cooperative learning strategies and developing their formative assessment skills. The aim being to improve the discourse of the classroom.
Tony Renshaw
We are learning about things like academic feed-forward. For example, when I suggest to a child that they've got the idea, but where could they take it next? – it’s a bit of academic feed-forward. It’s pretty interesting, and I've become hugely conscious of making sure that I'm providing academic feed-forward, that I'm not always providing behaviour feedback.
Narration
The development of cooperative learning resources has been done together with Tony's fellow teachers.
Tony Renshaw
Most of the maths department are working on the collaborative strategy part - so we are sharing, making and sharing resources. And in making and sharing the resources, we’re teaching each other how we use that resource. And as a result of doing that, we are learning about how the kids are learning. The discussion about behaviour has, in a large way, been replaced by discussions about learning.
Tony Renshaw
You know, sometimes a classroom can be a pretty confrontational place, and that’s pretty stressful for teachers. And we've got the kids to buy in to their learning. If I went in there tomorrow and just stood in front of the white board with the pen, or put an overhead projector on they would soon switch off, and the disengagement levels would be huge. But there is a bit of time to talk about where we have got to, and yeah it’s just made it a lot more fun, a lot less stress.
Russell Bishop
What is absolutely vital is to return to the notion of what schooling is all about. And it’s not about people just being happy. It’s about people achieving. And what we are finding is that when you change the discourse in the classroom to a situation where people are actively engaged in learning then that is when you start making a difference in the classroom; that is the win-win situation. Because you reduce behaviour problems, you reduce absenteeism problems, and you increase the achievement of young people. Both groups win. Young people and their parents win; and the teachers, who after all, came into this situation to do something like this – they also win.