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Thai greeting…
Thank you for your introduction and for the opportunity to participate in Edfest.
I want to congratulate the British Council and the Thai Ministry of Education, Science and Technology, and the Ministry of Information and Communications Technology. You have brought together a wide range of education experts to examine a modern approach to the development and maintenance of standards in education: Quality Education in a Changing World.
The learning community has become a global and cosmopolitan group, and gatherings such as this provide an opportunity to renew acquaintances and build stronger ties. My friend and colleague, Peter Upton, has been contributing to Edfest in his capacity as head of the British Council in Thailand. I had the pleasure of working with him on the Policy Action Group on Learning, and I am delighted to have this opportunity to get together with him and so many colleagues from around the world who share a passion for building a learning environment for the 21st century.
But if we as a group are becoming more global and cosmopolitan, maybe it is because many of the challenges we face arise as a result of globalization. It may be the case in Thailand, as well as in many other countries, that many of the education reforms underway in Thailand come in response to the emergence of China as a global industrial powerhouse. How can Thailand compete economically? Through education reform, Thailand hopes to reposition itself as a major regional player on the basis of the knowledge economy.
This leads to some new innovations, I am told. Some of them are prompting serious debate about the role of the private sector in education, as Thailand turns to private-public partnerships to solve some issues. Some involve student-centred learning, in which education is demand-driven, based on the needs of the learner, rather than the supply of teachers. I’ll have more to say about demand-driven learning in a few minutes. Some of the innovations involve applying communications technologies in the classroom. Thailand's SchoolNet was launched in 1998 in partnership with the telephone companies here. Since then, 4300 schools have been linked to SchoolNet and 1500 have their own websites. The Thai program was inspired by Canada's SchoolNet, in which Canada led the world in plugging schools into the Internet and putting educational content online.
These kinds of innovations remind us that globalization has social implications – including the implications for learning. Too often, the social consequences are seen as an afterthought, or as an unanticipated consequence of change. There is a sense that, somehow, globalization will shut down our full capacity to be human.
But I would argue that, as Thailand’s determination to reform its education system shows, globalization often provokes positive change. Our challenge is to shape globalization with human hands. We can encourage more citizens to be architects of the global village. Among the key resources available to us are the ongoing discoveries about how humans learn. Our understanding of human learning is paralleled only by the revolution in modern communications technologies.
And clearly, we have witnessed a marvelous international response to the challenge of building a global learning society. When the San Francisco-based State of the World Forum’s Commission on Globalization identified six Policy Action Groups in 2001, it made learning a priority. The Priority Action Group on Learning does more than just foster dialogue and debate. We are interested in much more than simply articulating a holistic and humanistic perspective on the challenges all of us face in building cultures of learning. Rather, we are interested in crafting practical advice for decision-makers. We want to see the knowledge we have acquired about how people learn turned into realistic perspectives. We want those perspectives to form the basis for sound public policy.
Coming to Thailand, and learning of the particular challenges here, makes me reflect upon how Canada’s system of learning has evolved in response to its own challenges. Some of the lessons learned may be transferable to other countries; many of the challenges we face are challenges shared.
The Canadian Council on Learning – CCL – was created as a result of a nation-wide consultation on innovation. The consultation asked the question, “What does Canada need to succeed in the knowledge economy?” Time and time again, Canadians from all walks of life responded, “a highly-educated population.”
CCL has a mandate to provide a strategic and pan-Canadian perspective on learning. It is built around a model of collaboration and inclusion. It fosters partnerships among learning organizations, community groups, non-government organizations, governments and researchers. We all share a passion. We all are dedicated to building a pan-Canadian roadmap for learning. And we all want to share what we have learned with our colleagues from around the world, and learn from the best practices of others. Our mandate is to provide learners, educators and policy makers with high quality research and information about best practices in all aspects of learning, from early childhood through the workplace and beyond.
We have great momentum after a period of remarkable growth and change in the learning environment in Canada. Over the past century, Canadian society has moved from an agrarian, to an industrial, to a post-industrial society that is knowledge-based in a global economy. Learning systems have evolved quickly as well. But it was not so long ago that the consensus in Canada held that education commenced at primary school and ceased upon high school graduation. The lessons acquired at an early age were meant to last a lifetime.
Many of us here were raised with similar assumptions. But within our lifetime we have seen a remarkable change. The issue is not whether the lessons learned at an early age will last a lifetime; the issue is whether the habits of learning acquired at an early age will last a lifetime. We are developing programs to encourage learning at all ages, in the community and in the workplace. For the past two decades we have seen a remarkable growth of individual institutions that respond to the challenge of a knowledge-based society and continuous learning.
We have come a long way. But we have so far yet to go. The interaction of our institutions still seems mired down in that earlier learning model. And our learning infrastructure is still designed for that earlier model. Nor have structured curricula evolved to meet the new realities of lifelong learning.
I would like to offer four ways in which our systems of learning need to adapt to 21st century realities:
Let me outline each in more detail.
First, the continuity of learning. Learning must cover a very broad spectrum of life skills. The UNESCO Task Force under Jacques Delors helped articulate the vision when he described the four pillars of learning that would enable individuals to achieve their full potential:
No curriculum in a formal education setting has yet been devised to cover sufficiently all four aspects. And yet it seems clear to me that, without attention to each of these four pillars, an individual’s education is incomplete. Moreover, the degree to which we reinforce each of these pillars, the greater our chances of creating a dynamic and sustainable society, built upon the strengths of individual citizens.
Since time immemorial, societies have relied upon other elements of a learning system to help ensure that individuals acquire these skills. In addition to the formal education system, we have informal and non-formal learning.
Formal education is a hierarchically-structured, chronologically-graded system. It begins with primary education and continues to secondary and post-secondary.
Informal learning comes as a result of daily interactions with family, friends, peers, the media and other influences that help shape attitudes and provide skills and knowledge. Just watch how quickly an eight-year-old child can learn from his friends to surf the Internet. No formal classroom training that I know of is as efficient.
And non-formal learning is organized educational activity outside the established formal system. It is intended to serve a clientele with identifiable learning. In Canada, for example, non-formal education might come from sports coaching, boy scouts and girl guides, or after-school clubs.
Taken together, the three elements of education present a very powerful engine for learning. They support one another. And in our discussions on building a learning environment for the 21st century, we would be short-sighted if we focused on formal education to the exclusion of informal and non-formal.
Too often we treat the three modes as distinct elements. If we begin to look at them as three aspects of one overall challenge – learning – the sum can become bigger than the three parts. And from the perspective of the learner, the three modes are different aspects of one common theme in life’s journey – learning. All three merge in the lifetime of the learner.
It seems to me, then, that we cannot speak of the adequacy of curricula without thinking about the way in which our understanding of the process of learning has changed.
We all now master a discourse about continuous learning. But what does that really mean? And how does it alter the way we must think about formal education?
We are all aware that the current emphasis on lifelong learning acknowledges that learning occurs at any time and in many ways, from early childhood through adult and workplace education and training. The Canadian Council on Learning has recognized this essential reality by placing these three components – early childhood learning, adult learning, and workplace learning – at the centre of its concern. For each of these, we have established national networks to lead research, knowledge exchange, examination of promising practices worldwide, and monitoring of Canadian performance. We have done this based on the understanding that improvement in results begins with a commitment to monitor and report publicly on progress over time. (I will return to this point a little later.)
However, lifelong learning is not only about the duration of learning across the lifespan; it also implies a paradigm shift from the supply side of education to the demand side. This would mean that the scope and magnitude of education and training does not need to depend on the current offer by the State or private providers. The imperative of demand implies that there is no limit to potential provision because there is no limit to learning. Demand-driven learning also implies greater accountability towards learners. This means that monitoring the quality of curriculum, of methods and of delivery becomes significant. It also means diversity of provision in response to learners’ demands; greater weight given to employability of learners as a result of their educational experience; meeting the needs of adult learners; and general service to society.
This tremendous evolution in the concepts and processes of learning requires systematic change. With regard to financing learning, it requires resources for learning throughout the life cycle – by the State, by employers, by institutions and by individuals. It also requires that the foundations for lifelong learning be present throughout the life cycle and the educational support system. This not only includes a strong formal education system, but also career counselling, prior learning assessment and recognition, credit transfer, co-financing of workplace learning, and understanding of the complementarity of health and learning, most notably through health literacy.
It is not only that lifelong learning requires a broad systematic approach. Each part of the system must continuously be assessed and improvements made where necessary. In Canada, this ongoing monitoring is an essential function for CCL.
This brings me to my second point: the need to make more effective use of infrastructure to support all three modes of learning. We need to make schools and universities more accessible to non-formal and informal learning. And when we build community infrastructure, whether recreation facilities, libraries, or churches and temples, we are also building resources for non-formal and informal learning. We should also give serious thought to how these can be used by the formal learning networks.
Not only does this make sense from the economic perspective of using investments, resources, and space more efficiently, it also creates the opportunity for symbiosis. It creates a learning culture where formal, informal, and non-formal learning are all part of a single quest for learning on the part of the people who use these facilities.
It seems to me that the integration of formal education and informal learning provides benefits beyond a rational use of existing and limited infrastructure. When communities cluster around learning facilities, we build a sense of belonging and participation and provide greater social cohesion. We help improve cross-generational understanding.
The infrastructure required is not only physical – it is also organizational. It includes conditions whereby individuals may alternate their activities between study and work throughout their lifetimes – an easy and seamless transition of work/study/work/study.
The third point I wish to make today is that we need a more effective means of mobilizing knowledge, assessing the effectiveness of our learning systems, and transferring what we have learned.
By mobilizing knowledge, I would include conducting the research needed to gain a better understanding of the cognitive, psychological, cultural, demographic, and other factors that influence how one learns. In Canada, my organization has a Research and Knowledge Mobilization unit that works with our partners in the learning community to determine the research priorities we will pursue. We test our peer-reviewed research against four criteria:
The Canadian Council on Learning has identified areas of learning that require urgent attention: adult learning, early childhood learning, work and learning, Aboriginal learning, and health and learning. We have created five regionally-based knowledge centres across Canada to support research and knowledge exchange into these areas. These centres will build a national network of experts in their respective fields, and advise on the priorities for each domain.
Metrics and assessment are key tools for building a learning society. What gets measured gets done. And without an effective means to measure learning outcomes in formal, informal and formal learning, we are more or less groping in the dark. People and governments want to know which educational models and practices work well, and which do not.
Canada is a federal state where education falls within provincial jurisdiction. School programs differ from one part of the country to another. Making comparisons of results from these various programs is a complex task. However, young Canadians in different provinces learn many similar skills in mathematics, reading and writing and science.
Each province has its own approach to assessment. In Ontario, for example, the assessment of student achievement in the publicly-funded school system is conducted through an independent agency of the Ontario government, known as EQAO – the Education Quality and Accountability Office. It assesses all students in Grade 3 and Grade 6 in reading, writing and mathematics, and administers secondary school tests in literacy and mathematics. The assessments provide accurate, objective and clear information about student achievement. Teachers and parents can use the results to improve learning for students. Moreover, EQAO publishes school and school board reports that parents, educators, policy-makers and members of the public can use to monitor the effectiveness of the education system over time.
The benefits are many. Students know more about how well they are doing. Teachers and principals have more feedback on whether students are meeting the expectations in the provincial curriculum, and how effectively teaching strategies and school programs meet student needs. Parents are more familiar with the expectations in the provincial curriculum, and better informed about their children’s progress. And the people of Ontario have accurate and objective information about the quality of the publicly-funded education system.
This, as I say, is how Ontario manages its assessment program. Canada’s nine other provinces and three territories maintain their own systems. But all provincial and territorial education ministers seek collaboration and consensus on ways to assess learning. A new Pan-Canadian Assessment Program, known as the School Achievement Indicators Program or SAIP, has been assessing student performance in the core subjects of reading, mathematics and science. We’ve designed it in such a way that other subjects, such as second languages, information and communications and the arts can be added as the need arises.
The beauty of this system is that it not only enables us to assess the performance of our education systems in Canada, it also dove-tails with the important international assessments, such as the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA). We are integrating existing testing programs. We can use the information we gain from our assessments to tailor our policies for continuous improvement.
Some kind of testing is a more or less standard procedure in formal education. What kind of metrics can we apply to understand whether our informal and non-formal learning modes are being put to optimal use? What kind of metrics would tell us, for example, if our learning system is addressing each of the pillars of learning? For example, does the decline in voter turnout in Canada and other Western democracies signify that there are insufficient efforts to support learning to live together? Is there a metric that we can apply to monitor whether individuals within our societies are acting upon the now-common rhetoric of the need for ongoing learning in today’s workplace?
CCL is also developing a Composite Learning Index that will broadly represent how Canada as a whole is doing in all aspects of learning, reflecting Delors’ four pillars. The goal is not to create competition on test scores among the provinces and among communities. Rather, we are establishing benchmarks so that we can judge ourselves and measure progress over time.
If our analysis is based solely on standardized testing of school children, we send the message that this is the only stage of education that we consider important. Through its Composite Learning Index, CCL is conveying that all phases of learning are essential in creating a learning society. The Composite Learning Index will represent broadly how Canada as a whole is performing in learning. The indicators that comprise the CLI come not only from the school system, but also from earlier and later educational milieux – from early childhood, from the workplace, and from the key intersection of health and education.
Of course, the CCL composite learning index for Canada includes indicators from schools that demonstrate learning to know, such as student skills in reading, mathematics, and science, and the rates of participation in higher education. However, the index also includes indicators of learning to do, learning to be and learning to live together. For example, we measure the percentage of adults involved in job-related informal training and the percentage of employers providing workplace training as indicators of learning to do. For learning to be, we consider the percentage of children involved in structured activities such as early childhood programs and the availability of books and print materials at home. Examples of indicators of learning to live together include access to child care; the delinquency rate; and contributions to clubs or charities.
These are only a few examples drawn from our Composite Learning Index. In addition, each CCL Knowledge Centre will recommend a set of indicators for its particular theme. It is in examining the results for each of these, whether it is metrics for health and learning, formal education, or for adult education, that you we will discern progress in Canada’s learning systems.
Finally, let me turn to the importance of curriculum development in quality education. As I outlined earlier, an effective learning culture must build on the four pillars of learning identified by Jacques Delors: learning to know, to do, to be, and to live together. An effective learning culture should also make optimal use of each of the three learning modes: formal, informal, and non-formal.
It follows that an effective curriculum should reach well beyond the results desired in a particular classroom, or to complete a certain grade, or even to fulfill the requirements of several years of formal education. A curriculum should provide the knowledge and the tools that will set the learner on a lifetime pursuit of knowledge. It should empower the learner to make effective use of formal, informal and non-formal modes of learning. It should provide, as Mr. Delors would say, “for passage from one stage to another, and to diversify the paths through the system.”
Some curriculum content has stood the test of time. In Canada’s pioneer past, the “three R’s” – reading, writing, and arithmetic – were regarded as the foundation for schooling. Today, we continue to emphasize the importance of literacy and numeracy. Research suggests that the ability to read and write is the single most important skill that will determine an individual’s future as a learner. It is the keystone of learning how to learn.
Much of the recent policy discussion in Canada has focused on the role of computer literacy in a curriculum. We have been at the forefront of putting computers in our schools, and linking schools to the Internet. And here is one part of the curriculum that is surely advanced by informal learning, as more Canadians have computers in their homes, their place of work, and even their recreation centres. The computer and the Internet are becoming more widely available around the world as essential tools of the lifelong learning infrastructure.
But more important than the tools or the infrastructure is the attitude toward learning. And that attitude must be that learning is a lifelong pursuit – that one’s career and personal development will represent a constant mix of formal, non-formal and informal modes of learning education and work. And an appreciation that all types of learning play an integral role.
There is another aspect I want to emphasize about curriculum in a learning society. Not only must we use curriculum to help build bridges among the formal, informal and non-formal modes of learning, we also need to do much more to build bridges within the formal education system itself. We need much better coordination and fluidity between primary and secondary, and secondary and post-secondary educators to support learning throughout life. College professors and secondary teachers should consult one another on what is required in the overall learning system. Human resource professionals should be much better connected to the universities, colleges, technical schools, and high schools.
We need to eliminate the stove-pipe mentality in our learning systems, and start seeing all the players across the system as partners in a great enterprise, to build a learning society. We need to build learning networks that extend beyond researchers, policy makers and academics.
To reprise the question for this session: How then, do we build a curriculum of sufficient quality?
We will do so by keeping in front of us the fact that we are constructing this curriculum for a lifetime. Our curricula should not only develop mastery of particular content at a particular point in time. In other words, the curriculum is not merely for learning to know.
Curricula must develop the capacity and desire to learn at all stages of the life cycle. They must enable us to become self-directed, independent learners, utilizing all the modalities of education at our disposal. They must provide us with tools that assist our perception of the world; they must provide the skills to solve problems, as well as the tools that allow us to comprehend the physical and social worlds surrounding us.
As an illustration of the importance of problem-solving skills, let me cite results from the OECD Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), which tests competencies among 15-year-olds in basic curricular areas. According to the consistent results found in PISA, there are very significant differences found among participating countries in students’ abilities to solve problems. It may be, for example, that the knowledge of French secondary-school students may be at the level of those in Canadian schools; but French youngsters perform well below their Canadian peers in the standardized OECD tests. The principal reason appears to be that Canadian students are able to utilize better the knowledge that they have at their disposal, in order to solve problems and address issues. And it appears to me that these types of skills will serve them well in a knowledge-based society.
In this connection, the 21st Century Learning Initiative, which is a transnational movement, including a component in Canada sponsored by CCL, recommends that by the age of 15, in an ideal situation, most students will have become independent learners. This would mean that they will have acquired the competencies and motivation to seek and interpret information on their own; and that the role of teachers would become more that of mentor and guide than of purveyor of information to passive recipients. In this important sense, development of a curriculum of quality is perceived not only as the content of an educational program: it is also the way in which that content is delivered. Education and curriculum are not merely questions of substance – they are a means by which critical skills can be acquired and honed.
At this conference, I know that I am preaching to the converted. We have gathered here because of our commitment to learning, and because we believe we have something to learn from those whose educational systems may differ markedly from our own.
Through various international bodies, including the Policy Action Group on Learning, the worldwide learning community is advancing the notion that we can work together to build a global learning society. We can share best practices. We can measure and assess learning results from around the world. We can help build better learning environments in our respective countries. And we can do this without in any way diminishing our sovereign jurisdictions for policy and curricula.
Colleagues, we are very fortunate in our choice of professions. We have embarked upon careers that put us close to the heart of an issue that, I believe, will be central to the evolution of a global society in the 21st century, that is, the full development of the individual in every country of the world. Certainly we have to practice what we preach. There are few disciplines that require the application of lifelong learning more than the field of mobilizing, assessing and transferring knowledge.
Education should be shared, and not be the basis of undue competition. Organizations like the World Bank help develop the physical infrastructure of countries to help bridge economic divides. The learning infrastructure of these nations merits similar attention. The British Council’s work here in Thailand and around the world is another wonderful example.
At gatherings such as this, we help build a new ethos of global cooperation in education and in learning theory. We have a common goal: to help more citizens of the global village achieve their fullest potential. If we can learn differently, perhaps we can think differently. Gatherings such as this one help us to create the human interaction that will ultimately decide the fate of globalization.
I know I look forward to seeing what the future holds in our field of endeavour. And that enthusiasm for the future – and confidence in the future – and curiosity about the future -- is a solid foundation to build a culture of learning.
[Thai sign-off and thank you.]
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