Food for Thought: Ideas of Professor Yong Zhao

Dear all,

I didn’t send a Food for Thought last weekend because I knew this one would be long and I want you to read it. This is the final part of the excellent learning experience that I enjoyed at the INTASE World Educational Leadership Summit. I have already shared the ideas of Tony Wagner, Stephen Murgatroyd, Simon Breakespear, Pasi Stahlberg and Sugata Mitra; all of whom were very much on the same page with the call for change in education. In this final part I will share the ideas of Professor Yong Zhao from the University of Oregon. I will try to bring together two lectures and a Masterclass as succinctly as possible for you.

It’s not only the speakers at this conference and your Academic Director who feel that education needs to change radically and it needs to happen now! In Sir Ken Robinson’s new book, Creative Schools, that  I have just started.  The introduction, One minute to Midnight, starts:

“Are you concerned about education? I am. One of my deepest concerns is that while education systems around the world are being reformed, many of these reforms are being driven by political and commercial interests that misunderstand how real people learn and how schools actually work. As a result they are damaging the prospects of countless young people. Sooner or later, for better or worse, they will affect you or someone you know. It’s important to understand what these reforms are about. If you agree that they’re going in the wrong direction. I hope that you will become part of the movement to a more holistic approach that nurtures the diverse talents of all our children.”

 Last weekend I read this Mindshift article, What theFuture Economy Means for How Kids Learn Today, by David Price, that starts:

“If you were only to listen to politicians and policy makers, you could be forgiven for harboring two delusions: first, that the sole purpose of schooling is to create the workforce of the future; second, that the only place that our students learn is at school. If you believe that preparation for work is at least a part of education’s function, at what point do educators have a responsibility to face the radically changing employment patterns facing our students? And how can we re-think schooling to complement, not compete with, their informal learning?”

Both of the above authors connect directly with Yong Zhao’s work and thinking and that is what I want to share now.

Although this YouTube interview given by Yong Zhao does not capture his energy and humour it accurately provides a synopsis of his ideas.

He has also written several books. This is his latest that will be followed by several others and in particular, Counting what Counts: re-framing education evaluation which will be released this summer.

Yong Zhao feels that globalization and technology are rapidly changing society and redefining the value of human talents, knowledge, and skills. The knowledge and skills valued by schools today may not help our children live a successful life in the future. Yong Zhao discussed how technology and globalization has changed the value of knowledge and skills and suggested schools can do to cultivate successful citizens in the future.

Professor Zhao posed the questions, what matters in education today? What are the important qualities that make a person successful?  Success at doing what? What really matters? He talked about how all the data collected from longitudinal studies such as the Terman Studies show that high IQ, SAT scores and Standardized test results do not predict success in life. Zhao showed that IQ accounted for approximately 20% of success whilst EQ 62% and Feng Shui about 23%. Writers such as Keith Baker, in a key article published in 2006 called "Are International Tests Worth Anything?  questioned whether standardized tests are valuable at all. Research into the data would say not.

Talent has to do with context and given the change in context it is now time to redefine talent.

Zhao talked about our present economic environment and how we are living in an age of abundance. Gone are the days when it was necessary to produce a workforce that was compliant and ready for their roles as clerks and factory workers. Today’s economy is not producing the jobs to employ everyone leaving schools and universities. Big companies are getting fewer and are being replaced by small start-up enterprises run by small scale entrepreneurs. He explained that no longer will there be a job waiting for the next generation of youth but rather that future generations will have to create their employment. They will have to be entrepreneurs; business entrepreneurs, social entrepreneurs, intrapreneurs or policy entrepreneurs.

He explained that the skills he saw as critical were the 4 C’s; Communication, Creativity, Collaboration and Critical Thinking and that it is education’s responsibility to focus on developing these in all our children. He pointed out that modern assessment “assesses what teachers teach and not what students learn,” and that for education to change it is vital that what we value through assessment these changes.  He summed up this argument by saying, “what counts may not be countable, and what is countable may not count.”

In his Masterclass, he suggested that we should focus on the now, start from zero, don’t look backwards and asked what do we know about now:

·         Human nature is diverse, curious and creative

·         The economy is fast changing

·         Information is everywhere

·         The world is globalized

Working from this premise he suggested that we need to find ways to optimize each of these opportunities.

Human nature: We understand multiple intelligence and know that no one is supremely talented in all areas. What we need to understand is what are our motivating factors and what makes us willing to pursue areas of strength. It is clear from research and motivational profiling that there is a very complex set of objectives that encourage motivation and therefore makes us very diverse in our talents. Curiosity is seen as natural and is accompanied by a capacity to create. Humans use a trial and error methodology in order to come up with original solutions and this leads to new learning. Learning has to involve creativity. It is previous experiences that account for human difference in creative problem solving. Children are natural born learners from birth. Our ability to learn is what stands humans apart from the rest of the animal world. 

Fast changing economy: We have entered the second machine age. Machines are taking over many jobs but this provides opportunities. We have to decide which problems are worth solving and which should be left to far quicker and efficient machines. The key for education is to identify the skills and talents that will not or cannot be replaced by machines. As D. Pinks say,” we need to make sure students are learning something that can’t be done cheaper somewhere else.” In our age of abundance we have no need to hunt for food or find shelter which gives us free time that is occupied by consuming entertainment, health and education. This is where we need to focus on the unique qualities in each of our students. Opportunities that didn't exist before are opening every day.  In developed economies the rich are getting richer, the middle class are losing their jobs and automation has removed many working class occupations. But this should not just been seen as a negative because data shows that our economies are providing just as many opportunities for new jobs as they are taking away old ones. The cost of starting a business today is the lowest it has ever been.  The key question is how do we help students capture these opportunities? Are we providing them with the skills to recognize and accept these openings when they appear? Or are we still focused on the old economy that has disappeared?

Information: Today information is available everywhere and can be accessed very quickly. Schools were built to be the centers of knowledge.  However, they have lost their monopoly over information/ knowledge but are not reflecting this change. Education is refusing to accept the need to redefine its function in society. Schools still have an important role to play in society but it can’t be the same as in the nineteenth and twentieth century.

Globalized world: The biggest problem is the need to get on with each other. Our national systems still focus too much on competition with others rather than collaboration and understanding. We have to move away from a world where we want to be better and beat those from other countries. We need to teach children to see themselves as part of a global society. The globalized world provides the opportunity for everyone to flourish and make a living. As an entrepreneur it has always been the case that not everyone will like your product. What has changed is your access to the market. In the past if you lived in a village of 1000 people and only 1% liked your product you would end up poor. But today, the global world provides a fantastic opportunity. If only 1% of the globalized world knows and likes your product you have a chance of making a very good living.

Yong Zhao suggests that we have to capitalize on human uniqueness and build on our ability to create and recreate.  The key is entrepreneurship. In the past we just prepared people to find a job doing what other people wanted. He says that to educate children to succeed in present society we need to allow children to create the future. If we accept this then why not have them create their curriculum because when we create curriculum – it is for now/ past based on what we know not what students want or need to know. We have to re-imagine jobs and look towards mass entrepreneurship. This will mean developing a start- up mindset for all students so they understand business, social, combination of business and social and interpersonal entrepreneurship. As Apple recently stated, “if you want to be managed you are not employable.” The new requirement of the labour market is that we should be preparing students with a mindset that identifies opportunities, sees problems as opportunities and has creative skills that find new solutions through tiny variations. This mentality is all around us today, Uber being one excellent example. You just need one idea and then the resilience, social intelligence and social capital to make it work.

Yong Zhao stressed that schools should be focused on developing qualities and skills such as confidence, passion and creativity, alertness to opportunity, global competence, uniqueness, empathy, risk-taking, resilience and interpersonal skills. The pedagogy of school should encourage growth of entrepreneurs and it should be the schools responsibility today to create the changes. We should not allow our students to be bound by our own prison, we do not have to change everything and by starting small we can change enough to make a difference.

Yong Zhao's recommendations for a Creative, Entrepreneurial, and Global 21st Century Education are:

•       Stop prescribing and imposing on children a narrow set of content through common curriculum standards and testing

•       Start personalizing education to support the development of unique, creative, and entrepreneurial talents

•       Stop fixing solely the teaching force by selecting, training, and retaining better teacher candidates. It takes too long and we cannot wait

•       Start empowering the children by liberating their potentials, capitalizing on their passion, and supporting their pursuits. Start giving the ownership of learning to the children

•       Stop constraining children to learning opportunities present in their immediate physical environments by assigning them to classes and teachers

•       Start engaging them in learning opportunities that exist in the global community, beyond their class and school walls

•       Stop forcing children to learn what adults think they may need and testing them to what degree they have mastered the required content

•       Start allowing children the opportunity to engage in creating authentic products and learn what they are interested in, just in time, not just in case

•       Stop bench marking to measures of excellence in the past, such as international test scores

•       Start inventing the excellence of the future. You cannot fix the horse wagon to get to the moon. We have to work on rocket science.