The picture above was taken of Michael Phelps after he won the 100 meter butterfly in the Olympics in Beijing by 1/100th of a second. Anders Ericsson (2004) would say that the 1/100th of a second difference between winning and losing was the result of “Deliberate, difficult practice undertaken over a long period of time, while receiving informative feedback, and having opportunities for repetition and correction of errors, which leads to elite performance.”Phelps deliberate “difficult” practice includes swimming 80,000 meters a week (50 miles). He practices 365 days a years (52 days per years more than most other competitive swimmers. Every race that he swims is filmed above and below the water – every meter is broken down mathematically and analyzed by fluid mechanics programs. Numbers of strokes, speed of stokes, angles of fingertips entering the water, and the tilt of is head is adjusted based on this “feedback” to “correct his “errors” so he can reduce water resistance and increase his speed. His blood is drawn and a comprehensive blood analysis is run after each race to measure how many millimoles of muscular waste needs to be cleared out of his system before his next race. This “feedback” directs Phelps regarding the speed and the number of warm down laps he needs to swim after his races to drop his lactic acid levels back down to peak performance levels.
Why do I introduce you to this notion of deliberate practice and offer Michael Phelps as an example? I highlight the concept of deliberate, difficult practice, with meaningful and actionable feedback for the correction of errors (certainly not standardized tests), because foundational ideas like hard work, ambition, and dedication (time investment) were noticeably absent in the US National Education Technology Plan.
How can we possibly “Strengthen Leadership” without accountability and no mention of performance reviews with “teeth?” How will “Innovative Budgeting” ever occur in an educational system run by an undisciplined government that has proven it can’t fiscally manage anything well? The concept of “Improving Teacher Training” sounds good, but who is accountable for making it happen? I find it interesting that while completing my M.Ed at Temple (1999-2003) and my LST MS here at Lehigh (2005-2010), I have not had one online course. If not me, who? The grand generic verbalization continued with “Support eLearning”, “Encourage Broadband Access”, “Move Toward Digital Content”, and “Integrate Data Systems”, but I was left wondering about substance. If we actually achieve these goals as written and develop and disseminate quality educational content utilizing technology who will come if we haven’t addressed the foundational ideas of hard work, ambition, and dedication (time investment)? For example only 105,000 intrinsically motivated students enrolled for courses at the Florida Virtual School in 2008 (FVS Minutes, 2008), representing only 4% of the state’s total 2,640,000 students (Florida Department of Education, 2006).
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The Florida Virtual School has truly embraced US National Education Technology Plan. If fact, based on my brief investigation of their work I was impressed by the diverse, robust curriculum and quality of the content. Clearly, the effort at FVS is to serve motivated, ambitious students who have high expectations by offering them coursework that might not be available at their school. Who else but the top 4% of students would want to take courses like AP Microeconomics, AP Art History, AP Computer Science, AP Statistics, AP Calculus, Mandarin Chinese, Latin, Marine Science, etc.? I took a brief tour of the Mandarin Chinese course and was amazed at its depth. Students are immersed in the Chinese culture as virtual exchange students in China as they learn to listen, speak, read and write the language. If fact, my brief exposure to the Mandarin course content has motivated me to call the school to see if I can enroll as an out of state (adult) student. Out of state students can participate in FVS courses for a fee. If this is an option I am also interested in taking the Flash Animation course and the AP Art History course, as well. FVS is an awesome example of what is possible, but it is, unfortunately, an exception. But the FVS example also exposes our bigger “foundational” problem – the elephant in the room that no one has the political courage to address – How do we create a culture of “chasing excellence” in which the remaining 96% of Florida students want to participate in the same kinds of challenging coursework? By serving only the top 4%, 10%, or 20% we still lose as a nation.
According to Craig Barrett (Intel Presentation, 2008), there are more kids in China learning English than our 307,305,000 US citizens (US Population Clock, Aug 29, 2009). In the United States, only about 24,000 students in grades seven through 12 study Chinese (Aratabi, 2006). We are doomed by these kinds of numbers unless we adopt an Asian culture in which everyone in the United States is passionately devoted to educational excellence that only results from hard work, ambition, and life-long dedication (time investment).
References
Aratabi, Lori (2006). With a Changing World Comes An Urgency to Learn Chinese. Washington Post. Saturday, August 26, 2006. Accessed at http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/25/AR2006082501418_pf.html, August 29, 2009.
Florida Department of Education, accessed at http://www.fldoe.org/news/2006/2006_11_17.asp , August 29, 2009
Florida Virtual Schools Board of Trustee Official Minutes, Tuesday, June 24, 2008, accessed at http://www.flvs.net/Pages/default.aspx, August 29, 2009
K. Anders Ericsson, Ph.D. / Department of Psychology / Florida State University
Ericsson K.A. (2004). Deliberate practice and the acquisition and maintenance of expert performance in medicine and related domains. Academic Medicine. Vol. 79, No. 10: S70-S81
US and World Population Clock, accessed at http://www.census.gov/main/www/popclock.html, August 29, 2009.
Kevin,
ReplyDeleteThe core values of success are pretty clear for intrisically motivated individuals like Phelps. Schools, in general, seem to cruise past this basic concept and move right to curriculum, technology, and teaching training with big ideas that are always short on detail. Your example of Florida's Virtual School is interesting. About one third of the states have created virtual high schools; Pennsylvania has not.
IF you're interested in Mandarin online, you may want to check out http://li.blendedschools.net. It's a project that I helped to begin, and I still manage some of the grant funding that supports it. They have added adult classes to their offerings that include third grade through university. They also offer Arabic, Japanese, and Russian. Classes have live sessions with highly-qualified instructors, good textbooks, and great online technology.
My dissertation centered on fostering intrinsic motivation. In the words of Keller, "Motivation is the neglected heart of education." By the way, I hadn't known Ericsson was at Florida State. My advisor, Dr. Lee Tuscher, was a student of Gagne, the father of the field, at Florida State!
-Dr. G
Kevin,
ReplyDeleteI also chose to investigate the FLVS program (it caught my interest mainly because I currently live in FL) but also because I am currently participating in this class remotely and it drew a nice parallel. You mentioned something that I did not highlight in my summary; the fact that out of state students may participate in this program. And that a class such as Mandarin Chinese takes you on a virtual exchange student journey, something a traditional classroom environment would have a hard time emulating. Very cool stuff, good luck to you if you chose to follow this endeavor. My wife speaks a little Mandarin and she will confess it is difficult to grasp!
Jack
Kevin,
ReplyDeleteYour response promoted me to think more about virtual schools. Even though my undergraduate degree was in Elementary and Special Education I don’t remember ever discussing virtual schools. While this may have been due to the fact that PA does not to my knowledge have any virtual high schools, I feel as it is important to have a basic foundation of the many way students can be educated in today’s society.
I find it interesting that such a small amount of students participate even though the program seems to be successful. This leads me to some questions: Is the program only geared towards students that are at the top of their class? Can special education students participate, if so, how is their curriculum modified? I look forward to finding the answers to some of these questions throughout the coursework.
Sara
I think increased accountability and performance reviews for teachers would lead to more teacher interest in professional development and even in technology...if not a personal interest in technology, then interest in keeping one's job or moving up the career ladder. I imagine that performance reviews might include an evaluation of a teacher's use of technology, and without that a teacher might not be motivated one bit to change their styles. I speak from an outsider perspective of course, but I don't see why teaching jobs should be different than other jobs that depend on regular evaluation.
ReplyDeleteAlso - I have thought the same thing as I have been going through the MS program at Lehigh...why not an online course or two? I certainly can't complain about the quality of the courses, but I think taking an online course would be an excellent way to learn how to teach one - especially since that seems to be the direction that education is taking.