Research ed presentation notes handout

Laura McInerney (@miss_mcinerney)

What problem in education would you

pay £1,000,000 to solve?

How the Millennium Prize problems could save us all

If there was a prize on the table of one million pounds to solve an education problem – what would be worth solving? I ask the question not because there is a million pounds available (if only!) but because there is something about the focus and challenge that comes from high profile valuable (and difficult) challenges….

Slide 2 Laura McInerney (@miss_mcinerney)

How the Millennium Prize problems could save us all

The best example of this is David Hilbert [he of the monocle]. In 1900 Hilbert took to the stage in Paris and gave a lecture in which he outlined 11 problems that mathematicians needed to answer if their subject was to drive forward. It is easy to believe that maths has always been one simple subject – but at this time it was quite fractured. After the lecture Hilbert published 23 problems and these became a motivator and focus for mathematicians who began to work purposefully toward solutions. In terms of problems Hilbert described one of the first ever set in the 17th century. There a mathematician asked, if a bead is threaded onto a wire at one end and is dropped to move to the other end, what shape of wire will help get the bead from one end to the other most quickly? (Laymans answer: a bit of a curve).

Laura McInerney (@miss_mcinerney)

What are education’stouchpaper problems?

How the TouchPaper Problems could save us all

Hence, problems are situations in which we are trying to figure something out – they are not just simply questions. And in schools we face such problems all the time “How do I…..?” I therefore thought about creating a list of ‘McInerney’s’ problems but given no-one can say my name, that seemed a bit daft. So instead I’ve used the phrase “touchpaper problems” – touchpaper being the thing you light to set off a firework. Touchpaper suggests something that burns the path towards an explosion of activity. So throughout the session, and into the future, the question is: What are education’s touchpaper problems? I.e., What problems could we solve that would “light the way”?

Slide 4 Laura McInerney (@miss_mcinerney)

How the TouchPaper Problems could save us all

Ok – what led me to be standing in front of you saying all this? I was a teacher, in secondary schools in East London. I left a year ago to….

Laura McInerney (@miss_mcinerney)How the TouchPaper Problems could save us all

Go and live in Missouri, where I am starting a PhD [And if you want to know what Missouri is like it involves cockroach racing, cow milking and rodeos – as you would expect]

Slide 6

•Learning

•Social Development

•Principles/Rules

• Justifications


As a teacher, I wanted to certain things from research: I wanted it to be about learning or a child’s social development – so I either wanted to know “how do I teach this child this thing” OR “how do I help this child develop a certain social skill – confidence, etc” Ideally I wanted principles/rules. Something equivalent to fire, fuel, oxygen for starting cars. Or ABC in respiration. Maslow & Bloom give some of this, but we are discovering issues around the edges with them, however until other principles rise up they will continue to be used. Not only do I want principles because I think they give a place to start (a sort of “do this first” it usually works)…. But I also want them because of the conversations about our ‘justifications’ that those principles can create. Intuition is important and acceptable, but as professionals if all we can say is: “I only taught this way because I felt it in my waters” then we close down the

potential for better conversations. If I say “I think you should have done x” and you respond with “well I feel it in my gut that my way was correct” and you don’t have any way to justify or explain the principle on which you based your decision then we are no longer able to have a conversation in which we could learn more. To me: that is not professional.

Slide 7

•Timings

•Locations

•Methods

•Data

•Priorities


Unfortunately, as a researcher I tend not to think about those things I think about what sort of research I can do that will work around school timings, locations, and what sort of methods or data will be accepted in academic journals. These priorities tend to push researchers towards institutional level research, or issues that are not about learning and social development. The ‘micro’ stuff that I wanted to know as a teacher, vanishes.

How do we bridge the Gap of Needs?


So how do we bridge the gap between researchers and teachers?

Slide 9 Laura McInerney (@miss_mcinerney)How the TouchPaper Problems could save us all

With cool and interesting problems that can bring both sides today! Now, I get that Maths is quite different to education BUT there are some surprising similarities: For example, Hilbert argued that there was a difference between the operations that mathematicians perform when working in the 23rd dimension compared to the 5th dimension. For that reason it would be easy to argue that each person should stick to their own dimension, however Hilbert strongly believed that if maths was to be pushed forward it needed to be done systematically and collectively. As in education – we can argue that this or the other context is different and special and needs unique solutions – but if we look carefully there are likely to be unifying problems too

Millennium Prize Problems

The Prizes were conceived to record some of the most difficult problems with which mathematicians were grappling at the turn of the second millennium;to elevate in the consciousness of the general public the fact that in mathematics, the frontier is still open and abounds in important unsolved problems; to emphasize the importance of working towards a solution of the deepest, most difficult problems; and to recognize achievement in mathematics of historical magnitude.

7 £1 million 1 – 7/2013


Also problems have added benefits. In 2000, mathematicians came up with a new set of problems – 7 of them – only one of which has yet been solved. They did so because: - It showed that maths is hard - It got public interest - It showed that the frontiers of

maths were still open - It highlighted the important of

working towards a solution - And it honours the importance of

research and what an achievement it is to solve things

Wouldn’t it be nice if we thought like this in education too!

Slide 11

What other edge-of-practice questions do

we have?


BUT – I was still aware that maths involves universal rules and laws, and maybe education is not quite the same…. So had other sectors used these types of problems? And if so, what made them successful?

v

Problems…..

In 1959 Richard Feyneman challenged scientists to put the Encyclopedia Brittanica on the head of a pin, with a substantial reward for the person who did it. It took almost 30 years, but it focused people on nanotechnology and drove people to look at a topic previously considered quite unsexy (people were much more nterested in looking at the stars, than pins). Learning: Needs to be specific.

Slide 13 Challenges….

In Australia the Great Cane Toad was originally released to eat another species but there were soon too many of them. A competition with cash was eventually stumped up and a trap was eventually generated. Learning: We have to look at the general principle rather than just intervention. The prize winner worked out the weaknesses of the frog first and then created the trap, whereas the government had previously just tried whatever they could using the resources to hand. We see this too much in education – some ‘invention’ given to us – but actually we need the principle so that even if we can’t buy the invention we can still use the knowledge.

Challenges….

TedMed is being spearheaded by medical leaders across the world. They have created “20 challenges” and are carrying out events and forums to discuss a variety of problems. They are not looking for solutions [see: even in medicine things are not cut and dry]. This sounds great but this approach is unlikely to help the teacher in the classroom in need of principles. Learning: Problems in our list need to have a defined end-point, this may mean some problems don’t fit, but a ‘nice chat’ won’t cut it.

Slide 15

What should education’stouchpaper problems

look like?


So what should our touchpaper problems look like?

1. Specifically focused on cognitive &/or social development


2. Principle not invention

3. A defined end-point

Slide 17

What are education’s #touchpaper problems?


[At this point people had a think of their own problems that met the 3 principles – specifically focused on cognitive/social development, gets to the heart of a principle over an invention, and has a defined end-point]

Slide 18

What is the shortest period of a time in which a person with dyslexia can be taught to spell the 1000 most common words in English?


This was my first attempt

If a child needs to remember 20 chunks of knowledge from one lesson to the next, what is the most effective homework to set?


This was my second attempt

Slide 20

Conclusion:What are education’s

#touchpaper problems?


At the end of the session people asked if the questions had to focus on cognitive/social development, or could it broaden to institutional or more philosophical questions? In my view, the questions should not do this. Researchers are already pulled towards these questions and they do not help the classroom teacher on a day-to-day basis. Even if we discover that single-sex schools on top of a mountain are the best, knowing that is not going to help me if I teach both genders in a valley school. Likewise, we all have personal values and philosophies, and we debate them constantly – but time we spend on that is time now spent solving the solvable. There are things we could find out if we decided to invest the time in it, and I think we at least need to retilt the balance towards these solvable problems.

Research ed presentation notes handout

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