I come from a long line of arguers. My mother and grandfather were politically very different, both intelligent, both talkers. Growing up, I spent a lot of time with my grandparents while my mother worked two jobs. My mother and my grandfather would frequently engage in heated debate, to the extent that my peace-loving grandmother would get so upset that she would need to leave the room. I loved listening to them spar and had no understanding of the content, so just watched in neutral amusement.
I sometimes wonder whether common ground gets us further in the various education ‘wars’. Potentially it’s more constructive to spur an opponent to action by finding a mutual motivator, like student outcomes. But then I remember that it was the take-no-prisoners advocacy of Dr Jennifer Buckingham who was instrumental in bringing about the Year 1 phonics check. Others like Professor Pamela Snow consistently call out misinformation, but also put their money where their mouth is by offering affordable retraining to thousands of reading instructors. We need the fighters and the peacemakers.
We’ve won the Reading Wars, while the Mathematics Wars thankfully struggle to take hold. But another skirmish may be emerging: the Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) Wars. The January National School Reform Agreement report did more than hint that stronger accountability was needed in regard to student wellbeing, while at the same time, teachers have reported in multiple reviews that a lack of training and stresses arising from this area are contributing to low job satisfaction. If I were a betting person, I would put a small wager on a few indicative questions being added to NAPLAN to track national student wellbeing. And if I were a pessimistic person, I might wager that these results could be added to MySchool.
So how is a concern with student wellbeing being weaponised – ok slight exaggeration – in the discourse? Robert Pondiscio believes that a focus on academics (difficult, quantifiable) has been replaced by SEL (hard to measure, usually not measured at all). This is visible in a lot of critical literature on leadership, and in Australia, I’ve certainly noticed a shift to educating the ‘whole person,’ ostensibly seen in non-academic outcomes. When final results are released, a lot of the LinkedIn discourse feels compensatory – You’re more than a number etc etc. Indeed, Melbourne University has seen a market for measuring non-academic outcomes with its New Metrics project, an attempt to give validity to everything but academics.
Pondiscio points to the ways that schools have come to replace the work of families, faith and other institutions and this is certainly reflected in the findings of the Productivity Commission. In the United States, this can mean all sorts of overreach that thankfully hasn’t reached Australia’s shores – yet. In the Australian context, the worry in the medium term is that the current issues – the lack of training, evidence-based practice and resources – will be magnified with increased accountability and emphasis. One can assume that teachers won’t have a concomitant reduction in curriculum or compliance.
Yong Zhao collates some additional criticisms. There’s weak evidence and that evidence is overhyped; it’s too broad and covers everything from friendship issues to 21st Century soft skills; it’s secular ideology. He cautions that it would be a mistake to move doggedly forward without open discussion and critique about what SEL is, what it isn’t, what it should be and whether schools should even be responsible. Dr Lucy Foulkes has even set up a special interest group of researchers and service providers to shine a light on the harms that can come from school-based programs.
What I hope to see is a rigorous discussion about what schools can and should try to influence. My current research is in academic confidence and ways we can instil a sense of self-efficacy in students. I feel very confident that this work is in my ‘lane,’ and I know that schools can be hugely influential in providing foundational belonging and even buoyancy. Just as with any potential ‘war,’ perhaps what’s needed here is a parley, some terms of reference, some agreement on what SEL is and should be. If provision of social and emotional learning is as important as academics, then perhaps some well-intentioned sparring is exactly what is needed.
"an attempt to give validity to everything but academics." Is this fair? Why posit traditional academics would be excluded? Cannot both kinds of intelligences be accounted for?
It would seem obvious at this point that 'non-academic' intelligence cultivation is pretty useful. The happiest, most successful folks on this rock are not necessarily the book smartest. Most arrived there by knowing when and how to apply what little basic knowledge possessed but more importantly, knowing how to lead and build consensus and support - the stuff SEL is about.
Qualities as fuzzy as courage, magnanimity, self-awareness, situational awareness, humility and other virtue traits can be benchmarked, quantified and tracked. True there is no universal yardstick for this kind of intelligence but the measurement tools are actually as rigorous as those used to access an essay or the soundness of a math proof.
In fact, it can be argued that focusing on meta skills development can have a much greater impact on achieving equality, increasing quality of life and mitigating negative coping strategies than a purely academic curriculum/pedagogy.
A useful case study is RBK, a character accelerator in MENA where upwards of 70% of female youth are unemployed. RBK grads skip an unemployment line that is 85 million long not because of technical or 'academic' acumen or strong foundational knowledge - many are refugees with out a high school diploma - but because of the social, emotional, logical and meta intelligence acquired in the accelerator. They are thriving because of their communication skills, ability to separate the music from the noise and ultimately, their acquired virtues.
We are at a steam engine moment in humanity. There will be life Before AI and life AFTER AI. Yes foundational, academic, technical knowledge is essential to moving forward both individuals and communities. But we are having our frontal lobes handed to us by an entity that has an IQ orders of magnitude greater than our own. An entity that possesses not only the collective wisdom of all of humanity but also the knowledge of how to piece it together given context. As such, it does not feel productive to be fighting against the one thing that can actually save us - our humanity.
Rebecca, I appreciate your thoughts around this topic and look forward to your contributions to this fii...conversation.
The current conveyor belt paradigm must be replaced by a student paced mastery paradigm built on learner competencies and student agency.