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The Forum > Article Comments > STEM: part culture war, part cargo cult > Comments

STEM: part culture war, part cargo cult : Comments

By Nicholas Gruen, published 17/2/2015

We've nearly doubled educational spending per student in the last few decades. That's funded popular measures with little impact.

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Bravo!

I'd go a little further and suggest that the current model of tertiary STEM education could be almost completely abandoned and readily replaced with a model based on projects designed to stretch students learning.

There is nothing required of an undergrad course in engineering or science that is not available as a free or cheap resource online and with access via university library authorisation the resource becomes truly vast and comprehensive.

Allowing students to teach themselves as they do project-based technology development, with really high quality teaching backup in the form of colloquia, seminars, tutorials and simple email support would, I suspect, be far more effective than compelling attendance at lectures given by senior staff who have more important things to do.

We need to move, as rapidly as possible, away from the current linear model of learning and embrace the non-linear technologies that internet access makes possible.

I'd also suggest that it is critical for us to embrace a better model for teaching of the humanities. Mary Shelley's cautionary tale is still relevant.
Posted by Craig Minns, Tuesday, 17 February 2015 6:35:32 AM
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'STEM is all the rage in education – that's Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths.'

Could'a fooled me..

http://www.smh.com.au/technology/sci-tech/20year-decline-in-year-12-science-and-maths-participation-study-finds-20141006-10qvq2.html

http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/aspiring-teachers-abandoning-hsc-maths-20150213-13drr7.html

I'm not sure of the cause, there seems to me to be a rise in what we used to call 'airy fairy' subjects back in my day.

I'm not sure whether marks for HSC get scaled these days, but it used to be that you were rewarded for taking on 4 Unit Maths as opposed to General 2 Unit Maths, or 'Maths in society'(ie Vege maths) . At one point I was sure you had to do Maths for the HSC but now only English is compulsory.

So perhaps Maths skills were weighted in line with their difficulty, but now students have decided tactically they are not worth attempting in order to maximize their HSC mark. That's my stab in the dark.

It may be sexist of me, but these changes do seem to coincide with girls now doing much better than boys at school.

Anyway, it doesn't seem to me that 'STEM is all the rage in education'.
Posted by Houellebecq, Tuesday, 17 February 2015 8:00:39 AM
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“We've nearly doubled educational spending per student in the last few decades. That's funded popular measures with little impact – smaller class sizes – and politico/educational fads some of which have proven disastrous – like whole language learning.”

Education spending may have doubled over the last unspecified number of decades, but undoing that doubling shows how pointless that claim is. We can do that by cutting teacher salaries by 50 per cent (i.e., to $46,779 for the top classroom level in Victoria) or by increasing the maximum class size by 100 per cent (i.e., to 50 students in a secondary school), or by increasing teaching loads by 100 per cent (i.e., to 45 hours a week in a primary school), or by some combination, and thus drive the best people out of teaching into better paid and less demanding jobs.

It ought to be obvious that spending has to increase to keep up with the increased number of students and to allow teachers to share in the rising prosperity that they have helped create. Otherwise, able people would leave teaching and the students’ achievement levels would not just plateau, but plummet.

The Tennessee STAR study showed that smaller classes result in improved student learning.

The average secondary class size was 21.4 in 2013 (Summary_Statistics_for_Victorian_Schools_Brochure-March2014.pdf). The average secondary class was 20 in 1992 (Commission of Audit), so contrary to the myth, many classes are larger now than 23 years ago.

The long term is instructive. The secondary pupil teacher ratio was 10.8:1 in 1999 (the last year of the state’s first ever long-term Labor government, the one accused of being controlled by supposedly militant teachers unions. Yet that ratio had been 10.9:1, way back in 1981, the last full year of a Liberal government that cared about education in the state’s history. It is now 12.2:1, so in 34 years we have had a 12 per cent cut to secondary staffing.

“Whole language learning” might be a fad, but it does not cost any more than phonics.

People who write on any topic should get basic facts right.
Posted by Chris C, Tuesday, 17 February 2015 8:54:09 AM
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Chris, student achievement levels HAVE plummeted and in my limited observations throughout my own children's educational journey there are precious few able people in the teaching profession.

Houellebecq's comment is on the money and the original article is pretty close to the bone as well.

I assume you are a teacher, or associated with the education system.
Posted by Craig Minns, Tuesday, 17 February 2015 9:02:50 AM
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How wonderful to see a sacred cow swallowed whole and spat out in front of my eyes! And by a prominent economist to boot.

As someone who could be seen as part of the STEM establishment, I have tended for many years to button my lip on the topic of STEM education. But I have never forgotten my early attempts to get a job, after studying for seven years and doing the standard four years or so as a post-doc. For each job (this was in the 1960s) there were 400 or so applicants! I should have been delighted to get the interviews I did but what I really wanted was a paying job. Luckily I was eventually successful. So much for a shortage of scientists.

In my early days in CSIRO, and especially while I served my statutory term as a laboratory ‘union rep’, I felt the need to oppose the continual demands that schools and universities turn out more scientists and engineers. After all, I was representing ‘the workers’ and perhaps ‘the future workers’. To me there had seemed to be an adequate supply already. Where were those graduates going to find work? Later as a research manager I became an employer of STEM graduates. We always had plenty of applicants, though I never quite lost the illusion that my own cohort was somehow better than those who followed (I was probably wrong). So maybe the real challenge for STEM advocates is to drag the brightest students away from the attractions of law, medicine, veterinary science, commerce, etc. Good luck with that.
Posted by Tombee, Tuesday, 17 February 2015 12:22:15 PM
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Craig,

There is evidence of some decline in PISA results, but I have never seen any evidence that student achievement levels have “plummeted”. There are many reason for this decline, including the dispiriting attacks teachers are subject to year in and year out, the cost-cutting and chaotic decision-making of ignorant governments, the recycling of fads from the 1970s like the open classroom, the socially segregating socio-economic status funding model (kept in place under Gonski despite the incessant propaganda to the contrary) and the worsening working conditions in education.

The ability of people in teaching has fallen as the pay has fallen. Andrew Leigh did work on this years ago. Teaching has become a less attractive profession to able people. Cutting spending would make this situation worse as it would drive even more able people out of teaching. Once you closely examine any claim made about increased spending on education, its meaning dissolves before your eyes. All these claims have been either untrue or technically correct but without necessary and relevant detail.

I was a teacher. I retired several years ago, fed up with the system, but I resolved to maintain my interest in the field.
Posted by Chris C, Tuesday, 17 February 2015 12:31:46 PM
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Chris, thanks for taking the trouble to respond with some thoughtful comments.

I do think you're approaching this, perhaps understandably given your background, from the wrong directions though. We have been selecting the least able cohort of students to be trained as teachers for at least 3 decades, perhaps longer. The consequence is that poor teachers have turned out a generation of poorly trained kids and then we select from the most minimally competent to train the next generation of teachers. It's a race to the bottom and it has to stop.

Another huge problem is the very large number of part-time teachers and supply teachers who are dropped in on classes with no real role other than supervision. My year 12 son was looking for help a few days ago with a math problem (he didn't understand my explanation) and had to hold off for some days because his teacher was away (yes, everyone gets sick occasionally) and the replacement couldn't answer the question. The problem is much greater in some schools than others. His previous school, which was a complete disaster academically and administratively was overrun with part-timers. The high performing students still do okay in that sort of environment, but the strugglers simply give up and that is borne out by that particular school's record.

It starts at Primary school, of course, where the quality of teaching is the paramount determinant of outcomes in later schooling. Poor administration (often lousy principals promoted to their level of incompetence) leads to poor teacher morale, leads to poorly trained and motivated students. Add in the often chaotic homelife some of these kids have, including sadly my own when they were young; their parents recently divorced and being driven hither and thither by lawyers and courts, and the outcomes are predictable.

I have met some wonderful students of education during my most recent period at uni, but they are a minority. Teaching has to be seen as a vocation, not something you do because it pays ok and has good hours for when your kids are young.
Posted by Craig Minns, Tuesday, 17 February 2015 1:02:00 PM
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Thanks all for your comments. It's great to see thoughtful debate rather than linkbait and trolling in comments.
Posted by Nicholas Gruen, Wednesday, 18 February 2015 3:05:50 PM
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Craig,

I accept that the cut-off for teacher training, but a cut-off is a cut-off, not an average. There are still able people going into teaching, just not as many as in the past. I think we have reached the point of actually dong something about it. The NSW Coalition government has taken steps already. I expect the Victorian Labor government to do the same.

There is a difference between part-time teachers and supply teachers (a British term for what we in Victoria call casual relief teachers, CRTs). The CRT fills in because the class teacher is absent. The part-time teacher has a teaching load and is expected to run the class like a full-time teacher. Schools should hot have a problem with part-time teachers provided there is a sensible structure in place in the school.

You mention principals. One of the funny aspects of educational discussion is the belief that teachers would be better if principals had more power when principals themselves are just teachers which have risen a little higher.

Teaching is a vocation, but even highly motivated people need material recognition. If we want our students to perform at their best, we need to pay our teachers well, give them decent working conditions and support them in the job they do. Most of the “reforms” imposed in the last 30 years have been of no value at all.
Posted by Chris C, Thursday, 19 February 2015 8:01:21 AM
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Hi Chris,
A cut-off is not an average, but if the cut-off is moving down then even if all other things are held equal, so is the average, while the standard deviation is getting broader and the distribution is getting more skewed to the low end. It means that there are more kids likely to be taught by a substandard teacher and therefore, more substandard teachers in the next generation. I do hope that something is being done, because it's a genuinely bad situation that needs to be fixed properly and quickly. Every year that it continues makes it much worse, since older teachers who may on average be more capable yield the field to members of a cohort that is on average less capable.

It's not just the teachers, of course, but the rigidly processive model of management that has become entrenched within bureaucracies, especially Government ones.

I couldn't agree more on the subject of principals. In my own children's educational careers they've had 5 different principals. One who has recently moved on from their current school was really excellent - a standout performer in every way. I haven't had time to evaluate his successor yet. However, the one at their previous school was/is appallingly, tragically incompetent and to my mind has risen far beyond her ability. The primary school experience was also mixed, with a long-term, well-respected highly competent leader retiring to be succeeded by a person without leadership skills and a reliance on rules.

The problem with part-timers is that they are less committed to the job in many cases. As well, in some cases there are two or more part-timers serving a single class, so consistency goes out the window. The good performers get the attention and the kids who really need it sit looking out the window or on facebook disengaged from the whole exercise.

Yes, good teachers deserve to be paid properly, but the poor ones don't deserve to be paid the same unless they take the trouble and have the capacity to become good.

Thanks again for a good discussion.
Posted by Craig Minns, Thursday, 19 February 2015 9:22:10 AM
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Nicholas Gruen,

Thank you for responding as author to the comments. I realise that your article was really about STEM, but if you wish to find out more on what I was saying you can find details in my submission to the Senate inquiry into school funding (no 42 at http://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Committees/Senate/School_Funding/School_Funding/Submissions and a thread I created on the Gonski review at
http://community.tes.co.uk/tes_opinion/f/31/t/576719.aspx?PageIndex=1.
Posted by Chris C, Thursday, 19 February 2015 12:52:08 PM
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Craig,

You are right about cut-offs and averages. I am just trying to show the picture is not as bleak as is often made out.

I was a school timetabler in three secondary schools. It was not necessary for part-timers to share classes in any of them, though there was one year in which an acting principal put up a curriculum structure which could not work and which required to have lots of shared classes, not because we had part-timers but because the structure was just silly. In primary schools it would be different because normally the one teacher takes the one class for almost the whole week.

I can assure you that there are many teachers who want to see improvement in their profession, in both classroom teachers and principals.
Posted by Chris C, Thursday, 19 February 2015 1:01:53 PM
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Dr Gruen points out there are numerous calls for more STEM in schools and universities. But I suggest there are good reasons for this, and don't agree it is a "cargo cult". Australia's economic wellbeing and much of its society, depends on STEM. Our agricultural and mining sectors depend on science and engineering. The systems in our cities which keep the citizens fed and healthy also depend on science and engineering. Our fourth biggest export industry is education, which is dependent on technology and scientific research.

Dr Gruen claims that "old-fashioned entrepreneurialism" has been the dominant input to the success of Silicon Valley. This is not quite true, as what has emerged is a sophisticated blending of STEM and entrepreneurialism.

As Dr Gruen points out, there are free resources online. But there is little future for a country which relies on the education offered free by the government and companies of another.

Australia can hope that a few crumbs from the US entrepreneurial table will fall on the floor for us, or we can invest in our own future. One way to do this is to teach entrepreneurial skills to STEM students. I teach the Australian Computer Society "New Technology Alignment" on-line course. Students first have to find a business opportunity and then propose technology for that opportunity. Those working in an organization have the opportunity to do their project, for their boss, in the workplace. At the Australian National University I am helping with TechLauncher where students have to option to set up a new company as part of their for-credit project. I will be discussing how to teach innovation, at CSIRO in Canberra, 27 April 2015.

We do need STEM in-service training for existing teachers. This can be on-line, but needs to be more than just telling them to go a look at a web video. What is required is properly designed on-line education programs for teachers and for stud nets. Australia has had such programs, particularly for rural and remote students. Those programs could be broadened for all students.

More at: http://blog.highereducationwhisperer.com/2014/02/blended-learning-model-for-remote.html
Posted by tomw, Tuesday, 24 February 2015 11:57:03 AM
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