Good to see
Salman Khan speaking at BETT, albeit by video link, rather than the
all-too-predictable and fanciful Mitra. Salman Khan trounced
Sugata Mitra’s gloriously irrelevant, utopian nonsense, with a level of
relevance, detail and understanding that is always impressive. While Mitra
talks a lot about education in the developing world with holes in walls, grannies and the hopelessly naive SOLE, Khan really has provided
a free, world-class education for anyone, anywhere for hundreds of millions of
learners.
Master - Swiss Cheese Problem
Khan's diagnosis of problems in some subjects, especially maths, has become known as
the ‘Swiss Cheese Problem’. In a linear curriculum, with a large cohort of
students, an assessment system that ignores mastery and demotivates through
the wrong mindset in teaching and learning - large-scale failure is inevitable.
He identified the problem precisely when he said that too many students in
maths get moved on to the next topic without mastering what they NEED to know in order to progress. Most students are moved on with varying degrees of knowledge and
skills, even the best performing students, with 80-90% scores still have a
10-20% shortfall. This shortfall varies from student to student, with often
significant misconceptions and absences dotted around their mnds like conceptual holes in a Swiss
Cheese.
Khan’s
solution, and I agree, is to close these personal holes and move forward
through the subject in a peronalised fashion catching and closing the holes, one by one, leaving no holes left behind. In practice, this means
less focus on summative testing and fixed grades. The emphasis, he believes,
should be on far more formative assessment and adaptive learning that leads towards
complete mastery.
Motivation also
In
addition, and I also agree, he also sees the need for motivational factors to
be added, so that the student is not derailed by fixed mindsets around ability and talent. The hideous 'gifted and talented' movement is typical but
much of the language around maths is about talent and ability, not perseverance
and resilience. Dweck is his theoretical source for improving the motivational
component. (for more on Dweck see here.)
Technology
The only
way to do this on the necessary scale, he thinks, is
to use technology. We have never, in the past, had the technology that could deliver
this level of adaptivity, while maintaining motivation. Now we have, he claims.
There are systems available that deliver personalized mastery through smart
formative assessment, formative motivation and smart realtime use of algorithms
and gathered data, to both eliminate the holes in the cheese, as well as
maintain motivation. I have been involved in such work, have seen the data and
the impact. He is right.
Conclusion
Like
Wikipedia and MOOCs, whenever you mention Khan, you get that wrinkled face look
and the educator’s favourite word ‘but….”. This is the Khan Academy’s tenth
year of operation and it has been groundbreaking. Khan’s combination of an
acute pedagogical analysis of the two key problems (mastery and motivation),
both in the minds of learners and methods of teaching, are a real wake-up call.
Technology is not about shoving devices into walls but using devices to close
down the conceptual holes when you teach – that is what adaptive, personalized learning
offers. Khan, for me, is way smarter than Mitra (or Robinson) and way further down the road in terms of real solutions.
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