Thursday 14 November 2013

The Education of Christopher Pyne

The approach to education reform intended by the new Government, as enunciated especially by Education Minister Pyne, is based on serious misunderstandings of the nature of education and the latest contribution to knowledge about it. "People need to understand that the government has changed in Canberra, that we're not simply administering the previous government's policies or views”.

The National Plan for School Improvement passed by the Parliament in June represents substantial advances over the existing school education system. Save Our School’s Trevor Cobbold points to the priority given in the Plan to reducing disadvantage.

The Plan breaks the link between government and private schools which allowed that every time state governments increased funding for disadvantaged students in government schools, a portion of it flowed through to private schools. The funding for disadvantaged schools is unfortunately spread more broadly than the Gonski Panel recommended. The reduction of funding to universities in order to fund the Plan is very unfortunate.

Five areas of concern arise from the statements by Minister Pyne about school education. They are first, the proposition that ‘the present model is not broken’, then the influence of standardised testing, the nature of school leadership, the nature of effective learning and teaching and the nature of the disciplines which form the curriculum, especially history, and the ways they are taught.

The present model is broken! Gonski Panel member Kathryn Greiner said that strongly in an interview on ABC’s RN. The evidence is clear: the disparity between the achievement of Australian kids in well resourced city schools and those in less advantaged schools and from less advantaged backgrounds, especially in remote areas and in indigenous communities, is amongst the highest in OECD countries and is growing.

Standardised testing does not improve student achievement. The main argument is that the tests help improve student achievement. However, variation of scores within a school is substantial so that comparison of schools is near meaningless: scores vary from year to year and subject to subject. School league tables are meaningless!

Attempts to link test scores to teacher performance: a survey of over 200 New York City public schools by Roland Fryer of Harvard University’s Department of Economics in 2011 found no evidence whatsoever that teacher incentives increase student performance, attendance, graduation or teacher behaviour. Study after study and commentary after commentary have strongly criticised the emphasis on test scores. They have negative effects on student health and wellbeing, as found by the Whitlam Institute. Standardised tests narrow the curriculum. The US group Common Core found a rich curriculum to be the distinguishing feature of school systems in countries whose students did well.

Adults reflecting on their positive recollections of schooling talk of teachers who inspired them by the genuine concern for their individual achievement! How much of Minister Pyne’s policies reflect that, the fact that teacher’s views of student performance are in fact superior to the results of standardised tests and that in countries whose students do well in international tests, teachers are trusted?

School leadership is not management or administration. The Abbott government and its supporters have praised the emergence of ‘independent’ public schools scheme started recently in Western Australia. This and policies of several state governments announced in the last year or so intend to give school principals greater control over budgets and hiring of teachers. The PISA reports make clear that the independence for schools which raises student achievement is not achieved by increasing the administrative burden. Effective school leadership is the same as for leadership in any organisation: strong support for teaching staff including setting high performance standards and developing good relations with the community as is shown in longitudinal studies in disadvantaged south Chicago.

The support for independent schools has led to greater homogeneity in classes as schools better resourced by federal government, student fees and private support attract already advantaged students leaving less advantaged to the meanness of struggling public schools and their dedicated but struggling teachers.

That the average scores of students in the highest quartile in the international tests administered by the PISA program have declined is surely evidence that the reforms of the Howard Government and its support for independent schools have not worked. Socioeconomic background of the class can make a difference of two years or more to the achievement of a child.

Effective learning is student-centred. Mr Pyne favours replacing student-centred learning with a ‘more didactic approach’ to teaching and said so on ABC TV’s Q&A . It ignores the evidence from studies by Stanford’s Jonathan Osborne together with Deakin University’s Russell Tytler and by University of Pittsburgh’s Lauren Resnick about genuine engagement of students in discussion: argumentation and ‘accountable talk’.

That teaching has been didactic and devoid of any human element is a significant reason why history and science teaching so often fails. It ignores the importance of meaningful feedback, as opposed to indiscriminate praise, by teachers to student as revealed by Melbourne University’s John Hattie and Helen Timperley of Auckland University and research in England. And it ignores the importance of intrinsic motivation revealed by University of Sydney’s Andrew Martin. 

A challenging and engaging curriculum is essential. Minister Pyne, like Prime Minister Howard, criticises history curricula for promoting ‘left-leaning’ views.  

History and science and every area of knowledge are evolving all the time, new themes and new views emerge, older theories are overturned. If curricula are to be alive and engaging new understandings from new research must be incorporated.

In areas considered difficult special efforts must be made: distinguished mathematics educator Celia Hoyles from the UK, speaking at a conference on curricula two years ago, recommended an extra specialist math teacher in every school. Australian students don’t do all that well in mathematics as shown by the latest OECD study of adult literacy and numeracy: Hoyle’s comments went unreported!

The traditional approach to education results in school leavers being able to repeat learned facts but cannot engage in analysis of the issues involved in those domains of knowledge. Those qualities are considered to be essential by many employers outside the fast food and similar industries.

The overall approach of the Coalition’s education policies completely ignores the critical importance of early childhood, relationships of the very young child with the mother and the vital importance of the education of girls and support for mothers. The latest Human Development Report, for 2013, from the United Nations points out that a mother’s education level is more important to child survival than is household income.

The single greatest contribution to improving educational achievement would be support for early childhood including preschool and interventions such as equitable access to parental leave. The gains are particularly strong for children from disadvantaged backgrounds: provision of qualified preschool teachers is essential. It is not child-minding.

By next year, according to the 2008 National Partnership Agreement on Early Childhood Education every child should have access set a target of all children in the year before they attend formal schooling should have access to pre-school delivered by a university qualified early childhood teacher for 15 hours a week, 40 weeks a year. Support for these agreements is essential.

Education does not, by itself, diminish poverty!

Actor and comedian Tim Minchin said much more interesting things about education at the University of Western Australia. Like, “life is best filled by learning as much as you can about as much as you can, taking pride in whatever you’re doing, having compassion, sharing ideas, running(!), being enthusiastic”.

Much of this education reform is just the unwinding of intelligence and creativity!

Mr Pyne could learn a great deal just by listening to ABC RN programs.

This post is also on my website. A longer version is on On Line Opinion

Thursday 7 November 2013

John Howard, Climate Change Denier and much more!


It would be easy to dismiss former Prime Minister John Howard’s address, to acolytes in London, presented at the invitation of climate sceptic and former UK Chancellor Lord Lawson. Over at New Matilda Ben Pobje has done that. So have others including Guy Rundle and Max Gillies in their 2002 production Your Dreaming: Poets, Pontificators and Expatriates and Jonathan Biggins and others at the Sydney Theatre Company satirise numerous politicians and others every year in their Revue.

Lots of people take seriously what John Howard says. His speech has gained a lot of media attention, a media which for the most part has given scant attention to the overwhelming scientific evidence for human induced climate change and its likely damaging consequences, as pointed out by Wendy Bacon of the Centre for Independent Journalism at the University of Technology Sydney.

Unfortunately, to respond to Howard’s remarks is likely to only reach those who already consider the science of climate change to be valid and the Fifth IPCC Report just released to be further evidence of that. Stephan Lewandowsky, now of Bristol University, like others, has cogently argued on numerous occasions why climate change science and science in general faces scepticism. Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway have done so specifically pointing to similarities with the campaign against action in cigarettes in their book Merchants of Doubt. 

But one must go on! Several of Howard’s statements are gratuitous, several are misrepresentations. That is not to say that the contribution of innovation and advance of technology, on which he relies, are to be put aside. Tristan Edis at Climate Spectator has sensibly paid attention to that.

But Howard’s principal statements must be identified for what they are.

He casts the science as another religion. We have been there before. It is a conscious and complete misrepresentation of the nature of science and of terms like consensus and belief. We should remember that Howard presented numerous annual Prime Minister’s science prizes. We would be straining credulity to concede that he does not actually understand the basics of science. Unless he never read the speeches he had to make beforehand. To suggest that the climate scientists’ statements are “sanctimonious” and that the term “denier” has some overtone of intimidation is to misrepresent the meanings of words and the nature of the discourse.

Howard misrepresents the present state of scientific understanding by branding it as a mantra, as a set of views to be not denied. And he asserted, “In the past five years, the dynamic of the global warming debate has shifted away from exaggerated acceptance of the worst possible implications of what a majority of climate scientists tell us, towards a more balanced, and questioning approach.” Rubbish! Dangerous stupid rubbish!

“Global warming is a quintessential public policy issue. Understanding the science is crucial; so is understanding the economics ...”

Indeed! Good public policy requires clear understanding. Global warming is indeed quintessential public policy issue. Understanding the science is crucial; so is understanding the economics; the argument cannot proceed in the absence of that. Howard does not understand the nature of science just as he does not understand the nature of history in his criticism of Australian history in the Australian school curriculum. In fact he does not understand the nature of truth as it is used in science.

He shows that with these statements. “The flood of emails coming from the University of East Anglia, the admitted errors regarding the Himalayan Glaciers, as well as the nakedly political agendas of some of those allegedly giving impartial scientific advice have degraded the image of the IPCC as the unchallengeable body of scientific experts on global warming.

“And the most recent IPCC Report has produced a grudging admission that the warming process has been at a standstill for the past 15 years. But we are assured that is only temporary.”

There have been eight independent enquiries into the leaked (hacked) emails from the University of East Anglia Climatic Research Unit: all show there was no evidence of scientific misconduct. Howard’s statement is disingenuous!

The IPCC has admitted that the statements that Himalayan glaciers would melt away by 2035 was based not on peer-reviewed science but on a media interview in 1999: the large Himalayan glaciers could not melt in a few decades. But the evidence now is absolutely clear: there is substantial retreat, just as there is of Arctic ice.

And the latest IPCC assessment is not grudging, it is as cautious as always: the probability that climate change has been caused by humans has now been ramped up to 95%. Anyone not understanding the high level of certainty involved in that needs to “go have a ear examination” as jazz man the late Roland Kirk would have said. 

The statement, “the warming process has been at a standstill for the past 15 years” is standard denier talk and relates to very high temperatures in 1998: this has been grabbed hold of to assert that the earth is cooling, not warming. Wrong! Research by Judith Lean, of the US Naval Research Laboratory, and David Rind, of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies published in 2009 shows the relative stability in global temperatures in the last seven years is explained primarily by the decline in incoming sunlight associated with the downward phase of the 11-year solar cycle, together with a lack of strong El Niño events. These trends have masked the warming caused by CO2 and other greenhouse gases.

David Karoly at the University of Melbourne, an internationally recognised expert on interannual climate variations due to El Niño-Southern Oscillation has pointed out that at short time scales, natural variability can offset that warming influence and cause short-term cooling. Global average temperatures have fallen over the six years to 2008 due to natural variations, with the warmth in 2002 and in 1998 due to El Niño events and the recent La Niña causing colder temperatures in 2007 and 2008. The long-term warming trend is unequivocal.

And Mr Howard's economics itself amounts to a mantra based on a naive view of the world and bad math. He draws upon the probable growth in the world’s human population and the trends in prosperity to envisage that a quarter of the world’s population will be lifted out of poverty. By economic growth!

Ongoing economic growth will not deliver ongoing economic benefits to the general population. The only people who believe that are fools and economists. (Not my words.) The world’s resources are limited and significant resources can continue to be exploited unsustainably only to the detriment of humanity. That is in fact what climate change is all about!

Howard ignores distinguished economists including Nobel prizewinner George Akerlof, Lord Stern, Ross Garnaut and a host of other economists around the world. Interestingly Akerlof years ago pointed to sensible risk management as had others: if climate change does not occur then taking the steps now will nevertheless not cost very much. But if it does occur and we have not taken steps to mitigate the effects, the costs will be horrendous.

More to the point, lifting of people out of poverty is not achieved simply economic growth! The proposition that general prosperity results from economic growth is a fallacy promoted by the adherents of neoclassical economics. United Nations Human Development Reports make it abundantly clear that where poverty has been alleviated it has been through cross border transfer of ideas and government intervention through carefully management strategies!

John Howard, like many who rail against the science of climate change, is defending his preconceived views developed over many years, views which are the basis of his political views. To accept contrary views would lead to political isolation, he would be left wandering about in an intellectual and emotional desert.

Howard, like some of his colleagues such as former Senator Nick Minchin are not agnostics, they are deniers. They might not like the term but that is not relevant. For a person in his position, John Howard’s statements are not just personal opinions. The are statements of a person held in high regard by many: the statements are grossly irresponsible and should be seen as such. The future of humanity depends on ignoring them. As ABC commentator Jonathan Green points out Howard’s and the new Government’s, view propel us into a realm propelled purely by political necessity.

The latest analysis by Sinclair Knight Merz (SKM) reported by principal consultant Walter Gerardi shows that we have to work hard at diminishing emissions, including replacing carbon fuels in energy generation, if Australia’s emissions target is to be reached. Assuming no mitigation policy is in place emissions are expected to grow by 15% on current levels by 2020. “Fugitive emissions are expected to have the most rapid growth, around 58 per cent, due to expanded coal mining and increased production of LNG.” Gas prices are rising which acts as a barrier to entry of new gas-based energy generation. A large share of the abatement would have to occur in the energy generation sector, according to SKM.

Meanwhile the BBC reports that warming gases have reached a record high and the largest storm in three decades is this week hitting the Philippines. The change of government in Australia has seen several bodies concerned with climate change disbanded as legislation to abandon the carbon price is being prepared for tabling in the Parliament.

The Australian government cancelled the traditional briefings given to businesses, diplomats and environmental organisations before the upcoming United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change annual meetings in Warsaw; Australia will be represented at the meetings by the Ambassador for Climate Change. The Prime Minister and the Foreign Minister will attend a government heads of government meeting in Sri Lanka. (Canada will not attend that meeting and India will be represented at Foreign Minister level because of concerns about human rights practices of the Sri Lanka government.)

Large numbers of staff in CSIRO, those on temporary appointments, are to lose their jobs as a consequence of the Government’s freeze on replacing staff in the public service. There are those who claim that the future of humanity depends to a significant extent on ongoing scientific research. However, Prime Minister Abbott said in his interview with Lally Weymouth of the Washington Post recently that defence expenditure would be increased to 2% of GDP when the budget is stronger!

This post was last updated 11:12am 12 November 2013



Sunday 3 November 2013

Leading Museums And Botanic Gardens Is Not Project Management

The report in the Sydney Morning Herald of October 10th of the departures of Frank Howarth from the Australian Museum and of David Mabberley from the Royal Botanic Gardens and National Herbarium (“Museum director joins public service exodus” by Anna Patty and Andrew Taylor) contains some statements from senior government persons that reveal profound misunderstandings of the business of these two enterprises and promotes some unfortunate interpretations.

The issues raised are ones for government, boards and executives. They are matters of leadership and governance. For more than 30 years the Museum, like its counterparts, has been successful in generating many millions of dollars from outside government, equal in proportion to most other comparable organisations from grants, sponsorships and major exhibitions. This seems to not prevent the ongoing efficiency dividend drive of Treasury, which we have seen rewarding Edmund Capon’s efforts at the Art Gallery.

A significant problem, very relevant to the Australian Museum which Mr Howarth is about to leave, clearly exists at the Botanic Gardens and Domain Trust as revealed by Chairman Ken Boundy : “the position [of executive director at the Botanic Gardens] has become more of a project management role”. That enterprise undertakes  research and collection management as well as important horticultural research, plant conservation and display, in Sydney and two sites in western Sydney and the Blue Mountains. The professional staff from the many disciplines are entitled, as at the Museum, to competent leadership and governance which understands, advocates and encourages the full range of work.

Leadership of professional people in scientific and related areas requires superior attention to recruitment, encouragement of performance to the highest standards, a challenging environment which rewards and coaches staff and so on. That is true whether we are talking about the leading biomedical and other scientific institutions around the world such as the Perimeter Institute near Toronto studying quantum physics or the major scientific and educational institutions in Sydney. Leadership of ‘knowledge organisations’ is absolutely not simply project management.

The boards of these institutions must understand the role of the institutions which they govern and the prerequisites for effective leadership of them. That includes persuading government to provide appropriate support. Not a simple task: many governments in Australia have adopted superficial and largely irrelevant practices which they wrongly see as the features of successful business. For instance, an obsession with financial matters and unreasonable demands for the raising of funds. Financial success flows from effective leadership, not the other way around!

By the way, what would one say about the successful launch of the Cassini spacecraft and Huygens probe by the European Space Agency in 2004 and the work which went into the eventual discovery of a Higgs particle at the Hadron Supercollider by CERN compared with the development of the Dreamliner or the management of Sydney Rail? Are scientists really just a bunch of boffins pursuing their own glorification or do they in fact have important lessons for us about how to achieve success? Lessons which governments might need to take on board.

Then there is the matter of the collections at the Australian Museum and the theft of some of its specimens by employee Hank van Leeuwin.

Contrary to what is said by Patty and Taylor, the Australian Museum was not “in turmoil” after van Leeuwen’s thefts were revealed. It is a gross exaggeration to say that ICAC berated the Museum for “management failures”. Whatever ICAC said the upshot was that the proposition, advanced after the investigation of the theft, that every specimen in the collections had to be registered led to vast expense for no good purpose. This continued the silly notion that the collections should be financially valued, requiring vast amounts of time to estimate the replacement value or sale price. Another government promoted ridiculous exercise in the name of accountability and transparency. As if the collections could be sold. Which they can’t. As silly as valuing land under roads.

The claims paid little attention to how effective natural history museums conduct their business including the management and care of millions of specimens. Collections are vitally important for understanding evolution, ecology and environmental change. Most specimens are invertebrates including insects, worms, crustaceans and similar creatures. Unlike mammals, birds and reptiles, the numbers of species of invertebrates are vast and the majority still await description and naming. That is common knowledge!

Most natural history collections are in “lots”, kept perfectly safely in storage awaiting further study and registration when they are named by an expert. The actual registration of every specimen, even of mammals, birds and reptiles, would make no difference to whether or not their removal by a person on the staff of the Museum intent on stealing them would find it easy to do so. Staff are trusted. The exceptions when they should not be unfortunately cause problems, like all rare events, in financial institutions as well as in museums.

The greatest contribution to the security of the collections and to the increase of our knowledge about the fauna and the natural environment would be to ensure that there are adequate fully trained staff at the Museum led by executives fully committed to the pursuit of scholarship and effective management of the collections and communicating the resulting knowledge and understanding. Unfortunately, the ongoing severe reductions in State Government funding of the Museum over the last 20 or more years has seen declines in the numbers of senior research people and other staff at the Museum and curtailment of many programs in all areas including public programs.

The departures of large numbers of executives hardly seem consistent with “normal operations of government” which was director-general of Premier and Cabinet Chris Eccles’ reported response to the departures. That four major cultural and scientific institutions have lost their CEOs in the last 12 months suggests systemic problems perhaps related to government’s demands for revenue. Hardly indicative of stability or ‘team NSW’. More Kookoburra-like – noisy and inconsequential – rather than like the Platypus, very clever but not often seen.

Organisations like museums and public gardens and herbaria, like art galleries, require the best and that means understanding by government and by boards. And yes, that will lead to economic gains also. If Australia is to continue to be a clever country we need the best, not severe misunderstandings and superficial excuses such as leadership of scientific and cultural enterprises amounts to no more than “project management” and that departures of four senior executives in one year is the “normal business of government”.

There are lessons from the best research and development organisations. They  are typified by leadership which encourages frequent interaction of people from different disciplines, even in one case, requiring presentation of seminars on topics outside their area of expertise. They ensure that as far as possible that they recruit the best possible people and provide a challenging and supportive environment. Some of these features are shown by some research organisations and some universities in Australia. It is by no means clear that governments have understood any of this.

More articles on leadership in scientific and cultural organisations can be found here, here , here and here.

This post was drafted after the article in the Sydney Morning Herald, to which this is response, was published.