Handheld Learning - learning with mobile and ubiquitous technologies

I admit I was slightly shocked at last year’s Handheld Learning conference at Goldsmiths when I shared a table one lunchtime with a group of committed comprehensive teachers and Alex confidently challenged our liberal antagonism towards selective education with the statistic from Theodore Darlrymple he quotes here.

At the time I was far too interested in the reaction of the teachers to collect my thoughts and respond intelligently, had I done so my instant reply would probably have been to leap to the defence comprehensive education, however, on reflection I can see that this stark comparison is too simplistic and emotive.

It is clear to me that comprehensive education has never been properly realised (in England at least) even now we still have selection by academic achievement in many areas, and by ability to pay everywhere, not to mention gender and increasingly religious segregation masquerading as comprehensiveness. From the start the experiment was ill conceived as a “Grammar school education for all” rather than more appropriate personalised learning for all.

So it is not the outcomes of the (hobbled) comprehensive experiment I would want to defend but the principle of a more appropriate and equitable educational experience for everyone. 

I have a similar “knee-jerk” need to defend mixed-ability teaching. I think you will find there is just as much evidence out there to defend it as there is to criticise it. The problem is that the issue is not absolute, it is relative to who you are and what you are trying to do. If you subscribe to a narrow, knowledge transfer view of education then setting and streaming may well squeeze more kids through your particular sausage factory. For me, learning has a broader remit than this and I would miss the dynamic of different perspectives brought to more active learning by diverse groups of young people.

I was at a meeting just after the public axing of maths coursework and (surprise) my first reaction was to defend extended project work. But yet again it is not that simple. Coursework was adopted to get at those procedural aspects of capability that are difficult to get at in a formal written exam. There are lots of them, they are very important, and they need to be registered and valued, but unfortunately coursework is not very good at doing this. Ministers may have different reasons for getting rid of it, but we need to make sure that we replace it with better ways of recording young peoples’ breadth of ability. 

So well done Alex, you pressed my buttons - again ;-) Unfortunately I am less optimistic that handheld devises in education offer instant solutions to any of the above. The educational establishment still holds the final say in school, and just as we have cocked up potentially exciting and liberating concepts like comprehensive schools, mixed ability teaching and coursework, I see no reason why handheld technology should be any different. Unless of course we use them to bypass school altogether?