For Each and Everyone: Catering for Individual Differences through Learning Studies

Foreword

Foreword Hong Kong, like many other societies, has given serious consideration to how teachers deal with the diverse range of talents and abilities of their pupils. This concern came to the fore with the shift from elitist to mass education systems, which resulted in a far larger population of students in school and longer periods of time spent in formal education. The Hong Kong government introduced an innovative means to help improve its schools’ capacity to deal with student diversity. In 2000, it commissioned and funded five different projects, each of which was to develop, implement and disseminate a different strategy by which teachers could support the diverse needs of pupils in their classrooms. The five approaches involved, respectively, a focus on streaming pupils by abilities into subject groupings; motivation and models of learning; the development of a community of learners; the use of information technology; and, the use of variation as a guiding principle of pedagogical design to enhance learning. This book reports on the nature and impact of the last of these projects. The project had four key features. It developed a form of “Learning Studies” which built upon the Japanese tradition of “Lesson Studies.” Secondly, it used Variation Theory developed by Marton and his colleagues (1997, 1998) as its theoretical underpinning. Thirdly, it viewed pupil diversity as a positive feature of schooling and not as a problem, such that catering for diversity was viewed primarily as a matter of pedagogy to be addressed in the act of teaching. Finally, the strategy reported in this volume was developed with teachers through a process which was grounded in the reality of classrooms. What resulted was not a set of propositions developed solely from a theoretical framework, but rather a means to strongly empower teachers to work together and improve their pedagogy. The impact of the project is also reported in this volume. It is evident from the data and from speaking to those who have been involved with the project that it has transformed not only the pedagogy in many schools, but also created amongst many teachers a process which has facilitated both their ongoing professional growth and improved the culture of their schools. It has rekindled in teachers the belief that all children are capable of learning once x Foreword their learning needs and the object of learning for any particular lesson are clearly identified, especially those children who have hitherto been considered to have low ability. The work reported in this volume deserves to be given close attention by teachers and all those concerned with educating the next generation of citizens. Paul Morris President The Hong Kong Institute of Education ...