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Raising World-Class Learners with Yong Zhao
57 Plays2 years ago
On today’s episode: education scholar and author, Yong Zhao
Zhao is an education professor at the University of Kansas and at the Melbourne Graduate School of Education in Australia. His work focuses on technology and globalization’s impact on education. His latest book, co-authored with fellow KU professor Rick Ginsberg, is Duck and Cover which explores the outdated and ill-informed ideas that plague our school system and how we can rethink them.
Topics:
- 02:30 How ‘chance’ can become opportunity
- 08:38 The problem with education reforms in the U.S.
- 12:03 How the concept of the ‘achievement gap’ hurts students
- 15:30 Entrepreneurial thinking in the classroom
- 19:45 Giving teachers agency in reform efforts
- 21:30 How Chat GPT can help students
Recommended
Transcript
Testing Pressures in US Education
00:00:09
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But testing themselves are problematic.
00:00:12
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First of all, you are putting pressure on students, on teachers.
00:00:17
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You're putting the pressure on, so teaching has become teaching to the test.
00:00:23
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Another thing is that because only two subjects in the US have been valued, reading and math, and it has really already taken out time for students in other areas to discover their interest, to discover the possibility.
Introduction to 'How to Have Kids Love Learning' and the Hosts
00:00:42
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Welcome to How to Have Kids Love Learning, where we explore ideas and strategies for parents and educators that help students thrive.
00:00:50
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I'm your host, Ed Madison.
00:00:51
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I'm a professor and researcher at the University of Oregon and serve as executive director of the Journalistic Learning Initiative, a nonprofit organization that empowers middle and high school students to discover their voice, improve academic outcomes,
00:01:05
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and become self-directed learners through project-based storytelling.
00:01:09
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Teaching students to become effective communicators is at the heart of JLI's work.
00:01:22
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Well, today's guest is Young Zhao.
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He is an internationally renowned scholar serving as the Foundation Distinguished Professor at the School of Education and Human Services at the University of Kansas,
00:01:34
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and a professor in educational leadership at the Melbourne Graduate School of Education in Australia.
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His work focuses on technology and globalization and its impact on education.
Yong Zhao's New Book 'Duck and Cover'
00:01:45
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We first met at the University of Oregon where he was the presidential chair and director of the Institute for Global and Online Education at the College of Education.
00:01:55
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He's published over 100 articles
00:01:58
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And 30 books, including his latest Duck and Cover, Confronting and Correcting Dubious Practices in Education, which is co-authored by fellow Kansas University professor Rick Ginsburg.
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And in it, he and Ginsburg explore the ill-informed ideas and policies that continue to plague our school systems and how we can rethink them.
The Role of Chance in Success
00:02:21
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I want to talk about the new book.
00:02:23
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First of all, let me just welcome you, Young.
00:02:25
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It's so great to have you here.
00:02:27
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I have so much that I want to talk to you about.
00:02:29
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Welcome.
00:02:30
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Yeah.
00:02:32
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Yeah.
00:02:32
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I want to talk to you about the new book, but first, you know, I was doing a little additional research this morning and found a really interesting article on you in the Washington Post that talks about another book that you co-author, but it's really about you, which is Improbable Possibilities.
00:02:50
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And there was a statement that really spoke to me that I wanted to read from the book.
00:02:56
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And it says that the American myth of rugged individualism, the belief that humans succeed against heavy odds solely through their individual talent, determination, and intelligence, obscures the role that the interaction of genes, environment, and chance play in shaping a person's path to success or failure.
00:03:18
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And, you know, we always talk about nature and nurture, but this whole idea of chance is a whole nother concept.
00:03:28
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And I love that you go into it.
00:03:29
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And I just wanted to chat with you about that this morning, especially as it related to your own story, because you were born in a village with very little promise, but there's so many things that happen in terms of the historical moment in which you were born and
00:03:47
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that I just love to delve into a little bit.
Zhao's Journey from Village to Scholar
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So let's talk about that.
00:03:52
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Sure.
00:03:52
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Thanks, Ed.
00:03:54
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Again, it's so great to see you again.
00:03:56
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And this is just wonderful to have a chance to chat.
00:03:59
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I think in human life, we generally ignore the idea of chance.
00:04:06
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But what is chance?
00:04:08
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Chance is basically...
00:04:12
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when you take advantage of an opportunity, it becomes your chance.
00:04:17
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So suppose like everybody in my village had the same opportunity, but not many people took advantage of the same opportunity and they did not turn that into chance.
00:04:29
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The same thing like your work on student journalism.
00:04:34
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I think many people, we have seen that as a possibility, but not many people dove into that.
00:04:40
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I think that that is really important, but also in education.
00:04:45
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We like to think everybody's the same.
00:04:48
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Maybe there's some difference in nature, some difference in nurture, but how people take advantage of what happens around them matters tremendously.
00:05:00
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And that is very hard to do research on because, again, we can do proposed to factor research because, oh, yeah, you did that.
00:05:09
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But at the same time, how do we help our students or our children
00:05:14
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to take advantage and turn
Critique of Standardized Testing and Achievement Gap
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things into chance, into something that they could explore and they could develop, that would be powerful.
00:05:24
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I think that's the very, sometimes almost accidental, in many ways.
00:05:31
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What are the factors that you think have some children, you know, grab those chances and others not?
00:05:39
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I mean, I don't know.
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I'm gathering probably there's some research even about twins, you know, who have the same genetic disposition.
00:05:45
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But, you know, one may consider themselves more of an introvert and another one may consider themselves an extrovert.
00:05:54
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Well, I think, you know, definitely.
00:05:56
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I think that there are like, for example, your personality, but that also interacts with the chance as well.
00:06:04
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So the other thing, like, for example, you know, your ambition, your motivation and your self-perception as well.
00:06:14
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Like, for example, do you feel like you are able to do certain things or you are not?
00:06:20
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That really has tremendous impact.
00:06:23
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Yeah.
00:06:24
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Yeah, sense of agency or self-efficacy.
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Yeah.
00:06:26
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Exactly.
00:06:27
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Yeah.
00:06:27
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Yeah.
00:06:28
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Yeah.
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So you taught yourself to read.
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It's so fascinating to read.
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I mean, I'm going to go get this book.
00:06:34
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There was an overview of it, like I said, in the Washington Post.
00:06:37
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But you taught yourself to read.
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You came from a village where, like I said, the chances of you becoming a world-renowned scholar were bleak.
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Can you share a little bit about that?
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Yeah.
00:06:54
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Well, sure.
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I mean, I think, you know, the village is, you know, from just some kind of literacy perspective, was completely illiterate, you know, is that and people truly were starving for food in the 1960s, 1970s when I grew up there.
00:07:12
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People did die in my village because of the lack of food, famine and all those things.
00:07:19
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And it was really a horrible place.
00:07:22
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But at the same time, Mao Zedong, the leader of China at that moment, who started the Cultural Revolution, which disrupted the economy, but began to build primary schools in the villages.
00:07:36
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So that's where I had an opportunity to go to school.
00:07:40
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And also, jokingly, but not entirely, is that my father kind of said, since you're so poor at any of the village jobs, why don't you go to school?
00:07:51
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I was really bad at farming.
00:07:53
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So that was my disadvantage.
00:07:55
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So in many ways, actually, I want to just highlight that a lot of times if you look
00:08:02
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at the future more positively, your weaknesses may become your strength.
00:08:08
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When you're not good at something, that may turn out to be an opportunity that you can take advantage of and that becomes good.
00:08:16
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So I avoided, for example, Reni being a good farm boy, which I couldn't be, which I wasn't.
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So I turned up and it so happened, Mao Zedong began to build a school.
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I, you know, if there was no school, I probably would be the worst farmer in China.
00:08:36
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Hmm.
00:08:37
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Let's move to, to your, your latest book, um, that's coming out with Rick Ginsburg, Duck and Cover.
00:08:44
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And it really recounts, um, you know, some of the policies, um, during the fifties and sixties that still sort of inform, uh, policies today.
Focusing on Students' Strengths
00:08:53
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And you, you take on some sacred cows, um, you know, for example, let's start with standardized testing, you know?
00:09:01
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Yeah.
00:09:02
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Um, and, uh,
00:09:04
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You know, where have we gotten it wrong here in the U.S. in our effort to really give kids the best education?
00:09:13
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Well, I think, Ed, we've been doing education reforms for decades for different things.
00:09:20
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And I think the big problem with all these reforms is that they have been playing with things that really don't matter.
00:09:31
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If you look globally speaking, not only the US, our
00:09:35
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basic test scores have not changed much for the past 20 years, for the past 50 years.
00:09:42
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Even the most basic reading and math, I think.
00:09:46
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So we wrote this book, Rick and I wrote this book, really trying to expose some of the
00:09:52
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the problems which was viewed as good but if you examine them they don't really produce much you know testing as you said is a good example it's been adopted for in the us you know massively i think the last 20 over 20 years now it's become a standard for every student every classroom
00:10:17
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But testing themselves are problematic.
00:10:20
Speaker
First of all, you are putting pressure on students, on teachers.
00:10:25
Speaker
You're putting the pressure on, so teaching has become teaching to the test.
00:10:31
Speaker
Another thing is that because only two subjects in the US have been valued, reading and math, and it has really already taken out time for students in other areas to discover their interest, to discover the possibility.
00:10:47
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And also using test scores to judge students, to publish test scores.
00:10:51
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You're already defining students as you're not good.
00:10:55
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Schools should become a sanctuary for all students, no matter where they're from.
00:11:00
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If they can discover schools as a place they can feel good, they can do good things, that they have potential.
00:11:07
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That is a much better education than a place that tells them you're no good compared to other people.
00:11:14
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You're below the state average.
00:11:16
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You're worse than other people.
00:11:18
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You know, nobody likes a place that keeps telling you you're not good, Ed.
00:11:23
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Yeah.
00:11:23
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Yeah, I, you know, I have a belief in the work that we do with the Journalistic Learning Initiative, and a lot of it starts with middle schoolers.
00:11:30
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And that's when I just through observation discover that kids are,
00:11:36
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It's where kids start to collect beliefs about, you know, what they can do and what they can't do.
00:11:43
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Like I'm good at math or I can't write or whatever else.
00:11:45
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And they start to collect evidence for that to the point that by the time they're in high school, you know, they've convinced themselves that they actually have, you know, I guess what, you know, would be called a fixed mindset, you know, compared to a growth mindset, you know?
00:12:01
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Yeah.
00:12:01
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Yeah.
Product-Oriented Learning and Entrepreneurship
00:12:03
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So this section of the book, part one, the title of the part one is Dreams, Fantasies, and Nightmares.
00:12:09
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So you also talk about the achievement gap and our notion of there being an achievement gap.
00:12:16
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Can you speak to that a little bit?
00:12:17
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Because that language has become so etched, and particularly as it relates to students of color.
00:12:26
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We see so much data that says that there's a gap.
00:12:32
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Oh, I think, you know, the achievement gap is almost a manufactured concept that does more damage to the people rather than help the people.
00:12:46
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It started, actually, the term I started during, you know, the time people tried to maintain segregation.
00:12:51
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and try to look at this gap.
00:12:54
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They cannot be mixed.
00:12:55
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It was one of the reasons.
00:12:57
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And now achievement gap has become the term to say we are going to close the achievement gap.
00:13:02
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And we cannot close the achievement gap.
00:13:05
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We have not closed the achievement gap for the several decades.
00:13:09
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And the problem is that I will say, OK, the kids
00:13:15
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You know, in the white kids in the suburbs, they're not going to stop and wait for the black kids in downtown Houston to say, yeah, we'll just come up with something.
00:13:25
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What do we need to do is not try to focus on what people cannot do.
00:13:31
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Their deficit is to focus on what they can do.
00:13:35
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I think, you know, this paradigm of look at people's test scores and say they have a gap.
00:13:41
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We need to say, OK,
00:13:43
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That gap may exist, but does that gap matter?
00:13:47
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And we need to look at what these kids, you know, they have when they come to school, their resilience and their interest is different, you know, from the suburban kids.
00:13:59
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And so we need to focus on what they can do, especially when they come to school.
00:14:04
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And, uh,
00:14:05
Speaker
You know, the achievement gap is highly correlated with the socioeconomic status.
00:14:11
Speaker
And those socioeconomic status cannot be easily changed.
00:14:14
Speaker
And that's a societal problem, not a school problem.
00:14:17
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But we have students coming in every day.
00:14:20
Speaker
We have to work with them.
00:14:22
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So just impose that deficit model on those students does not help at all.
00:14:28
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And some of the gaps don't even matter.
00:14:30
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Like, for example, you look at
00:14:33
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The college entrance exam, like the SAT, for example, they really actually show a gap between, you know, we call that white and black and white and Hispanic or Asian and Hispanic and all this.
00:14:49
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But does that gap matter?
00:14:50
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Because SAT has not proven to be very influential on students' performance.
00:14:57
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So you have an artificial gap that exists and people believe that gap and they direct people to close that gap, which is impossible.
00:15:06
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And therefore, you know, we have a manufactured gap, which does not matter.
00:15:12
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You know, so we need to rethink about that seriously to not focus on the gap, but focus on people's strength.
00:15:19
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And also in a new age, you know, right now we are in a new smart machine age.
00:15:23
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Our children can do a lot more than what schools trying to force them to do.
00:15:31
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Yeah.
00:15:31
Speaker
You know, there's a wonderful series of books that you did called World Class Learners, which I really, really, you know, I really have taken a lot of value in looking at.
00:15:45
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And it's really about
00:15:48
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Infusing entrepreneurial thinking into schools.
00:15:51
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Can you talk about that a little bit?
00:15:53
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Because we hear so much about project-based learning, but you actually sort of coined the phrase product-oriented learning.
00:16:02
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Yeah, Ed, that's why I admire your work in journalism, because you are really asking students to produce authentic products.
00:16:15
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And, you know, the reason I did not like so-called project-based learning was, number one, the project was
00:16:23
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often pre-selected by the teacher, which does not have much meaning for students.
00:16:29
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For them, doing that is about the same as doing direct instruction.
00:16:34
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So students were not involved, their agency, their passion, not involved.
00:16:39
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Second of all,
00:16:41
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I think the project based learning does not teach students to identify problems.
00:16:47
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I think in your work, and I have to reference your work since I read your most recent book, you are asking students to identify the problems, to understand what it means.
00:17:01
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I think identifying problems and then seek solutions to that problem
00:17:06
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matters tremendously in this new age you have to be able to identify your own problem and the six solutions to that and third of all what i i did not quite like in the traditional project-based learning is collaboration i really believe collaboration should be strength-based
00:17:24
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and passion driven.
00:17:25
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That is in the collaborative work, you develop your strength further, you try to become better, but not doing the same work.
00:17:34
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In our traditional project, students do the same work in the collaboration, in project-based learning.
00:17:41
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What we would like to do is in a group of five, for example, even in your work, like you're writing a news piece,
00:17:48
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Some people can do the interview, others can set up the equipment better, others manage the current better.
00:17:55
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When you do the production, some people can do typesetting, some people can do the writing, some people can do promotion.
00:18:02
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People have different strengths and work should be strength based.
00:18:06
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So I think entrepreneurial work is not for you to necessarily become a businessman, but for students to exercise their agency in various ways.
00:18:16
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And today, that is very possible with all this social media, with all this technology.
00:18:23
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I think we can do that.
Empowering Teachers in Educational Reforms
00:18:25
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Students can become entrepreneurs who get to own their own learning.
00:18:32
Speaker
And, you know, I think a lot in terms of a shift in this direction, it's really going to require rethinking how we train teachers, right?
00:18:39
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Because if we're still utilizing the same, you know, practices to train teachers, we're not going to see this kind of innovation at the classroom level with students.
00:18:50
Speaker
Yeah, that's, well, that's why, again, the work you and I, when others are doing is very significant, is we want to give examples.
00:18:59
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Changing education is a historical burden, you know, for everybody.
00:19:05
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It's so difficult to change.
00:19:06
Speaker
It's so very hard to change, but someone has to make the changes.
00:19:11
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You know, there are plenty of innovators, you know, who are making the changes.
00:19:15
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I think teachers, some teachers are making the changes.
00:19:18
Speaker
I don't think the systems are,
00:19:20
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can make the change.
00:19:21
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Systems, you know, are there to maintain the status quo.
00:19:26
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I think we need individual teachers, individual school principals or superintendents to initiate the change.
00:19:33
Speaker
Well, look at you.
00:19:33
Speaker
You've done amazing things, you know, in some schools and that's good.
00:19:38
Speaker
You know, as long as some students are getting started, probably, you know, the impact has spread.
00:19:46
Speaker
Well, you know, it's interesting that you mentioned this because what we've discovered is that whenever there's a top-down approach to changing education, in other words, you know, the school district or superintendent's office, you know, issues a memo that they've purchased a new curriculum or something like that, you know, teachers roll their eyes because it's just the, you know, they perceive it as the latest flavor of the year and
00:20:12
Speaker
And they don't have any buy-in in it.
00:20:14
Speaker
So what we do is we approach teachers directly with an opt-in approach.
00:20:19
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And that gives them agency to choose.
00:20:23
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And what we find is that one teacher takes our program in a school and all of a sudden it creates a buzz in the hallways.
00:20:30
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The students are talking about it, other teachers are talking about it, and then other teachers want to
00:20:35
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participate in and it grows organically, you know, from from teachers who have seen the benefit.
00:20:43
Speaker
And I just think it's just much more.
00:20:45
Speaker
First of all, it just honors teachers professionalism that they you know, that they get to choose what they want to pursue.
00:20:51
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And we're just finding it's a much more effective way.
00:20:55
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Definitely, I think one of the problems with the education reforms that we've been conducting have deprived teachers of that autonomy, of their agency, of their professionalism.
00:21:09
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There is a tremendous public distrust of teachers because of this reforms.
00:21:15
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So we are putting test scores as that kind of measure to say, we're gonna hold you accountable.
00:21:21
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as if teachers did not want to teach or are not
The Potential of ChatGPT in Education
00:21:24
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able to teach.
00:21:24
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I think the room for teacher professionalism and autonomy has been drastically reduced.
00:21:31
Speaker
Yeah.
00:21:32
Speaker
I want to ask you about chat GPT and what your thoughts are about that.
00:21:37
Speaker
There's a lot of talk and concern.
00:21:41
Speaker
And I'm curious, given your interest in technology, where you see that playing in terms of the future.
00:21:49
Speaker
Well, I think there are... I'm actually working on an article about that.
00:21:54
Speaker
I've been playing with it a lot.
00:21:56
Speaker
First of all, we don't know where CHAT-GPT and similar artificial intelligence technology may take us.
00:22:03
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I think that's getting all the computer experts, education experts, philosophers to debate.
00:22:11
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Is this the end of humanity?
00:22:13
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But for sure, I know chat GPT and again, and many seminar tools are very powerful.
00:22:20
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They are going to transform our human society again.
00:22:25
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What the Internet has, you know, look, we cannot deny that.
00:22:29
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and automation has already displaced a lot of jobs, transformed how economy functions.
00:22:36
Speaker
I think ChatGPG will do that, which forces education to rethink about what we want to teach our children.
00:22:44
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If ChatGPG can pass the SAT, the GRE,
00:22:48
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or the LSAT, and that's the law school entrance exam, easily, why are we preparing our children to simply pass test?
00:22:59
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That's question number two.
00:23:01
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If ChatGPG can do so well in writing, in doing computer programming, coding, in doing art, in doing website, and most of the traditional stuff,
00:23:13
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while we're teaching our children to do the same chat GPT can do.
00:23:16
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So that calls into question of the content of our teaching.
00:23:20
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This is a great time.
00:23:22
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I mean, unless we teach our children to be more human,
00:23:25
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we are gonna be more mechanical.
00:23:27
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If you are mechanical, you're doing the same as ChatGPT, which can be replaced by machines basically.
00:23:33
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Second thing, I think ChatGPT can be a very powerful way to help human beings, to train human beings into something better.
00:23:42
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You know, that is actually, I heard from Professor Chris Diddy of Harvard, which we actually host a show called Silver Lightning for Learning.
00:23:51
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And he was talking about, I think he is,
00:23:54
Speaker
is involved in the National Science Foundation, founded the Center on Artificial Intelligence and Education.
00:24:01
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And he says that, you know, we should not treat this as artificial intelligence, AI.
00:24:07
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Instead, we should treat them as IA, intelligent assistant.
00:24:11
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So how can teachers and students use GPT as, you know, as a
00:24:20
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IA, intelligent assistant, that can help us a lot.
00:24:24
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I was in Australia just last week.
00:24:27
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I saw actually one school that has been doing that.
00:24:31
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They're informing their teachers how you could have chat GPT to generate drafts, have students improve on them, have students learn how to give prompt to chat GPT.
00:24:42
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So we need to teach our students to say, chat GPT is here to help you
00:24:47
Speaker
But you need to improve, you know, like I'm sure in writing news, writing reports, you know, I'm sure you can use chat to write, but you know, that does not have a personal, unique Ed Madison kind of style, right?
00:25:04
Speaker
You need to have put the humanity into that.
00:25:07
Speaker
I think education has to change.
Conclusion and Future Collaborations
00:25:10
Speaker
Young, this has been a fascinating conversation.
00:25:14
Speaker
And I'm glad to know that you're actually still residing here in Eugene.
00:25:18
Speaker
So, but thank you so much.
00:25:21
Speaker
Looking forward to talking with you offline and making plans to get together.
00:25:24
Speaker
Thank you for being a part of this series.
00:25:27
Speaker
And we're just really inspired by all the work that you're doing.
00:25:32
Speaker
Thank you.
00:25:32
Speaker
Great.
00:25:33
Speaker
Thank you, Ed.
00:25:43
Speaker
How to Have Kids Love Learning is produced by the Journalistic Learning Initiative.
00:25:46
Speaker
For more information about our work, please visit journalisticlearning.com.