isaacmao.com: lifelong (e)learning

关于教师和校长的ICT培训，中国的教育系统做得还远远不够。看看澳洲的一些经验，不无启发：

Professional Development

It is essential to invest much more in the professional development of the school leadership team and in continually upgrading the professional skills of teachers.

By and large, education systems around the world have failed to invest in the upgrading of the full potential of the human resources at their disposal in the way that other fields of human endeavour have done. This has often been because of the pressing need to provide basic coverage of educational services to all students. Nevertheless it will not be possible for schools to make the performance gains necessary unless this is done.

In Victoria, three initiatives have been taken to support leaders. The first has being the establishment of the Australian Principals Centre to assist in the provision of a ‘life cycle’ process of professional development training for Principals, as illustrated in Figure 3.

Figure 3 Victorian Principal leadership training life cycle.

The second is the establishment of the Personal Professional Development Program which enables each principal to design personalised professional development packages in negotiation with each teacher.

The third is the Professional Recognition Program and its equivalent for principals, the Principals Performance Management System, which provides for all Principals to voluntarily contract for annual performance reviews and either bonus tied or accelerated promotion to externally assessed value-adding performance.

从一份来自欧洲的有关虚拟大学的研究报告中，作者的观点非常令我赞同，也如同是我的切身体会。一个人，尤其是在大学的阶段，应当有条件获得接触社会各类精英的机会，并能够从中找到自己的定位和学习的对象。中国的教育让人们往往崇拜权威，对“权威”噤若寒蝉，直至自己也变成崇尚“虚荣/神秘”的个性，对学术研究和产业发展都是不利的。

I will begin by reviewing the lessons to be learnt from my story, which can be told in many different ways. The most important lesson echoes Castells, who, in his book The Rise of the Network Society [1], states that close personal contact between experienced experts and novices is crucial to the latter’s development and will always be so. No one who has been educated or become skilled in their profession has done so without the guidance and example of one or more persons who have already won their spurs in that profession.

The second, equally important lesson — one not mentioned by Castells — is that respected experts in a particular field do not necessarily make great teachers, nor do they always give proper lessons or even take the time or feel inclined to do so.

The third, frequently forgotten, lesson is that none of us really needs to have many different mentors in the sense of trusted, personal advisers or examples. Learning consists for the most part of absorbing information, applying it and slowly and patiently building up expertise, working with fellow students and, where necessary, being guided and evaluated by people who are expert guides and evaluators.

中国新闻周刊的一篇文章《新革命 性革命》也引起了我的注意，教育与社会问题是紧密相关的，封闭的、僵化的教育内容和结构会让政府在面临重大问题的时候手足无措，难以招架。真正应当做到未雨绸缪，时来人备，则必须关注教育的战略意义和手段。

.....李银河同时认为，政府并没有意识到性革命的到来，“政府和教育应该提前做更有效的性教育，而现在的性教育更多从医学的角度来谈，与性病、艾滋病联系在一起，好像性和病联系在一起的，其实性是很美好的事情。”