Leading and Learning for the 21stC
No. 20 - October 2004
Editors: Bruce Hammonds and Wayne Morris
Web Site: www.leading-learning.co.nz
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Over the decades schools countless well intentioned reforms have been dropped on schools by distant experts - many of them simultaneously but little seems to have changed. More often change has been because of results of bigger forces (paradigms) that now and then change society. Currently, modern information technology is one such transformation force.
'How has the world of the child changed in the past 150 years? It is hard to imagine any way it hasn't changed…and yet if you look at schools today versus schools 100 years ago, they are more similar than dissimilar.'
Peter Senge
More quotes on general philosophy
Even the advent of modern information technology, that has the power to transform school as we know them, has hardly made a crack in the antiquated secondary school structures designed for a Victorian Age. Henry Ford's mass production ideas, long since forgotten in the modern car factories of today, are still to found in our secondary schools!
'Secondary education is a more purely industrial aged institution than any business'.
Peter Senge
Just as the invention of the printing press slowly destroyed the previous oral culture and the profession of copying manuscripts, so to will modern information technology transforms schools. Eventually, but not yet it seems. As information can be acquired anywhere, at any time, from anywhere, sooner or later students will find the need to learn from teachers irrelevant. Schools will be transformed, or more likely new learning communities will evolve and teachers will need to learn new roles. Students will need to become 'life long learners' and will value a 'just in time' curriculum rather than the current 'just in case' one. These are the trends that we all ought to be well aware of.
All institutions respond unpredictably to bigger forces beyond anyone's control. Gutenberg could not imagine what his printing press would change - mainly the control of knowledge; linear books rather than oral tradition became the new source of information and power. The efficiency and time and movement ideas of the 19th century evolved from the 'age of science and rationality' moved into education, creating the large 'learning factories' of the 20th C to realize the 'dream of mass education'. Unfortunately for many students it has turned out to be a 'mass nightmare'. Designed to stream students to fit into an industrial society, secondary schools now simply cannot cope with the range of students that now enter our schools. They have simply passed their 'use by date!'
'All bottlenecks occur at the top'.
Anon
In the sixties, in a reaction to the dull conformity of the 50s, a wave of freedom spread through the Western world and with it progressive educational ideas. Progressive education ideas had emerged earlier but were short lived. The biggest changes in education came because of a combination of these forces but in reality were only seen in primary schools. Straight rows, formal teaching, use of corporal punishment and testing ( so a student could go up a 'standard') were replaced by discovery learning, group work and a new relationship between teacher and learner. There has been little change as dramatic since (even counting computers) but little of the progressive ideas managed to transfer or thrive in the more rigid traditional secondary schools. It was at best a half finished revolution.
'The world by and large has to be reinvented'
Charles Handy
Currently schools are just recovering from a efficiency movement resulting as a result of what has been called 'market forces'. Accountability, efficiency, choice and most
Important of all, competition, forced its way into the government's educational thinking worldwide. Now, as 'market forces' loses it's aura, particularly in regard to social issues, the new trend is moving back to more progressive 'learning how to learn' ideas as the transformational power of information technology is developing the need for a new 'post print' mindset.
'Professionals built the Titanic - amateurs the Ark.'
Anon
This all seems beyond anyone's control, much to the despair of central planners - these forces seem to work through society in their own time and in their own unpredictable way and are only fully recognized after they are in place. The Industrial Revolution was only apparent after numbers of inventions were in place. The same will apply to the revolution that will be created by new information technology. Currently named the 'Information Age', it is transforming itself into an 'Age of Imagination and Ideas'. Ideas and the talents of citizens will become the new capital of the first decades of the new millennium. From this will evolve new educational ideas and to survive every school will eventually have to be able to continually transform themselves.
'It is not the biggest or the brightest or the best that will survive, but those that adapt the quickest.'
Charles Darwin
The new ideas behind our society are those emerging from Darwin's evolutionary theories and more recently complexity science or chaos theory. Everything in the future will depend on seeing patterns and relationships and appreciating that everything is connected, often in surprising ways. To educate students for this confusing, but potentially exciting environment is the challenge of schools.
'Life is like playing a violin in public and learning as one goes along.'
Samuel Butler
Traditionally educational changes are planned by those at the 'top' and then been passed onto school more often than not by people who had never used the ideas in real setting. After a year or two, little remains to be seen of many of the changes, but the idea that someone at the top has the ideas to transform school persists. As a result of the imposition of too many changes coming too fast, many simultaneously, without enough professional development and resources, all that has resulted is' burnout' and frustrated teachers who because of the process lose faith in their own professional judgment. As well the process of change is not well understood by those imposing or implementing them .All real change involves an implementation dip, when there can be a loss of confidence, and such changes need at least two or three years to become firmly in place. As well teachers are adept at colonizing imposed curriculums, which is just as well. At the moment as all the imposed curriculums are away being 'stock- taked' and reinvented as 'key competencies' - another world wide trend but at least one in line with future needs of students.
'Most schools are drowning in events - an attention deficit culture'
Peter Senge
As the imposed (an expensive) curriculum contracts were found to be inefficient the Ministry played 'catch up' with innovative schools and introduced whole school development and even started talking about 'schools as learning communities'. These ideas have wide support and seem to be the real answer to systematic educational change, building as they did on new ideas about organizational change.
'We are truly the fish swimming in industrial age assumptions'
Peter Senge
The problem, as ever, lies in the application of the ideas, or more particularly the lack of the understanding of the importance of 'ownership' of the ideas by the teachers themselves. 'Learning communities', or organizations, are more talked about than seen in reality, in both the business and educational worlds. For all that, the idea of groups of people aligned behind a shared vision, values and teaching beliefs, is still the most promising idea for an ever changing world. The key to achieving such learning communities is to arrange the circumstances so that individualistic and creative teachers begin to own them and learn to appreciate the advantages of such a collaborative culture for themselves.
'The pathway to excellence lies within each school.'
Terrance Deal
The brutal fact we have to own up to is that imposed change does simply not work at the system or school level - or even in an individual class. It has to 'grow' though mutual actions. For impatient change agents this is a hard but important idea to understand. It is easier to recognize when it is admitted by the 'experts' how little of the heavy handed curriculum developments of the past decades have really made any difference.
'How many times have we bought in outsiders to tell us what we already know?'
Peter Block
What differences did all the imposed curriculum, charter development and strategy planning really make? What has happened to all the endless 'action plans', timelines, School Development Plans, Curriculum Delivery Plans, countless objectives in all sorts of areas, Performance Management Systems, Professional Standards etc? The only thing missing in all this flurry of management ideology was an emphasis on teaching and learning and the valuing of teachers own beliefs about teaching as the key to real change. More often teachers were seen as problems to solve by professional development provided through Ministry contracts.
'You might as well dance naked around a campfire as go to one more ...planning meeting'
Gary Hamel Harvard Business School.
To be honest, schools planned more than they could ever implement, monitor or let alone evaluate and a lot of time and energy was wasted trying to do so. As a result many things were done badly. Even today there are schools with impossible Curriculum Delivery Plans, reaching out three or four years, and teachers still futilely tracking learning objectives covered by the class. Really who cares!
'Creativity and enthusiasm …the fuel for improvement only diminish under the weight of big thick folders'.
William Cook, Strategic Planning for American Schools
Basically we have been 'hoodwinked' and true educational leadership has too often been replaced by 'gung ho' managerial types 'doing things right rather than doing the right things.' Michael Fullan writes, 'that comprehensive and elaborate implementation plans are not the solution' but actually added 'insult to injury' by 'adding another burden' creating 'overload and fragmentation', and that such plans 'outstrip teacher's time and capacity to implement'. All this wasted time and energy could have been better used to focus on teaching and learning; doing fewer things well and encouraging teachers to focus improvement by examining students work.
'Most educational change has been akin to rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic'
Only now is there a realization by schools of the futility of all this planning and a growing recognition that the 'emperor has no clothes'! Documentation has become an end in itself. The Ministry, at least, have realized this and is distancing itself from it 'obese' curriculums and now are recognizing the painfully obvious fact that it more about: the quality of teaching; teachers having high expectations and the involvement of parents and the wider community. Schools are now being flooded by exemplars and the almost mystical belief that technology will solve all the problems.
'It is about teaching and it is about time'
SPINZ2 CDROM Cant. Principals Assoc 04
Schools would be well advised to treat all assistance with some suspicion as yet more advice will come from people who have never had to implement their own advice! All ideas need to be evaluated as to how well they line up with, and assist the school to achieve its own vision - a vision that needs to evolve from the teacher's beliefs. It is all about integrity. Try out ideas by all means but only keep what works - modify and adapt everything and do this continually - this is the best strategic plan of all!!
'Life is what happens when you make other plans.'
John Lennon
Teaching must be appreciated as a creative act. For teachers to 'think on their feet', a school must have an agreed philosophy, vision or purpose for all to work within. This framework must be clear enough to give security but free enough to encourage teacher individuality and creativity. There will always be tension between these two forces but this tension is where new ideas come from.
'Good teaching is forever being at the edge of a child's' competence.'
Jerome Bruner
Developing these philosophical 'covenants' is the role of a leader; it is matter of drawing together the best ideas of the teaching teams, considering new ideas about how students learn and being continually prepared to keep learning - a 'learning community'. Rather than planning everything in advance, it is more a matter of encouraging teachers to try new things and keep what works. New idea will 'emerge' and spread through the school, and if powerful enough to other schools, and vice versa. In this way an educational 'epidemic' will occur and it can be amplified and spread by the use of modern information technology. Ideas, as ever, will develop a momentum of their own.
As messy as it sounds this is exactly how good ideas have always spread and only in retrospect can ideas be coalesced into a 'movement'.
'Life is like playing a violin in public and learning the instrument as one goes along.'
Samuel Butler
As ideas are develop they can be tidied up and shared with others. Our site for example is dedicated to sharing idea loosely called the 'Quality School Movement'.
'Present thinking can kill the future.'
Ken Blanchard
These are exciting ideas and a direct contrast to the 'top down' idea of the past decades. It will require new roles for school leaders and the Ministry of Education. All those in leadership positions (including class teachers), will have to focus their energy on the creation of conditions to encourage such creativity. Instead of the current structures which suppress creativity the opposite will be required. Leaders need to communicate this 'new' emergent creative vision. They will have to learn to trust teachers (and teacher's in turn their pupils) and encourage them to reflect and learn from experiences successful or otherwise. And they will have to create collaborative networks of schools to learn from and spread idea to. These are the elements required to create 'learning communities' of inter related schools capable of continual evolution. A very different scenario to our current 'stand alone', often competitive, schools,
'Reformation comes from the bottom up - a transformation by the people.'
Religious writer.
The key, according to Dennis Sparks ( US Staff Development Council), is to replace a belief in 'experts' , who deliver knowledge of good teaching in workshops or through contracts, with 'communities of teachers' who learn through 'ongoing collaboration and practice.' Teachers will need to work in teams, bouncing ideas off each other, exchanging and sharing strategies. Teachers will need to become expert in precise talk about teaching and learning; an idea reminiscence of how creative teachers worked before 'Tomorrows Schools'.
'It is not the biggest, the brightest or the best that will survive, but those who adapt the quickest.'
Charles Darwin
The benefits would be immense. Teachers would feel valued and would grow in confidence. Teachers with expertise would not only be able to support teachers, not only in their own schools, but in other school as well and, most of all, all teachers would be confident enough to be critical of new idea and methods. This would amount to the professionalism of the teaching profession.
Leaders, rather than being about being autocratic or charismatic, will be about creating learning cultures around learning principles in the best scenario shared by other schools.
'We need to be authors of our own life'.
Peter Senge
As wonderful as all this sounds these simple ideas are still rare as a result of the obsessive planning and compliance 'risk aversive' culture that has been imposed the last decades. However there are individual schools who have already achieved such a learning culture and there are groups of schools collaborating in at least one area in New Zealand. Possibly the Ministry ICT Clusters could evolve into learning communities? It would be important however for such clusters to emerge and be in control of the schools themselves - with Ministry support of course!
'The world more or less has to be reinvented'
Charles Handy
When the idea spreads (as it will because we are leaving the Industrial Age and entering into a new age of Ideas and Creativity) at some point it will reach a 'tipping point'. Then it will become 'contagious'. Even the last bastion of the Industrial Age, the Secondary schools will crumble. The sign are already present as they are presently unable to ensure 19% of their students leave with a qualification!!! More likely new schools will simply emerge to replace them? Maybe schools as we know them will disappear like the dinosaurs.
'Professionals built the Titanic - an amateur built the Ark'
Anon
It is over to all of us to spread the word. The educational transformation ideas our website www.leading-learning.co.nz is predicated on will eventuate sooner or later.
It will depend on our individual and collective courage and an innovative Ministry of Education.
'No problem can be solved at the same consciousness that created it'
Albert Einstein
Bruce Hammonds
Bruce would be happy to receive any feedback on the newsletter.
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