============================================================

Newsletter written by Bruce. Feedback to: bhammonds@leading-learning.co.nz

Email this ezine to a friend.

Add staff members to receive our free ezine.

============================================================

'Teaching in the Knowledge Society; Education in the Age of Insecurity'

============================================================

Andy Hargreaves
Teachers College Press 2003

(A good friend of mine lent me the Andy Hargreaves book and, before I returned it, I made a few notes to remind me of what I thought were the main messages. I share the notes with you in this newsletter with the proviso that your reading of the book will allow you to avoid my personal interpretations!)

Introduction: Standardization or Creativity?

We live in a knowledge society, or as Hargreaves prefers to call it, a 'learning society'; a society that is driven by creativity and ingenuity. In contrast, worldwide our schools have 'become obsessed with imposing and micromanaging curricular conformity' which has 'degenerated into a compulsive obsession with soulless standardization.'

Ironically at a time when we are living at a defining moment for education in relationship to a learning, or knowledge society, schools and teachers are becoming 'compliant and over monitored'; the 'drones and clones of policymaker's anemic ambitions.' As a result, he writes, too many adolescents are becoming disengaged and alienated from their own learning and achievement gaps are now a feature of all Western countries.

Hargreaves believes education must take the lead to promote an education system in which 'highly skilled teachers are able to create creativity and ingenuity among their students by experiencing creativity and ingenuity themselves.'

The Importance of Public Education.

Market fundamentalist polices may have been good at creating wealth but it has not been good at caring for deeper human needs. Public education is, according to Hargreaves, the only means to ensure the ideal development of the necessary character, teamwork and tolerance required to restore the balance. The real issue, he says, is the need to ask of ourselves what kind of future world do we want and then to consider the values, dispositions and global responsibilities required of future citizens and then to set about reinventing schools to achieve such a transformation.

Unfortunately teachers, Hargreaves writes, are currently being sidelined from achieving such a transformation. They are, he says, suffering from 'eroded autonomy, lost creativity, restricted flexibility and constrained capacity to exercise their professional judgment. They keep their heads down, struggle along alone and withdraw from working with their colleagues.'

There are exceptions. There are schools that have established caring learning communities, promoted learning teams and that have involved everyone in the 'big picture' but these schools too are threatened by the growing pressures of standardization.

Teaching Hargreaves writes is the paradoxical profession. On one hand teachers are expected to build learning communities but at the same time schools are under attack by an 'epidemic of standardization and over - regulation'. To solve this paradox it is important that schools and their communities take a lead to develop new thinking.

Educational History.

The reforms imposed on schools the past decades are 'akin to moving the deck chars on the Titanic' and have done little to change the fundamental nature of education. Due to economic recession education has been seen the problem, curriculum control has tightened and teachers blamed for everything that has led to our current situation.

As the industrialized economy is replaced by the 'post industrial' knowledge economy schools remain firmly rooted in the past. A knowledge economy Hargreaves writes 'runs not on machine power but on brain power - the power to think, learn and innovate'. This asks schools to ask 'profound questions about the kinds of knowledge students are being equipped with'.

National education standardized curriculums worldwide are driven by market fundamentalism, are even though now being found inadequate still remain in place. 'Schools and teachers can not stand aside from their responsibilities'. Learning and teaching must return to being the 'heart of teaching and schooling'. 'Schools are still run by 'clocks and bells, periods and classes' and students grouped by age, and subjects taught by isolated subject specialists, using standardized curriculums and basic traditional structures remain. 'The regulation and routines of factories, monasteries, and self perpetrating bureaucracies provide young people with poor preparation for a highly innovative, and team based knowledge economy where routine is the enemy of risk.' Rather than being informed by 'ideas' schools are flooded by an 'information glut,' or 'data smog,' based around reporting on narrow forms of achievement which in themselves have become part of the problem by narrowing the curriculum.

A new approach to learning necessitates new approaches to teaching. Teachers will have to learn to teach differently from how they were taught. No teacher knows enough, states Hargreaves, to cope or improve by him or herself. It is vital, he continues, that teachers share their 'collective intelligences' and to work in partnership with their students and their parents if they are to transform schools.

And to make things more challenging there is no 'freeway' to the future. Professional trust in each other and in processes will be required. Teachers will need to enter into dialogue and commit to shared beliefs and norms to develop the necessary collective courage.

'The language of joy and spontaneity is missing'.

The educational changes imposed in the past decades, Hargreaves writes, have had no place for 'for values, no sense of how people should live among others or how they should conduct their lives'. The reforms have had no place for 'the experience of joy, of spontaneity, of lives lived in ways that are vibrant and fulfilling' rather they have focused on narrow and easily measured definitions of achievement and progress.

In this difficult environment of 'top down' imposed change only a few courageous and inspiring educators have been able to keep their focus on the 'big picture'. In most situations 'there has been a failure to tackle real issues of race, colour, and injustice; to challenge the deep seated beliefs about the incapacities of children in poor or minority families.' Schools have been far too busy complying to broaden their focus to consider the wider societal issues that impinge on their schools.

'Good teachers understand that successful learning and teaching occurs when teachers have caring relationships with their students and when their students are emotionally engaged with their learning'. 'Those distant from the classroom tend to neglect the emotional dimensions - performance standards, targets, checklists - these are their priorities. No time for is given to creativity, imagination, and relationships - for all those things that fuel the passion to teach'.

Failing students continue to experience incredible fragmentation in their lives and school compounds this lack of connection and 'social capital' by teaching subjects in isolated subjects and often excludes them because of 'their' behavior problems. The answer, Hargreaves believes, is not provided by concentrating on achievement alone but by improving schools by providing a more personalized approach to engage learners and by strengthening communities and relationships.

The focuses on literacy and numeracy initiatives have only temporarily improved test scores (in the UK). What is demanded is that learners are encouraged to be intellectually and emotionally engaged with their schooling. Emotional bonds of engagement are at the core of school improvement. To achieve this teachers' beliefs and assumptions about learning and teaching are vital.

There is no doubt that learners today are more diverse and demanding. To feel valued they need responsible caring environments that are inclusive to their ideas and perceptions; learning requirements that involve and listen to their families and communities. To achieve this require a flexible and creative curriculum rather the current standardized and overcrowded provisions and it will also need less fragmented school structures. This will call for teachers to work in collaborative groups, challenging one another, so as to be able to provide for the individual needs of their students. Individual teachers in knowledge society no longer know best and sharing relationships with each other based on mutual respect and shared beliefs. Professional trust will be vital.

Schools of the future need to value many different kinds of excellence and not just the academic and celebrate the real achievements of their students; all students must feel part of the 'big picture' of school.

These ideas and values, Hargreaves writes, places teachers as an important counterpoint to current intolerance, individualism, exclusion and insecurity that students are exposed to. 'It means developing social capital, laying the emotional foundations of democracy and creating kernel of cosmopolitan identity.'

'Teaching beyond the knowledge economy means being in a reinvented profession... Teaching should be a career of first choice... a social mission, a job for life…teaching should never be about settling for less.' These are exciting ideas and, if enacted, would provide a sense of revitalization and purpose to the teaching profession

Standardization is a dead horse and it is time to get off.

So teachers, Hargreaves believes, have a choice 'to be catalysts for change, to be a counterpoint for socially disruptive effects, or to continue to be casualties of market fundamentalist changes that focus on blindly on improving narrow mandated achievements driven by results, condemned to a life of corrosive individualism where we work, learn, and respond to change alone.'

When teachers work alone teachers 'mask their emotions to align with the ways and feelings that are expected'. This is at best, Hargreaves writes, a draining process. 'It is hard to remain authentically optimistic and enthusiastic when you are overloaded, have no time to care…and are constantly criticized…get little opportunity to work with colleagues, and must grapple with change alone.' 'In such an energy draining climate teachers work in fear of the next capricious soulless reform initiative, and suffer from unending performance anxiety'. Casualties rather than catalysts; teachers are being 'robbed of their flexibility and creativity' exhausted and demoralized, and resignation results.

Curriculums at the senior level are currently defined by endless assessment requirements giving no time for teachers to explore issues in depth or to be involved in interdisciplinary inquiry. Schools have become obsessed with 'keeping up appearances' and looking good. Too many teachers are 'tired of fighting it', worn out by the 'loss of creativity and spontaneity in their work and wounded by the theft of their autonomy'. Many end up by 'selling their souls to the devil', their 'capacity to collaborate corroded'. As well any desire to initiate change is held hostage to an 'insecure middle class electorate anxious and insecure about its children…easy prey for moral panics about falling standards and failing schools'.

'What teachers have had stolen from them …is their time to learn and think'. 'Creativity has been replaced by compliance' writes Hargreaves, and have 'no opportunity to grow personally in their profession.' Too much valuable teacher time is spent in isolation assessing and marking to focus on new ideas about school organization and ways of leaning necessary for transforming their 'egg shell' schools into integrated learning communities.

Lose of purpose is the most common cause of negative feelings about teaching. Teachers are feeling a loss of 'love, joy, passion and soul in their work because of the impact of government reforms.' And too often this 'reaches into the teachers' health and their experience of stress'. As a result national governments are 'losing the trust of the teaching profession'.

Re invention of schools as Learning Communities.

'Michael Fullan's complaint that "that the school is not yet a learning organization" still retains a strong and disturbing ring of truth,' writes Hargreaves.

(For a summary of Fullan's book 'The New meaning of Educational Change' visit:
www.leading-learning.co.nz/newsletters/vol01-no03-2002.html )

Schools as learning communities need to 'model the life and work that students will experience as graduates'. In a learning community 'parents need to work with schools to define the graduation outcomes' and a shared philosophy should underpin all activities and decisions take in the school. To engage learners learning should be integrated around relevant problems and, to do this, teachers should work collaborate in teams. Future learning communities need to balance complexity with cohesion and creative tension with security and take a 'counseling and personal approach' to all learners. In such schools 'professional risk taking is always encouraged' and students and teachers both need to become problem solvers, risk takers and team workers.

Such a development Hargreaves sees as no easy task 'regressive policies and bureaucracy are stifling the release of intellectual capital of our schools' he writes.

Beyond standardization - time to rethink.

Teachers need to be seen themselves as the core profession and the key agents of change if we are to realize an inclusive knowledge society. Yet teaching, Hargreaves writes, is in crisis. Teachers face an entrenched bureaucracy and to develop schools as a caring community, or to reinventing schools as focal points for community regeneration, will not be easy.

Educational reinvention must develop 'through methods that inspire good teaching and that retain good teachers'. 'Teaching must become a real learning profession for all teachers.' Professional regimes of 'permissive individualism' need to be re-cultured into collaborative professional communities ' where sharing and planning together emerge as acceptable norms', based on shared beliefs and using agreed data to improve both teaching and learners performances and in the process strengthening teacher judgment and opportunities to learn.

New roles for central government.

As standardization is increasingly found wanting new roles will need to emerge for central government to assist schools become more flexible and creative so as to 'free the energies, talents and professional creativity of principals and teachers to lead programmes of innovation and transformation'.

Schools, writes Hargreaves, need to be helped to collaborate with other schools so as to share ideas and improve teaching and learning. Central governments could assist by providing 'seed money' and the means to share ideas and, in the process, 'give teaching back to the teachers'. Professional networks and mentors and support services needs to facilitated but this need to be seen as independent of central authorities. By all these means, Hargreaves believes, new 'grown up norms' of professionalism will emerge. Together such measures, he believes, can help re -invent teaching as a learning profession.

Three Models of school development:

1.   The 'Performance Sect'

The 'standards stampede' of the past decades has convinced policy makers they can impose improvement on schools. Focused initiatives, such as the UK Literacy and Numeracy Project, have been duplicated in many low performing schools throughout the world and are now common. In the UK the initiatives have improved achievement scores but along with the benefits and quick results they have drawn attention away from other areas of the curriculum and ironically, have due to their highly prescriptive nature, de-professionalized teachers. As such, Hargreaves believes, they run the risk of increasing a 'dependency culture' by creating what Hargreaves calls a 'performance training sect' where teachers are expected to follow a set script without question.

While such 'performance training' is valuable 'teachers must always be allowed to question and critique what they are…all being coached in' otherwise they perpetrate dependency. Teaching should never be driven by 'false certainties'. After initial success in the UK the literacy and numeracy achievement kevels are now plateauing out. At this point it is important to tap into the creativity and ingenuity of the teachers themselves for future initiatives.

2.   The Professional Learning Community Models

A Professional Learning Communities approach premised on re- culturing the school is one that promotes ownership and shared inquiry using agreed data to inform practice. A 'performance training model' sometimes provides a necessary platform for such improvement but care should be taken to see the training does not become 'the only way of doing things'.

There is a growing understanding that 'one size does not fit all' when it comes to school development. Professional Learning Communities develop best with highly high capacity systems and by contrast 'improvement through training sects' seems to yield results in low capacity systems' where teachers might be struggling. Some countries give high performing schools 'earned autonomy' while at the same time imposing prescriptive training programmes and intrusive monitoring on 'failing schools'. By this form of 'professional apartheid', schools in poor communities gain restricted assistance.

Some school development models suggest there is a developmental continuum and that schools need different help at different stages. This is an improvement, Hargreaves believes, on the idea that schools progress in a simplistic linear process.

While this recognizes the reality that schools are different and help must be tailored, it is still simplistic and development too often remains a 'top down' initiative. Schools are too complex, says Hargreaves, to be collapsed into a simple continuum of development - and what defines success is equally problematic!

Hargreaves book is premised 'that standardized reform in education undermines 'teachers' capacity' and that we need to move away from the flaws of a 'top down one size fits all model'.

3.   A Complementary Model - the best scenario

Hargreaves suggests a complementary strategies model as the best model for school and teacher growth. Schools that are 'failing' embark on 'short term rescue but this is to be combined with long term strategies for sustainable improvement.'

Hargreaves recommends that school create a leadership charge team comprising of both those who can bring about short term immediate changes and others who can focus on long term improvement. The two change team roles are complimentary. 'Once immediate changes prove effective longer term improvements that have been articulated can be implemented - and the staff will be aware of them.'

'There is a wealth of evidence that with the right teaching and curriculum, even the most disadvantaged children and adults can learn'. 'All teachers can learn as well - it is here that a stronger emphasis on creative teaching ….might reasonably begins?'

'This is where the seeds of the professional learning community can be sown.' Instead of waiting until the basics are mastered the capacity to engage in the knowledge society can begin in parallel. Along with 'performance training' in literacy and maths it is also important to initiate creative and critical thinking. A complimentary model ensures creativity is not sacrificed to compliance.

The balance of complimentary growth roles depends on the needs at any one time but the training element will diminish as they are set in place. 'Even at the beginning, when training needs are dominant and pressing, there should always be an element of more reflective community building' writes Hargreaves.

The complementary model recognizes 'that it is at the bottom, not the top, where creativity, flexibility and ingenuity in school improvement are most needed. Instead of persisting with micro management the need is to engage educators in their task of engaging their students in learning that is challenging and meaningful and that connects with the students own culture.'

Hargreaves' conclusions.

Hargreaves argues that teaches must prepare their students to thrive in a knowledge community and that this is a matter of fairness and inclusiveness no matter whatever the race, culture and abilities of the students.

The future prospect of a country depends on its ingenuity, and capacity to harness and develop the collective intelligence of all people. This requires valuing creativity, problem solving, cooperation, flexibility, the capacity to develop networks, the ability to cope with change, and a commitment to life long learning.

This Hargreaves writes, is in contrast to the fragmented, frenetic and individualistic world which has undermined community, relationships and spread insecurity. Education, he believes, is the only public institution available to preserve and strengthen relationships and to deal with the human consequences of the knowledge society by building social capital, community and forging a cosmopolitan identity.

Teaching needs to 'become a moral, visionary profession' so as to recapture their 'status and dignity as some of societies leading intellectuals, not mere technicians and instruments of other people agendas'. 'Teachers are not deliverers but developers of learners' he says. Teaching is an instrument of social change and as such teachers 'must become active in the world of adults as much as being committed to their kids.'

Recent disillusionment in teaching is a 'reaction to the loss of vision within the public education system and its narrowing of its sense of purpose….Teachers are demoralized because they have had their purpose stolen from them'.

'We live in a time when great vision is called for again - when our prosperity and security depends on our capacity to develop students and teachers who can understand and engage with the dramatic social changes…that today's society represents.'

Instead if talking about the injustices, as the gap between the rich and the poor widen, we are diverted by a narrow emphasis on achievement and improvement. 'Our diluted vocabulary betrays a lack of courage and loss of nerve'. Professional Learning Communities promise a way to improve our schools and our communities As such communities are hard to create Hargreaves recommends a model that combines both short term 'performance training' with the re invention of the 'school as a learning community' model based on shared norms and practices.

Teachers have an opportunity to be part of building a new inclusive community that value developing the talents of all its members. To achieve this, teachers need to rekindle their own moral missions and purposes; open their minds to their parents and communities; become agents of their own change; and recognize that their responsibility extends to all children, not just the ones in their own school.

'All children should have the opportunity to reach their highest and most creative levels'.

Hargreaves leaves us with five challenges.

1. The need to revive and re-invent teaching as a passionate mission that is about creating an inclusive, ingenious and cosmopolitan society.
2. We need to galvanize public opinion in favor of investing in an ingenious and inclusive educational system that benefits everyone.
3. We need more sophisticated strategies of school improvement that acknowledges differences between schools and teachers.
4. That this ingenuity should not just be offered as reward to affluent schools and teachers - we also need to transform problematic schools in poor communities.
5. We need to show political courage and integrity by re-connecting educational improvement with a renewed assault on societal improvement.