A different type of thinking ...

A different type of thinking

Schools are interconnected networks that can be either purposefully woven and crafted into a grand tapestry or carelessly neglected and snagged until only a knotted, tangled mess is left.

    Educators need to develop a whole new approach to teaching and learning.  The education students receive must prepare them for the dynamic, ambiguous future ahead of them. This means tailoring curriculum and instruction to meet the needs of the students, using technology as an effective tool, and creating a culture of inquiry and collaboration in the classroom focused on the future. It must also include a systematic approach to education to amplify learning and instruction.   Through continuous efforts to increase their capacity, schools can truly become places of learning where students can thrive and reach their goals.

                We cannot simply rely on the same types of thinking that have brought us to our current state. We must recognize that to affect the level of school improvement necessary to provide students with the level of education they will need in their future we must strive to implement better ideas designed to create better results. A strong and progressive education system is essential for developing the talent and skill base necessary to compete in the world market and defend the sovereignty of the US. It is up to us to ensure that our students have what they need to succeed.

    Part of this “new type of thinking” involves shifting our focus from what is wrong to looking for what is good and improving it. To be clear, this is not to say that we should ignore the problems in schools, nor am I stating that they are unimportant. What I am proposing is that rather than focus on learning about problems and focusing on what we already know is broken, we agree to focus on solutions and recognize that a good deal of what occurs in schools is the result of caring, skilled teachers interacting with students with a desire to learn and be successful.

If we spend all our efforts focusing on what is broken, how it got broken, or who to blame, when will we have time to make things better?

    The title of this article is, in part, it is a reference to a quote often attributed to Albert Einstein “We cannot solve the problems of today with the same type of thinking that we used to create them.” There is debate as to whether that is what Einstein said; however, Einstein did recognize that the development of atomic weapons changed how diplomacy would be carried out in the future.  I would argue that the same level of understanding must be adopted to create the change in the educational system necessary to prepare students to meet the challenges they will face.

    This different type of thinking will be guided by ten fundamental principles.  The first of these principles comes from positive psychology scholars who have developed the concept of appreciative inquiry (AI), a powerful change process based on the principle that organizations can decide to change. 

1.       Stop Trying

2.       Simple thinking won’t solve wicked problems.

3.       Schools must be places of learning.

4.       The right thing is not optional.

5.       Positive organizational leadership is not just being happy.

6.       If everyone is responsible, then no one is accountable.

7.       Schools require students and families.

8.       Great schools are great because they build staff capacity.

9.       Everyone must row in the same direction.

10.   Culture is king. 

 

Variables involved in creating a school that is based on technology

What does it take for technology to have a meaningful impact on the capacity of a school? 

By Rob Koch

The potential for technological innovation to increase the ability of a school to facilitate instruction remains largely untapped in many schools.  There are multiple factors that influence the effectiveness of technology implementation.  Levin and Schrum (2013) conducted a study of eight award-winning schools that considered technology as an important element of their success.  The study stressed the importance of using a systems thinking approach to implementing technology that addresses all of these factors at the same time.  Peter Senge (2012) defined systems thinking as the study of organizational structures and behavior focusing on identifying high-leverage strategies.

Levin and Schrum’s study identified the following components as being important for the implementation of technology:

·       Vision:  Teachers in their study stressed the importance of having a clear vision that guides the practices of the entire school. 

·       Distributed Leadership:  Levin and Schrum also found that distributed played an important role in implementing new strategies to improve learning.  Their study primarily focused on the teacher empowerment effect of distributed leadership (DL).  Harris (2013) would also point to the ability of DL to increase the organizational knowledge of the school and the data-driven practices of professional communities.  Taken together, teachers in a DL model work harder to implement new practices based on data-driven decisions through collaboration. 

·       School culture:   The most compelling finding of the Levin and Schrum study regarding school culture was the importance of trust and establishing digital citizenship.

·       Technology planning and Support:  Levin and Schrum found that the majority of schools that they studied found it important to have IT support in place.

·       Professional development:    They also found that schools that were effective in implementing technology provided time for professional learning communities.

·       Curriculum and instructional practices:  Some of the benefits that the study found were increased accesses to information, teachable moments for information literacy, and the ability to gather data quickly.

·       Funding:  Many of the schools changed their textbook policies to allow for open educational resources, replacing the cost of a textbook with the cost of a tablet or other device.  Some districts implemented policies allowing students to bring their own technology.

·       Partnerships:  Levin and Schrum also found that technology enabled the schools to strengthen their communications with parents.  Additionally, they noted that through partnerships with businesses, schools were able to increase their funding.

It was interesting to use InsightMaker.com to gain further insight into the findings of Levin and Schrum (Please feel free to explore and comment).  In developing this model, the factors that seemed to arise out of other factors were not considered as independent variables (slider).  For example, it was determined that school-parents and school-organizations partnerships would be influenced by the level of inclusiveness and relationships of the DL practices.  Additionally, independent variable were selected considering the ability of the school leaders to make choices regarding the implementation and allocation of efforts and resources.  (The Insightmaker contains detailed information regarding the assumptions that were made in creating the model.) The importance of distributed leadership and the vision of the school become apparent in this model.   

References

Harris, A. (2013). Distributed school leadership: Developing tomorrow's leaders Routledge.

Levin, B. B., & Schrum, L. (2013). Using systems thinking to leverage technology for school improvement: Lessons learned from award-winning secondary schools/districts. Journal of Research on Technology in Education, 46(1), 29-51.

Senge, P. M., Cambron-McCabe, N., Lucas, T., Smith, B., & Dutton, J. (2012). Schools that learn (updated and revised): A fifth discipline fieldbook for educators, parents, and everyone who cares about education Random House LLC.

Reforming Education

United Nations Development Program

     What does learning look like?  Somewhere along the way to improve education, it has been damaged. The awesomeness of "eureka" transformed into normative bubbles.  The wonderful experience of falling down repeatedly until finally a first glorious step is taken replaced with a paralyzing fear of failure.    Inspirational feats of high performance  have been standardized.

    In reading Andy Hargreaves' article, describing the ways that the educational system has changed, I found myself reflecting on the reason that I choose to be an educator.  It was a long time ago, but I know that it was not to subject students to endless barrages of tests that arbitrarily label them as "partially-proficient" or "advanced."  I do see the value of knowing where my students and my skills fall in relation to others.  The series of reforms that the educational system has undergone in the past thirty years has helped move education forward; however, the road to improving education is far from complete.

Hargreaves (2009) classified the ways in which school reform has been implemented.  The first way of reform involved teachers' independent efforts to increase pedagogical efficiency (Hargreaves, 2009).  According to Hargreaves, the independent nature of teacher initiated reform resulted in an effort to standardized the educational system.  The standardized system then resulted in Hargreaves' third way which involved top-down efforts to force reform on schools through a system of threats and intimidation.

Through an extensive study of educational reform and educational systems, Hargreaves (2009) derived a “Forth Way” to reform education, consisting of purposeful partnerships, principles of professionalism, and catalysts for coherence.

     Five pillars of purposeful partnerships:

1.    An inspiring inclusive vision:  We need to develop a shared vision for education that addresses essential needs of society that extends beyond reading, writing, and arithmetic.  The educational system needs to prepare students for their future.

2.    Public engagement: Re-energize the public's passion for education

3.    No achievement without investment:  Educating children requires investments beyond money; society has to put forth the effort and time to educate their children.  Replace technology time with time for tikes.

4.    Corporate educational responsibility:  Self-serving corporate support for educating children to learn skills that serve their industry needs to be changed to supporting the needs of society.

5.    Students as partners in change:  Empower students through establishing their responsibility for their training, and monitoring their success.


Three principles of professionalism

1.    High-quality teachers: If we want high-quality people to teach then we must provide a competitive salary.  Teachers also bear the responsibility of earning prestige and persevering the integrity of their profession.

2.    Powerful professionalism:  Teachers collaborate and challenge each other to increase the performance of the educational system.

3.    Lively learning communities:  Teachers involved in collaborative, data based, ongoing improvement to refine instruction.

Four catalysts of coherence:

1.    Sustainable Leadership: The job of leading and managing a school involves an extensive number of factors resulting in leaders burning out.  Utilize distributed leadership to increase stakeholder buy-in and share the responsibilities.

2.    Net with no nanny: Professional network driven by a shared vision but without a "nanny" to intervene allowing teachers to deepen their practices free from the whims of trendy innovation.

3.    Responsibility before accountability: Teachers are responsible for the performance of all children.  Multiple sources of data continuously collected to monitor the performance of teachers.

4.    Build from the bottom, steer from the top: Teachers set high standards objectives to improve learning through a system of collective responsibility.


The top-down reform measure of No Child Left Behind has resulted in increasing the number of schools classified as unacceptable and deemed “broken," by the US Secretary of Education.  The idea that teachers have a monopoly on education is not viable.  Educators and politicians must share the responsibility for education with parents, community members, corporations, and students.  Somewhere the vision for education became meeting standards and not preparing students for their future.

By Rob Koch

References

Hargreaves, A. (2009), The fourth way of change: Towards an Age of inspiration and sustainability. in Hargreaves, A., & Fullan, M. (Eds.). (2009). Change wars. Bloomington, IN: Solution Tree.

Google

Systems Thinking in Education

Systems Thinking: Big Picture Thinking

CC0

Critical analysis . . . problem solving . . . creativity . . . systems thinking are the things that we need to prepare students for the 21st century.  Systems thinking is especially relevant to developing a 21st century understanding of the world. A world where understanding how one's actions affect the actions of others.   

What is systems thinking?  If analysis involves breaking a thing into smaller parts and thinking about how each part works, systems thinking looks at how the thing interacts with other things.   The Waters Foundation (watersfoundation.org) has developed 13 habits of systems thinking:

• Seeks to understand the big picture
• Observes how elements within systems change over time
• Recognizes that a system's structure generates its behavior understanding the complexities
• Examines interdependence causing cause and effect relationships to be circular rather than linear
• Changes perspectives to increase understanding
• Rigorously examines assumptions, beliefs, and perceptions
• Considers issues fully and resists urge to jump to a conclusion
• Makes mental models to understand what is happening
• Uses understanding to identify points of  leverage : what small change can result in the desired effect?
• Considers both short-term and long-term consequences
• Identifies unintended consequences 
• Recognizes that an action will experience time delays before a desired result takes place
• Successive approximation: Monitors and evaluates the behavior of the system and takes action when necessary 

An example of systems thinking:

Ellen MacArthur Foundation (creator) (2011, August 28). Re-thinking progress:
The circular economy [video file]. Retrieved from http://youtu.be/zCRKvDyyHmI

This type of thinking is found in the common core standards k-12, STEM, and 21st Century Skills.  Daniel Goleman, author of Emotional Intelligence: why it can matter more than I.Q.,  has stated that this type of thinking helps to facilitate the development of emotional intelligence (2014).  Recognizing the impact that the actions of others have on you and your actions have on the emotions of others is central to understanding social-emotional dynamics.  Taking this a step further, systemic thinking can also be found in the conflict resolution practices of Restorative Justice, a highly successful school discipline program.  Restorative justice focus on how ones actions affect others.  Research indicates that student participation in social emotional learning programs has been shown to have a 11 percent increase in student achievement (Durlak, Weissberg,  Dymnicki, Taylor, & Schellinger, 2010).  Additionally, Restorative Justice strategies have been associated with increased student achievement (Schiff, 2013).

Systems thinking has been around as a discipline for over 50 years.  However, its application for the 21st century seems untapped.  Providing instruction on systems thinking in the classroom has a large potential for deepening student understanding of content, decreasing discipline problems, and increasing emotional intelligence.  In a world where our interdependence is inescapable, understanding the potential of our actions on others, positive or negative, is essential.

Further Information

Education For Today: Rethinking Skills for Success with Daniel Goleman and Peter Senge

Daniel Goleman and Peter Senge discusses system thinking in relationship to empathy building and the use of systems thinking in the schools.

watersfoundation.org  Excellent starting point for systems thinking in schools.

http://www.clexchange.org/  Another good source for systems thinking in schools.

http://www.casel.org/  Information regarding social emotional learning in schools.

http://www.fixschooldiscipline.org/  Fix School Discipline is a good starting point to learn about restorative justice in schools.

Resources

Durlak, J. A., Weissberg, R. P., Dymnicki, A. B., Taylor, R. D. & Schellinger, K. B. (2011), The impact of enhancing students’ social and emotional learning: A meta-analysis of school-based universal interventions. Child Development, 82: 405–432.

Goleman, D. & Senge, P. (Performers). (2014, March 17). Education For Today: Rethinking Skills for Success with Daniel Goleman and Peter Senge [Web Video]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=es5yaJdPeBY&feature=youtu.be

Schiff, M. (2013, January). Dignity, disparity and desistance: Effective restorative justice strategies to plug the “school-to-prison pipeline.”. Closing the School Discipline Gap: Research to Practice conference, Washington, DC.