| « Elearning - accessibility and usability | Changing css stylesheets using Javascript and a URL parameter » |
Can you change an organisation from the inside?
Learning, Change Management, Education reform, Politics 3305 viewsLot's of things are coming together for me at the moment. This post is an attempt to try to mash them together and see what comes out...
1) I'm reading the Cluetrain Manifesto. If there was ever a book that says what I've been thinking - this is it:
Many people in today's world seem to assume that official authorisation is required to learn new things
At some point you've got to break down and trust people both inside and outside your organisation.
Does your organisation have any genuine passion to share? Can you deal with such honesty?
Organisations don't know who their customers are any more.
The Net is next to impossible to understand unless you've experienced it for yourself.
I could go on, but I'd probably end up quoting from every page...
2) Through Twitter interactions with Tony Parkin, Doug Belshaw, Eylan Ezekiel and a host of other people who have been pushing the boundaries for years, I'm re-engaging with my passion for schools and teaching. We've been saying for years that networks fundamentally change the dynamic of education. That classroom walls can be broken down, that learning is a wider process than that of knowledge transfer from teacher to student. Yet, with all the thinking and fantastic practice that is going on, we still haven't really changed the underlying organisational structures that our schools are based on.
I'm not saying throw out the baby with the bathwater. But the trouble is, there just isn't the critical mass of networked people in each institution. What would happen if they all got together to create a new way of doing education?
3) A similar situation is happening in corporate learning. There are individuals within L&D teams across the country (and the world) who are connecting, learning how to learn and trying to demonstrate how training has to change not just just to keep up with society but to make training better. What would happen if they got together to create a new way of doing corporate L&D?
4) We keep having conferences. Teachmeets are becoming some of the most valuable CPD events for teachers. Yet very little real change is happening at a structural level.
5) We have a choice. We either stay inside the current structures and try to change them from the inside or we leave them.
6) Let's assume, for the moment, that leaving is not an option, so how do we change the current structures? We have to play the game. Use the accepted methods to communicate and make change happen. That means engaging with the regular media and lobbying government (or the management).
7) So here's a proposal. I'm focussing on schools for now:
Education policy conference
(Thanks to Eylan for his significant input on this)
Purpose: To look at education in its widest sense and propose recommendations for government.
Participants: A mix of 'stakeholders' (eg. teachers, policy-makers, industry leaders, parents, techies, kids!)
Method:
- Prepare the ground with a series of prompt statements (see below) - publicised widely and discussed in various media spaces.
- Raise the issues of assessment, curriculum, the place of school in society and the home, infrastructure and ethos.
- Participants to contribute to a conference wiki under those headings.
- Participants to come prepared to a day's conference to discuss, agree, and map out a 5 year plan towards creating a 21st century education system.
- The final statement must have three aspects - it must be written for a policy audience, must show stages of development, and must be simple to sum up.
Prompt statements
- The National Curriculum should stay But Ofsted should go
- Testing must be rigorous but results should not be published
- Schools have a moral and societal obligation to help shape children's lives to be healthy and respectful of authority
- If teachers choose resources / suppliers then those choices should be accountable to the community
- Classrooms should only be used when absolutely necessary
- The government should appoint a Chief Education Officer, and an independent advisory board on education
- The Open University is a model of highly effective, scalable education that could be replicated across schools and universities nationwide.
So, what do you think? Could this work? Would it make any difference? Only if it had a high enough profile.
5 comments
Great post Mark - and an excellent summary of the discussion that we have been having.
I think it is about time we all stopped throwing things from up on the fence and stopped moaning, and proposed something more positive.
I think that we could look at other methods for structuring this discussion (thanks to my wife @lezeki for this!) such as the Delphic Technique
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delphi_method
BrainPOP UK would love to help get these events off the ground - virtual or f2f - so that we can get it going.
Looking forward being involved with this
My daughter goes to a non-traditional secondary school here in the US (in New York state). The school is only in its 3rd year, but has seen some great results. It is a project based curriculum, requiring team work for each project, interaction with the community (business, colleges, community service, professional organizations, etc…).
The problem has been getting the school districts (who make the funding decisions) to get on board. They are in the process of changing the model to convince the school boards that this is an effective model. With this in mind I have a couple of other suggestions:
1) Provide choice in approaches. My daughter’s school is a good alternative for those who learn well in not structured environments. In fact, many who choose to go to the schools are those that show a high level of intelligence, but have poor grades or grades that don’t capture their knowledge. However, my son would not do well in this environment.
2) this leads to how do you assess learning that may be delivered differently? What my daughter’s school has found is that most of the students are very successfully with the testing also as long as they have some exposure to what the testing is looking for and how it is developed. They have a higher pass rate than other schools in the state despite the fact that many of their students would be considered learning disabled or low preforming in the schools they came from.
3) There needs to be constant communication and negotiation of the curriculum between teachers, administrators, the community, and the students. Her school does not wait to implement changes if they perceive there is a problem with their curriculum, resources, or methods of teaching. Each of the past 4 years the freshman curriculum has been changed based on feedback from students, parents, teachers, administrators and the community members who are part of each student’s learning committee. These learning committees meet twice a year for each student and discuss the student’s progress. The first year of the school, the administrators wanted to get rid of the committees because it was time consuming. However, it after much advocating from the parents, teachers, and students, this has become a tool to help develop curriculum and assess student learning and needs. It is an invaluable tool to get rich feedback from all the influences in the educational system. It would be like having a tutor, student, parents, and a member of the community meet in the British system of education.
I’m not sure if any of this is relevant to your discussion. However, it might be helpful to look at other models from which you could take pieces.
@Virginia. Thanks. Yes - it’s always useful to look at other models, to see what works elsewhere. I think assessment is going to be the key issue here. It’s what drives much of the school system - everything is geared around what is being assessed.
@Eylan. Thanks for the support. Not sure quite how to move this forward. A number of people are expressing support in various forums - we need to try to pull them together somehow.
Flattered and honoured to be included and mentioned in such company, Mark. Though I think anyone who knows me would not claim that I had been successful at changing my organisation from the inside… though I have hopefully helped others achieve it in theirs! And I have at least offered a model, haven and support for different thinking inside my own….
I would say though that I have encountered some of the thinking here out there in a number of schools that I have had the pleasure of working with whilst at SSAT. The alternative culture is out there… and i would be up for seeing hwo we could mobilise some of this thinking!
