Acknowledging the I in Education

8/3/2019 Acknowledging the I in Education

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ACKNOWLEDGINGTHE IN EDUCATIONSCHOOL REDESIGN FROM THE GROUND UP

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f you took education classes in college, you mayhave contemplated the following question: "Ifwe were designing our education system fromscratch today, what would it look like?" Backthen, this question might have been a fun intellectual exercise. Today, it may just be the mostimportant question we can ponder.

If you've ever renovated part of a home- your kitchen, say - you've likely had thatmoment where you asked yourself, "Can I getto my dream kitchen without tearing out thatold pantry?" or "Can I just tile over this existingfloor?" Usually, there doesn't seem to be a clearcorrect answer, because there are pros and conswith each option. If you make use of what youhave, you might save money and time and bejust as happy in the end. However, if you haveto compromise on many of the details along theway, in the end you'll wonder why you wastedthe time and effort.

By RYAN S. WOOLEY


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If you have the capability to do thework, and if you want the best possiblekitchen, you will opt to take everythingdown to the studs and start over everytime. It is the only way to have doubleTrivection ovens, adequate preparation space, and enough light to see theasparagus spears you are cutting. Inother words, if the kitchen was built in1939 and its current purpose is aboutactually preparing food and entertaining 2oII-style, there is only one way toget the job done. Otherwise you end upliving with design limitations that areno longer relevant. When my housewas built, microwaves and refrigeratorice makers hadn't even been inventedyet, and about as much power was allocated to an entire kitchen that is nowallocated to one appliance.Things have changed. We knowmore about kitchens. They are different than they were in 1939 at the designlevel.Relatively speaking, the potentialimpact of upgrading the core designof education is much more striking.Cooking may have gotten incrementally better over the past century, butgiven the convergence of educationalresearch with newly available tools,education is poised to improve exponentially. For the first time, our besteducation-design ideas are actually insync with the tools that are currentlyavailable for their implementation.Why would we stay tethered to outdated designs?THE INCONGRUITY BETWEENKNOWLEDGE AND PRACTICEThe beginnings of the education sys-tem in the United States coincidedroughly with the Industrial Revolution. The ethos of the time was to beefficient - to pool resources for thebetterment of groups of people, toestablish standards. Schools, as weknow them, were designed in this era.The school day was broken into standardized segments of time, just likefactory workdays. In the same way thatassembly-line work was distributedin a logical order and across workers with specific skills, schools werebroken into age groups and students

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placed in small rooms where teachers(with specific age or content expertise)would cover what came next. Youcan imagine a factory worker saying,"This is the place on the line where weinstall the doors" just as easily as youcan imagine a teacher saying, "This iswhere I teach fourth graders."

This original design was immenselyeffective because it was a powerful toolto democratize education in an efficient and cost-effective way. It was alsoresponsible for ushering in a long eraof national progress and prosperity.During this period, the United Statesfashioned itself as a world superpowerand came to be a beacon of innovation. There was notable and productivecongruity between education and theeconomic drivers of the time.In 20II - when our economicdrivers have shifted, when new toolshave broken down the constraintsof older models, when our collectiveintelligence about teaching and learning has matured - the design ofschools should look considerably different. Yet, the vast majority of schoolsstill look remarkably like they did a

century ago. Does the original designstill fit? Or are we paying a price forretrofitting our renovations onto anantiquated system?

I'm as tired as anyone of the proselytizing. As an educator and educational technologist for IS-plus yearsnow, I have seen my share of writingsand presentations about how "everything is changing" in education. Moreoften than not, these proclamationscome with a tacit Why-don't-all-ofyouidiots-see-what-I-see? subtext - evenwhen these arguments are overblownand rest on ill-articulated assumptionsabout what is best. On the other hand,if there is merit to the suggestionof needed radical change in education - and many of us think there ismerit - it has not manifested in a veryevident way. If we combine these twoobservations, we're frequently tellingourselves how badly we need to changewhile simultaneously not changingmuch at all.

To understand this incongruity, weneed to focus on a few fundamentaldesign elements and get beyond thesurface rhetoric and smug assump-

Lesson plans should be burned in agiant, glorious bonfire. They were designedto teach lengths of time, not students.


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tions. We need to identify some of themost basic and universal expectationsand hopes we have for schooling andcheck them against our actual design.There is so much we want from ourschools, so it is understandable thatwe can't have it all. But shouldn't thebasic, essential hopes be addressed atthe design level?

Or, to put it another way, shouldn'twe ask, "What do we want fromschools in 20II that is not facilitated bytheir fundamental design?"

I'm going to cut to the chase. I think itis safe to say that differentiated instruction (DI) is a fairly universal expectation today. Like many other termsin education, DI has been packaged,marketed, "thesified," and perhapsoverused. The concept was formallyarticulated in the December 1953 issueof Educational Leadership, a volumeentitled "The Challenge of IndividualDifference." Yet, if we strip away anybaggage that the DI-Iabel accumulatedover the years, attending to the individual specific needs of students is auniversal hope for schools. Certainlyit would be difficult to argue the opposite. Even if we consider learning to bea social act, we are always concernedabout individual development. We mayhope our students learn to work wellin teams, but we understand that whatmakes teams work is the individualdevelopment of its members. Thereis no well-functioning team withoutwell-functioning individuals. A groupdoesn't think or design solutions; individuals do this as part of a group.School design has never been verysupportive of differentiated learning. Inconventional models of instruction, theteacher may try to teach to some imagined "middle" of the group - somesweet spot where advanced studentswouldn't be bored, struggling studentswouldn't be overwhelmed, and somegroup in the middle would be comfortable and appropriately challenged. Thegoal seemed to be to find the "least bad"among these options. The ugly truth isthat, even in the best of circumstances,

it is unlikely that ~ n y student in thistype of class was ever attended to individually - at least nowhere near all thetime. A very skilled instructor may havefound ways of moving the wand ofindividual attention around a room, touching every student. But in a 50-minuteclass with 20 students, how often isthe wand in the right spot for a givenstudent? If you are lucky and the wandwas equally distributed and constantlymoving, it would catch you about halfof he time.

In more progressive models ofinstruction, perhaps the teacherbecomes less "sage on the stage" andmore "guide on the side." Maybe students are arranged in small groups.Lessons in this setting are thoughtto be more student-centric, as smallgroups move more nimbly across ill-defined tasks or problems (those withmultiple right answers). Certainlyfrom a design standpoint, this instructional method seems much more likelyto yield differentiation. But a closerlook reveals that group work mightactually introduce its own set of obstacles. Perhaps a student finds herselfin a group where her members takeover and leave little room for her togrow. Perhaps she ends up doing all ofthe work because her group membersdon't care about the project or are simply not as capable. Suppose the groupcan do this project well in three days,but there are three weeks allotted forit. Unfortunately, even teachers whofocus on differentiation cannot trulyovercome the obstacles to it.

In short, the prevailing design issimply not equipped to deal with differentiation adequately or efficiently.For years, teachers have been doingthe best they can to work around thesedesign limitations. The problem is therecipe, not the cook. Schools are notdesigned to attend to individual need.Even the most progressive schools areorganized around arbitrary units oftime. Do I spend a year taking chemistry because that is how long it takesme to learn it? Does it happen to takeme and all 18 of my classmates exactlythree weeks to learn and explain thecauses of the Civil War?

The standard structure of educational time and space was born fromour organizational needs, not from theneeds of students. We needed order.We needed predictable schedules,and foreseeable entry and exit points.What would the structure look likeif designed from the perspective ofstudent need? Here is a possibility: students would progress through a topicas they were ready, not when somearbitrary time period was used up.Instead of being organized by age, theywould be organized by developmentalneed. Students would be the primaryarchitects of their own learning paths,because they are in the best positionsto judge their needs. Students wouldbe coached to understand themselvesas learners and would become skilledat making design decisions about theirdevelopment.

Ironically, moving away fromthe industrial model actually makeslearning more efficient. Here is anexample: Sally B. Student was ready tomove on to the next topic in her Spanish class two weeks ago. Since that isnot the way the class was scheduled,she's been in a holding pattern untilthe class catches up to her. Those twoweeks could have been spent learningnew material. If we added up thoseholding patterns over the course ofstudent's academic career, how muchtime would have been wasted? Oneyear? Two years? Five years? Wouldn'tit be better to spend the exact amountof time on a topic that was needed formastery? Wouldn't it be better iflearning activities could be custom-tailoredto individual need?

If only we had a teacher who could: be in 18 places at once; constantly collect information abouteach student's progress and use thatinformation to adapt the learningpath on the fly; repeat a lesson as often as necessaryfor each student; start and stop multiple times in themiddle of each lesson, per each individual student's need; skip information that was alreadyknown by each student; and

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morph into three other humans during a lesson, each with a differentway of explaining the concept beingstudied.

While all of this seems crazy, everysingle bullet is possible. The teacherjust has to be a computer... in thehands of each and every student.

Before you chuck this magazine intothe garbage, hear me out. I'm not suggesting that we don't need teachers.My wife and I are teachers and we havea thousand friends who are teachers.All of us rely on our jobs to put foodon the table for our families. I have adeep respect for the profession. I'msuggesting that we don't need teachersto teach content. Lesson plans shouldbe burned in a giant, glorious bonfire.They were designed to teach lengths oftime, not students.

We need to give teachers a newjob description. We need them to helpstudents articulate learning paths.We need them to advise and mentor,connect, and encourage. Many teachers perform these duties every day,but these are secondary duties to theprimary duty of teaching content inpredefined blocks of time in classrooms built to accommodate smallgroups of students. The role of teacheris 180 degrees from where it shouldbe. Teachers should look more liketravel agents - the really good oneswho get more excited about your Alaskan cruise than you do. They shouldbe giddy to help students plan theirtravels.

Imagine the following scenario:Sarah, a I5-year-old high schoolstudent arrives to school at 8:00am. She begins he r day by attending School Meeting. Afterward, shemeets with Mr. Smith, her scienceteacher, to review progress on heronline modules. Sarah is right onschedule with the two-week plan thatshe worked out with Mr. Smith. Herprogress shows that she is ready forthe accompanying lab, so Mr. Smithrecommends that she schedule thelab with Ms. Geller, the permanent

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erhaps, like me, you see thebetween schools and the rest of the worldwhen it comes to the shape and pace ofprogress.lab technician. Mr. Smith also recommends that Sarah attend an onlinebroadcast of a renowned speakerin the field, which is scheduled for2:00 pm two days later. Thousandsof students across the country will beattending the event online. Duringher meeting with Mr. Smith, Sarahasks a few questions for clarificationand gets one-on-one assistance withone of the problems she struggledwith.

Sarah's day might look like thefollowing:

amSchool Meeting in the Auditorium

amMeet with the science teacher, Mr. Smith,for bi-weekly progress review - in Mr.Smith's office.

Writing workshop with writing group - inone of the five small meeting rooms forstudents.

Lunch in the dining hall.

Skype conversation with Chinese-language exchange partner - in individual/partner soundproof room (one of eight inthe school).

Open learning time for group projects/individual exploration - in large, opencafe.

Live human model drawing - in drawingstudio.

The 2:00-P5 pm slot could justas easily have been filled with, say,"Live demonstration of the physics ofsound" in the science lab. But if thisdemonstration happens, it will berecorded and later edited. One of thebest features of this new school is thatthe lecture gets to finally shed its badrap. Once demonstrations lose theirformer limitations, they also lose theirstigma. Stand-and-deliver demonstrations don't have to be live anymore.They can be recorded and shared asynchronously via the web. Here are someof the many benefits of doing so: Demonstration can be started andstopped several times to give the student the ability to catch up, take notes,look up unfamiliar terms. Demonstration can be reviewed multiple times for mastery of concepts. The best demonstrations can be replicated and shared repeatedly, giving usmore efficiency (we don't need to pay ateacher to do the same demonstrationmultiple times) and quality (we cantake the best demonstrations we generate and re-mix them with other "bestof" performances).

Perhaps the most significantimprovement to realize in educationredesign is the maximization of precious time. But time reconfiguration isonly one branch of a suite of interconnected design elements. Here is a shortlist of some of the most obvious interconnected improvements in a schooldesigned for effectiveness with today'stools (for details, see sidebar on page 55): Shift focus of "in class" time toemphasize process over content.


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Change The Facilitatorof "in class" Web";based instruction.

processcontent.

Wireless broadband, com-

use of

role of teacher,

educational W " ' ~ " " ' ' ' r n and maturationof thougl1t in the field.

by' n ~ ~ _ ~ A +

by a g e " ~

puters in the hands of everyent start ing in at least grade six.

of teacher.

by developmentalof by age.

THE MIGRATIONbut couldlet go of gradelevel groupings and

learning perspecstandard schedules? Classrooms

we know them? Teachers as wemost basic and

met by our design before we layeronal, and sometimes conflicting,

on the system?

Well, we know we can't just startover - at least not overnight. We can'tput all of our children in a cocoon untilwe rebuild this thing. Those of us whorely on our existing customers to helpus pay the bills can't risk losing thefamilies who know and trust the conventional model. But if there really isa fundamental design flaw, isn't it a bitirresponsible to pretend it isn't there?Shouldn't we at least start moving inthe right direction? Human beingshave engineered some fairly sophisticated migrations throughout our history on this planet; we could do this ifwe develop the will. The real conversation now should be about how to pacethe changes we should make - howto approach the task of moving ourschools forward.

Whether or not you agree withthe prescription I offer here, let meassume that you agree that education,in all of its forms, is not living up to

its potential. Perhaps, like me, you seethe incongruity between schools andthe rest of the world when it comes tothe shape and pace of progress. Thereare several potential reasons for thisincongruity. Here are a few: Even though independent schoolsare marketbased, they still have sig.nificant referential ties to the publicsystem, which is not marketbased. Schools have played a central rolein the stories most of us carry aroundwith us about our personal comingof age. We are naturally nostalgic andprotective of its shape. Many of the adult participants incurrent schools (the people in the bestpositions to steer change) were drawnto careers in education because of ourfondness for it. If anyone would be aptto be blind to its flaws, it would be us.

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Acknowledging the I in Education