Transforming Schooling: Why We Must And What It Will Take
School does not work for too many of our young people and is also failing our wider societies
. In this article we outline what we see, based on our research in the area, as key aspects of the problem and hint at what can be done about it. In this article we argue the need for a transformational approach to changing what school is and how it works. The concern to transform is different from the normal objective of school reform. The latter is about improving what is rather than imagining what could be and understanding what it would take to achieve it. Being concerned with transformation means being willing to question deeply held assumptions about the very nature of school, teaching, learning and knowledge. It also means questioning taken for granted assumptions about the role of learners, teachers, school leaders and communities. As we all make these assumptions and we all have an interest, we all need to get involved.
Why do we need to transform Schooling?
Schooling does not work for a large number of learners. The evidence as it relates to many disadvantaged groups - including ethnic minorities and those in low socio-economic groupings - is well known and largely undisputed. But schooling does not only need to be transformed to work for these groups. Schooling increasingly fails the majority - in many western countries, boys for example, are 'falling behind'. Then too, boys and girls alike often fail to achieve adequate numeracy and literacy and, despite many attempts to improve in these areas, in many countries this appears to be getting worse rather than better. While these areas have been the primary focus for advocates of reform, they are not, however, where schooling fails the most.
Education is generally regarded primarily as a public (or merit) good - we invest in it as a society, not only to help those who participate directly to better themselves, but because in so doing we all benefit. Correspondingly most countries have aspirational goals for schooling which relate to social, emotional and citizenship outcomes for learners - with these rightly perceived as contributing benefits to the wider society. Unfortunately these social goals are seldom measured and nor do they form the basis by which international comparisons are made between educational performance at the national level although the body to which all governments look for these comparisons - the Program for International School Comparisons (PISA) which is a part of the OECD - is moving towards doing so. This shift is important as the influence of PISA on national policy priorities has arguably been the same as that of national standardised testing on teacher priorities - to skew the focus onto the narrow set of measures included in the tests. This has meant less focus on what many employers and wider advocates have been arguing are key for national competitiveness now and in the future.
The skills students need to do well in their lives and to contribute to their society are increasingly those that are critical in a world in which information is no longer restricted and where uncertainty is greatly expanded. This describes today's world and the future. Unfortunately the evidence also suggests that a learner who can perform well in these areas - one who can be creative, can problem solve in the context of high uncertainty or ambiguity, can create new knowledge where none currently exists or is contradictory and fragmented, may do poorly in today's schools. Correspondingly, students who do doing well at school often fail to leave with these critical skills. The need for these skills has often been picked up under a call for a shift to 21st Century teaching and learning. We are now 12 years into the 21st century and we are still not supporting an approach to learning which underpins these critical skills. Why?
School was designed on the basis of assumptions about learning and knowledge which have long been superseded or even invalidated by advances in biological and social science. The evidence is that, despite many and repeated attempts to change it, schools still embody and perpetuate (if not actually espouse) nave assumptions about the nature of knowledge (as fixed and transmissible), learning (as involving the passive acquisition of knowledge quanta provided by experts) and skill development (as resulting from acquiring propositional knowledge). School systems don't deliver what we want from them because, as a system conceived and constituted as they are, they cannot so deliver. At the level of the individual leader and teacher also we continually find habits of ways of thinking and doing which work against the development of 21st century skills. For example, in order for teachers to deliver learning that is relevant to the real world, that learning needs to link to the world of the learner. At the moment too much of it happens - or is attempted - behind the chain wire fences of the local school. Despite almost all of the expertise about problems and opportunities important to the community, in places of work and play, being outside that school fence the single largest weakness in contemporary practice in the schools in which our research was undertaken is in the area of connecting to students lives and experience and applying and assessing in authentic contexts. Too many teachers struggle to find ways to make learning real, relevant and significant to the learner. Second in terms of weakness of practice were those aspects of teaching which supported students to learn how to learn and to deal with the complexity of real world problems through becoming more meta-cognitive - thinking about and taking responsibility and control over how they learn.
So why is it so hard to transform schooling?
As already noted, many of the key goals are stated but not measured. Much of what is measured, and the way it is measured, therefore distorts the stated intent. The assumptions, upon which it is based, though invalidated within the scientific community, persist and are still widely held by learners, educators, and community and policy makers. Furthermore they are held as world-views - deep assumptions of which the holders themselves are often unaware. There are also many with a vested interest in the current system (education is and supports industries from facilities providers, software developers, publishers, and tertiary education systems). Finally it is a system which operates towards the limits of its capacity - it is difficult to change it while keeping it going to deliver what is expected 5 days of the week 52 weeks of the year. Attempting to transform it has been likened to trying to reengineer an aircraft while it is in flight.
So what can we do?
Firstly, we all need to become more circumspect. Instead of assuming we know what school is and how it should work, we need to question that assumption. Work from the assumption that we don't know how to educate people for the skills they will need for the future and that we - by which I mean parents, students and teachers, leaders of schools, and administrators and policy makers, need to become learners about how, together, we can redesign support systems for learning that are relevant and engaging. Secondly, community needs to go into schools and schools into community. Teacher's cannot and do not know enough about how to change and what to change. There is a need for wider stakeholder investment of time. So get involved, but always from the assumption outlined above. The system has had enough ideologically loaded assumptions imposed on it as well as the dogma of many experts.
Thirdly, support new leaders, within the governance and delivery systems of the school and outside the school. These are leaders who are learners and leaders who support learning. Eschew the know-alls and control freaks. This sort of leader shuts down learning and capacity building for change.
Finally, insist on quality evidence to guide learning - learning about how we learn and learning about how to change. Measure what is valued even if it is hard. Reject narrow and instrumental approaches to accountability which drive out innovation and learning.
by: Chris Goldspink
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