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| Education for a Changing World Graham Leicester, Keir Bloomer, Denis Stewart Click here for a print version of this article. Shift Happens In August 2006 Karl Fisch, a high school teacher in Colorado, pulled together a set of data about the way the world is changing as a conversation starter for a staff faculty meeting. He called his presentation 'Did You Know – Shift Happens'. The presentation simply displayed a series of facts about the pace of change and the tectonic shifts in the world that are challenging many of our assumptions about the effectiveness of our education systems. Fisch posted the presentation on his blog, the Fischbowl. It hit a nerve and quickly gained worldwide attention. Today it has been viewed online by more than 15 million people, and shown to countless more at conferences, workshops and presentations. Why? Because it is a powerful and simple representation of what we all know but have been unwilling to face up to. We live in powerful times. The world is changing. The future is radically uncertain. And the challenge for educators is daunting. As the presentation memorably puts it: 'We are currently preparing students for jobs that don’t yet exist, using technologies that have not been invented, in order to solve problems we don't even know are problems yet.'But Not in Education Fisch's presentation is so powerful because we also sense how utterly out of step it is with the pace of change in education systems worldwide. We see a pattern of steady, incremental improvement in education that continues to push the relevant statistics on participation and attainment ever higher, but a singular lack of transformative innovation. School remains a perennial institution, maturing in Victorian times and little changed in its essence in over a century. The great expansion in education provision was driven by the needs of an industrialising economy. Today's economy and society have different needs. But while the factory whistle is now a museum piece, the school bell that imitates it remains a ubiquitous reminder of another age. The warning lights have been flashing red for decades now, but our earnest efforts at improvement have failed to keep up with the world. The OECD in 2002 described an era of ‘discontinuous change’ in learning and education, 'revolution, not reform.' It has yet to transpire. The theme of the European Journal of Education's special volume on educational futures in 2007 was the gap between a growing understanding of the need for educational innovation and the persistence of disappointing practice. 'How come the more we know the less we use?' the editors asked. The story of the last 25 years is perhaps most simply and powerfully told in relation to the United States – one of the most innovative nations on earth. In 1983 the National Commission on Excellence in Education published its landmark report A Nation at Risk. It spoke of a 'rising tide of mediocrity that threatens our very future as a nation and a people. What was unimaginable a generation ago has begun to occur – others are matching and surpassing our educational attainments'. The response to this wake up call was managerial - improving the efficiency of the system, the quality of the inputs, managing the numbers. The results have been less than dramatic. There is the pain of the economist in this conclusion from the Heritage Foundation think tank in 1990: 'As a result of the past decade's efforts, classes have never been smaller and per-pupil spending and teacher salaries have never been higher – and student performance has never been lower'.The pain of the politician is audible in US Education Secretary Rod Paige's lament in 2004: 'Is it too much to ask that a third-grade child read at a third-grade level?'And there is the pain of the entrepreneur looking to hire talent in Bill Gates' observation in 2005: 'American high schools are obsolete. Our high schools were designed 50 years ago to meet the needs of another age. Until we design them to meet the needs of the 21st century, we will keep limiting - even ruining - the lives of millions of Americans every year.'Reviewing the sorry saga Larry Cuban concludes: 'The surface is agitated and turbulent, while the ocean floor is calm and serene. Policy churns dramatically, creating the appearance of major changes while deep below the surface life goes on largely uninterrupted.'Overall, across the developed world governments have formulated new missions and aspirational targets for education, but none has yet made the breakthrough to transformative practice. Educational system leaders are good at producing development programmes which are frenetic, burdensome to practitioners, incomprehensible and disruptive to both parents and learners but ultimately leave the essentials of the scene completely unaltered. Resignation and fatalism are setting in. The debate is getting highly emotional and polarised. As critique of the existing system becomes more incendiary and revolutionary to provoke change, defence inevitably becomes more entrenched. Even the perennially hopeful Barack Obama is daunted when it comes to education: 'Our debate seems stuck between those who want to dismantle the system and those who would defend an indefensible status quo.' 4 The above is taken from a newly published book titled 'Transformative Innovation in Education' published by Triarchy Press, NET's publishing partner. The authors move on from this introduction to offer some provocative ways forward. Further details: www.triarchypress.co.uk |
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