Disrupting Class Commended
One of the books I read recently is Disrupting Class: How Disruptive Innovation Will Change the Way the World Learns by Clayton M. Christensen, Michael B. Horn, and Curtis W. Johnson (McGraw Hill). Oh my. This book adds lots of combustible material to the education fire that I've been warming myself by for many years. I saw a reference to the book in an editorial in our local newspaper and got myself to the Amazon site promptly and ordered this hot-off-the-press book--copyright 2008. It has been all I hoped for.
The lead author, Christensen, is a professor of business administration at Harvard, and has authored other bestsellers on innovation. His basic premise is that technology will drastically reconfigure education as we know it, with the process of change being well underway by 2012, and more than half of all high school classes taught online by 2020.
Technology bringing change to the classroom is not a new idea, and neither Christensen nor I see technology as it's used now in classrooms as particularly revolutionary. For the most part, it facilitates doing faster and better some of the things we've tried to do in the classroom in slower ways for a long time--teaching typing, and requiring typed essays, reports, and research papers, for example. No one I know who uses word processing programs has any interest at all in going back to the days of using typewriters for keyboard practice and for writing documents, or being limited to the old alternative--writing in longhand. Computers have dramatically changed the way we do these small things.
But Christensen is talking about something far more revolutionary. He refers to Howard Gardner's multiple intelligences theory and envisions computerized instruction that enables each person to study any subject through the lens of their most capable "intelligence." For example, a person with outstanding musical intelligence would have content in every subject area integrated with music in a fundamental, primary way. A nature smart person could learn about math, social studies, and language arts through studying the natural world. Can you imagine how disruptive to the status quo such an approach would be?
Christensen furthermore states that this approach will be developed and used first in "nonconsumers" of traditional educational approaches and products: homeschoolers and charter schools. These groups will be quick to see the potential of these new approaches, and they will make such good use of them that conventional educational institutions will soon be forced to take note and get in line. The author bases some of these predictions on models in the business world where the most innovative solutions to complex problems often cannot be successfully integrated into old structures. They work best if they can develop in a fairly autonomous organization, along new lines. (He cites comparisons between charter schools that have a great deal of autonomy and schools that are far more closely tied to the conventional counterparts in their district. More autonomy equals better results. Kansas so far has only the less autonomous charter schools.) Then, after the system has proven itself, the older educational organizations will be more willing to replace their old ways with the obviously more successful new ways.
What often happens is that efforts to integrate new methods into old structures flounder under the weight of many limiting factors. Turf wars come to mind. If it wasn't invented here, it can't be better than what we've already got. I first understood what Christensen is saying about 20 years before he said it, and I have smarted and grieved over it many times since then. Every school day I saw children who had "intelligences" that seldom intersected with the methods of instruction our school offered. And we could not change to accommodate them. They were consigned to ongoing struggle and a lingering sense of failure, while we continued to run the program.
Christensen is absolutely on target when he says that homeschoolers and charter schools will be the first to benefit from the tailoring that developing technology offers learners of all kinds. I've seen the resourcefulness of these groups of people first hand, and they are professional in the best sense of the word in many of the approaches they use. They have curriculum flexibility that surpasses what is possible in group learning environments. They can further customize the curriculum to suit the best learning modalities of each student in a way that seldom happens in a classroom environment. They are tenacious in pursuing what works, and very clear-eyed about the need to discard what doesn't, no matter how slick the packaging or how good others think it is.
A central understanding to the whole process of educational change is that the emphasis must be on education, not on schools in themselves. Amen and amen. This is so simple, and so commonly overlooked by decision-makers. Too many people think education means bricks and mortar and seat time. What an impoverished conception! Have these people never pursued a single project for the sheer joy of learning about it? I daresay if they have done so, it has, as likely as not, happened outside a conventional curriculum or classroom. Under the hood of a car perhaps, or while holding a fishing pole, or learning a piece of music, or with eyes racing along lines of printed material, or spellbound in the presence of a master speaking about his passion. It doesn't take curriculum and classes to create a spectacular learning environment. Yet, people who think conventionally about education will try first to squeeze innovations to fit inside these parameters.
Christensen sees conventional classrooms on the grade school level as having more inherent flexibility than is typical in high school. They are therefore less in need of alternatives. He also acknowledges that some subjects in high school lend themselves more easily to a classroom setting than others do. In other words, he does not necessarily advocate replacing everything conventional with something new.
Our high school offers a combination of programmed individualized (but almost entirely text-based) instruction and classroom instruction. I think this is a far better arrangement than exclusively doing either one would be. We further open classes to students who are homeschooled for the most part and who wish to take advantage of conventionally-taught classes in some subject areas. Music, composition, speech, Anabaptist history, and some of the practical skills classes are the classes homeschoolers most frequently choose. These options make our school better than most in terms of the flexibility present. But this is not quite good enough.
I, for one, will keep a sharp eye on what homeschoolers are up to, and if they tell me that multiple-intelligence-based computerized instruction is here and working well, I will lose no time in campaigning to see it offered in our high school as an alternative track to a diploma.
It may disrupt class, but I can't think of a better reason for doing so.
The lead author, Christensen, is a professor of business administration at Harvard, and has authored other bestsellers on innovation. His basic premise is that technology will drastically reconfigure education as we know it, with the process of change being well underway by 2012, and more than half of all high school classes taught online by 2020.
Technology bringing change to the classroom is not a new idea, and neither Christensen nor I see technology as it's used now in classrooms as particularly revolutionary. For the most part, it facilitates doing faster and better some of the things we've tried to do in the classroom in slower ways for a long time--teaching typing, and requiring typed essays, reports, and research papers, for example. No one I know who uses word processing programs has any interest at all in going back to the days of using typewriters for keyboard practice and for writing documents, or being limited to the old alternative--writing in longhand. Computers have dramatically changed the way we do these small things.
But Christensen is talking about something far more revolutionary. He refers to Howard Gardner's multiple intelligences theory and envisions computerized instruction that enables each person to study any subject through the lens of their most capable "intelligence." For example, a person with outstanding musical intelligence would have content in every subject area integrated with music in a fundamental, primary way. A nature smart person could learn about math, social studies, and language arts through studying the natural world. Can you imagine how disruptive to the status quo such an approach would be?
Christensen furthermore states that this approach will be developed and used first in "nonconsumers" of traditional educational approaches and products: homeschoolers and charter schools. These groups will be quick to see the potential of these new approaches, and they will make such good use of them that conventional educational institutions will soon be forced to take note and get in line. The author bases some of these predictions on models in the business world where the most innovative solutions to complex problems often cannot be successfully integrated into old structures. They work best if they can develop in a fairly autonomous organization, along new lines. (He cites comparisons between charter schools that have a great deal of autonomy and schools that are far more closely tied to the conventional counterparts in their district. More autonomy equals better results. Kansas so far has only the less autonomous charter schools.) Then, after the system has proven itself, the older educational organizations will be more willing to replace their old ways with the obviously more successful new ways.
What often happens is that efforts to integrate new methods into old structures flounder under the weight of many limiting factors. Turf wars come to mind. If it wasn't invented here, it can't be better than what we've already got. I first understood what Christensen is saying about 20 years before he said it, and I have smarted and grieved over it many times since then. Every school day I saw children who had "intelligences" that seldom intersected with the methods of instruction our school offered. And we could not change to accommodate them. They were consigned to ongoing struggle and a lingering sense of failure, while we continued to run the program.
Christensen is absolutely on target when he says that homeschoolers and charter schools will be the first to benefit from the tailoring that developing technology offers learners of all kinds. I've seen the resourcefulness of these groups of people first hand, and they are professional in the best sense of the word in many of the approaches they use. They have curriculum flexibility that surpasses what is possible in group learning environments. They can further customize the curriculum to suit the best learning modalities of each student in a way that seldom happens in a classroom environment. They are tenacious in pursuing what works, and very clear-eyed about the need to discard what doesn't, no matter how slick the packaging or how good others think it is.
A central understanding to the whole process of educational change is that the emphasis must be on education, not on schools in themselves. Amen and amen. This is so simple, and so commonly overlooked by decision-makers. Too many people think education means bricks and mortar and seat time. What an impoverished conception! Have these people never pursued a single project for the sheer joy of learning about it? I daresay if they have done so, it has, as likely as not, happened outside a conventional curriculum or classroom. Under the hood of a car perhaps, or while holding a fishing pole, or learning a piece of music, or with eyes racing along lines of printed material, or spellbound in the presence of a master speaking about his passion. It doesn't take curriculum and classes to create a spectacular learning environment. Yet, people who think conventionally about education will try first to squeeze innovations to fit inside these parameters.
Christensen sees conventional classrooms on the grade school level as having more inherent flexibility than is typical in high school. They are therefore less in need of alternatives. He also acknowledges that some subjects in high school lend themselves more easily to a classroom setting than others do. In other words, he does not necessarily advocate replacing everything conventional with something new.
Our high school offers a combination of programmed individualized (but almost entirely text-based) instruction and classroom instruction. I think this is a far better arrangement than exclusively doing either one would be. We further open classes to students who are homeschooled for the most part and who wish to take advantage of conventionally-taught classes in some subject areas. Music, composition, speech, Anabaptist history, and some of the practical skills classes are the classes homeschoolers most frequently choose. These options make our school better than most in terms of the flexibility present. But this is not quite good enough.
I, for one, will keep a sharp eye on what homeschoolers are up to, and if they tell me that multiple-intelligence-based computerized instruction is here and working well, I will lose no time in campaigning to see it offered in our high school as an alternative track to a diploma.
It may disrupt class, but I can't think of a better reason for doing so.
posted by Mrs. I at
2:30 PM
1 Comments:
Love the blog. Very well synthesized. Check out the book on Amazon at www.amazon.com/Disrupting-Class-Disruptive-Innovation-Change/dp/0071592067 or at www.disruptingclass.com.
By
Anonymous, at 6/24/2008
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