Thinking About Change

All year I've been trying to teach the kids in my class to question things and look at possibilities. I always try to push them to see how things can be. I do not want them to accept things as they are, but to wonder instead about how they can be. The other day, I posted something I called fundamental change. Re - reading that post, I realize the pure hyperbole the title was. Certainly a few of the things mentioned in the post were different ways of looking at things, but they were probably not fundamental. This got me thinking about how classrooms and other places of learning could change. What are some of the possibilities at the structural and organizational level?

One tool I have the kids in my classroom use is a simple matrix that comes from the Medici Effect. In this exercise of creative thinking, you simply list what you know about a place now (what it is like, what happens there, who goes on there, etc. etc. whatever you can think of), and then in the second column, you list all of these attributes negatively.

Here is a matrix for a classroom:

The beauty of this simple tool is that it opens us up to new possibilities and opens us up to new ideas. Once we rid ourselves of assumptions about the way a place "has to be," we can look at it in a new way. Which is what we do in the third column (which I have conveniently left off of this version to give me more time to think about it) In the third column, we think about how it can be different. An example, from the diagram above would be that if the curriculum is not supplied by experts from outside the classroom, where could it come from? Experts inside the classroom? Experts from another place? A curriculum is not supplied at all? While this matrix does lead to a lot of "off the wall" ideas, these can always be discarded. Like any brainstorming tool, it is not really the "realisticness" of the ideas that counts, but simply the number of them that can be supplied.

It frustrates me to see all of the transformative tools we have, the networks we can form, the powerful theories of learning and change that we can implement, and yet we plod along, tinkering with assignments and where we seat kids in the classroom thinking this will change the kind of learning that develops, making it more appropriate for the century we live in.

It is time for change if we want our kids to be able to work at the highest levels in this century. They need new skills then we had, they need to understand new tools and their impact on the globe. A common definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a new result each time. This seems to be what has happened in education. Certainly people were learning in schools before, we all did. But schools need to have a different job now. The learning needs to be different if we want our students to be successful.

I need some time to think about what kinds of things need to go in the third column of the diagram above.

Comments

[Bob Hill]

I too am thinking about the changes which need to take place in the classroom. Here in Scotland, there is a lot of forward thinking about the new technologies and tools, but often it's using them to do the same old thing. For example, podcasting is thought of as a new way of teaching literacy. This is true and it does get results but it is so much more!

I eagerly await your third column.

[Mark Ahlness]

Clarence, thanks for this! It's exactly what I was looking for a while ago when I suggested (I can't remember where - a comment left on a blog somewhere!) that the model currently used for staff training in technology ought to be totally redone. Throw out all the old assumptions. It is not working. Start over. Thanks for getting me thinking about this again - Mark

[Brian Crosby]

http://learningismessy.com/blog/?p=85
Doug over at Borderland picked up on a post by Clarence Fisher about a “grid” that would apply to classroom change. I threw in my response and Doug replied, but the gem is Marco Polo’s reply. I think he frames the issue magnificently:
http://learningismessy.com/blog/?p=85