“You have a masterpiece inside you, you know. One unlike any that has ever been created, or ever will be. If you go to your grave without painting your masterpiece, it will not get painted. No one else can paint it. Only you.”
—Gordon MacKenzie, Orbiting the Giant Hairball
When You Are or Are Not in Charge
COVER STORY
Leading Yourself Through Change Chapter 5 Excerpt The Human Side of Changing Education By Julie Jungalwala Founder & Executive Director of the Institute for the Future of Learning
In 2015, I conducted a research report for Arthur Levine at the Woodrow Wilson Foundation titled “The K–12 Transformational Landscape.” The scope of the research was to interview a number of thought leaders to gain perspective on the short-, medium-, and long-term trends in the American K–12 education system, its primary challenges, and the biggest potential levers for change. One of my biggest takeaways from the research was the growing sense of a bifurcating path and what might happen if we decide to stay on the path of the one-size-fits-all model, or make the choice to fundamentally rethink and reimagine the system. Conducting the research helped me understand the terrain and the choices before us. Yes, there is much innovation happening. There is an ed tech bubble happening right now. There is the semblance of schools moving into the 21st century with iPads and apps and big data. But scratch under the surface, and a significant percentage of this “innovation” is “technologizing the traditional” (Richardson, 2015). Any technology that helps facilitate the processes and procedures existing in the current system is a much easier sell than something that will disrupt the status quo and support a more creative—and risky—approach. What might happen if we double down on the industrial era model with the power of technology? The dystopian view is that we have millions of children isolated in front of computers or tablets being fed adaptive instruction. Students will progress in a linear way through a prescribed curriculum with little or no opportunity to create or think for themselves. Don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against computer adaptive instruction; it is a helpful tool in the overall learning process. But if we do not stop to think about the overarching outcomes that we seek, then the default path is one of consumption, increasing isolation of the student, and reduced risk taking—aided, and made more efficient by, technology. Conducting the research made me realize that the overall pace of change is too slow and that too many innovations, in particular technology innovations, are not actually that innovative. A deeper change is needed and technology (alone) is not our savior.
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