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Leading with ‘impact’: A possible counterpoint to tribalism, Tim Logan
Leading with ‘impact’: A possible counterpoint to tribalism
Tim Logan tries to move beyond ‘us vs them’
As human beings, we have always told ourselves stories in order to help us make sense of our situation. One of these abiding stories is an ‘us vs them’ narrative, which runs deep in our collective culture and psyche, with fascinating and unexpected consequences. In his enlightening new book, Blueprint: The Evolutionary Origins of a Good Society, Nicholas Christakis excavates the biological reality of this tribal narrative that is, he maintains, an evolved feature of our ‘social suite’ – the set of characteristics that has helped us to flourish and build the (generally) functioning society that we now enjoy. Despite contributing to the inevitable notions of difference and otherness, tribalism has been essential in enabling us to identify as part of a manageable group and build cooperative relationships.
It almost goes without saying that, in our current turbulent times, this tribalism is evident everywhere – in our fractured politics, in our mainstream and social media, even in our divergent approaches to knowledge and truth. In our educational debate too, anyone who has spent any time on #eduTwitter in recent years will recognise similar trends: vocal proponents of ‘knowledge-rich’, ‘research-informed’ approaches failing to find much common ground with ‘21st century’, inquiry-centred advocates. But stepping back from our myopia to take a longer view, it is clear that this tribal debate in education has been raging for thousands of years [see Robinson’s (2013) illuminating book charting the history of the trivium (and Stephen Taylor’s great review in IS Spring/ Autumn 2015)]. So, this is nothing new! ‘At present, opinion is divided about the subjects of education. All do not take the same view about what should be learned’ (Aristotle, The Politics, 384–322 BC)
Optimistically, Christakis suggests a way to temper this tribalism. By levelling our analysis ‘up’ or ‘down’, we can connect with other identities and perspectives that may unite rather than divide us. We could shift a level ‘up’ to the ‘imagined communities’ (Anderson, 1983) of unifying national or supranational identity – such as French, European or ‘Afropean’ (Pitts, 2019). Alternatively, we could shift a step ‘down’ to the level of the individual, in order to connect with the common humanity that resides in all of us. To provide further illustration, Christakis draws the metaphor of differentiating two adjacent hills. As we stand and compare one, at 300 feet high, with another much taller at 900 feet, we interpret significant differences between the two hills. However, if we were able to transcend our particular perspective, we would realize that these were, in fact, two mountains of very similar height (10,300 feet and 10,900 feet) shaped by powerful tectonic forces, our distorted magnitudes caused by the fact that we had been viewing them from a plateau at 10,000 feet high.
In my view, this understanding of our natural propensity towards tribalism (for good or ill), and ways to transcend it, is a productive avenue for considering how we might similarly accept, but rise above, our educational tribalism. Shifting our focus ‘up’ to the level of the ‘impacts’ we want to have on our students might provide a way to gain the unifying perspective we very much need – an acknowledgement of the shared plateau on which we are all standing.
In a significant recent development in accreditation of international schools, this shift is an important feature of NEASC/CIE’s ACE Learning accreditation protocol. Based on Curtis and McTighe’s (2016) work on the Input-OutputImpact TM framework, ACE Learning transfers our strategic focus from outputs to impacts. This helps us to move beyond debates about programme design, qualifications, curriculum and instruction (though we will return to them, of course), in order to concentrate primarily on our intended outcomes for our students – where we might find consensus.
According to Curtis (2015), impacts represent a school’s ‘highest goal for student learning, often [though not necessarily] spanning academic areas.’ Impacts are longterm, performance-based learning outcomes that deepen over time and involve autonomous transfer of the acquired attribute/aptitude to new situations by the student. To take this analysis further, beyond their duration and depth, impacts may be clearly visible in the ‘processes and products of student learning’ (Curtis, 2015). However, others – such as value change or character development – are more intangible, posing interesting ongoing challenges for ‘capturing’ these impacts. Similarly, while we set out to produce particular impacts, the diversity of our students and the complexity of our communities may also produce a range of unintended impacts beyond our intentionality and control. However, despite such complexities, the desired
Examples of mission/vision statements
impacts that we specify in our various guiding statements should be the level of analysis that unites us as educators – as instances of our common ‘moral purpose’ (Fullan, 2001). By way of an example, a young person’s ability to think and engage critically with the world is generally agreed by most to be a desirable impact of schooling. This is clearly evident in many schools’ mission/vision statements (see image).
Examining this impact further, some might claim that our students would find it difficult to think critically unless they have a lot of knowledge and understanding about the object of their thinking (Hendrick, 2016). Others may claim that students’ critical faculties will remain under-developed unless they have been given the opportunity and freedom to practise, struggle, fail and succeed to think through the issues independently (van Gelder, 2005). Nevertheless, wherever we stand on these perspectives, agreement remains on the aspiration – a shared desire to leave a strong and lasting impact on our students’ critical cognitive abilities. From there, we can design backwards to the inputs and outputs required to achieve such an impact. However, this is where the real work begins. Within our communities, we then need rich, research-engaged and ongoing dialogues in order to agree on the structures and processes that best bring about and evaluate these impacts. This is far from straightforward, and requires strong leadership – but at least we can be confident that we are starting from a place of consensus about our desired impacts, to which we can always return when things begin to descend back into tribal factions.
References
Anderson B (1983) Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. London: Verso Aristotle (1905) Aristotle’s Politics. Oxford: Clarendon Press Christakis N (2019) Blueprint: The Evolutionary Origins of a Good Society. New York: Little, Brown Company Curtis G and McTighe J (2016) Leading Modern Learning. A Blueprint for Vision-Driven Schools. Bloomington: Solution Tree Press Curtis G (2015) What is a Vision without Impacts? [Online]. Greg Curtis Consulting. Available from: http://gregcurtis-consulting.ca/dir/ blog/2015/06/04/what-is-learning-without-impacts/ [Accessed 7 June 2019] Fullan M (2001) Leading in a Culture of Change. San Francisco: JosseyBass Hendrick C (2016) Why Schools Should Not Teach General Critical Thinking Skills [Online]. Aeon. Available from: https://aeon.co/ideas/ why-schools-should-not-teach-general-critical-thinking-skills [Accessed 8 June 2019] Pitts J (2019) Afropean: Notes from Black Europe. London: Penguin Robinson M (2013) Trivium 21c: Preparing young people for the future with lessons from the past. Carmarthen: Crown House Publishing van Gelder T (2005) Teaching Critical Thinking: Some Lessons from Cognitive Science. College Teaching, 53(1), 41-46
