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Sadly, family bedtime stories have long since faded into childhood, but yesterday I was reminded of the blind men and their elephant after reading The End of Techno-Critique: The Naked Truth about 1:1 Laptop Initiatives and Educational Change in the Journal of Technology, Learning, and Assessment. This brief yet important piece, by Mark E. Weston and Alan Bain, directly addresses  technology’s failed promise to transform and improve modern education.  While the article focuses on 1:1 programs because of their prominence, the shortcomings of laptops are not unlike those of any and all other initiatives.  In summarizing the scope of the issue, the authors conclude:

The body of evidence shows that the existence of scalable and sustainable effects from educational changes, innovations, and reforms – technological or otherwise – although frequently assumed remain an unrealized goal within education. In the field’s prevailing paradigm, efforts at improvement, as promising as they may appear, too often are co-opted, diluted, or diminished to generate any widespread effect on teaching or learning.

Anyone connected with education could cite numerous and varied reasons why schools suffer the effects of “co-opted, diluted, or diminished” efforts.  Weston and Bain suggest the causes are rooted within the  “autonomous, idiosyncratic, non-collaborative, and non-differentiated teaching practices that largely remain uninformed by research about what it takes to significantly improve student learning and achievement.”   Expressed another way, teachers, administrators, students, and parents typically only perceive part of the teaching-learning “elephant”.

Not unlike the blind men, we tend to focus on what is nearest (and by extension, most important) to us, effectively limiting our perspective to the reality at hand.  If the metaphor seems strained, consider your daily professional interactions and obligations.  Do they truly reflect an understanding of and involvement in the whole of teaching and learning, or are they merely a part of the “big picture” that only someone else sees?

From Technological Tools to Cognitive Tools

In How People Learn: Brain, Mind, Experience, and School, Bransford et al consider technology in terms of cognitive tools that shape and extend human learning.  In this environment, laptop computers are holistically integrated into a school’s  teaching and learning process.   According to Weston and Bain, such a setting requires establishing six distinct components:

• One, the community comprising the school – students, teachers, school leaders, and parents – must have an explicit set of simple rules that defines what the community believes about teaching and learning.
• Two, the school community deliberately and systematically uses its rules to embed its big ideas, values, aspirations, and commitments in the day-to-day actions and processes of the school.
• Three, all members at all levels of the school community are fully engaged with creating, adapting, and sustaining the embedded design of the school.
• Four, the embedded design generates feedback from all members of the school community: teachers, school leaders, students, and parents.
• Five, the interplay of rules, design, collaboration, and feedback make it possible for the school community to develop an explicit schema—a shared conceptual framework for practice—that defines interactions for the community members in their pursuit of learning.
• Six, guided by their use of their schema, community members demand systemic and ubiquitous use of technology, as opposed to idiosyncratic and sporadic use of technology described in the research on many 1:1 computing programs.

While I may not subscribe to every aspect of the self-organizing school concept, I do believe that developing a community-wide understanding of teaching and learning is an important first step in improving education.  At first blush this may seem obvious if not unnecessary; what school would profess to lacking such a shared vision?  Such an endeavor goes far beyond a simple mission statement or strategic plan, however.  Defining what a school believes about teaching and learning is to define the school itself, to see and comprehend all the parts of the elephant.

Just think what a bedtime story that would be….

• streamline technology-enhanced methodologies
• facilitate cross-curricular units
• target visionary technologies
• exploit efficient curriculum integration
• and the list goes on…

While the Jargon Generator provided a nice distraction from the arduous task of strategic planning, it also gave me pause to reflect on the prevalence/overabundance of buzzwords in the world of instructional technology.  In addition to timeless standbys such as paradigm, authentic, and best practice, we have made 21st century the prefix de facto of this decade, and 2.0 can seemingly be appended to any type of noun.  This marriage of farcical numeracy and argot root words has created an entirely new lexicon de jure.

Lest I sound an aloof linguistic curmudgeon or dictator of diction, I readily admit my occasional use/overuse of these popular words and phrases. Every profession has distinctive vocabulary that its practitioners must employ and I am no exception. Education, however, and especially technology education, has raised the buzzword bar to the height of nonsensical.

Common language ideally leads to shared understanding, but there is considerable disparity in how we have come to understand and define catchphrases like 21^st century learning or School 2.0. This collective lack of clarity is not due to the subjective art of teaching but rather our indiscriminate use of labels. In our heedless rush to modernize education, we have deemed anything technology-related to be 21^st century and/or 2.0 in nature.

Somewhere Noah Webster is spinning in his grave; perhaps it’s time to start bringing some meaning to the jargon.

N.B.  If you feel so inclined, you can add your favorite bit of education lingo to this form and see all the results here.

**Photo courtesy of Naddsy on Flickr (Creative Commons, non-commercial)

In his examination of aviation safety, Gladwell details the storied history of Korean Air, formerly one of the most dangerous airlines in the world.  Over a twenty year span it wrote off sixteen aircraft in serious incidents and accidents with a loss of over 700 lives.  Since 1997, however, it has not had a single fatal crash and today is among the safest carriers in the skies.  The reasons for the turnaround?  An understanding of communication, culture, and Geert Hofstede’s Power Distance Index.

As Gladwell explains, airplane crashes rarely happen as depicted on the silver screen.  In reality, the typical accident is not due to a lack of knowledge or skills, and involves seven consecutive human errors.  Furthermore, these errors are invariably due to a lack of teamwork and collaboration.  Iced wings, low fuel, or a broken glide scope will generally not lead to catastrophe unless there is a communication breakdown on the flight deck.  Mitigated speech, which Gladwell defines as “any attempt to downplay or sugar-coat what is being said” is what brings planes down, and Chapter 7 is full of examples of mitigated speech leading to disaster.  Deference to authority, while polite, is not always prudent…but it is predictable.

Hofstede’s Power Distance Index (PDI) is a measure of how close or how distant a relationship superiors like to have with their subordinates, and that subordinates like to have with their superiors.  In a study comparing the PDI of pilots from around the world, researchers found a strong correlation between countries/cultures with high a PDI and plane crashes.  In other words, when people don’t speak up, the consequences can be dire.  The United States has a relatively low PDI (40) and its domestic carriers enjoy a near-perfect safety record; American flight crews speak their mind.  But what of American educators?

While as a nation we may not feel comfortable accepting the idea that power is distributed unequally, to what extent do teachers and administrators play the role of high PDI aviators?  Our much-lamented state of education is not because teachers cannot teach or administrators cannot manage.  Granted, teacher preparation and professional development have been sharply criticized in recent months, but is this to say that we as a collective lack the knowledge and skills to provide our students a quality if not world-class education?

If you want to know what is wrong with our schools, have lunch at the typical faculty table.  Given the opportunity (i.e. in the absence of administrators), teachers will be quick to share their insight on everything from classroom management to standardized testing.  They understand where we have come up short as a profession, and they have viable suggestions for improvement.  Unfortunately, these ideas often stay in the lunch room because there is a high power distance between faculty and administration.

Administrators are expected to lead, and teachers are expected to follow.  When schools run into educational “turbulence”, do they look to their own ranks for solutions or wait for instructions from Central Office?  Even in schools where open communication is encouraged, how many teachers, faced with the issues of evaluation, tenure, and financial stability, assert themselves to close the relationship gap?  Though there are certainly exceptions, I daresay they are few in number.

If Korean Air can turn itself around, so can American education.  It will take more than narrowing a power index, but rethinking traditional roles and relationships, and working collaboratively toward a common goal, would go a long way toward improving our schools.  The next time you have an opportunity to “help fly the plane”, don’t hesitate to help chart the course.

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At the risk of gross oversimplification, Disrupting Class can be distilled to the ideas that students need to be intrinsically motivated, schooling should be customized to match learning styles, and technology, which to date has not improved learning will, if deployed disruptively, allow students to maximize their individual potential. As they summarize the issue on their website,

“The biggest problem in the current education system is that not every student learns in the same, standard way, and yet schools standardize the way they teach and test. Using the computer as the delivery platform for learning has the potential to break the trade-offs between customization and affordability, which could ultimately allow students to learn in their preferred styles and at their preferred pace.

But another problem is that the huge investment in computers in schools over the past couple decades has delivered so little. The theory of disruption explains how computers can make the meaningful impact we describe above. They must be implemented disruptively by targeting at the outset areas where the alternative to computer-based instruction is nothing at all. Additionally, software makers will need to customize their offerings for different kinds of learners, because right now the programs that come out tend to be similar to the mainstream teaching methods.

And for all this to happen, there is another problem that must be addressed. The current business system is aligned to push down standardized textbooks and curricula; it’s not well suited to bringing in customized software solutions. A new business system must emerge to replace the current one so that students, parents, and teachers can all pull computer-based learning into the mainstream classrooms.”

Christensen envisions this disruption occurring in two stages.  The first stage, termed computer-based learning, utilizes software as a platform for learning in places and for courses where there are no teachers to teach.  The second and significantly more advanced phase, described as student-centric technology, requires the development of software that enables students to learn each subject in manners consistent with their type of intelligence and learning style.  While these stages and the notion of “disruptive innovation” are certainly enticing, they are not the panacea for modern education as some have asserted.

Computer-based Learning: Better than the Alternative?

The use of computer-based learning (specifically online courses) can, in a limited fashion, meet the needs of students who are constrained by their school’s curriculum.  However, a virtual environment is no substitute for a real-world learning experience.  Consider the Virtual ChemLab, which Disrupting Class describes as “infinitely better than many students’ alternative–which is nothing at all.”

While the site is certainly comprehensive, will “learning” chemistry through photographs, video clips, and virtual labware produce students who can think scientifically?  Can higher-order skills and processes be addressed and assessed through an interactive lesson?  Science is fraught with misconceptions and as John Bruer and others can attest, these can be very hard to correct in any setting.  Do the opportunities and benefits afforded by computer-based learning truly outweigh the risk of propagating low-level and potentially faulty knowledge?

This is not to say that computer-based learning is inherently bad, but it isn’t inherently superior to face-to-face instruction, even in a “monolithic” classroom.  To suggest otherwise, as the authors have done, negates the impact of the classroom teacher who, as Robert Marzano notes, has a  direct and major influence on learning.  An online alternative may be better than no alternative, but its limitations must be acknowledged.  Just as Microsoft’s Flight Simulator won’t prepare one for the rigors of actual flight, pointing and clicking reagents won’t unlock the complex relationships between matter and energy.

Student-centric Technology:

Student-centric technology, manifested as hardware and software that can tailor instruction to a particular student’s learning style, is at first glance an exciting concept.  In Christensen’s scenario, at some point in the not-to-distant future, non-programmers (i.e. students, teachers, parents, etc.) will be able to create and distribute modular, computerized “tutorials” on any number of topics.  In this new network of user-generated content, people will ultimately have the ability to “assemble [tutorials] together into entire courses whose approach is truly student-centric—custom-configured to each different type of learner.”

Pieces of this vision already exist thanks to the advent of Web 2.0, and it is true that we often learn better when we teach than when we listen to a teacher.  The issue of expertise, however, must be considered in this new student-centric model.  In How People Learn: Bridging Research and Practice, M. Suzanne Donovan, John D. Bransford, and James W. Pellegrino make the following observations regarding novice and expert learners:

• Experts notice features and meaningful patterns of information that are not noticed by novices.
• Experts have acquired a great deal of content knowledge that is organized, and their organization of information reflects a deep understanding of the subject matter.
• Experts’ knowledge cannot be reduced to sets of isolated facts or propositions but, instead reflects contexts of applicability, i.e., it is “conditionalized.”
• Experts are able to retrieve important aspects of their knowledge with little additional effort.

While a novice may be able to construct a tutorial that benefits others with his/her dominant learning style (we’ve all encountered situations where a student was able to reach someone we could not), there are limits to what a novice can provide.  And while a teacher, the expert learner, can facilitate deeper understanding when working with students, the teaching-learning process could become more difficult as a result of novices selecting and learning from content created by non-experts.

A Missed Opportunity

The two points I’ve briefly illustrated here should not detract from the overall message of Disrupting Class or the many good ideas it contains; change is necessary if we are to prepare our students for an unknown future.  Disruptive innovation in the form of technology, however, is not the answer.  The stages/shifts that Christensen, Johnson, and Horn outline reinforce traditional course offerings with low-level knowledge and skills, largely place responsibility for the teaching-learning process in the hands of the students, and present technology as the solution to education’s shortcomings.  That approach is not a road map for the 21st century.

Education needs to become more individualized and student-centric, but the authors missed a terrific opportunity to emphasize how technology can facilitate those processes within a realistic, sustainable system.  Curriculum and instruction must evolve to include new skills and literacies that can only be acquired through the use of technology.  Online classes and user-generated tutorials will not revolutionize learning; real innovation will occur when we as a profession finally connect technology and pedagogy.

• Information Management and Research
• Digital Citizenship
• Communication and Collaboration in a Global World
• Creativity, Critical Thinking, and Design

While these themes have served us well thus far, they are, in many respects, incomplete in addressing the needs of today’s learners.  For our students to succeed once they leave our care, they must be equipped with the knowledge and skills required of 21st century citizens; they must become literate in the contemporary sense of the word.

The 7th grade Digital Literacy course illustrated that literacy is as much about the journey as the destination, and the path to becoming functionally literate has changed since we took our first steps.  While our four themes certainly point in the right direction, recent conversations within the School community and the education profession at large suggest that we need to examine the concept of literacy more closely.

An Issue of National Prominence

Whether referred to as “21st century skills” or “21st century literacies”, the over-arching issue of 21st century learning is one of national prominence.  This month’s edition of Social Education, published by the National Council of Social Studies (NCSS), is devoted to Developing 21st Century Skills.  As noted in the magazine’s overview,

Recent events have made one thing clear: there is no historical force that guarantees American success in the twenty-first century if Americans lack the knowledge, skills and competence needed to deal with the challenges that face them in the United States and the world. As social studies educators, nothing is more important than providing our students with these capabilities.

Today marks the conclusion of the annual conference of the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE).  This year’s theme,  Because Shift Happens: Teaching in the 21st Century, and this month’s issue of the Council Chronicle each emphasized the importance of rethinking our approach to literacy.  NCTE’s online feature, More Thoughts on 21st Century Literacies, includes this observation from Ernest Morrell:

[There are} three major differences between 20th and 21st century literacies: vastly greater communications technologies in the 21st century, such as the Internet, laptops, and iPods; rapidly changing demographics, with an increase in Latino and other minority populations; and a change in how students are expected to process information—critically, rather than simply regurgitating what they have consumed.

Earlier this month, Education Sector’s Elena Silva published Measuring Skills for the 21st Century.  Silva’s work provides a good overview of the need to teach complex thinking skills, examines several models for articulating 21st century skills,  and explores new assessment models. As Silva states in her report:

It is an emphasis on what students can do with knowledge, rather than what units of knowledge they have, that best describes the essence of 21st century skills.

While these are but three examples, it's worth noting that they all (1) come from reputable, national organizations, (2) were published within the last month, and (3) reflect a measure of consistency because they reference and build upon established frameworks.

Frameworks for 21st Century Skills

ISTE's National Educational Technology Standards have long served as a guide for improved teaching and learning.  As their website states,

ISTE standards for students, teachers, and administrators help to measure proficiency and set aspirational goals for the knowledge, skills, and attitudes needed to succeed in today’s Digital Age. Our proven leadership in developing these benchmarks and providing guidance in implementing them has resulted in broad adoption of the ISTE standards in the U.S. and in several countries.

The NETS for Teachers were revised in June of 2008.  The Student Standards, shown below, were a major influence is crafting our four 1:1 themes and describe, "what students should know and be able to do to learn effectively and live productively in an increasingly digital world."

Literacy requires mastering a skill-set, and the enGauge 21st Century Skills from the NCREL/Metri Group offers another model that articulates these important skills.  As their Skills Briefing states,

Advances in the cognitive sciences show that learning increases significantly when students are engaged in academic study through authentic, real-world experiences. The enGauge 21st Century Skills build on extensive bodies of research – as well as on calls from government, business, and industry for higher levels of workplace readiness – to define clearly what students need to thrive in today’s Digital Age.

Their four focus areas, Digital-Age Literacy, Inventive Thinking, Effective Communication, and High Productivity, "should be considered within the context of rigorous academic standards.  They are the bridge to authentic, intellectually challenging work by students."

A third, more detailed approach to defining literacy comes from the Partnership for 21st Century Skills.  Their Framework for Learning includes both student outcomes (as represented by the arches of the rainbow) and support systems (as represented by the pools at the bottom):

The four student outcomes, Core Subjects and 21st Century Themes, Learning and Innovation Skills, Information, Media, and Technology Skills, and Life and Career Skills, when combined with the accompanying support systems, form a comprehensive model for defining and achieving 21st century literacy, the importance of which cannot be overstated:

Every child in American needs 21st century knowledge and skills to succeed as effective citizens, workers and leaders in the 21st century. There is a profound gap between the knowledge and skills most students learn in school and the knowledge and skills they need in typical 21st century communities and workplaces. To successfully face rigorous higher education coursework, career challenges and a globally competitive workforce, U.S. schools must align classroom environments with real world environments by infusing 21st century skills into their teaching and learning.

The Partnership for 21st Century Skills

Although there is a demonstrated need for redefining literacy, and established frameworks can provide guidance, the complexity of the issue and process can be overwhelming.  The urgency heard from NCSS, NCTE, and others will not transform education until literacy can be easily internalized and applied.  To that end, we must adopt a literacy framework that meets the needs of our students.

Defining Emerging Literacies

Our Middle School academic leadership has been discussing the concept of 21st century learning, as have our counterparts in the Upper School.  A cohort of their teachers has reviewed the aforementioned resources and tentatively organized/categorized them into seven "Literacies of a Lifelong Learner":

• Basic Literacy
• Habits of Mind Literacy
• Visual/Media Literacy
• Information Literacy
• Intercultural Literacy
• Citizenship and Ethical Literacy
• Network Literacy

This schema, though early in its development, is a very thoughtful attempt at formulating "talking points for our internal culture."  Since we are a part of that culture, we need to consider how literacy, regardless of how it is framed, lives within our division.  As such, I would encourage you to spend some time reading and reflecting on what it means to be a literate student, and teacher, in 2008.

Before we start charging forward, however, it’s important to stop and consider the concept of direction as it relates to the process of navigation.  Consider the near ubiquitous GPS device: provided the user knows where he/she wants to go, the GPS unit can use 3-D Trilateration to determine the starting position, the final destination, and the most direct path between the two.  Thanks to satellites, the days of dead reckoning geophysical navigation are over.

When it comes comes to educational change, there are no geosynchronous beacons to guide us, but that does not mean we cannot chart an informed course.  Just as the GPS device relies on known reference points, we too must use external markers to decide which “direction” will lead us to our goal.  Thanks to research and networked learning, the days of self-referent intellectual navigation are over as well.

The Starting Point

Just as a GPS unit must determine one’s starting point before plotting a path, teachers and administrators must begin their journey toward 21st century education by developing an understanding of their students’ needs.  Every school is in a slightly different place, but all our students share a common experience; they are digital learners contending with analog classrooms.  To get a sense of what this means, A Vision of K-12 Students Today should provide some insight:

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Acknowledging that students today are different and that we need to adjust our instructional practices is the first step in moving forward…but moving forward to where?  What knowledge, skills, and expertise will they need in this unknown future?  There are no crystal balls, but there are some indicators that can help define the final destination.

The Final Destination

No one can predict exactly what our students will need to know and be able to do once they leave our care, but some good thinking from several prominent organizations has done much to address the issue.  The 21st Century Skills from NCREL/Metiri, the National Educational Technology Standards from ISTE, and the Framework for 21st Century Learning (shown below) from The Partnership for 21st Century Skills provide a solid and comprehensive framework for our final, if rather fluid, destination.

It’s important that we don’t let the uncertainty of this moving target diminish our desire to move in this “direction”.  Reaching this destination will require some reference points along the way and the ability to change course as needed.

Reference Points for the Journey

Once we have an understanding of where we are and where our students need to be, the real work begins; the journey itself.  Accurate navigation requires solid reference points, and the more the better.  With respect to curriculum development, we are looking to Wiggins and McTighe’s Understanding By Design for guidance. For classroom instruction,  we have adopted Charlotte Danielson’s Framework for Teaching as our benchmark.

In addition to these pedagogical landmarks, we also need to consider the standards and recommendations regarding our respective content areas.  Every major professional organization has developed some position statement and/or guidelines regarding 21st century education, including the Definition of 21st Century Literacies from NCTE and The Technology Principle from NCTM, and we need to be mindful of these as we navigate forward.

Coordinating all the Coordinates

Although it may seem simplistic to compare charting a course for a geographical destination to that of determining a direction for modern education, the processes are not all that unalike.  The key to each is to know where you are, where you want to be, and having sufficient points of reference to guide your journey.  Consumer-grade GPS technology can determine your location and suggest a route using only three satellites; given the abundant resources at our disposal, surely we can steer our classrooms in the right direction.