Systemic Change is the Future of Public Education
The public schools in this country are under siege. The perceived failures in adequately preparing students for the challenges of a global community and the educational communities' unwillingness, or inability, to change its ways, has awakened the political decision makers and perhaps the general public. Change is in the air.
A host of self-appointed experts have risen to the cause, offering solutions that have the distinct possibility of achieving the demise of the public school system. Business interests seeking to take over the schools in anticipation of a potentially lucrative income from the development and publication of standardized tests and "teacher proof" instructional materials, are champing at the bit to install charter schools and vouchers as the panacea in response to the ills of the conventional public schools.
The Federal government has weighed in with its various strategies for raising standards through the use of standardized tests and a standardized core curriculum. Like many of the efforts of the past, these efforts have not brought about the desired changes and improvements needed for survival. Unless the existing public schools join in a massive campaign to re-invent themselves they are definitely on the chopping block.
Nothing short of a complete systemic change will save the schools from their destruction by possibly well-meaning, but often ignorant, self-serving forces that are emerging everywhere. Knee-jerk reactions to solving the complex problems of education will only accelerate the destruction of the public school.
The need for systemic change in schools can be responded to if educators take the necessary steps, now. They can be ahead of the curve by immediately planning for this eventuality. But, will they?
Materials have been developed to address systemic change for those who choose to respond to the threats. They elicit participation in developing the foundational concepts for systemic change and in teasing out the implications for structural and procedural changes required of a new school design.
These materials have been under development throughout the sixty-year career of this author while working as a teacher at all levels of public education including extensive pre-service and in-service education.
The materials and support networks required of change can be engaged with a minimum of cost and outside consultation. The controlling feature is what has been clearly stated by S. Horde et. al, that change is a process, not an event. Change is about assumptions and beliefs that take time and commitment to change. These must precede any attempt to change the structures and procedures of the schools.
A SYSTEMIC DESIGN MODEL FOR A 21ST CENTURY PUBLIC SCHOOL
We frequently hear that current efforts to reform education are simply tinkering with the system and not likely to produce sustainable results. While this observation has merit it is also apparent that a practical vision of a workable educational system remains elusive.
What follows is a simplified model of a systemic design that has a validated assumptive base. Based on the systemic design model illustrated in the next section, each component will be briefly described along with its rationale and interrelatedness.
The first component, philosophical/theoretical assumptions and beliefs, is perhaps the most important element in the formation of a workable systemic model. The assumptions and beliefs that we hold that define the conduct of education influence the nature and processes of every other component in the model. Unfortunately, educators and the lay public do not have a shared set of assumptions and beliefs that can be validated in personal experiences or in the experiences of scholars who have spent a lifetime studying human behavior, human development and learning. Even among professional educators, there is a wide disparity in acceptable assumptions that can be shown to have validity.
The result of this lack of a set of shared assumptions and beliefs accounts for a record of hodgepodge reforms that permeate the current efforts. There are five elements within this first component that must be made clear to everyone concerned. The quality of the educational experience for every individual, regardless of the differences we all know exist, is dependent upon a thorough understanding of these five elements:
(1) the interrelated dimensions of human development, human behavior and learning,
(2) the nature and development of groups and institutions that support the formation of effective teams and improved communications,
(3) the nature of knowledge and knowing embracing all realms of meaning,
(4) the nature and function of a self-actualizing personality that serves the teacher/facilitation role of an effective helping professional.
(5) the acceptance and implementation of systems theory and systems design as a significant mode of learning and systems analysis as a strategy for assessment and evaluation.
The fact that a shared set of assumptions and beliefs does not exist among professional educators, nor with the lay public, can be laid at the feet of teacher education. Teacher education is the most logical place to begin the process of creating a foundation knowledge base that will guide decision making about what is or is not effective educational practice, but will they do it?
Given the importance and complexity of an effective educational process, the existing teacher preparation programs are a farce. Just compare the preparation of a specialist in medicine and you get the picture. Teachers as facilitators of learning are at least as important in our society as general practitioners in medicine.
Change will require a restructuring of the professional education experience with a special emphasis on theory-based systemic change and systemic maintenance. Given the complexity of the subject matter of this component and the tendency of members of higher education faculties to perceive their roles as super-critics, the likelihood of immediate change is remote. What will be needed, above all, are demonstration sites for alternatives that are held to rigorous scrutiny, where the five elements are defined and their implications for educational practices are demonstrated.
The second component for conversion of the conventional systemic model runs counter to many of the findings that are known and validated about the five elements noted above. This component is labeled administrative organization, decision-making and accountability procedures and finance. While the administrative organization generally involves an elected board of directors, composed of lay persons with or without in-depth background in education, most conventional systems function as authoritarian structures with a chief administrator who holds power over much of the system and its personnel.
It matters little that personnel may have found a workable and valid set of assumptions about human development and learning when the chief school administrator does not share those points of view. In an authoritarian structure, administrative fiat prevails. Since underlings (teachers and other staff) are relatively powerless to affect change or even maintain consistency with what they may believe to be valid assumptions, there is little they can do to improve the situation.
This type of organization promotes a diminished personal responsibility for the workings of the system and often leads to tacit or open aggressiveness and sabotage against its practices.
We have a model that has worked relatively well for nearly two hundred fifty years - a governing structure that features three branches operating under a constitution. The three branches provide a balance of power between the legislative, executive and judicial functions. The balanced system functions under a specifically defined constitution.
Our schools could be run within a similar model. There would be an instructional branch composed of those who work closely with learners, a management branch responsible for business management, budgeting, public relations and system’s maintenance, and a quality assurance branch that monitors quality and compliance with a written constitution and by-laws.
The existence of a clearly defined constitution and by-laws is pivotal. The substance of this constitution and by-laws would be drawn from the five sets of validated assumptions and beliefs identified in the first component. Practices would be determined to have consistency with those assumptions and beliefs.
Assumptive Base
Individual human beings develop and learn in accordance with biologically-based capacities that emerge in life through invariant sequences, influenced by the quantity and quality of experiences. What is learned is unique to each individual; all learning is conditioned by perceptual filters composed of personal meanings given to past experience.
Learning and thinking originate at a pre-conscious, subliminal level that can give rise to awareness that is organized and communicated at a conscious level. The unconscious response patterns each individual has acquired throughout life, shape and focus the perceptual filters, that is, the interpretations and importance one ascribes to specific objects, events and processes, and the verbal and non-verbal behavior one exhibits.
Individual interpretations of life are communicated through processes of interaction, interpersonal exchanges of viewpoints in language forms that are assimilated and processed in the unique mechanisms of persons attempting to communicate. The more validation that occurs between the intended message and what is actually heard, the better the consensus and the more satisfying the communications becomes.
Groups of individuals grow toward consensual validation in their communications by overcoming barriers to those transactions, by developing from a state of dependency, to independence and eventually interdependence. Interdependence is the stage of group maturity marked by productive, therapeutic communication.
These maturational stages are recognizable, and appropriate interventions will facilitate growth from one level to the next. Effective group processes do not require sublimation of diverse individual needs and goals; effective groups facilitate individual growth and development in an atmosphere of inclusion, mutual support and trust.
Each of the knowledge disciplines, practiced by scholars and artists, represents the most productive strategies for learning and communicating known to humans. They are themselves constantly being modified and improved/updated, and they reflect the best approaches to learning and understanding of our time.
Each learner needs to acquire a sense of the underlying structures of these disciplines through active participation in order to make effective contact with these fields and with the accumulated products that have evolved from them over the centuries. All learners need to construct these conceptual frameworks to efficiently process the vast amount of information generated through instant contact with the universe brought about by emerging technologies.
The school is a system that functions as any other system, made of parts that interrelate to form a whole; a change in one part of the system brings about a change in the relationships between the parts and a change in the nature and capabilities of the system.
The third component includes the goals and objectives for the institution and for its learners. The goals and objectives for each learner and for the institution need to reflect the assumptions and beliefs of component number one. The overarching goal for each learner would be specified with concern for achieving maturity consistent with all dimensions of individual development.
Objectives would reflect interventions that develop the skills required of life. Skills acquisition in a full range of ways of knowing and communicating would reflect the natural progression of individual biological maturation. The institutional goals would reflect the needs for individual and collective growth.
The fourth component defines the legitimate curriculum for the school. Assuming many years of opportunity to engage productive examination and interpretation of life as it exists or has existed throughout the universe, each learner will be expected to construct meaningful patterns from personal engagement in the study of life in all its manifestations (Whitehead), the legitimate curriculum for the school. Methods of construction of knowledge using materials of disciplines within all realms of meaning (Phenix) would be employed to bring meaning to the complexities of the universe. This would be done in ways that promote insight, knowledge construction, the development of problem solving abilities and personal adaptations necessary for individual and collective fulfillment.
The fifth component specifies the assessment, recordkeeping, evaluation and reporting system. This system most importantly must reflect consistently the assumptions and beliefs of component number one, having compatibility with all other components of the systemic model as well. It must maintain the sanctity of individual differences. The current uses of standardized tests and a standardized core curriculum are in nearly every respect inconsistent with what we know and can verify about human development and learning.
Building upon the insights gained from system’s theory, both the core curriculum and the assessment and evaluation of the products of investigations into all manifestations of life in time and space must be complemented with a compatible record keeping process. This process must serve to assist the learner in organizing, measuring, predicting and discovering meaning in life’s personal and collective experiences.
As Bela Banathy points out: “Performance measures that retain empirical grounding in systems-in-transition need to be developed.” The “Constructive Assessment, Recordkeeping and Evaluation System (CARES)” has been successfully field tested by this author, designed to accomplish a "systems-in-transition" orientation. It has the potential to replace the inappropriate imposition of standardization as a one-size-fits-all orientation.
The sixth component addresses physical facilities and utilization patterns. The need for instructional space for the conveyance of information to students has outlived its usefulness. The availability of accessible information through electronic/digital means makes the egg crate construction of buildings to house instruction to be obsolete. Its design and uses must now reflect the vast changes in communications technologies that have become commonplace today and will likely be changing at an even more rapid pace in the future. This electronic age has ushered in a flexibility that will be thwarted by the existence of a fixed installation that is coercively managed to seek compliance with pre-established and rigidly pre-defined learning outcomes.
What is needed is a social/community center equipped with electronic resources and stimulating space and equipment that encourages the pursuit of curiosity among all, regardless of age, and the free exchange of discoveries. A community center should encourage the participation of all community members in the sharing of experiences, regardless of areas of interest or expertise, conducted by competent teacher/facilitators well grounded in the meaning and implications of the five fundamental areas of assumptions and beliefs.
The seventh component is community involvement. Bringing up an informed and compassionate citizenry cannot be the exclusive prerogative of the schools and their personnel. Every member of the community must feel invited to participate on their terms with a minimum of imposed direction from those who may be “in charge.” Becoming an active, participatory member of groups that function at a level of consensual validation will bring out the hidden resources that exist among us all. Anything less in this age spells difficulties for the future of a democratic way of life. Of course, to accomplish this it requires knowledge and skill in the development of functional groups, a matter central to the success of the entire institution of education.
The eighth component addresses the support services needed to ensure successful individual and collective pursuits of meaning. When impediments to learning are discovered, attention must be given to the problems by specialists who have expertise in understanding the problems and skill in facilitating an effective response. The resources for addressing these impediments must be made available in a timely way to maximize the opportunities for all individuals to actualize their personal fulfillment in life.
The ninth component involves the need to establish pre-service and in-service demonstrations of innovative possibilities. If managed with the cooperation of the professional and lay communities, these sites can exercise the pursuit of innovative ideas with relative freedom to try and possibly fail. While “campus schools” offered the possibility for the pursuit of innovation, the fact that they were relatively isolated within the mystique of the university setting made their effectiveness suspect. Nevertheless, the need for these demonstration sites still remains a high priority.
What is needed now are sites that are fully integrated into a newly designed systemic model for education as suggested in this treatise. Maintaining an updated and refined knowledge base for decision making in formal education settings is an important and continuing need.
The tenth and last component of the systemic design model for education embraces the area of the rapidly changing and challenging innovations in the area of electronic communications technology. The schools are generally well behind the curve of change in this area of reality in our modern day world society. While students are carrying their instruments of communication in their pockets, many schools have prohibited their use as a distraction in the process of raising the test scores. This contributes enormously to the already pervasive problems of relevance in the lives of individual learners. This reality requires flexibility seldom reflected in the personalities who run the authoritarian school systems that are anchored in the past.
Admittedly, the above description of a systemic design model for education is sketchy; the components of the design however are elaborated in a variety of media available for study.
Examine your school system using the "Systemic Solutions Generator" outlined below:
Systemic Change in Education
A Solutions Generator
We all use the word "system" in our daily vocabulary as if we all understand what we are talking about. We refer to the digestive system, the solar system, the braking system, the accounting system, the heating system and so on and on. We speak of these systems, as with the school system, using words that contain limited conceptual background.
The words "school system," with connotative meanings - meanings based on in-depth analyses of the systemic parts and the interrelationships between parts - are missing in today’s conversations about school reform. To help with a common sense analysis of the school system, that provides a sound basis for school reform, a "solutions generator" is presented here for your use.
An illustrated "Systemic Design Model" below provides a view of the component parts of the school system as most of us have experienced it, though seldom fully understood. (Systemic Design Model)
A host of self-appointed experts have risen to the cause, offering solutions that have the distinct possibility of achieving the demise of the public school system. Business interests seeking to take over the schools in anticipation of a potentially lucrative income from the development and publication of standardized tests and "teacher proof" instructional materials, are champing at the bit to install charter schools and vouchers as the panacea in response to the ills of the conventional public schools.
The Federal government has weighed in with its various strategies for raising standards through the use of standardized tests and a standardized core curriculum. Like many of the efforts of the past, these efforts have not brought about the desired changes and improvements needed for survival. Unless the existing public schools join in a massive campaign to re-invent themselves they are definitely on the chopping block.
Nothing short of a complete systemic change will save the schools from their destruction by possibly well-meaning, but often ignorant, self-serving forces that are emerging everywhere. Knee-jerk reactions to solving the complex problems of education will only accelerate the destruction of the public school.
The need for systemic change in schools can be responded to if educators take the necessary steps, now. They can be ahead of the curve by immediately planning for this eventuality. But, will they?
Materials have been developed to address systemic change for those who choose to respond to the threats. They elicit participation in developing the foundational concepts for systemic change and in teasing out the implications for structural and procedural changes required of a new school design.
These materials have been under development throughout the sixty-year career of this author while working as a teacher at all levels of public education including extensive pre-service and in-service education.
The materials and support networks required of change can be engaged with a minimum of cost and outside consultation. The controlling feature is what has been clearly stated by S. Horde et. al, that change is a process, not an event. Change is about assumptions and beliefs that take time and commitment to change. These must precede any attempt to change the structures and procedures of the schools.
A SYSTEMIC DESIGN MODEL FOR A 21ST CENTURY PUBLIC SCHOOL
We frequently hear that current efforts to reform education are simply tinkering with the system and not likely to produce sustainable results. While this observation has merit it is also apparent that a practical vision of a workable educational system remains elusive.
What follows is a simplified model of a systemic design that has a validated assumptive base. Based on the systemic design model illustrated in the next section, each component will be briefly described along with its rationale and interrelatedness.
The first component, philosophical/theoretical assumptions and beliefs, is perhaps the most important element in the formation of a workable systemic model. The assumptions and beliefs that we hold that define the conduct of education influence the nature and processes of every other component in the model. Unfortunately, educators and the lay public do not have a shared set of assumptions and beliefs that can be validated in personal experiences or in the experiences of scholars who have spent a lifetime studying human behavior, human development and learning. Even among professional educators, there is a wide disparity in acceptable assumptions that can be shown to have validity.
The result of this lack of a set of shared assumptions and beliefs accounts for a record of hodgepodge reforms that permeate the current efforts. There are five elements within this first component that must be made clear to everyone concerned. The quality of the educational experience for every individual, regardless of the differences we all know exist, is dependent upon a thorough understanding of these five elements:
(1) the interrelated dimensions of human development, human behavior and learning,
(2) the nature and development of groups and institutions that support the formation of effective teams and improved communications,
(3) the nature of knowledge and knowing embracing all realms of meaning,
(4) the nature and function of a self-actualizing personality that serves the teacher/facilitation role of an effective helping professional.
(5) the acceptance and implementation of systems theory and systems design as a significant mode of learning and systems analysis as a strategy for assessment and evaluation.
The fact that a shared set of assumptions and beliefs does not exist among professional educators, nor with the lay public, can be laid at the feet of teacher education. Teacher education is the most logical place to begin the process of creating a foundation knowledge base that will guide decision making about what is or is not effective educational practice, but will they do it?
Given the importance and complexity of an effective educational process, the existing teacher preparation programs are a farce. Just compare the preparation of a specialist in medicine and you get the picture. Teachers as facilitators of learning are at least as important in our society as general practitioners in medicine.
Change will require a restructuring of the professional education experience with a special emphasis on theory-based systemic change and systemic maintenance. Given the complexity of the subject matter of this component and the tendency of members of higher education faculties to perceive their roles as super-critics, the likelihood of immediate change is remote. What will be needed, above all, are demonstration sites for alternatives that are held to rigorous scrutiny, where the five elements are defined and their implications for educational practices are demonstrated.
The second component for conversion of the conventional systemic model runs counter to many of the findings that are known and validated about the five elements noted above. This component is labeled administrative organization, decision-making and accountability procedures and finance. While the administrative organization generally involves an elected board of directors, composed of lay persons with or without in-depth background in education, most conventional systems function as authoritarian structures with a chief administrator who holds power over much of the system and its personnel.
It matters little that personnel may have found a workable and valid set of assumptions about human development and learning when the chief school administrator does not share those points of view. In an authoritarian structure, administrative fiat prevails. Since underlings (teachers and other staff) are relatively powerless to affect change or even maintain consistency with what they may believe to be valid assumptions, there is little they can do to improve the situation.
This type of organization promotes a diminished personal responsibility for the workings of the system and often leads to tacit or open aggressiveness and sabotage against its practices.
We have a model that has worked relatively well for nearly two hundred fifty years - a governing structure that features three branches operating under a constitution. The three branches provide a balance of power between the legislative, executive and judicial functions. The balanced system functions under a specifically defined constitution.
Our schools could be run within a similar model. There would be an instructional branch composed of those who work closely with learners, a management branch responsible for business management, budgeting, public relations and system’s maintenance, and a quality assurance branch that monitors quality and compliance with a written constitution and by-laws.
The existence of a clearly defined constitution and by-laws is pivotal. The substance of this constitution and by-laws would be drawn from the five sets of validated assumptions and beliefs identified in the first component. Practices would be determined to have consistency with those assumptions and beliefs.
Assumptive Base
Individual human beings develop and learn in accordance with biologically-based capacities that emerge in life through invariant sequences, influenced by the quantity and quality of experiences. What is learned is unique to each individual; all learning is conditioned by perceptual filters composed of personal meanings given to past experience.
Learning and thinking originate at a pre-conscious, subliminal level that can give rise to awareness that is organized and communicated at a conscious level. The unconscious response patterns each individual has acquired throughout life, shape and focus the perceptual filters, that is, the interpretations and importance one ascribes to specific objects, events and processes, and the verbal and non-verbal behavior one exhibits.
Individual interpretations of life are communicated through processes of interaction, interpersonal exchanges of viewpoints in language forms that are assimilated and processed in the unique mechanisms of persons attempting to communicate. The more validation that occurs between the intended message and what is actually heard, the better the consensus and the more satisfying the communications becomes.
Groups of individuals grow toward consensual validation in their communications by overcoming barriers to those transactions, by developing from a state of dependency, to independence and eventually interdependence. Interdependence is the stage of group maturity marked by productive, therapeutic communication.
These maturational stages are recognizable, and appropriate interventions will facilitate growth from one level to the next. Effective group processes do not require sublimation of diverse individual needs and goals; effective groups facilitate individual growth and development in an atmosphere of inclusion, mutual support and trust.
Each of the knowledge disciplines, practiced by scholars and artists, represents the most productive strategies for learning and communicating known to humans. They are themselves constantly being modified and improved/updated, and they reflect the best approaches to learning and understanding of our time.
Each learner needs to acquire a sense of the underlying structures of these disciplines through active participation in order to make effective contact with these fields and with the accumulated products that have evolved from them over the centuries. All learners need to construct these conceptual frameworks to efficiently process the vast amount of information generated through instant contact with the universe brought about by emerging technologies.
The school is a system that functions as any other system, made of parts that interrelate to form a whole; a change in one part of the system brings about a change in the relationships between the parts and a change in the nature and capabilities of the system.
The third component includes the goals and objectives for the institution and for its learners. The goals and objectives for each learner and for the institution need to reflect the assumptions and beliefs of component number one. The overarching goal for each learner would be specified with concern for achieving maturity consistent with all dimensions of individual development.
Objectives would reflect interventions that develop the skills required of life. Skills acquisition in a full range of ways of knowing and communicating would reflect the natural progression of individual biological maturation. The institutional goals would reflect the needs for individual and collective growth.
The fourth component defines the legitimate curriculum for the school. Assuming many years of opportunity to engage productive examination and interpretation of life as it exists or has existed throughout the universe, each learner will be expected to construct meaningful patterns from personal engagement in the study of life in all its manifestations (Whitehead), the legitimate curriculum for the school. Methods of construction of knowledge using materials of disciplines within all realms of meaning (Phenix) would be employed to bring meaning to the complexities of the universe. This would be done in ways that promote insight, knowledge construction, the development of problem solving abilities and personal adaptations necessary for individual and collective fulfillment.
The fifth component specifies the assessment, recordkeeping, evaluation and reporting system. This system most importantly must reflect consistently the assumptions and beliefs of component number one, having compatibility with all other components of the systemic model as well. It must maintain the sanctity of individual differences. The current uses of standardized tests and a standardized core curriculum are in nearly every respect inconsistent with what we know and can verify about human development and learning.
Building upon the insights gained from system’s theory, both the core curriculum and the assessment and evaluation of the products of investigations into all manifestations of life in time and space must be complemented with a compatible record keeping process. This process must serve to assist the learner in organizing, measuring, predicting and discovering meaning in life’s personal and collective experiences.
As Bela Banathy points out: “Performance measures that retain empirical grounding in systems-in-transition need to be developed.” The “Constructive Assessment, Recordkeeping and Evaluation System (CARES)” has been successfully field tested by this author, designed to accomplish a "systems-in-transition" orientation. It has the potential to replace the inappropriate imposition of standardization as a one-size-fits-all orientation.
The sixth component addresses physical facilities and utilization patterns. The need for instructional space for the conveyance of information to students has outlived its usefulness. The availability of accessible information through electronic/digital means makes the egg crate construction of buildings to house instruction to be obsolete. Its design and uses must now reflect the vast changes in communications technologies that have become commonplace today and will likely be changing at an even more rapid pace in the future. This electronic age has ushered in a flexibility that will be thwarted by the existence of a fixed installation that is coercively managed to seek compliance with pre-established and rigidly pre-defined learning outcomes.
What is needed is a social/community center equipped with electronic resources and stimulating space and equipment that encourages the pursuit of curiosity among all, regardless of age, and the free exchange of discoveries. A community center should encourage the participation of all community members in the sharing of experiences, regardless of areas of interest or expertise, conducted by competent teacher/facilitators well grounded in the meaning and implications of the five fundamental areas of assumptions and beliefs.
The seventh component is community involvement. Bringing up an informed and compassionate citizenry cannot be the exclusive prerogative of the schools and their personnel. Every member of the community must feel invited to participate on their terms with a minimum of imposed direction from those who may be “in charge.” Becoming an active, participatory member of groups that function at a level of consensual validation will bring out the hidden resources that exist among us all. Anything less in this age spells difficulties for the future of a democratic way of life. Of course, to accomplish this it requires knowledge and skill in the development of functional groups, a matter central to the success of the entire institution of education.
The eighth component addresses the support services needed to ensure successful individual and collective pursuits of meaning. When impediments to learning are discovered, attention must be given to the problems by specialists who have expertise in understanding the problems and skill in facilitating an effective response. The resources for addressing these impediments must be made available in a timely way to maximize the opportunities for all individuals to actualize their personal fulfillment in life.
The ninth component involves the need to establish pre-service and in-service demonstrations of innovative possibilities. If managed with the cooperation of the professional and lay communities, these sites can exercise the pursuit of innovative ideas with relative freedom to try and possibly fail. While “campus schools” offered the possibility for the pursuit of innovation, the fact that they were relatively isolated within the mystique of the university setting made their effectiveness suspect. Nevertheless, the need for these demonstration sites still remains a high priority.
What is needed now are sites that are fully integrated into a newly designed systemic model for education as suggested in this treatise. Maintaining an updated and refined knowledge base for decision making in formal education settings is an important and continuing need.
The tenth and last component of the systemic design model for education embraces the area of the rapidly changing and challenging innovations in the area of electronic communications technology. The schools are generally well behind the curve of change in this area of reality in our modern day world society. While students are carrying their instruments of communication in their pockets, many schools have prohibited their use as a distraction in the process of raising the test scores. This contributes enormously to the already pervasive problems of relevance in the lives of individual learners. This reality requires flexibility seldom reflected in the personalities who run the authoritarian school systems that are anchored in the past.
Admittedly, the above description of a systemic design model for education is sketchy; the components of the design however are elaborated in a variety of media available for study.
Examine your school system using the "Systemic Solutions Generator" outlined below:
Systemic Change in Education
A Solutions Generator
We all use the word "system" in our daily vocabulary as if we all understand what we are talking about. We refer to the digestive system, the solar system, the braking system, the accounting system, the heating system and so on and on. We speak of these systems, as with the school system, using words that contain limited conceptual background.
The words "school system," with connotative meanings - meanings based on in-depth analyses of the systemic parts and the interrelationships between parts - are missing in today’s conversations about school reform. To help with a common sense analysis of the school system, that provides a sound basis for school reform, a "solutions generator" is presented here for your use.
An illustrated "Systemic Design Model" below provides a view of the component parts of the school system as most of us have experienced it, though seldom fully understood. (Systemic Design Model)
Ten parts of the school system are identified in the illustration above.
1) Philosophical/theoretical assumptions and beliefs
2) Finance, administrative decision making and accountability procedures
3) Goals and objectives for the system and the learners.
4) Curriculum and instructional/learning transactional strategies
5) Assessment, evaluation, record-keeping and reporting procedures
6) Facilities and utilization patterns
7) Community involvement
8) Support services
9) In-service and pre-service demonstration sites
10) Information and management technologies
Experience with effective systems tells us that all the parts must be functioning effectively and interactively with all the other parts. A system that contains weak or defective parts will cause the system to malfunction. Injecting new parts into a system of old parts will frequently cause problems with the old parts and their ability to function interactively. A school system that features inconsistencies between its parts will not function effectively and will fail to achieve its desired outcomes.
Also a school system that is poorly designed, regardless of consistency between its interactive parts, when based on invalid assumptions and beliefs, will fail to produce the outcomes we expect of our schools.
Based on valid assumptions and beliefs, a systemic overhaul is required with parts that are in sync with other parts designed to meet the desired goal as stated at the center of the foregoing "Systemic Design Model." Using this model as a "Solutions Generator" all ten parts of the school system must be visited to create a functioning system with a minimum of internal inconsistencies, consistent with what we know and can validate about individual development and learning.
Achieving this goal will likely be resisted by those whose minds are clogged with rigid stereotypes and long standing traditions; by people who are suffering from hardening of the categories. Nevertheless, an effort must be made to bring about the changes needed to prepare our citizens for the challenges of this 21st century world.
Let’s explore the dimensions of our school systems using the "solutions generator." Remember, each part of a functioning system must be designed to function in a predictable fashion and become a working member of the system in which it is placed. A change in one part brings about changes in the system as a whole, changes that may result in improving or diminishing the functioning and effectiveness of the system.
Start with the part called philosophical/theoretical assumptions and beliefs. Assume that this part is based on the reality of individual differences; that no two people anywhere throughout this world are identical, not their genetics, not their experiences nor what they have done with their experiences.
Assume that individuals develop their intellectual abilities as they emerge along an invariant sequence that is directed by a unique genetic code influenced for better or worse by the experiences encountered in day to day living. Consider learning to be a creative process that develops over time with a gradual accumulation of holistic insights that eventually are formulated in the mind as useful principles and laws found to apply in the solution of problems.
Assert your belief that Individuals are best assisted in learning within groups where learners are operating at a level of consensual validation, regardless of age or social/economic standing?
Let’s first look at part number four called the "curriculum and instructional/learning transactional strategies." Take the position that this part is based on a concept of standardization, meaning the curriculum and instructional strategies are designed to be appropriate for all learners, regardless of their developmental or experiential differences. Assume also that appropriate subject matter can be determined apart from the learners and successfully delivered to learners through various teaching techniques and instructional media in compartmentalized classrooms.
Which one of these propositions do you endorse? If you endorse proposition one, how do you reconcile the differences with proposition four identified on the chart above? If you endorse proposition four as requiring standardization, how do you deal with the realities of proposition one that asserts the principles of learning and development?
To this point, having looked briefly at only two dimensions of the school system, we find these parts to be incompatible and we have eight other parts to consider before we can determine the total system’s functionality.
What choices do we have when we find parts that are not functioning well? We can send the problematic parts back to the drawing board and decide which position holds more credibility and validity, verified first in our own experiences and then in the experiences of others, especially those of reputable scholars in this field. Or we can rely on a position of conventional wisdom handed down through the ages, seldom subjected to a rigorous analysis.
How about a comparison of parts one and five? Part number five is defined in today’s rhetoric about educational reform as standardization, the savior of a failing educational system where the lofty statements of goals and objectives for the system and the learners have not been met. Can this type of standardization, arbitrarily and rigidly imposed, be reconciled with principles of individual development and learning?
What happens to individuality in the world of standardization? Is creativity inhibited, is the entrepreneurial spirit lost, is a loss of the ability and the will required to solve problems a predictable byproduct?
Going further, consider number five, strategies of assessment, evaluation, record-keeping and reporting. Is standardized testing compatible with number one? What if individuals do not fit the pre-defined definitions of success, as measured by standardized tests? Do you favor segregating the students into categories of average, above average or below average based on a score on an achievement test? What effect does this have on healthy personality development?
If there are assessment and evaluation alternatives that are compatible with number one, that identify accurately the dimensions and extent of learning each individual has achieved at any point in time, would you consider them or reject them outright if they challenge your long held positions?
Let’s suppose there are teachers who buy into the propositions of part number one and attempt to install procedures that match those assumptions and beliefs. Most school systems exist under hierarchical, authoritarian structures with an appointed leader who has pervasive authority. What chance does an individual teacher have when trying to implement the propositions drawn from number one if the administrative organization or the administrator does not allow it? (part number 2) Without a shared set of validated assumptions and beliefs, that determine what is or is not appropriate educational experience, that teacher is at the mercy of the positions of administration with little recourse except to conform to those positions.
What roles do the propositions of parts number one, two, three (goals and objectives, four (curriculum and instructional strategies) and five have on the design and maintenance of facilities? Is the egg crate building design compatible with a compartmentalized/departmentalized design? Does a compartmental/departmentalized instructional design facilitate the development of holistic insights required of intelligent problem solving? Would a flexible community center that invites-in all of its members better serve the learners of all ages?
Do utilization patterns of a school that operates consistently with compartmentalized instructional designs allow learners the time to internalize experiences and form their own patterns of meaning, or does it encourage an unhealthy dependency on so called experts?
Why are education decision-makers eager to move instruction into the earliest levels of development? Is it because they feel the later experiences within the system are ineffective and instruction that starts earlier will solve this problem? Do the advocates of this point of view understand the principles of learning and individual development?
Consider systemic part number seven. (community involvement) What kind of support services are required to assist learners with impediments that may be found interfering with learning? How are these services obtained and distributed within an authoritarian structure?
Can the contents of part number nine be ignored? ( teacher education) What kinds of pre-service and in-service experiences will assist educators, teachers and others in developing validated assumptions and beliefs that will guide the development of effective strategies for individual learning and development?
Are these validated assumptions and beliefs as important to learning at the college and university levels as they are for early, middle and secondary education?
What is the role of modern communications technologies (part number ten) in facilitating learning at all levels of education? Can the cell phone and the social networks be harnessed to facilitate the development of insights into reality, or will they continue to languish in the mire of social trivia and vulgar, often hostile uses, and be abandoned by the school?
Without a serious investigation into the nature and roles of each and every part of the educational system, will we continue to tinker around the edges and waste more human and financial resources? Will we encounter further difficulty in gaining support for a non-functional system?
Can this country function in a democratic mode in the future when our population is so poorly educated that an alarming number of the products of our schools can’t function as productive members of a democratic and capitalistic society in this 21st century?
The answer is obvious, but the solution is difficult. Change is inhibited by the reluctance to abandon the traditions that possibly served us well sometime in the past but are woefully deficient in today’s world community.
Systemic change is needed, but not just changes for change sake, but change that is based on a rigorous examination of the parts of the system and their interrelationships, viewed from a validated set of assumptions and beliefs about how individual learners can best fulfill their needs for themselves and for their country.
1) Philosophical/theoretical assumptions and beliefs
2) Finance, administrative decision making and accountability procedures
3) Goals and objectives for the system and the learners.
4) Curriculum and instructional/learning transactional strategies
5) Assessment, evaluation, record-keeping and reporting procedures
6) Facilities and utilization patterns
7) Community involvement
8) Support services
9) In-service and pre-service demonstration sites
10) Information and management technologies
Experience with effective systems tells us that all the parts must be functioning effectively and interactively with all the other parts. A system that contains weak or defective parts will cause the system to malfunction. Injecting new parts into a system of old parts will frequently cause problems with the old parts and their ability to function interactively. A school system that features inconsistencies between its parts will not function effectively and will fail to achieve its desired outcomes.
Also a school system that is poorly designed, regardless of consistency between its interactive parts, when based on invalid assumptions and beliefs, will fail to produce the outcomes we expect of our schools.
Based on valid assumptions and beliefs, a systemic overhaul is required with parts that are in sync with other parts designed to meet the desired goal as stated at the center of the foregoing "Systemic Design Model." Using this model as a "Solutions Generator" all ten parts of the school system must be visited to create a functioning system with a minimum of internal inconsistencies, consistent with what we know and can validate about individual development and learning.
Achieving this goal will likely be resisted by those whose minds are clogged with rigid stereotypes and long standing traditions; by people who are suffering from hardening of the categories. Nevertheless, an effort must be made to bring about the changes needed to prepare our citizens for the challenges of this 21st century world.
Let’s explore the dimensions of our school systems using the "solutions generator." Remember, each part of a functioning system must be designed to function in a predictable fashion and become a working member of the system in which it is placed. A change in one part brings about changes in the system as a whole, changes that may result in improving or diminishing the functioning and effectiveness of the system.
Start with the part called philosophical/theoretical assumptions and beliefs. Assume that this part is based on the reality of individual differences; that no two people anywhere throughout this world are identical, not their genetics, not their experiences nor what they have done with their experiences.
Assume that individuals develop their intellectual abilities as they emerge along an invariant sequence that is directed by a unique genetic code influenced for better or worse by the experiences encountered in day to day living. Consider learning to be a creative process that develops over time with a gradual accumulation of holistic insights that eventually are formulated in the mind as useful principles and laws found to apply in the solution of problems.
Assert your belief that Individuals are best assisted in learning within groups where learners are operating at a level of consensual validation, regardless of age or social/economic standing?
Let’s first look at part number four called the "curriculum and instructional/learning transactional strategies." Take the position that this part is based on a concept of standardization, meaning the curriculum and instructional strategies are designed to be appropriate for all learners, regardless of their developmental or experiential differences. Assume also that appropriate subject matter can be determined apart from the learners and successfully delivered to learners through various teaching techniques and instructional media in compartmentalized classrooms.
Which one of these propositions do you endorse? If you endorse proposition one, how do you reconcile the differences with proposition four identified on the chart above? If you endorse proposition four as requiring standardization, how do you deal with the realities of proposition one that asserts the principles of learning and development?
To this point, having looked briefly at only two dimensions of the school system, we find these parts to be incompatible and we have eight other parts to consider before we can determine the total system’s functionality.
What choices do we have when we find parts that are not functioning well? We can send the problematic parts back to the drawing board and decide which position holds more credibility and validity, verified first in our own experiences and then in the experiences of others, especially those of reputable scholars in this field. Or we can rely on a position of conventional wisdom handed down through the ages, seldom subjected to a rigorous analysis.
How about a comparison of parts one and five? Part number five is defined in today’s rhetoric about educational reform as standardization, the savior of a failing educational system where the lofty statements of goals and objectives for the system and the learners have not been met. Can this type of standardization, arbitrarily and rigidly imposed, be reconciled with principles of individual development and learning?
What happens to individuality in the world of standardization? Is creativity inhibited, is the entrepreneurial spirit lost, is a loss of the ability and the will required to solve problems a predictable byproduct?
Going further, consider number five, strategies of assessment, evaluation, record-keeping and reporting. Is standardized testing compatible with number one? What if individuals do not fit the pre-defined definitions of success, as measured by standardized tests? Do you favor segregating the students into categories of average, above average or below average based on a score on an achievement test? What effect does this have on healthy personality development?
If there are assessment and evaluation alternatives that are compatible with number one, that identify accurately the dimensions and extent of learning each individual has achieved at any point in time, would you consider them or reject them outright if they challenge your long held positions?
Let’s suppose there are teachers who buy into the propositions of part number one and attempt to install procedures that match those assumptions and beliefs. Most school systems exist under hierarchical, authoritarian structures with an appointed leader who has pervasive authority. What chance does an individual teacher have when trying to implement the propositions drawn from number one if the administrative organization or the administrator does not allow it? (part number 2) Without a shared set of validated assumptions and beliefs, that determine what is or is not appropriate educational experience, that teacher is at the mercy of the positions of administration with little recourse except to conform to those positions.
What roles do the propositions of parts number one, two, three (goals and objectives, four (curriculum and instructional strategies) and five have on the design and maintenance of facilities? Is the egg crate building design compatible with a compartmentalized/departmentalized design? Does a compartmental/departmentalized instructional design facilitate the development of holistic insights required of intelligent problem solving? Would a flexible community center that invites-in all of its members better serve the learners of all ages?
Do utilization patterns of a school that operates consistently with compartmentalized instructional designs allow learners the time to internalize experiences and form their own patterns of meaning, or does it encourage an unhealthy dependency on so called experts?
Why are education decision-makers eager to move instruction into the earliest levels of development? Is it because they feel the later experiences within the system are ineffective and instruction that starts earlier will solve this problem? Do the advocates of this point of view understand the principles of learning and individual development?
Consider systemic part number seven. (community involvement) What kind of support services are required to assist learners with impediments that may be found interfering with learning? How are these services obtained and distributed within an authoritarian structure?
Can the contents of part number nine be ignored? ( teacher education) What kinds of pre-service and in-service experiences will assist educators, teachers and others in developing validated assumptions and beliefs that will guide the development of effective strategies for individual learning and development?
Are these validated assumptions and beliefs as important to learning at the college and university levels as they are for early, middle and secondary education?
What is the role of modern communications technologies (part number ten) in facilitating learning at all levels of education? Can the cell phone and the social networks be harnessed to facilitate the development of insights into reality, or will they continue to languish in the mire of social trivia and vulgar, often hostile uses, and be abandoned by the school?
Without a serious investigation into the nature and roles of each and every part of the educational system, will we continue to tinker around the edges and waste more human and financial resources? Will we encounter further difficulty in gaining support for a non-functional system?
Can this country function in a democratic mode in the future when our population is so poorly educated that an alarming number of the products of our schools can’t function as productive members of a democratic and capitalistic society in this 21st century?
The answer is obvious, but the solution is difficult. Change is inhibited by the reluctance to abandon the traditions that possibly served us well sometime in the past but are woefully deficient in today’s world community.
Systemic change is needed, but not just changes for change sake, but change that is based on a rigorous examination of the parts of the system and their interrelationships, viewed from a validated set of assumptions and beliefs about how individual learners can best fulfill their needs for themselves and for their country.
