ICSEI Opening conference 03-01-2013
CHANGE. Making it happen in your school and system
Integrating Technology, Pedagogy and Change Knowledge
Michael Fullan. Professor Emeritus OISE/UT
Nowadays people get bored at school. Researches show that not only students are not
engaged about learning, but also teachers lose enthusiasm about their job year after year.
Our assets for 2013 are, first, the radical infiltration of the professional capital agenda.
It is radical because it is a redefinition of the school improvement, it goes deeper in the
conceptualization and it includes new terms. Then, there is the need of flourishing of the
whole system reform action. It is important to emphasize on “action”, because it is not only to
study how to reform the whole system, at the same time, we have to do things to change the
system. Other assets are to deepen in the new pedagogy and to encourage a leadership that
mobilizes all the others.
Our work with schools is based in four interrelated key concepts focused on realizing
the moral imperative of raising the bar and closing the gap for all students.
1.
The “Simplexity” refers to the simple fact of identifying a small number of core
factors that must be included in the focus connected with the complex fact of getting
them play out among individuals and groups.
2.
The motion leadership is the leadership actions that cause movements
forward.
3.
A whole system reform includes the system improvement and also innovation.
4.
Finally “The Skinny” is a summary term of the previous three. It is “the smaller
number of things you need to grasp”, that is, an essence that can be easily internalize
by leaders who apply themselves through deliberate practice, reflection and learning
To make the change happens the main elements are the Drivers and there are based
on Professional Capital, the Stratosphere and the Motion Leadership.
The Right Drivers
There are some criteria to choose the right drivers. On one hand, they have to foster
intrinsic motivation and engage teachers and students in continuous improvement. On the
other hand they must inspire teamwork and affect all the teachers and students, not only a
part of them.
It is important to identify also the wrong drivers in order to use them in the correct
way: ”if you use then as second order factors they can reinforce the right drivers”. For
example, it is a mistake to use Technology as a driver, the driver must be Pedagogy, but
Technology can be used as a great accelerator.
Another driver is the Good Accountability. It requires non-judgementalism, because
“if you take a negative or pejorative attitude when you see poor performance you demotivate
people” and, consequently, you don’t have a chance of forming relationship and helping to
develop capacity. It also depends on widespread transparency, not only about results but also
about practice, that is getting feedback about good teaching, in the schools and across schools.
Good accountability produces strong “internal accountability” which is “when people know
what they are doing, they can explain themselves, they can show data and they are committed
to improvement”. It fusses assessment and instruction.
Capacity Building is a driver as well. This means to build up the competencies,
knowledge, skills and motivation of individuals, but specially of groups that can do things to
improve the structure at school and district level.
Finally, Social Capital is the right driver instead of Human Capital, because “social
capital produces more human capital than human capital produces social capital”. Human
capital must be considered as a part of Social Capital, so professional development of teachers
is not the driver, it is an enabler. “Learning is the work” is the driver and encourages
teamwork.
The Change is a system thing, not a fragmented thing. You need inspirational focus,
good diagnosis and a coherent plan of action (the latter based on four right drivers, using the
so called wrong drivers judiciously) – Mourshed et al. 2010The system coherence is about shared mindsets. A tool is only as good as the mindset
using it, so it is not enough to align ideas on a paper; “you need to know what you are doing
and it comes from how you think and how you act together with other people”.
The elements involve in making the system coherent are, first of all, a small number of
ambitious goals. The focus must be on instruction, the students’ learning agenda and the
capacity building around that agenda. The cultivation of “systemness” is on the part of all.
Systemness is when “more and more people think about bigger pieces of the system they are
working at. For instance, when school becomes collaborative teachers stop thinking on “my
students and my classroom only” and start thinking of “our students in our school”
The impact of coherence is that there is a strong focus on consistency. The attention is
also sustained on improved practice. There are multiple reinforcing energies to get results. The
performance becomes better and there are a large number of people that “talk the walk as
they walk the talk”, this means that anyone in the school can explain what they are doing in a
specific, precise and consistent way.
Professional Capital
This module goes deeper into what is the most powerful of all the change drivers,
namely the development of Professional Capacity. Change leaders have to become experts at
fostering professional capacity within their schools in clusters and networks and in the system
as a whole. Andy Hargreaves and I mapped this area out in our recent book Professional
Capital.
Professional capital is formed by three elements: human, social and decisional capital.
To explain what the decisional capital is Michael Fullan gives this example: “when you say
teachers are interacting together therefore there is social capital, you have to be careful about
that because if they don’t know what they are doing they are sharing ignorance. It has to be
some gap in the conversation and that comes from the decisional capital”.
In the past, networks were teachers that came together to share ideas, that might be
valuable for the individuals but there were not strategies for system changes. An effective
network focuses on students’ achievements, requires effective leadership and has adults as
specific practices learners. It also combines mutual allegiance and collaborative competition.
Mutual allegiance is when there is interaction between people inside and outside the school
and their commitment to each other increases. This encourages a sense of friendly
competition, the willing to do things better and share them with everybody.
Stratosphere
It is ironic that we fingered technology as a wrong driver, and now we are touting it as
a part of a breakthrough solution. The consistency is that pedagogy is the driver, but one
wonders now that technology is becoming supercharged whether it might take and equal
place. The important thing is that technology and pedagogy be integrated. In this module you
will examine why and how teachers and students can partner for learning with technology as a
powerful accelerator.
Technology, Pedagogy and Change Knowledge have increase a lot their sophistication
but unfortunately they have done it separately. Stratosphere is bringing these domains
together in the same projects. Pedagogy as a driver, technology as the accelerator and change
knowledge used locally but also more roughly to bring about a whole system reform. Each of
these domains has a great knowledge base.
The new learning strategy shows that learning experiences need to be irresistibly
engaging for students and teachers. For that, the gadgets must be efficient and easy to use,
the ubiquity of the technology must be 24/7 and the education must be steeped in real-life
problem solving.
In the new pedagogy the teachers are needed but there are required to take a new
role as change agents. The expert teachers are the activator teachers. They work together with
the students as active learning partners, they encourage the students to employ their own
tools, they use peer to peer teaching and they offer students more choices than mandates
(M.Prensky, 2012).
“The goal is to start drawing out that knowledge, building on it and making it present
so technology and pedagogy are powerfully connected. It is a huge opportunity because the
knowledge of pedagogy is stronger and stronger and the power and availability of technology
is increasing”.
Motion Leadership in Action
Motion Leaders cause positive movement forward. To accomplish this, great
leadership requires mastering the three tranches below in concert. These stances are not
simply linear: you will need to be good at change by paying attention to all three from the
beginning. Think of sustainability from day one, and engage in all three continuous bases.
There are three stances for sucesfull leadership: the change stance, the
implementation stance and the sustainability stance.
The Change Stance deepens in the realization of the moral imperative focusing on a
small number of ambitious goals building a guiding coalition.
Successful leaders practice impressive empathy, that is, “to have empathy for people
who are in your way, so they have great capacity to deal with diversity and even opposition”. A
leader would also have the capacity to push, pull and nudge. Pull is to be assertive about the
moral imperative of the agenda. Pull is to draw people into a vision, into the process and “into
the excitement of making impact”. Nudge means to do things that causes in the environment.
Finally, every successful leader thinks bigger and always want to do more and better for the
system.
In the Implementation stance is important to be aware of premature excitement and
fat plans. The capacity building must be central and the communication during the
implementation is paramount. The purposeful data have to permeate and the group has to
change the group itself.
The Sustainability Stance is about staying the course but adding innovation and
improvement. Also about position leadership for the present and the future.