When you come in please:
1.
Help to move the furniture so that we can meet in 6 or 7
small groups
2.
Try to sit with at least one other person you have not
talked with (much) before
3.
(Re-)introduce yourselves
1.
Check out Pigeonhole Live
https://pigeonhole.at/LMFZXI (passcode: LMFZXI).
2.
Review the questions/comments, vote for those you
would like to discuss and/or add a comment
Goals (weeks 2-3)
• Develop a deeper understanding of why some things
change and some things stay the same (and of some key
concepts from the initial readings)
• Begin to develop skills in analyzing policies, programs
and improvement efforts
• Gain some familiarity with the history of school reform
Agenda
• (Re-)Introductions & Revisiting Norms
• Review: Why do some things change (while others
•
•
•
•
don’t?)
Discussion w/ Pigeonhole Live
Activity: What’s essential in a school?
Ideal Letters
Next time
Norms/Expectations
• Respect for people and diverse ideas,
• Responsibility for preparing for class and for contributing regularly
and constructively to activities and discussions (in class, outside of
class, and online)
• Willingness to share the responsibility for group work and to support
and facilitate the participation of others
• Regular and prompt attendance for class and for group meetings (in
person and electronically) outside of class
• Use of electronic devices in class and in meetings outside of class
primarily for class-related work
Why do some things change?
Work with 3 or 4 others to pick 1 or 2 factors:
• Structural add-
• Timing
• Solving a problem
on’s
• Policy elites
• “Real school”
• The grammar of
• Others?
schooling
Take 5 minutes to use them to explain T&C’s view of:
1. Why the Carnegie Unit, kindergarten or Junior High
were widely adopted and sustained
2. Why the innovations reflected in the Dalton Plan,
the 8-year study, or the Schools of Tomorrow were not
But what really changed?
• To what extent did these reforms change schools? To
what extent did schools change reforms?
• Which changes are “really” changes, changing:
• Your clothes?
• Your mind?
• The oil?
• The rules?
• The world?
Improvement as “incremental”
…the task is much harder than many people suspect. We
suggest that actual changes in schools will be more
gradual and piecemeal than the usual either-or rhetoric of
innovation might indicate. Almost any blueprint for basic
reform will be altered during implementation, so powerful is
the hold of the public's cultural construction of what
constitutes a "real school" and so common is the teachers'
habit of hybridizing reforms to fit local circumstances and
public expectations. On reason that changing the grammar
is difficult is that reforms in one classroom or mini-school
or school or district take place within a larger
interdependent system. (Tyack & Cuban, p. 109)
Hargreaves & Shirley, p. 210
• Should schools be improving what they already do,
and undertake everything in their power to make it
better, and more effective?
• Or should they be embracing innovation in terms of
new ideas, outcomes, and practices-not merely
making their existing practice more effective, but
transforming that practice and perhaps even the
nature of their institutions altogether?
• Are improvement and innovation mutually exclusive?
Why do some things change?
The evolution of Citizen Schools from an afterschool
program to a model for extended learning time (19842010)
http://internationalednews.com/2014/09/24/a-conversationwith-eric-schwarz-about-the-evolution-of-citizen-schools/.
Pigeon-Hole Live Discussion?
What’s Necessary, Useful, Unnecessary In A
School? (3 columns)
• Gym
• Ipads
• Musical
• Computers
•
• Mobile phones
•
• Blackboard
•
• Smartboards
•
• Administrators
•
• Counselors
•
• Instructional
•
coaches
• Art supplies
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
instruments
Parent Liaison
Tables
Chairs
Microscopes
Teachers
Students
Kitchen
Playground
Globe
Textbooks
Books
Libraries
Paper
Pens & pencils
Buildings
administrators
Ideal Letters
Some common ideas. Ideal learning:
• Is “student”-centered, “personalized”
• Engages the community
• Attends to the relationship among students, teachers,
and parents
That raise some common concerns:
• How can students/teachers/others be "autonomous"
while still ensuring that they achieve specific goals
relevant to parents and/or the community as a whole?
• Who should decide on the goals of education?
• Who should benefit?
Ideal Letters
Also, some focus on what’s “ideal” for themselves, some
on what might be ideal for their own students, and some
on what might be ideal in general.
Some imagine the “ideal”, regardless of current
circumstances, others focus on what might be ideal within
schools and classrooms as they currently exist, and/or as
they exist within a system like that of NYC.
Some base their vision on experience (their own or
others), some based on reading, some based on
research, some based on particular purposes
Keep looking at what you take for granted, what you
assume.
Are we assuming that all students have to go to
college? Have to get a job?
Can we imagine what education would be like if the goals
were different:
To be a “good” person? A “global” citizen? To be? Or not
to be, but…?
Next Time: Why don’t schools change?
Required reading:
Cohen, David (1990). “A revolution in one classroom: The
case of Mrs. Oublier.”
Elmore, R. (2003). “Change and improvement in
education.”
Payne, C. (2008). “I don't want your nasty pot of gold:
From social demoralization to organizational irrationality.”
• What does the author see as some of the key problems
with current school reform efforts?
• Who do they see as the key participants in explaining
whether reforms are likely to work?
• What (and who) does each author leave out of their
analysis?