Six Secrets of Change - 1

Instructional designers are frequently hired on to companies or agencies with the intent to train employees on some sort of systematic change taking place within the company or agency. The best instructional designers in the world, however, cannot be effective if the audience has not bought into the need for change. The Six Secrets of Change by Michael Fullan is a guideline for leaders to help their organizations survive and thrive by successfully bringing about change when necessary. The six secrets are not meant to be hidden, but rather, are often difficult for leaders to access because they are simple and profound. The first two secrets are:

1. Love Your Employees
2. Connect Peers with Purpose

Secret One: Love Your Employees:
A report by McKinsey and Company that focused on the world’s top-performing schools confirmed that, “the quality of the education system cannot exceed the quality of its teachers,” (Barber et. al. 2007). Though Michael Fullan is a Canadian education official, he ironically chose to address an example from my school district, San Diego Unified (SDUSD), to discuss a non-example for Secret One. To address the low performance scores of teachers with SDUSD, superintendent Alan Bersin and chancellor of instruction, Tony Alvarado pushed for change from the top without figuring out how to love staff by involving them in the improvement drive. Inevitably, they were pushed out of the district by 2005.

On the other hand, so-called “Firms of Endearment (FoEs)” such as Trader Joes and REI take a much different approach to change. These FoEs’ apply Secret One, which decreases employee turnover and increases employee loyalty. With the love of employees in mind, designers implement reform with less resistance because the employees desire the continued growth of the company for their own sake, and analysts often receive the best information from employees who work directly with consumers. Between 1996-2006, public FoEs yielded a 1,026% return compared with the 122% return by S&P 500 companies.

Secret Two: Connect Peers with Purpose
Secret Two requires not less, but more leadership, however, rather than tight accountability, drift and inertia are gained by decentralizing the creativity. For instance, public schools in England public schools had experienced rising literacy scores from 1997-2001. Then, for three year, no growth ensued. Instructional leaders employed a strategy that grouped six schools together. 1500 groups of six schools each collaborated with one another to learn from each other. It turns out there were some terrific strategies that were being kept and once the collaboration occurred, literacy rates once again improved. The reason Secret Two requires more leadership is to organize such group collaboration. If instructional designers approach the design of learning activities with the need for peer collaboration in mind, then employees develop an “our” attitude rather than a “me” attitude. English teachers in the above example replace a “my classroom” attitude with an “our district” one and positive results ensue.

FutureWatch 3

After attending a workshop at USD (University of San Diego) called: Leading Schools in a Flat World "Globalization and Its Implications for Education," I am hopeful about my loves. I love humanities and believe the humanities can be taught using a 21st centruy approach. According to the "gurus" of the 21st century, the future for education is simple yet innovative: teach children to develop their passions and creativity, and prepare students for the technology of the 21st century global economy. For teachers to model passion, three things are needed:

1. Wide-spread systematic change on all levels (federal/state governments, districts, schools, teachers, parents).
2. Innovative classroom designs built with the intention of enhancing the skills of our students to meet the needs of a 21st century global economy.
3. The need for education to develop passions within our students while we address the core curriculum.

The first "guru" I heard from was Michael Fullan, author of The Six Secrets of Change. According to Fullan, wide-spread systematic change is not as difficult as one may think. He says that true reform can be brought about during one election period if these six secrets are applied:
A rule of thumb that Fullan brings up, however, is the "implementation dip." I love the development and implementation stages of ADDIE. I'm going to devlop a completely digital classroom this fall, and I feel so much better about change knowing that an initial "dip" in achievement upon implementation is okay because there is going to be a learning curve. I am not confident I will be able to keep up with designing new lessons, creating job aids for students to complete those lessons, and assessing them appropriately using the new tools such as blogs, wikis, PBL (Project-based learning), and digital portfolios. I do know, however, that if I am honest and passionate with students, they will learn. In my 8 years of teaching, I have noticed the the highlighted years are those where I am doing a significant amount of learning with my students. Year nine will be one of those years.

The second interesting need for the future is the redesign of our 19th century classrooms. While new technologies such as Smart boards (see right) and overhead projectors have innundated classrooms, many teachers are utilizing these technologies in old-school, teacher-centered ways. According to Matthew Spathas, classrooms of the future need not only technology, but complete remodeling so that they can be student-centered, teacher facilitated areas of learning that enhance the passions of our children while preparing them for the "flat" world of the future. In other words, our children are preparing for jobs where global corporations will require them to collaborate at a distance with folks from China, India, Europe, South America, etc. Our children will need to adopt a Net Gen culture and be accustomed to PBL. In addition, our posterity will need to be internationally minded, creative, and innovative. Spathas envisions a student-centered, teacher facilited classroom that resembles this:

Finally, our teachers will need to bring out the passions of our children. According to Dr. Zhao of Michigan State University, our students' math test scores have been far below those of other countries since the 1960s. Yet, America has continued to prosper economically and currently holds and exports more patents than any other country in the world. This is because Americans are passionate and creative. The worry is if we lose this aspect of our culture in exchange for enhanced math scores, then we will lose our greatest resource, our creativity. In exchange, we will produce a ton of out-of-work engineers who lack both projects to work on and jobs that will go to Asians working for global corporations for far less pay.

Zhao's statistics brought me right back to the love I speak of in my own comprehensive reflection. I love humanities, yet I also love that I have so many new ways of facilitating the learning of humanities as a result of being a graduate student of Educational Technology at SDSU (San Diego State University). If we expect our teachers to implement new technologies in their classrooms, and implement widespread systematic change, then our teachers need to develop TPCK (technological pedagogical content knowledge). TPCK is most effectively developed in teachers when professional development is conducted in a teacher's content area, their passion. My final conclusion is that if we want to reform our classrooms to meet the needs of the 21st century global economy, then we need to model what it looks like for teachers so that they can implement wide-spread systematic change.

For further information about TPCK, see my Literature Review.

References:

Fullan, Michael. (2009). The Six Secrets of Change. Jossey-Bass: San Francisco, CA.

Liebke, Juliana. (2008). "Designing Professional Development to Enhance Technology Integration in the K-12 Science Classroom."

Spathas, Matthew. http://www.ibrary.com/digitalthoughts/

Zhao, Yong. http://zhao.educ.msu.edu/

FutureWatch 2

The first article I read was, "What Does School Reform Look Like?" by Andy Carvin. Andy's blog was his thoughts of the upcoming EduCon conference he was to be attending, which focused on education reform. While reform comes in many shapes and sizes, EduCon's focus was:

• Schools should be inquiry-driven
• Schools should focus on creating 21st century citizens
• Technology must serve pedagogy, not the other way around
• Technology must enable students to research, create, communicate and collaborate
• Learning must be networked

My initial AHHH was on the concept, "technology must serve pedagogy." While conducting a case study in my EDTEC 690 class, my group came up with this question: How does a teacher's perceived knowledge/skill with TCPK, which involves the intersection of technological, pedagogical, and content knowledge within a teacher (see diagram below), predict success with technology integration?

The findings in our case study concluded that professional development for technology integration is most effective when it content driven, allows for group collaboration, and includes follow-up evaluation with mentors. It sounds as though we are not alone in coming up with this conclusion. This is especially important to me as a social studies teacher because my discipline is often the least prioritized in this world of math and reading test scores or scientific advancement. Social studies is a reading class, a citizenship class, a cause and effect class, and I am thinking it should be among the favored technological courses. Social studies teachers, however, need to have more training on technology integration and access to more real-world simulation software.

I also read, "Creating a New Culture of Teaching and Learning" by Alan November. I was really glad this was in PDF so I could print it out and get outside to read it. One UGGH that I have run into with the advent of all this technology is that I can't just grab a book, head to the beach, take notes in the margin, and discuss my findings in a live seminar setting. Having to sit at the computer to do my readings and then write up a formal reflection has definitely changed the way of scholarly learning, and I'm not sold yet. I mean I hate to waste paper, but being confined to my computer is getting old.

November's approach is that information, communication, and community relationships are a valid way for teachers to decided which technology is needed for implementation in his/her class. November spent the first page of his article discussing the digital natives vs. digital immigrant idea which I thought was a bit old, at this point. Then, he broke the article down to points, some of them good.

1. "If it's not on the internet it's not true." (November 2009). He brought up an interesting point about the Holocaust and that a student came across a website that had a very logical explanation for why it never occurred. His point was that we, as teachers, need to teach students critical thinking skills so that students can decipher truth from non-truth. An "Ah-ha" moment occurred for me with November's suggestion to use Alta Vista as a search engine. He mentions that teachers can teach students about the "link" command, which gives a backward map of where a site is "hot-linked" to. As it turns out, the Holocaust denier, Arther Butz, who's site the student found, links up to a "Hate Directory" that was formed by the Maryland State Police Association. Unfortunately, however, November's article did not describe how to use the command link feature, and I could not figure it out.

2. November discussed that live video cameras should be in class rooms. I certainly wonder about the legality of such an endeavor, however, legality aside, it could enhance parent engagement.

3. Automating vs. Informating--a strange use of terms, indeed. November's concern is that certain technology only automates the learning environment, but doesn't enhance the actual learning. One example he used was the concept of word processing. He thinks this is a $2,000 pencil and therefore doesn't enhance learning. I disagree with him, however, because I have seen students acquire 21st century skills by word processing. Students need to learn to type, spell/grammar check (which helps student learn writing conventions), design principles, creating tables, using graphics, and learning MLA or APA format which most university professors require of their students. I think over time, word processing does improve learning, but the use must be regular and consistent.

4. The last point I wanted to discuss is "collegiality." November is a supporter of team-based teachers, a notion that my colleague and I have been trying to advocate for the 8 years I've been teaching. His idea is that if teachers focus on their needs for information, communication, and community relationships, then they will end up with more technology that will be implemented for student learning.

FutureWatch 1

The first video I watched was called, "A Nation In Crisis: America's Education System Is Broken." This 9+ minute-long video really did not make a clear point--It wanted its audience to join the "Learn to Learn Revolution." Huh? The video did not once explain what that is.

To support its cause, the video presented information like, "today's high school graduates will have an estimated 8-15 careers in their lifetime, even with the same company." This does not make sense to me. It also made the point that content changes over time, so students need to "Learn how to learn." I agree with this statement, however, there was no explanation about what this looks like. What would an education that teaches how to learn consist of? This video also presented U.S. rankings in Science, Math, and Reading. In comparison with 30 other countries, we were 17th in science, 24th in math, and 16th in reading. But, it did not share with us which countries were ranked highest and how those countries' education systems differ from ours.

The video says that the following 21st century skills are needed for our childrens' success:

1. Creativity and innovation
2. Facility to use ideas and abstractions
3. Self-discipline and organization to manage work and drive to success
4. Ability to strategize and think independently
5. Function well as a team member

But what type of an education system would produce these results in students? The video offers these solutions:

U.S. Education Problems:

• Test-making companies are high-profit
• Government is too concerned with special interests

U.S. Education Solutions:

• "Parent Revolution" with teachers and administrators
• Stop labeling students by test scores

One of the issues I had with the video itself was its complete disregard for one of the essential principles of learning efficiency stated by Clark et. al., which is that cognitive overload should be avoided. In this video, quotes were continually placed on the screen which were then read by the narrator. This redundancy in content is considered a poor form of delivery for leaning efficiency. I think the video was too long, and after realizing it was an ad for: http://www.learntolearn.com/, I know it was way too long for an ad. Once I went to the website for http://www.learntolearn.com/, I realized the target audience is parents and that the goal is to have parents find options to educating their children outside of our school system. I think the goal is to create statewide systematic change by causing a huge revolution of parents finding alternatives to public schools for their childrens' education.

The second video I watched was called, "Evolution of Technology and Teaching." I immediately liked the efficiency of the delivery. Within a minute, just by using photographs of classrooms and technology from the 1950s to now, the evolution of 60 years of education and communication was summed up and followed with this point:
There was not one live human voice, however, the message of the video became inherently clear that there is strong argument that the future of education is through distance learning. The video culminated with a quote aimed directly at teachers and the need for teachers to keep up with the needs of our time. Finally, it turned out to be an ad for tdsolutionsonline.com which appears to be a company that trains teachers for today's classrooms and the needs of today's students. A convincing ad, I went to the tdsolutionsonline website. I think this company has the potential to affect both school-wide and district-wide systems. I like the concept which would train teachers on creating an online course. Is the training content-centered or skill-centered and if the states don't adopt this concept of education as mainstream, what does the future hold? My remaining questions are: how many teachers will pay for this training on their own? Who are the clients? Districts? Teachers? Why would a teacher pay for this training? A district?

It is nice, however, that after working so hard to earn an MA in Educational Technology, I do feel that as times change, I am staying ahead technologically.

Chapter 21-Trends & Issues in P-12 Educational Change

Question: Interview several key leaders in your school system to diagnose which definition of systemic change they hold. Their definition(s) are a reflection of their mental models for change. Make a judgement about whether their mental models will help or hinder whole-district change in your system.

Before I could hold a discussion with district leaders about systemic change, I found it necessary to define it to leaders. Using the T&I in ID&T text, I explained it as, "redesigning or transforming the whole system." Since I work for SDUSD, the second largest school district in CA and one of the largest in the country, I have to admit that I got a few laughs. But then, however, I had to keep leaders on track and I proceeded to explain the four meanings as briefly as possible:

1. Statewide policy systemic change: changes in statewide tests, curricular guidelines (standards), teacher certification requirements, and funding policies.
2. Districtwide systemic change: changes in school district programs
3. Schoolwide systemic change: change or program instituted in the school
4. Ecological systemic change: understanding the interrelationships/dependencies within the schools, district, and state, and that change in one often leads to changes in all.

Both my vice principal and principal held a strong belief in the "Schoolwide systemic change" definition. At our site, we have made significant changes in our school programs in terms of becoming an International Baccalaureate (IB) magnet school, restructuring the master schedule, funding a position for a Network System and Media Specialist Tech., and funding a music/band teacher. These changes, however, are unlikely to have an affect on the district and/or state.

I also interviewed an administrator from our district special education department. She stated that her definition of systemic change is districtwide - her department interprets what the state mandates and makes sure that state law is adhered to throughout schools in the district. The authority of the district special ed. department, however, is reliant on the state, not the other way around. She did not see any changes that could affect statewide systemic change.

Their mental models will help whole-district change in our particular system. My friend in our district special ed. administration has been able to implement policies that advocate for special ed. student rights and needs in schools throughout the district. The state regulations gave her the ability to implement changes and the authority to follow through.

Our school, Pacific Beach Middle School, is one of three middle schools that has become an IB school, though we are the one and only to become an IB magnet. If all three schools are able to effect positive change, especially in terms of raising state-mandated test scores and enrollment, then it is possible to attract the attention of district decision-makers, which could eventually lead to district-wide systemic change. We become an IB magnet next year and time will tell if our test scores continue to raise.