What others say about the future of education

From the Sight of a Visitor.....

I walked down the stairs this morning wanting to write a companion piece to my essay on “Whether and to what extent do we believe in the power of our voice?”, this time to center on “Whether we believe in the power of education?”  The context for this musing is Kampala, Uganda and surrounding villages.  To quote our guide, “People in the villages are suffering”.  Most of the suffering is perhaps physical, poor nutrition etc.  Since I am somehow wired to wonder how we fix things that aren’t working, this leads me to wonder how we fix poverty in a society that drains the people daily through requiring bribes, etc.?

Changing norms

The difficulty is that the norm of the country has remained much the same for generations.  Helped by dictators and others in power, corruption is everywhere.  People consistently believe that while their vote counts at the local level that they have to vote for the current administration or they will be beaten up.  As I said in another post, to work in partnership here to build infrastructure is good work and necessary but it is also like pouring water into a bucket with a hole.  Rusted signs about urban renewal projects dot the road, right next to villages where people live without water, electricity or sanitation. 

Likewise, in a country where children die due to many diseases, children will not be invested in as they will when they guarantee the future.  In many places they are helpers to the parents for survival, doing small tasks, carrying water and looking after those younger than they are.  School may be available but uniforms may not be a price a family is willing or able to pay.  While we saw most children in school on the Tuesday we drove through villages, we saw many who were not.

The Power of Education

Bridging the undeveloped world to westernized living through technology.  Sugata Mitra’s Hole in the Wall project comes into play. To complete the story follow the Read More link

Read more: Education Challenges in Uganda

Inspiring Students to Life-Long Learning

                In order to be a life long-learner you must love learning. I have acquired this passion for learning and passed it on to several students already. A teacher must always strive to guide students toward a passion for life-long learning, and the best way to do this is to lead by example (Day, 1999, p.2).  I believe that the education system today should shift the focus of education away from performance and move toward creating a thirst for learning in our students. If you are interested in creating passionate life-long learners please follow the read more link.

Read more: Inspiring Students to Life-Long Learning

 Simmons, W. (forthcoming). From Smart Districts to Smart Education Systems A Broader Agenda for Educational Development.  In Robert Rothman (Ed.). City Schools: How Districts and Communities Can Create Smart Education Systems. Harvard Education Press, forthcoming.

ABSTRACT

The purpose of this essay is to examine education reform in urban school districts serving mostly lower-income families and how reform at the district level can improve these schools in order to better prepare their students to be successful adults. The scope it covers is extremely broad because it is not a single research effort. The scope is national district reform in the United States and even beyond that to the meaning of national district reform for these students as they enter the global economy and workforce. The methodology used is a literature review, as well as, analysis of national quantitative data, and privately gathered qualitative data from several research organizations about urban school districts serving mostly low-income families. The essay found that there are several models of successful reform working around the nation, but the problem is determining how to replicate these success stories. The conclusion was that civic leaders must unite to raise the level of education in their cities by forming Local Education Support Networks (LESNs). The limitation of the essay would be the fact that it left the reader with more questions than answers. A second limitation was the lack of reference to rural communities who also have students who need education improvement. This paper contributes four examples of success stories in urban district school reform. It also contributed the explanation of LESNs and Smart Education Systems and their importance in education reform

CRITIQUE

                Education reform is on many people’s minds currently. NBC (2009) news examined President Obama’s first speech addressing education in the United States, “Obama argued that a far-reaching overhaul of the nation's education system is an economic imperative that can't wait, despite the urgency of the financial crisis and other pressing issues. ‘The future belongs to the nation that best educates its citizens,’ he said. ‘We have everything we need to be that nation ... and yet, despite resources that are unmatched anywhere in the world, we have let our grades slip, our schools crumble, our teacher quality fall short and other nations outpace us.’” (NBC, 2009) This essay is a chapter from a book that will soon be published by Harvard Press addressing the issue of urban education reform.  I live in a suburban area and am only 50 miles outside of a rural community who has schools who desperately need reform. I am concerned with the fact that urban school reform is being addressed and success stories are being reported, but I have not heard rural schools even mentioned. Some of the ideas presented in this essay could apply to rural education reform, but others cannot. Who will consider the issue of rural school education reform? The communities are smaller and by nature less powerful. Does this make these students less important?

I believe that the use of internet technology could benefit education reform efforts for the students in rural communities. Simmons (forthcoming) touched on the importance of the issue of the individual nature of students as learners. Hodgkin’s (2008) Snowflake Effect emphasizes the weight of individuality in the learning process and likens each learner to a snowflake. The Snowflake Effect states that each learner is a unique individual and education that is focused on sameness will not be as effective as education focused on inspiring the individual learner to passion for new knowledge. Applying the Snowflake Effect to our educational system could change the face of education. Unfortunately Simmons (forthcoming) did not explore that aspect of education reform. I believe in order to meet the needs of students who live in small communities without access to the community services offered in urban areas mashups, or “pre-existing bits and pieces” of information joined together to meet the needs of the individual learner (Hodgkin, 2008, p. 4) could be useful. This area of technology needs to be researched as a means of education reform for rural students.  Mashups could also have implications for assisting the creation of LESNs in urban areas as well. Technology needs to be harnessed to the benefit of education reform. People and technology together are far more powerful as change agents when linked together than on their own. People can only do so much, but people connected through the use of technology will be able to locate far more resources for a larger number of students. This linkage is important to urban communities, but I think it is essential in rural communities for education reform to be successful.

In conclusion, this essay was inspirational and informative. The Smart Education System outlined in the essay makes lots of sense and seems to be workable as an education reform solution. The essay ends with a list of research questions that realistically must be addressed for the ideas in the essay to be more meaningful. I would take great pleasure in doing some of the research suggested. I wonder where this essay will lead us. I will take the challenge to make education reform a reality. Each of the questions in the essay must be researched from a critical perspective. Rex, Steadman and Graciano (2006) suggest that a critical perspective looks at power struggles within the classroom. In the case of utilizing a critical perspective for education reform, the power struggle is not within the classroom, but inside the political, social and economic systems that the education system is surrounded by. Completing research from a critical perspective that will look at why these systems are not working together and how they can make changes to do so, perhaps by developing software systems to help create the needed links between systems, will enable education reform to become less of a dream and more of a reality.

References

Hodgins, W. (November 2008). The Snowflake Effect: The Future of Mashups . Retrieved March 12, 2009, from Becta Web site: http://emergingtechnologies.becta.org.uk/index.php?section=etr&catcode=ETRE_0001&rid=14146

 (March 12, 2009). 12 States Make Gains in Graduation Rates. Retrieved March 12, 2009, from NBC 6 Web site: http://www.nbc6.net/education/18913653/detail.html

Rex, L. A., Steadman, S.C., & Graciano, M. K. (2006). Researching the complexity of classroom interaction. In J. L. Green, G. Camilli, & P. B. Elmore (Eds.), Handbook of complementary methods in education research (pp. 727–771). Mahwah, NJ: American Educational Research Association.

George Siemens presented this model as part of a discussion on the adoption of technology.

I borrow it for use here as a framework through which we may create meaning in our quest to redesign education.

I think the Isle of Wight participatory team who met last week was indicative of the issues that come with the over use of systematization – so much so that the person and the relationship that might exist become irrelevant to the test results.  I was frankly shocked that individuals in the UK are being let go from teaching due to test scores.  This implies some people believe in those scores much more than I do – what I believe is that the scores show that schooling is not working, rather than people are not doing a good job. We can’t make students learn, take our tests well, or even care about our systems and that is what I believe they are telling us when the repeatedly do poorly on standardized assessments – they are telling us the schooling is irrelevant to their world.

I see innovation in terms of education regularly cycling through to the chaotic but relationship based education models.   Interested?  Follow the READ MORE link.

Read more: Borrowing GS's Iris Model