Can school change society or do we have to change society first to have a different school?

This week I attended a conference on the PISA and PIRLS surveys. As the conference had been organized by a teacher union there were some tension concerning the interpretation of the results of the surveys. If the results are poor, it could well be that not only the government but also the teachers have their part of responsibility because they may be doing a bad job or because they had their say in the defining of the curriculum in use. That neither the second nor the latter conclusion can be easily accepted by teachers and their representatives is easy to understand.

What was raised then, was that education may well be victim of circumstances set by society itself. Circumstances that were mentioned were growing individualism, consumerism and strong economic interests. From this perspective it is clear, that society is responsible for the disaster and that it should change first. But is it as simple as that? Maybe the science of complexity could help us out.

According to complexity theory, school is a complex adaptive system which is embedded in and connected to other complex adaptive systems. School is not loosely connected to society, it is an itegral part of society. The actors in the educational system are at the same time actors in other systems like the national economy. Furthermore, what makes school special, is it's long-term influence on an individual - from early childhood to adult life. And as schooling is continuously being extended, the probability is growing that it will have a strong influence on the individuals hence on society. So why shouldn't educational systems be in a position to change other social systems?

If there are doubts that school can change society, we have reasons to doubt that any subsystem (unions, non-profit organizations, governments, laws, family structures etc.) can have a considerable impact on the global system. Is this the case? If we turn to what the science of complexity tells us, I would say that the answer is yes and no.

What is highly probable is, that small changes in school, won't lead to major changes in short-term. At the same time some of the changes will have a long-term effect, but it is impossible to predict which of the changes will have a major effect, when this effect will be perceivable, and if this effect is going to beneficial. Changes in the curiculum, in the the training of teachers, in the way schools are organized will without any doubt, have a short-term impact on school life, but long-term outcomes remain unpredictable.

We have also to consider that while changes in the educational system take place, other subsystems change at the same time, influencing one another and the global system like the society in which they are embedded. We cannot stop the economical system from evolving to have enough time to analyse the impact of changes brought to education. This means, that we make decisions on assumption at a certain stage of a process an this process, or parallel processes are changing the conditions that have lead to these assumptions.

The question is now, how we should decide on what actions to take, if we have no possibility to identify what long-term outcomes an action or a decision could lead to.

In his book "Complexity and Creativity in Organizations" (1996), Ralph D. Stacey posts that "The criteria for quality actions become, not ends, but ethical considerations and criteria having to do with maintaining positions, keeping options open, retaining flexibilty, and revealing errors as fast as possible. The quality action is not one with a predetermined outcome, because that effectively excludes all creative actions, but the action that is morally good in itself, the action that keeps options open by allowing an organization to stay in the game (...)."

If this is true, which I believe to be the case, then we should invest time to define an ethical framework that would help us to choose between possible actions. We should also set conditions in which creativity of a large number of actors is possible so that through a double-loop learning process innovation is possible. The science of complexity also tells us, that there is no justification to an organizational model in which change is built on a decisional hierarchy where "a few do the thinking and the creating while the many do as they are told." (Stacey)

For all those who would like to know precisely what to do (stakeholders or teachers alike), who want to be in controle of the outcomes, who need a blueprint for change that they would then impose on others, and who think that self-organization only leads to disorder, this may not be a very satisfying position. From such a perspective there is no guarantee for success, not even a lot of control and obviously many actions will be futile and will have neither visible or beneficial short-term nor long-term outcomes. But if uncertainty is the price for creativity (and according to complexity science we need a lot of creativity to increase the probability of innovation and to avoid that a system gets stuck in a stable equilibrium) then, we should opt for uncertainty instead of top down control.

"It is honesty, not rightness, that moves children." Herbert Kohl

During my three days trip to the French Atlantic coast I reread 36 children and Growing Minds, on Becoming a Teacher by Herbert Kohl.

H. Kohl is a great example of a reflecting teacher who is also a gifted writer. He is often qualified as "provocative" educator with "revolutionary" teaching ideas and methods. Considering that his beginning teaching experiences happened back in 1962, in a primary school class in Harlem, with 36 black children, they are indeed revolutionary.

But what stroke me most, is his honesty regarding his first steps in teaching, where he still stuck to the curriculum and tried to establish order and gain authority in his classroom while simultaneously trying to do innovative projects and bringing in his enthousiasm for teaching.

In my view, what he did is the same as most young teachers do (me included, when I started teaching), trying to merge or serve system expectations and a self-image of an innovative, skilled and respected educator.

What makes H. Kohl exceptional to me - as a teacher, not as a writer - is his self-criticisme, the conclusion he drew out of his daily experiences and his statements on the role of the teacher.

It's definitively a must read for every educator regardless if he/she is in his/her beginning or final years of teaching.

I don't want to spoil your pleasure of discovering the books by yourself so I won't quote to much from them, except for the title and the following :

"I've been involved with what has been called open or progressive education for over twenty years and found these concepts frequently misunderstood. One can teach Shakespeare, microbiology, computer math, as well as simple reading , writing and arithmetic, in open ways that leat do understanding, mastery, and occasionally love of the subject itself. To teach in an open way does not mean the loss of content, the indulgence of the whims of students, or the avoidance of complexity. On the contrary, it implies control of content, and the ability to deal with new and difficult ideas and concepts - in other words, the development of sophisticated thinking."

"In a boring classroom where learning is not much more than filling out forms and taking tests, ther's little reason to want to join back in once you've been separated from the group. (...)

Decent nonviolent discipline will only be effective in a learning environment where interesting things are happening. There is an essential relationship between the quality of content an the use of nonpunitive discipline strategies in any learning situation. Effective discipline is dependent upon building an attractive and comfortable world that children don't want to be excluded from, and not upon how you respond in any particular instance."

"Because they saw my researching they learned to do research. They wouldn't have learned had I merely told them to do it."

Why do arrows never hit their target when used in combination with a teaching machine?

Evaluation by competences has become the new credo of schools and educational reform in many countries in Western Europe.
We all know that giving global marks to students in a subject like mathematics or reading is vague, subjective, and depending on only a few test situations and thus unfair. We also know that this evaluation practice doesn't take into account complex learning processes that students have gone through. This leads to the conviction that evaluation by competences will me more objective and more precise. And, according to a common belief, the more items are taken into account the more precise the picture will be.

But will splitting up complex knowledge into multiple items really improve evaluation? How many items do we need to be able to attest a student that he/she has good reading skills?
Will learning be more effective when we can assume that "teaching to the test" will be transformed into "teaching to the competence item list"? Has there been considered, what difference it makes if the teachers themselves are in charge of defining the items or if the competence lists are centrally defined and distributed to the teachers as normative targets?
What will be the effect on students once they have gone through a schooling system where "myriads" of items have to be taken into account, especially when school has not been able, up until know, to get rid of subtle reward and punishment practices? Are people aware of the possible contradictions between competence items and their contradictory theoretical roots?

An interesting article by Véronique Marchand illustrates how the "evaluation of competences proceeds through reductionism" and states that "the complex action which constitutes every act of thought is reduced to a succession of procedures that become an end in themselves".
http://www.manifestoclub.com/education-competences (English translation)
http://www.sauv.net/competences.php (French version)

When reflecting on this subject, I can't help but thinking that, even if Burrhus Frederic Skinner is not necessarily the direct and only mentor of the approach, it could well be that in in the end he will.
Why? Because the main arguments that are use to "sell" the approach to 'evaluate by competences' like 'reduce or even eliminate failure', 'set reachable targets for everyone', 'increase students motivation to learn' etc. have all been used in a similar way by B. F. Skinner when he argued in favor of his operant conditioning instrument, the Teaching Machine. And we all know that any given school system tends to assimilate (make it similar to what is already in place) new concepts.

It is often said that, if you don't know the history, you are condemned to repeat it. This applies to teaching as well. If you don't know in which theories your teaching practices are rooted, you may be condemned to do what you tried to overcome or to do differently and better.

So you teachers out there, I invite you to analyse what is hiding behind the competence item before checking the box. The item is not necessarily what it pretends to be. And please don't forget to have a look back to the roots of your teaching.
Take the videos below as a start and listen carefully to what Skinner says about the "free will".

Oh yes, what about the title?
Read to Véronique Marchand's article to the end and you will get the explanation.

The Tower of Babel

I got a lot of comments and questions recently. Thanks to all of you who took the time to comment my posts. Regarding the questions it will take some time to answer them, if I can. But maybe somebody else does have answers. Use the comment to react to peoples questions if you have some hint to a specific subject.

One suggestion I would like to make is that you should try to write your comments in English.
I think that most readers will understand English and expect English, as the whole blog is in English.
If I accept every language, the blog will be something like the Tower of Babel. Unfortunately I know only a few languages and most of the people around the world don't understand Luxembourgish. This makes it difficult to moderate comments. So let's all make an effort and avoid confounding of tongues to keep confusion low.

Besides, I don't give marks here and I don't care about your spelling - I care about the message. And if you are a teacher or a future teacher, try to do what you expect students to do, take your time but don't avoid the difficulty ;-)

The Book of Learning and Forgetting, Frank Smith

This is one of the books I regularly reread and one of those that I wish I had written. On 120 thought-provoking and illuminating pages the author retraces the roots and illustrates the consequences of some of the well established practices that inhabit school. Most of these practices are taken for granted by teachers, parents and politicians. Among these practices you'll find learning through repetition, hard work, individual effort, conditioning, reinforcement, exercises and corrections, testing, rewards and control.
He opposes this "official theory of learning" to a "classic view" of learning which says that most of the time "you learn from the company you keep" from the individuals and the groups you most identify with. We learn "new things" from them by connecting those things to what we already know, to what we have discovered, imagined or understood and by connecting them to our beliefs and theories, and to what we would like to learn.
Smith also says that the question should never be if you are learning, but always what are we learning, because you always learn. I totally agree with that. In reading lessons you could for instance be learning that reading opens new doors to imagination and understanding, or you could be learning, that you are a poor reader, that you will never be a member of the "literacy club", or you could be learning which strategies are most effective to avoid reading until you end up being illiterate - as school expected you to be from the start.
If you are asked to memorize word lists, you may be learning that putting things into short term memory helps getting good marks in tests or, if you have difficulties remembering those words, you may be learning that you probably have a learning disability, that you don't fit, that you have no talent for languages, that your brain is not made for learning, that learning is an endless struggle and a continuous war against forgetting.
Smith also questions the value of testing, measurement and standardization as a means to achieve quality in education. On the contrary, continuous testing diminishes the motivation and the self-confidence of the low scorers. On the other hand the high scorers "become so addicted to tests (...) that thy are reluctant to read or write anything, in school or out, unless a score or a grade will be attached."

Besides the devastating critic Smith has also to offer some interesting suggestions on how to change school, well knowing what questions they will generate. Regarding these suggestions he anticipates:
"The teachers then ask who should bring all this change about. My answer is that they must. Teachers shouldn't expect people outside the classroom to improve their working conditions for them; all their problems were created by people outside the classroom. Teachers must take charge of their own professional lives. How might teachers take charge and improve what goes on in schools? I have a simple answer. They must change the world. And when they ask how they could possibly change the world, I have another simple answer - a little bit at a time. I suggest they start with their own classrooms."

For me, one of the key statements in the book is this one:
"You learn in communities of people who do what you are expected to learn."
My interpretation of this is the following : If you expect your students to write, you have to write and share your writing. If you want them to read, then read and share your readings experience with your students. If you want them to reflect on their learning, then you should reflect on your teaching and share your reflections with them ...
Teachers - think about this!