[NOTE: please excuse the lack of gender neutral language in the title of the post. Despite my nausea, I thought making the language gender neutral would render the title meaningless to most.]

There has been no shortage of efforts to compare the institution of public schooling to other disciplines or industries. Business and medicine are the two that I’ve encountered most often. Well, today, I read an article in the New York Times magazine about the music industry that had me thinking quite a bit about public school educators. The article is called “The Return of the One Man Band” (probably requires login) and focuses largely on how solo artists can make great and sophisticated music thanks to technological advances. As the author writes, “advances in recording and performance technology now make it possible for musicians not only to fire the drummer but also — if so inclined — to do away with accompaniment altogether without losing the richness, or seemingly the spontaneity, of a full-size band.”

I don’t know that there’s a perfect analogy to education, but I have noticed that high-end technology using educators do tend to operate as solo artists. That is, often with no other choice, they perform their artistry on their own without support from others. My own research demonstrates that the vast majority of all of the variance in technology use is within schools and not between schools. And, though I don’t have the data to support this argument, I would hypothesize that if we looked at the use of technology by school leaders, we would see that the vast majority of all of the variance in technology use is between schools, not within districts. A district technology coordinator, in a recent conversation, told me that the early adopters of technology in the classrooms were considered “the lunatic fringe;” and that hasn’t changed.

The musician featured in the NYT magazine piece, Owen Pallett, is quoted as saying, “I think one-man bands are a rising trend. The era of solo performers…is pretty much done. There aren’t any new solo performers out there that are interesting; now it’s all this assisted-performance type of thing.” Assisted-performance type of thing, huh? For those of you lunatic fringe who read my blog, do you think of yourself as a one-person band doing an assisted-performance type of thing?

Tags: education, music, performance, technology

A couple of weeks ago, Cathy Nelson tagged me for this. I was honored and eager to do this; I think this is a great opportunity for both self-reflection and to put my cards on the table for my readers to get to know me a bit more.

I’m going to take a slightly different approach than Cathy. Specifically, I’m going to “borrow” from Peter King, one of my favorite sportswriters. In his weekly Monday Morning Quarterback column on CNN/SI, King always includes a segment called “10 Things I Think I Think.” So, without further ado, here are 10 things I think I think about education:

1.  I think the thinkers/writers who’ve most influenced my thinking are Kieran Egan, Roger Schank and, well, I’d have to say John Dewey. I challenge you to read the following narratives by those three men, synthesize them in your head and tell me what you come up with (and, yes, I know that Egan is critical of Dewey, but that’s fine by me): Egan article; Schank & Jona white paper; Dewey book chapter

2.  I think the best book on education I’ve read to this point continues to be Schoolteacher by Dan Lortie. Over three decades later, Lortie’s work stands out as THE definitive exploration (methodologically and substantively) of the “ethos of teaching.” If you haven’t read this book, please add it to your summer reading list.

3.  I think we too often use the terms “education” and “schooling” interchangeably. They are too very different things. I think of schooling as a subset of the larger idea of education. This is not at all a novel idea, but I do think we need to continually remind ourselves of it.

4.  I think if you read or hear someone saying that there is a “program” or “initiative” or “reform” that significantly improves student achievement for a large group of students (lets say, for arguments sake, greater than 384), especially in a short period of time, they are lying (or, at least, terribly misleading you). There are lots of ideas/programs/curricula/etc. out there designed by really smart, well-intentioned people. But, I promise you, none of them will dramatically and suddenly alter the achievement growth trajectory for any large group of students. None.

5.  I think, having just written that, the bodies of research that are most compelling with respect to improving student outcomes (notice I didn’t write “achievement”) are about small class sizes, quality early childhood education, and year-round learning. In other words, if you told any educator that next year they were going to have a much smaller class, with kids who had high quality early childhood educational experiences, and who have had learning opportunities during the summer months, they’d be thrilled. If we’re going to continue the institution of public schooling, we ought to think about improving early childhood educational opportunities for all kids, moving away from the agrarian-based educational schedule, and reducing class sizes (I might even be so bold as to suggest we break down classroom walls altogether; how open education of me). Notice I’ve written nothing here about technology?…that body of research is neither robust nor consistent enough yet. )-:

6.  I think emphasizing evidence-based practice in education is a good idea. I think embracing a very narrow view of what counts as a warranted knowledge claim (i.e. what counts as evidence) is absurd.

7.  I think whereas there has necessarily been great attention given to issues of between-schools segregation by race in the U.S., there is a huge, insidious problem of within-schools segregation in far too many schools in the U.S. For those of you that work in or know of schools with a reasonable semblance of racial diversity (yes, both of you), take a look at your school population and then the populations of the kids in: special education, gifted and talented programs, advanced placement courses, the APs office for disciplinary referrals, etc. Do those populations have the same racial compositions? I thought not.

8.  I think we need more principals like Chris Lehmann and Tim Lauer. I kept that list short, for lots of reasons.

9.  I think “Leadership Without Followers” by Chris Dede continues to be relevant and the framework for all that I believe about educational leadership.

10.  I think all kids can learn…I’m just not sure they can do it well enough within the confines of 99.99% of the schools in the United States.

There, I said it…or at least wrote it.

Unlike some, I kinda like this meme concept; I think it’s a decent way to encourage folks to write on a particular topic. So, in that light, I’m tagging the following bloggers:

• Justin Bathon
• Paul Bogush
• Ric Murry
• Kate Olson
• John Hendron

Have at it, folks.

Tags: blogging, education, meme, reflection

I’ve been pondering the next few weeks and have come to realize that my computer and I will be having a lot less face time than we have over the last few months. Tomorrow afternoon, I leave for NY for various personal and professional reasons. Then, I come back to VA for Memorial Day weekend, after which I depart for West Virginia where I’ll be visiting 15 schools in 4 days (”naturalistic” data collection for statewide study). So, there will be lots of time on the road, lots of time talking f-2-f; in other words, not a lot of time in front of the computer…not a lot of time engaged with my personal/professional learning environment (PLE).

I’m certain this is a good thing as I’ve necessarily been a little withdrawn from the “non-virtual” world for a while now; the end of the semester does that to me. But, I have to admit that I have lots of anxiety. What happens when my networked learning opportunities are less frequent? How am I going to keep up with my tweets, feeds, e-mails, etc.? So, yes, I’ve grown very attached to my PLE. And that leads me to my point…

I’m a voracious learner…and I’m very proud of it. In fact, I’m so narcissistic that I’m willing to say that I think we ought to make nurturing the love of learning the centerpiece of 21st century education. In my opinion, we (the royal we?) write/speak a lot about the technological tools, and even how it’s not about the tools, it’s about the opportunities the tools give us. We write/speak about skills such as digital and information literacy as a 21st century skill.

For me, though, it starts with 21st century dispositions. As we look towards School 2.0 or Classroom 2.0, first and foremost, we need leaders, teachers, and students who are willing and eager learners…voracious learners.

Photo Credit: Aaron Schmidt

Tags: 21st century skills, learning, PLE

The Wordpress.com training wheels are off!

Feel free to let me know what you think of the new look.

Thanks.

[Prelude: Now that I live in Virginia, I MUST get to know Andy Roterham. He's a powerful insider in many educational policy circles, and he's been edublogging longer than anyone I know. His post today pointed me to the article about which I write below, so here's a tip-o-the-hat to Mr. Eduwonk]

You may be well aware of Clayton Christenson’s theory of disruptive innovations. It has received a LOT of attention in the last couple of years (deservedly so, IMHO) and quite a few researchers/commentators have tried to apply the theory to the institution of public schooling. Well, now Christenson himself has…in a pretty big way. THIS article appears to be a preview for an upcoming book called, Disrupting Class: How Disruptive Innovation Will Change the Way the World Learns.

I have two thoughts before I ask for discussion via comments. First, I always tell my students to “consider the source” when reading “stuff” on the Internet. This article happens to appear in Education Next, the education journal of the Hoover Institution, a notably conservative think tank based at Stanford University. The mission statement of the Hoover Institution speaks to limited government (”Ours is a system where the Federal Government should undertake no governmental, social or economic action, except where local government, or the people, cannot undertake it for themselves”) so it should come as no surprise that his vision hints at privatization of education.

Second, as much as I respect Christenson’s work, I’m not sure how “disruptive” his ideas are. Consider the following:

Is this much different than, for example, the MIT Opencourseware project? I think what Chrisentson writes about will transform learning, but will it, as the title of the article states, transform our schools? It certainly hasn’t yet…

Tags: Christenson, disruptive innovation, education, schools, technology