Working At The Edge

Make School Different: Digital leadership & Transformation

#35 of 60: What can we learn from global efforts to transform education systems? đŸ€”

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In September 2018, I had the opportunity to attend a gathering in New York, WISE@NY. 

An initiative of the Qatar Foundation, “WISE (World Innovation Summit on Education) is an international, multi-sectoral platform for creative thinking, debate and purposeful action. WISE has established itself as a global reference in new approaches to education. Through both the biennial Summit and a range of ongoing programs WISE is promoting innovation and building the future of education through collaboration.”

Since attending WISE@NY, I have followed their work which is aligned with our work here in the states to transform education systems.

And here’s where there is something worth sharing


During 2020, after the start of the pandemic, WISE held three online gatherings to engage in conversations about what’s next for education. You can review the recordings of these convenings on their site.

As an outcome of the convenings, WISE published this ebook: Education Disrupted, Education Reimagined

The included essays, based on sessions and contributions to the various WISE summits, are quite provocative.

As an example, this from Stavros N. Yiannouka, CEO of WISE:

The current global pandemic and its immediate aftermath provide an opportunity to rethink the why, the what, and the how of education. The pandemic has shone a spotlight on our eco- nomic systems with many coming to realize that the majority of our most essential workers—nurses, teachers, cleaners, deliverymen, garbage collectors, paramedics, check-out clerks, farm workers, etc.—almost never reap any but the most meagre rewards from the system to which they are deemed essential. So, too, with education, we must begin our rethink by asking ourselves who is our education system supposed to serve, and is it meeting expectations?

The answer is quite clear. Education systems are supposed to serve everyone. Indeed, education has traditionally been viewed as the great social leveler, providing opportunities for advancement regardless of one’s socio-economic starting point. Unfortunately, that promise, never fully realized, is receding further and further from becoming a reality. Indeed, there is a strong argument to be made that education systems are now net contributors to declining rates of social mobility around the world. It’s not hard to see why. Education systems are structured hierarchies, designed to channel ‘the best and the brightest’ into the professions and occupations that offer the greatest potential for private economic gain. Elite schools and colleges, examination-based grading systems, and streaming on the basis of attainment, all contribute to a stratification of the education system that closely mirrors the economic stratification of our societies.

And this from Her Excellency Sheikha Hind bint Hamad Al-Thani, Vice Chairperson and CEO of Qatar Foundation.

Prior to COVID-19, ‘schools’ were simply buildings that grouped people together according to certain criteria. Post COVID-19, merely digitizing the existing curriculum isn’t enough. We need to eliminate schools. Not the buildings. But the mental framework that makes us picture the process of getting a group of people, tightly packed, all moving in the same direction at the same time. That has to end.

Now is the time to be asking why children spend a lifetime unlearning what they learned at school; why we say we want self-motivated learners and then don’t let them choose; why we talk about nurturing global citizens but fail to teach young people to love and care for their planet; why we design ‘schools’ for students who we think of like fish, all similarly-shaped and moving together, when we know everyone learns differently.

The ‘new normal’ will be shaped by the choices made in the next few years by governments, higher education leaders, academics, and a generation of students and parents. We have to get it right, because the stakes are total. Our ability to recover and progress in the decades after this crisis depends entirely on our ability to make higher education more personalized, more flexible, and more holistic.

And this from Aaron Eden who serves on the board of the Institute for Applied Tinkering, and works with the managing team of the Alliance for Self-Directed Education:

…if we are going to see the transformation called for after this crisis, or at any time, we are going to have to realize that the change we are talking about is fundamental. For it to have any chance of happening, we have to acknowledge that the change we want is not a new set of WHATs—like design thinking, or technology, or mindfulness, or maker spaces—but a critical HOW. That critical HOW is a shift from power-over to power- with, from domination and command-and-control to equity and co-creation. And we must recognize that for it to truly flourish into its possibility, that HOW must have its own space, opted into by those that choose it, and guaranteed as a choice to recognize the right of every family to have access to Self-Directed rather than only Other-Directed education.

Intrigued? I hope so. You’ll see some of the essays and ideas shared in future provocations
.

I share this resource today, not because I agree with everything, but as leaders of this transformation, we need to constantly challenge our own thinking. And there are ideas here, many (mostly) from international contexts, that can provide the opportunity to stress test our thinking.

I do hope you take some time to download the ebook of essays and/or check out the Summit recordings.

A one final bit


This past week WISE held a summit titled Education Reimagined: Leadership for a New Era. I’ll share out some thoughts on this in later posts, but video replay is available at the link above.

The ‘how” of school transformation is, no doubt, a controversial topic among school communities and educators. It challenges identities and what it means to be human, to be a teacher, to be a learner. But the larger context of the world we live in will force us to transform if we don’t choose to do so, and quickly.

Leading transformation is challenging, but necessary now more than ever. We cannot miss this window of opportunity, and we must continually stress test/challenge our visions for the future along the way. We can do this through connection with a variety of others on a local, regional, national and global level.

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❓ Provocations:

Who are you connecting with to iterate your vision for a more human-centered education system? Do any of the ebook excerpts above resonate with you? Were there other ideas from the ebook and/or videos that resonated with you? Why is that?

💎 Resource:

Education Disrupted, Education Reimagined – ebook of essays from 2020 WISE summits on reimagining education

🧠 Mindsets:

Continuous learning

Paradigm shifts

💡 Areas:

Leadership

📣 Drop your thoughts in the comments, or in the Facebook group, and feel free to share resources. đŸ”„đŸ”„đŸ”„

Randy Ziegenfuss
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