The future of Education: Problematised (Tech Versus Teachers)

Whilst here in Cambodia with Teachers Across Borders Australia, I met a volunteer from the group VSO (Voluntary Services Overseas) who spoke glowingly of the potential for education via screens in developing countries. This concept broadly is one that appealed to me as a leading proponent of instructional video and flipped learning in the Secondary educational space. I believe that teachers need to be better integrating technology into their teaching methodology whilst also holding it at arm’s length when delivered past or without teacher consultation. This is admittedly a complex and delicately weighted position to have, I believe that technology supported instruction is crucial, but that it should also be delivered and produced by teachers. Following on from this wide-ranging discussion that touched on all of the familiar catch cries of the educational disruptors: ‘factory model’, Sir Ken Robinson, High Tech High, Flipped Learning, Blended learning and other such staples. Plus, a couple of new ones: a video called ‘Shift happens’ that takes a deeply Orientalist perspective on students from other nations, combines it with funky music and the advent of the internet to deliver the message that… nothing really. Another topic of discussion was the ‘African School of Excellence’, which I noted down for further research. In short, the ‘African School of Excellence’ appears not to be known for, well, it’s excellence, but rather it’s low cost nature. Following on from this discussion I went in search of further information on this school, beginning as you might expect with the top schools of South Africa, of which it was not listed or even mentioned. Similar to the examples noted below, the model of this school is less teaching time, less qualified teachers and more ‘peer learning’. As the advertising spiel notes, “something one student says is the only way for teenagers to learn”. This school serves as a touchstone for the movement to shift traditional school structures, with or without technology, to allow affordable and ‘scale-able’ education solutions.

Continuing this line of research, I found the writings of Michal Horne (2017a, 2017b, 2018a, 2018b, 2019) who is closely tied to the            ‘Christensen Institute’ and I read both his writing and the papers produced by this thinktank. This line of thinking is a smaller subset of the type of thinking that Pearson and other global players are seeking, all working towards breaking into the ‘education market’ to solve the issues of low human and teacher capacity in developing and war-effected nations. But also, in all nations, the solutions proposed in USA charter schools are sought to be scaled up and delivered to developing nations and the inverse is also true, with innovations and perceived solutions applied in developing nations being applied to schools in more ‘developed’ nations. These innovations and ideas all centre around a shared lexicon and line of thinking, the traditional model of schooling, consistently referred to as the ‘factory model’ is to blame and this ‘space’ is awaiting ‘renewal’ and ‘disruption’.

The worlds issues are aimed to be solved through the actions of educational agents and “To fill such a tall order, many schools have moved away from the monolithic factory model of teaching and learning and turned to personalized learning” (Page 5, Barrett & Arnett, 2018).

Diving into the papers published by the Christensen Institute, we see some glaring holes in their thinking but also some interesting and deeply challenging ideas. For example, these papers are light on research, but those pieces of research that are used are strange, inconsistent and scattershot.

For example they begin by citing the work of John Hattie (2008) as “The” ‘Research’, notably, not John Hattie’s book, 2009’s Visible Learning, but rather a brief and significantly outdated blog, containing a brief pre-amble and the ranking of effect sizes that Hattie himself has all but disavowed. This ‘research’ is used to establish that “student-centred teaching strategies—such as tutoring, small-group learning, mastery based learning, and individualized instruction” can help students excel.

This group sets out the same concerns as many within the educational space, teachers work is overwhelmingly complex, constitutes a frightening workload and teachers can be resistant to new change initiatives.

They note, “We cannot say conclusively that personalized learning features of the staffing arrangements in this study have a causal connection to improved student achievement.” (Page 8, Barrett & Arnett, 2018). Once establishing the sheer flimsy-ness of their argument they press on to purport that personalised learning is the solution to education, but that ‘teachers lack capacity’ to deliver these programs with fidelity. Flexible staffing is their way of shuffling teachers around based on the student’s data, as produced by the ‘personalised learning tool’. This overcomes the need for teachers to know their students or engage with their uniqueness, but rather allows for the suggestively ‘lower capacity’ teachers to be more impactful in their interactions. In reality, the ‘flexible approach to staffing’ sees an influx of ‘non-teachers’ entitled ‘Support Staff’ and ‘Teachers-in-Training’. This flooding of adults into schools, typically untrained or inexperienced, is an intervention that Hattie himself noted as having minimal to no impact on improving student outcomes (Hattie, 2015). Yet, by being more flexible, “the math teachers, math coaches, and tutors at Cristo Rey shared responsibility for 60 students at a time in a large, open learning space”, they seek to increase class sizes, an idea consistent with Hattie’s earlier work (2009, 2012).

This ‘flexible staffing’ also involves a range of different payment arrangements such as “paid fellowships and residencies” (Page 16, Barrett & Arnett, 2018) leading down a ‘pipeline’ that involved becoming accredited teachers. Notably, “Blended learning and innovative staffing also allowed schools to give their students more individualized attention from adults than traditional instruction typically affords. (Emphasis in original, Page 18, Barrett & Arnett, 2018). This emphasises the exact issue with this model, these adults are not teachers, regardless of the range of titles and appellations that these systems placed upon them. These flexible approaches to expertise establish a number value reduction in budget, usually wasted on traditionally trained ‘professional’ teachers and allows for money to be freed up for performance pay for teachers. Indeed, this fact is promoted as one of the clear benefits, “All of the schools that used support staff or teacher-in-training roles did so in part to increase their level of staff support at a lower cost than hiring additional certified and experienced teachers.” (Page 23, Barrett & Arnett, 2018). The creative use of ‘adults’ within one of these exemplar schools also meant that “Its tutors were college students from nearby Santa Clara University who earned “service learning” college credits rather than pay” (Page 23, Barrett & Arnett, 2018). This further destabilising the teaching profession and having non-trained teachers and unpaid workers flooding into schools.

The fault is clearly with the existing teaching workforce, as it is noted that, “Only about 25 percent of teachers have what it takes to produce strong learning gains with their students.” (A gross misinterpretation of the references provided at the bottom of this article). This reference itself suggests a level of simplicity and understandability within the concepts of teacher and teaching effectiveness, two concepts that are fraught with complexity and difficulty (Wiliam, 2016).

Another element of this overall worldview and strategy described within is a reliance on coaching, this concept of coaching as directly and clearly understandable to the lay-reader is pervasive. Schools are like sports teams, they need to train, collaborate and be coached. Yet, the complexity of educational coaching is never elaborated on, nor explored. The remaining number of actually trained teachers within this model is so few, yet the demands upon them, as expert pedagogical agents, coachers, ‘up-skillers’ of untrained and potentially disinterested individuals, are legion.

A key element identified by the ‘Clayton Christensen Institute’ in two of their papers is high quality leaders, focused on having high academic standards (Arnett, Moesta & Horn, 2018; Barrett & Arnett, 2018), yet it is notable that the aforementioned ‘pipeline’ provides no clear development towards this role, leaving  a pipeline with a missing link most crucial. The concept of Instructional Leadership is one now taken for granted and accepted as best practice (Eacott, 2017; Heffernan, 2018; Robinson, 2011) but the concept of becoming an instructional leader without ever being a teacher in a classroom seems like one fraught to destabilise the teaching profession.        

                                

These examples of this one think-tanks line of thinking, shows an emerging space within education where the role of educators are diminished, overlooked or by-passed and neoliberalism and free-market economics are being applied broadly.

In short, the argument is raging, in locations of high need, do you build human capital through human capital (teachers)? or do you bypass a generation for the benefit of the next, utilising less teachers and more technology to meet the aims of a society?

These are not small questions, or ones to be overlooked, my relatively simplistic and overtly critical view of these ideas is serving only as a starting point, these ideas become all the more appealing and compelling when applied to developing and war-ravaged nation with significantly lacking existing infrastructure and human, cultural and intellectual capital.

With this in mind, we should not be too hasty to rule out these possible solutions for being just that, possible solutions.

References

Allan Gray Orbis Foundation (2014) African Schools for Excellence – Recovering a lost word in our education. Accessed on 11/7/2019, available from: https://www.allangrayorbis.org/entrepreneurship-blog/effect/african_schools_for_excellence/

Arnett, T., Moesta, B., & Horn, M. B. (2018). The Teacher's Quest for Progress: How School Leaders Can Motivate Instructional Innovation. Clayton Christensen Institute for Disruptive Innovation.

Barrett, S. K., & Arnett, T. (2018). Innovative Staffing to Personalize Learning: How New Teaching Roles and Blended Learning Help Students Succeed. Clayton Christensen Institute for Disruptive Innovation.

Eacott, S. (2017) School leadership and the cult of the guru: the neo-Taylorism of Hattie, School Leadership & Management, 37:4, 413-426.

Eacott, S. (2018). Ranting, raving and complaining: reflections on working against orthodoxy. International Journal of Leadership in Education, 1-9.

Evers, J., & Kneyber, R. (Eds.). (2015). Flip the system: Changing education from the ground up. Routledge.

Hattie, J. (2008). Visible learning for teachers: Maximizing impact on learning. Routledge.

Hattie, J. (2012). Visible learning for teachers: Maximizing impact on learning. Routledge.

Hattie, J. (2015). The politics of distraction: What doesn't work in education.

Heffernan, A. (2018). The accountability generation: Exploring an emerging leadership paradigm for beginning principals. Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, 39(4), 509-520.

Hogan, A. & Sellar, S. (2019) Pearson 2025: Transforming teaching and privatising education data. Accessed on 10/07/2019, available from: https://e.issuu.com/issuu-reader3-embed-files/latest/twittercard.html?u=educationinternational&d=2019_ei_gr_essay_pearson2025_eng_24&p=1

Horne, M (2017) John Danner, Education Entrepreneur, Doubles Down On Human Capital. Accessed on 10/7/2019, available from: https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelhorn/2017/08/31/john-danner-education-entrepreneur-doubles-down-on-human-capital/#11fa9246255f

Horne, M (2017) New Research Answers Whether Technology Is Good Or Bad For Learning. Accessed on 10/7/2019, available from:  https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelhorn/2017/11/14/new-research-answers-whether-technology-is-good-or-bad-for-learning/#550ed46619d7

Horne, M (2018) Teachers Shouldn't Have To Work Alone -- And Now They Don't Have To. Accessed on 10/7/2019, available from: https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelhorn/2018/05/29/teachers-shouldnt-have-to-work-alone-and-now-they-dont-have-to/#2dae59476157

Horne, M (2018) Why Teachers Aren't Buying What Education Reformers Are Selling. Accessed on 10/7/2019, available from: https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelhorn/2018/09/27/why-teachers-arent-buying-what-education-reformers-are-selling/#32b702255f90

Horne, M (2019) The future of learning unfolding in Malawi. Accessed on 9/7/2019, available from: https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelhorn/2019/07/01/the-future-of-learning-unfolding-in-malawi/

Educational International EdVoices (2019) Phillipines: The price of privatisation. Accessed on 10/7/2019, available from: https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/education/philippines-the-price-of-LDlFtEJIn3d/

Netolicky, D. M., Andrews, J., & Paterson, C. (Eds.). (2018). Flip the System Australia: What Matters in Education. Routledge.

Robinson, V. (2011). Student-centered leadership (Vol. 15). John Wiley & Sons.

Robinson, V. (2017). Reduce change to increase improvement. Corwin Press.

Shrayber, M (2017) Is The African School For Excellence The Future Of Affordable Education? Accessed on: 11/7/2019, available from: https://uproxx.com/life/african-school-for-excellence-affordable-education/

Wiliam, D. (2016). Leadership for teacher learning. West Palm Beach, FL: Learning Sciences International.

Examples of References cited within papers being discussed:

“Hattie Ranking: 252 Influences and Effect Sizes Related to Student Achievement,” Visible Learning blog, accessed April 7, 2018, https:// visible-learning.org/hattie-ranking-influences-effect-sizes-learningachievement/#comment-10298.

Steven G. Rivkin, Eric A. Hanushek, and John F. Kain, “Teachers, Schools, and Academic Achievement,” Econometrica, vol. 72(2), March 2005, pp. 417–458; Jonah Rockoff, “The Impact of Individual Teachers on Students’ Achievement: Evidence from Panel Data,” American Economic Review, vol. 94(2), May 2004, pp. 247–252; William L. Sanders and June C. Rivers, “Cumulative and Residual Effects of Teachers on Future Student Academic Achievement,” University of Tennessee Value-Added Research and Assessment Center, November 1996, https://www.beteronderwijsnederland.nl/files/cumulative%20and%20residual%20effects%20of%20teachers.pdf.

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