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The assumptions that limit innovation -- the school year, daily schedule, class size
Created by Silicon Schools Fund and Clayton Christensen Institute.
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Two key assumptions that limit innovation are overlooked and even seem to be accepted.
The first is what should constitute a common core essential to all students.
The second is that the math, science, reading, etc. should be taught separately.
Can we recognize that Algebra II and Geometry are not essential for all students as evidenced by all of the successful people whose only post-secondary use of those skills is on helping their children (and many can't remember enough to do that)? Wouldn't it be better to teach the analytical skills that legitimate math education instills in relation to areas of interest and relevance? Mastery of those skills would facilitate the mastery of higher math if necessary. But how do you address parental expectations and similar college entrance requirements?(5 votes)
It sounds like you are touching on the idea of making our educational standards more diverse, pragmatic, and integrated. I believe that the blended learning models offer more opportunity to expand the general education in K-12 students. A curriculum build similarly to the Khan Academy Knowledge Tree shows how basic math touches other fields such as accounting, economics, science, and so on. All of the basic skills we learn branch off into other practical skills that are often overlooked in early education. It seems like the blended learning models could work to integrate these "knowledge tree curricula" into school systems and promote a more diverse, pragmatic, and integrated educational experience for our students.(3 votes)
What to people think about incremental quality improvement versus large changes such as blended learning in schools. What made me think about this is something Brian said at about0:19in the video: "Every machine is perfectly designed to do what it does." As an engineer, I have to say that is not the case. A new product is developed and often the improvements are incremental rather than revolutionary.(1 vote)
0:19Video transcript
- [Voiceover] "If you always
do what you've always done, "you'll always get what
you've always got." - Now, this quote has
been rightly or wrongly attributed to Henry Ford, but regardless of its true origins, it's worth thinking
about the essence of this as we redesign schools. - Put another way, every machine is perfectly designed to produce exactly what it produces, and organizations are the same way. Our schools produce the results they do because we've built them in a way to make those results. And it's only by
questioning the assumptions at the core of schools, that we can start to think about machines that get very different results. Now, this isn't only
about blended learning, but if you're going to redesign a school, you can't just think
where is there technology and where is there not technology. You actually have to go
at the core assumptions around the calendar, where students go, how we use adults, and redesign schools
with those ideas in mind. - So let's dive in. Assumption one that we make
is that the school year should be from September through June. Now, we now the origins of
this from the agrarian calendar when students had to get off for summer so that they could tend to the farm. But in this day in age,
does that still make sense? And even more so when we have evidence about the summer slide that
actually affects students from disadvantaged communities where they don't continue to
learn during those summers. - So let's put this calendar
from September until June into the bucket of things
you may wanna reconsider if you're starting from scratch. Assumption two, school
should be from 8:30 to 3:30 every day of the week. Three ideas for you to
think about in this. One is the brain-based
research we're seeing about just how many hours of
sleep an adolescent brain needs and the kind of school schedules that would most accommodate that. Secondly, we're in a reality now where many families have
both parents working so the custodial hours the
schools need to think about may be different than just 8:30 to 3:30. And, lastly, it is interesting
to look internationally and compare the number of hours
the students are in schools in other countries compared to our own. We'll focus on two of
our protagonist schools and look at the schedules they've created around the ideal experiences
for their students. - Assumption three. The daily schedule should
be fixed for all students so that all students receive
the same amount of time in every single subject. Now, this may make sense from
a law and order point of view and managing a strict schedule each day, but from the perspective of individualizing and personalizing
learning for each student, we have to question whether
this still makes sense. - And assumption four, class
size is super important and also should be roughly
the same all day long. We're gonna start to wonder, what are some of those schools doing to have much larger class
sizes at some part of the day and much smaller class size in other and actually be deliberate
about that choice versus defaulting to a
one-size-fits-all approach. - Assumption five, the
default for all students is to be in a group of students in a box with a single credentialed
teacher at the front of the room. In this week, we're gonna
look at lots of schools that are rethinking how they use staffing to use different adults
in different places and reconfigure classrooms
in radically different ways to personalize learning for students. - Assumption six, students
should almost always be grouped according to their age
level and by grade levels. And the history of this
is kind of interesting as we moved out of one room schoolhouses into more specialized, elementary, middle, and high school and grade level expertise. But we think it's interesting to say, "Well, why do we continue
to still do this?" - Now stepping back. As Brian and I have been working through this course with you,
what we've come to realize is that we actually could
have retitled this course "Redesigning Schools from the Ground Up." And what we think is really
important to point out is that the school leaders
that are using blended learning the most interesting ways
to boost student learning, they're not just doing
this as a cosmetic fix, but they're really thinking
through the structures and systems of their entire
schools as they do this so that they can meet each student with the need that they have when they have it. - [Brian] So keep these
six assumptions in mind, and let's look at how the schools are actually starting to question them as they ask themselves
what's the ideal way to run their schools.