People In Our Institutions

This quote from Graham Leicester's Policy Learning paper suggests that staff are a barrier to change in our institutions. We do not believe that this is the case. Many staff have hopes and aspirations for improvements in our education system and the success of our learners. However, they are faced with a dilemma. They work in an education system that largely treats everyone the same whilst staff know that we all have different landscapes of intelligence.

An education system that acknowledges individual difference rather than ignores it demands a new approach to what it provides and how it provides it. This is an education that is about educating for understanding and assessing understanding using a broad range of performances, emphasising learning and personal growth. Whilst many of our staff do share such aspirations for a learner-centred education system that aims to develop the variety of talents of learners we seem to lack the capacity to achieve it.

As practitioners we are torn between an objective, target-driven, performance assessment culture that reduces achievement to a single assessed dimension and our own intuitive, value-driven beliefs, and will to do it better. It is not surprising that initiatives such as the 'implementation' of new technologies rarely achieve their aspirations. As Cuban notes: 'When teachers adopt technological innovations these changes typically maintain rather than alter existing classroom practices'⁸.

The pace of change in our institutions is acknowledged to be slow by those who manage, and too fast by those who work in the system. One reason for this may be that there is something unreal about expecting to change behaviours and implement new technologies, in an effort to move to a service and student-centred way of working, in the same old environments that limit us to teacher-centred approaches. Space may have a much more central role in change than we previously realised. The spaces in which we work, live, and learn can have profound effects on how we feel, how we behave, and how we perform. These spaces can also limit the possibilities of our activity restricting us to old modes of working and thinking. The learning spaces that we develop have the potential not only to change the way that we work but also to play to our individual difference and preference. If we design our learning spaces with the variety that exists in our learners only then will we be providing the maximum opportunity for each and every learner to achieve and enabling every member of staff to innovate.

The innovator's dilemma, identified by Clayton Christensen, is a real issue for us. We currently operate a relatively successful education system and moving to new approaches may not be easy as Christensen tells us that new innovations rarely perform as well as existing systems at the outset. If our buildings, technologies and behaviours are new and innovative they will, most likely, initially perform less well than current facilities. Hence the dilemma. If we base our future use of technology, staff and buildings on available evidence it's unlikely that we will ever change at all. Conversely if we base our decisions on an unknown future it may not measure up to current expectations. It is our view that faced with this dilemma we have to be prepared to take some risks. We have to imagine the learning futures that we wish to create - and be prepared to be wrong. This is a tall order for those in our colleges and universities charged with the responsibility of success. Within the Imagination section we give some ideas on Developing The Vision to move our thinking out of current paradigms.