"Collaborative innovation, technology and sustainable ecology"
Educational reform has
been at the forefront of pedagogical discourse for decades. Some believe that
the primary aim in educational reform for sustaining our future should be
“creative destruction”, consciously obliterating the systems and processes that
we have come to accept, to make way for a more inventive curriculum in which
students re-evaluate their perception of the world and the extent of the role
they can take in shaping it.
The concept of creative
destruction is inspired and personified by the
thought of Sir Ken Robinson – adviser to government on arts education. It
stands in stark contrast to the views of our former education secretary Michael
Gove whose beliefs could be conversely termed as "destructively
creative".
Aside from parental
influence, much of our early foundational understanding of our position in
society is rooted in education. This system, designed for us and supposedly in
our interest, is an enormous influence on what we consider to be meaningful and
valuable in our lives. Under scrutiny,
it becomes apparent that outdated ideals are still haunting modern day
learning. Many schools still favour a counter intuitive rigidity and structure
which prepares young minds for an age and social construct that no longer
exists. It could be argued that this leaves a lasting and damaging legacy for
each individual, collectively affecting us all. There has been a growing call
for a complete overhaul of the experiences we provide young people with, and
what this leads them to believe their futures might consist of. Many school age
pupils cannot recognise their own value, and never go on to achieve their
potential for the benefit of society and ecology at large, as they are not
being provided with the freedom and flexibility to explore their own talents.
The 21st Century demands
an inclusive focus on skills which utilises all learning styles and intelligence's, through collaboration, social interaction, problem solving and
life-long learning. These are relevant and creative learning approaches which
harnesses each individuals uniqueness, and we must provide children with opportunities
to intellectual challenges, which allow them to fully explore these aspects of
the self. In doing so, we would be preparing them to independently tackle
larger complex issues important to us all, in their professional lives such as globalisation,
climate change, fuel provision and biodiversity.
Ken Robinson (2013) states that we all
are born with the capacity to generate creative solutions with value. He goes
on to say that as children, one of our greatest talents is our ability to think
laterally. This will be a vital thinking skill if young people are to participate
fully in sustaining global ecology. Deakin University’s Dr Anne Grant, (2013)
explains that in schools today too many young people suppress their talents or
became disengaged because they are told to think and behave in a certain way.
She goes on to say that as a direct result the child gets frustrated and their
behaviour suffers. This story is common and indicative of wasted potential,
caused by the delivery of a one size fits all model of mass education, set up
in the interests and the image of the industrial revolution, where the focus is
efficiency and a disregard for the qualities of the individual.
This traditional format places emphasis on graded assessment,
over-structured tasks, and often, boring, irrelevant content which lacks
engaging context and delivery. These issues have long been noted and
highlighted by educational researchers, initiatives such as PLTS, ILPs, SMART
targets and assessment FOR learning have been fed into schools and colleges in
a vain attempt to rectify this apparent conflict without true impact. These
initiatives support an approach which the model is unable to accommodate.
Ken
Robinson (2013) believes that because of this, we are actually educating people
out of their creative abilities. He notes a longitudinal study that was carried
out, where children were tested for their capacity for divergent thinking, A
trend emerged. As children aged and became more “educated” their scores
diminished, Our schools are seemingly killing the creativity of our young
people and this may worryingly prevent them from becoming valuable and
productive in a fast paced 21st century society. Speak to any
teacher who has been practicing for over 15 years and they will tell you that
our education system
evolves and revolves cyclically. It is ever shuffling the emphasis and it sits
uncomfortably, never settling. New initiatives which are theoretically
promising never seem to work as we continue to maintain a centralised structure
of routine and insist on firefighting issues with “bolt on” improvements rather
than considering a complete overhaul.
Our schools
are like factories, such batch production education methods are rife with
contextual awkwardness, which no longer produce anything of quality. This will
continue to worsen as the approach becomes ever more obsolete. Such negligence
and failure to innovate is a prime example of destructive creativity. Is
“creative destruction” the answer? Will a complete overhaul turn the situation
around? Perhaps we need to start from scratch and think deeply about our offer,
its relevance to today and its value for tomorrow.
To cope with our
changing future, education needs to reassess its sense of linearity and embrace
a deliberate empirical approach advocating flexibility and ambiguity. It needs
to stop trying to judge, measure, control and label everything. Instead we
should embrace methods which heighten students curiosity and help sustain their
childlike sense of exploration and creativity, in order to harness their
potential to problem solve and tackle worthwhile tasks independently. Robinson believes that creativity now,
is as important in education as literacy, and that we should treat it with the
same status.
Contrast this approach
with that of former education secretary Michael Gove, who wanted to see schools push more generic classical knowledge, and
further standardised assessment with less emphasis on an individual’s personal
development. He was symptomatic of further destructive creativity,
believing that if we all adapted to follow the established and familiar pattern,
then we could all be successful. This arguably contrived view disregards ranging
contexts and individual aspiration. Adam Tomes (2012) who writes for revolutionary
socialist group “Counterfire” said at the time: “The
effect of Gove's new system is to narrow our children's education and make it
less relevant to the world they live in and need to understand, leaving no
space for learning in the widest sense,”
The idea of a
return to verbal lectures centred on abstract thought is an archaic ideal that
is unnatural and unattractive to many young people today. Had this been
implemented, the majority would have been unable to resist distraction. Ken
Robinson (2013) affirms that young people are living in the most intensely
stimulating time in the history of the earth, yet we are medicating, penalising
and labeling them as having disorders such as ADHD because their attention is
diverted from the irrelevant and “boring stuff” that we deliver. Focusing on
one method of delivery suited best to an auditory learner, as Gove suggested,
is far removed from the multimedia platforms that children are familiar with now.
It only delivers meaningful content to a small number of participants, making
such method of educating ineffective and exclusive. Government must plan for
and deliver services thoughtfully, resourcefully and flexibly, so that we, as
individuals, can remain diverse, sustain growth and survive challenges by
engaging with creative approaches to collective progress. A contemporary
curriculum calls for more widespread use of multimedia and technology in provision,
making delivery appealing, accessible and aesthetically engaging. This could deliver
a truly intelligent experience, flexible and individualised, adapted easily for
a broad range of learning preferences.
There has never been
greater opportunity to implement personalised and relevant learning than there
is today with the development of accessible learning technologies in VLEs. Such
digital platforms present a familiar mode of operation for young people which
is directly relevant to how they will need to communicate in the future. The
range of apps that can be embedded can appeal to broad interests and “ways of
doing”, and students have the opportunity to explore at their own pace when
supported by remote tutorials and formative online feedback. A new curriculum
could harness this technology as a central, versatile system for delivery of
work set, to exercise a contextualised and meaningful problem solving approach.
Collaborative working could exist between learning groups by embedding social
media, and schools and colleges could better use their physical working space
for flipped learning experiences that apply the knowledge gained and skills practiced online. Economically this would work to the institutions advantage as
they would free up the constant occupation of vital assets (their property and
capital equipment) so that it might be used more broadly and efficiently. It
would also mean that employees could work more effectively as facilitators,
utilising their specialist approaches as consultants to a wider range of
individuals through a collaborative, collectively shared experience at
prearranged times.
Today our collective
vision for education is broader, our nation is more complex and diverse, and
our technical capabilities are more powerful. But we continue to assume the
factory-model classroom and its rigid bell schedules and age-based grade levels
when we talk about school reform. Our focus for sustainable ecology should
primarily be to take advantage of what technology can do to revolutionise and
assist education to harness individual potential, Used creatively, and designed
without restriction in the spirit of revolution, it could facilitate
collaborative innovation for the benefit of all our futures.
Definitions:
Creative destruction – Remodelling the
school structure and system from scratch. The radical idea of complete change
in how we conceive, plan, implement and manage delivery of creative learning
experiences to the benefit of all with the goal of sustainable ecology.
Destructive creativity: The production
of new educational initiatives and theoretical shifts which are added onto poorly
designed systems and threaten our ecosystems
Creativity: The ability to think
laterally and generate innovative solutions to problems
Sustainability: to continue to
remain diverse and productive over time
Ecology: the study of organisms in
relation to one another
PLTS: personalised learning and
thinking skills
Ecosystems: a biological community of interacting organisms and their physical
environment (referring here to humans and how their educational experiences
affect their operational potential in the world)
Flip learning: a form
of blended learning in which students learn new content
online by watching video lectures, usually at home, and what used to be
homework (assigned problems) is now done in class with teacher offering more
personalized guidance and interaction with students, instead of lecturing.
VLEs: Virtual learning environments
such as “Moodle” or “Blackboard”
ILP: Individualised learning plans
SMART targets: aims which are
specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and time based.
Assessment FOR learning: Where the teacher and student work together to
assess the student’s knowledge, what she or he needs to learn to improve and
extend this knowledge, and how the student can best get to that point
(formative assessment)
References
Einstein,
A. (1901) Albert Einstein Quotes [ONLINE] Available at: http://quoteshelp.com/albert-einstein-quotes/, (accessed 01 October 2013)
Grant,
A. (2013) Guidelines seek to ensure talented students get their chance to excel
[ONLINE] Available at: http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/victoria/guidelines-seek-to-ensure-talented-students-get-their-chance-to-excel/story-fni0fit3-1226727881205 (accessed 15th September 2013)
Marmer,
M. (2013) I’m not voting in tomorrows election, I’d rather see creative
destruction [ONLINE] Available at: http://maxmarmer.com/2012/11/no-im-not-voting-in-tomorrows-election-id-rather-see-creative-destruction/ (accessed 14th September 2013)
Papanek,
V. J. (1972) Design for the Real World: Human Ecology and Social Change.
First Edition. Pantheon Books.
Robinson,
K. (2013) How schools kill creativity [ONLINE] Available at: http://www.ted.com/talks/ken_robinson_says_schools_kill_creativity.html?quote=92. (Accessed 10 July 2013)
Tomes,
A. (2012) Gove Levels: the educational abyss [ONLINE] Available at: http://www.counterfire.org/index.php/articles/education/16050-gove-levels-the-educational-abyss-ebacc-gcse-class (accessed 15th September 2013)
Vasagar, J. (2011) Michael Gove to send copy
of King James Bible to all English schools [ONLINE] Available at: http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2011/nov/25/michael-gove-king-james-bible
