What’s Standing In The Way?
I started to write a comment on Pete Reilly’s most recent posting on EdTech Journeys and ended up with something a little too long – so I’ve turned it into a post here instead.
Pete wrote:
“In a recent blog post Scott Mcleod asks the question,
can anyone else think of an employment sector other than K-12 and
post secondary education where employees have the right to refuse to use technology?
It’s a great question and it provoked some good discussion; however is mandating technology use enough? Will it create the pedagogical changes we want, if put in the hands of educators whose personalities are not conducive to the classroom transformation we’d like to see?”
In response to Scott’s question – yes, I can think of one. I worked for many years doing IT support and projects for the BC Court system – some of it specifically working with the Judiciary.
I find teachers have very similar attitudes and approaches as judges. Once in the courtroom – a judge is adamant about their “judicial independence”. In other words, they must have the freedom to do their work without interference, including what technology tools they use, how they make their judgments, how they sentence, etc…
For teachers, it’s similar – from the perspective that teachers, once in their classroom, have very individual styles. Their classroom culture, how they teach and whether they use technology cannot be mandated – they can be influenced, but not forced.
This naturally leads to the path for effective technology integration, in my opinion.
My experience is that teachers passionately believe in kids and, once convinced that something benefits their students, will move mountains to ensure their classroom & students have what they need.
Legislation doesn’t work.
We are all naturally selfish, from the perspective of needing to know how something will benefit ME and what I care about – before I will invest my precious time and energy into changing.
We must lead, we must inspire, we must coach and mentor, we must help teachers experience the power that technology can add to individualize learning, to honour each child’s learning needs and styles, to prepare them for the world today, to facilitate teamwork, creativity and critical thinking and to engage learners.
A reliable technology infrastructure is only the foundation, only the tool.
Training and traditional pro-d only help me “know” at an intellectual level what I “should” be doing.
My relationship with an inspirational leader and a supportive mentor is necessary for me to believe that change is possible and to begin to go from “knowing” to actually “doing” or “being”.
This isn’t anything that we haven’t talked about before, though.
So what’s standing in the way of making it real in all of our schools?
Is it lack of leaders?
Is it lack of time? Everyone is overwhelmed by national testing requirements, legislative requirements, parent demands, new systems, less support for special needs, increasing ESL, lack of training, etc…
Is it a desire by decision makers to find “simple” solutions that don’t exist? (i.e. The Western mentality that I want to go to the doctor and get a prescription that will make it all better) So we fund one little piece at a time, then wonder why it didn’t work??
What do we need to change in order to start making real changes? Who do we need to engage?