I’ve become rather fixated on the claim that our 21st century schools are encumbered by a 19th century “industrial model”.  On a certain level, I understand it: large comprehensive high schools, compartmentalized courses like cogs in a cognitive machine and the like.  The danger of this presupposition, I think, is that it can leave the quality of 21st century “advancements” gone unchecked.

The Quotations

Here are some of the quotations I’ve found (and I’ll ask for yours, too, if you know of any)!  They are:

“Just as in the early stages of other industries’ histories, society’s expectations and behaviours actually conformed to the standardization; Americans no longer expected customized learning. Much of the support behind this standardization–categorizing students by age into grades and then teaching batches of them with batches of material–was inspired by the efficient factory system that had emerged in industrial America.” – p. 66, Disrupting Class by Clay Christensen et al.

“As we transitioned to a more urban, industrial era at the turn of the twentieth century, however, effective teaching and learning consisted of “bath-process” large numbers of students in assembly-line schools to teach the Three R’s–and so to assimilate rural workers and immigrants into the new requirements of work and citizenship.  For the most part, these are still the schools we have today.” – p. 256, The Global Achievement Gap by Tony Wagner

“Businesslike efficiency and vocational education in secondary schools and colleges were seen as critical to preparing students for work in an industrial economy that was then competing with Great Britain and Germany.” -p. 9, Oversold and Underused by Larry Cuban

Each of these books argue, in part, that certain technological progress, like Web 2.0 tools, hold the key to breaking with this antiquated model.  While I’m not saying that what these authors are saying is false, it would be facile to say that simply because something is more recently technological–like, say, the digitization of academic content–it is necessarily better.

Are there other quotations you’ve come across yourself that might fit well with the ones above?  Please, pass them on!

19th Century NYC Textbooks

I was elated to learn recently from my friend that if I was on the move to identify popularly used English literature textbooks from 19th century NYC, I need look no further than across the street.  Standing on the steps of Tweed Courthouse (the current home of the NYC DOE) you can see the Municipal Archives.  There, I will find volumes of documents for review.  Specifically, there are Board of Education Annual Reports that might well have, among many other things, a listing of the textbooks ordered in schools.  (Many thanks to David Ment of the Municipal Archives for his clear and quick direction!)

Once certain textbooks have been identified and acquired, I’ll begin the study to better understand just what is so different (and the same) about the old textbooks and the new online courses.

Herman Melville, the Teacher?

While immersing myself in New York of the 1800s, I’ve learned that one New Yorker and author–Herman Melville–did himself teach in a school upstate.  It’s not clear what he taught, though he did focus on the classics, we do know that he had on his person an introductory book to teaching called The District School.  In it, John Orville Taylor makes many direct arguments about what good education is and is not: he holds no punches in telling parents they need to do their part and painting a picture of new teachers who have no ideas what they’ve gotten into.  Melville did only a couple years teaching; then he did other things: like write Moby Dick.

Still, for your amusement and edification, here is The District School, in its entirety.

I was in the hospital with my new son one night a few weeks when I saw that one of the authors of Disrupting Class, Michael Horn, replied to my previous blog posting.  My son is three weeks today; his father finally has a chance to reply to Horn.  Horn wrote a comment to my posting that begins:

While I appreciated the kudos, a “good catch” does not adequately respond to my point.  Even Horn’s later series of rebuttals do nothing more than dodge the core of the critique.  At the heart of the posting is the concern that the authors of Disrupting Class knowingly misrepresent and dismiss research and scholarship in the field of education.  As a result, the Disruption Theory they create is inherently groundless.  Though it is compelling–no one would argue that the book has had great effects on education policy and reform–it neglects to seriously consider what is going on in actual schools with actual students, and it doesn’t consider what experts in education have to say about those realities.

I agree with Horn that much of educational research doesn’t prove causal relationships (if you do X students will ace their exams).  But that doesn’t mean you disregard it completely.  The weakness of Disrupting Class‘s stance toward educational research is that it finds value only in the answers to questions, not the questions themselves.  What questions would have been raised in their book if the authors had seriously considered educational research? What questions, then, would policy-makers and educational leadership have asked?  Questions, after all, are far more disruptive. 

Here’s an example.  One of the gaps I point out is that the authors make “the hasty assumption that adolescents’ use of technology means they can simply learn from it.”  Horn replied to this critique (which was the third in a list) that “we pointedly don’t rely on point #3 that you cite. Others write about this, but we ourselves don’t hinge our argument on this point.”  I’m sorry, but Horn and his colleagues pointedly do rely on students’ use of technology to learn.  If you remove students-using-technology-to-learn from Disrupting Class there is no book.  Who uses the online courses they speak of?  How do the authors imagine students sharing content they create?  And let’s not ignore the fact that not all students learn well in online courses; not all students have any interest or natural skill in posting materials for classmates to learn from. 

If the authors had consulted–just as one example–Donald Leu’s study in which he compares students’ offline and online literacy skills they might have disclaimed that research shows students’ offline and online literacy abilities have no direct relationship.  Great online readers might be shoddy offline readers.  And vice versa.  If they had considered even just studies that compare students online and offline lives, they might have explored certain realities of applying their theory to a school system: not all students are digitally literate; students’ social digital literacies don’t simply apply to online schoolwork; not all traditionally successful students’ talents translate to the online world; not all students even have equitable access to online worlds and therefore to those crucial online skills. 

The above response, I might add, says nothing about the authors’ disregard for the roles of teachers in student-learning.  While they do compliment educators for their hard work, they don’t seriously consider what it means, for instance, to disrupt teacher education using their framework.  Nor do they consider the setbacks and advances being made in the professional development of educators.  Their solution is to take a master teacher like Jaime Escalante and broadcast him to as many students as possible.  I wonder what kind of relationship Escalante would form with his students in such a scenario.  After all, wasn’t it his ability to connect with his classes that made his success possible? 

In sum, we need a real series of exchanges in which the educational research community dialogues with the authors of Disrupting Class.  Ideally, there would be a think tank in which some organization (a university, consulting group, a city) would invite the book’s authors and an array of educational scholars to the same table to talk about ways to ground so influential a book.  The authors of the book might dismiss educational research, but researchers are also quick to categorically dismiss the book.  Disrupting Class has been incredibly influential and is shaping education reform around the world.  Scholars who ignore that simple truth are too tangled in their own academic robes to see that real principals, teachers, students, and parents are and will be affected by this book.  Time to disrobe, if need be, and to seriously consider what it means to disrupt.

NB: There are other critiques of the book as well. One especially thoughtful review is by John Sener.

On May 15, 2009, the New York City Chancellor of Education announced the launch of NYC21C (now called iZone), which is a research and development initiative intended to strategize a city-wide plan to make 21^st century teaching and learning a reality in the city’s fourteen-hundred plus schools.  Several NYC Department of Education offices are collaborating for this initiative, including the Office of New School Development, the Division of Instructional and Informational Technology, and the Office of Strategy and Innovation.

The vision for iZone comes from various sources, including consultation with business leaders worldwide.  In addition, one noteworthy book called Disrupting Class: How Disruptive Innovation will Change the Way the World Learns, by Clayton Christensen et al., of the Harvard Business School, has also been consulted to guide the iZone initiative.  Chancellor Klein provides a public blurb for the book.  Klein writes:

Provocatively titled, Disrupting Class is just what America’s K-12 education system needs–a well thought-through proposal for using technology to better serve students and bring our schools into the 21st Century. Unlike so many education ‘reforms,’ this is not small-bore stuff. For that reason alone, it’s likely to be resisted by defenders of the status quo, even though it’s necessary and right for our kids.  We owe it to them to make sure this book isn’t merely a terrific read; it must become a blueprint for educational transformation (np).

What’s more, the chancellor has cited the book as one of the main works influencing his own approach to urban education reform (Green, 2008).  In addition, the book’s concepts and language pepper the iZone literature. Innovation is a key concept and word to the authors of Disrupting Class, the subtitle of which places much emphasis on “disruptive innovation” (np).

It is more than reasonable to say that Disrupting Class, along with other sources, influences the way in which initiatives like iZone are enacted all over the country.  It is a book written from a business/administrative vantage point.  In the upper left-hand corner of the book’s back cover is the word “business”, clearly directing the bookseller where to shelve it.  The book does indeed raise important questions for educators.  However, the book also has a blind spot which must be identified and addressed so that the efforts of education reformers consulting the book can adjust their own systemic course of action.  The blind spot I speak of is most evident in the seventh chapter called “Improving Education Research”.  Next, I suggest that this circumvention of educational research leaves in its wake major gaps in Disrupting Class.  These gaps suggest three hasty assumptions underlying the book: 1) the hasty assumption that teachers can’t be taught to integrate technology into their classrooms; 2) the hasty assumption that innovative teaching and learning is simply a matter of outsourcing academic content to distance learning companies; 3) the hasty assumption that adolescents’ use of technology means they can simply learn from it.  Finally, I offer suggestions for New York City’s iZone initiative to address the gaps in these authors’ argument.

Gaps in Class

“So many talented, committed people,” the authors begin, “work so hard to improve public schools and yet get disappointing results because the research they follow is preliminary and incomplete” (161).  The short seventh chapter of Disrupting Class builds a case that educational research is well-intentioned but less than useful.  They argue that much of education research doesn’t go far enough in its work because it emphasizes description, not prescription.  It fails to show causality.  The same kinds of causal relationships that exist in the observable world—like gravity’s effects or the breaking point of metals (both are analogies used in the book)—should be observable in educational settings if the research is done properly.  The goal is to achieve a quality of educational research that allows administrators and teachers to reliably predict what will and won’t work in school reform.

To be clear, the book’s general idea that some educational research is strong and some is weak is hardly contestable.  More contestable, however, is the casualness with which they dismiss educational research as a whole.  For instance, in support of their claim that educational research is simply limp, the authors include a footnote at the end of the chapter’s opening paragraph.  The footnote seeks to show support from scholars outside the paradigm of business management and begins as follows:

There is a host of articles that criticize education research from vantage points different than ours.  One such study by the National Academy of Science evaluated educational research and found that it had “methodologically weak research, trivial studies, an infatuation with jargon, and a tendency toward fads with a consequent fragmentation of effort.”  Other scholars point out that these research studies are often too narrowly focused on pedagogical or curricular factors with no reference to the underlying culture and its effective (174).

But, in fact, the quotation above is taken completely out of context.  The full quotation (Atkinson & Jackson, 1992) tells a different story.  It’s worth quoting at length as it reveals an important gap in Disrupting Class with regard to its view of educational research.  I’ve italicized the quotation from the excerpt above to emphasize its intended context:

The undistinguished reputation of education research is also partly attributable to some of the work.  There has been some methodologically weak research, trivial studies, an infatuation with jargon, and a tendency toward fads with a consequent fragmentation of effort. The committee, however, does not share the widespread negative judgments about the contributions of research to the reform of education.  Our review of research-based programs to improve teaching, strengthen curricula, restructure institutions of learning, and assess and monitor the progress in US schools has convinced us not only that research can improve education, but also that it has been demonstrably useful (20).

As is plain to see, the quotation that Christensen et al. use omits crucial words like “partly” and “some”.  They start the quotation right after a pivotal qualifier and stop the quotation right before the authors’ admission that they don’t “share the widespread negative judgments about the contributions of research to the reform of education.”   The paragraph says the opposite of the authors’ contention: it says that there are some who say educational research is weak, but they themselves don’t agree. The authors of Disrupting Class fail to take seriously and treat rigorously educational research that might support or contradict their own ideas.  When one looks at the educational research they do cite in footnotes, it represents only a cursory glimpse of some educational specialties.  The studies aren’t scrutinized and don’t appear to deeply inform the authors’ ideas and recommendations.

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