The power of storytelling is evident throughout human history. Human beings are literally hardwired for narratives. For millennia, stories have bound communities, transferred traditions and built culture.
Our world is shaped by the stories told and they are also fundamental to change processes. What makes a story powerful is not necessarily the facts themselves, but how the story creates meaning in the hearts and minds of the listeners. This means the main obstacle to convincing people of the need for change is often not linked to what they don’t yet know, but actually what they already do know. In other words, our existing mindsets, the assumptions and beliefs held, can act as narrative filters to prevent us from hearing social change messages.
The narrative of schooling is a story of relatively consistency and resistance to change. Despite rhetoric about change, we, unfortunately, continue to deliver an industrial-age model of learning. In the social construct of our schools, educators essentially maintain the system they know. This paradigm is one in which the product (assignment, test score, graded task) is more important than the learning process.
This framing is particularly pertinent in education because of the power of the status quo. Challenging and confronting dominant norms, values and beliefs around schooling and devising alternative futures is not a simple task. If we are to change the narrative and reframe the discourse of schooling we must be savvy about the language we choose and find new sources of eloquence and leadership. This change requires the emerging understanding that this journey is not about knowing, but feeling... it's about learning and cultivating wisdom.
There are many reasons we require a new story for schooling. Three are related to our current story: Industrial age mindsets continue to dominate the discourse about schools; Taylorism prevails in thinking about how systems should intervene to improve them, and we lack clarity about the potential in the purpose of our work.
Schools continue to focus on knowledge and not learning which we measure with benchmarks, international comparisons, numbers and letters. We attempt to teach our children things that they don’t internally care about, and devalue them by ignoring things they do care about. And we value the compliant learners created in the process of schooling.
In the process, we create in many of our learners (including our teachers and school leaders) doubt, emotional stress and anxiety. We expect our educators to batch children by age, implement a restrictive year-level curriculum, constantly assess and grade, ultimately prepare children for high-stakes tests, and to complete all the requisite mandatory training and paperwork the education system produces. We remain overly concerned about the deficits in children, teachers, and schools, and not concerned enough about the potential in all learners.
The focus on standardised tests has had unintended consequences and limited the opportunity for schooling to really respond in a way that leads to the future we desire. This desire is not to say we don’t want children who are literate and numerate – this is very important – but it's not sufficient in this ever-changing world with its emerging complex challenges.
As we currently experience them, schools cannot deliver the deep and powerful learning that we say we want for all our children. I sense the potential we've seen unleashed in some schools through Designed inGenuity offers a way forward. The need for increased momentum is now my motivation.
The problem is that we too often move children from being, by nature, learners to students, by turning play, curiosity and wonder into tasks, assessments, and grades. We also change the learning paradigm replacing the natural joy of learning with artificial measures of achievement.
Many great ideas with good intent have failed to reach their potential in the past. Innovation in education is cluttered with Empty Terms that travel faster than the fidelity they deserve and ideas that get re-prosecuted under multiple brandings.
Recent efforts to improve schooling outcomes have typically been driven by externally imposed strategies that focus on some measurable elements of teaching and look to narrow performance indicators. We have garnered efficiencies and effectiveness by this approach. However, the significant investment in the drive for school improvement has not produced the desired outcomes. It’s apparent that improving ‘results’ in terms of what is measured, and therefore deemed important, is merely tinkering with a system that, if not already, is becoming obsolete. We need to go beyond the limits we define ourselves.
A new story of schooling is needed. One where the joy of learning is nurtured, each learner’s true potential is unleashed, and community well-being is the focus. While there are some indications as to what this ‘new narrative’ of education might look like, the details are still emerging. A reimagining of schooling in which learners do not become students, and learning is about coming alive, not test scores and grades is our goal. Also necessary is finding our voice to show the world what is possible and also understanding what it is that is holding us Back and seeking learning beyond what we think we know.
Next: Courage Found
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