Here's my summary of the book REDESIGNING EDUCATION, by Ken Wilson and
Bennett Daviss. Has anyone else read this book? What do you think of it?
I enjoyed it thoroughly! But, not being experienced in education, per se,
I can't judge its wisdom as well as I'd like.
Cheers,
Jane Jackson, Director, Modeling Workshop Project in High School Physics
Kenneth G. Wilson, a Nobel Prize winner in physics, has written a 250-page
book called REDESIGNING EDUCATION. He wrote it with Bennett Daviss, a
journalist who specializes in education. (Henry Holt & Co., 1994, $27.50 in
hardback) The authors made an extensive study of education beforehand, and
they consulted with leaders in educational reform. (In physics, these
leaders included Arnold Arons and Lillian McDermott.)
The authors say that educational reforms are treating the symptoms rather
than the disease. We need a new paradigm, a new vision of what education
should be. And then we need to use sound business practices to implement
the new paradigm systemically.
Why a new paradigm? Because the world is fundamentally different from
before, and because it's complex and changing fast. The authors say, "The
pressures forcing the creation of a new educational vision are precisely
the same ones forcing our economy to reinvent itself - pressures that value
mind over muscle, process before product, and quality above quantity.
Because our economy's strength grows directly out of the abilities of its
workers,the same transforming pressures are reaching through to our
schools..."
What are some aspects of the new paradigm? Teaching higher order skills,
integrating what's learned, using better methods of teaching and learning,
effective lifelong professional development for teachers, improved
assessment and evaluation of instruction.
Most important, what is the process of strategic change? It's basically the
same as in science and industry. "The redesign process is the integration
of research, development, dissemination, and refinement ..." "Obviously
children are not products and schools are not factories. But the redesign
process works independently of commercial or technological contexts. It is
the process by which human energies are harnessed to the steady pursuit of
a vision of excellence." The missing link in U.S. education reform, IS
this lack of a systematic redesign process. This is what prevents reformers
from integrating effective innovations. The authors discuss the process of
guided or strategic change in industries (computers, aircraft, etc.) and
agriculture, and they show how two educational reforms embody elements of
this process. These reforms are Marie Clay's Reading Recovery for lagging
first graders and a school restructuring program called Success for All
which was developed by Robert Slavins at Johns Hopkins University.
How is this strategic change or educational redesign process organized? It
can be structured in several ways, as industry has shown. The authors say
that their purpose isn't to describe the various structures, as they are
well known. They simply say that, in parallel with the redesign process in
technology, "As the vision becomes clearer, an organization and structure
will coalesce around it. The organization's purpose will be to study
effective practices around the world, identify those that advance the
vision, test them, refine them, integrate them into a comprehensive and
coordinated structure of reform, teach educators to use them, and supervise
their implementation - as well as to continually improve teachers' general
professional skills and knowledge. As part of its responsibility, the
organization also will seed and cultivate new possibilities, a process that
must include constant work to improve its own offerings and programs..."
Lest anyone still wonder what the problems in education are, heed the words
of the authors: "The system of research, development, and redesign that
industry relies on is a defined, orderly, institutionalized pattern of
progressive change that routinely overcomes subjective and unpredictable
human resistance to the new. When one searches for a comparable process in
education, one finds only isolated pieces of it. Educational research is
underfunded and often aimless or inexpert. Promising research results have
no ranks of educational architects and instructional designers waiting to
turn them into better classroom materials or techniques; instead,
eduational innovation remains a cottage industry of lone tinkerers - some
highly skilled, some far less so - who work in isolation, too rarely
communicating or collaborating to build on each other's progress. The only
established marketing or technical-support agency waiting to transfer
workable innovations to interested schools is tiny and fragmented. The
overall result is a process of educational innovation and school reform
that is random and chaotic, operating more by chance than by method."
Having given an overview, let's now consider some of the details. The
authors list 5 cornerstones of the 21st century education.
* Total Quality Learning is an adaptation of Total Quality Management
(TQM). The basic idea is continuous improvement. Schools are notoriously
slow to change, because they don't know how. This gives them a way to deal
with change effectively.
* Empower teachers to decide collectively what changes need to be
made for better education, and in what order, and how.
* Cognitive science shows how students learn and provides curricula
to achieve effective learning.
* Cooperative learning is more effective than competition or
individual learning, and it promotes friendship and self esteem.
* Computer technology can link the teacher, the student, and
information. It can provide visualizations and immediate feedback. e-mail
can improve communication.
Some other important ideas in the book (not inclusive; these are the ones
that interested me):
* Lack of time to prepare excellent classes is the biggest problem
for teachers. How this can be achieved economically is discussed.
* What we can learn from Asian schooling.
* Indepth discussion of effective educational designs such as Reading
Recovery, Success for All, the Science Education for Public Understanding
Program (SEPUP), and Professional Development Schools.
* At the end of the book, a long-range plan for implementing school
redesign nationally, with cost estimates. A description of a day in a
middle school in 2014.
Jane Jackson, Prof. of Physics, Scottsdale Comm.College (on leave)
Box 871504, Dept. of Physics, Arizona State Univ., Tempe, AZ 85287-1504.
phone:(602) 965-8438 fax: 965-7331 e-mail: jane.jackson@asu.edu
Modeling Workshop Project: http://modeling.la.asu.edu/modeling.html
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