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The Role of Technology in the Systemic Reform of Education and Training: Part 1
(13 parts to this document)
This study was conducted under a Star Schools Dissemination Grant to The Distance Learning Resource Network (DLRN) through OERI, U.S. Department of Education.
Abstract
Systemic reform of education and training is built upon a number of converging events. This study reviewed the literature in the areas that directly affect systemic reform, and concludes with recommendations that will enable technology to play a significant role in this movement.
Literature from the following areas were reviewed: paradigms, change strategies, systemic reform, Goals 2000, legislation, constructivism, student empowerment, andragogy, equitable access, current use of technology in education, problem-based learning, evaluation through performance based assessment, technology as a force for systemic reform, technology's potential as a partner and tool for systemic reform, new ways to think about the use of technology for education, competing in the global economy, total quality management in education, using the national information infrastructure for education and training, and instructor in-service and pre-service.
When "A Nation at Risk" was released in 1983, it sounded an alarm for educators and the nation. It stated that the educational system of the United States was not serving the nation well. Approximately ten years after the release of "A Nation At Risk," the Goals 2000: Educate America Act was signed (March 31, 1994).
The Information Infrastructure Task Force (1994) found that the way Americans teach, learn, transmit and access information remains largely unchanged from a century ago. They found the following conditions in American education and training:
In late June, 1994, the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching reported on the results of an international survey of 20,000 college professors in five European, four Western Hemisphere and four Asia-Pacific nations, plus Hong Kong. American college professors rated their students the lowest of the 14 countries participating. Only 15 percent said American high schools adequately prepared students for college-level math and quantitative reasoning. Asked if undergraduates are adequately prepared in writing and speaking skills, 20 percent or less of the faculty thought so in the United States (San Jose Mercury News (1994).
Since "A Nation at Risk," a number of forces came into play. As with any paradigm shift, it takes years and a number of events to reach a critical mass that moves theory and practice forward. Blanchard (1994) refers to "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions," Thomas S. Kuhn's (1970) book which describes how in the history of science, no major discovery ever came from those scientists who were vested (i.e., job, status, professional reputation) in the current predominant paradigm of thought. Instead, what happened time after time was that a young person (a Turk, maverick or rebel to the scientific community) would discover some finding that could not be explained by known scientific laws. He (or she) was scoffed at by mainstream scientists who clung tightly together in blasting the work of the upstart, and if need be the person him/herself. But the young Turk, if persistent, has an ally on his side: truth. And over time other newcomers to the field recognize that truth and a following emerges for a new paradigm that is better able to explain the current reality as it is now known to all. "
Certainly, this describes how early adopters and users of technology in education and training have felt. Blanchard (1994) says, "The old "command and control" paradigm is failing because those who have been clinging to it (corporate America: GM, IBM, Sears, etc.) are now stumbling and upstart companies that are representing a new era of assumptions about work and the nature of employment are thriving. The fact that Wal-Mart gave ownership interests to all its employees has a direct correlation with its rise in overtaking Sears and others on a national scale." This all underscores the "fact that the times they are a changin'," says Blanchard.
To unlock an epochal technology's power, Magnet (1994) says, companies have learned that they must restructure themselves and how they work as they weave computers into their most basic processes. "A technological revolution," he says, "is more than a merely technological matter; It entails an organizational transformation too. That's what U.S. business' recent frenzy of re-engineering has been all about, as companies flatten and decentralize along a unifying nervous system of the new information technology." As education and training has stretched to realign itself with the economy, it too has gone through a frenzy. Downsizing has occurred in teachers, resources, and facilities; technology has not been added, or has been added sparingly. Criticism has resulted in changes in curriculum, most notably state frameworks and national standards. Instructional methods have been questioned and new ones put into place. Certainly, this is the basis of systemic reform where schools have decentralized, reorganized, and rethought their production capabilities in the learning and teaching process, and are now organizing along a unifying nervous system of the new information technology. Educators should become more comfortable with information technology as they become familiar with technology, as information has always been their business.
There are a number of elements that created the movement for systemic reform and enabled the passage of the Goals 2000: Educate America Act. The Goals 2000: Educate America Act covers all Americans; it includes the cradle to grave lifelong learning that has become necessary in a global economy. It should not be perceived to cover only K-12 education.
The Paradigm Shift
Baker (1992) provides the following definitions for paradigm shift:
Thomas S. Kuhn (1970): Scientific paradigms are "accepted examples of actual scientific practice, examples which include law, theory, application, and instrumentation together-- (that) provide models from which spring particular coherent traditions of scientific research."
Adam Smith (1975): A shared set of assumptions. The paradigm is the way we perceive the world; water to the fish. The paradigm explains the world to us and helps us to predict its behavior." Smith concludes that "when we are in the middle of the paradigm, it is hard to imagine any other paradigm."
Willis Harmon (1970): "The basic way of perceiving, thinking, valuing, and doing associated with a particular vision of reality. A dominant paradigm is seldom if ever stated explicitly; it exists as unquestioned, tacit understanding that is transmitted through culture and to succeeding generations through direct experience rather than being taught."
Barker (1992): "A paradigm is a set of rules and regulations (written or unwritten) that does two things: (1) it establishes or defines boundaries; and (2) it tells you how to behave inside the boundaries in order to be successful."
Barker (1992) identifies the following Paradigm Principles:
Barker states that in times of crisis, people expect and demand great change. This willingness to accept great change generates two results: More people try to fine new ways, i.e., new paradigms, to resolve the crisis, thus increasing the likelihood of paradigm shifts. Because of the crises mentality, more people willing to accept fundamentally new approaches to solve the crisis, thus increasing the opportunity to change paradigms. This sets the stage for radical change. Barker provides the following sequence for a paradigm shift:
Change Strategies
Even if we know exactly where we want to be in ten years and what the National Information Infrastructure will be...and even if we knew how much funding we could count on to get us there, we would still need to plan. There is a great body of literature on planning for technology, change, adoption of innovation, and strategies of adoption. As you read through this literature review on systemic reform and the use of technology, it may be useful to refer to model change strategies. Blanchard (1994) suggests that we can "make the times changes faster" through planning. His recommendation for a "viable blueprint for the pending evolution (revolution?) is based on a study of six organizations (Beer, Eisenstat and Spector, 1990) on "the process of change that leads to performance improvement." The six-step change strategy includes:
Mojkowski (1990) suggests that a strategic approach to technology implementation should include the following:
Farrell and Gring (1993) suggest another five-step model that is tied to a milestone timeline.
Pearson (1990) identified a model specifically for distance education programs. There were nine elements in the program and to be successful, all must be followed.
What is Systemic Reform?
During the last decade, it has become obvious that the contributions of teachers, administrators and the use of technology have made important changes in the lives of students. What became apparent is that the successes in the classroom needed to be viewed in the larger context of the educational system and curricula reform. The changes in the larger system were needed in order to enable wider spread changes in the classroom. Thus we began to use the words change, reform, restructure and finally systemic reform which includes K-12, higher education and training.
The National Commission on Time and Learning (1994) states that "Higher education needs to get involved. Colleges and universities, as institutions, have been bystanders for the most part in the school reform debate." They can do this by admissions requirements that validate learning and not seat time, by aligning programs that educate teachers with the movement to higher standards (which will require changing offerings in schools of education and the design of undergraduate programs in core disciplines), and by becoming involved in the struggle to reinvent local schools.
"We really need to be more involved in collaboration with the public schools," says Dr. Thomas Schnell, associate dean of research at the University of Missouri - St. Louis (1994). "In the past we've had our differences. Public school teachers and administrators have viewed colleges as being ivory towers with no sympathy for life in the trenches, and colleges have viewed public schools (teachers) as being practitioners with no appreciation for innovative theory."
The goal is still to have an impact on the students, but impacting their learning depends on the teacher and the support that the teacher is receiving from the school's administration, district, higher education, state and federal government. As this definition broadened, other groups were identified to be included in system reform. Parents needed to be involved as first teachers and remain involved through their children's academic careers. Schools of education needed to be involved as they significantly impacted the pre-service and in-service of teachers and administrators. Curriculum groups began developing curriculum frameworks for all areas. Performance based assessment and authentic assessment became major movements. Teachers began to learn facilitation methods.
Textbook authors, media program producers, the Public Broadcasting System, educational associations, teachers' unions, communities, PTAs, county offices of education, state departments of education, U.S. Department of Education and the administrations of Presidents Bush and Clinton became involved. Each group defined the contributions it could make as well as the changes that needed to be made within its structure in order to contribute to successful systemic reform. At the federal level, the use of technology was enabled through the Star Schools legislation. The movement became synergistic until finally, interest, understanding, and change developed a critical mass that enabled the passage of the most sweeping educational legislation in the history of America, Goals 2000: Educate America Act.
Yet another layer of systemic reform deals with time - the time to learn, think, and reorganize for teachers and students. "Unyielding and relentless, the time available in a uniform six-hour day and a 180-day year is the unacknowledged design flaw in American education," according to the National Education Committee on Time and Learning (1994). "By relying on time as the metric for school organization and curriculum, we have built a learning enterprise on a foundation of sand, on five premises educators know to be false." The first is the assumption that students arrive at school ready to learn in the same way, on the same schedule, all in rhythm with each other. The second is the notion that academic time can be used for nonacademic purposes with no effect on learning. Next is the pretense that because yesterday's calendar was good enough for us, it should be good enough for our children -- despite major changes in the larger society. Fourth is the myth that schools can be transformed without giving teachers the time they need to retool themselves and reorganize their work. Finally, we find a new fiction: it is reasonable to expect 'world-class academic performance' from our students within the time-bound system that is already failing them. These five assumptions are a recipe for a kind of slow-motion social suicide. The key to liberating learning lies in unlocking time."
Meyer, Brooks, and Goes (1990) describe discontinuous or second order change as the type of strategies organizations employ when confronted by rapid change. "Discontinuous or second-order change transforms fundamental properties or states of the system." Fullan (1991) describes it as changes which "alter the fundamental ways in which organizations are put together, including new goals, structures, and roles."
Meyer, Brooks, and Goes (1990) describe two strategies which are used at individual work sites and at the industry level to react to sudden, jolting changes in the environment. The first is metamorphosis which is frame-breaking change within an individual organization; the second is revolution which is described as the emergence, transformation, and decline of entire industries.
Conley (1993) distinguishes between three types of changes that schools undergo, sometimes simultaneously. They are renewal, reform, and restructuring. He defines them as follows;
David (1991) says that the central feature of restructuring is that it is a system wide process.
For the purposes of this article, systemic reform will be defined as second order change, or restructuring of educational agencies and processes, at the local, regional and national levels.
The dominant thinking about reform and its student level elements is to increase learning, especially advanced or higher-level skills, and to enhance student motivation and self-concept. Reform stresses the elements in the second column of Table 1 (Means, et al, 1993).
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Table 1
Comparison of Conventional & Reform Approaches to Instruction
(Means, et al, 1993)
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Conventional Instruction Reform Instruction
Teacher-directed Student exploration
Didactic teaching Interactive modes of
instruction
Short blocks of instruction on Extended blocks of authentic
single subject and multi-disciplinary work
Individual work Collaborative work
Teacher as knowledge dispenser Teacher as facilitator
Ability groupings Heterogeneous groupings
Assessment of fact knowledge Performance-based assessment
and discrete skills
A Framework for Understanding Systemic Reform and Technology
Elements that have lead to and still are contributing to educational systemic reform and technology include a number of significant factors.