Technology for Learning

photo credit: alex.ragone

I’ve just finished reading Disrupting Class by Clayton M. Christensen, Michael B. Horn and Curtis W. Johnson. I loved this book for several reasons:

1. It’s about technology and learning (my passions).
2. It brought a perspective from beyond the classroom.
3. It was grounded in research and data.
4. It concluded with a call to action that moved me.

As educators we can learn a lot by exploring outside the walls of our classrooms, schools and districts. The authors encouraged us by exploring disruptive innovation in other industries and postulating its application to K-12 learning systems. They marvelled that student achievement has increased at all (the broadest measure of success in our work) given that we have only been able to tinker at the margins. What we have learned from other industries is that disruptive innovation is necessary for organizations to renew and sustain themselves. Sustaining innovations are what we have undertaken thus far – those innovations that continuously improve products and services for the same consumer population. Only disruptive innovations target those consumers who have been disenfranchised in the past. And they contended that technologies available today are the force that will allow disruptive innovation to take place.

The authors explored how this might occur, again based upon research in other industries. First and foremost, we cannot expect these changes to occur within our existing systems. Just as Toyota successfully introduced the Prius as a result of the work of a design and engineering team separated from its main production teams, so do we need to free teams to explore and develop learning models that respond to individual student needs. After a period of time, Toyota disbanded the innovative team and moved Prius production into its world-class production systems where sustaining innovations will continue to occur. So may it be with learning models. We need to embrace the innovations in the mainstream where they can benefit from replicable systems that are adapted to their components. Then a new team can be struck to address a new innovation.

Not everyone will agree with the authors’ analysis and recommendations. There are few examples of where disruptive innovation is already happening. And some will suggest that parental choice and more attention to home and chartered schooling will drive the innovation necessary for student success.

And while this approach appears simple in description, in reality it is fraught with challenges in many of our districts today. First, is there a will with all stakeholders (parents, teachers, administrators, politicians) to challenge the status quo? Is curriculum a barrier? Is parent expectation a barrier? Is funding a barrier? Is technology itself a barrier? Second, are we prepared to take the organizational risk of “letting loose” an entrepreneurial group of educators? Who will monitor their work? How will success be defined and measured? How can we imagine the reintegration of new systems into the old?

I hope that I am not fearful of the challenge. But for those of us responsible for both maintaining the current environment and supporting (either directly or indirectly) the innovative team, and carrying at least some of the accountability for the online security and privacy of our students and our technologies, the task is daunting. I am now exploring with my team how we could sponsor such an approach in our district.

Have you undertaken such a mission? Please share your challenges and successes so that we can all learn from them.

An Interview with Dr. Christensen
Reference
Christensen, C. M., Horn, M. B., & Johnson, C. W. (2008). Disrupting Class: How Disruptive Innovation Will Change the Way the World Learns. New York: McGraw-Hill.