This post is a follow up to Affecting Educational Change.
A comment left by the inimitable Gardner Campbell the other day has lead me down another rabbit hole of thought that I need to explore in depth with regards to the prospect and need for educational change, and that is the notion that in striving to change the system we must inevitably and in parallel change the culture within it. In fact you could say that the Institution and the Culture are so inter-twined that you cannot really differentiate one from the other.
It is here that subversives who strive to affect change via external pressure or agitation must tread carefully (myself included), because in raging against the system, at a certain point we rage against the people within it as well. In the face of raw, uncensored edupunk for example – as grand as it is to witness – without equally passionate attempts to connect with those unfamiliar, or in direct opposition our views, we risk alienating them and driving them into further protectionism. To a certain degree this will require recognising and perhaps working with them in their own context, with all the idiosyncrasies and frustrating demands or expectations that entails.
I think here the argument in favour of working within the system to change the system bears the most merit. It is perhaps the most effective means of ensuring the internalisation of change instead of seeing subversives splinter off into a radical faction, with the rest of the Academy continuing along, business as usual.
Discomfort and Protectionism
As an example, I recently discussed the whole notion and origins of Edupunk with a colleague I respect and she had some very interesting insight to offer. In a previous position she had worked in a governmental department that looked after education and training at a state level and had been working vigilantly and tirelessly towards opening up opportunities to engage with new media in the classroom, where the norm had been to block access to certain highly-trafficked sites such as YouTube.
Despite being met with a great deal of initial resistance and reluctance, she began to make progress and had nearly reached the stage where schools would have access to many of the sites that we in higher education take for granted. Then Edupunk arose.
Out of fear of the implications, discussions on opening up access to these sites broke down and her work on expanding the opportunities was more or less scuttled. Right or wrong, good or bad; their fear of subversion forced the department back into a corner and they resorted to shoring up their traditional policies of blocked access.
In her current role now she is what I consider to be a key hope for internalising change in the university, working tirelessly with staff at a range of hierarchical levels, comfort zones, and opinions on openness and sharing. This requires a great deal of political sensibility and sensitivity, a willingness to recognise the perspectives of administrators and staff, and a creative approach to exposing them to new ways of working that challenge their existing perceptions, while not backing them into a corner.
Subversion as an Exemplar
That being said, I firmly believe that subversion can be, and in the case of DIY edtec is, an effective tool specifically because of the fact it directly challenges standing policies, assumptions, and ways of working. It provides an example – or a model – stark in contrast yet nonetheless powerfully effective in empowering learning. It shows what is possible when you approach learning in a creative, innovative way that focusses on the learner first – whether this is aligned with standing policies or not.
A Multi-Pronged Front
The importance though is having change agents in place, to (among other things) act as buffers, interpreters, and synthesisers between the radical subversives, the moderates, and particularly the conservatives; and effectively take some of the ideas from the radical fringe and help the wider Academy interpret and apply them to a local context. This might involve or require diluting some of the potency of the ideas; but ultimately any progress, however minute, should be embraced and encouraged.
Whereas subversion or edupunk by itself might only serve to alienate the movement from the rest of the Academy; and buffers, interpreters and other change agents alone within the system lacking exemplars for the uninhibited, uncensored possibilities beyond the system; these two models taken together represent a potentially powerful combination and mutually beneficial relationship.
In effect it expands the depth and diversity of the people involved in the discussion on educational change to the point where a similar topic is being explored by different people in different ways and different contexts, some of which agitate and debate, others that model and demonstrate, and others still that collaborate and communicate.
I disagree about the concept of working in, around, outside of the current system. The current educational system needs to implode and from it’s ashes can a new educational system emerge.
We must be careful at the same time this system is imploding not to alienate the people. It is the system that must end, not the people. We all need to be re-educated to disperse strategies / skills, facilitate expertise, & engage learners in different ways. The status quo worked perfectly for educating people to work in a past era.
I definitely agree that there’s much to dislike in the current institutional models and I think as an ideal starting from absolute scratch would be brilliant. I’m loathe of much that is considered common practice in formalised education – which is one of the key reasons why our kids are home-schooled. I just can’t sit idly by and while my kids spend the bulk of their most formative and influential years in a system I believe is fundamentally flawed and in desperate need of systemic change.
At the same time I think the prospect of a systemic collapse and rebirth is fairly unlikely (would you agree?). So in saying that we’re more or less forced to try and change the current model brick by brick, piece by piece.
It’s here that I grow at odds with myself about the most effective way to affect change.
On one hand my first instinct is to blaze forward in the direction of the changes I think are necessary – with or without support, with or without the blessing of formal or existing policy on a sort of educational crusade that demonstrates and models new ways of working and learning that are in no small way grounded in the evidence from ongoing and preexisting scholarly research. Publications and work of authors such as Stephen Downes, George Siemens, Howard Rheingold, Brian Lamb, as well as the scholars (past and present) who influenced them – not to mention the work and experiences of more progressive authors such as Ivan Illich and John Holt.
In many ways these individuals (to me at least) recognise a far bigger picture that transcends the Academy. They see people first, and then learners – each with their own unique set of experiences, perspectives, dreams, aims and objectives. Real live people, who don’t necessarily fit within a sharply delineated box that neatly aligns with an articulated set of learning outcomes and institutionally decreed list of graduate attributes – nor do I think they need to.
The issue that I have, and which really inspired this post, is how to help inspire recognition of a need for change within The Culture of Academia itself, and a willingness to do so. Ultimately it doesn’t matter what I think or believe if a willingness to change isn’t internalised within The Culture. In the absence of compelling motivation to innovate, adapt or change schools will continue to operate business as usual, while the dissenters or progressive thinkers are relegated to a radical fringe within formal education, or make a complete break and choose alternative forms of education.
Essentially I think that changing the overarching system must first begin with changing the underlying culture. Because culture isn’t something that disappears in the absence of a system, nor a change to it. Culture is as much a mindset as a way of working or living. Indeed perhaps you could even say that a culture is what defines a system.