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Role of a Teacher
Posted by Scott Guthrie on 11/28/2004
In Reply To:Role of a Teacher Posted by John Gunkler on 11/26/2004
This is a subject which has gotten me quite depressed recently, so be forewarned that I’m going be rather negative…I may even rant a bit
The barrier to system dynamics and thinking in education, the barrier to any innovation in education, is Society – the people who hold the purse strings and control the resources we need to innovate in education.
Read this paper (http://web.mit.edu/nelsonr/www/implementation.html) and others (firefighting) at this site (http://web.mit.edu/nelsonr/www/). I’d love to get the model running, but my version of Vensim (5.4) cannot properly open the model
You can skip to the “Implications” (p28) if you wish, but the loops are of interest… I know I’m going off half-cocked, but here are three points to consider:
Society is not fully committed to system dynamics and thinking, let alone system dynamics and thinking in K-12 education. Let alone K-12 education itself. Nor is any school district or school fully committed. Classrooms may be, but many only see students for one year. When classrooms can use a multi-year approach with a group of students, it is with a very small group (due to resource limitations) and over a period of four years at most.
All innovations in education have been half-hearted at best, with the possible exception of the decade long commitment to innovation in science, math and engineering education starting in 1959…and we stopped funding that adequately in 1968. All innovations have been starved of the resources they need at some point and/or been terminated too early (or not early enough in the case of ITIP . I know I’ll catch some flak for that jibe…)
There is an extreme danger, as system dynamics and thinking classes and innovations in education “die off” due to innovator fatigue and/or lack of resources, that our “aggressive diffusion” of system dynamics and thinking in education will give it a bad name due to the lack of measurable results in student achievement (see ITIP above). Sometimes I worry that this has already happened.
Other observations/opinions that have implications that I don’t like:
The half-life of education production (students) in K-12 education appears to be approximately 6 years.
The half-life for educators appears to be approximately 15 years.
This implies that it’ll take 6 to 9 years of commitment on the part of students for a significant measurable change in their learning to take place…and 15 to 23 years of teacher training for a significant change in the number of classroom practitioner/coaches to take place. That’s a long time for a society that has trouble planning for one election cycle.
What to do? As has been said before, we’ve got to develop a test that shows the efficacy of a systems approach to problem solving/education. If we had a test that could show the efficacy of system dynamics and thinking, we’d be ready to convince a community/school district that passing that test is a desirable outcome. Once we’ve done that, we need to be ready to convince that district/community to use system dynamics and thinking throughout its curriculum, in every classroom, with every student, for at least 9 years. That means a commitment of 9 years of funding and resources with no holding back. Who’s willing to do that with their kids?
Other things that are killing system dynamics and thinking in K-12 education:
NCLB. Look at the NCLB tests that your state is using: multiple choice questions on factoids and trivia that require little, if any, complex analysis on the part of the test taker. These scores, and the number of students taking them, are then used as the basis for funding schools: if not enough students pass the test or not enough students of any identifiable sub-group take the test, your school will be punished by loss of funding. Until there is a simple multiple-choice test that includes the need for the understanding of systems concepts, the future of system dynamics and thinking in K-12 education in an NCLB atmosphere is “bleak.”
Funding. As a nation, we have been cutting education funding and resources consistently since about 1968. It has now gotten to the point that most of our schools no longer offer “extras” and electives (including PE in elementary schools!). I have come to realize that system dynamics and thinking, taught as an elective, will never survive in the current K-12 funding atmosphere. The only hope it has is if it is used as a tool to teach other concepts. Unfortunately this possibility is being held back by NCLB issues and school staffing. I won’t even touch the issue of teacher training time here because it’s just too depressing.
Staffing and class size. School staffing is tied to funding in a very direct, basic manner. As funding is cut, positions are cut. As positions are cut, classes get larger. As classes get larger, the time per student that a teacher has is lowered. As the time per student is lowered, the effectiveness of any coaching that the teacher can give is lowered. Soon enough, the tipping point in passed and the teacher can no longer effectively coach any student in the class and other teaching/learning models must be used.
Time. The devotion of classroom time is critical. Unfortunately, class size, funding/resources, and the need to teach/learn for NCLB limit the amount of time where innovative ideas can be tried in all but elective courses. Oops! We don’t have those any more.
That is what we’re up against. Calculus was invented in 1666. I’m not sure, but I suspect that it took a long, long, time for engineers to use it on a regular basis. My suspicion is that we’re in for a long wait for it to be adopted in any meaningful way in education…probably around 2035 or so.
Scott Guthrie
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