TECHNOS

July 20, 2008

TECHNOS QUARTERLY Fall 2000 Vol. 9 No. 3

John Dewey Never Said It Would Be Easy: Designing Education in the 21st Century

by Jerrold E. Kemp

Too few efforts to improve public education have provided positive results to cheer about. Principals and teachers, who are under constant pressure to attain successful student results on standardized tests and reduce problems in schools, need to give more systematic attention to comprehensive reforms of school programs. In his new book, An Interactive Guidebook for Designing Education in the 21st Century (TECHNOS Press, 2000), well-known instructional design specialist Jerrold Kemp outlines a practical approach to the process.

W e hear the term “educational accountability” being used more frequently. As Jean Allan, president of the Center for Educational Reform, stated in a November 1999 USA Today article, “Schools are still not accustomed to acting like businesses or needing to prove results” (“Baldridge Winners Named: No Awards in Health or Schools.” USA Today, November 26, 1999, page 3B).

Four factors are making accountability more essential in public education:

Rising educational requirements for good jobs while preparing a diverse and flexible workforce.
Limited degree of acceptable performance of graduates from many schools.
Need to control instructional costs along with increased learning effectiveness and efficiency.
Spread of school choice, which is giving a growing number of parents the option of selecting the best schools for their children to attend.

To serve these accountability needs, a new design, leading to a restructuring or transformation of instruction is necessary in keeping with social and economic needs of the 21st Century. This could build on much that good schools are now doing, but does require a fresh focus that starts with identified needs and seeks solutions in a comprehensive, orderly way. This procedure also recognizes organizational changes that become necessary within a school.

Where Are We? . . . Where Should We Be Going?
Remember the campaign cry that was on a large poster in Democratic National headquarters during the 1992 presidential campaign?—It's the economy, stupid! There should be a comparable slogan for public education today—It's a new plan for instruction we need, my friends!

This assertion can start to provide an answer to the question, “With all the attention being given to education, why has there not been more progress toward the necessary accomplishments that are wanted?” Various authorities challenge widely held assumptions and recognize the need for a fresh approach based on more careful efforts that can lead toward successful learning. Some of their views are scattered throughout this article as sidebars. From these statements, it can be seen that a key cause for the lack of student achievement is the inability to approach educational change in a fresh, all-inclusive way.

Most often we base our decisions and actions on past experiences with the assumption that something new should fit within established and accepted patterns. Is it not true that most people still think of education as conducted by a teacher standing at the front of a classroom, frequently talking and using a blackboard? They see students, seated in rows listening, and when directed, answering questions or reading from a textbook and completing workbook assignments. The usual goal has been to memorize information for tests with resulting grades: A, B, C, D, or F.

Furthermore, because everyone has experienced the educational process, particularly in their youth, most laymen as well as educators believe they are knowledgeable about education and are qualified to recommend changes. But the world we live in today is appreciably different from that in which most of us experienced our education. No longer can education be considered in terms of former beliefs, assumptions, and needs. Therefore, we must give serious consideration to transforming the entire system of education.

Finally, we so often hear and see a proud statement or plea for excellence in education. Also, during the 2000 political election season, politicians, in many speeches, are expressing the need for revolutionary change in education. While most people have a fair idea about the goals and accomplishments desired for educating our youth, if questioned about how to reach these desirable levels, only limited, piecemeal solutions usually are proposed. Too often simplistic solutions are recommended for complex problems, and it must be recognized that it takes more than money to improve education in our world today. Let me offer a more meaningful way to proceed.

In writing An Interactive Guidebook for Designing Education in the 21st Century, my goals were twofold:

To provide an understanding that to improve education, by making systemic changes, requires major shifts in our assumptions, beliefs, and actions.
To encourage and guide administrators and teachers to apply a practical, cohesive plan, adaptable to their own situation for transforming an instructional program toward successful results.

Guidebook Offers Practical Information for Systematic School Change

An Interactive Guidebook for Designing Education in the 21st Century, by Jerrold Kemp, consists of the following:

Section I: Preparing Your Thoughts for Educational Transformation. Introduces a model for transformation that can guide the reader toward understanding changes in our thinking and actions necessary for the successful improvement of schools.

Section II: An Instructional Design Process and Procedures. Provides essential information for the development, support, implementation, evaluation, and extension of a systematically planned school restructuring program based on the model introduced in Section I.

Appendix A: A School Changes. Describes in a realistic (hypothetical) situation how this school transformation process can be initiated and then implemented by a team of motivated teachers, with the coordination of the principal, the guidance of an instructional designer, and the involvement of parents and persons from the community.

Appendix B: Students Make It Happen! Treats the same school situation introduced in Appendix A from the students' positions by following two students through implementation of the new school program.

A key component of any change process is the people involved. Leadership, cooperation, and support are all necessary. I wrote the Guidebook to be of value for anyone involved in or interested in school reform, whether for a project such as integrating computers into a classroom, redesigning a single course, restructuring a whole department, or transforming a school's complete operation. These applications can be beneficial in a regular school, an alternative school, or a new charter school.

“Numerical goals, like those specified in American 2000: An Educational Study, published by the Secretary of Education (1991) and advocated by President George Bush, accomplish little. Ranking individual students, schools, and district does not improve education. The question to answer is: By what methods can education be transformed to improve learning?”
• W. Edwards Deming, The New Economics (Cambridge, MA: Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Center for Advanced Engineering Study, 1994)

A Model for Educational Change
Why is there so much dissonance and mismatch between the efforts of educators to restructure a program and the methods that should be used today that can lead to necessary outcomes? In his groundbreaking article, “Is Education Becoming?” (AudioVisual Communications Review, Spring 1969, pp. 36–40), Ron McBeath presents three stages of educational change: sequential, emergent, and transformational. They represent three major patterns of educational philosophy comprising educational theory, principles, practices, and outcomes. (These stages are discussed more fully in the Guidebook.)

Stage 1—Sequential. Serves the needs of dependent, linear-thinking students. The acquisition and memorization of facts is a main task for these students. The student's mind is seen as a fishnet, which would catch whatever is poured into it. It is assumed that the bigger nets (i.e., better minds) would catch more knowledge.

In this stage, the teacher, who holds a center position in the educational process, would direct students' learning through the textbook and lecture mode. Questions would be asked to check that students were memorizing the correct information. Tests are mainly used to measure the recall of information provided. Objective-type scoring is according to a preset standard with grades assigned on the normal curve.

Stage 2—Emergent. Provides opportunities to improve learning conditions by making available alternative methods and materials for students who have various levels of experience and different learning styles. There may be some full-class teaching, but more time is spent in cooperative learning on small-group work and individual studies.

In this stage, the teacher not only provides different points of view but also helps students to see the applications of the various positions. Tests are expanded from recall to application questions for the ideas studied. Discussions involving student experiences and individual opinions become important parts of the instructional program. Grading is a more subjective judgment by the teacher than in Stage 1.

Stage 3—Transformational. Provides learning experiences to encourage students, who now are at the center of the educational process, to explore, think creatively, and take risks in their educational activities. Students are helped to identify problems, gain understandings through their own efforts, and search for new ways of initiating inquiries. Not only does testing include recall, applications, implications, and creative explorations, it also is used diagnostically to help open further avenues for learning.

Rather than requiring competition among students, as is done in Stage 1, and an open, laissez-faire approach as in Stage 2, in Stage 3 each student (or group with teacher guidance) accepts or may set several of his or her own objectives to be accomplished. Most students can judge their own progress. A variety of evaluation methods determine individual accomplishments and performance competency.

We must recognize that the beliefs and practices of teachers, administrators, parents, legislators, and others would place them in the different stages with a direct relationship to their own beliefs in terms of the types of outcomes each individual feels should be achieved in an educational program. Unfortunately, the urgent need to prepare students to successfully achieve required learning standards often leads to Stage 1 teaching practices and may dampen efforts to restructure educational programs. We must also realize that the components listed under Stage 3 do fit most educational needs of our students today who are living and will be working and raising families in this emerging Information Age.

Since developing this model, McBeath has presented it both nationally and internationally to numerous educational and lay groups. After explaining the details, he frequently asks this question: “Consider educators (administrators and teachers) with whom you work or whom you know—what percentage of them reveal beliefs or exhibit actual practices in each of the three Stages?” Results most often are typically close to:

Stage 1—75%

Stage 2—20%

Stage 3—5%

These percentages clearly indicate a major problem faced by educators. The beliefs and practices of the great majority of educators remain in the traditions of the past, teacher-centered, autocratic classroom image. When we extend this concept to parents, students, school boards, and legislators, people who have important influences on and roles in education today, it is evident that they also have Stage 1 images of how education should be conducted. But how many businesses can successfully function today with an Agricultural or Industrial Age perspective? It is essential that businesses and industries operate within Information Age principles and practices for successful outcomes. Therefore, important questions for us to consider are:

Where do we want to be?
What outcomes do we seek?
What principles are needed to guide our practices?
What skills and assistance do we need to implement the types of practices needed to achieve the desired outcomes?

Answers to these questions require an orderly process that offers a practical way to decide on and accomplish the goals for any school or instructional program. The plans and procedures presented in the Guidebook are focused on helping people develop programs which will guide students toward Stage 3 outcomes. Hopefully, we are prepared for this approach and are willing to explore the necessary paradigm shift.

Guidebook Audiences Include People Who Care about Schools

Jerrold Kemp's An Interactive Guidebook for Designing Education in the 21st Century is directed to four major audiences:

Teachers interested in or actively involved in innovative school activities with responsibilities for development, implementation, and evaluation of instructional programs.
Educators who can serve as qualified instructional designers (possibly one of the above teachers) to guide the planning process.
School principals, department heads, facilitators, and other administrators who have leadership, organizational, managerial, and evaluative responsibilities for new or redesigned school development projects.
Professors of higher education courses in school administration, teacher education, and instructional systems technology who wish to prepare education students for their new roles in 21st-Century schools.

Other audiences include persons who may have policy, leadership, support, or other interests in school transformation; parents; district and county superintendents and staff; school board members; state education department staff; state and national legislators; representatives of community organizations and business companies.

Setting the Stage for Successful Transformation
We know that a school is a complex agency, influenced and directly affected by many factors, including social forces, state and federal statutes, politics, the local economy, and group or individual agendas, desires, and pressures. The process of education requires many interrelated elements that should all receive detailed attention. Neglecting or improperly treating any of them can lead to an unsatisfactory result.

Many non-education projects apply a systems approach to problem solving. Essentially, this is based on the scientific method whereby a problem is recognized, a hypothesis is formed or a tentative solution is chosen, experiments are conducted, and data are gathered that lead to a conclusion about the accuracy of the hypothesis. This approach is conducted in an orderly, controlled manner that takes into consideration all necessary factors that together can contribute to positive results. If successful, the results provide new knowledge, or are used to produce or improve the products of technology. If not fruitful, revisions or a new plan are tried until success is realized. Thus, by adapting the scientific method, we have an objective, systematic way of approaching educational problems.

For training and education, this procedure becomes a comprehensive process for designing instruction. The term “instructional design” is commonly used when all components of systematic planning are treated in a coordinated manner. A qualified person who directs or coordinates this method of planning is called an instructional designer.

For an education program, as for other applications, a system should be understood as a network of interdependent components that function together to accomplish a specific goal. Many educators believe they already develop and manage their instructional programs in this way. But upon carefully examining their plans and observing instructional procedures, we find “it ain't necessarily so.” How decisions are made, objectives set, instructional and learning sequences created, resources selected, support provided, and learning evaluations performed—all essential elements—even if each one receives consideration, often most are not treated in sufficient, integrated detail.

But there are some teachers who do apply the slogan—It's a new plan for instruction we need, my friends. They have designed successful innovative programs that do implement a procedure that to some degree is similar to what I propose in the Guidebook. They are to be complimented and encouraged to continue and extend their efforts. As an example, the Nevada State Department of Education prepared A Guide for Nevada Schools Planning: A Schoolwide Program (1997). Although in a different format, this plan, along with details and participation activities, includes most of the analyzing, designing, and measuring components I presented in the Guidebook. The Nevada approach certainly recognizes the need for a systematic method of change, showing that “it can be done.” But how? How can we formulate an all-inclusive strategy for designing an educational program that potentially leads to improved quality of instruction, comprehensive high levels of ongoing student learning, and program success?

Successful School Restructuring

There have been some successful school restructuring efforts in recent years. A number of them apply many of the components of systematic change (to varying degrees) described in Jerrold Kemp's An Interactive Guidebook.

Accelerated School Program. See Accelerated Schools in Action by Christine Finnan (Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press, 1996).
Coalition of Essential Schools. See Horace's Compromise (1984) and Horace's School (1992) by Theodore Sizer (Boston: Houghton Mifflin).
Effective Schools Process. See Making School Reform Happen by Pamela Bullard and Barbara Taylor (Needham Heights, MA: Allyn & Bacon, 1993).
New American Schools Design. See Bold Plans for School Restructuring by Sam Stringfield et. al. (Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1996).
Project CHILD (Computers Helping Instruction and Learning Development). See www.ifsi.org/child.htm.
Schools Development Program. See Rallying the Whole Village by James Comer (New York: Teachers College Press, Columbia University, 1996).
Success for All. See Every Child, Every School by Robert Slavin (Newbury Park, CA: Corwin Press, 1996).

A Design Plan
The answer to the above question requires a number of further operational questions within five major phases of a systematic and comprehensive design plan: Analysis, Initiation, Development, Implementation, and Program Evaluation and Revision. Each question is necessary, whether a single course is to be restructured, a cooperative project involves a team of teachers, or an entire school program is to be transformed.

Analysis Phase

What are present school problems and student learning needs that provide the bases for reform and transformational change?

Initiation Phase

How can a vision statement and mission goals be developed for the program?
What priorities and constraints for the program need recognition as the planning starts?

Development Phase

What curricula topics, basic skills, interdisciplinary themes, and other educational experiences should comprise the instructional program?
What subject content supports each topic and theme?
In terms of subject content, what learning objectives should students attain for each topic or theme?
What is the level of each student's preparation for studying a topic, as determined by pretesting?
What instructional methods and learning activities can be used to accomplish the objectives?
What instructional resources are most suitable to carry out instructional and learning activities?
What logistical support is required to initiate and maintain the instruction and learning?
How can attainment of learning objectives by students be determined?

Implementation Phase

Do the results of a program tryout indicate need for any changes or improvements to meet expectations?
What other matters may need consideration when implementing and managing the new program?

Program Evaluation and Revision Phase

After initial use, does the program meet an acceptable level of learning competency and other positive behaviors for following groups of students? If not, what revisions should be made?
Does the program operate in a cost-effective and efficient manner?
With success, can the program be extended within or even beyond the school?

While these 16 questions may appear to be a formidable list, for an endeavor requiring major restructuring, careful attention should be given to all necessary components for a successful instructional program. And even some items require consideration of a number of sub-elements. For instance, question number 10, regarding logistical support, includes budget, facilities, materials, equipment, personnel responsibilities and training, and other essential services. While questions numbers 1–12 guide a planning team in new program design, numbers 13–16 are important to anyone having management or facilitation responsibilities for a major transformational program.

Throughout the treatment of the above five design phases, questions appear in the text that encourage and guide reader decisions and actions. Keep in mind that choices to be made during planning these design components would be influenced by the following factors:

The information, skills, and attitudes needed for societal living and employment in the 21st Century.
Expanded knowledge about how learning can take place for a wide range of individual students.
A variety of instructional methods to provide for student learning.
An increasing array of technical resources that allow for learning to be managed more efficiently and with more effective results.
The need to assess learning in multiple ways while both students and educators become accountable for the results.

“What is new in our time is an emerging knowledge based on the change process in schools and a growing understanding that restructuring schools will require a comprehensive, integrated change of both the structure of the workplace of teaching and practices between teacher and student.”
• A. Lieberman (ed.), Building a Professional Culture in Schools (New York: Teachers College Press, Columbia University, 1988)

What Makes a Successful School?
In the Guidebook, I examine a series of constructs that together can provide a satisfactory answer to the question, “What makes a successful school?” But as a starting point, we must recognize the following broad elements of a framework that would be essential for successful instructional transformation in a school. (For more information, see “Successful School Restructuring Efforts,” on page 28.)

An orientation toward the needs of the Information Age.
An active, involved community consisting of participating parents, teachers, students, and others.
A principal with vision, energy, and compassion.
Teachers who are ready for change, enjoy the challenge of collaboration to the benefit of students, and are supported in their efforts.
Students who can be motivated toward success in learning, while acquiring basic skills and preparing for their roles in society.
Services of an instructional designer for guiding the planning process.
Systemic changes in the instructional program utilizing a systematic planning procedure.
Available current and emerging technological resources for improving and extending instruction and learning.
Necessary funding, teacher-release time, and other recognized support as the program is developed and implemented.
Endorsement by other school system personnel including the superintendent and the school board.

These elements must be present for a school to transform itself (with a lot of help!) into one that will successfully guide its students into the future. Make no mistake: the systematic transformation of a school is hard work. But it is well worth the effort, and it is necessary, if we are to help our children fulfill their promise. John Dewey never said it would be easy.

Jerrold Kemp is retired from his positions as professor of education and coordinator of media production and instructional development services at San Jose State University, jobs he held for 30 years. A former president of the Association for Educational Communications and Technology, he is author or co-author of five textbooks and has consulted on innovative educational projects and practices in numerous schools, universities, and agencies in foreign countries and UNESCO. Dr. Kemp is the Year 2000 TECHNOS Press Author.

An Interactive Guidebook for Designing Education in the 21st Century, by Jerrold Kemp, is available from AIT's TECHNOS Press for $22.95US plus $4.00 per book for shipping. Call AIT's Customer Service, 800-457-4509, to order a copy. Group discounts are available. The Guidebook is the second in our Leadership Series for school administrators. The first is The Complete Handbook of Block Scheduling, by Thomas Shortt and Yvonne Thayer (1999).