Conversation from Penn State with Sir Ken Robinson: Education Innovation - Learning the true meaning of creativity

I woke up this morning to find I'd received the following email from Stephanie Williams from WPSU/Penn State Public Broadcasting:

As I'm sure you're aware, many experts believe the education system in the U.S. needs significant restructuring. WPSU-TV recently interviewed Sir Ken Robinson on a series called “Conversations From Penn State” where he discussed the problems facing the education system and suggests ways to improve it by promoting creativity. After reading through your blog, I think you and your readers may be interested in the interview. It can be found at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tL0WW3tR8Kc and I have provided the embed code at the bottom of this message if you wish to share the video. Please let me know if you have any question or if you decide to post the video.

Sincerely,

Stephanie Williams

As regular readers would know, I resonate strongly with Sir Ken Robinson and what he has to say about education.

Often times teachers and leaders in schools are hamstrung by an education system that is focused on reforming and teacher-proofing, resulting in standardising students and de-professionalising teachers.

However, There are many people in education for whom teaching and education is their passion. It is where they are in their element.

Video: Conversation from Penn State with Sir Ken Robinson

This conversation draws on Ken Robinson's work, The Element. During the conversation he makes the following points:

• People underestimate themselves
• The problem is the education system, not teachers and principals
• Transformation is what's required, not reform
• There's an obsession with Standardised Testing
• Schooling is resulting in "standardising" kids
• Reforms are focused on teacher-proofing.

After viewing the video I'm left with the opening question that was put to Ken Robinson:

What sparked your interest in education?

I'd be interested in what your thoughts on the conversation are. I have placed my own summary, comments and thoughts after the video.

A transcript of the conversation is also available.

My summary, comments and thoughts on the conversation

I have been working on my PhD studies which has involved me interviewing many primary and secondary teachers. As part of the interviews teachers commented on their view of schooling and themselves as a teacher. Several of these teachers, primary and secondary, commented that teaching is more than content and subject areas. Teaching is about students realising their full potential.

These teachers seem to believe this, yet an outcome of the education system, according to Robinson, is people underestimating themselves. Robinson highlights this when he comments that there is a view that only special people are creative or are good at Maths. For me it raises questions as to what we might mean be "full potential".

Robinson indicates that systems of mass education are the result of mass industrialism. The education system has been crafted in the image of industrialism. The education system is linear and based around supply and demand. It's a system that is about conformity, standardising and a presumed workforce and less about diversity. The system is founded on the IDEA of UTILITY: that is what will be useful in gaining employment and making a living.

For Robinson, education systems are obsessed with standardised testing. This culture of testing can result in narrowing the curriculum and teaching to the test. This comes at a price for students and teachers. Robinson believes that in attempting to deal with a culture of standardised tests the education system is standardising students. It also results in a stripping away of teacher professionalism.

Many Government policy makers invest huge amounts of time, money and energy in attempts to teacher-proof the system through public accountability resulting in standardisation: teacher standards, leadership standards, standardised testing, public reporting of results comparing schools, common curriculum.

Teacher-proofing won't work. Why? Because teaching is more complex than standardised solutions. Scotland discovered this. Improvement processes can result in isomorphism - where it all starts to look the same, no matter the context. Robinson states that students don't comment on the curriculum or the testing regimes as making a difference to them at school.

Students regularly comment that it is the teachers who were significant to them at school. It's teachers (or other mentors) who can result in students realising their passion, and perhaps their full potential.

Many leaders and teachers are grappling with the issues of transformation. Just the other day I was having a conversation with a secondary teacher around the need for things to be different in schools. The teacher, a very competent and successful teacher teaching in a highly complex secondary school, commented on the challenges she was faced with on a daily basis. The world isn't changing - it has changed.

Bring on the Learning Revolution

Many people would be familiar with Sir Ken Robinson's 2006 TEDTalk, Do schools kill creativity? This is the "follow-up" 4 years later at the 2010 TEDTalk.

Some key points from this TEDTalk are:

• Education dislocates people from their natural talents.
• Reforming education systems is of little use because it's trying to improve a broken model.
• What is required is a revolution that transforms the system into something else.
• Innovation is fundamental to the required transformation.
• We need to challenge what we take for granted.
• The Tyranny of Common Sense works against transformation.
• The Narrative of Linearity in education (ie. it starts here and finishes here) is an example of what is taken fro granted.
• "A three-year old isn't half a six-year old!"
• Education results in conformity through a fast food model.
• Passion is what excites the spirit and gives energy.
• Does education feed people's passions?
• Human flourishing is organic not mechanical.
• "Tread softly because you tread on my dreams." -W.B. Yeats
• Everyday, education treads on children and young people's dreams.

The video of the talk is below.

Shaping Learning in the 21st Century - Teachers Leading Innovation: Key shifts and enabling factors (2)

The ACE presentation was well attended and I have received some very affirming comments from particiapnts. The powerpoint show is available as a box.net share file located in the right hand column.

Below are a couple of comments:

"I was at your ACE presentation at our school on the 23/6. I thoroughly enjoyed it and felt very energised after it in terms of our own projects. ...We are fortunate in being a laptop school that has really good technology access and innovation. However, I think that your presentation provided that overarching paradigm that is sometimes lost in our everyday practice."

"Thank you for presenting such a thought provoking and complex issue for your seminar last night. I am not sure how you fitted it all in, in seventy five minutes but you did. It should be the start of a great conversation at many schools. I would love to have had the opportunity to work with you in a school setting."

"The first part of Andrew's talk with audience participation stimulated thinking. I think it is also time for strategy implementation."

"Congratulations on an excellent thought provoking lecture."

Leading for Learning in a world that is flat

Today I presented a session to a group of principals on leading for learning. In providing a key note I hoped to open up thinking, conversations and possibilities. The notion of a flat world (as developed by Friedman) was drawn upon to highlight the lateral connectivity that exists in the world.
The presenation explored a new imaginary for schooling and education, networked learning, the need for disciplined innovation and possibilities for developing next practice. These were concepts that I developed as a result of my Churchill Fellowship.
As a result of the presentation and discussions there are a few thoughts that emerged:

• there is a need for courageous leadership in schools and systems
• focusing on what I have to do (compliance, regulations, etc.) limits the possibilities of what I could do to transform learning and schooling
• networking is important for developing possibilities, ideas and ways forward that transcend the system
• individual schools can move forward towards excellence/greatness more quickly than systems can.