Recently Greg Whitby alerted us to "the danger of the hype" in his blog. He made some interesting points about the hype distracting from teacher's core work. He uses Michael Fullan's "Without Pedagogy in the driver's seat, there is growing evidence that technology is better at driving us to distraction ...." to support his assertion.
Greg also supplies the full text of Michael's paper "Choosing the wrong drivers for whole system reform". In this he makes a number of important points that are highly relevant to our current discussions in Australia.
"Effective drivers are those
- that cause whole system improvements;
- that are measurable in practice and results; and
- for which a case can be made that strategy X produces result Y.
An ineffective driver, however,is one that
- actually does not produce the results it seeks;
- may make matters worse; and
- can never have the impact it purports to produce.
There are four main ‘wrong drivers’ that have more effective matched alternatives. The pairs of
alternatives are:
- accountability: using test results, and teacher appraisal, to reward or punish teachers and schools vs capacity building;
- individual teacher and leadership quality: promoting individual vs group solutions;
- technology: investing in and assuming that the digital world will carry the day vs instruction; and
- fragmented strategies vs integrated or systemic strategies.
Although the four ‘wrong’ components have a place in reform, it is a mistake to lead with them". Countries that do will not achieve whole system reform but may move backwards relative to countries using the right drivers."
His conclusion is that:
"The solution involves using the four big effective drivers:
- The learning–instruction–assessment nexus.
- Social capital to build the profession.
- Pedagogy matches technology.
- Systemic synergy. "
