Dr. Curtis Clark - Reshaping Education: Embracing Change

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JEREMY: A welcome and hello to Dr. Curtis Clark, who is a former Deputy Minister of
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the Ministry of Education of Alberta and Advanced Education,
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and is now a consultant at Propero.
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Dr. Clark has extensive experience in education leadership, particularly in
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navigating policy changes and fostering collaboration between the public and
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private sectors to improve education outcomes.
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Dr. Clark, welcome. How are you doing? CURTIS: I'm great. And thank you for having me here, Jeremy. JEREMY: Great.
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What have been the key takeaways so far of the events that M&L has been putting
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on in terms of your perspectives?
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And what do you think has been the most kind of, I guess, eye-opening things that you've heard?
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CURTIS: So I think probably maybe not eye-opening, but what's been resonating is the
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commonality of some of the issues that we've been facing.
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And certainly from my perspective of being engaged in policy development and
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in the education portfolios for a number of years, these are particular things
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that we were starting to see.
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But now to see that it's coalescing around some actions and individuals and
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corporations and entities that are starting to focus on this specifically,
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that's been really heartening to see.
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But also the recognition that it's not traditional models that we're looking at. It's about change.
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It's about shifting that and how important it is for us to recognize that,
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you know, we've actually been admiring this problem for long enough.
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Now it's time to actually start doing things and also to see those who have
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been doing it as well. JEREMY: Yeah, absolutely.
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I've been noticing that too. One of the things that really sort of like was
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a moment where I tuned into was a comment yesterday about this 12-21 paradigm.
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I don't know if you caught that. CURTIS: Yes, indeed.
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JEREMY: So I'm going to ask you a couple of questions. What you think about the role
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between technology and education in terms of reshaping that sector and what
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steps should education institutions be taking to be preparing students for the future of work?
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CURTIS: I think it's interesting that you referenced the 12-21,
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because what we're looking at is structural changes in organizations and certainly
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from a policy perspective, from our post-secondary institutions and those who
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are on the peripheral of that learning space as well.
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I think the concept of future skills equals change.
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We can't think about future skills without recognizing that we expect and will
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be framing large foundational changes to our institutions, to our policy directions,
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to our learning outcomes as well.
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And if we don't start paying attention to that, then I think we get lost back
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into the 12-21, the 12th century models of doing things and the 12th century
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structures of the organizations that we have.
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But in order to move us forward, we need to think differently about what our
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institutions do, the role that they play.
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Recognizing that it's not a traditional learner that we're looking at,
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that 17 to 24-year-olds who are going through our post-secondary institutions.
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This is about lifelong learning.
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Future skills is about that ongoing adaptive and agile aspect of what learning is.
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And recognizing that the 25 to 55-year-olds in that upskilling and reskilling
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sort of framing, that is who we need to start paying attention to.
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And we need to change our structures and our organizations to adapt and meet
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them where they are as a learner,
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but also be able to provide an agile and responsive learning space and outcome
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for them to be successful and thrive in this world that we're looking at right
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now, that economic shift that we're looking at.
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JEREMY: Yeah, if I can follow up just on the word responsive,
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I think so often we think of traditional learning spaces as a student goes in
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and they receive a body of information and a body of knowledge that is kind
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of more or less static and set in stone.
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I'm just wondering if you can sort of, I'd love to just hear a little bit more
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about like that responsiveness in how those curricula, those bodies of knowledge
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can really adapt to a learner. I don't know, does that resonate with you?
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CURTIS: Totally. I think we need to get away from the old learn and pray.
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And the learn and pray is we're going to teach you, you're going to learn something
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and pray that this is applicable to the world that you're moving into.
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And what we need to do in terms of looking at that engagement of the individual
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is there's a couple of things.
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First of all, we need to start sort of meeting the students where they are.
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So there is the old traditional model of you come in as a blank slate.
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We will fill you up and we don't really understand where you're coming from
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or the competencies or the skills that you bring to the table.
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We don't really care about that.
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We are here to inform and frame you that way.
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We need to shift away from that. And we need to sort of look at,
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first of all, doing an assessment of where students are coming from,
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where are their competencies?
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A colleague spoke about this yesterday in terms of what Bow Valley College
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is doing in terms of looking at the competencies that an individual brings to the table.
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Look at their learning map or the process that they're going to engage in in
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that learning journey for them.
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And then sort of work from that space. If we're looking at 25 to 55-year-olds,
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we can't assume that they're coming in with nothing.
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We have to really meet them as a learner where they're at and be able to provide
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the service and the expectations that they have for that learning space.
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As opposed to start from scratch and you're going to go through the traditional
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trajectory of what our old models have framed.
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So we need to think differently about how we engage, but then it's also what
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we're engaging them with.
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And it's about real-time, real-life experiences.
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We need to, in some way, engage industry differently to co-develop and be a
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part of that process so that when learners are coming out,
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they're actually engaging with the industries and that sector that is actually
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the part of the workforce that they're moving into.
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And the skills that they're going to utilize will be applied in that space as well.
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So it's thinking differently about a curriculum. It's thinking differently about
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the learner and how we as institutions and policy framers enable that and nudge that in a way.
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JEREMY: So that sort of next thing that comes to my mind when I hear the engagement
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piece is about leadership.
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And so what do you think are the most important leadership qualities that we
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need to basically guide our education system through, you know,
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these periods of rapid change and profound uncertainty that we're seeing today?
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CURTIS: There's probably three different ways to look at this. We need to get out of
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the risk adversity that we traditionally
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have with fairly conservative organizations and institutions.
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Again, a 12th century approach is it's a very sort of lockstep approach,
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understanding of the role and expectations and the prestige of that organization.
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So we need to move away from that and sort of look at that risk aversion that
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we have to be a little bit more thoughtful and creative about how we think about curriculum.
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How we think the role of an institution is in terms of its function in developing
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the educational foundations, the programming.
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So we need to think differently about that. And programming is one of those
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areas that we tend to be very risk adverse at.
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It's pretty lockstep in how we think about the building of curriculum and its outcomes.
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So we need to think about that differently. And we need a different leadership
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sort of orientation towards that. The other part of it is we have to think about
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it from...we need to stop competing with each other.
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It's much more about collaboration. Where do we find those moments of cooperation and alignment?
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And that takes a certain leadership orientation. It takes a different step away
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from what we've traditionally thought about.
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I'm competing in a market, and I'm competing in a market for students and the
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learning outcomes and objectives that my institution can provide.
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So there needs to be a different sense of what that partnership orientation is.
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And some of that partnership orientation is also with industry.
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How do we bring industry into this process of...Linda Hill, a professor in the
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Business School of Harvard, talks about creative ingenuity, creative genius.
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It's about that collaborative space and bringing diverse individuals together.
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But that's a leadership quality as well, is being able to say,
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we need this and I'm going to facilitate this as a leader, as an institutional
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leader, or as even just an industry leader as well. JEREMY: Yeah, that's so interesting.
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Antipathy or antagonism between the collaboration and the competition frameworks of mind.
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I'm just wondering, why do you think that education systems have been traditionally
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or historically more in the kind of competition end of this spectrum of relationships?
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CURTIS: I think one element of that is that our policy structures have not enabled a change.
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It sort of sets it up that in order to sort of look at even our funding models,
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it's very much about here is
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my niche, here is my mandate, here is the market that I need to address.
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And the expectation of growth comes from a solid student body and the funding
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is created by body students coming in and the student count and address that way.
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So we tend to say, I need to capture this.
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This is where my funding envelope articulates. And as such, I cannot sort of
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cooperate or partner or think about this differently because the funding model
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doesn't allow me to think about how do I collaborate?
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How do I think about sharing or enhancing the experience of the learner?
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It's a capture kind of mode. It's again, going back to that 12th-century model of this is mine.
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And what we've seen also in that problem is a lack of collaboration and wanting
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to cooperate is you also get built into the structure of my courses do not transfer to your courses.
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The fluidity of that learning experience for the learner becomes very captured in that space.
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We need to blow that up. We need to enable that kind of collaboration and way
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of thinking that our job is to educate and to develop the upskilling and reskilling
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framing for the learner,
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not to capture a particular market orientation.
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JEREMY: Right. Dr. Curtis Clark, thank you very much. CURTIS: Thank you. It's been a pleasure.