Still Learning to Change?

After ten years of studying educational change, Hargreaves et al published Learning to Change: Teaching Beyond Subjects and Standards in 2001 noting that:

A new orthodoxy of schooling appears to be emerging in many parts of the world, especially in the predominantly Anglophone nations. (p. xi)

They define the new orthodoxy as learning which is based on:

… prescribed standards (especially in literacy, numeracy, and science) that almost all students are expected to achieve. These standards are linked to centralized textbooks and redesigned assessments and are enforced through systems of accountability and monitoring that reward successful schools and provide support or threaten closure to those that persistently fall short. (p. xi- xii)

Does that sound familiar? But wait, they’re just warming up…

They say this new approach emerged at a time of “growing concern worldwide about the apparent disengagement of many young adolescents from their schooling and the risks they increasingly encounter in their lives” (p. xii). Well, it’s over 20 years on and that paragraph feels just as concerning in 2023 as it must have been to readers in 2001. Standards-based reform was supposed to be the answer but as the authors noted:

Standards-based reform … appears to have an ambivalent relationship to the kinds of schooling and teaching that work best for young adolescents, especially those who are most at risk. (p. xii)

And so it was up to (you guessed it) the teachers who found themselves in the middle of a quandary, required to “respond with urgency” to the new reforms while “dealing with the demanding learning needs, complex social worlds, and socially toxic environments” of teenagers. The authors identified three areas of tension for teachers as they wrestled with balancing the requirement to adhere to the new standards-based teaching while their students seemed to need a curriculum with “greater flexibility” which “has meaning for them, connects with their lives, and is grounded in relationships between teacher and students in which each knows each other well” (p. xiii). They said:

* Whereas standards push the curriculum toward detailed central prescription, the needs of today's diverse adolescents call for the flexibility of broader guiding frameworks.

* Whereas standards tend to emphasize common, subject-specialist knowledge, the needs of young adolescents push teachers toward a more contextualized, integrated curriculum that engages learning with young people's lives.

* Whereas standards tend to be externally imposed on teachers and students, the varying and pressing needs of young adolescents push the best teachers toward involving students in defining, interpreting, and being more involved in setting and reaching high standards of learning themselves. (p. xiii)

For over five years, the authors followed a group of Grade 7 and 8 teachers in Ontario, Canada and tracked their “experiences and responses to successive waves of reform”. They discovered that the teachers in the study were all “willing and able” to make “complex and demanding” changes in their classrooms. Their work was not “wholly romantic” and their achievements were not “won easily”. It required “intense intellectual work” and “immense amounts of emotional labour” to interpret policies and principles and “turn them into working realities” in their classrooms.

The Gig?

It seems that, 20 years later, we live in a world where standards-based reform continues its march across the education landscape, infecting every nook and cranny it touches. I think the gig remains the same as it was then - save ourselves and our students. How? By using our hearts, minds, and imagination, and “grounded in relationships between teacher and students in which each knows each other well”, work as intermediaries between the syllabus and the student to bring prescribed standards and outcomes to life by creating learning experiences for each student that are flexible, meaningful, and connected to each student’s life (p. xiii).

The Support

Citing Marsh (1999) and Lieberman & McLaughlin (2000) the authors suggest “a focus on processes of teacher inquiry … and on building professional communities of practice where teachers experience the time, encouragement, and standards-based urgency of working on standards and reform together. […] Moreover, sufficient levels of support and funding for teacher inquiry and collegial discussion to take place in school time are crucial.

Fight for Your Right to Party!

If anything, I’d say the evidence points to an even more orthodox “Orthodoxy of Educational Reform” than 2001 but, thanks to Hargreaves et al, maybe we can pick up the work they set out for us in 2001? We know that making “complex and demanding” changes in our classrooms won’t be “wholly romantic”, and our achievements won’t be “won easily”. It will require “intense intellectual work” and “immense amounts of emotional labour” to interpret policies and principles and “turn them into working realities” in our classrooms. But, we understand, that you’ve gotta fight for your right (to party).

So, let’s come together in community, taking time to share and encourage each other. Who knows, maybe one day the bosses will even find “sufficient levels of support and funding” for this to take place in school time? Until then, I’ll see you online.

💎 Brad’s Bookmarks:

5 things I found interesting this week:

* Revisiting Ken Bruce has gone mad ad. Everyone from Melbourne back in the day was deeply traumatised by these ads…

* Tones Drones and Arpeggios The Magic of Minimalism Part 1

* Tones Drones and Arpeggios The Magic of Minimalism Part 2

* A friend sent me this from Nick Cave on ChatGPT

* John Petrucci, Tosin Abasi, and Devin Townsend on Odd time signatures

💣 Brad’s Bombshell of the week:

“In England and Wales, more than a decade of detailed curriculum prescription has left many teachers feeling deprofessionalized, less confident, cynically compliant, and increasingly stressed - to the point that there is now a severe crisis of recruitment into teaching and that sons and daughters of teachers express little interest in joining the profession. Similar teacher recruitment crises also afflict the United States, especially in urban areas. A public (and classroom) image of teaching as highly stressed, overloaded, and increasingly subject to external regulation and control does nothing to help”. (p. 6)

Hargreaves et al., (2001). Learning to change: Teaching beyond subjects and standards. Jossey-Bass.

Ways to work together?

* Interested in making GarageBand for iPad work for you in your classroom? Get the Make Hot Hits with GarageBand for iPad course for FREE.

* Interested how we dig deeper about our ideas around music theory in the Gig Based Classroom™? Check out our FREE GBL Music Theory Course. It contains all of our YouTube music theory video’s, but in sequential order, inside a canvas course.

* Want to get to know me? I stimulate discussions (we call it “The Weekly Riff”) on music education philosophy, pedagogy, technology and content inside our FREE community. Join my colleague, Pete Orenstein, in our Community of Practice aka the GBL CoP 👮🚨🚓🚨👮

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I read every comment on our YouTube. So, see you there.

Dr Brad Fuller

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