Disrupting Everything

Posted by David Parish, Ph.D., CEO Calypso Systems
Tuesday June 16th, 2009 | 0 Comments

Having attended a half-dozen or so ed tech conferences over the past few months, one thing is clear. The book "Disrupting Class", by Clayton Christensen and Michael Horn, has quickly jumped to the center of the education universe, referenced in nearly every conversation about the role of technology in education. If you have not yet read Disrupting Class my advice would be to jump over to Amazon and order your copypost-haste. (You can't possibly be interested in this blog without being fascinated by the book!) The overarching theme of the book is that while technology has had a useful impact on education, it's used primarily within the context of an outdated one-size-fits-all model of teaching and learning. In a world where "tried and true" core curriculum topics are not adequately preparing students for life in a Hot, Flat and Crowded world, something more is needed. Something disruptive to the status quo. As the authors argue, technology provides an opportunity to reinvent education as a personalized experience for each learner, tuned to each person's strengths, interests, intellect, learning style, etc., though all within the context of defined standards.

The notion of personalized education is compelling and as far as I can tell, gets little push back from those who work far closer to the classroom than I. In fact more recently I've sensed that the industry's collective unconsciousness has already voted, and that "individual lesson plans" are as surely a part of the future of education as is pizza in the lunch room. It's all good as far as I'm concerned (including the pizza), especially as one who's career is based upon building technology to improve educational outcomes. So the good news is that when I sit in rooms filled with Superintendents, Technology Directors and Curriculum specialists, there's consensus on where we're headed, something I don't believe I could have said a year ago. Now that's a book with impact!

In all, I've come away encouraged by both the direction articulated by Christensen and Horn, and by the education industry's apparent embrace of those ideas. But it's the second part of the book that worries me. For the latter part of the book leans heavily and convincingly on Christensen's prior work on "disruptive innovation" in business, (see his prior work, "The Innovator's Dilemma") to point out that the type of profound change represented by the idea of personalized instruction CANNOT AND WILL NOT HAPPEN within the confines of the existing, traditional education industry. It must and will first take root in alternatives to mainstream education, most likely in home school and chartered school settings. Why? Read the book for the details, but the answers are pretty much black and white. I repeat ... it cannot and will not happen.

Yet the same Superintendents, Tech Directors and Curriculum Specialists who embrace the notion of personalized instruction are, for the most part, acting as if they can ignore the truth of implementation. It's kind of like saying you believe in physics, but reserve the right to question the existence of gravity. The notion of personalized instruction and the theories of how disruptive innovation happens are two sides of the same coin. You can't realistically have one without the other. (When questioned on this topic, I literally had one superintendent say to me "I just don't believe that part of the book".)

So what's the answer? Should schools ignore the possibilities of personalized instruction for mainstream students, knowing they're unlikely to achieve their all of their goals? Or push ahead and possibly achieve some level of improvement? If the latter, how do they deal with required teacher training, assessment, curriculum and other issues that must be part of the overall personalized instruction experience?