Mommy, what's a Chautauqua?

More great stuff via the WorkingStories listserv. This time an invitation to join a Virtual Chautauqua. "Chautau-what?" you ask.

Seth Kahan is facilitating the latest Chautauqua; the topic, his new book, Building Beehives: A Handbook for Creating Communities that Generate Returns.

Inside the main tent Seth too, talks about the democratisation of information and the implications for teachers:

It is now the case, with the coming of the Internet into living rooms worldwide, that any first- or second-grader can show up in the classroom knowing more than about a wide variety of subjects than a teacher can hope to understand… What is the teacher's role now? It is no longer to be the bearer of knowledge, but to be a guide in the learner's quest. Here, then, is an apt metaphor for our new organization's changes.

He goes on to make a plea for a leadership model congruent with our complex world:

We must ask our leaders, our managers, our boards, our directors, to take on new roles that are appropriate to a model of distributed leadership. This is not pie-in-the-sky fantasy. This is the reality of staying abreast of change in a complex world.

Finally Seth provides a link to a thought-provoking paper contrasting two "new leadership" models with very different theoretical underpinnings.

Update: Seth's thoughts appear in almost the same words on his blog, although registering for the Virtual Chautauqua is well worthwhile. Past Chautauqua facilitators include Steve Denning, Brian Alger and Johnnie Moore!

The privileged status of story

From Patti Digh via the WorkingStories listserv comes Ask the Cognitive Scientist: The Privileged Status of Story:

Cognitive science research confirms that stories are indeed powerful. This research shows us where this power comes from and suggests how teachers might harness it. Stories have a particular format, and each of us has a representation of that format in memory. Teachers may use this power both by the judicious use of storytelling in the classroom, and by using the structure of stories to organize a lesson.

Who's afraid of the big bad blog?

Johnnie Moore links to Robert Scoble musing on big businesses' reluctance to adopt blogging. Scoble relates the Kryptonite story as an example of how easily a story spread by "word-of-mouth" in the blogosphere can damage a brand. The Kryptonite folks have offered a solution, but the penetration of their message has been much lower.

Scoble posits that this may be, at least in part, due to their lack of a blogging culture and hence lack of access to the blogosphere to tell an anti-story. As Scoble observes crisis management isn't the only reason corporate culture would do well to adopt blogging.

His reasons distill down to maintaining a relationship—a relationship between customers and a brand. How do we maintain relationships? By remembering Roger Lewin and Birute Regine's message in The Soul at Work that people matter:

…to develop caring and connected relationships is to become genuinely interested in other people's stories… Engaging people's stories deepens the conversation and is a way of instigating the delicate work of building trust in an organisation.

Why then are weblogs effective at building relationships? I think it is because weblogs can tell stories more effectively than other electronic media. As Scoble points out:

Hey, Microsoft has had "mswish@microsoft.com" for a long time. Even when I was a customer of Microsoft's, I'd never send anything to that address. Why? I never thought anyone was listening.

Like Larry Prusak said "I never hear stories through e-mail. I hear them through talking to people." I wonder whether Larry can hear stories through weblogs? I think I can.

Update: Kryptonite argues its case (via Steve Rubel).

What did I learn today?

The organisers of the Navcon2k4 conference really struck a chord. Julia Atkin delivered a third key note which blended harmoniously with Tom Sergiovanni's and Dale Spender's tonics.

Julia believes that just as the red flag act handicapped the performance of the early motor car, current assessment practices are crippling attempts to improve learning. What is needed, according to Julia, is a reassessment of assessment.

Like Tom Sergiovanni, Julia referenced a topical article from the previous day's Christchurch Press. News that "Teachers 'could do better'" is best answered by teachers examining their professional standards according to Julia. Julia challenged us to consider what we mean when we describe ourselves as professionals.

She emphasised the importance of having a clear vision because unless our actions are aligned with our values we will achieve nothing but chaos. New Zealand society's vision for education appeared muddled to Dr. Atkin; a vision that is more about sorting than helping each child reach their potential.

In order to encourage some reflection on our educative purpose Julia read some guiding words from Jacques Delors' introduction to Learning: The Treasure Within:

People today have a dizzying feeling of being torn between a globalization whose manifestations they can see and sometimes have to endure, and their search for roots, reference points and a sense of belonging.

Education has to face up to this problem now more than ever as a world society struggles painfully to be born: education is at the heart of both personal and community development; its mission is to enable each of us, without exception, to develop all our talents to the full and to realize our creative potential, including responsibility for our own lives and achievement of our personal aims.

This aim transcends all others. Its achievement, though long and difficult, will be an essential contribution to the search for a more just world, a better world to live in.

There is, therefore, every reason to place renewed emphasis on the moral and cultural dimensions of education, enabling each person to grasp the individuality of other people and to understand the world's erratic progression towards a certain unity; but this process must begin with self-understanding through an inner voyage whose milestones are knowledge, meditation and the practice of self-criticism.

Our assessment system is well aligned with our current vision of education as a sorting and standardising mechanism. We are very good at assessing quantity and standardising (we expect students' ideas to mirror those held by their teacher); we are not so good at assessing quality and raising standards.

So how do we assess for quality? By encouraging students to ask themselves, rather than their teachers: "What did I learn today?"—and not just because their mothers will want to know! In capturing these powerful learning stories we will be answering Dale Spender's challenge to assess not only what is in our students' heads.

Nattering at Navcon

Dale Spender didn't disappoint; dressed in purple, she continued to question the organisation of schools, a theme started by Tom Sergiovanni.

She reminded us, as teachers, of the futility of continuing to rely on an authority model when we can no longer rightly claim to be authorities. Instead we must accept the democratisation of information-making and reinvent ourselves as members of a learning community. By learning from each other we will break down this industrial hierarchy.

As the printed word makes way for digital text the education system, based as it is on the printed word, will need to transition or become an anachronism. Learning no longer equates to reading and writing, rather it is better thought of as a process of knowledge production. Spender is convinced that digital texts, which oppose one size fits all education by focussing on the learner's needs, are better tools for this new learning.

Dale transported us virtually to Woodcrest College where staff have made this transition. A school where staff and students are partners in producing, not reproducing, knowledge (the physical manifestation of this philosophy is the absence of photocopiers at Woodcrest, only printers). Dale shared the insightful comment of one Woodcrest student:

Now we've got computers, our heads aren't the best places for keeping information.

She used this evidence of the changing nature of knowledge to issue a challenge to teachers:

How do we know students are learning if the information is not in their heads?

Promises, promises

Tom Sergiovanni's keynote at Navcon2k4 challenged educators to reconsider the organisation of schools and the role of leadership within those schools. As social organisations, Sergiovanni sees schools as communities of learners. Sergiovanni's learning community consists of teachers and learners in common fellowship of learning for the public good. Learning, which when aggregated, represents an asset—Douglas Engelbart's concept of collective IQ.

Sergiovanni made the point that the efficacy of technology enhanced learning is dependent on engaging learners—a particularly pertinent point given this was an ICT conference for schools and made more relevant by Sergiovanni reading excerpts from the previous day's Christchurch Press:

There are a lot of children who know what their rights are, but not enough who are aware that there are responsibilities that go with those rights.

Building community, with defined roles and responsibilities, is key to improving the situation according to Sergiovanni. A school's vision is at the heart of developing community and is unique, in contrast to the industrial view of organisations which suggests schools can be standardised—one vision does not fit all.

Schools who share a vision perform better than those that lack clear focus; without students connecting with their school's vision learning will not take place. Therefore teachers have a role in connecting students with that vision. Discouragingly, the longer students stay at school the weaker are their connections.

Sergiovanni stressed the importance of a vision being a working document and likened visions in action to trademarks. A trademark or brand is a narrative and it is through story that a school's vision is built and maintained. Students' voices need to be heard if they are going to engage with school. I was reminded of Steve Denning who believes strong brands are grounded in narratives:

[a brand is] a promise about what value the company will deliver to customers. It’s a promise that the company needs to keep if it wishes to enjoy the continued relationship with its customers.

Fittingly Sergiovanni concluded by asking us to make promises—promises to our students, promises to their parents.

Crisis? What crisis?

After a week away at conference I took Marshall McLuhan's advice and resorted to pattern recognition to make sense of my overloaded Bloglines subscriptions. I’ve talked about crises in science education before so I thought I would comment on a related pattern which caught my eye.

In the UK the BBC reports that science student numbers are declining and at the same time (via Joanne Jacobs) Christie Davies questions, with his tongue firmly in his cheek, the relevancy of science.

Science is more than a collection of facts to be memorised, it is a powerful and useful lens with which to view the world. Herein lies the problem; we often teach science as a series of unrelated facts. To quote from Lugi Pirandello's Six Characters in Search of an Author:

But a fact is like a sack. When it's empty it won't stand up. And in order to make it stand up you must first pour into it all the reasons and all the feelings that have caused it to exist.

Our science teaching is too much like a limp sack for my liking. How then do we inject reason and feeling into our teaching?