As we see it, the common thread of this weeks readings is affecting change. Cuban provides a window into a world where change is constantly demanded and attempted from above, but rarely achieved on the ground in any significant way. The Human Centered Design toolkit offers another approach to change by starting with the situation on the ground and working from there. The design way fixates on how to become an be the sort of individual that orchestrate or conjure this change: The Designer.
All of these can be discussed in terms of identity. In particular, by focusing on what it takes to become a designer, and what it means to be one, Nelson and Stolterman make identity central to the endeavor of design. Being a designer is not, as popular conceptions might hold, simply a matter of artistic or aesthetic talent, but also “… maturing as a whole person within larger webs of life…” and “…listening to the inner guidance of the seed of character pushing for full expression of a well lived life. (p.215)” This presumably includes a balanced diet and moderate exercise. Their point seems to be that the practice of design is inextricably bound with who the designer is in every facet of their life (as is illustrated with unimpeachable clarity in figure 15.1). However, the designer’s identity is not the only one we need to take into consideration.
As Nelson and Stolterman note, “Designing is the means by which desired ends become real. (p. 239)” This is another way of saying design is the way to realize intentional change. In figure 15.2 (p. 241), designers are presented as change agents who serve (or contract with) stakeholders. The introduction of stakeholders to the conversation is key, because it is here we can look at the importance of identity on the other side of the equation. Cuban offers us a window into the dynamics of change in public education, where stakeholders at different levels (who in many cases could also be seen as designers) lead to compromised outcomes.
In Cuban’s introduction “Inside the Black Box of Classroom Practice,” he points out a very peculiar contradiction that has existed in education for quite some time now. We have seen very interesting shifts in the identity of teachers, from “dress-clad women and tie-wearing men” who controlled the classroom with an iron fist in an extremely formal environment to the “jeans-wearing teachers drinking coffee” we are familiar with today (Pg. 6). No longer do we hear stories of the ruler wielding instructors who dominate the classroom. Similarly, education itself has shifted in identity. Before, it was a privilege for “largely white male children in the early nineteenth century” to instead “enrolling females, racial and ethnic minorities, and children with disabilities.” (Pg. 4) It has also gone from a largely religious driven organization to a secular one with the acceptance of more religious and ethnic minorities. It’s hard to argue that the identity of both teachers and the education system has not changed.
However, when examining the way teachers teach, we see something rather interesting. “While the organizational, governance, curricula, and formal school culture has changed dramatically in the past century, reformers have failed to alter substantially how teachers teach.” (Pg. 6) We have long seen that education has been attempting to change teacher-centered classrooms into student-centered learning environments that focus on a deeper level of understanding, inquiry-based learning, collaborative work, and an emphasis on connecting classroom learning to real-world experiences, yet the classic teaching model has largely been left intact. Even with the advent of a wide variety of technology that has been touted as being the seed for an education revolution, we watch as education remains largely unchanged and these new technologies are instead simply weaved into the already existing classroom structure. As Cuban puts it, “Overall, these first-order or incremental changes have largely left intact teaching routines that students’ grandparents visiting these schools would find familiar.” (Pg. 7) This leads to a rather interesting question. With such dramatic shifts in the identity of teachers and the educational system itself, why has the classroom largely remained the same?
As of late, there seems to be a very dramatic emphasis on further changing the identity of the teacher. “Change the teacher, the logic goes, and you improve student learning.” (Pg. 8-9) As we are all aware, a direct correlation has been assumed between the quality of teachers and the results on standardized tests.
“Such pseudo-causal linkages suggest that a federal law caused some high-achieving students to do poorly, again missing the complexity of teaching and learning, suggesting anew that teachers are solely responsible for tests scores without any mention of policy makers putting in place an infrastructure or neglecting to do so that supports teachers in their classroom lessons.” (Pg. 13)
A significant reason for such causal linkage being formed is due to the identity of the policy makers. While meaning for the best, these “policy elites” formed mostly of business and civic leaders are not educators. In reality, teachers have very little say in the policies being decided for them. Policy makers fail to see the natural variance in students that an educator comes across. Policy makers and educators are two very distinct communities, and it could be argued that the relationship in this case between designer (policy makers) and educators is most similar to the “Designer Artist” we examined in the last chapter. While the designers know the goal that is desired, they take very little input from the clients. We have to wonder, how do we go about changing the relationship between designers and clients in the case of education reformation?
School reform from a top-down perspective has consistently produced the same issue in education: classroom practice has rarely seen significant change. As Cuban argued the main reason is because the policy makers do not hear or try to understand the context, nor listen to the problems teachers have from their perspective. However, their needs, constraints, and dilemma in the school context have been underestimated by policymakers. What are the stories that we do not know about them? We need to hear them out first in order to make a change (IDEO, 2009).
There certainly is a gap between what the society think teachers’ responsibilities are and what the teachers’ think about what their responsibilities include. Today the governmental or societal request upon the classroom practice is about student-centered pedagogy and with technology-integration. They are pushing teachers to take on very specific roles or responsibilities, but at the same time they are dealing with other stakeholders’ needs which is very similar to the relationship that the designers have with their clients (Nelson & Stolterman, 2012). Does the idea of what makes a good teacher that the parents or students have match to the pedagogical goal? What if the goal of parents and students is to get high scores from their tests, SAT and get into one of the top Universities while those pedagogies do not necessarily guarantee these exact goals. When teachers are evaluated by the how many student got entrance to the highest Universities, not by the quality of their education/class, how do we resolve the dilemma between the ideal required by the government and the reality they face?
Also, is the design of education created by policymakers student-centered from the teachers’ perspective as well? The student-centered pedagogies fundamentally put emphasis on the students’ engagement in class throughout different learning activities, and tools, which requires lots of efforts and time for teachers. Putting the issue aside, their role in class also shifts from lecturers whose roles can be perceived explicitly, to facilitators whose roles are more toward helping out students to have ownership of their learning rather than teachers deliver knowledge. Isn’t this shifting role threatening their adoption of new pedagogy when the school is downsizing? We do not know what their stories are yet since we have not heard enough. We need to hear more to understand their context, and come up with solutions.