Disrupting Education

Clayton M. Christensen, Michael B. Horn, and Chester E. Finn Jr. discussed disruptive innovation in education at the American Enterprise Institute on October 27. Despite the negative-sounding theme, their discussion wasn't about wrecking the educational system; rather, they discussed how to improve it.

Horn pointed to the theory of multiple intelligences as a reason students struggle to learn in a standardized setting. He argued students learn better in a customized setting where they can learn at their own pace and through methods that work for each individual.

One talking point that the panel continuously debated was the idea of virtual learning—where high school students take online courses but are not necessarily in a traditional classroom with a teacher. Having a virtual school would allow students to take the courses they want and learn in their own manner, and because of the low cost of the "schools," more money could be spent on other educational priorities. By 2019, Christensen and Horn think 50 percent of high school courses will be online. Finn challenged this opinion, saying teachers and teacher unions are too powerful to let their job security be threatened.

Do you think virtual schools would be a positive disruption to education's status quo?

Comments

[jsener]

Over the summer I did a rather complete blog series on the book . Among the comments there is that Disrupting Class relies excessively on multiple intelligences. It's a great concept, but not strong enough to hold everything that Disrupting Class tries to hang on it.

[Rob Darrow]

Virtual schools across the nation are already providing a "positive" disruption. Florida Virtual School and VHS, Inc. are two examples of this. The data collected by the North American Council for Online Learning (www.nacol.org) indicates there were 1 million K-12 students who took an online course last school year. In addition, national trends show a yearly increase in the number of students who are choosing to attend charter schools rather than their regular neighborhood schools, the number of home-schooled students, and the number of students dropping out of high school. The sheer numbers of students choosing these alternatives will negate any arguments suggesting that teacher unions will not allow this direction. Both the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers have produced useful documents that guide the development of online schools.

[David McGeary]

As an instructional technology specialist, I have been intrigued with the role of technology in strengthening learning experiences for students by appealing to multiple intelligences - not only via information encoding activities, but also in reflective exercises that allow students to apply their understanding of information / knowledge in cognitive exercises (via crystallized or fluid intelligence tasks). While the notion of intelligence is still somewhat one-dimensional, any teacher will agree that allowing multiple modalities of input via varied styles of representation is one way to truly enhance learning, particularly in youth. I would argue further that, in allowing students multiple methods to represent their understanding of material, it is easier to get an accurate idea of how effective instruction actually can be. If learning is a task, then assessment is clearly our only method of gauging efficacy and delineating between encoding and understanding. Howard Gardner has certainly unified these ideas in staging Visible Thinking theories in parallel to Multiple Intelligences. Virtual learning environments, aside from providing a familiar and media rich environment for the encoding of information, also provides a fantastic stage by which students can effectively demonstrate their understanding of a concept and engage in meaningful social interactions to improve understanding through their established networks online. Virtual Learning is the perfect conglomeration of traditional classroom learning theories, multiple intelligences, connectivist theories and visible thinking.

[John Adsit]

There is no question that virtual schools can be a positive disruption, but I think many people are missing Christensen's main points in this debate, and Multiple Intelligences is really a red herring in the argument. If we back away from the specifics (MI or any of the roughly 100 different theories on learning styles), what we are talking about is the ability to differentiate instruction to meet the needs of the individual student. I think we can all agree that different students have different needs, and Christensen's primary argument is that it is the current monolithic, factory-style, one-size-fits-all approach to education that prevents us from doing that. Virtual education has the potential to make such changes for several reasons, but roadblocks loom in its way. One of them is the primary one that Christensen points out--we have not yet developed the technological infrastructure that allows us to diagnose and adjust to student learning needs as well as we should. Christensen says that will come in time. The second is that we who are part of the virtual school movement are still learning how to do this. Too often we build our courses to look and work like the courses in traditional monolithic education, thus providing no real benefit instructionally. That, too, should change as we learn how to use this new tool. The third major roadblock is legislative. State laws and university admissions requirements require us to adopt the traditional limitations of regular schools, even though they make no sense in a virtual world. The "anywhere, anytime" and "work at your own pace" and "work to mastery" advantages that the virtual world brings to the student are lost under the severe seat time requirements some states impose. The ability of online programs to bring rich and exciting science experiences to students in remote and underprivileged areas is lost when universities say that the existence of any sort of virtual lab experience in the course disqualifies it for use in college admission. It is hard to break away from the old, monolithic approach when the law says you are not allowed to do so.

[James E. Mac Shane]

The perspective of the article focuses on two of the basic developing education challenges for humanity on the planet today.
One is Multiple Intelligences that is an aspect of the search for scientific understandings of the total human intellectual development processes that go beyond the historic educational goals. The other is the importance of the span and spectrum of information that technological communication developments are involved in every day life for all ages.

The educational problem that educators are becoming aware of is related to the amount and span of information that students experience in their environment. It is becoming more important to help our students to become aware and consciously use the knowledge of their experiences than it is to introduce theoretically new information.

The developing educational interest in individualization is relates to the most fundamental change for the historic education process. This is a result of scientific understandings of the natural human learning processes that are looking at the differences between the internally developed intellectual processes and the historic externally developed educational processes.

Multiple Intelligence points to the natural internal unavoidable human learning processes. Education is about the individual student's unconscious to conscious positive and negative choices as they relate to any given subject. This is where education is heading.

[Margo/Mom]

Virtual high schools as currently available have not been well-developed to offer any individualization beyond that of pacing. Most function as electronic workbooks--and do well for highly motivated students who can move through more quickly and as better than nothing for drop-outs, near drop-outs and other undesireables. It's a quick fix for kids who sat through the required Carnegie units but didn't pass the course.

What I have not yet seen, is the development of virtual high school courses that do some of the things that virtual higher education has encompassed: wider geography, actual cohorts learning together in an online community. Rather than packaging the basics, virtual education could be expanding the available curriculum. An urban district (or a cluster of rural districts) could offer a single section of highly specialized content (17th century women poets, or changing geography of the middle east, or Spanish V). It would have a beginning date, an end date, regular assignments. What it would not have is a fixed location or time of day to meet. There would be required reading, written assignments, virtual discussions, possibly even group projects in the virtual world.

This is the kind of disruption that our students are already causing by bringing cell phones to class or logging into chat rooms in the computer lab. It would serve to enlarge, rather than narrow, the available curriculum, and it would put to full use the wide range of technological communication that our students are already far better versed in than we are.

[Audrey Guzik]

Understanding a student's own learning style, interests and strengths to guide and support their education in all subjects is already the mainstay of a well-established approach: the Montessori method. Assessment of each child requires a sensitive, highly trained and intelligent teacher who relies not only on a child's performance on objectively measurable tasks from the curriculum, but also on in-class observation and conversation with the child herself. In order to create the sense of seamless self-motivated learning the teacher is always a step ahead, anticipating where the child is headed and making available to her the right lessons at the right time in the right way with enough flexibility to incorporate the child's unique interests.This requires great familiarity with the child, and could never be accomplished through virtual or one-time assessments. Certainly older students will be able to take a more active part in this process, and virtual classes could help provide the flexibility a truly individualized education would require. However, as mentioned by an earlier post, the assessment and the right kind of curriculum and the procedure for creating an individual path through the material is a great task. Can it be automated? Perhaps. Adaptive computer systems are already in use in various applications. But it would require a comprehensive effort to develop and research such a system. In addition, how will the virtual educational world integrate with the physical resources and human interactions that students will also require? If this is done piece-meal and without high quality research to back it up, and stymied by outdated limitations, mindless red tape, and resistance and ignorance from administrators (as so many new programs in education are done) it could be a disaster for students. If it is done well it could be a revolution that leads to thoughtful, self-motivated, responsible, satisfied and successful students prepared to develop their unique skills and talents to their full potential. We are so far from having anything close to what is necessary that it would take a great effort to get there.

[Dana Koch]

To MargoMom...Take a look at Virtual High School Inc. based in Massachusetts. They offer teacher facilitated, cohort based online courses that follow the tradtitional semester schedule and supplement the courses students take at their local high school. www.goVHS.org offers exactly the kind of online courses you are looking for and exactly the kind of "disruptive innovation" that Christensen refers to in his conclusion.