I’ve just finished reading Disrupting Class, and I’ve also listened to the podcast of Paul Miller talking to two of the authors. Disrupting Class looks at the advances being made in the area of learning technologies, and explores the possibilities of transforming the application of ICT in the US schooling system.
Comparisons between US and emerging economies such as China are pretty fascinating at this point in time, and the authors delve into this in the introduction. Chinese classroom teaching is still based on rote-learning, although that is beginning to change, and yet it’s out-performing the more child-centred approach of the US. To try to explain this, the authors look at motivation, and specifically what they call extrinsic motivation (that originates from outside the task). They argue that just like Japan before them, Korea and Singapore are finding that the extrinsic motivation to learn in their societies is fading as economic prosperity and security are attained. The argument is left hanging at this point though, and no evidence is provided relative to more mature economies such as UK and US. To me, the discrepancy between the “old world” and the new simply means that there are huge forces “out there” well beyond the education system that powerfully influence the drive to learn in individuals – witness the fact that over 30 million Chinese children are currently taking piano lessons. This isn’t necessarily disagreeing with the authors’ ideas of extrinsic motivation; these are societies that have a real sense of moving forward, and this has a tremendously aspirational effect on the population. In contrast, US and UK are, in my opinion, playing an inherently defensive game in the world economy – attempting to protect their positioning by redefining themselves in terms of the knowledge economy, and this can and does filter down to the individual psyche in mysterious and amazing ways.
A lot of the thinking around all levels of education and training right now is driven by the need to compete at national level in the global economy. The focus of Disrupting Class is on the failure of the US school system to meet the individual learning needs of significant numbers of children, and what can be done about it. The authors argue that only with the adoption of sophisticated learning technologies that are beginning to emerge, will schools be able to move away from the current “one size fits all” approach that is failing so many children. The main problem that I had with this was that the authors acknowledge that no unambiguous model to describe all the permutations of intelligence type / learning style has been produced to date, and that the optimisation of learning technologies is dependent on this. Disrupting Class cites the well-known Gardner model of multiple intelligence, but this model is not without its critics who argue that the evidence to support this is scant, and that even at a theoretical level it remains problematic. The developmental psychologist Helene Guldberg provides a useful summary of this in her article “Class Divisions”, as well as a more general critique of this theory. Whilst the authors acknowledge the incompleteness of the theory, they are nonetheless happy to propose a society-wide solution based on it, which seems a bit like putting the cart before the horse.
I’m pretty confident that the ideas emanating from the definition of disrupting innovations, that have been amply discussed by Paul and the authors in the podcast and also in Paul’s blog, will be strategically and tactically sound, and don’t really have anything to add. This is hardly surprising given that this is precisely the area of strength from which the authors are approaching the whole issue of schooling. The authors are able to cite a number of contexts that would be particularly receptive even in the here and now, from home-schooled children to students needing to make up credits. Maybe the arguments could have been illustrated with more examples from the domain of education, though, rather than falling back on corporate / technology case studies.
Overall, it’s a good read (though the chapter on the importance of chatting to babies seemed to be slightly on a limb from the core line of argument, and is not original). The book has a US bias, but that can be quite interesting. In Britain, one of the drivers for the introduction of universal education was one of social control (the social upheavals as people moved en masse from the countryside to cities such as Manchester was perceived to be a threat to the social order) and producing a work-ready population. However in the US, because the distinctive origins of that country, the question of facilitating a vibrant participative democracy with a well-informed electorate was also a key consideration. Although not central to the widespread adoption of learning technologies, the socio-historical stuff in this book was quite engaging and provides interesting background. At Talis we’ve really got to become a lot better informed about the US educational system – one book I’m planning on reading is Philip Altbach, American Higher Education in the 21st century, 2005, for a general view.
Above all, it’s fascinating to consider what will be the impact of this change, not just on pedagogy and the learning experience, but on the education system as a whole and beyond, into the broad economy. And finally, it vindicates the approach that Talis has been taking for some time, namely the development of a software platform to facilitate the development of software by non-IT experts, and the growth of user networks.
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