Antony T. Smith
University of Washington Bothell
I have been asked to share my thoughts about the future of the National Network for Education Renewal (NNER) from my own perspective—that of a literacy researcher and teacher educator, as well as a former regional coordinator for the League of Small Democratic Schools, participant in the Institute for Educational Inquiry’s leadership program, and classroom teacher. Considering the challenges of our time, Linda Darling-Hammond (2005) observed that:
The enormous complexity of today’s world and the even greater complications of tomorrow’s signal a new mission for education: one that requires schools not merely to ‘deliver instruction’ but to ensure that students learn—and to do so in more powerful ways than ever before. If schools are to meet this new challenge, they must dramatically increase the intellectual opportunities they offer while meeting the diverse needs of students who bring with them varying experiences, talents, and beliefs about what school means for them (p. 2).
I would add that students also bring with them diverse language, cultural, and life experiences that represent funds of knowledge that must be tapped in order to actualize the kinds of intellectual opportunities referred to here. Further, we are no longer in the technology or information age. We are in what Daniel Pink (2006) calls the conceptual age, and in this age making meaning and connections will be most valued. As Kylene Beers (2007) notes, the focus of the conceptual age will be on multiple possibilities rather than single solutions. Creative thinking will be the key to success.
I have four points I would like to make in terms of the conceptual age, the four-part mission of the Agenda for Education in a Democracy (AED), and the future of the NNER. First, I believe we must refocus our efforts on the child. I think of this in terms of students’ access to knowledge, and the ever-widening gap between school reading and world literacy, a gap that is caused in part by our current system of accountability and our focus on student outcomes rather than the students themselves. Outcomes, achievement, and learning are not synonymous, and the assumption that the concepts behind these terms are aligned is dangerous.
In literacy research, the terms digital natives and multiple literacies are becoming increasingly common in describing the new and innovative ways students are melding literacy and technology—ways that often don’t work well at school and are seldom measured. Kylene Beers (2007) wrote about a visit to a high school where, in the library, she overheard a student swearing to himself as he typed at a computer workstation. She asked him what was up, finding out that he was responding to posts on his blog about environmental awareness. A blog he had maintained, daily, for three years. A blog with a large number of hits. Later, when Kylene ran into this student’s English teacher, she was told that he was failing class because he just didn’t write much and didn’t seem to care about assignments. As this story demonstrates, the gap between school reading and world literacy is huge, and it is widening. Access to knowledge must be provided to bridge this gap, for both native English speakers and English language learners.
Providing students with access to knowledge, whether technological or otherwise, remains a crucial goal in educating students for life in a democracy. This leads me to my second point, that to provide access to knowledge we must redefine what it means to be a “highly qualified teacher”, as student achievement and teacher seniority, for example, are not sufficient defining characteristics. Sonia Nieto (2005) provides a different list of characteristics of highly qualified teachers. Such teachers:
These characteristics are aligned closely to the idea of a nurturing pedagogy, where teacher skill and knowledge, and student motivation and interests, factor into what is taught and what is learned. In literacy this means going beyond than the five elements of reading identified by the National Reading Panel (2000), which are: phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, comprehension, and vocabulary. Take reading fluency, for example. Focusing too much on boosting the words correct per minute rate scores for students only makes kids read faster. Is this the purpose of reading? Is this the best skill set for their adult lives in our society?
I believe that a nurturing pedagogy in literacy must include three additional elements beyond the five identified by the National Reading Panel: These are motivation, interest, and engagement. All three are key not only to literacy, but also to civic engagement and, ultimately, to an active life in a democracy.
With that said, a nurturing pedagogy is not going to be enough if the school itself is not functioning in a way that supports it. This brings me to my third point, one that John Goodlad (1979) eloquently stated almost 30 years ago—that we must retire the factory model of schooling and replace it with an ecological model. The factory model of schooling is a major source of misalignment between school goals and actual school functions. This model, with an emphasis on outputs, diminished expectations, and narrow measures of accountability, is fundamentally incompatible with essential school goals of narrowing the education gap and supporting the process of lifelong learning in the conceptual age. Schools, unlike factories, do not have the means by which to be accountable for an end product. The factory model, with its replication-oriented reforms and scientifically based notions, does not work. In fact, the current accountability system under No Child Left Behind is itself not scientifically based. Yet we are giving more tests than ever, and the factory model remains widely accepted.
Twelve years ago I taught in a public elementary school that was governed by a program delivery council comprised of teachers, administrators, and parents. This council considered district learning goals and the needs of students, making curriculum recommendations based on these factors. Today that same school must comply with a district-wide curriculum web that mandates what is taught each day in every subject, despite vast demographic differences across classrooms and schools. Teachers in this district must submit a signed form each time they dare to deviate from the master plan, and such behavior is not encouraged. This approach not only “raises the bar”, it hits kids with it.
What schools must do is replace the factory model with an ecological model of education that is concerned, as Goodlad asserts, “with interactions, relationships, and interdependencies within a defined environment” (1979/2006, p. 90). With a new focus on how a school functions as an organism, rather than as a factory with production goals, the emphasis on accountability and sustainability shifts so that external expectations are examined in context and in relation to individual and group life in classrooms and schools. Again, the focus must be on the child, not the test score.
An ecological model of schooling dovetails with the idea of enculturating youth in a democracy because a factory line cannot do this. I have an example from one of my M.Ed. advisees, Amy (a pseudonym), who is also a high school English teacher. Last year Amy was assigned a remedial reading class. Her sole purpose was to give these angry teenagers enough practice assessments so that they would pass achievement tests they had recently failed. This was not a nurturing pedagogy. This was enculturation into failure.
The situation of these students reminds me of a point made by Randy Bomer (2007), who noted that too often, “students have experienced reading and writing as demonstrations of compliance with authoritarian norms, rather than as ways of acting in the world, tools for doing something real. Could it be that when they are uninterested in literate activity, it’s because of what they think literate activity is for?” (p. 310).
Amy tried to work with her disgruntled students on their practice tests, but after a few weeks, tossed out her plans and instead had everyone read an emotionally charged and highly engaging book, The absolutely true diary of a part-time Indian, by Sherman Alexie (2007). Her students were interested. They were engaged. They read the book. Discussions were held in both large and small groups. Students and teacher alike laughed, argued, and cried. This was not just a set of practice assessments to prepare for mandated achievement tests. This was dialogue. This was discourse. This was life. Later, many of the students passed the tests. As a master’s student, Amy was able to get support for this project from her coursework and from her advisor. But this was just one teacher.
Amy noted that her whole school needed the level of support she had received. This brings me to my fourth point—that we as educators from all levels must work to reinvigorate and strengthen university-school partnerships, because this is one of the most powerful ways that we can all become supportive and involved stewards of the schools. While I know that a number of NNER members are involved in active and effective school-university partnerships, I also know that many are struggling in isolation. In my current work, my colleagues and I have managed to maintain is a connection between our teacher education program and one elementary school in which we conduct our literacy methods courses. This partnership, although limited in scope, is able to provide teacher candidates with opportunities to put class theories into practice, for students to work with teacher-candidate buddies, and for classroom teachers to participate in ongoing professional development exploring literacy practices. It also allows the instructors of the course to help work as stewards of the school.
Truly, as John Goodlad, Cori Mantle-Bromley, and Stephen Goodlad suggest, “the partner school is perhaps an idea whose time has come…It is the primary vehicle for the renewal of both schools and educator preparation programs” (2004, p. 118). It is also a mechanism for the university to provide support as a steward of the school. From my work with teachers and administrators in independent and alternative schools participating in the League of Small Democratic Schools, I know that there is a desperate need for support and stewardship. The survival of these schools depends on it.
In sum, it is clear that we, as members of the NNER, must refocus our efforts on the child. We must redefine what it means to be a highly qualified teacher. We must retire the factory model of schooling and replace it with an ecological model, and we must work to reinvigorate university-school partnerships. In this conceptual age we must approach renewal with an increased sense of urgency. We must operationalize the mission of the Agenda for Education in a Democracy in ways that make a daily difference in the lives of students and their teachers.
To move into the conceptual age I close with ideas shared by John Goodlad (1979/2006) in his landmark work, What schools are for—ideas that are perhaps more relevant now than ever before. He observes that the purpose of the school is to develop the full potential of the individual, for the sake of both the individual and our democracy. We as educators and members of society must engage in dialogue in order to consider how to address the misalignment between our ideals and actions. We are accountable for the condition of our schools, and it is time for us to participate in their reconstruction. In the afterword of the recent edition, Goodlad writes: “Our nation is marked by a characteristic that is both interesting and frightening: We are extraordinarily patient with human folly, sometimes not paying attention until it has brought us to the edge of a precipice. Then we look down and wake up” (2006, p. 153). Surely we as educators have looked down into the precipice of current times and have woken up. Now is the time to act to push forward with the Agenda for Education in a democracy with a sense of urgency, to improve our schools, to educate our children, and to sustain our democracy.
References
Alexie, S. (2007). The absolutely true diary of a part-time Indian. New York: Little, Brown, and Company.
Beers, K. (2007). The measure of our success. In K. Beers, R. E. Probst, & L. Rief (Eds.), Adolescent literacy: Turning promise into practice (pp. 1-13). Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.
Bomer, R. (2007). The role of handover in teaching for democratic participation. In K. Beers, R. E. Probst, & L. Rief (Eds.), Adolescent literacy: Turning promise into practice (pp. 303-331). Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.
Darling-Hammond, L. (2005). Educating the new educator: Teacher education and the future of democracy. New Educator 1 (1), 1-18.
Goodlad, J. I. (1979, 2006). What schools are for. Bloomington, IL: Phi Delta Kappa International.
Goodlad, J. I., Mantle-Bromley, C., & Goodlad, S. J. (2004). Education for everyone: Agenda for education in a democracy. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
National Reading Panel. (2000). Teaching children to read: An evidence based assessment of the scientific literature on reading and its implications for reading instructions. Rockville, MD: National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.
Nieto, S. (2005). Schools for a new majority: The role of teacher education in hard times. New Educator 1 (1), 26-42.
Pink, D. (2006). A whole new mind: Why right-brainers will rule the future. New York: Penguin.
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