Personal Paradigm Shift

I am on a journey full of confusion and simultaneous inspiration...

It has been fascinating to read my colleagues' blogs and realize that we are all in similar, yet distinctly different places on our journey... This is likely a result of our different constructs and the lenses through which we process new information. Nonetheless, I am captivated by the constancy and inevitability of change that we all face.

I often strive for a moment of stillness amidst the chaos of daily life, and yet, stillness seems but a mystical notion in our world of hum, buzz, energy, and movement. Considering the notion of an inevitable paradigm shift, it becomes clearer that I must embrace the lack of stillness and seek to push the envelope of change on a deeper level so that movement may indeed commence where it is most needed. As noted on one website, we are to “Think of a Paradigm Shift as a change from one way of thinking to another. It's a revolution, a transformation, a sort of metamorphosis. It just does not happen, but rather it is driven by agents of change,” (http://www.taketheleap.com/define.html). Thus I am left with the notion that I am called to be a “change agent” in the education reform movement… but where to begin?

A website for educational leaders advised: “As an academic leader you are called on to not only be a leader of change but to be sensitive [to] the many reasons why change in programs or procedures are not only needed but becoming more urgent,” (http://www.thenationalacademy.org/ready/change.html). Taking this advice to heart, I am challenged to conceive of second-order change in a world that is overrun by a history of first-order change. In the history of education, I see evidence of first-order changes (those in which the conditions may be easily reversed to return to the “way things were”) in such movements as phonics vs. whole-language instructions, ‘vocational’ education’s rebirth as ‘career technical’ education, closed to open back to closed classrooms, and countless other hints of change. These so-called innovations generally led to myriad debates and publications both in support-of and against the innovations at hand. Regardless of the feedback, however these movements within education have been on an ever-swinging pendulum that does nothing more than sway back and forth with an insatiable need for “further discussion”… At what point does the discussion end and second-order, irreversible change begin???

The time has come for history to stop repeating itself. “Second-order change is deciding – or being forced – to do something significantly or fundamentally different from what we have done before. The process is irreversible: once you begin, it is impossible to return to the way you were doing before,” (http://www.thenationalacademy.org/ready/change.html). We know the status quo isn’t working, the achievement gap continues to grow, and students are not constructing real knowledge when they are “being taught to the test.” As a former teacher, I recall being so overwhelmed by the theories I was expected to learn, that I didn’t even have the time to think about the fact that, perhaps, the entire system into which I was being indoctrinated, was, and continues to be, broken. 

There are many reasons second-order change does not take place, including, but not limited to the following:
     o    a tendency to mandate change from the top
     o    organization-wide initiatives that lose sight of individual units
     o    overwhelming people with too much at once
     o    operating from wrong cultural assumptions
     o    the desire for instant success on the part of the leadership
     o    appropriate resources not available
     o    change by memo with no discussion, no ownership
     o    comfort with the status quo
     o    constant reinforcement (celebration) of "how good we are": so why change?
     o    a reward system that doesn't match reality
     o    some people thrive on chaos and don't want issues solved
     o    competing cultures: trustees, students, faculty, staff, each thinking they "own" the institution   and not agreeing in fundamental areas (http://www.thenationalacademy.org/ready/change.html).
When considering the barriers to change, and yet the dynamic nature of a paradigm shift, it is clear that education is at an impasse… Change is coming, whether or not people are ready for it. As a new teacher, I could not have guessed that I was stepping into a flawed system because I was a product of this system, and while I was not always happy with it, I was also taught to accept the status quo, not to make waves, and accept that those who came before me knew what they were doing… Well, what if they didn’t?! Don't we all learn through trial and error?

A paradigm shift related to technology in education is already underway. Some people think they are on-board because they use PowerPoint presentations in their classroom, others think that “clicker” responses keep their class engaged, and yet students continue to sit in rows, bubble in forms, and swallow the standards which they are force fed daily. Changing behaviors, those of educators, students, and citizens alike, will not be easy, hence the reason a true paradigm shift takes time. Based on theories of behavior change, it is likely that a number of benefits and support systems need to be in place in order for authentic behavior change to commence and persist (http://www.csupomona.edu/~jvgrizzell/best_practices/bctheory.html

Answer? More of the status quo…