Todays blog is off topic for the class, yet in another way its not. I am currently taking an engineering managment class on organizational change. I am thoroughly enjoying the material and looking at things from a very logical and discrete view again. It is my comfort zone.
We are reading Collins book Good to Great and Kotter/Cohen The Heart of Change along with Who Moved My Cheese. It is an interesting combination of books and the content not so unlike looking at why teachers wont change to use technology. In Good to Great and The Heart of Change the change discussed comes from the leadership and a shared vision. After having the right people in place the change is then, according to Kotter, sprung from a sense of urgency. With that that sense of urgency, it is difficult to get people motivated. A logical argument does not motivate change like a sense of urgency does.
So what creates a sense of urgency in teachers to change to use technology. Is there leadership that spurs it on? When considering asking one teacher to change, what does it take to create that catalyst for change.
It seems to me that simply making a logical argument for FOSS based on cost and its there, does not provide the basic organziational management to create change and remove teachers from their comfort zone to use technology in a way they do not desire or feel is even necessary. Maybe a different theoretical framework, one based on management, might be better utilized.
Ok.. so there is no research backing up my thoughts here.. they are just that ... my thoughts and something I may, or may not, pursue further.
Well Lila, my off-the-cuff quick answer to what would bring technological change would be the governor of free market enterprise.
ReplyDeleteHow would this be brought to the schools and why do I say that? Well, 1) a sense of urgency can arrive only when one is not shielded from reality and as long as schools have the protection of the state they are shielded from market forces 2) because most schools are thusly shielded. So,if my quick off-the-cuff, intuitive answer is correct the answer would be for all schools to be privatized in order for the sense of urgency to develop. In a free market system school innovation would result purely because competitive market forces would demand excellence and in this case the softening and deadening influence of layers of bureaucracy and unnecessary fluff would not be allowed to continue and thus changes would be made or the schools would be forced to fold.
An additional problem or maybe totally different from the suggestion above about the "public" schools being shielded from market forces is just something I've noticed around UT. There is lots of technology that lays around with no training for the profs. No one around our building in Plant Sciences knows how to run some of the fancy media tech stuff and no one trains us. I think this may be typical of a lot of places!! So, how can profs change if they get no help?
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