School Curriculums: Technology As An Opportunity And Challenge
In our ever-changing world, our curriculum and the way we teach our students must adapt to meet these changes. Our students are living in a world where they have access to an enormity of information at their fingertips and adults are no longer the primary source for their information. This paper will focus on technology as an opportunity and challenge in the educational leader’s role in developing and planning the school curriculum.
Technology has begun to change the roles of educators and students. In the traditional classroom, the teacher is the primary source of information, and the learners passively listen and receive it. However, because of the access to information and educational opportunity that technology has enabled, in many classrooms today we see the teacher’s role shifting as students take more responsibility for their own learning using technology to gather relevant information. Schools and universities across the country are beginning to redesign learning spaces to enable this new model of education, foster more interaction and small group work, and use technology as an enabler.
Opportunities for communication and collaboration have greatly been expanded by technology. Traditionally, classrooms have been relatively isolated, and collaboration has been limited to other students in the same classroom or building. Today, technology enables forms of communication and collaboration undreamt of in the past. Students can also go on a virtual field trip and Skype authors. Students in a classroom in the rural U.S., for example, can learn about the Arctic by following the expedition of a team of scientists in the region, read scientists’ blog posting, view photos, e-mail questions to the scientists, and even talk live with the scientists via a videoconference. Students can share what they are learning with students in other classrooms in other states who are tracking the same expedition. Students can collaborate on group projects using technology-based tools such as wikis and Google docs. The walls of the classrooms are no longer a barrier as technology enables new ways of learning, communicating, and working collaboratively. Technology presents us with many unique opportunities but it will be up to educational leaders to make the most of the opportunities provided by technology to change education so that effective and efficient education is available to everyone everywhere. The implications of growing up in an “always-on” technological environment are only now coming into focus. Recent research has shown dramatic shifts in youth behaviors, attitudes, and lifestyles – both positive and concerning – for those who came of age in this era.
As the educational leader, it is important to first make sure that the curriculum is aligned with current research on learning, the needs of the school’s current population, the mission and vision, and the state standards. Schools, teachers, and students have limits, a limited amount of instructional time a day, a limited amount of curriculum that can be taught in a day, and a limited amount of learning that can learned in a single school day. It is the educational leader’s job to prioritize and decide which skills and content must come first. In the world of rapid technological change, mass cultural adoption of technology, and the mediocre performance of our current education system should priority be on the focus on content and skills, or are there other possibilities we should consider?
Why is instructional change necessary in our schools? First, because in the past decade there has been an upwelling of developments featuring research-based, classroom-proven 'best practice' teaching strategies — accompanied by pioneering discoveries about learning and learners — which are simply too compelling to ignore. The stand-and-deliver model of teaching and learning, with the teacher at the center of instruction, is increasingly incompatible with today's youth; in some schools, it is giving way to more varied methods founded on research about how children learn. Independent school educators need to evolve with the emerging research on teaching and learning, and adapt their craft to the changing needs of students.
The principal has three jobs when it comes to curriculum: 1. Make sure there is one….lead the process of developing and designing curriculum. 2. Get it going in the school…lead the process of implementing the curriculum – getting teachers to teach it and assess it. 3. Check up on it….lead the process of monitoring the curriculum, asking the right questions and collecting the right data. And then swiftly making the modifications which will further advance learning.
Aim for 'subtle shifts.' Changing curriculum and instruction should be a gradual process, a matter of modifying single lessons rather than entire units. Successful instructional change is a matter of reflecting, planning, communicating, planning some more, making a 'subtle shift' in practice, reflecting some more, and then repeating the process.1 At Hawaii Prep, preparing to expand our kit-based science program at our K-8 campus, we sent a team of teachers, administrators, and community members to a weeklong training program (Leadership Assistance for Science Education Reform at the Smithsonian Institute). Rather than purchasing kits for science instruction in every classroom in grades K-8, we're inviting teachers to try individual units on a pilot basis, and, so far, several teachers have plunged into the program on their own initiative. In time, we believe others will be drawn to kit-based science by the infectious enthusiasm and by the success they witness in their colleagues' experiences — but it won't be a curriculum program that's forced upon everyone all at once, which would have a low threshold for buy-in among our talented and accomplished (and autonomous) faculty.
Start small. Work with individual teachers at first, or with small clusters of motivated individuals who buy into a proposed change and are excited to become experts in the new process and practices. Enthusiasm fueled by early successes and spread by word of mouth among students and teachers is contagious! This strategy shortcuts all the energy and time spent trying to convince skeptical, reluctant, and resistant faculty members to jump aboard an 'untested' change. Build it — with 'it' meaning an instructional innovation that works — and they will eventually come.
Be patient. Instructional change agents should anticipate anxiety. Individuals respond uniquely (at times unpredictably) to new ways of doing things, no matter how sensible or appealing the new ways might be. Expecting colleagues to hold to the same levels of performance and pliability one has for oneself leads to repeated frustrations and slows the process on a number of levels. Over time, favorable changes unite a critical mass of teachers whose collective enthusiasm overcomes initial resistance and gently diffuses the pervasive this-isn't-how-we've-always-done-it attitude. It takes time — often years — to successfully implement instructional change across a department, division, or entire school.
Make time for instructional review within the school day. Schools that place a high value on curriculum review and professional dialogue about instruction build it into the workday, rather than adding more meetings during the afternoons, evenings, or weekends when many teachers are involved in co-curricular activities or wish to enjoy precious family time or time alone. This is a vital consideration. Above all else, teachers need time to realize meaningful instructional improvement. The simplest way to create more time is to extend the length of the school year and add periodic in-service days for articulation; but, in some independent schools, this order of change could provoke a battle that might then undermine the good intentions of a curriculum review before it even gets underway. At other schools where I've worked, faculty members were afforded opportunities for collaboration on a regular basis when the school redistributed instructional time incrementally. For instance, adding two minutes to the beginning and end of the school day, and one minute less at the beginning and end of lunch, is hardly noticed, but it adds 30 minutes per week of instructional time in schools with a five-day week. This would allow for 60 minutes of instructional review every two weeks to be built into the regular workday, with a minimal disruption to the existing schedule.
Provide ready access to the resources necessary for change. For example, a number of excellent organizations host websites and conferences dedicated to instructional improvement, including the superb resources provided by the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development. It's important to anticipate increased needs that will emerge as a consequence of instructional change. At Hawaii Prep's K–8 campus, for example, with the move to more kit-based science instruction this year, we provided a part-time resource teacher to assist with setup and materials support to facilitate the new program's implementation. While the new position is a strain on the budget, we see it as a resource essential to the success of the initiative — and balanced against the big picture of potential benefits for children and teachers across the years ahead, plus considering the hundreds of hours already invested in the instructional change, a part-time resource teacher is a small price to pay. Plan ahead and make sure your new programs (and teachers) aren't starved for support. Although it will certainly safely bury a lot of fears. Ultimately, we are obliged to find ways to teach so that opportunities to learn are maximized. The children and families we serve in America's independent schools deserve no less.
