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Thank you for starting this important discussion, Dr. Lucero. I agree with you on all essential points -- except perhaps one. Before I come to this point, I would like to remind you of a bon mot that I believe is attributed to Benjamin Bloom: the educational reality lags at least 50 years behind the state of scientific knowledge. (However, I am not quite sure whether I would rather follow a proven scientist or an intelligent practitioner in case of doubt, see Ziegler & Vialle, 2017). And this 50-year gap, which I do not question, leaves me stunned.

The point where I don't entirely agree with you is that most reform efforts in education come from educators. In fact, I find that education has become far too much the plaything of various interest groups all trying to bring about reforms in their own sense. Whether it is the economy (education as preparation for a profession) or politics (many ideological education reforms), parents' or teachers' associations, etc., they all have their own agendas.

There are now two things to distinguish: (1) Who determines the direction of the reforms and (2) who is needed to implement them?

For (1) intelligent practitioners and (educational) scientists should provide the essential impetus. For (2) it requires a concerted action of all relevant social forces, otherwise reforms remain piecemeal and reflect the handwriting of the social group that was able to assert itself by chance.

I therefore regard it as the most important task to bring the various actors together. But let's not kid ourselves: Bringing all relevant actors together at one table and getting them to put their own interests aside in the interest of a good education almost sounds like an educational fairy tale. This is politics and goes far beyond the possibilities of the societal subsystem of education.

Reference

Ziegler, A. & Vialle, W. (2017). Using the Actiotope Model of Giftedness to bridge the gap between experiences and practice. In J. A. Plucker, A. N. Rinn, & M. C. Makel (Eds.), From giftedness to gifted education: Reflecting theory in practice (pp. 203-226). Waco, TX: Prufrock Press.

Dear Prof. Ziegler, thank you for your thoughtful answer. Regarding the one point that you did not agree with entirely, namely that attempted reforms come exclusively from Educators, I should have clarified a few points: By "reforms", I had in mind something fundamental, a paradigm change, where fundamental assumptions are questioned and reevaluated, and possible replaced. Yes, the more superficial changes that have often been advocated do come from various sources, such as The Federal Government, the business world, the bastions of religious practitioners, politicians, teachers' unions, etc. But, as I said, these are fairly superficial and "band-aid" treatments.

By the way, my thoughts regarding inputs from anthropologists revolved around studies of hunters and gatherers (who represent the vast majority of our cultural history) to inspire us in suggesting methods for teaching and learning, such as" 1) didactic story-telling; 2) "schooling" taking place near home and family; 3) being at one with nature and our environment; and 4) communalism throughout all important events and phases of our lives. Our brains must have grown and adapted to learn in these ways.

Maybe an eclectic borrowing from such diverse resources will lead to paradigm changes in Education.

Interesting question. I think and (as a project manager in curriculum reform) experience that in current education we are flooded with changes, either from governmental side (reducing funds, adding/changeing focal points, changeing registration and reporting procedures..), from changeing parental whishes (growth in 2-income households and 1 kid only parents), from industry (reduction of internship opportunities in Health etc.) and from within (IPAD schooling, Agora education).

The biggest problem is that - apart from budget cuts - most of these changes are done with the best intentions and usually do not work out well when projected to all education. There is no such thing as a reform is being best for all (sorry).

In project management the first question asked when someone wants to start something (a project) should always be 'what is the problem you want to fix?'. Why do we need a paradigm shift?

As a project manager in curriculum reform and as a researcher of teaching project management I do have a lot of (funded) critique on education and on research of education. But I did not find a reason (yet) for a paradigm shift. I'm curious for your reasons.

Regards, Steven Nijhuis

Dear Steven,

My reason is a simple one. People have been trying to improve Education (usually within a limited sphere, e.g., K-6) for the past 40 years. Instead of producing long-term, wide-spread improvements, the overall results tend to be short-lived and very limited in scope. And, overall, the quality of Education is not improving. There are so many reasons for this failure. But the last thing you should do is simple tweeking of one aspect or another and expect to see any significant improvement. For this reason, it is clear that we need a paradigm change.

You need to look at the situation systemically. Taking a systems approach, one of the first things you need to do is question the assumptions being made (explicit and implicit). Bringing in people with diverse backgrounds can expose these assumptions (conventional wisdom) by asking "naive" and fundamental questions. The next step is to come up with sets of justifiable assumptions that are conditioned on other basic and reasonable assumptions or contexts. From there, we can start brainstorming such that no idea is dismissed out of hand. Eventually, each promising system that supports greatly improved Education is documented (with all the assumptions and conditions stated explicitly). Then pilot programs are launched to test and improve each system. Once they have been validated, they would be ready to be implemented widely. Periodically, their implementation should be monitored to ensure that the spirit of each system is faithfully being adhered to, and to make improvements and adjustments as conditions are found to change.

A few more thoughts on this interesting topic:

One of the problems I face(d) in my research is how to measure the quality of education. One of the best works on this is from Kirkpatrick (1959, 1996, 2006), stating that to measure the effect you have to do a pre- and posttest on students. And still the effect of education can only be measured when compare taught students and non taught in practice.

Most of the articles I found on actual teaching practice either don't measure the quality or ask students to evaluate. The latter being not a good measurement of 'added value' as a small field test showed (Nijhuis, presented on and IEEE conference).

So when stating that the quality of Education is not improving, there has to be some kind of measurement. I could think of one: the end level is not improving (which in my perception could be true - I did not research). In my country the percentage of the population with a Higher Education degree is rising. With a constant end level, that could be noted as an improvement. If we combine a growing part of the population with a Higher Education degree with 'the quality is not improving' it has to be that the end level has gone down. Which is claimed by several - although we have an accreditation system in place to circumvent that.

I do like the approach of a blank field. Readdressing education from scratch. Please do not use a blunt brainstorm - since they have been proven to dampen creativity (Kahneman, 2012). Good questions would be: why do we put children in a classroom, why do we treat them all the same, why do we insist on measuring only a few 'growth parameters' like arithmetic and spelling and is education removing the curiosity from the child or is that a normal growing up pattern?

Just my 2 cents, keep up the good questions.

Hi Antonio Lucero

I think that one of the main failures of previous efforts (after budget constraints) is getting stakeholders on-board. When so many people have divergent opinions and solutions, it is detrimental to progress if they are not behind the proposed changes. And as Steven pointed out, I think we need to step back and reassess what it is that we want to achieve, then design a plan of how to get there. Our society has changed drastically in the past decade and teachers face issues that were not even heard of 10 years ago. We also face a higher ratio of students who struggle with learning disadvantages and need a different method of learning. An older book entitled A MInd at a Time by Mel Lavine, helps us to understand that as educators we need to view the whole child and find ways to stimulate their desire of learning and help them to actually see the usefulness of what they are learning in daily life.

My friends, First of all I should have clarified that the Educational system I have in mind is the USA system of public education.

Secondly, I would like to offer a third point of view that is distinct from both the current piecemeal approach and the top-down systems approach. This third point of view depends on SYNERGY.

When a problem is extremely complex and no single approach can adequately span all the requisite dimensions that bear on reaching a good solution, then the problem may need to be broken down into complementary, quasi-independent subproblems each one with its own domain and group of experts. Even though each subproblem is still very difficult, it should appear to be tractable.

All the groups share the same objective: Develop methods for rendering the best educational system.

Of course, we should expect that each domain will yield a suboptimal solution.

Some examples of quasi-independent domains: Self-actualization; the fine arts; mathematics; the neuroscience of learning; educational funding; the art of teaching; school administration; the manual arts; athletics; the psychology of the classroom; computer-based instruction; and the societal importance of all aspects of schooling (besides business and military applications).

In the initial phase of development, each group should work on its own without interacting with other groups to see how far they can go independently and to define inputs they need from other groups, as well as outputs they expect to provide to other groups.

After this initial phase, the groups should get together to review one another's results and to uncover how each group can help other groups to begin to meld into comprehensive, synergistic approach to establishing a good educational system.

That system is indeed hindered by several perverted incentives, I can understand your worries. I do think that besides those the separation of public funded and privately funded education is part of the problem.

In 2020 a book on innovating education will be published, I wrote a chapter from the PM perspective (why so many innovations fail). Do not forget one of those items: the disagreeing strong believes people in the education profession have on what is considered good education.

Dear Steven, Please note that I said: "All the groups share the same objective: Develop methods for rendering the best educational system." This begs the question of what is "best." My belief is that what is "best" is what is best for the student toward self-actualization. It should NOT be what is best for the economy, best for the political system, best for tax-payers, best for the national defense, best for becoming rich, best for getting into the ivy-league colleges, best for short-term pleasures, best for maintaining the status quo, best for religiosity, etc.

Once we have a people who can feel worthy and accomplished and confident and motivated, then they will be more likely to contribute their part to the general welfare.