Final Paper: How Innovative Schools are Finding Success

How Innovative Schools Are Finding Success

Tim Wilson

Endicott College

Introduction

            The need for truly transformational education reform has been continually building in my mind as my experiences in education grow.  I have always had the idea that there was a better way to learn than what in the industrialized method that nearly every school is modeled around, but I didn’t yet see a path to what that different system would look like.  In March of 2015, I was lucky enough to be in attendance at the Innovate conference at Graded School in Sao Paulo, Brazil.  The coordinators of the conference were careful to make sure that Innovate was not just another tech conference.  I was introduced to some of the techniques and practices that innovative teachers and administrators are utilizing that are the next stage on from just using technology because it’s flashy and new.  Taking a deeper look at how we can use or not use technology to foster greater student learning.

The session that had the most impact on me was the last session that I attended.  I had noticed that Dan Kerr, who was the middle school principal at my previous school after I left and is good friends with several of my good friends, was presenting.  I had actually never met Dan and thought I would go introduce myself and stay for his presentation.  It was great connecting with him, oddly enough he owns one of my wife’s paintings, but it was the content of his session that solidified my reasoning to go into administration.  The topic of the session was Blue Sky Schools.  If there were no restrictions, financial, social, geographical, or physical environment, what would your school look and feel like?  Most of the participants in the group were administrators and Dan had asked three heads of schools to act as a sounding board panel of experts.  What was great to hear was that some of the “out of the box” ideas that were being tossed out, some of the schools were already beginning to implement them or are in the process of actualizing these dreams.  The other thing that I noticed was that all of the ideas actually seemed feasible and well thought out.  We weren’t talking about ‘The Matrix’ where to learn Kung Fu, all you had to do was upload the skills to your brain.  The leaders that were on the panel also then discussed what they saw as the challenges that our idealistic ideas would face.  They also talked about a small few innovative schools that were testing the waters.  I came away from this session and immediately enrolled in the Endicott Masters in Administration.  I had been accepted for the summer before but was thinking about doing a different Masters in Educational Technology.  I knew after that hour and a half that I wanted to be a part of the change that I see has to happen in education and focused on these questions that this paper will focus on as well.

   

How are innovative schools successfully transforming the traditional educational system and what are the roadblocks that must be overcome?

            Each innovative school has its own mission and vision of how to best provide for the enhancement of their students’ learning.  There are, however, several programs or features that these schools have in common.  Not all of the schools adhere to all of these components, but all of them focus on at least one and most on several areas.  The trends that stand out are Blended Learning, Project Based Learning, Experiential/Apprenticeship Learning with connections to the community, Maker Spaces, and purpose designed physical environments.  These areas of focus also often overlap and compliment each other.

            Blended Learning is the practice of blending online education with face-to-face learning, including PBL and Experiential Learning (Jokinen & Mikkonen 2013).  One of the biggest concerns of many educational institutions is finding enough time to cover all of the content that students will be tested on in their state, federal, or college required standardized tests (Kahn 2012).  Schools with Project Based Learning or Experiential Learning curriculums especially feel the pressure of catering to specific tests while dedicating large portions of their time to pursuing the interests of the children.  The iSchool in New York City attacks this issue by using a Blended Learning approach.  PBL is the basis of their philosophy, but their students are also required to take the Regents Exams to receive their state certified high school diploma.  The leaders of the iSchool realized that much of the content for the exams focused on straightforward, low-level concepts that could be memorized.  The other thing that they noticed was that many of the students already had a strong understanding of the required concepts and were being lumped together with everyone else in order to make sure that all of the necessary content was covered for each student.  By utilizing online learning for the content specific to the Regents exams, students are able to be self-paced, moving on when they have demonstrated mastery of a concept.  The iSchool found that many of the students worked well ahead of what a regular class would have, completing the curriculum content in one and a half years, or even one year, compared to the two years set aside in a traditional class.  Taking back this much time allows for the iSchool to spend significantly more time working in PBL modules which build 21st-century skills such as collaboration, problem-solving and critical thinking (Brown & Berger 2014).    

            In Project Based Learning (PBL) students drive the learning through their natural inquiry.  Projects are guided and facilitated by teachers but remain as a result of the students’ interests.  Skilled facilitators bring together transdisciplinary content throughout the inquiry process instead of segregating it into specific subjects (Bell 2010).  Research shows that Project Based Learning or Phenomenon Based Learning significantly increases student engagement and develops specific content-area skills.  It also shows that students engaged in PBL show greater development in 21st-century skills like collaboration, problem-solving, critical thinking, and presenting (Mosier, Bradley-Levine, & Perkins 2016).  Many of the inquiries are based on current events or events that are personally relevant to the students and their community.  By solving real-world problems that are meaningful to them students are driven to design their own inquiries, plan their learning, organize their research, and implement a variety of learning strategies.  On top of the content knowledge, students develop responsibility, independence, and discipline in PBL programs (Bell 2010).  There has been a big shift in Finnish education toward PBL methods since 2013 and by the 2016-2017 school year, all public schools will be required to dedicate large periods of time to Phenomenon Based Learning (Zhukov 2015).

            Experiential Learning is where learners acquire knowledge through personal experiences.  However, to develop the knowledge that an experience might have embedded in it, the Experiential Learning model focuses on reflection at a metacognitive level upon the experiences students are involved in (Dewey 1938).  For older students, Experiential Learning can take the form of apprenticeships, trade programs, outdoor education, or study abroad programs (Rivera 2015).  There are some schools, like the THINK Global School that take this method to the extreme.  THINK has no brick and mortar school to speak of as the various classes are conducted in whatever country they are in at the time.  Each year they choose three countries for students to study in and explore, making the experience of learning biology that much more real when it is in the jungles of Costa Rica, or history in Bosnia (THINK 2016).  Both PBL and Experiential Learning are rooted in the ideas of John Dewey, that children build knowledge and understanding through doing and engaging in high-quality experiences (1938).

            One of the quickest ways that innovative schools are changing the concept of what school is is by redesigning the physical school itself.  There are a multitude of creatively designed schools that are the collaboration of brilliant architects and pedagogical leaders.  The Fuji Kindergarten building, completed in 2007, is a great example of how the environment can provide the inspiration and opportunity for learning.  The building was designed by Takaharu Tezuka, a Tokyo-based architect, whose philosophy on an early child, as he says is “Don’t control them, don’t protect them too much.  They need to tumble sometimes.  It makes them learn how to live in this world.” (2014)

The school boasts an accessible, open rooftop that children free to run around to their hearts content.  The image below tracks a single kindergarten student’s movement throughout the day.  On average the students travel 4km per day

The rooms in the under-layer are open on at least one wall so that children can come and go as their interests take them. 

            What the most innovative of schools are doing is not simply adopting a new method of teaching, adding more technology, or creating interesting spaces to learn in.  They are combining several of these innovations to create schools that disrupt the very notion of what school is.  For schools to engage in truly transformational change, Grant Lichtman says that they must focus on two areas or planes as he calls them.  The first plane is building a systematically strong and sustainable environment that, at all levels, focuses on the most important area that schools value: learning.  The second plane deals with focusing on all of the elements that are necessary for organizational innovation.  Without supporting each and every step, programs end up unsuccessful to varying degrees as demonstrated in the chart below (2015).      

Outcomes

The desired outcome for these innovative schools as they become more and more prevalent is to completely disrupt the educational landscape as early adopters of the path out of the current learning system that the rapid rate of change is making irrelevant.  The rate of technological advancement and the unknown of potential job choices that currently do not exist, demands different approaches to learning and the preparation of our students for college, jobs, and for life.  As innovative schools continue to adopt the practices described above while constantly returning to their focus on learning the paradigm shift will and is beginning to occur.  Soon enough the innovative schools will become the norm.

Students involved in the innovative programs that schools are employing will be independent, critical thinkers who have a broad global view.  Students will be highly capable problem solvers who thrive in collaborative ‘group think’ settings.  Students will understand the interconnectedness of all that is around them and what has been separated in the traditional subject areas.  Students will be able to adapt to unfamiliar situations and reinvent themselves as their interests and passions develop.

For me personally, doing this research reignites my passion of being involved with the transformative nature of education.  It has helped me verbalize what it is I value in education, where I think it is headed and what I am looking for in the next school that I have the pleasure to be involved with.  

References:

Bell, S. (2010). Project-Based Learning for the 21st Century: Skills for the Future.Clearing House, 83(2), 39-43. doi: 10.1080/00098650903505415

Brown, M.M., & Berger, A. (2014). How to innovate: The essential guide for fearless school leaders. New York: Teachers College Press.

Dewey, J. (1938). Experience and education. New York, NY: Collier Books.

Henrie, C. R., Bodily, R., Manwaring, K. C., & Graham, C. R. (2015). Exploring Intensive Longitudinal Measures of Student Engagement in Blended Learning.International Review Of Research In Open And Distributed Learning, 16(3), 131-155.

Jokinen, P., & Mikkonen, I. (2013). Teachers' experiences of teaching in a blended learning environment. Nurse Education In Practice, 13(6), 524-528 5p. doi:10.1016/j.nepr.2013.03.014

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