In the recent years St. Francis College has made some changes in the area of technology. Some eight years ago the school had dedicated labs with desktop computers for teachers to schedule at least weekly visits for their class and were available for more time as certain projects required. About five years ago, these labs were removed over a weekend, in the middle of some class projects, as the school had purchased fifty Netbooks. At this point it was much more difficult for students to gain access to the computers both through logistics and skills. The computers had to be carted around, they were often out of battery, and an IT technician needed to be available to check them out. As for skills, this meant that students needed to start-up and login each time, which is not incredibly difficult, but for younger students this could end up taking the entire lesson time to complete. Four years later the Netbooks are failing. The batteries run out quickly, they do not connect to the internet, and are simply more of a pain than they are worth.
It is clear that new computers are necessary for the school. The teachers’ desires to utilize technology to a greater extent, as best practices indicate to be beneficial, and the intent interest that students demonstrate for learning with technology are the two main driving forces pushing the school to adopt change. What they are really driving at is for the school to develop a culture in which technology is embraced and supported. They are looking for the leaders of the school to put in place the three aspects that make up culture; artifacts and creations, values, and basic assumptions that reflect those of a positive learning environment (Evans, 1996). The school leaders have felt the pressure of their population and thus, reluctantly purchased sixty Chromebooks. This, on the surface, seems to be a positive step in the right direction; however, the rollout of this new initiative demonstrates the school’s lack of preparedness and possibly willingness for change. It shows that the values, the ingrained “way to do it”, are not in sync with those of the community (Evans, 1996).
In creating successful change, the leader must identify with and understand the personal struggle that each member involved in the change is faced with. With this understanding, the leader needs to empower individuals to be agents of the change that is desired (Calabrese, 2002). At St. Francis College, the process of deciding which devices to purchase, whom to involve, and the ultimate rollout of how the devices were to be put into use was anything but empowering. The school had, that year, hired an educational technology integration specialist whose job description included advising management on any technology equipment purchases and the implementation of those devices. The integration specialist was a big proponent of the schools need of updated, reliable equipment but was consistently paid lip service to and deliberately excluded from senior leadership team meetings. The specialist had been asked to research what products would best suit the school’s needs, yet was never given an opportunity to show the findings of their research. The position of Ed Tech integration itself was created with high expectations that results, whatever those were meant to be, would come quickly and often.
When the laptops finally arrived, it was near the end of the school year and a surprise to the heads of primary and secondary school, as well as for the technology specialist. The owner of the school, who is the head of finance and is not an educator, had ordered the laptops. Before the integration specialist, who was expected to deploy the devices and train teachers on how to best use them with the students, they were delivered to the classrooms. The students were extremely excited to jump right in and the teachers did not even know how to even log on.
The actions of the management at St. Francis are clear examples what Calabrese (2002) says leaders do to suppress change. They are suspicious of any new idea and make approval a complicated process, give ambiguous messages, demand results and establish unattainable targets, and they surprise people with their decisions to change and reorganize. As a result of these actions, management continues to set the norms of the school as negative and unproductive, even adversarial. The culture that arises is one of animosity and disrespect as the espoused values are clearly not the values that are acted upon (Evans). Management failed to take into consideration the users that would end up working with these devices, the teachers and the children.
Calabrese, R. L. (2002). The leadership assignment: Creating change. Boston: Allyn and Bacon.
Evans, R. (1996). The human side of school change: Reform, resistance, and the real-life problems of innovation. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
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