Systems level change in education

by | Sunday, August 02, 2020

How do you design for change in complex systems—like education?

Implementing large-scale changes within educational systems can be a challenging task. Doing so requires many actors, working at different organizational levels (and perhaps across organizations), to not only be unified in their overall goals and coordinated in their actions, but also have the freedom to respond to changing local circumstances and unanticipated issues. In this paper we argue that these efforts can be fruitfully seen as being an act of design that take place within a complex social system. We contextualize our argument in the five spaces for design in education framework and demonstrate how the differing perspectives of educational professionals can either work at cross-purposes or be aligned to a larger goal. A sensitivity to these five spaces and an understanding of their interconnected nature can provide us with tools and approaches to bring about significant, sustainable change in education.

Citation, abstract and a link to article below.

Original points of view image from the internet: variations by Punya Mishra

Weiner, S., Warr, M., & Mishra, P. (2020). Fostering System-Level Perspective Taking when Designing for Change in Educational Systems. TechTrends. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11528-020-00529-w

Abstract: A core element of systems thinking is perspective taking. Perspectives help people distinguish between salient and irrelevant information, take particular types of actions, and make sense of the world. In this article, we consider what systems thinking and perspective taking means for designers in education. First, we present a framework, the five spaces for design in education, to illustrate design work in education. The framework presents five spaces for design: artifacts, processes, experiences, systems, and culture. We claim that most—if not all—educators participate in design work; however, the design spaces they work in vary. Consequently, educational designers often fail to consider the perspectives of those working in different spaces, resulting in failed reform efforts. We illustrate this concept through the technology integration attempts of the Los Angeles Unified School District. We argue more effective design in education occurs when designers both recognize their own design perspective and are aware of other perspectives.

Here are some related posts and articles

A few randomly selected blog posts…

A Silver Lining side conversation with S. Giridhar:

A Silver Lining side conversation with S. Giridhar:

S. Giridhar (Giri), Chief Operating Officer of Azim Premji University (APU) and I had a chance to chat for a Silver Lining for Learning side conversation. Giri is a good friend and we connect at multiple levels. We both went to the same undergraduate institution (BITS...

Of certainty & doubt

The NYTimes has a op-ed piece today by Max Blumenthal about an obscure letter Eisenhower wrote to "Robert Biggs, a terminally ill World War II veteran." Biggs was worried by ambiguity and uncertainty he seemed to observe in president Eisenhower. He wrote that he:...

Cybersecurity & the Future of Education

Cybersecurity & the Future of Education

I was recently interviewed by David W. Schropfer for his DIY Cyber Guy podcast. David is an expert on cybersecurity and, and that is the focus of his podcast. I am clearly not an cybersecurity expert, so I was somewhat surprised at being invited to his show. What...

Orissa Folklore

Just got an email from a fellow Mishra (no relationship, at least I don't know of any), Dr. Mahendra Mishra who works as the state tribal education coordinator in my home state of Orissa as a part of it's Primary Education Program (more at www.opepa.in). Mahendra He...

The value of school: Part 1

The value of school: Part 1

Note 1: This is the first of two posts on the value of school by Punya Mishra & Kevin Close. Read the second post: Revisiting Accountability. Note 2: These two blog posts became the basis of an article. Full citation and link below: Mishra, P., & Close, K....

AI’s Honey Trap: Why AI Tells Us What We Want to Hear

AI’s Honey Trap: Why AI Tells Us What We Want to Hear

Leon Furze's blog post about AI sycophancy popped into my feed yesterday and got me thinking. In his post (worth reading in full) he pointed to some striking research from Anthropic showing how AI systems tend to agree with humans, even when the humans are wrong. The...

Happy 2009, a stop motion movie

Soham, Shreya and I spent this afternoon making a couple of stop-motion animation new year's card. Check it out... http://www.youtube.com/embed/7kw_icNKI44 https://vimeo.com/41488009 Have a great 2009!      

Cleaning and coding Interviews with AI

Cleaning and coding Interviews with AI

I have previously written about how AI can possibly help with qualitative research AND how how AI has given me a superpower which is the ability to write computer programs. Well this post is an extension of both of these topics. To provide some context, for the past...

0 Comments

Submit a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *