This document summarizes a presentation given by Dr. Alan Bruce at the EDEN Open Classroom Conference in Athens. In 3 sentences: Dr. Bruce discusses the challenges facing education including outdated school models, economic crisis, and ensuring education remains relevant. He argues that reform is needed to re-examine assumptions about education, challenge power structures, and take advantage of technological potential. Dr. Bruce advocates for innovation, creativity, and transforming education systems through collaborative leadership focused on excellence.

1. Dr. Alan Bruce
EDEN Open Classroom Conference
Athens: 28 October 2011

2. D’où venons nous?
Que sommes nous?
Où allons nous?

3. Contours of crisis
 Schooling at the crossroads: the
obsolete template and the 21st century
 Economic meltdown: globalization and
neo-liberal ascendancy
 Seeking vision: significance, relevance,
meaning
 Technological Tantalus: ICT,
communications and potential
 Innovation imperatives

4. Method and rationale
Need to:
 re-visit key questions on purpose and
reason for education and schooling
 question assumptions and
presuppositions underlying knowledge
transmission systems
 investigate power, access and control
 challenge strategic policy directions
 assert transformative potential of ICT

5. Gauguin’s question: 1
 Psychoanalytic: Erikson in Childhood and
Society
 Philosophy: purpose, value and social
utility
 History: the development of institutions and
the politics of control
 Sociology: Rousseau to Illich and the
shaping of systems
 Pedagogical: learning to learn and
exponential change

6. Gauguin’s question: 2
 Autonomous learner or social being
 Critical thinker or passive recipient
 Empowered or victim
 Production, autonomy and control
 Citizenship, economy and rights
 Emancipatory dialectic or return to
barbarism (Kargartlitsky)

7. Gauguin’s questions: 3
 Proclaiming excellence in chaos
 Setting strategic goals in times of
uncertainty
 Purpose and meaning in the learning
matrix
 Creating and sustaining value
 Shaping potential and defining hope
 The courage to challenge

8. The impact of change
The old world is dying.
The new world struggles to be born.
Now is the time of monsters. Antonio Gramsci

9. Change dynamics
 Sustained and systemic
 Accelerating
 Multidimensional and simultaneous
 Structural incapacity to incorporate
required modifications and adjustments
 Deep uncertainty in terms of future
options
 Unprecedented levels of challenge

10. Globalization as norm
 Flexible structures and modalities
 Ever-increasing emphasis on
competitiveness
 Ruthless focus on profitability
 Ruptured communities and helpless
individuals
 Structural imbalances
 Limitless opportunities

11. Globalized work
 End of job norms – flexible multitasking
to meet market transformation
 Shifting production patterns
 Outsourcing and permanent migration
 Knowledge economy and lifelong
learning
 Adaptability and creativity
 Concentrated wealth, access and power

12. Globalization: the threats
 Persistence and increase in inequality
 Permanent hopelessness of excluded
 Embedded violence
 Internal underclass
 External invisibility

13. Globalization: the opportunities
 Time warp of nation state
 Integration and participation
 Learning without borders
 Global communication and
dissemination of knowledge
 ‘Collective effort not collective
answers’ (Therborn)

14. Impact of crisis
 End of certainties
 Explosive social tensions
 Systemic policy paralysis
 Spiraling indebtedness
 Rupture with past assumptions on linear
progress
 Inadequacy of traditional learning and
schooling systems to meet new needs

15. Anticipating the future (OECD
1994)
Future learning and employment needs
(Jobs Study)
 Policy change
 Flexibility
 Entrepreneurship
 Internationalization
 Technology

16. The future is now…
 Potential provision of universal
schooling is now realized
 Internationalization is the norm
 Technology is pervasive but unevenly
accessible or applied
 ‘Flexibility’: weapon or tool?
 Entrepreneur: leader or false god?
 Policy: shaping or copying?

17. School and community

18. Leadbetter’s insights
 Critical issue of motivation (extrinsic and
intrinsic)
 Centrality of innovation
 Instilling purpose:
education + technology = hope

19. Defining directions
 Excellence
 Innovation
 Leadership
 System change
 Reform
 „The chemistry of widespread
improvement‟ (Michael Fullan)

20. Comparative analysis
(McKinsey 2010) – 20 countries
Key interventions:
1. Revise curriculum and standards
2. Set appropriate pay for teachers/principals
3. Enhance technical skills for teachers
4. Improve student assessment systems
5. Quality data systems
6. Improve policy and laws

21. Evidence of improvement
 Pattern of improvement is independent
of geography, times or culture
 Interventions are mutually reinforcing
 Collaborative practice works best
 There must be an architecture of
leadership

22. Michael Fullan 2010
The power of collective capacity is that it
enables ordinary people to accomplish
extraordinary things – for two reasons.
One is that knowledge about effective
practice becomes more widely available
and accessible on a daily basis. The
second reason is more powerful still –
working together generates commitment.

23. Developing school
leadership
OECD 2008:
 Support, evaluate and develop teacher
quality
 Goal setting, assessment and
accountability
 Strategic financial and HR management
 Collaboration with other schools

24. Reactions to crisis
 Effort to establish status quo ante
 Denial and paralysis
 Rage and frustration
 Cut, cut and cut: the marketization of
thought
 Copy ‘success’ stories
 Opportunity to learn: the innovation
imperative
 Creativity unbound

25. From crisis to renewal
“School systems that have successfully
ignited reforms and sustained their
momentum have all relied on at least one of
three events to get them started:
 they have either taken advantage of a
political or economic crisis,
 or commissioned a high-profile report
critical of the system‟s performance,
 or have appointed a new, energetic and
visionary political or strategic leader.”
McKinsey 2010

26. Innovation
 Holy Grail of crisis resolution
 Imperative for future restructuring
 Linked centrally to:
policy
knowledge production
information explosion
ownership

27. Constraining innovation
 Commodification of knowledge
 Institutional resistance
 Reward, patents and ownership
 Community resistance
 Outcomes and results
 Incremental and disruptive dimensions
 Planning for innovation?

28. Creativity and ICEAC Study
(IPTS 2011)
 Form of knowledge creation
 Product or process that demonstrates
balance of originality and value
 A thinking skill
 Ability to make unforeseen connections
 Based on learner empowerment
 Innovative teaching supports creative
learning

29. Creativity and innovation:
finding evidence
 Conceptualized in different ways even if
universally mentioned
 Teachers: 91% agree ICT enhances creativity
 Theory stronger than practice:
 Only 46% of teachers use play
 Only 41% use multidisciplinary work
 Only 50% believe creativity can be assessed
 Only 58% had training in ICT classroom use
 Only 25% claim ICT quality in their schools is
excellent

30. Creativity: stakeholder evidence
 Expert perceptions of rigidity and
inflexibility on curricula and assessment
 Institutional resistance to change: ethos
of control, discipline and hierarchy
 Innovation only exists in pockets – not
generalized
 Mindset shift critical
 ICT quality use suggests partnership
with students, not authoritarian control

31. Creativity: conclusions
 Curricula: holistic, supported and
exploratory
 Pedagogic practices: not rigid and inflexible
 Assessment: impact of central exams
 Teacher training: need for CPD, guidance,
vision, exchanges
 Culture: leadership, tolerance and diversity
 Technology: vast potential

32. The Creanova project (2008-11)
Key findings: school and work
Collaborative learning
Experimental design
Innovation as policy
Discovering Vision 2010

33. Embedding creativity
 Organic, reflective evaluative follow-up
 Analysis and modification
 Lasting partnerships between research
units and schools
 Labor market transformation impact
 Organic link to work and community
 Professional passion - out of the strait-
jacket

34. Mapping educational innovation
 Improve (formal/sustain axis)
 Supplement (informal/sustain axis)
 Reinvent (formal/disruptive axis)
 Transform (informal/disruptive axis)

35. Mapping vision
 Re-appropriate a sense of human values and
personal worth
 Re-envisage purpose and intention of learning
 Accept the full impact of globalized society
 Multidimensional futures
 Stratification has an impact
 Learning is not simply learning: it is
communication
 Instilling awareness that change is possible,
alternatives are viable

36. Crisis impact: system
change

37. Shared challenges
 Demographic changes: ageing and life
expectancy
 Women and labor market participation
 Immigration
 Cultural and religious difference
 Conflict and stress
 Hyper-urbanization

38. Shared opportunities
 Increased application of new knowledge
 Open and distance learning
technologies facilitating learners and
staff competence
 Transformation of traditional teaching
role to mentoring, guiding and facilitation
 Development of network of innovative
best practice at European level

39. Solutions are possible
 Regeneration and renewal
 Restructuring based on quality,
meritocracy, equal opportunities
 Processes that trigger innovation,
creativity, initiative
Diamatopolou 2011

40. From science to wisdom
The strangeness of reality consistently exceeds
the expectations of science, and the
assumptions of science, however tried and
rational, are very inclined to encourage false
expectations. It is a tribute to the brilliance of
science that we can know such things. And it
is also an illustration of the fact that science
does not foreclose possibility, including
discoveries that overturn very fundamental
assumptions, and that it is not a final
statement about reality but a highly fruitful
mode of inquiry into it.
Marilynne Robinson, Absence of Mind (2010)

41. Charting vision
 Courage and leadership
 Collaborative engagement
 Imagining the impossible
 Asserting rights
 Access and inclusion
 Redefined roles – end of the factory
school
 Community and transformation

42. Linkage and creativity

43. Directions
 Innovation based on questions, not
answers: avoiding mantras and clichés
 The poetry of open discovery and delight
 Constructing schools as critical spaces
 Connecting science and discovery through
technologies of emancipatory practice
 Rediscovering community in a fractured
continent

44. Σας εστριστώ πολύ
Dr Alan Bruce
ULS Dublin