Moving forward and gaining momentum

Enormous efforts are going into improving schools, schooling and education but most are disruptive, counter-productive and undermine stakeholder commitments to future initiatives.

Here are some basic (but counter-intuitive and very challenging) ideas about the way forward for schools, schooling and education:

• Education is NOT a "process/production" activity and cannot be treated, nor modelled as such - A VERY BIG PROBLEM!!!  more...
• Reality is complex, messy, uncertain and unpredictable - Forrest Gump was right: "Sh-t happens!!"
• Certain people may be in charge at various levels, but it is not possible for them to be in control
• Hierarchical systems tend to protect senior officers from the inconvenience of knowing about the current reality
• Knowledge, not plans and policies, make people responsible (and knowledge can help make people, response-able)
• People want to do a good job (unless they are totally discouraged)
• We need to reduce the need for counter-measures (re-work) and move directly towards solutions by nurturing the emergence of what is desirable more...
• We need much less change but much more improvement
• Organisations (including schools) are constructed in the everyday conversations of those involved.
• Such situations require a set of agreed and easily retained rules of engagement/interaction (everyone's job description*), e.g.,
  
  
  • Know what is happening
  • Work with others to improve what is happening
  • Do your work in a way that makes it easier for the next person to do well
• When making changes/improvements always start by making things easier. 
• As a result of the above, everyone will do more and to do it better!!

That is, ongoing improvement of schools, schooling and education can be achieved quickly and economically  

• by working together and
• by adopting a strategy of  Easier First .

[*This 'job description' was used at RPS for the last several years of my time there and was clearly proven to work. In a school of 670 students, I taught 0.4 FTE, the APs taught 0.8 and everyone else taught full-time.  That is, 97% of all the available teacher time was spent working directly with students.]