Institutional Isomorphism & Dynamic Conservatism
These concepts stood out for me today, because I have seen the phenomena, but didn’t have terms for them. I would venture that doing something just because it’s always been done, and doing the same thing using a new technology has been done in every school in the province. The status quo and familiar are easier than the new and unknown– but that doesn’t mean they are better. As teacher-librarians we need to be advocates for change.
That said, it can be hard to affect change. You come up against things like “We’ve been doing it this way for x number of years and it’s worked, why should we change?” or “I don’t have time to learn something new.” or “I already let my students play on the computer when they’re done their work.” I know, that when you are in the classroom it is very hard to try new things. The day to day grind is so exhausting, we turn to what is familiar and easy, even if it is not the best way to do something. Sometimes “good enough” is all you can do. But that doesn’t mean we should settle for “good enough” all the time. We can’t change the face of education all at once, but we can make small steps. I’m reminded of my kaleidoscope project, it had challenges and I wouldn’t want to do all art projects using technology, but it also provided the students with experience retrieving files from a shared drive, editing the document to record their information, using Flickr to find photos with a Creative Commons license, and using an online paint tool to manipulate their chosen image. I want to share this story so other teachers see it is possible to use technology in new, meaningful ways.
I am worried about how the BC Education Plan will be implemented. While there is solid research to support many of the ideas, I think there will be push back from teachers and unions, because it is perceived as being imposed upon us. I think it’s going to take a lot of conversation and convincing for some teachers to “buy in” to it. Although blindly throwing money at any problem is never a good solution, I think the government needs to make a financial commitment to prove they are behind this plan. Here is my list of necessities:
- high-speed wifi in every school in the province, accessible anywhere in the school
- enough bandwidth for every student to have a device connected to the internet
- funding to purchase new technology and replace old technology, based on what the teachers in each school need
Maybe once those are in place teachers will be more willing to look at the Ed Plan as a positive change for our education system.
From my research, I perceive that many teachers would actually like to be part of changing educational practice, but individually it is just too difficult and there hasn’t been a collective mechanism to facilitate implementing change. No doubt, we become habituated in our minds and in our environs. For me, it would be very easy to simply stand in front of the class and lecture all I know about these topics. The class could be furiously taking notes, and then, at the end of the week, we could have an exam. In the field of educational technology, there are textbooks, but I fear they would be out of date by the time they were published and ready. The classroom, as an environ, is loaded with educational history, the ‘way things are done’. Also, if we were educated in a particular way, these two elements are going to conspire to dictate how we might imagine conducting learning activities. We need many and different learning experiences so that we have a greater breadth and depth of learning experiences to drawn on.