Preparing Learners for Their Future Raymond J. McNulty, President International Center for Leadership in Education 2010 Wisconsin Stem Summit.

Preparing Learners for Their Future

Raymond J. McNulty, President

International Center for Leadership in Education

2010 Wisconsin Stem Summit

“The future is not some place we are going to, but one we are

creating. The paths are not found, but made, and the activity of

making them, changes both the maker and the destination.”

John Schaar

Hawaiian Fishponds areCulturally and Historically Significant

Waikalua Loko (circa 2000)

‘A’OHE PAU KA ‘IKE I KA HALAU HO’OKAHINot all knowledge is learned in one school

Ma ka hana ka ‘ike:“the knowledge is in the doing”

The Boston Globe

Ray, reading the paper on your “Kindle” or online just

isn’t the same!

Almost everyone wants schools to be better,

but almost no one wants them to be different.

Almost everyone wants schools to be better,

but “FEW ADULTS” want them to be different.

I am proud of my school. T = 85S = 50

Students have fun at school. T = 78School is boring. S = 47

NATIONAL DATACopyright 2008 Quaglia Institute

Teacher – Student Comparisons

T – I make learning exciting for my students.

86%

S – My teachers make learning fun.

41%

WE need to become the AGENTS of change.

We need to think and act differently when it comes to education.

We need to set a transformative agenda and not an improvement agenda.

FUTURE READY TODAY

THEMES

• The Aim of Education

• The Challenge We Face

• Best Practices, Next Practices and Innovation

• From ---- To

• Conceptual Age

• Closing Thoughts

THEME

• The Aim of Education

The primary aim of education is not to enable students to do well in school, but to help them do well in the lives they lead outside of school.

We’ve created false proxies for learning…

• Finishing a course or textbook has come to mean achievement

• Listening to lecture has come to mean understanding

• Getting a high score on a standardized test has come to mean proficiency

Learning should have its roots in..

• Meaning, not just memory

• Engagement, not simply transmission

• Inquiry, not only compliance

• Exploration, not just acquisition

• Personalization, not simply uniformity

• Collaboration, not only competition

• Trust, not fear

We need fewer, clearer and more rigorous standards!

OUR PROBLEM IS NOT SIMPLY STANDARDS, BUT

“OUR BEHAVIOR AND DESIGN” AS WELL!!!!

We need more artists, so here’s our plan.

REQUIRE ALL HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS TO TAKE MORE ART!

We need more scientists and mathematicians, so here’s our

plan.

REQUIRE ALL HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS

TO TAKE MORE MATH AND SCIENCE!

What Works Best?

• REQUIRE

• MANDATE

• FORCE

• EXCITE

• CREATE PASSION

• MOTIVATE

Motivation is a key ingredient for success in learning.

I see no evidence of motivation in school improvement plans.

We are obsessed with quantitative data as the key driver of our

improvement efforts.

Talking with kids…

It’s not us against them!

CULTURE TRUMPS STRATEGY

THEME

• The Challenge We Face

What got us to where we are today in education,

will not get us to where we need to be!

In many cases, our efforts to transform education look

much like the original system.

Why is it so hard to change?

• The more successful a system is, the more difficult it is to recognize when it must change. By example, market leaders are the last ones to transform.

• The American Education System, “The market leader during the industrial era!”

Market Leader Thinking

• Dominant logic: “That’s the way we do things here.”

Mental Locks

• We don’t need to be creative for most of what we do (driving, shopping, business of living). So staying on routine thought paths enables us to do many things without having to think about it.

It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.

(the most adaptable)

HAVE WE ADAPTED?

THEME

• Best Practices, Next Practices and Innovation

Best practices allow you to do what you are currently doing

a little better,

while next practices increase your organization’s capability to do things that it has never done

before.

Best Practices• Research Based• Imitation• Copy• Replication• Successful Practices Network

NEXT PRACTICES

Best practices allow you to do what you are currently doing

a little better,

while next practices increase your organization’s capability to do things that it has never

done before.

College and Career Readiness Defined

• Cognitive strategies: Intellectual openness; inquisitiveness; analysis; interpretation; precision and accuracy; problem solving; and reasoning, argumentation, and proof.

• Content knowledge: Understanding the structures and large organizing concepts of the academic disciplines, resting upon strong research and writing abilities.

• Academic behaviors: Self-management, time management, strategic study skills, accurate perceptions of one’s true performance, persistence, ability to utilize study groups, self-awareness, self-control, and intentionality.

• Contextual skills and knowledge: Facility with application and financial-aid processes and the ability to acculturate to college.

David Conley

Sir Ken Robinson

Expertise can sometimes be a road block to problem solving and

the development of Next Practices.

Experts see their points as critical to resolution, without sometimes

valuing the thinking of others.

A Story….

• Sir Ken Robinson • Paul McCartney

• George Harrison

-Shurnyu Suzuki

“In the beginner’s mind there are many

possibilities; in the expert’s mind there are few.”

System Innovation

Sustaining Innovation

Next Practice

Disruptive Innovation

NEXT PRACTICE THINKING

• The Iterative Process

• Versions

• Create a disciplined, managed space for development of new ways to accomplish difficult tasks

THEME

• From ---- To

The Internet has created the greatest generation gap since the advent of

rock and roll.

What does the “net generation” expect from us based on their

lifetime experiences with technology?

So 20th century!

This Generation…Teenagers surveyed…

• Use MySpace and Face Book

• use texting instead of e-mail (parents) • nearly 60% would rather use e-mail than a

telephone

• are likely to have 6 applications running at once on their PC

This Generation…

• The “killer application” for today’s students isn’t You Tube, Face Book, My Space, Google, Moodle, Pod-casting or some Wiki-site

• For digital teens, the one and only “killer

app” is… speed

• Consider this …

This Generation…

–The fastest growing segment of computer-users today in the U.S. is 5 to 7 year olds

Theme

• Conceptual Age

• Agricultural Age… Farmers

• Industrial Age… Factory Worker

• Informational Age… Knowledge Worker

• Conceptual Age… Creator / Empathizer / Innovator

Three reasons for this…

• Abundance

• Asia

• Automation

#1 Abundance

• Malls, Target, PetsMart, Best Buy,

• Homes, Cars

• Self Storage

• Trash …. USA spends more on trash bags than 90 countries spend on everything

Abundance has produced an ironic result…

Lessened the significance of things because you can get it anywhere.

(no longer enough to create a product that’s reasonably priced and functional)

Products must be more R – Directed

beautiful, unique, meaningful, “aesthetic imperative”

Abundance Elevates R – Directed Thinking

Electric lighting was rare a century ago…

Today it is commonplace and abundant.

Yet….

Candles ― who needs them anymore?

$2.4 billion business a year

#2 ASIA

• Knowledge workers new competition.. India, Philippines, China

• Programmers 70k – 80k are paid what a Taco Bell worker makes

• Chip designers 7k in USA …..1K in India• Aerospace Engineers USA 6K… $650 in

Russia• Accountant USA 5K… $300 in Philippines

#3 Automation

• Last century machines proved they could replace human backs

• This century new technologies are proving they can replace human “left brains”

• Any job that depends on routines is at risk.

• Automation is changing even doctors work.

• Outsource.com

Left hemisphere is sequential, logical and analytical. The Left powered the

Information Age. Still necessary, but no longer sufficient.

Right hemisphere is non linear, intuitive and holistic. The Right qualities of

inventiveness, empathy, joyfulness and meaning will power the Conceptual Age.

A new age valuing….

• High Concept: the capacity to detect patterns / opportunities to create, to be artistic / emotional beauty and to combine seemingly unrelated ideas into something new.

• High Touch: involves the ability to empathize with others, understand the subtleties of human interaction to find joy and elicit it in others

High Concept / High Touch• GM’s top leader… I see us being in the

art business.• MBA’s becoming the blue collar workers

for the conceptual age.• Graphic designers have increased ten

fold in the last decade.• Since 1970, 30% more people are

earning a living as writers.• More Americans today work in art,

entertainment and design than as lawyers, accountants and auditors.

THEME

• Closing Thoughts

THEMES

• The Aim of Education

• The Challenge We Face

• Best Practices, Next Practices and Innovation

• From ---- To

• Conceptual Age

• Closing Thoughts

Transforming Schools???

What’s your change strategy?

There’s no silver bullet!!

NO EPIPHANY

The system is not to blame, we are, for not adapting it to our ever

changing world.

I can’t imagine anything worse than looking back at the opportunity before us in

education and thinking we blew it!

We can rationalize the failures of the past -----

or we can learn from them.

We can complain about the troubling inadequacies of the

present ----

or we can face them.

We can talk and dream about the glorious schools of the future ---

OR WE CAN CREATE THEM!

Preparing Learners for Their Future

Raymond J. McNulty, President

International Center for Leadership in Education

2010 Wisconsin Stem Summit