Innovation Profile 244 (and last)

Will they; won’t they?

It is rare to find a group of people who all like change. Usually the majority do not like it. The same is true of teachers and headteachers.

Human beings have survived through ability to adapt to change; when it is inevitable people have amazing change capacity. Those who adapt survive.

Teachers and schools will not survive if they fail to adapt to the inevitable spread of digital technology and environments across all aspects of life. When, in the early 1980s, there was discussion of microelectronics and computers becoming pervasive, there was little understanding of just how pervasive. But 25 years is long enough for the message to be understood.

There are school leaders, teachers and school technical staff who still constrain the use of ICT and digital environments in education; who fail to seek new approaches that acknowledge that ICT in many forms is ever-present in the lives of pupils and in their homes.

The time has come to tell these people clearly that they will not survive in their jobs much longer. The schools and teachers, who are adapting, are making such radical improvements to their working practices that there is no way back for them to old ways. Schools that have moved fully into use of ICT and digital environments would face revolt from teachers, pupils and parents should they try to remove ICT-based approaches. Teachers exerting their professionalism in such schools will find it impossible to work as effectively as they expect to do, in a school that has not fully embraced the digital world.

There are now two kinds of teachers and two kinds of schools. As the group that are adapting and surviving cannot now revert to old ways; the size of this group can only grow. The number of schools failing to adapt can only decline, as the various pressures that society will exert upon them force change.

The tipping point has arrived. Personal ownership and home access to ICT has reached the level that the majority are being disadvantaged, if the transformation of schools’ educational offering made possible by ICT is delayed; the message is spreading rapidly.

Of all the questions around the coming of home access that need discussion, the issue of whether some school leaders and teachers will try to stay in their comfort zones, and will attempt to ignore it, is probably the biggest.

Innovation profiles to this list, to tempt readers to consider new ideas, will now cease, with thanks to all readers; if you wish to continue to be part of this debate as it develops during the Autumn, please email mary.harris@mirandanet.ac.uk.

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If you know of examples of innovative use of ICT-for-learning that others would be interested in, please email innovations@eep-edu.org

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