The world is either the effect of cause or chance. If it is the latter, it is a world for all that, that is to say it is a regular and beautiful structure.
Marcus Aurelius: Emperor of Rome
Derren Brown, the famous illusionist recently ran a programme on television where he offered a fool-proof service to horse racing punters. The basis of the programme was that he traded on his amazing ability of prediction. He invited people to come forward and place a fixed bet on the winner of a specific horse race. One thousand people responded by putting money on a horse, but here was the rub, Brown spread bet, he covered every horse in the race and thus guaranteed that some of his clientele were going to win. Taking only his winners, who were still committed to the notion that he was able to pick out winnners, he repeated the process again and again, slowly thinning down the number of people each time whose horse won the race and always inviting the winning punters to continue to put increasingly large amounts of money on the horses. So punters who stuck with Brown’s winning bets began to win large aounts of money, and being on the inside track so to speak, meant that they were very likely to win again as the suggested bets were from a trusted source, and there was no cause to believe he would fail. Of course, eventually there was only one punter left, who was persuaded to put all her life savings on a horse of Browns choosing. It lost. However, television being what it was, Brown had it covered and she didn’t really lose because he had put the money on a different horse. Thus maintaining the magic, but not after revealing the scam to the trusting woman, and to the audience.
I tell this story because it seems to me to reveal something of the madness that we have in educational reform. Despite more than two decades of endless change, we still seem no closer to making any real sense out of public sector developments. Public spending on education has gone up and down, according to the colour of the political flag that was in office, but in the main, the plethora of initiatives that successive governments have committed to as drivers of improvement in services have singularly failed to make the grade. We are now in a situation where we need to try a new direction as money is once again short, and there is a growing recognition that we need to redesign service in a way that high standards are established without resorting to spending more than economically we can afford to spend. For some this new agenda is being termed as ‘paradigm change’ 1. For most of us, I think in reality it will be a variation on the existing theme. Our reform, is simply that, reengineering the existing form, not transforming. Whatever happens, it is very likely that educational service reform will continue to undertake an equivalent of Browns spread betting, sifting only the successful initiatives as evidence of how to improve the system, and leaving on the sideline a growing number of ‘also ran’ schools.
We can see this in the logic underpinning much of the school to school networking taking place. The emphasis on knowledge transfer, replicating across the system any examples in the system of great success, making sure that the champions of these successes are highly visible and ready to make clear for all that will listen what exactly constituted their success. The findings will then form the basis of the next development in areas that lack the cutting edge knowledge. We are already seeing this in the work of the schools challenge initiative (DCSF 2008). Knowing ‘what works’, is persuasive, it comes with the full backing of government seeking solutions in areas of greatest need, and as an approach it is endorsed by most of the professional development community who need to be seen to have a body of knowledge and be seen to know how to use it properly. In this world, certainty plays a very significant part in ensuring that we have an equitable, open opportunity for all. Indeed, this has formed the basis of many recent school improvement initiatives, and certainly underpins much of the concept of what is known as ‘evidence led practice.’ The usual systems of carrot and stick apply, performance will be defined and measured against the implementation and management of the new developments in their new settings. We can presume, as knowledge transfer mechanisms begin to embed, that a few organisations improve, many will drift, some will fail.
It seems clear to me that in our next phase, we need to examine the idea of transformation and challenge the tyranny of certainty approach vehemently. What we do know about knowledge is that ‘whenever knowledge connects with knowledge, new connections take place. Ideas spawn ideas, which synthesis with each other until more knowledge results. It is completely natural,.’ (Verna Allee 1993). We simply don’t know a great deal about how to transform a system in the form of a service that has been around for over a century because until now all we have ever done is reform it. Embracing the reality of ‘not knowing’ is much harder for us to take on board and embed into our organisational psyche. In the previous two phases of public sector reform, under both conservative and labour administrations, professional knowledge was managed in unprecedented ways by reinforcing the assumption that someone out there knew best, and in that certainty, we simply had to find out what it was, where it was, how it worked and how to repeat it somewhere else.
Embracing lack of knowledge places a profession of educators in a very interesting position. It means we have to learn. We have to learn to see the problems differently. It means we have to learn to live with chaotic, diverse and emergent public service rather than assuming a fixed, orthodox approach that will suit all-comers. We need to learn how to create the conditions that are conducive for innovative, creative ideas that can be explored, deepened and connected over time not through procedure and content, but through a philosophy of emergence - a willingness, collectively to listen, study, trial, reflect, reconstruct and communicate with integrity and in a culture of trust. We need to learn to create a learning community, designed around relationships that are focused on emergence.
Putting our trust in someone else’s confidence trick is simply not a sensible way forward.
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