Try to avoid all-or-nothing thinking. The digital world is based on binary choice. Our thinking about it can’t be. This is true whether we are talking about computers in classrooms, distance learning, or the use of teleconferencing in large organisations. But in all these arenas, when computational possibilities are introduced, camps form and middle ground disappears.
Turkle, Sherry, 2015. p. 329
I have been struck by the requests from some of our students for paper textbooks, paper notebooks and other paper-based resources as they grapple with the move toward digital textbooks, exciting revision apps and online learning environments. Essentially many of our students want both: they want to be able to move between an online world and have the resources physically in their hands. This means we need to plan for both, a truly blended environment, and support students in identifying the tools that best fits their needs in a given moment. And yet, much of what we structure in international schools requires ready and immediate access to technology (at school and at home). How did we get locked into this ‘all or nothing thinking”? How do we find a middle ground that takes into account multiple perspectives and needs?
In many respects, I think the key to finding the middle ground is practicing the art of listening.
As the leaders of learning organisations, we need to take the time to listen to multiple voices: the voices of our students, our teachers, our parents and the communities to which we belong (both local and global). This enables us, in our decision-making processes, to step out of either/or thinking and see the possibilities that come from being comfortable with polarities.
We know that when we listen to our students, for instance, they tell us that they need and want structure, safety (emotional and physical) as well as challenge, and a strong sense of purpose. These are their basic needs as learners and once they are met we have a solid platform from which to experiment in our learning environments. By listening to students, we can break the either/or way of thinking – either around technology or another planned change – and see how we can move fluidly between different ways of learning that responds to their current and future realities.
Our teachers voices are also crucial in navigating the seemingly polarising decisions we encounter each day. As school leaders we need to work on the following with our teachers
- building the capacity of teachers to be collaborative and engage in cognitive conflict
- valuing dialogue and action equally, which involves recognising when to move forward and when to be patient with our staff
- building strategic and systems thinking within our schools as it builds resilience, understanding and the strategies to negotiate polarised thinking
- communicating a vision and build trust and empathy
- staying true to school values while listening for, and staying open to, possibilities that fit within that vision or suggest a need for change
- building professional capital (see Hargreaves and Fullan) by bringing in teachers who can help drive change but have the patience to negotiate different perspectives, and by recognising and valuing the ‘long-timers’ who provide necessary stability
- modelling having patience with oneself and acknowledging one’s own strengths and limitations.
Lastly, our parents have a key role to play in embracing polarities of thinking. If they can’t, we struggle to as schools. We need to invest time in an education strategy for parents so they can truly be partners in a change process. For instance, if we want our families to think beyond the Ivy Leagues schools and the top-ranking British universities, to embrace conceptual-learning in Mathematics and to recognise the value of design and systems thinking as well as the pursuit of knowledge, then we need to spend time helping them understand these ideas and how their children will benefit. Instead of seeing our parent community as an obstacle to change, we need to recognise and validate their experience and find ways to help them understand alternative ways of seeing the world.
As leaders in schools today we need to have patience but keep moving. We need a certain fluidity in dealing with seemingly dialectical problems. In the end this movement between different ways of seeing problems is crucial so we don’t fall into the trap of dichotomous thinking. If we get locked into that paradigm then we stay out of the game of change; we get paralysed and stuck in the status quo and, ultimately, we settle for something less that what education can be.
Instead, let’s be hopeful. Let’s focus on what can be rather than what can’t be and figure ways to move forward together. Let’s keep students, parents and staff as equal members in our dialogue about competing priorities and conflicts that seem unresolvable. I believe strongly in our human capacity to allow competing priorities to sit side-by-side and inform each other. In this process we need others to help us see a way to achieve this equilibrium. We need to embrace conversation and practice the art of listening.
Works cited:
Turkle, Sherry. Reclaiming Conversation: The Power of Talk in the Digital Age. Penguin: New York, 2015.
Hargreaves, Andy and Fullan, Michael. Professional Capital: Transforming Teaching in Every School. Teacher’s College Press: New York, 2012.
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