I’m a little behind the curve in terms of tackling my reading list, but the holidays gave me a chance to finally read Disrupting Class: How Disruptive Innovation Will Change the Way the World Learns by Clayton Christensen, Curtis Johnson, and Michael Horn. As the title suggests, this much-discussed book applies Christensen’s theory of Disruptive Innovation to public education and describes how technology can be used to revolutionize learning. For those unfamiliar with Disrupting Class, the Concord Consortium White Paper review and Clayton Christensen interview provide more detailed overviews of the book’s major concepts:
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At the risk of gross oversimplification, Disrupting Class can be distilled to the ideas that students need to be intrinsically motivated, schooling should be customized to match learning styles, and technology, which to date has not improved learning will, if deployed disruptively, allow students to maximize their individual potential. As they summarize the issue on their website,
“The biggest problem in the current education system is that not every student learns in the same, standard way, and yet schools standardize the way they teach and test. Using the computer as the delivery platform for learning has the potential to break the trade-offs between customization and affordability, which could ultimately allow students to learn in their preferred styles and at their preferred pace.
But another problem is that the huge investment in computers in schools over the past couple decades has delivered so little. The theory of disruption explains how computers can make the meaningful impact we describe above. They must be implemented disruptively by targeting at the outset areas where the alternative to computer-based instruction is nothing at all. Additionally, software makers will need to customize their offerings for different kinds of learners, because right now the programs that come out tend to be similar to the mainstream teaching methods.
And for all this to happen, there is another problem that must be addressed. The current business system is aligned to push down standardized textbooks and curricula; it’s not well suited to bringing in customized software solutions. A new business system must emerge to replace the current one so that students, parents, and teachers can all pull computer-based learning into the mainstream classrooms.”
Christensen envisions this disruption occurring in two stages. The first stage, termed computer-based learning, utilizes software as a platform for learning in places and for courses where there are no teachers to teach. The second and significantly more advanced phase, described as student-centric technology, requires the development of software that enables students to learn each subject in manners consistent with their type of intelligence and learning style. While these stages and the notion of “disruptive innovation” are certainly enticing, they are not the panacea for modern education as some have asserted.
Computer-based Learning: Better than the Alternative?
The use of computer-based learning (specifically online courses) can, in a limited fashion, meet the needs of students who are constrained by their school’s curriculum. However, a virtual environment is no substitute for a real-world learning experience. Consider the Virtual ChemLab, which Disrupting Class describes as “infinitely better than many students’ alternative–which is nothing at all.”
While the site is certainly comprehensive, will “learning” chemistry through photographs, video clips, and virtual labware produce students who can think scientifically? Can higher-order skills and processes be addressed and assessed through an interactive lesson? Science is fraught with misconceptions and as John Bruer and others can attest, these can be very hard to correct in any setting. Do the opportunities and benefits afforded by computer-based learning truly outweigh the risk of propagating low-level and potentially faulty knowledge?
This is not to say that computer-based learning is inherently bad, but it isn’t inherently superior to face-to-face instruction, even in a “monolithic” classroom. To suggest otherwise, as the authors have done, negates the impact of the classroom teacher who, as Robert Marzano notes, has a direct and major influence on learning. An online alternative may be better than no alternative, but its limitations must be acknowledged. Just as Microsoft’s Flight Simulator won’t prepare one for the rigors of actual flight, pointing and clicking reagents won’t unlock the complex relationships between matter and energy.
Student-centric Technology:
Student-centric technology, manifested as hardware and software that can tailor instruction to a particular student’s learning style, is at first glance an exciting concept. In Christensen’s scenario, at some point in the not-to-distant future, non-programmers (i.e. students, teachers, parents, etc.) will be able to create and distribute modular, computerized “tutorials” on any number of topics. In this new network of user-generated content, people will ultimately have the ability to “assemble [tutorials] together into entire courses whose approach is truly student-centric—custom-configured to each different type of learner.”
Pieces of this vision already exist thanks to the advent of Web 2.0, and it is true that we often learn better when we teach than when we listen to a teacher. The issue of expertise, however, must be considered in this new student-centric model. In How People Learn: Bridging Research and Practice, M. Suzanne Donovan, John D. Bransford, and James W. Pellegrino make the following observations regarding novice and expert learners:
- Experts notice features and meaningful patterns of information that are not noticed by novices.
- Experts have acquired a great deal of content knowledge that is organized, and their organization of information reflects a deep understanding of the subject matter.
- Experts’ knowledge cannot be reduced to sets of isolated facts or propositions but, instead reflects contexts of applicability, i.e., it is “conditionalized.”
- Experts are able to retrieve important aspects of their knowledge with little additional effort.
While a novice may be able to construct a tutorial that benefits others with his/her dominant learning style (we’ve all encountered situations where a student was able to reach someone we could not), there are limits to what a novice can provide. And while a teacher, the expert learner, can facilitate deeper understanding when working with students, the teaching-learning process could become more difficult as a result of novices selecting and learning from content created by non-experts.
A Missed Opportunity
The two points I’ve briefly illustrated here should not detract from the overall message of Disrupting Class or the many good ideas it contains; change is necessary if we are to prepare our students for an unknown future. Disruptive innovation in the form of technology, however, is not the answer. The stages/shifts that Christensen, Johnson, and Horn outline reinforce traditional course offerings with low-level knowledge and skills, largely place responsibility for the teaching-learning process in the hands of the students, and present technology as the solution to education’s shortcomings. That approach is not a road map for the 21st century.
Education needs to become more individualized and student-centric, but the authors missed a terrific opportunity to emphasize how technology can facilitate those processes within a realistic, sustainable system. Curriculum and instruction must evolve to include new skills and literacies that can only be acquired through the use of technology. Online classes and user-generated tutorials will not revolutionize learning; real innovation will occur when we as a profession finally connect technology and pedagogy.