I'm writing again in retrospective, and it's truly fascinating to conduct a refresher of the articles and videos assigned each week and discover a totally different take than I had when I first tackled the learning materials for this week. Now the articles strike more clearly, and I find myself nodding along in interest to the videos (whereas before, I recall needing to read articles out loud or turn on the cc captioning on videos to better process all the new information).
Dr. Reigeluth is a prominent figure this week, with his long history as an IST instructor at Indiana University, and I found his words on public education in particular very prescient. As systems thinkers and designers, our complex national public education system has flaws. It's easy to see the students and learners who fall through gaping cracks, and difficult to see how to solve those issues with the level of bureaucracy involved. Corporations are swayed by markets, and change there can be motivated with financial and efficiency modeling. The internet was made for change, and new structures can easily rise and fall and rise again almost overnight. The public education system remains a monolith, resistant to change and with barriers that seem impossible to overcome.
As Dr. Reigeluth discusses with interviewer Dr. Tim Green in "Talking Reinventing Public Schools with Dr. Charles Reigeluth", the public education system cannot change by degrees. There must be not only systemic overhaul, but significant role changes for students, parents, and teachers. How public education exists not only in reality but in our collective societal understanding must shift to allow the space to make major renovations. This, I think, is possibly the biggest mountain to climb for IST professionals, and one of the most important. Our public education system provides invaluable learning to all of our next generations, and their education is paramount to the health of our society, our country, and our global relationships.
Hi Susannah,
Glad to hear that the content is coming together for you!
I agree with you that it would require a lot of force and effort to change and improve the public education system. Meanwhile, I am also optimistic about its future, given the pandemic has allowed teachers and students to at least have a trial of a different form of learning or two. I know it was different from carefully planned online learning experience, but being exposed to that new experience, hopefully, helped everyone develop some new skills for a different type of learning and created some new visions.
-Renee