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Teachers as hackers in educational reform
By Ben Williamson, Learning Researcher, Futurelab |
Teachers are not regularly referred to as 'hackers', especially not by former chiefs of the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority. But ex-QCA chief executive David Hargreaves uses the teacher-as-hacker metaphor to illustrate a new model of educational reform in which transformation occurs in the interactions between networks of practitioners, and is not simply directed from the top-level down.
In his keynote presentation to the Networked Learning Communities (NLC) 2003 conference, Hargreaves suggested that most educational reform is like the construction of a cathedral: it takes a long time but once completed is immense.
On the other hand, he argued, "When you look at hacker culture, it's more like a bazaar: a babbling bazaar of different agendas, but all focused on one clear goal - yet it works.
"The question is," he asked delegates, "can you do the same? Can you generate a professional bazaar of innovation that works as an alternative to the DfES's top-down cathedral of reform?"
In Hargreaves' view, teachers should be given the opportunities to work in the same hacker ethic that has allowed Linux success as an alternative computer operating system. Linux was developed by several thousand programmers after its inventor, Linus Torvalds, offered it for free on the condition that if anyone could make improvements they should communicate them back to the entire programming community.
"The result is a fundamental Linux networking effect, where a lot of hackers work together because they enjoy what they do," Hargreaves told the conference. "My argument to you is that you are, potentially, an educational Linux."
In a new article, Education Epidemic: Transforming Secondary Schools Through Innovation Networks (2003), published by independent think-tank Demos, Hargreaves elaborates on his proposals for educational reform.
Demos draws extensively on systems thinking and emergence theory, and it aims for public service renewal based on a bottom-up form of organisation. It has also recently devised an open-access strategy that allows the free distribution and download of its material, and which reinforces its belief in the emergent properties of a system in which many parts interconnect and interact. Hargreaves' call for reform is at the heart of the Demos philosophy for educational change.
Education Epidemic argues that transformation is made possible when innovative schools have the capacity to communicate outwards their best practice, and when other schools have the capacity to access it. ICT, Hargreaves believes, makes this possible, because it allows schools to engage in 'innovation networks' - although this has yet to be realised.
"ICT potentially provides a network structure to turn thousands of secondary schools and their teachers into another small world, in which any two nodes can connect with one another easily and quickly," he argues.
"Given the right infrastructure, a teacher or school wanting to target a peer who might know about or be interested in a particular professional practice, the chances are that by asking someone they know to check among people they know, the chain to the right peer would be very short."
With such an infrastructure, it would become possible for teaching staff to much more quickly access the best-possible resources and practices for their needs. But it would need to be a system allowing rapid feedback on whether these resources or practices were transferable across different contexts.
This is a highly-extensible model for change that those who work in the computer and research sectors will already be familiar with. Indeed, it is along similar lines to the academic peer-review process and, perhaps more so, the ratings systems of online retailers such as Amazon.com, eBay and Epinions.
These retailers often rely on customer evaluations and ratings for sales to occur, provide recommendations from other users as well as 'expert' sources such as publishers, and, in the case of online auctioneer eBay especially, operate a 'rate seller' function that works as a reputation system to indicate the trustworthiness of particular sellers.
Hargreaves suggests that the Government could provide an innovation and best practice network with a similar infrastructure, through which innovative approaches would branch out from central hubs to satellite institutions.
"The quality of an innovation and validity of a claim to good or best practice could be rated by those who had tried to transfer it, as well as by 'experts' such as researchers or OFSTED." He adds that "the trustworthiness of the judges would also be rated by practitioners, for this would be particularly important in relation to judgements or claims about high leverage and ease of transferability."
While these certainly sound like radical steps for educational transformation, nothing in Hargreaves' article is particularly new, as he acknowledges. The types of ICT systems he describes exist, as do self-organising networks of practitioners across many fields. Likewise, there are already thousands of extremely talented teaching professionals online in discussion groups and forums where advice on good practice is shared and, sometimes, where it is shaped. The point of an 'emergent system' is that new knowledge and skills develop from the interactions of all its interconnected parts.
The testbeds for much of this thinking in education are the 111 Networked Learning Communities launched since September 2002, which currently join up over 1,000 schools, 20,000 staff and 500,000 pupils. Their central ethos is one of learning on behalf of each other, and adding value to the network by exchanging knowledge.
David Hargreaves believes that the NLCs may demonstrate how a bazaar-style approach rather than a cathedral-building campaign can contribute to the ongoing transformation of education - led by best practice from practitioners in the field.
"If Networked Learning Communities succeed," he told the NCL conference, "'it will be a vital demonstration that bottom-up, peer-to-peer and self-organising systems are a powerful and self-sustaining means of improvement. That could change for ever the relationship between ministers and the DfES on the one hand, and the nation's schools and their teachers on the other."
Links
David Hargreaves's presentation and transcript from NLC 2003, plus latest news on the Networked Learning Communities, can be found at: stage.ncsl.org.uk/ncsl/index.cfm?pageID=nlc-index
Hargreaves, D (2003). Education Epidemic: Transforming Secondary Schools Through Innovation Networks. Demos. Available online for free download at: www.demos.co.uk/catalogue/educationepidemic_page276.aspx
November 2003
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