Dewey, Kotter and Campbell on Democracy, Education and Change

I recently upgraded to Windows 10 and incurred plenty of change. I also encountered more applications that would not work with the newly upgraded Windows 10 and the "Edge." What is it about change that works? I began to ponder change in education.

Learning is change. In my graduate studies in education we had to take a course in change management. At the time, I was not connecting the liberal learning seminar to my studies on theories of education. However, since my education was so engaging, I actually retained something in the back of my mind.  The first part of this equation of learning was influenced by John Dewey.

When it came to learning, Dewey is my "leader of learning." I just ate up all that experiential learning and using activity to engage students. I love all of his theories of learning.  There was that one issue about democracy in education that did not seem to synthesize at the time.

Dewey had beliefs in education and reform. I was not paying attention at the time and the words education reform and my organizational change management seminar never crossed paths in my brain. Until now.  Dewey's words now jump off the page 

"I believe that all reforms which rest simply upon the enactment of law, or the threatening of certain penalties, or upon changes in mechanical or outward arrangements, are transitory and futile." 

Did Dewey mean that reforms will fail that are forced upon educators? I think Dewey clarifies himself in another of his stated beliefs 

"I believe that the individual who is to be educated is a social individual and that society is an organic union of individuals. If we eliminate the social factor from the child we are left only with an abstraction; if we eliminate the individual factor from society, we are left only with an inert and lifeless mass."

I wonder are we loosing track of the social individual during education reform? Can we continue down this path of educating students to get  a robotic job, or the work of the day, and eliminate these social factors? Dewey does not seem to think so. 

"I believe that education, therefore, is a process of living and not a preparation for future living."

Learning is change. Let me tackle the change portion of this equation, and my learning in the course on organizational change management. We studied John Kotter and his book Leading Change.

In class, we threw around saying like "Culture eats strategy for lunch" with reckless abandon. We memorized the models of proven organizational change management from Lewin's three-step process and Kotter's eight-step process, to Bullock and Batten known for planned change, Neckhard and Harris for a change model formula, and Nadler and Tushman for congruence model. Of course we studied the scholarly works from Harvard University and MIT on how to institute successful organization change. Communication of the vision and buy in from all the actors seemed to be the overarching theme of successful change.  

None of the books addressed the Miegs Field model of change management. Perhaps it was still to early in the life of this new model. The model that keeps change top secret until the moment it happens, does not allow voices to be heard because they just drag out the process, and a system that thinks they know what is best for the society. Miegs Field did enact change overnight in a most undemocratic manner.  If you asked people today if they think it a good idea to tear down Northerly Island in favor of a few private pilots to build a landing strip, then you would hear the protests.

With the exception of Miegs Field, successful change involves communication. Kotter even addresses the predominating political organization when he asserts: 

"Organizations of the future will have to value candid discussion far more than they do today. Norms associated with political polite –ism,  with non-conformational diplomaticese, and with killing-the-messenger-of-bad-news  will have to change.  The volume knob of the dishonest dialog channel will have to be turned down."   

 

Organizations with communication dysfunctions must find a way to communicate to effect real change. 

Learning is change. Hopefully, I can come back full circle to Dewey and synthesize with Kotter. If educators embody the same beliefs as Dewey, and there is a functional communication system, then the open communication of education reform can produce a successful organization change. Without a voice from Dewey influencing the reform, it is as he said "transitory and futile."

So when it looks like east-is-east-and-west-is-west and never-the-twain-shall-meet, then the time is now to read the other textbook from my graduate organization change seminar:

How do we learn things?

I was introduced to several models of learning during my exploration in how to teach accounting. The one model that stood out for me was Taylor's learning cycle.

In my first few attempts at teaching accounting at the college level, I asked students if they knew how they learned. "Nope" was the typical answer. I energetically teased with a "you are all the way up to college level and no one told you how you do it?"  They leaned in as I explained the Taylor Model.

Learning begins with a disorienting event. Something is said or done that does not match up to what you already know. You get a disorienting feeling. A deer in the headlights feeling. It is uncomfortable to be disoriented. Some have stress and anxiety. What the mind then does can be to respond to this stress with a fight-or-flight reaction. Fight reactions would be similar to "I hate this topic, this is stupid, stupid textbook, the teacher is dumb, what do I need this junk for..." Then I observe students nodding heads and giving nervous laughs as they recall and remember. A flight reaction would be something like procrastination.  "Oh I can just watch this game first then I learn this junk, or my friend just called to go to a party, or I have to go shopping first, then I'll get to this later"

Instead of letting the negative stress and anxiety lead you into fight-or-flight responses, embrace the disorientation feeling, say to yourself "I am feeling disorientation which means I am on the way to learning something new." Encourage yourself to approach it in a positive manner. Getting past the reaction to disorientation is the biggest challenge to learning.

If you live in the City of Chicago, like I do, there really are shootings and people getting shot on your street corner. Police leave the blood on the streets after the body is off to the morgue. One time my Alderman, Joe Moore, got a mop and pail out of a nearby building to wash the sidewalks of a drive-by he witnessed. Violence is real to those living in the city. We don't have "post" traumatic stress disorder, we have "constant" traumatic stress disorder.

We have an overactive amygdala as a result. That amygdala is the part of the brain that does the split second flight-or-fight response. The amygdala has a role in emotion, learning and memory. This is only one of the many factors challenging learning, but is core to many challenges.

Once we recognize the disorientation, we seek to resolve the situation by exploring and searching for information, facts, processes, solutions to problems, and knowledge to match up to the layers of what we already know. This phase uses curiosity. Curiosity needs time to roam around. Curiosity needs space to perform trial and error. We need to experiment. We need to ponder. What happens to many in this phase is the "Efficiency Sargent" takes over.  The learner finds themselves trying to gather and assemble all the knowledge in the easiest (most efficient to them at the time) manner possible. Even if searching means finding the answers on the internet. This produces a very slim level of knowledge. Most likely just enough to pass a quiz or test.

Deep learning occurs during a messy, search for information and many trials and errors. Deep learning occurs when "time" gets lost searching and exploring learning. Have you ever got so deep into a project that 2 to 3 hours passed and you realize you have not even stopped for lunch or dinner? Deep learning happens when the learner is "in the flow." Athletes performing in the "zone" are in a flow state. According to Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, who named the process, the flow produces a sense of joy in the person. Things take place effortlessly and pleasure is the response in the flow state. 

Could my students be getting high in the flow state? The reorientation phase of the learning cycle is a satisfaction of stress that caused the disorientation. We now close the circle by progressing to the state of equilibrium. Everything is cool in the equilibrium state. Now is the time to go out dancing at the club.