In his blog post, Some strategies for the Open Homework Systems project, Clint Lalonde begins by acknowledging that the process of developing a list of strategies for Open Homework Systems (OHS) project required collaboration from various groups. Lalonde offers thanks to these groups and shares that they were included within his gathering of knowledge and generating of strategies for the OHS project. Lalonde plans to front-load this content to inform initial discussions for a newly-formed project advisory group. Lalonde manifests a holistic and collaborative leadership approach with a humanistic lens, which works well with the design and planning for the Open Homework Systems project.
Conceptually, Lalonde recognizes that online interactive software and learning platforms are not ubiquitous, identifying sub-branches such as STEM, Business, Arts & Humanities, Health & Human Services, Social Sciences, and Trades. Recognizing this as an area of limitation, Lalonde manages risks by concentrating efforts rather than diluting resources. He focuses on STEM and one other higher enrolment courses, which remind me of the cost-considering Theory E change management theory (Biech, 2007). What resonates most from Lalonde’s post is that we do not have to reinvent the wheel when it comes to implementing change and that we should look to leverage what currently exists to supplement change. Including vetted resources can have multiple positive impacts such as increasing change efficacy for members.
In a K-12 context, I think if we look at OHS from a lens of urgency, for example school systems pivoting to emergency remote teaching and learning, we can identify specific needs and implement change with a shared understanding, individually and collectively, that includes member buy-in and concerted effort. The Luecke method comes to mind, where school systems accept the need (Al-Haddad & Kotnour, 2015) and embrace the value of OHS as a resource to supplement student learning and reinforce instruction. According to Al-Haddad & Kotnour, this method requires strong leadership, a clear vision, and flexibility to implement change and to meet evolving needs (2015). Ideally, this leader would “be the innovation they wish to create” (Workman & Cleveland-Innes, 2012, p.321). It would also require an unfreezing of mindsets, as Lewin’s 3-stage model of change suggests (Weiner, 2009), which is a difficult task, as has been revealed through teacher’s struggle navigating policy, expectations, and goals during the COVID-19 pandemic (Reich et al., 2020). However, in my experience, I have witnessed a shared resolve and high change efficacy (Weiner, 2009) with digital technologies in the shift to emergency remote teaching and learning, demonstrating the potential for continued growth along this trajectory. It would be a unique challenge, but not an impossible one, to identify the need for and the inclusion of online interactive software and learning platforms such as OHS in K-12 public education.
Al-Haddad, S., & Kotnour, T. (2015). Integrating the organizational change literature: a model for successful change. Journal of Organizational Change Management, 28(2), 234-262.
Biech, E. (2007). Models for Change. In Thriving Through Change: A Leader’s Practical Guide to Change Mastery. Alexandria, VA: ASTD [Books24x7 database]
Reich, J., Buttimer, C. J., Coleman, D., Colwell, R. D., Faruqi, F., & Larke, L. R. (2020). What’s lost, what’s left, what’s next: Lessons learned from the lived experiences of teachers during the 2020 novel coronavirus pandemic. MIT Teaching Systems Lab.
Weiner, B. J. (2009). A theory of organizational readiness for change. Implementation Science, 4(67).
Workman, T., & Cleveland-Innes, M. (2012). Leadership, personal transformation, and management. The International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning, 13(4), 313-323.
How Can K-12 Innovate when it Continues to be Reactive?
In K-12 public education, there are many levels of decision-making depending on needs, solutions to problems that require certain voices over others. However, the stakeholders in the top-down hierarchy of K-12 rarely if ever include teachers. This decision-making pipeline finds the teacher at bottom, recipient of decisions, tasked with implementing change they rarely have any say in. From the Ministry to the school board, to the superintendent to the principal, policy and practices are funnelled until they are put into action by the teacher. One glaring example is Mike Harris’ Conservative Party’s 1995 Common Sense Revolution that sought to make several changes, among which were reversals of anti-racist legislation and removal of pro-equity language in the Ontario curriculum (Anderson & Ben Jaafar, 2006). In 1996, this conservative government established the Education Quality and Accountability Office (EQAO), which produced Ontario’s first standardized tests.
In Ontario, EQOA remained in place until the pandemic disrupted the status quo. The outcomes of EQAO have been debated over the years, with criticisms of inequities and biases (Eizadirad, 2019; Klein et al., 2006). In my original post, I touched on Al-Haddad & Kotnour’s review of change management methods, specifically how Kotter’s Leading Change method and Luecke’s Method identify and accept the need and urgency for change (2015). In the K-12 context and urgency, I reiterate here that members of the system, specifically teachers, have identified needs such as equity and access, and the desire to implement change resulting from the pandemic. However, change has been slow if evident at all, fraught with barriers, and dependent on the change-maker. The changes that required urgency and were actioned came from outward pressure such as Health and Safety operations leading to the transition from face-to-face to emergency remote teaching and learning.
In 2019-2020, EQAO was canceled, but in 2021-2022 it was reinstated without modifications to account for setbacks such as instructional loss. As Marsh et al (2006) note, “there remain many unanswered questions about the interpretation and use of data to inform decisions, and about the ultimate effects of the decisions and resulting actions on student achievement and other educational outcomes” (p.2). In my experience, the outcomes revealed during the 2021-2022 school year exemplify what Marsh et al noted in 2006, that decisions “fall into two categories: decisions that entail using data to inform, identify, or clarify (e.g., identifying goals or needs) and those that entail using data to act” (p.3). The 2021-2022 return to EQAO exemplifies the government’s narrow scope of the increasing digital divide resulting in digital redlining (Tong et al., 2021), and on access for those most vulnerable and racialized students (Camillo et al., 2020). The data generated through EQAO informed responsiveness, specifically with the unrolling of a new Math curriculum in September of 2020. Clearly, the current government chose to use data to act (Marsh et al., 2006), removing anti-racist language in the process (Sharp, 2021). The results of this year’s EQAO will reflect many factors contributing to student success, revealing variations on the status quo of school systems that will exacerbate current identities or create new identities to serve economic agendas (Pickup, 2021). Instead of returning to standardized testing, the Ontario Ministry of Education should return to the design phase and create a new evaluative tool that reflects gaps created by the pandemic in order to narrow these gaps rather than highlight them.
Reference:
Anderson, S. E., & Ben Jaafar, S. (2006). Policy trends in Ontario education: 1990-2006. Ontario Institute for Studies in Education of the University of Toronto. https://icec.oise.utoronto.ca/PDFfiles/FinalPolicyNarrative.pdf.pdf
Camillo, C., Shoyama, J., & Longo, J. (2020, September 8). A Tectonic Shift in the Digital Divide: It’s now deeper than a technological gap. Johnson Shoyama Graduate School of Public Policy.
https://www.schoolofpublicpolicy.sk.ca/research/publications/policy-brief/covid-series-tectonic-shift-in-the-digital-divide.php
Eizadirad, A. (2019). Decolonizing educational assessment: Ontario elementary students and the eqao. Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-27462-7
Klein, A. M., Zevenbergen, A. A., & Brown, N. (2006). Managing Standardized Testing in Today’s Schools. The Journal of Educational Thought, 40(2), 145-157. https://www.proquest.com/scholarly-journals/managing-standardized-testing-todays-schools/docview/213795793/se-2?accountid=8056
Marsh, J., Pane, J., & Hamilton, L., (2006). Making Sense of Data-Driven Decision Making in Education: Evidence from Recent RAND Research. Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation. https://doi.org/10.7249/OP170
Pickup, A. (2021). Toward a historical ontology of the infopolitics of data-driven decision-making (dddm) in education. Educational Philosophy & Theory, May 2021, P1. https://doi.org/10.1080/00131857.2021.1935232
Sharp, M. (2021, July 14). Lecce removes anti-racist language from Ontario’s new math curriculum. The Toronto Star. https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2021/07/14/lecce-removes-anti-racist-language-from-ontarios-new-math-curriculum.html
Tong, C., Zimmerman, D., & McClanahan, J. (2021). Closing the broadband digital divide: the role of utility‐owned fiber. Climate and Energy, 37(8), 1–14. https://doi.org/10.1002/gas.22217
Hi Angela,
Thank you for providing this critique of the role of data and decision-making in the K-12 system in Ontario. I have been out of the K-12 system for quite some time, so I really appreciated your description of how standardized testing has been implemented and the impact from the pandemic. You mention that some of the data did inform Math curriculum changes, and I wondered what that looked like – it did not seem like it was positive if anti-racist language was removed in response, but I may have misinterpreted that. I also wondered if teachers are involved in curricular changes – here in BC yes, but what does that look like in your context? Thanks,
Michelle
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