Guest Posts: Autonomy creates capacity to be different
Editor’s note: Each Friday we feature guest bloggers that are involved in rethinking what is possible with schooling and the education system.
At bat this week are Dan French and Lynn Nordgren, who during an Education|Evolving meeting last June expressed their support for moving control over school form and function out to the front-line units, including teachers.
Dan French is director at the Center for Collaborative Education in Boston. He argues that, “only when you create schools that are empowered in that way do you get truly successful, high performing schools.”
Lynn Nordgren, President of the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers, talks about autonomy in terms of teacher professionalism, and motivation.
For these two, autonomy is a matter of creating the capacity to be different, and about motivating the professionals to take control over their work. Both Minneapolis and Boston have been working at this, by giving teachers and their unions the opportunity to create independent schools, inside the city school districts.
June 17, 2010 - 8:44am
Personalizing of education seems inevitable as we recognize every child has a different set of abilities and disabilities in acquiring knowledge and the skills to apply it. Why haven't software companies taken the lead by developing interactive applications that first assess how each student learns and then continuously alter the style, pace and content
of the lesson to enable optimum progress.
This would seem like a no-brainer for the 'Gates' and 'Jobs' personalities we have among us. America's strength has always been our ability to innovate. We shouldn't let the fear of losing antiquated, traditional classrooms result in millions of kids failing to reach their potential every year.
June 17, 2010 - 8:23pm
At this point in time only teachers have the abilties to 'personalize' education by addressing the variety of demands students make to learn what they want to know. Unfortunately most school administrators don't understand how to change the school environment to allow teachers to meet student needs. Would it be more expedient to show administrators how to create learning environments for teachers and students or build a school to match each new way of teaching?
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