Michael Fullan has written an excellent analysis of the best way to redesign school systems after the pandemic. This paper deserves the time it takes to read. Don’t read just the bullet points. Read it all.
Fullan recognizes that the pandemic has shaken up many assumptions about the status quo. He persuasively argues that the status quo in education is “driven” by failed ideas.
He writes:
The four new wrong drivers are not completely wrong. It is just that if left alone they take us in a negative direction. Let’s name them and give them nicknames (in parentheses).
- Academics Obsession (selfish)
- Machine Intelligence (careless)
- Austerity (ruthless), and
- Fragmentation (inertia).
They have been operating for 40 years,
and with ever-growing intensity. Together they are the ‘bloodless paradigm’, lacking care, empathy, and civic awareness – the things that make us humans. The new right drivers, by contrast, capture and propel the human spirit. Again these are offered with nicknames.
What does he propose instead?
- Wellbeing and Learning (essence)
- Social Intelligence (limitless)
- Equality Investments (dignity), and
- Systemness (wholeness).
They are the human paradigm and presently constitute a work in progress. We have barely begun to tap their potential.
Fullan’s provocative paper deserves your full attention. The path we have taken in education for the past four decades has exhausted whatever promise it might have had. After the past two decades of legislated testing, accountability, competition, and privatization, we see few of any signs of improvement. The more we stick with the status quo, the more rancid it is. It is time for fresh thinking. Here is a good place to begin to think anew.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Fascinating article, seemingly a summary of all I have been reading here for several years.
I have always felt that the biggest harm done by academic obsession (his title) is that it makes children feel like they are inadequate. We must go in a direction that allows children to develop at their own rate. Just because one 12 year old can do algebra does not mean that others who cannot should be taught they are inferior. If I were to wait for all students to be ready to take on world history with a proper background of information, we might never teach the course. We need to meet the children where they are, and try to move them forward.
A part of this is that we do not condemn students or teachers for failing to measure up to expectations that are unreasonable. Present expected levels of performance are mostly unreasonable leading to sullen reaction we all blame on electronic devices
This article points to the need to make a paradigm shift in education. In response to the pandemic and the failure of competency based education, we need a coordinated effort to educate the whole student. This is an interesting analysis of the problems facing us and the complexities of our technological society. Only a more inclusive model of education will result deeper understanding and thinking through collaboration instead of competition.
As I read this paper, I immediately thought of how our problems are similar to those of Australia. The difference also struck me as well. Australia understands it has a problem, and they have brought it Pasi Sahlberg to have a voice in the discussion of change. Instead the US is choking from its own blindness and hubris. We have more income inequality in our country, and we have a large cadre of billionaires standing on the neck of our public schools. They have no intention of making positive child-centered changes. They are intent on dismantling public education. They intend to offer a bunch of unbundled education services and have students work toward various skills-based badges instead of deeper understanding. They do not care about producing thinking, empathetic human beings that are responsible citizens. They want to turn education into competency based badges to serve the gig economy, not democracy or even individual interests. They want cheap, disposable cogs for the wheel of a capitalistic society. They are paying off politicians to facilitate this nefarious goal. Our problems are far more far reaching and complex than those in Australia.
“I immediately thought of how our problems are similar to those of Australia.”
Almost a quarter of a century ago Noel Wilson was warning Australia about the standards and testing malpractice regime. Did they listen to his prescient and cogent analysis? Hell no! And where has that left Australian education?
Same with the US. Many, some of us following Wilson’s lead, have been fighting the standards and testing malpractice regime with it’s data driven dialogue debacle since the end of the last century. Did they listen to us? Hell no! And where has that left American education?
“Our problems are far more far reaching and complex than those in Australia.”
No, they aren’t more far reaching and complex. All of the political dynamics and onto-epistemological fallacies are the same. The USofA is not that unique, except in our great American inability to listen and learn from others.
In terms of billionaires per capita we are far worse off than Australia. We have the largest number of billionaires in the world according to Forbes. Australia is 14th. The same ideological fallacies plague both countries, but we have more powerful billionaires that can exert their biased influence on governance.https://www.forbes.com/sites/jonathanponciano/2020/04/08/the-countries-with-the-most-billionaires-in-2020/?sh=49eec4ec4429
Australia imported our bad education ideas. Rupert Murdoch invited Joel Klein to tout the non-existent NYC “miracle” to the Australian Commissioner of Education. Simple: testing, high-stakes accountability, competition, common standards. Julia Galliard bought it and the nation got stuck with NCLB-style “reform.” Galliard went on to become Prime Minister and never stopped believing in Klein and Bloomberg.
cheap disposable cogs. yes
Thank you, Diane, for including Michael’s Fullan’s article in today’s blog.
I wrote a paper on Fullan for an Ontario teachers union OSSTF . I titled it the “Glass is Half Fullan”. Two things irritate me the most about Fullan. He is a long time proponent of standardized testing even though his old pal and wrinting partner Andy Hargreaves disagree with him. Second his voluminous writing often treats teachers as broken and who need to be fixed. Not exactly the teacher POV.
He often say spend more, extend education downwards, which we called a profound sense of the obvious.
Does he express his fondness for testing in the article which is the basis of Diane’s post?
My impression was that Fullan was rejected the test-based accountability with which he was associated in this new paper.
Doesnt matter
Do the wealthy supporters of meritocracy and extrinsic rewards and punishments want equality or student wellbeing? I think not. Standardized testing is designed to suit the desires of monopolists.
Dear Daine, thank you for sharing this paper and insights from Prof. M. Fulton. In my opinion, at least three–if not all–of his four drivers are (and have been for many years) at the core of Finnish school education. This is why Finnish schools (mainly from K-9) returned to face-to-face school education since May 14 and have remained so, almost in a near pre-pandemic normal situation. Best regards, Eduardo Andere (Author of: “Teachers´perspectives on Finnish school education: Creating learning environments” (Springer, 2014) and “The future of schools and teacher education: How far ahead is Finland? (Oxford University Press, 2020).
Same guy who wrote the white paper, Alive in the Swamp with the woman from Pearson? Beware of the Wolf. https://www.nesta.org.uk/report/alive-in-the-swamp-assessing-digital-innovations-in-education/
If ever any paper needed close reading this is it, especially Fullan’s discussion of the 6C’s, 21st Century Skills, and vague references to some ancillary research in California and Australia.
I am working on learning more about at least one of Fullan’s California projects. Unfortunately there are no peer-reviewed summary of accomplishments.
Here is a link if you also want to see what assessment looked like in one Fullan project, a three-year $10 million effort to improve the performance of English Learners including long-term English Learners, funded by the California School Boards Association and several non-profits. https://michaelfullan.ca/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/The-Coherence-Framework-in-Action.pdf
You will see that the main measures of accomplishment are expressed as percentages, and that these percentages changed over the three-year project.
100% of Long-Term English Learners will access new curriculum supported with adequate technology, instructional materials, and assessments.
5% annual increase in English Learner language proficiency.
3% annual increase in English Learner A-G completion. (A-G refers to courses required for admission to either the California State University or University of California systems with a grade of C or better).
50% increase in Long-Term English Learner students reporting they feel positively connected to the school environment and experience success.
Year-to-year changes in these percentages appear to be framed as if evidence for continuous improvement.
This brief suggests that more detail can be found in specific pages of Fullan’s 2016 book: The Taking Action Guide to Building Coherence in Schools, Districts, and Systems. You have to buy or borrow the book to see the details.
Although some of the Fullan’s paper is appealing, it also represents another proposal for managing learning as if there are no redeeming features in our public schools and the principle of democratic governance for these.
It is worth noting that Joanne Quinn, a frequent collaborator with Fullan, has an MBA in Marketing and Human Resource Management. According to LinkedIn for 16 years she has been President of Quinn Consultants in Toronto. She also served for ten years as the Superintendent of Education for four schools in a district with 65,000 students.
Fullan is think-big thinker: “This paper is intended to provide a comprehensive solution to what ails the current public school system and its place in societal development – a system that is failing badly in the face of ever complex fundamental challenges to our survival, let alone our thriving as a species.”
I am uncomfortable with anyone who claims to have a “comprehensive solution” to the current public school system (including the USA) and who fails to address the fiscal and policy constraints that have been imposed on that system for decades along with a pattern of denial that planet earth and human survival is at risk.
If you want a better and brief jargon-free article on doable reforms, find “Twenty Years of Failing Schools” in The Progressive, February/March issue (pages 50-51. This article includes specific suggestions for the Biden administration and the new Secretary of Education. The author is Diane Ravitch.
“I am uncomfortable with anyone who claims to have a “comprehensive solution” to the current public school system”
Yeah, that’s a warning sign, no doubt.