Pedagogy

This is an important statement. Schools evolve in a manner based on a perception - Teacher roles, student roles and societal roles. There is no revolution brought about by the collective. For structures - funding, management, assessment/benchmarks etc. - time is required for the evolution. Fashion has its purpose as it allows innovators to display, group and promote. Fashion is also recyclable - 'yes been through that 20 years ago'. The bulk of teachers and students are not innovators. They will choose the status quo and remain faithful to the functions prescribed by their perceptions. From this basis change is a series of small steps (incremental). To a certain extent this bulk of consciousness self protects and provide certainty of place. Change has to occur within the scope of recognition and purpose. It is important that teachers and students have clarity of purpose. However teachers cannot be recalcitrant - they must be progressive. The bulk of teachers will be progressive when support structures are explicit and clear in purpose. Innovation requires support. Innovation without support remains bound within a quagmire of fashion cycles. National and State visions of education reflect the quagmire of cycles and almost static based change occurring in most schools.

Teaching practices slowly evolved from communicating personal knowledge on the blackboard to prescribed text books. Contemporary teachers are now faced with a multifaceted array of delivery tools. Schools need to make explicit to their teachers biannual benchmarks of what Information Technologies should be employed in their classrooms. Leaving it up to the teacher is insufficient. Only 2 out of 10 teachers are innovators. These teachers will have passion and commitment to the school. They will drive innovation. 6 out of 10 will turn up and put time into their work. They operate on the status quo. They need assistance to innovate. The remaining 2 out of 10 will not contribute. The Innovative teachers should be employed by the school as agents of continual change, with the objective to raise the benchmarks of Information Technologies employed. The bulk of the teachers Performance Management should be tied to the expected benchmarks. The non contributors should be actively squeezed out of the school. If schools do not provide the appropriate and relevant service they become irrelevant and their students are dis-serviced.

Schools have evolved on a basis that can be described as a silo platform. Whilst schools do share state or national curriculum outcomes/statement they are competitive. They are competitive for content resources, teachers and students. Whilst some privilege schools may benefit many poorly resourced schools do not. This competition maintains the silo status quo. The physical ability to cross pollination will benefit not only poorly resourced schools but also richly resourced schools. To enable a physical capacity to cross pollination requires structural changes in how students enrol, how content is developed and how teachers perceive their roles.

The future of a school is reliant on its capacity to connect to the online world. Presently innovative individual teachers and students use leading edge communication technologies to develop individual learning environments. The starting point to a connected learning environment may be the individual however real gain will be made when schools become active knowledge nodes. The skills shortage issue is real. Attracting and retaining senior level specialist teachers is becoming more difficult. Departments of Education need to develop strategic plans to enable schools to enterprise as knowledge nodes or else schools will become irrelevant.