Managing Change: The Importance of Vision
Terry Freedman, Educational ICT ConsultantBack in the 17th century, if you were unfortunate enough to have had a vision, and stupid enough to admit to it, you'd likely be burnt at the stake or locked away on the grounds of insanity. But these days, having a vision is de rigeur if you are to bring about change in an organisation effectively.
There is a lot of research which shows that if you want to transform educational ICT in an organisation, you must have a set of guiding principles -- a vision -- in place. You have to know what it is you're striving to achieve, not in terms of the nuts and bolts of what technology will be used and how, but in terms of the educational experience of the students, teachers and parents.
Moreover, the research, and experience, tells us that the vision has to be shared by all, not just the lone ravings of a madman. Ideally, then, it should have been developed by all.
Three of the things I always check when I'm evaluating the ICT provision of a school, whether as an ICT Mark Assessor or an independent consultant brought in by the school or the Local Authority, are as follows:
One, does everyone, including parents and, of course, the youngsters, know what the vision is?
Two, did they have a hand in framing it?
Three, is the school achieving it?
Interestingly, I find that much of the time the parents and students know what the vision is if you ask a question like, "What do you think the school is trying to achieve?". If you ask them about visions, they give you a kind of sidelong glance that suggests that they think you're slightly unhinged. It's a salutary lesson: most of the world does not speak in corporate jargon.
If a vision is good to have, having two or more must be even better, right? Unfortunately, no. Researchers Peck and Sprenger, in their chapter on one-to-one educational computing in The International Handbook of Information Technology in Primary and Secondary Education (Springer, 2008), which I shall be reviewing, advise against falling into the traps of naive innovation. One of these is having too many disconnected initiatives.
Even Ofsted, the UK's school inspection body, said in a recent report on the impact of the National Strategies, that:
... the frequent introduction of new initiatives had led to overload and diminished their potential effectiveness.
Try telling that to the people and organisations who are continually coming up with new initiatives and projects to make educational ICT even "better". A couple of years ago, I worked out that there were forty educational initiatives, policies or projects that involved ICT in some way, that affected schools in England and Wales. There may have been more, but when I reached 40 I stopped counting.
Perhaps our 17th century ancestors weren't entirely wrong after all!
Reader Comments (6)
I think there's the potential to confuse a number of key issues here. Firstly, I believe there is an important difference between a vision and a set of guiding principals. The latter provide a framework for achieving the former - but are not synonymous. Second, a new initiative may reflect the presence of a vision, but does not in and of itself represent a vision. In the proper order of things a new initiative (or any number of them for that matter) should be implemented as a strategic approach to pursuing a vision. The reason we have so much confusion created by so many, seemingly unrelated or competing initiatives is that they are so often simply the result of a "good idea", or at best, a "short horizon" vision. Neither of these things are conducive to long term, sustainable change. I've written on my blog about the need for "long horizon" vision as a key to leading learning in the digital world. (http://blog.core-ed.net/derek/2010/02/leading-learning-in-a-digital-world.html) Sadly, many of today's leaders are not being guided, inspired or led by a long horizon vision, but instead fall prey to short term social, political or economic imperatives and the knee jerk pursuit of 'short horizon' visions.
This is important, but the fact is that in a school many staff will not really agree with any vision that involves students and teachers using more new technology to improve education. So what do you do? You can try and take them through a process of discussion of and engagement with the issues. You may or may not achieve any change. More likely you won't be given the time to do this because of competing initiatives. Alternatively if the Head has a vision they will at least be able to implement the framework to allow that vision to be operationalised. Some will be won over in the implementation. So what you need is a vision+ as many people as possible involved in the formulation of the vision + "Power" if the collective vision is tending towards workbooks and copying from the board!
As for short and long horizons, again I agree. In fact, the way you describe them sounds very like the distinction I usually draw between having a technical specification and a funtional one. Must write about that.