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If you think about educational change, you can’t (all other variables kept static) change from a traditional “stand and delivery” teacher and POOF overnight become an inquiry based one. Similarly, moving from a teacher directed classroom to a student centered one, requires a gradual evolution for both teacher and students. Too radical a change might in fact cause the extinction of the very change you are trying to implement. Systems survive by maintain homeostasis of the system, not by being disrupted, regardless of how worthy or valuable the disruption. Moreover, the change might not even be imaginable or seem possible from the starting perspective.
How about on our way towards the desired change we move to the adjacent possible? First.
How about instead of telling teachers the changes they “should” make, how about providing them with a way to change?
Many #flipclass practitioners have spent considerable time and energy defining, explaining and clarifying what exactly #flipclass is and what it is not. Throughout I felt a key component of my explanation was missing but I couldn’t quite put my finger on it; #flipclass was close enough to what I already did but AT THE SAME TIME it opened up new opportunities for changes previously unattainable and unseen. This dynamic was for me the secret sauce of #flipclass as a vehicle for change. It was not whether #flipclass was “bad or good” (we could debate this forever) or the same as traditional practice…
Instead. What mattered? #Flipclass was possible AND created new possibilities for further change. Critics have been quick to pounce and this observation against #flipclass; “Look teachers who use #flipclass move beyond it”. Exactly!
How about instead we consider #flipclass as adjacent possible? As Steven Johnson describes, adjacent possible:
Change occurs within a complex interconnected system. You might in fact, have the best new idea, but that does not mean it will survive within the system. If you see #flipclass simply as “old wine in new bottles” consider #flipclass as the process of change rather than as the change.
Johnson compares ideas to a number of interconnected rooms down a hallway: you can’t reach the final room without travelling through the others. When I was in my “traditional teaching room” I could not see all the way down the hall to inquiry. As I moved into the adjacent possible of #flipclass, I gained new perspectives that I could not have in the original space. Being in this new space, a new adjacent possible became possible.
What is your adjacent possible?
Excellent post, thank you! Culture eats strategy, and thus requires a gradual change. But it all starts from seeing with new eyes.