We Don’t Need No Innovation Now -Crevits & Co. But maintenance & repair & simplifying

conserveren, optimaliseren, onderhouden en opgelopen schade herstellen; geen cultuuromslagen, maar enkel vernieuwen in continuïteit, én vereenvoudigen i.p.v. compliceren

“Our culture’s obsession with innovation and hype has led us to ignore maintenance & repairing and maintainers.” The peddlers of innovation radically overvalue innovation.
In schools we’ve tweaked and tinkered, chopped and changed, until what counts as school improvement is often just layer upon layer of initiatives and innovations."

We talk a lot in education about marginal gains, about extracting an additional 1% from myriad ‘interventions’, but I worry that this distracts us from seeking the 20% gains that lie before us if we banish classroom disruption, introduce an effective literacy catch-up programme, or provide a coherent 6-year curriculum.

Vereenvoudig het onderwijs en het besturen van een school i.p.v. het nog ingewikkelder te maken. En herstel de door tal van ondoordachte hervormingen aangerichte schade!

Voer de meeste geplande hervormingen af; ze leiden enkel tot achteruitgang en chaos en ze zijn ook onbetaalbaar.
Optimaliseer (indien mogelijk) de infrastructuur; optimaliseer de curricula en de methodes ...

Voer de meeste op stapel staande hervormingen af:

*De geplande radicale hervormingen zijn alle niveau-verlagend en nivellerend, leiden alle tot extra- werk- en planlast en tot aantasting van de motivatie van leerkrachten en directies
*Nefaste M-decreet
*Huidige effectieve eenheidsstructuur 1ste graad kapotmaken door invoering van chaotische en nivellerende veelheidsstructuur,
*gekunstelde domeinscholen s.o. die nergens ter wereld bestaan, *grootschaligheid die identiteit, specifieke cultuur van de school en de betrokkenheid en motivatie van het personeel zal aantasten,

*nieuwe ZILL-leerplanvisie katholieke koepel die opstellen van duidelijke leerplannen en degelijke methodes en instructie onmogelijk maakt;
*de 7 recente rapporten/adviezen voor de toekomst van ons onderwijs en voor de nieuwe eindtermen viseren alle een sterke ontscholing van het onderwijs
*de vele hervormingen van het hoger onderwijs en van de lerarenopleidingen leidden tot een sterke niveauding, wildgroei e.d. We vrezen dat de zoveelste hervorming van de lerarenopleidingen eens te meer een stap achteruit zal zijn.
*Het loopbaanpact zit volledig in het slop en wat ervan uitlekt lokt veel ergernis bij leerkrachten op
*

November 15, 2016 steveadcock81
A wonderful essay in Aeon magazine ‘Hail the Maintainers’ describes innovation as “a dominant ideology of our era”. In a podcast based on this essay its author warns: “Our culture’s obsession with innovation and hype has led us to ignore maintenance and maintainers.”

In schools we’ve tweaked and tinkered, chopped and changed, until what counts as school improvement is often just layer upon layer of initiatives and innovations. This onion-skin school improvement can hide a rotten, neglected core.

Innovation is alluring. When we bring in new initiatives we don’t have to offend those who invested in the previous project. New initiatives are shiny, gleaming and different; they offer a brighter future compared to the dull, messy, complex present. Brexit and Trump – and Obama in his time – were able to sell an exciting new vision, a rejection of the status quo, while those of us who campaigned to Remain could only offer more of the same.

What if we turned our attention away from innovation, away from the latest marginal gain, and towards getting the basics right, towards investing in the infrastructure which will support sustainable school improvement in our schools? I think of this infrastructure as 5 foundations: leadership, culture, curriculum, teaching and assessment. These are our building blocks of school improvement and it’s likely that we can trace all manifestations of success back to one of these five foundations.

There’s a dogged patience required to fix an incoherent curriculum, to raise standards of behaviour or to overhaul an assessment system. Those invested in the status quo might be offended, we might have to get our hands dirty, we might not see the fruits of our labour for years to come.

.... I think the current state of our school system means we should focus on fixing, not innovating. We talk a lot in education about marginal gains, about extracting an additional 1% from myriad ‘interventions’, but I worry that this distracts us from seeking the 20% gains that lie before us if we banish classroom disruption, introduce an effective literacy catch-up programme, or provide a coherent 5-year curriculum. As I’ve written before, schools are different to the SKY cycling team.

... When it comes to school improvement, we should avoid imitating individual initiatives and innovations and focus instead on the infrastructure which will underpin the school for years to come.
While our teachers teach like champions, maybe our leaders should lead like engineers?