FIRST
IN A SERIES OF COLUMNS
THE
ROLE OF TECHNOLOGY IN THE FUTURE OF EDUCATION
HOW SHOULD WE EDUCATE
IN THE "POST-EVERYTHING
ERA"?
| Pace of change | Two visions | Transformational
agendas |
By
Richard P. Richter
Pace
of change. Educators know from the
tempo and increasing complexity of their work that
they are in the midst of something new and startling.
After several
decades, the development of contemporary culture is
coming to a climax. It is bringing basic changes in
all organizations, including educational
institutions. The most compelling change is the
relentless and rapid process of change itself, both
within organizations and in their environment.
Standing in the
midst of this dynamic moment in Western experience,
we hear the note of fundamental change in
catchphrases--"post-job,"
"post-industrial,"
"post-masculine,"
"post-national," "post-Oedipal,"
"post-structural,"
"post-Christian," "post-modern."
We might just call it the "post-everything
era."
Central to this
era is the acceleration of change in the
technological foundations of life. These foundations
originated hundreds of years ago. The Western world
hoped that scientifically based technical innovation
would improve the economic, political, and cultural
conditions of individual lives. The independence and
empowerment of the individual lay at the heart of
that hope of Western culture.
Schools,
colleges, and universities, especially in America,
have had the role of fostering the independence and
empowerment of the individual in the modern
technological environment. As they have evolved, they
have had the responsibility to be the medium as well
as the message of modern life. That is, they have
employed the technological tools of the very culture
that they have been charged with teaching and
advancing. The textbook itself has long been the most
important but obviously not the only technological
tool.
In recent years,
the advances of information and telecommunications
technologies in a favorable economic climate have
been explosive. The use of these new technologies by
educators continues an historic pattern. But the
rapidity and the global scope of technological
advances have fueled social--and therefore
educational--change at an unprecedented pace.
The president of
Penn State, Graham Spanier, recently wrote about the
challenges of the new digital environment in an
article for the American Council on Education (The
Presidency, Spring 2000). He first cited some
specifics of the change in the fabric of his
institution caused by information technology during
his five years in office--for example, from 200,000
email files a day to more than two million; from not
a single individual webpage to 31,000 of them. Then
he observed, "This phenomenal growth in the
information technology arena has raised questions of
policy and practice for our university community that
have never before been asked."
The presidents
and superintendents of CAPE member institutions would
be able to cite similar patterns of change and
express their own awareness of profound policy
implications.
| Pace of change | Two visions | Transformational
agendas |
Two visions. So, the process of
change driven by technology has brought educators to
a critical turning point that demands vision and
decision. I detect two differing visions toward the
post-everything era in education.
One is gradualist.
Gradualists have passed the point of thinking,
"This too shall pass." They acknowledge
that videoconferencing and the web are changing
continuing education into "distributed
learning." They see how they are opening new
opportunities for teaching adults, especially those
in business. However, gradualists tend to hold tight
to the traditional scene where students and teachers
connect face-to-face. They still hold it up as the
centerpiece of education, where cognitive and moral
exchange at their best occur. They are willing to
augment the traditional arsenal of resources with
computers. But they are uncertain about the impact of
further technological developments. Nudge teaching
and learning methods along as the technologies
evolve, they say. Let institutions adapt over time
and add technological strategies without upsetting
our applecart. Sure, let them spend what is necessary
to keep up. But gradualists don't expect technology
to lead to operating efficiencies in the long run.
This gradualist
vision fits well with the academy's deep-seated
aversion to surface change, especially when
for-profit companies are driving it. It fits well
with the academic goal to define, propagate, and
defend the truth. Knowledge rarely emerges from the
whimsical changes of the day. The gradualists affirm
steadfastness in the educational mission of
institutions.
The other vision
I label catalytic.
In this view the arrival of the post-everything era
poses a unique opportunity for education at all
levels to transform itself deliberately and
imaginatively. Those who take this view see
far-reaching systemic effects flowing from the
information and telecommunications technologies
already introduced or soon to come.
In the catalytic
vision, scholars are restructuring knowledge.
Teachers are practicing their craft in novel ways.
Educational institutions are revising their core
priorities. They are reorganizing resources to meet
newly defined outcomes. Educators with the catalytic
vision see in the transformation of their profession
a reflection of fundamental change occurring in the
larger environment, in the whole cultural ecosystem.
They see a profound effect of all this on
students—on what they learn and how they learn
it. Indeed, they redefine what they think students
are--and what teachers are. They believe that by
transforming the nature of pedagogy in an interactive
and collaborative environment, institutions will
manage costs and still rise to a new level of
achievement.
Most who hold
this catalytic view agree with gradualists on the
importance of holding fast to educational mission.
Because of their commitment to transformation,
however, they do not shrink from revisiting the
traditional mission. They are ready to rewrite it in
language that fits the post-everything era.
Peter Likins,
the former president of Lehigh University (now
president of the University of Arizona), once used a
vivid metaphor to tell me how he felt as he led his
institution in the new environment. It felt to him
like re-shoeing a horse while it was running. Not
everyone with the catalytic vision feels so
paradoxically (or thinks so imaginatively) about the
challenge. But all probably share Likins's feeling of
the unprecedented character of the adventure.
| Pace of change | Two visions | Transformational
agendas |
Transformational
agendas.
I
have a hunch that only a few in the CAPE membership
stand no-holds-barred with either the gradualist or
the catalytic vision. I chat with people in the CAPE
circle of members and listen for telltale attitudes.
Usually what I hear is a sensible cautiousness mixed
with underlying confidence about a future educational
enterprise that will look quite different. With
varying degrees of foresight, their institutions have
joined CAPE because they have felt a need to connect
organizationally to a change-oriented agenda. CAPE's
own agenda has been a work-in-progress. It has held
fast from the start, however, to the mission of
helping institutions to transform themselves in the
conditions of the post-everything era.
Future columns
in this new CAPE medium will focus on selected issues
linked to the broad question—how should we
educate in the post-everything era? There are many
issues to choose from. "Collaboration," we
say, is the key to the new digital environment in
education. But are we talking about collaboration
across campus with colleagues or collaboration across
continents in international markets? Can we say that
the digital environment is finally here even before
the technological machinery becomes casual and
transparent--before your campus computer system works
as dependably as your car? Are the Ivies, with the
drawing power of their "name brands," going
to corner the market on distributed learning? What
can we do to conserve humane values in the
post-everything era? Stand by for a shot at some
answers to such questions.
| Pace of change | Two visions | Transformational
agendas |
Richard P. Richter
has been a consultant to CAPE since he became
President Emeritus of Ursinus College in 1995 after
18 years in office.
