Next Steps
Where do we go from here?
The first step in a plan to bring about needed changes in our systems of educating suggested by the analyses of the four categories heretofore discussed and included here.
A strategy for changing conventional education
Introduction:
Over the years as a professional educator, I have gradually identified what licensed teachers and administrators, and the lay public knows about the fundamental elements that shape our public education systems. Some of these elements are not new to those groups; they are preserved in traditions that have not been sufficiently examined or validated.
These include what little is known about (1) individual learners, (2) communication and group development, (3) the content and processes of becoming knowledgeable, (4) modern systems concepts that relate to learning, assessment, and evaluation of learning outcomes, and finally, (5) personality characteristics of professional educators that have to do with facilitating learning.
One might think that educators have expertise in these fundamental topics since they have been licensed to teach. While supervising students preparing to be teachers in hundreds of classrooms, observing behavior, and having studied and taught about the foundations for effective education for many years, including frequent meetings with State level Boards of Education and local Boards, I have found this to be far from the truth.
Furthermore, parents and the lay public possibly know even less, and this is critical when attempting to improve the existing system. Experience has taught us; the demands of an educated public may stimulate attention to these critical issues when our society is in this troublesome state.
What is currently known about individual development and learning that can be validated in personal experience and in the experiences of those who have studied these matters in-depth?
What is currently known about communication between individuals, and how groups develop into teams of learners, that can be validated in personal experience and in the experiences of those who have studied these topics in-depth?
What is currently known about the nature of knowledge and knowing, including processes of learning as practiced within a full range of disciplines of general education that represent six interrelated “realms of meaning,” that can be validated in personal experience and in the experiences of those who have studied these topics in depth?
What is currently known about modern systems theory, especially systems design as a process of learning and systems analysis as a strategy for assessment and evaluation of learning outcomes, that can be validated in personal experience and in the experiences of those who have studied these topics in depth?
What is currently known about personality characteristics that foster productive human interactions that facilitate learning in others, that can be validated in personal experience and in the experiences of those who have studied these matters in depth?
The above foundation elements form the parts of a system, a theory of education, that must be interrelated and translated into a reformed school system that meets the needs of 21st century students. However, after attempting several major innovations from within the educational communities across this land to achieve changes that would reflect the elements above, I have concluded that unless the public can be educated about updated knowledge regarding these elements, only piecemeal changes will occur from within the schools while systemic change remains vital in this troubled world.
Therefore, the attached proposal is designed to address this need. A Strategy for launching interactive multimedia (IMM) aimed at educators, politicians, and the public to engage them in a dialogue about the foundations for education required to accomplish sustainable change and vast improvement in cost-effective educational systems.
OVERVIEW/ABSTRACT
Concerns over the quality of education have frequently initiated a worldwide discourse about needed changes. Without an alternative, spelled-out in detail and comprehended by the lay public, a piecemeal approach and continued controversy will likely prevail. It’s time to seriously initiate the dialogue that can lead to systemic changes that address our perplexing social problems, poverty and discouraging performance indicators, that are manageable, cost effective, theoretically sound, and sustainable in this age of electronic communications and global connections.
Steps to achieving meaningful change:
Objectives:
Step 1: Convene a working group of those who have a genuine interest in changing education, who are familiar with the concepts contained in this thesis and in the book: Remaking our Schools for the 21st Century – A Blueprint for Change/Improvement in Our Educational Systems authored by Robert L. Arnold, Professor Emeritus of Education © 2013 and the contents of the latest version: Fraud In the Shadows of Our Society - What is Unknown About Educating is Hurting us All.
Step 2: Create an organizational structure and identify officers, board members and proposed leadership. Seek start-up funding from Foundations and forward- looking individuals.
Step 3: Support an interactive website(s) supported by an extensive social network. Seek advice regarding organizational structures and formulation of strategies for fund raising to guarantee sustainability.
Step 4: Develop a presentation for an alternative field-tested assessment, record keeping and evaluation system that would replace the widespread use of standardized, one-size-fits-all standardized tests, and a standardized core curriculum. Display the material on the website, with marketing strategies for creating widespread dialogue and sufficient income to cover expenses, royalties, and salaries.
Step 5: Encourage creation of supportive monographs (Blogs) that would be displayed on expanded, supporting website(s).
Step 6: Design multimedia presentations to introduce the lay public to a shared set of assumptions and beliefs about education.
Step 7: Organize, train, and manage a cadre/team of facilitators who will contract with both private and public schools across the USA to implement changes based on the materials displayed on the website.
Step 8: Establish a data gathering mechanism for validating the operational components that lead to an improved/changed school system.
Step 9: Establish a national educational conference center.
Project components:
Title: A Project to Educate the American public about the need and direction for Remaking our Schools for the 21st Century.
Goal: To initiate a widespread dialogue about the fundamental principles that underlie an effective education to stimulate real, theoretically sound and sustainable change in the way schools are conducted.
A systems-oriented school system would have the following characteristics: Its major components are listed below:
1. An individualized, computer-based (student constructed and maintained) record of learning with assessment techniques that honor different learning styles, interests, individual capacities, unique experiences with life, and evaluation criteria that allow for individual differences while maintaining the commonly shared goal of mastery of systems.
2. A diagnostic orientation directed to reduce impediments to learning for all individuals, regardless of age, race, emotional, social, physical, or intellectual capacity, with an acceptance of the values and ethical standards for dealing positively with diversity, pluralism, and inclusion.
3. A teaching/learning transactional strategy that features independent and collective planning for learning, facilitated through supportive group processes and the implementation of plans where individuals and groups are held accountable for accomplishing agreed-upon goals.
4. A competence-based curriculum that focuses on “life in all its manifestations” (Whitehead) with a balanced, student-constructed integration of the arts, sciences, mathematics and other languages, history/geography/cultural anthropology, ethics, and self/career development.
5. A central goal that centers upon the most socially useful learning in the modern world, learning how to learn, utilizing the methods and materials of all disciplines, in all “realms of meaning” (Phenix), fostering an openness to experience, incorporation into oneself of the processes and acceptance of change and the skills needed to organize and communicate one’s thoughts and feelings.
6. Using the creative orientations of all disciplines as strategies for learning that will bridge the longstanding philosophical gap between the interests of child-development and those of the acquisition of knowledge and skills.
7. Information management systems and appropriate uses of modern technology, configured to maximize learning and developmental maturation.
8. A support system for learners that involves highly skilled professional educator/facilitators, informed parents, trained leadership, community input, selected outside professional resource agencies, higher education faculty and students, and volunteer retired experts from a variety of specialties.
9. A written, continuously updated, and validated foundation for education that contains a statement of validated assumptions and beliefs about how individuals learn, grow, and develop, alone and in groups, that will guide and sustain decision-making by all the stakeholders, including parents, students, and professional staff.
10. A governance system modeled after our constitutional form of participative government to guarantee checks, balances, and meaningful/orderly input from all stakeholders, distributing responsibility, authority, and accountability to many members of each school community.
11. A health and fitness program for all learners, staff, and other stakeholders.
12. Facilities and learning environments designed to respond to the needs of a reality-based curriculum and active learners in this age of electronic communications and expanded learning opportunities encountered twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week throughout one’s lifetime.
13. A research-oriented laboratory for beginning teacher/facilitators and an intellectually challenging, cost-effective environment for professional staff, parents, students, and volunteers.
Detailed analyses are found beginning on page 195 of Fraud - In the shadows of our society.
Product page access link: https://store.bookbaby.com/book/fraud-in-the-shadows-of-our-society
The first step in a plan to bring about needed changes in our systems of educating suggested by the analyses of the four categories heretofore discussed and included here.
A strategy for changing conventional education
Introduction:
Over the years as a professional educator, I have gradually identified what licensed teachers and administrators, and the lay public knows about the fundamental elements that shape our public education systems. Some of these elements are not new to those groups; they are preserved in traditions that have not been sufficiently examined or validated.
These include what little is known about (1) individual learners, (2) communication and group development, (3) the content and processes of becoming knowledgeable, (4) modern systems concepts that relate to learning, assessment, and evaluation of learning outcomes, and finally, (5) personality characteristics of professional educators that have to do with facilitating learning.
One might think that educators have expertise in these fundamental topics since they have been licensed to teach. While supervising students preparing to be teachers in hundreds of classrooms, observing behavior, and having studied and taught about the foundations for effective education for many years, including frequent meetings with State level Boards of Education and local Boards, I have found this to be far from the truth.
Furthermore, parents and the lay public possibly know even less, and this is critical when attempting to improve the existing system. Experience has taught us; the demands of an educated public may stimulate attention to these critical issues when our society is in this troublesome state.
What is currently known about individual development and learning that can be validated in personal experience and in the experiences of those who have studied these matters in-depth?
What is currently known about communication between individuals, and how groups develop into teams of learners, that can be validated in personal experience and in the experiences of those who have studied these topics in-depth?
What is currently known about the nature of knowledge and knowing, including processes of learning as practiced within a full range of disciplines of general education that represent six interrelated “realms of meaning,” that can be validated in personal experience and in the experiences of those who have studied these topics in depth?
What is currently known about modern systems theory, especially systems design as a process of learning and systems analysis as a strategy for assessment and evaluation of learning outcomes, that can be validated in personal experience and in the experiences of those who have studied these topics in depth?
What is currently known about personality characteristics that foster productive human interactions that facilitate learning in others, that can be validated in personal experience and in the experiences of those who have studied these matters in depth?
The above foundation elements form the parts of a system, a theory of education, that must be interrelated and translated into a reformed school system that meets the needs of 21st century students. However, after attempting several major innovations from within the educational communities across this land to achieve changes that would reflect the elements above, I have concluded that unless the public can be educated about updated knowledge regarding these elements, only piecemeal changes will occur from within the schools while systemic change remains vital in this troubled world.
Therefore, the attached proposal is designed to address this need. A Strategy for launching interactive multimedia (IMM) aimed at educators, politicians, and the public to engage them in a dialogue about the foundations for education required to accomplish sustainable change and vast improvement in cost-effective educational systems.
OVERVIEW/ABSTRACT
Concerns over the quality of education have frequently initiated a worldwide discourse about needed changes. Without an alternative, spelled-out in detail and comprehended by the lay public, a piecemeal approach and continued controversy will likely prevail. It’s time to seriously initiate the dialogue that can lead to systemic changes that address our perplexing social problems, poverty and discouraging performance indicators, that are manageable, cost effective, theoretically sound, and sustainable in this age of electronic communications and global connections.
Steps to achieving meaningful change:
Objectives:
Step 1: Convene a working group of those who have a genuine interest in changing education, who are familiar with the concepts contained in this thesis and in the book: Remaking our Schools for the 21st Century – A Blueprint for Change/Improvement in Our Educational Systems authored by Robert L. Arnold, Professor Emeritus of Education © 2013 and the contents of the latest version: Fraud In the Shadows of Our Society - What is Unknown About Educating is Hurting us All.
Step 2: Create an organizational structure and identify officers, board members and proposed leadership. Seek start-up funding from Foundations and forward- looking individuals.
Step 3: Support an interactive website(s) supported by an extensive social network. Seek advice regarding organizational structures and formulation of strategies for fund raising to guarantee sustainability.
Step 4: Develop a presentation for an alternative field-tested assessment, record keeping and evaluation system that would replace the widespread use of standardized, one-size-fits-all standardized tests, and a standardized core curriculum. Display the material on the website, with marketing strategies for creating widespread dialogue and sufficient income to cover expenses, royalties, and salaries.
Step 5: Encourage creation of supportive monographs (Blogs) that would be displayed on expanded, supporting website(s).
Step 6: Design multimedia presentations to introduce the lay public to a shared set of assumptions and beliefs about education.
Step 7: Organize, train, and manage a cadre/team of facilitators who will contract with both private and public schools across the USA to implement changes based on the materials displayed on the website.
Step 8: Establish a data gathering mechanism for validating the operational components that lead to an improved/changed school system.
Step 9: Establish a national educational conference center.
Project components:
Title: A Project to Educate the American public about the need and direction for Remaking our Schools for the 21st Century.
Goal: To initiate a widespread dialogue about the fundamental principles that underlie an effective education to stimulate real, theoretically sound and sustainable change in the way schools are conducted.
A systems-oriented school system would have the following characteristics: Its major components are listed below:
1. An individualized, computer-based (student constructed and maintained) record of learning with assessment techniques that honor different learning styles, interests, individual capacities, unique experiences with life, and evaluation criteria that allow for individual differences while maintaining the commonly shared goal of mastery of systems.
2. A diagnostic orientation directed to reduce impediments to learning for all individuals, regardless of age, race, emotional, social, physical, or intellectual capacity, with an acceptance of the values and ethical standards for dealing positively with diversity, pluralism, and inclusion.
3. A teaching/learning transactional strategy that features independent and collective planning for learning, facilitated through supportive group processes and the implementation of plans where individuals and groups are held accountable for accomplishing agreed-upon goals.
4. A competence-based curriculum that focuses on “life in all its manifestations” (Whitehead) with a balanced, student-constructed integration of the arts, sciences, mathematics and other languages, history/geography/cultural anthropology, ethics, and self/career development.
5. A central goal that centers upon the most socially useful learning in the modern world, learning how to learn, utilizing the methods and materials of all disciplines, in all “realms of meaning” (Phenix), fostering an openness to experience, incorporation into oneself of the processes and acceptance of change and the skills needed to organize and communicate one’s thoughts and feelings.
6. Using the creative orientations of all disciplines as strategies for learning that will bridge the longstanding philosophical gap between the interests of child-development and those of the acquisition of knowledge and skills.
7. Information management systems and appropriate uses of modern technology, configured to maximize learning and developmental maturation.
8. A support system for learners that involves highly skilled professional educator/facilitators, informed parents, trained leadership, community input, selected outside professional resource agencies, higher education faculty and students, and volunteer retired experts from a variety of specialties.
9. A written, continuously updated, and validated foundation for education that contains a statement of validated assumptions and beliefs about how individuals learn, grow, and develop, alone and in groups, that will guide and sustain decision-making by all the stakeholders, including parents, students, and professional staff.
10. A governance system modeled after our constitutional form of participative government to guarantee checks, balances, and meaningful/orderly input from all stakeholders, distributing responsibility, authority, and accountability to many members of each school community.
11. A health and fitness program for all learners, staff, and other stakeholders.
12. Facilities and learning environments designed to respond to the needs of a reality-based curriculum and active learners in this age of electronic communications and expanded learning opportunities encountered twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week throughout one’s lifetime.
13. A research-oriented laboratory for beginning teacher/facilitators and an intellectually challenging, cost-effective environment for professional staff, parents, students, and volunteers.
Detailed analyses are found beginning on page 195 of Fraud - In the shadows of our society.
Product page access link: https://store.bookbaby.com/book/fraud-in-the-shadows-of-our-society