Disrupting Class: How disruptive innovation will change the way the world learns by Clayton M. Christensen, Michael B. Horn and Curtis W. Johnson
The basic thesis of Disrupting Class is that we all learn differently and technology can help to capitalize on that neurological fact to improve education systems. This is not as simple as it seems because schools have gathered students into heterogenous groups which present a knowledge base in a step by step process that benefit some learners but not all learners. Stakeholders in this process are entrenched in this paradigm and reluctant to change. How to break through this traditional learning paradigm is the focus of the book.
The argument that schools are designed for standardization and can not meet the needs of all learners leads to the discussion of student-centric schools where learning is customized for each student. Which fits nicely into the concept of differentiation. The authors believe that if schools are to educate every student then they must begin moving toward the student centric model and away from the monolithic batch process with all its interdependencies. They further believe that computer based learning is an emerging disruptive force that will accelerate this movement.
The theory of disruptive innovation is that innovations improve a product or service in ways that the market does not expect, typically by lowering price or designing for a different set of consumers. This is opposed to sustaining innovations which in the case of education is the monolithic standardized system that exists today.
The authors believe that as in the private sector, schools have continually had their goals changed. But unlike the private sector they must create new products from within the existing paradigm because they are a monopoly making it difficult for new models to compete on the changing goals. Schools, according to the authors, have been given four primary aims over the history of the United States. These arep preserve the democracy and inculcate Democratic values, provide something for every students, keep America competitive, and more recently eliminate Poverty Traces of all of the goals can be found in our current system and each goal has been met by teachers and administrators who want to improve the system. Today, however, the game has changed. Computers are the change agent and learners are different because of their familiarity with the digital world of knowledge.
Schools have been purchasing computers and using them to sustain and marginally improve the way they already teach and run schools. This has not led to significant change in how education systems work and can not do so until computer based learning disrupts the instructional job of teachers in a positive way by creating student-centric learning systems allowing teachers opportunities to give more individual attention to those they teach.
The example from industry that illustrates how this can be done is Apple computers. When Apple came on the scene computers were large, specialized, expensive machines that were beyond the understanding and budgets of most individuals. The sustaining innovation was for large corporations to continue making money selling these machines to large businesses. Apple disrupted this paradigm by marketing the computer as a toy for children. The main rule of disruptive innovation is that to succeed it must be applied to applications where the alternative is nothing. Just like Apple, they provided computers to people who would never have been able to afford any of the computers on the market prior to Apple.
In education the computer is disruptive when it provides opportunities for students for whom there was no alternative. If a student wants to take Chinese and there is not a teacher at the school to teach it, disruptive innovation can create a product for that student. This is already happening throughout our schools. It is up to the policy makers and administrators to encourage this growth as in Florida and Minnesota where virtual schools are growing much faster than anticipated and providing opportunties for students whose individual needs are not being met by the standardized operations of the typical school.
The reason that a large investment in computers in schools has not created a better education system is because we are using computers to do more of the same type teaching, didactic instruction. Computers will become disruptive as they begin to replace this type of instruction. That means finding places in the standardized model for which there is a demand but limited opportunities to meed that demand. School administrators and teachers must be looking for opportunities to provide computer based learning to students who want to take classes that schools can not provide. AP, specialized courses like language, recovery credit, and small and rural districts with limited resources are some of the ways technology have begun meeting the needs of students.
As the model of sudent centric learning takes hold in schools it will lead to better software. At first the software will be expensive and mirror the dominant learning styles in the classrooms. The authors believe that experience in industry and business demonstrates that a second stage will follow where software will be developed by teachers to meet individual learning needs. There is a vast untapped area of non consumption or needs with no alternative that computer learning technology will fill and create a student-centric project based learning models that will cause the technolgoy to disrupt the standardized education models of today.
Experience in industry and business show that four factors will drive this disruption and change education.
1. Computer based learning will keep improving
2. The ability of computer based learning to create differentiated learning pathways.
3. The upcoming teacher shortage.
4. Costs will fall as the market accelerates.
The outcome of this change will alter the dynamic of teaching and change the pedagogy. As students engage the knowledge base in computer based programs, teacher will have become learning coaches and tutors spending most of their time moving from student to student encouraging and helping learning rather than delivering one-size-fits-all lectures. Teachers will need to be more cognizant of student needs and learning styles than they are today. Assessment will become instant and instructive. Students will know exactly what they need to do to be successful using computer learning technology. Mastery learning will become the accepted model of learning and there student will repeat lessons in different ways in order to master the information. Teachers will also know exactly what students need in order to help them. This type of teaching will be much closer to the 19th century model of the one-room school house than the enormous learning institutions that have developed during the 20th century. Under this system students can be evaluated by how far they have moved through a body of knowledge rather than what per centage of the knowledge they have mastered.
The authors call for a transformation of education through disruptive technoloty. They envision chartered schools as laboratories where needed changes can begin and spread throughout the system. This is an important book that educators must read and consider. It is a warning to public schools that if they are to survive they must adopt a different way of doing business.
