compliance

Which is most important, compliance or engagement?

by Steve Wyckoff on March 4, 2010

Compliance or engagement, which is most important? I am often concerned when educators talk about engagement that they are actually talking about compliance. Let me give you an example. I’ve seen several surveys that purport to measure engagement but when you look at what they measure they talk about students who get to class on time, students who turn in their homework, students who don’t miss school, and students to do their homework. To me those are all issues of compliance, students are doing what they’re told, when they are told, and how they are told.

Engagement on the other hand is much more about students that are so involved in what they’re doing that they lose track of time. So involved that they spend evenings and weekends working on schoolwork, not because they’re required to but because they want to.

But the most important issue around compliance and engagement is how well our students being prepared for their future. Students who are compliant are being perfectly prepared for algorithmic jobs. Those are the jobs that have established processes and procedures that lead to a defined correct outcome. That’s exactly what we prepare kids for in schools. Look at standardized tests, we want students to know exactly the right steps to come up with exactly the right answer. Algorithmic.

On the other hand, those jobs that don’t have established processes and procedures that don’t lead to one correct outcome make up about 70% of the new jobs being created in America. Yet in most schools little or no time  is spent with students in preparation for this heuristic types of work. Again, if you look at standardized tests they in no way reflect heuristic thinking.

So which is important compliance or engagement? Obviously the answer is engagement. Yet it’s not what we’re doing in schools. If we are going to prepare students for the 21st century  it’s important that they become self-directed, and problem solvers. And I don’t mean problems that have a well-defined process with one correct answer. For our students, having an educational system that is algorithmic by nature is boring and irrelevant. One of the keys to school change will be to quit focusing on standardized tests and instead preparing our kids for their future. That will mean making the educational experience heuristics in nature, not algorithmic. – Steve Wyckoff

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School Reform: Is there any hope?

by Steve Wyckoff on January 14, 2010

Over the last month I’ve had the opportunity to visit with several friends and colleagues. It’s always great to catch up with people, especially those in your profession, that you don’t get to have a conversation with very often. These conversations were eerily familiar. But before I tell you about the conversations I need to tell you about the people.

Each of these individuals is highly successful in their particular niche in education. Each of them is positive, hard-working, and highly respected by their peers. They include nationally prominent speakers, directors of highly successful alternative programs, policy makers, instructional technologists, and school administrators. If you would observe them functioning in a professional setting you would applaud their efforts and results. You would also see that other educators look to them for leadership.

Each of the conversations was similar in that each had just finished a lively and positive professional conversation. But when we sat down to talk each began with a similar, rhetorical question. “Steve, what’s going to happen to education?” The conversations that followed included discussions about the insane focus on standardized tests, memorization and not learning, bored to tears students who are measured by compliance not engagement, the lack of innovation and creativity in education, etc.

These conversations were not out of the ordinary for me. Whenever I’m in a group as a presenter or participant, I always try to have one-on-one conversations where I can really get people to tell me their deepest feelings about our profession. I intentionally try to have conversations with those individuals who in the larger group are upbeat and positive.

It’s alarmingly common that in private these individuals tell me about their frustration level and diminishing hope for public education. And often times they ask, partially rhetorically, how are they going to keep doing what they’re doing. Each day for them is a struggle to remain positive and proactive.

I’m still connecting all the dots in my head, Dan Pink’s new book, Drive: the surprising truth about what motivates us, really has me thinking. I’ve listened to it once but I need to listen to it again. And in fact I’ve even bought the hard copy so that I can look up some specific points. For those of you who know me, when I buy the hardcopy of the book it’s serious business.

So in upcoming posts I’ll try to explain what’s become clear to me about the educational system and what drives our educators. As always, leave a comment above to know what you’re thinking.

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