Key Ideas and Resources
Key Ideas & Resources in The Education We Need for a Future We Can’t Predict
Links to references and resources mentioned in the discussions of key ideas in the book are provided here. Updates and links to new resources are discussed and shared periodically through blog posts at https://thomashatch.org/
The Grammar of Schooling
page 37
The “grammar of schooling” refers to enduring structures and practices including a schedule of courses divided into discrete subjects, taught in a “teacher-directed” manner in “egg crate” buildings that group students of similar ages in different classrooms. These conventional structures and practices are reinforced by beliefs about what “real school” looks like and by institutional structures, routines, and incentives that make it difficult to achieve quick, dramatic, large-scale changes in schools.
- The "Grammar" of Schooling: Why Has It Been So Hard to Change? (Tyack & Tobin, 1994)
- Tinkering Toward Utopia, (Tyack & Cuban, 1995)
- Another Look at “Tinkering Toward Utopia” (Cuban, 2020)
- Real School: A Universal Drama Amid Disparate Experience, (Metz, 1989)
- Mary Metz: Real School (Labaree, 2020)
Collections of “Innovations” in Education
page 53
- The Catalog of Innovations, Hundred.Org
- The Index of Innovative Schools, The Canopy Project, Christensen Institute
- Database of Educational Innovations in the Developing World, Center For Education Innovations
- Excerpts from a Global Catalog of Education Innovations in Leapfrogging Inequality (Winthrop, 2018)
- Changemaker Schools, Ashoka
- The Innovators Directory, WISE & the Qatar Foundation
High Leverage Problems
page 61
High leverage problems provide a particularly promising focus for improvement efforts. They concentrate on issues widely recognized as central to the development of more equitable educational opportunities and outcomes; present opportunities for visible improvements in relatively short periods of time; and establish a foundation for long-term, sustained, systemic efforts that improve teaching and learning.
- Creating Equitable Outcomes in a Segregated State (Hatch, Roegman & Allen, 2019)
- Solving Disproportionality and Achieving Equity: A Leader's Guide to Using Data to Change Hearts and Minds (Fergus, 2017)
- Tools for Improvement (Carngegie Foundation)
- Protocol Library and High-Leverage Change Strategies (High Tech High)
- What Is Root Cause Analysis? (ASQ)
Micro-innovations
page 75
Micro-innovations yield practices and products that are new to the contexts in which they’re developed. The concept builds on the philosopher Nelson Goodman’s question “when is art?” by shifting the focus from determining whether an idea, product or service is innovative to thinking about when new developments are innovative and how to create the conditions to support and sustain them. Concentrating on micro-innovations highlights that developing new products and practices that solve problems in specific situations and contexts can be a crucial foundation for broader reforms.
- “When is Art” in Ways of Worldmaking, (Goodman, 1978)
- A New Model for Integrating Technology in Schools? The Work of Edulab in Singapore (Hatch, 2017)
- Write/Formula (App)
- Math Cards in Fluency without Fear (Boaler, 2015)
Niches of Possibility
page 91
“Niches of possibility” are places within and outside conventional schools where more powerful learning experiences can take root. Identifying niches of possibility and developing micro-innovations depends on understanding the affordances in different situations and settings. Affordances arise from the characteristics and constraints that encourage and inhibit different behaviors. The power of niches of possibility emerge with the discovery of affordances and opportunities for developing more powerful learning experiences that were initially unanticipated (what Gould and Lewontin called Spandrels).
- The Theory of Affordances in Perceiving, Acting, and Knowing: Toward an Ecological Psychology (Gibson, 1977)
- Affordances and Design (Norman, 2018)
- The Spandrels of San Marco and the Panglossian Paradigm: A Critique of the Adaptationist Programme (Gould & Lewontin, 1979)
- The Spandrels of San Marco Revisited: An Interview with Richard C. Lewontin, (Sloan, 2015)
Capacity-building
page 121
Capacity-building is one of the primary tools that policymakers can use to pursue improvements in school systems (along with others like mandates and incentives). In general, capacity refers to the resources and abilities needed to achieve a particular goal (such as improving instruction in reading or achieving more equitable educational outcomes). My work on higher-performing education systems highlights that improving schools depends on investments in technical capital (money, materials, technologies, facilities etc.), human capital (skills, knowledge, and dispositions of the people involved); and social capital (relationships, social networks, trust, and collective commitment). These investments build the infrastructure for teaching and learning that supports the instructional core – the relationship between students, teachers and content – central to learning in schools and classrooms.
- Innovation at the Core (Hatch, 2013)
- It Takes Capacity to Build Capacity (Hatch, 2001)
- Dilemmas of Educational Reform (Cohen, Spillane, & Peurach, 2017)
- Instruction, Capacity & Improvement (Cohen & Ball, 1999)
- Bridging the Gap Between Standards and Achievement (Elmore, 2002)
Collective Responsibility
page 145
Collective responsibility, along with coherence and common understanding, plays a central role in systemic efforts to create more powerful education systems. Collective responsibility reflects the belief that individuals and groups should be held accountable for living up to and upholding norms of conduct and higher purposes that are often ambiguous and difficult to define in advance. It serves as an important counterpoint to answerability which reflects the beliefs that individuals and groups should be accountable for meeting clearly specified and agreed-upon procedures and/or goals.
- Beneath the Surface of Accountability: Answerability, Responsibility and Capacity-Building in Recent Education Reforms in Norway (Hatch, 2013)
- Coherence and Alignment: Reflecting on Two Decades of Research on Educational Reform (Hatch & Stosich, 2019)
- Accountability in Modern Government (Gregory, 2003)