Week2 "Free" blog post - Why is it so hard for schools to change?

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An instructor I had long ago once suggested that it is so hard to change schools because everyone has been to school. Everyone has a paradigm for what they think school should be like. No matter what research says, when you start trying to implement changes, people fall back on these deep-set beliefs, which become roadblocks to real change.

I would like to suggest this is true of teachers, parents, and administrators.  There is a reason for specialization in schools.  There is just too much to know.  I have spent the last year reading article after article about the effectiveness of using digital storytelling to support literacy.  On top of that, I am a Reading Specialist, with a masters from Western Michigan University in Reading.  Yet, in a short conversation with an administrator the other day, the idea of using digital storytelling to support improvement in reading and writing was totally blown off as some sort of "fluff" or fun thing to do that wasn't real teaching.

Back in the day, when I first started teaching, I actually taught in a one-room schoolhouse in Nebraska (there were no jobs in Michigan, of course). Over the years I have taught science and math as well as social studies, English, and reading. One thing I learned as a science teacher is that students come to school with their own explanations about why things work the way they do. They have compartmentalized "school knowledge" and "personal knowledge." They may spit out the "right" answer on a test, but in their hearts and minds they may not have changed their intuitive ideas about how things work, even after studying them in school. Students have to be led on a process of discovery so that, as they construct their understanding of a process, event, or concept, they shatter their old paradigms about things and replace them with schema that fit the research.

I think the same can be said of teachers, parents, and administrators.  The administrator I spoke to may be very well-versed in No Child Left Behind and all the bureaucratic hoops schools have to jump through, but she hasn't had time to study in depth the subjects her faculty are teaching or to keep up with new developments in all of these areas.  How can I lead her, and other teachers, and parents through a paradigm shift that leads them to accepting and supporting the use of digital storytelling as a legitimate means for improving literacy skills?  I think they too must be led through a process of discovery that will help them construct a new understanding of literacy in the 21st century, as well as of what digital storytelling really is and how it supports literacy.

Easy to say. I am now pondering how I would do that.  I do know that I would eventually like to be part of teacher training at a university, where I could help soon-to-be and new teachers discover the value of using digital storytelling across subject areas.  I would also like to use the things I've gleaned from my study of the literature to set up a new action research project for next year to measure for myself how digital storytelling can be used to increase literacy skills.