Charles
Ungerleider, Professor Emeritus, The University of British Columbia
[permission to reproduce granted if authorship is acknowledged]
In earlier blogs I talked about the risks that threaten planned educational changes and how they might be anticipated and mitigated. In this blog I want to talk about teachers and educational change.
Teachers seem to oscillate between a barnacle-like attachment to some educational changes and an impenetrable, clam-like resistance. I think there are many reasons for this tendency to fluctuate.
The first reason is that teaching is difficult work. There are many things to consider, including curricular expectations, the range of student abilities, the allocation of scarce instructional time, etc. The complexity of teaching makes most teachers risk averse. Once they have developed confidence in their ability to manage and have experienced success, they are reluctant to change. They are disinclined to adopt new pedagogy or curriculum if they think doing so would have an adverse impact on students or because they are worried that they may not be able to execute them well.
There is a smaller group of teachers who are risk takers. This group appears to have developed sufficient mastery and acquired sufficient self-confidence that they are eager to adopt new practices. Eager to explore new practices, these teachers are easy to recruit to pilot-tests. They are what, today, are called influencers. If they think the new practice or resource is worthwhile, they will advocate on its behalf.
The enthusiasm of teachers involved in or inspired by change is infectious. Once imbued with the spirit of change, they can inspire even mildly resistant teachers to adopt the practice. A teacher once described such an influencer to me in terms that have always stayed with me. “You know,” she said, “every teacher wants to touch her garment. If she likes something, it gives everyone else confidence.” The influencers are often the teachers who, if a pilot is successful, become the evangelists and coaches for the broader implementation.
There is some danger in relying on influencers whose garments others want to touch. They don’t inspire confidence in everyone. There are resistant teachers who will say, “Maybe she can do it, but I’m not her.”
Unsuccessful implementation of planned changes produces cynicism that undermines future change efforts. Teachers have a long memory for implementation failures that bolster their resistance to future changes. Teachers whose experience has made them cynical will wait out subsequent changes because their confidence in the system has been diminished by failures. Introducing system-wide changes takes a long time. Adopting new practices or curricula is hard. Some teachers will “opt out” of the change, confident that they will be retired before they will be “required” to change.
Change fatigue is a factor contributing to resistance to change. New governments often come to office with plans to fix some educational problem. They are often branded, or as one teacher put it, “things with names.” When too many “things with names” are introduced in too short a period, often without sufficient support for their adoption, teachers become clam-like, shutting their doors to whatever the change may be. “This, too, will pass,” they say.
Changes imposed from above are typically resisted. Even when perceived to have value for students, the adoption of the changes can take a very long time even when provision is made for building capacity and support – which they often are not. Making educational change is like repairing a car while you are driving. You cannot shut down the education system to ‘retool’ as you can with a factory.
Changes that teachers perceive as negatively affecting their relationships with students will also be resisted. Relationships with student are almost synonymous with success in teaching. Few teachers are willing to make a change they perceive as threatening established relationships.
Teacher resistance to change can be overcome with careful planning. Although it is tempting to rely on influencers to encourage change. I think it preferable to engage what a well-known BC teacher used to call “OCTs” – ordinary classroom teachers. Reluctant or resistant classroom teachers are more likely to entertain a change if it is one that OCT’s can implement.
Politicians who avoid fostering change just for the sake of being seen to be doing something help to reduce the cynicism engendered by “things with names.”
Well planned pilots, carried out by OCTs, with strong documentation of the factors contributing to success will go a long way to overcoming resistance to change. Involving teachers centrally in the change planning process will likely improve implementation and contribute to the adoption of successful changes.
Another factor that will help overcome resistance to change
is declaring that teachers have the “freedom to fail.” Teacher willingness to
try something new is likely to increase if they know that there is a
possibility that things won’t work as planned and that they will be supported
for having tried something new. The “freedom to fail” coupled with monitoring
and feedback will increase teacher receptivity to change and help them to make the
adjustments that are necessary during any educational change.