Subject: K-12 List Purpose

Posted by Steve Bosacker on 2/20/2006
In Reply To:K-12 List Purpose Posted by Lees Stuntz on 2/17/2006

Message:

Thank you, each of you for contributing your thoughts, insights and experience. I joined this list serve so I could learn and hopefully practice system dynamics - with a focus for education. You are helping me. Thank you.

This afternoon I caught up on your many recent emails. I see some things I hope will help us all move forward to fulfill this purpose of the list serve:

1) Lots of discussion about fundamental ideas - like feed back loops - indicates to me that we are attempting to develop a language for system dynamics that is both accurate to the discipline and comprehensible by teachers and students. This is not easy to do because English (or any other language I know of) does not naturally represent these SD ideas. Any discipline or practice that is embraced by a large percentage of people must have an accessible language. Otherwise the ideas will not transfer to more people.

2) Some of the variation in ideas about feedback loops and the lack of "agreement" happens because this is just a list serve. There is no one telling us on what to focus, or on what we should agree. So we may end up with some fuzzy results. Nevertheless, these discussions are helpful.

3) A while back some were talking again about ideas for how more teachers in more schools could have SD curriculum. I am struggling with the same issue at my daughter's charter school. Based on my experience getting new ideas and practices into an organization, real innovation (the introduction and use of SD curriculum in this case) happens because someone is very committed to make it happen. It may take more than 5 years of hard work (as it did for me in a previous career) to find the doors or opportunities to present the ideas, show the results, find allies and win support for change. The diffusion of innovations is well studied: A very small fraction of people will try anything new. A larger (but still small) fraction of people watch these innovators for what is both good and works well. Then these early adopters try it. Still more people watch the early adopters. When it works well for the early adopters these people will try out what the early adopters are using. Once there is a critical mass of people using an innovation the rate of diffusion increases. However there are people who resist change or are very pessimistic about new ideas. These will resist these changes - perhaps until they die.
We are facing the same challenge with system dynamics in education. Part of our challenge is to demonstrate this is good _stuff_ and how to do it. Many conversations in the list serve have contributed good ideas and practices that could show this is good stuff. I think it would be much easier to get people's attention if there is a video of students who talk about, demonstrate what they have learned and show real accomplishments because of SD curriculum. With digital video and MP3 compression it would be possible for many different people to record interviews in any part of the world and bring these together into one video production. If there was a video like this available I would show it to my daughter's school's curriculum committee and teachers. Some of these teachers will become very interested in these things. The next step is to have some very simple lessons they can incorporate into their existing curriculum. Anything new has to fit in or the efforts to incorporate the new SD curriculum will be too great and teachers will abandon trying.
Lacking that video I am doing the next thing available: Each year my daughter's school holds a 1-week symposium where the entire school stops their normal classes and focuses all together on one theme. Teachers, parents and many students contribute to create a school-wide theme-based curriculum for all students (K-12). The theme this year is "The Deep Amazon". So I created a proposal that fits with this theme and uses simple SD and systems thinking lessons to help students understand some of the reasons why the rainforest is disappearing and what that might mean for the people in the Amazon and for the rest of us. Hopefully this opportunity will lead to more interest in SD lessons that help students learn and achieve. I have to make this happen with my free time. It is worth it to me to help improve the school and benefit the students.

4) Let's find the leverage points that do open doors. If we documented what initiatives have opened doors to teachers and schools, as well as the curriculum that made the difference, we will accelerate the pace of growth. The resources I have found so far have helped me. More resources would make it even easier for me to introduce SD to my daughter's school. I will document my experiences in my new initiative and share these hopefully this summer.

Thanks,

Steve Bosacker
Minnesota