Lessons Learned from a Career as Practitioner and Scholar | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

Lessons Learned from a Career as Practitioner and Scholar | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice:

Lessons Learned from a Career as Practitioner and Scholar

by larrycuban

As a high school history teacher for 14 years, as an administrator for five years, a district superintendent for seven years, and, finally a university professor for a quarter-century, I have worked in organizations my entire professional life. Here are some lessons I have learned about working in schools, districts, and higher education.
I learned (and, yes, re-learned again and again) that organizations have two kinds of problems:tame and wicked. Tame problems are familiar situations facing both policy makers and practitioners, and for which they have a large repertoire of solutions. Tame problems often involve procedures (e.g., too much classroom time taken in collecting lunch money) and relationships (e.g., dropping a high school student because of too many absences). In most districts, policy manuals lay out step-by step ways of dealing with routine problems. Seldom, however, do those policy manuals or repertoires deal with wicked problems.
Wicked problems are ill defined, ambiguous, and entangled situations packed with potential conflict. For policy makers, wicked problems arise when people compete for limited resources (e.g.,since we cannot fund both the