5 myths of educational innovators, part I: disruption, digital natives, and learning styles
It’s almost back to school–a good time to clear out the cobwebs and challenge some conventional wisdom. Hype is seductive, and an enemy of clear thought. Luckily, I’ve recently come across some very well-spoken and thoughtful criticism of long-cherished ideas–even some of my own! Consider it a blast of compressed air for your brain instead of your keyboard.
This is the first of two posts. The second will appear Thursday.
1) Disruption. The term disruptive innovation, a huge buzzword in the technology industry, was coined by Harvard business expert Clayton Christensen, whose work in the last few years hasconcentrated on the advent of online learning alongside other education reforms. Generally, disruptive innovation is a new idea that is so different it creates an entirely new market and “value network”. Often it is inferior to the established players, but is also much cheaper and more efficient. The established players ignore it, and its utility goes unsuspected until it is suddenly ubiquitous, displacing what came before. For example, the mass-produced automobile, personal computing, and later smartphones.
In a New Republic piece calling disruption “Silicon Valley’s most pernicious cliche,” Judith Shulevitz singles out Christensen’s influence on school reform. Her argument: disruption is undemocratic; when it comes to public agencies and public services, stability is preferable to sudden change. “Not all civil services need to be hyper-efficient and bargain-basement and in a state of permanent revolution, especially when the private entities tasked with disrupting government operate largely outside public view. What the institutions of a democracy should do is attend to their many disparate constituents as effectively and inclusively and openly as possible without getting creatively destroyed in the process.”
A recent blog post in Scientific American supplies an illustration in support of Shulevitz’s argument.