In a school that I used to serve two years ago, there was an issue that was brought out every year at the year-end staff meeting, which is to make use of the e-class system to allow students to apply for extra-curricular activities (ECA). Traditionally, the students had to fill in forms in papers and hand them in to class monitors, the class monitors then sorts them and hand in the forms to the corresponding ECA teachers. The ECA teachers will then need to verify each student's application, or to decide which students' application to reject. They eventually generates a list which is posted on the office notice board for the students to check. Such traditional practice uses a lot of paper and takes a very long time. Collecting the forms from each students is a tedious task already, and sorting them by hand sometimes cause error and will waste even more time. The call to use the e-class system was supposed to solve these problems as all the transactions can be done online and man-made errors can then be reduced. However for several years this suggestion had been turned down by most of the teachers in the staff meeting. The major reason for not using this technology is that the teachers are not confident enough to use the system, They did not believe that using the e-class system is going to save them time, but thinks that it will cost them more time to learn how to use the new system. Therefore they feel more comfortable sticking to the old method which they already got used to, including the old problems that they already got used to meet.
I think one of the major reasons for innovation failure in education is it is very difficult to change teachers' beliefs. If the teachers were not convinced that an innovation is going to help them, they tend to become very reluctant to try it out. I think one of the ways to increase the chance of success of innovation is to create more chance of success experience for teachers. And certainly this needs to be done along with enough training and coaching in order to make sure that the teachers have enough skills and feel comfortable with using the innovative practice. Afterall teachers can always challenge innovative practices by saying 'if my old way could get the job done, why should I consider doing it the new way?' And that I believe, is one of the major obstacle to innovation success in education.
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Dennis Chan
Good points Dennis.
ReplyDeleteI have exactly the same problem with staff members sticking to systems designed in the last century. They were fine at the time and have worked well, but they now need changing.
Our parents expect us to use modern communication and administration tools. Two examples we have are forms to fill out for changes to school bus attendance and the need to fill out a permission form for every school trip a students attends.
Same case was happening in my school, Since our principal believe the use of IT can help students’ learning, the school spend a lot of money to setup both hardware and software IT equipment in schools, Such as iPad2, Brand new laptop computers and expand the broadband system. Although those system and hardware can provide a better environment for teacher and students, the school didn’t provide enough training section and time for teachers. As a result, most of the teacher avoid to use IT to teach with students. The case show’s that, even the technology can provide a new environment for teacher and students, We should have enough training for teachers on how to use those technology and create a innovative environment including time for teachers to change their pedagogies.
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