In the October Newsletter we focused on student voice, in November we're examining shared and transformational authority, the second component of the STEM Ed framework.
Shared and Transformational Authority demands a rethinking of the purpose and process of STEM education. Let’s unpack why this is. In 2008, Sir Ken Robinson gave a famous talk to the RSA called “Changing Education Paradigms” In it, Robinson outlines how features of public education that should be vestigial remain essential. Most salient is the idea that schools should prepare students to thrive in an industrial economy. Over a decade later the features Robinson derided have changed little. It is true that education policy is shifting; the Next Generation Science Standards stand out as a move away from the industrial model. However progress on the ground is minimal. Public education, and STEM in particular, is a system whose most powerful stewards still endeavor “to meet the future by doing what they did in the past”.
The COVID-19 pandemic has further exposed the undeniable frailty of the education system. An education model designed around physical control through precisely regulated schedules is wholly inadequate for our present moment. How can we prepare students for the future when out methods are stuck firmly in the past?
If traditional STEM teaching moves don’t work in the current remote environment and failed to prepare our students to thrive in an increasingly non-industrial before the pandemic what are teachers to do? Enter Shared and Transformational Authority. While no single idea is panacea , one way to prepare students to thrive in an uncertain future is to partner with them in that preparation. Shared and Transformational Authority is the idea that student investment and achievement increases as their involvement in how they learn and apply their knowledge increases.
Authority within a classroom is traditionally held by the teacher, the possessor of specialized content knowledge. This is the traditional, sage on the stage model. It is an excellent method of classroom control, but not without costs. In such classrooms, the power dynamic between teachers and students constrains the voices and actions of students, not giving them space to shape the topics, space, and process of their own education. Students are seen as consumers of knowledge, whose valuable funds of knowledge are ignored. This system can be oppressive in its refusal to share power.
The Shared and Transformational Authority strand of the democratic STEM Ed framework upends this structure. Students are not just consumers of knowledge, but are knowledge authorities themselves. Students have the right and responsibility to participate in the decisions that shape the space, topics, and process of their education.
Such partnerships require teachers to relinquish traditional ideas about authority in a classroom. This does not mean teachers cede all power to students, but rather share their power democratically. Now more than ever, teachers need to design STEM learning experiences with students and not for them.
We think Sir Ken Robinson would agree. Sadly, he passed away this August, but his ideas live on in the many remote classrooms across the country where unknown teachers are sharing power with students to co-create effective STEM learning environments. And it lives on the voices demanding that now is a time to do more than survive - in Bryan Brown, Chris Emdin, Bettina Love, and Gholdy Muhammad to name a few.
In other words, voice without power does not thrive. Sharing power is an important part of transforming STEM education, one classroom at a time. In this edition of the STEM Ed Innovator we invite you to explore some powerful resources we have cultivated to help STEM teachers give power to voice and create an environment rich with shared and transformational authority.
