HR Platform

OLD PARADIGM OF TEACHING AND TESTING

NEW PARADIGM OF CONTINUOUS LEARNING AND IMPROVEMENT

Success is artificially limited to a few "winners." All others are made to consider themselves and their work as mediocre or inferior.

Unlimited, continuous improvement and successes are the aims of the Business and community.

Competition-based.

Cooperation-based.

Lessons are linear, consecutive segments of one-way communication.

Learning is like a spiral with offshoots, with energy directed toward continuous improvement.

Product-oriented. Focused solely upon results, without acknowledgment of their short-term nature. Grades and rankings are important in themselves.

Process-oriented. Goals are important, but the process of getting to the goal is at least as significant. Assessments are used for diagnostic and prescriptive purposes.

Life, including training and education, is only worthwhile if you reach your goals. The process has little or no intrinsic merit, and must be abbreviated whenever possible so the goals can be reached sooner.

Life is a journey, and has intrinsic merit if lived with a zest for life, love and learning. Developing a "yearning for learning" is most important of all.

The system and its processes don't matter, as long as the ends are achieved.

The integrity and health of the system, its processes, and its people must be maintained, or the system will be suboptimized and will eventually fail.

Work is a task, not intended to bring joy and pride to the worker.

Work should be challenging, invigorating, and meaningful. Workers should take pride and joy in the products and processes of their work.

An educational institution is a place where teaching is done to (at) students. Students are passives, while teachers are active.

An educational insitution is a true community of learners in which administrators, teachers, and students learn how to get better and better at the work they do together, so that everyone succeeds optimally.

Trainers and / or Lecturers are isolated from each other by time and space.

Trainers and / or Lecturers work together on educational institution time to build success with each other and with a manageable number of students in a cohort group.

Administration is viewed as the trainer / lecturers' natural adversary (perhaps the enemy.)

Administrators are viewed as teammates and partners in removing the obstacles to student and lecturer / trainer success.

Trainers/Lecturers are viewed as the students' natural adversaries (perhaps as enemies).

Trainers/Lecturers are viewed as teammates and partners in removing obstacles to student's progress.

Single-discipline instruction.

Multi- and cross-discipline instruction.

Learning is restricted to the curriculum, often in its narrowest interpretation.

Learning is the foundation for life-wide, life-deep, and lifelong learning. 3-Dimensional Learning.

Tayloresque factory model: Rule by compliance, control, command. Authoritarian, hierarchical. Management based upon fear.

New model: Lead by helping and by providing vision and support, making it possible for trainers/lecturers and students to take pride in their work together and to have joy in the processes and products of continuous improvement. (In Japan this is called kaizen.)

Centralized control over resources, curriculums, teaching methods, length of class periods, etc.

Site-based management of resources, curriculums, teaching methods, length of class periods, etc.

External validation of truth and the "one right answer" for every question asked by trainer/lecturer, text, test.

External and internal truths are discovered through trainers/lecturers and students' questioning together.

Testing as the primary means of assessing results of the learning process.

Testing, when appropriate, to help modify (improve) the teaching-learning process. Other modes include process portfolios, exhibitions, performances, etc.

Instruction is set up to generate (right) answers.

Instruction is set up to generate better and better questions, followed by student inquiry into some of the areas of those questions. Student performances demonstrate improve understanding of the nature of the questions and some of the ways they might be solved.

Trainers/Lecturers are expected to know everything about their subjects. They give students data and information; students memorize it, then forget most of it.

Trainers/Lecturers are experts in their field. But more importantly, they are the most enthusiastic and dedicated learners in the classroom. Students learn from trainers/lecturers, other students, the community and other sources, and incorporate these learnings into their lives, applying their insights as appropriate to real-life challenges.

Business sometimes welcomed to "adopt" a school; kept at arm's length.

Businesses invited to become partner (secondary suppliers and customers) in the students' continuous progress, not for direct commercial gain.

People of the community are not encouraged to take part in the life of the educational institution, or in the education of the community's young people.

People of the community are brought into the educational insitution or context and made welcome, encourage to contribute time and talents to the betterment of their institution and the community's children.

Ultimate goal: Students as products of the school.

Ultimate goal: Students as their own products, continually expanding their interests, improving their abilities, and developing their character-getting better and better every day, and helping other to do the same.

Copyright ©John Jay Bonstingl 1995. All rights reserved. Permission to duplicate or otherwise use this material solely nonprofit educational use is hereby granted, provide this copyright notice is given. For further information, please contact The Center for School of Quality, PO Box 810, Columbia, MD 21044 USA. Telephone (410) 997-7555. FAX (410) 997-2345.