Holistic? What does that mean?

Before you can understand what I mean by "Holistic Equity" you have to have some ides of what I mean by "holistic." The video linked below will take you through a quick exploration of what "holism" has come to mean in education. My newest video, What Is A Holistic Approach To Education?, will clarify what holism is and how it applies to education in about 13 minutes.

The Why Video Series on Educational Norms

Here's a video series that breaks down a number educational norms from Education Reimagined.

The series digs into why we narrowly group children by age, promote memorization over deeper learning, use grade levels as indicators of “moving up,” and confine learning to four-walled classrooms.

After a successful launch, Education Reimagined and 180 Studio partnered up one year later to continue the series by asking why we assess learning based on seat-time and why young people attend school 180 days each year.

Video- Deeper Learning- The Pull

PREVIOUS: Deeper Learning- The Push

Video: Deeper Learning- The Push

NEXT: Deeper Learning- The Pull

Video: Milking K-12's Sacred Cows

Video: Gauging the Fuel For Learning

Video: Back to Basics 2.0

Video: Introducing Don and his book More Joy More Genius

Defense Against The Dark Arts: Hidden Curriculum Psychology

7-Part Video Course

Learn to Recognize Evil

- Evil is sometimes hard to see and understand.

Learn Real Magic

- Social psychology has proven that magic is real. 

Learn to Use Your Power for Good  

- Using magical power for good requires you to know and apply scientific principles.

You are a good and normal person.

At least, I hope so. 

Did you know that previously good and normal people have been made to do evil deeds? 

Of course, that sounds like the Imperious Curse from the fantasy world of Harry Potter. 

You might be thinking, "Magic, like the Imperious Curse, is a fantasy not a reality so you can't be seriously suggesting that the imperious curse could be real, are you?"

Yes, I am.

Social psychologists have discovered how situations can have seemingly magical powers over individuals under certain circumstances. 

And widely respected scientific research shows that in schools and organizations typical management techniques can result in harmful outcomes for those people subjected to it (and thus be considered evil).

This course will teach you what those circumstances are and how to create the opposite types of circumstances in order to cast spells for goodness instead of evil.

WARNING: This course raises challenging ethical issues for those good and normal people who have participated in schools and organizations that have good intentions but may have perpetrated evil instead. 

If you are not ready to confront the possibility that you and/or your organization may have inadvertently cast evil spells upon innocent people, then you may not be ready to take this course. 

Rest assured that this is not uncommon.

I have been guilty of both perpetrating this kind of evil and causing it to be perpetrated as have some of the social psychologists who conducted the experiments that proved this magic is real. 

But, with what we have learned it is now possible to recognize and prevent it from happening.

That is why I am teaching this course.

And rest assured that publicly funded and most institution-based research, at least, has adopted precautions to either prevent evil from happening, or taking extra care to ensure that the benefits of doing potentially evil-inducing experiments will be worth the risks.

Daily Course Sessions (Video length)

#1- The Imperious Curse and Dolores Umbridge- The Fantasy World (12:48)

Link to Part 1 (Links to the next episode appear in the description.)

#2- The Real World Imperious Curse (14:01)

#3- The Stanford Prison Experiment (12:00)

#4- Busting the Bad Apple Myth, Part 1 (10:06)

#5- Busting the Bad Apple Myth, Part 2 (10:53)

#6- How to Grease the Slippery Slope Towards Evil (11:27)

#7- How Climb Up To Goodness (13:18)

Total Runtime (84:33)

Motivation Hacks for Leaders

How does the science of motivation change leadership?

Have you ever been sucked into a power struggle?

Do you wonder why leading your co-workers and friends is so different from leading your spouse and your kids? 

Have you bought book after book chock full of clever advice that works only for a while?

This Motivation Hacks Video Course busts three leadership myths that the most popular advice is based on:

The Machiavellian Myth 
Leaders can motivate their followers via charisma and/or coercion.

The Skinner Box Myth 
Leaders can motivate their followers via rewards and punishments.

The Invisible Hand Myth 
Leaders can motivate their followers via clever arrangement of incentives.

Using these myths may get you short-term compliance, but also long-term resentment or worse. Manipulation and incentivization can backfire, but with a proper scientific understanding of motivation you can learn when and how to deploy them to good effect. But, more importantly, you can learn how to avoid them in the first place.

Course Session Titles (Video length)

Part 1- Certified Professional What? (4:28)

Part 2- The Power Paradox (8:13)

Part 3- Leadership vs Management: The Myths (11:46)

Part 4- Psychological Science, Part 1 of 2 (4:45)

Part 5- Psychological Science, Part 2 of 2 (11:13)

Part 6- Does Behaviorism Apply to Children? (4:29)

Part 7- Constructing The Motivation Continuum (13:15)

Part 8- The Hacks: 5 Pseudo-hacks, 3 Basic Hacks (13:35)

Part 9- The Ultimate Hack (with two names), Part 1 of 2 (17:56)

Part 10- The Ultimate Hack (with two names), Part 2 of 2 (10:38)

Part 11- Mythbusting: Wrong vs. Useful, Part 1 of 2 (16:11)

Part 12- Mythbusting: Situational Humans, Part 2 of 2 (21:32)

Part 13- The Role of Society (12:59)

Part 14- Resolving the Power Paradox (18:06)

Total Running Time: 2:49:06 

Here's a link to the first episode.
You will find a link to the next episode in the description for each episode.

Heroism Interrupted: A Cautionary Fairy Tale for Leaders

This page is a script for a video preface to Leadership in Education: How to Play the Hero's Game.

Once upon a time there was a king whose kingdom had fallen on hard times. 

First, a pestilence struck his kingdom and as people got weak with hunger they fell victim to a terrible plague that even killed the queen. 

The king did not yet have an heir so he took the first opportunity to marry a princess from a neighboring kingdom. 

Unbeknownst to them, their misfortune had attracted the attention of a trio of terrible dragons in the mountains above the kingdom. 

After watching the people of the kingdom get decimated by the calamities that befell them the dragons interest was piqued by the grand show of wealth and finery that the wedding celebration brought about.

The dragons began to approach when they saw that festivities were underway. 

Just after the king had exchanged vows with his new queen, Varda, they burst upon the scene. 

The blue dragon struck first by eating the king and capturing the maid of honor, Lady Geniveve. 

The red dragon stole a chest that held the kingdoms most valuable treasures. 

Finally, the yellow dragon snatched the new queen. 

After the panic had subsided the king's regent, the ancient Sir Grenadier, seized the moment to offer the entire kingdom to anyone who could rescue Queen Varda and recover the treasure. 

The drunk 8th Earl of Poselthwaite boasted that he would defeat the dragons and immediately set off to the dragon's lair with nothing but a bottle of spirits and a short sword. 

He boldly walked right down the middle of the valley that lead to the dragon's mountain lair bellowing his boasts all the way. 

Thus, he never saw which dragon brought his end because it swooped down from behind to eat him in a single bite. 

Later, two itinerant knights, Sir Wallace and Sir Monty, stepped forward simultaneously from opposite sides of the courtyard to offer their services. 

They both rushed off trying to be the first to sneak into the dragons' lair. 

Sir Wallace, the first to arrive, discovered the yellow dragon standing guard over the chest and the pair of fair ladies. 

He bravely confronted the beast and was able to get between them. 

Then with his shining broad sword he made a mighty sweeping blow that lopped off the head of the dragon, but, alas, on the backswing … took off Lady Geneveive's head, too. 

Upon realizing his deadly mistake he cried out in aggrieved surprise at his stroke of incompetence. 

But before his cry had echoed back the blue dragon flew down, pinned him to the ground, and prepared to feast on the knight. 

Meanwhile, Sir Monty had been observing the incompetence of his colleague and seized the moment to approach the blue dragon from behind. 

Just after the dragon had dispatched Sir Wallace he was decapitated by Sir Monty, who was careful to avoid creating collateral damage. 

Then the hero freed the young queen, grabbed the chest, and in a rush of triumph they hurried back to the castle as quickly as they could. 

The regent was grateful to the hero for his brave rescue of Queen Varda (though disappointed at the loss of Lady Geniveve) and asked that the chest be opened. 

The lid was lifted revealing that it was filled with plain rocks. 

The regent sadly shook his head in disappointment and clucked his tongue. 

The hero was so ashamed and furious that he rushed back to the dragon's lair only to be eaten by the red dragon, who was clever enough to have hidden the real treasure and set an ambush after discovering the loss of his companions and the chest. 

The red dragon also returned to the castle later that night and boldly recaptured the queen from her tower bedchamber and once again the kingdom was stricken with great dread at their misfortune.

So, the old regent asked once again for someone, anyone who would be willing to fight the red dragon.

Eventually a rather modest looking warrior in dilapidated armor, Reginald, stepped forward. 

The regent gave him a great steed to get him on his way more swiftly and the courtiers whispered amongst themselves that he was doomed. 

Knowing that his chances of success were slim Reginald visited an ancient reclusive monk who lived on the opposite side of the valley from the dragons. 

The monk was moved by the misfortune of the kingdom and the sense of duty that motivated the brave warrior. 

He said that he only had one thing to offer the brave knight. 

It was magic mirror. 

It's magic was to reflect only the gazers greatest fear. 

He gave Reginald the mirror wrapped in coarse cloth and sent him on his way. 

The unassuming warrior found the dragon's lair and came up with a plan. 

By throwing small parts of his armor behind the dragon he tricked it into thinking he had snuck by and gotten inside the cave. 

The dragon chased after the sound assuming the warrior was heading directly towards the treasure, but instead lead him to the hidden trove. 

Reginald hid in a side passage when, after searching in vain for the source of the sound, the dragon returned to the cave entrance to guard the queen. 

Reginald put the magic mirror at the end of the passage where he had hidden and then he once again enticed the dragon into the cave but this time down the dim dead end passage. 

When the dragon looked at the end of the dim passage it just saw a knight sitting with the queen before the treasure chest which was set as if it were a dinner table. 

They were about to eat a large red dragon steak served up on a shiny silver platter. 

The dragon was enraged by this sight and attacked the image with all it's might. 

But, of course, he was actually looking into the magic mirror and so he slammed himself into the wall with such force that he knocked himself out and Reginald easily dispatched him. 

The warrior gathered up as much treasure as he and the queen could carry together on the mighty steed and headed back to the castle. 

But alas, while recovering Queen Varda and the treasure was a great accomplishment, the warrior could not outwit the plague and the pestilence, so everyone got sick and died. 

The End

Now you must be wondering what kind of fairy tale is it that ends such. 

It might be the truth of our own future if we do not learn from those who failed in this story. 

The hero's challenge is first to survive and, then, thrive. 

A hero attains that status by having hard goals that have a major obstacle that prevents just anyone from achieving them. 

But, there are also inherent boundaries to how those goal states must come about and those boundaries create the playing field that defines what game the hero must play. 

In order to become a hero you have to play the right game for the circumstances. 

When the drunken 8th Earl of Poselthwaite shows up to play with dragons using only his dulled wits and a short sword, he fails. 

He did not really understand the game he needed to play. 

If you don't pay close enough attention to the right details of your situation you can inadvertently put yourself in harm's way. 

On the other hand the two knights seem to be playing the right game, but still broke the implicit rules for success. 

Sir Wallace's killing one of the the damsels in distress was a losing move. 

You have to stay within the bounds of the playing field because sometimes thinking “outside the box” is a losing move, not a creative one.

Sir Monty's accidentally recovering worthless stones was also a losing move. 

You have to keep your eyes on the prize, it's just no good to let your success get to your head and lose track of what you have to do. 

And finally, let's consider Reginald.

When he cannot cure the plague and stop the pestilence, he loses, too. 

And when the hero fails, the whole kingdom continues to suffer.

In this case it is a challenge that is simply beyond his ability and resources to handle. 

They were living in the time of knights-in-shining-armor and kings-living-in-castles. 

All the wealth in the world could not buy the public health measures that did not exist for them. 

Today, however, we have everything we need to play and win the heroic game of our time. 

The problem is knowing what the game is and the implicit boundaries that define success. 

The heroes of today are also going to rescue the vulnerable, retrieve a valuable treasure, and provide for health and wellness. 

• The realm in dire straights that my work addresses is K-12 schools. 
• The game is paradigm change. 
• The vulnerable are the children. 
• The treasure is optimal states of mind. 
• And, finally, providing for well-being requires a multi-level ecological perspective on the true boundaries of the playing field.
  
  On the one hand, we know that primary human needs give us one level of the necessary boundaries.
  
  On the other hand, we know that supporting need satisfaction requires us to see how each individual with those needs is embedded in a network of different levels of influence; such as one-to-one relationships, ecologies, organizations, and society. 

You can find out more about how to understand the heroic game of paradigm change in K-12 schools on my web site Teach-Kids-Attitude-1st.com. 

By clicking on the leadership button you will find my explanation of the game and it's boundaries. 

Thanks for watching.

This page is a script for a video preface to Leadership in Education: How to Play the Hero's Game.

School Reform Biomimicry

School reform biomimicry is a new idea that suggests we can learn from nature how to organize schools more effectively. 

In this video I propose that we approach school reform by taking lessons from our own cells and the alternatives of home and democratic schools. 

The script:

Hello, I've been trying for over a decade to puzzle out what public schools should be learning from the alternative education movement. 

I think I have finally found two key lessons that can provide practical approaches to change for mainstream schools, but I am only going to explain one in this video. 

The one I am NOT going to explain is about how autonomy is a fundamental psychological human need and therefore autonomy support is a crucial, yet neglected, duty of school leadership. 

But I'll explain that another time.

School Reform Biomimicry 

What I want to focus on now is a way that we can take a design principle from nature to create a strategy for improving mainstream schools that happens to be used in certain kinds of alternatives. 

There is a basic design principle that our cells use to create the amazing creativity and coordination of our bodies, and we should be using the same principle in schools to cultivate creativity and coordination for our society. 

But first, a quick review of cell biology, so that I can explain what nature has to offer.

There are only two kinds of cells in the world. 

Prokaryotes, which do not have a nucleus thus the DNA is just clumped together somewhere in the guts of the cell. 

What you need to know about prokaryotes is that because the DNA is just another part of the cell's guts means that it can very easily exchange DNA with other prokaryotic cells. 

This gives these kinds of cells an ability to change very quickly in response to pressures from their environment. 

This rapid adaptability is the reason that we humans have lots of problems when we use drugs to try to control diseases caused by these kinds of cells. 

The little buggers quickly figure out what genes they need to get around the action of our latest drug and pass it directly on to their neighbors. 

But the cost of this kind of willy-nilly information transfer is that they can't get too specialized or differentiated. 

The open architecture of their DNA means that all prokaryotic cells are mostly doing variations on the same basic things and they cannot develop much more complexity than they already have. 

The other kind of cells in the world are eukaryotes, which have a nucleus that protects the DNA. 

So, while they do not change as rapidly, the changes they do make can become very specialized and differentiated both within and between organisms. 

Eukaryotic cells traded the ability to change quickly for the ability to become multicellular and more complex. 

And this trade-off lead to the mechanisms of creative adaptation and complex coordination that is at the heart of human society. 

For instance, it was through creativity and complex coordination that we, humans, achieved a spectacular victory over the disease smallpox by eliminating the organism entirely, which is a feat recently repeated with an animal disease called rinderpest, or the cattle plague. 

So, cell biology has taught us that protecting the information transfer process is what enables us to be creative and highly coordinated and when threats can be eliminated that is the best protection we can achieve. 

Now let's consider a speculation: 

What if our cells could judge the relative value of different parts of it's systems and then decided that since that genetic information in DNA is SO important it must therefore deserve to take over more of the cell? 

I imagine that the cell would minimize the rest of the cell's parts and expand the nucleus. But, what kind of trade-off might that entail? 

Seems to me it would be a step backwards from the design principle of protecting the information transfer process.

School Reform Biomimicry: The Need

Now, let's turn our attention to schools. 

I'm going to represent them schematically, like I've been doing with the cells. 

Taking them at face value, we can say that instruction is a core function. 

So just like cells, some kinds of information transfer are at the core of schooling. 

And just as there are threats to our DNA, like virusues, the key threat to instructional effectiveness are what I will call motivational energy suckers. 

Let's think about motivational energy sucking as a kind of disease process that diminishes the energy available for learning. 

It shows up as students and teachers who are not tapping into the sources of their own passions and enthusiasms and therefore in order to participate they must suck passion and enthusiasm out of those around them. 

I'm sure you've known people who distract from, delay, and derail whatever forms of focused attention and excitement that occur around them; those people are motivational energy suckers. 

There are only three way to address the presence and persistence of motivational energy suckers and the current organization of typical school spaces makes them all problematic. 

So, the major challenge in schools, when we take them at face value, is the existence and persistence of motivational energy suckers that distract from the instructional processes that we commonly take to be the core of schooling. 

School Reform Biomimicry: The Current Situation 

Now, here's a generic school. 

All schools have two kinds of spaces, instructional spaces in which the core function of deliberate information transfer happens and non-instructional spaces that support the instructional practices in a way that is similar to how all the other parts of the cell support the nucleus to carry out it's information transfer functions. 

Notice that there are two openings, the school gate and the classroom door. 

Now, here's how a stereotypical public school is organized. 

The non-instructional spaces are stigmatized. 

"Do you have a pass?" 

"Why are you out of class?" 

"Who gave you permission to be in the hall?" 

Those spaces are considered mere transportation corridors between the all-important instructional spaces. 

One consequence of this organization of the space is that every child who shows up has to occupy an instructional space, even if they are not in an appropriate state of mind to take advantage of instruction. 

In other words, motivational energy suckers come into existence as they enter because they don't have any where else to go but into the instructional spaces. 

This is effectively like a prokaryotic cell that is organized for easy access to it's DNA and willy-nilly information transfer is the result. 

Although with the ironic twist that the information transferred is just about anything but what the teacher intended. 

Given this organization, successful schools MUST either prevent the motivational energy suckers from entering, transform them after they enter, or expel them. 

These are, logically, the only options. 

School Reform Biomimicry: One Non-Option

And transformation of people is notoriously difficult and unreliable, so except under special circumstances it is impractical as a strategy. 

Attempts to replicate transformation processes often require most people to be better than they already are. 

Movies like Stand and Deliver, Freedom Writers, and the Ron Clark Story, portray true stories of transformative teachers but those stories are interesting because they represent rare achievements that have proven to be very difficult to replicate. 

For schools organized in this manner the most reliable methods of dealing with the motivational energy suckers are creating barriers to entry and using subtle processes of exclusion to eventually drive them away. 

In your typical public schools these options are not readily available within the school, but there may be community-level processes that serve the same function or there may be ways that teachers and administrators are unofficially making due. 

If the function does not get handled then the school will deteriorate if motivational energy sucking spreads throughout the community. 

Private schools seem to mostly rely on the "barrier to entry" method of preventing motivational energy sucking, though I'm sure some use the exclusion principle, as well. 

In some celebrated academic charter schools they use the exclusion method by applying pressure for hard work with an ethic of diligent all-consuming devotion to the requirements of their system. 

This serves to ultimately discourage those who may be prone to motivational energy sucking, even if the school's party line says they support everyone. 

But what else can we do?

School Reform Biomimicry Inspired by Alternatives 

Well, let's look towards home and democratic schooling. 

My thesis research is being conducted at a Home School Resource Center which acts a lot like a community college in which a variety of courses are offered according to the interests and needs of their community. 

I also work with a democratic school in which the kids have classes available but are not required to take any of them. 

For our purpose here what you need to know about these schools is that they create welcoming, non-stigmatized, non-instructional spaces. 

And, thereby, ensure that the children have to first want instruction before it will be provided, and then they have to also show on-going interest and engagement or it will not continue to be provided. In other words the children have to both want and work for their access to instruction. 

Now imagine what might be possible in public schools if we bring together the biological design principle of protecting the integrity and fidelity of information transfer and the proven example of home and democratic schooling. 

What if... we maintain the social pressure to enter the school gate, but re-create the non-instructional spaces to be welcoming to everyone who is not in the right state of mind for instruction? 

Removing the stigma is a significant challenge but motivational pre-requisites for instruction is a potentially practical and promising strategy for improving public schools which should be tried. 

School Reform Biomimicry is Easier Said Than Done

Naturally this requires more than just arbitrarily declaring one day that these spaces are now different. 

We have to figure out how to make the transition from what we have to what we want. 

Fortunately, alternative schools have done decades of research and development already that can help us envision what is likely to work in the end. 

For instance, one of the most consistent features of democratic schools are student-run justice systems that are highly effective at maintaining a pervasive sense of just and equitable treatment in the face of conflicts. 

School Reform Biomimicry Depends on Willing Adults

But the critical key to making the shift is changing the adults attitudes towards children and the policies and procedures that guide their behavior. 

The adults need to shift from a sense that they are entitled to having dictatorial control over children to a sense that they have been chosen for their ability to support the children in responsibly exercising their autonomy. 

Remember "autonomy support?" 

I mentioned it at the beginning as the other key lesson mainstream schooling should learn from the alternative movements. 

Autonomy is a fundamental human psychological need and adults who provide for that need are being "autonomy supportive." 

The antithesis of autonomy support is control. 

(And for those who automatically assume that losing control of children is a bad thing, you don't need to worry because it has always been an illusion anyway, and you can't really lose what you never had in the first place. But that's for another video.) 

The key point of this video is that the organization of school spaces can be transformed to cultivate creativity and social coordination by taking a lesson from our own biology. 

Our biology teaches us that our own cells have evolved the ability to protect the integrity and fidelity of the information transfer of our DNA. 

Cells accomplish this through maintaining their investment in the various functions that take place around the nucleus, and not by expanding the nucleus's core function to take over everything else in the cell. 

School Reform Biomimicry: We Are All The Problem, Potentially

So in this view schools are manufacturing motivational energy suckers that can kill the learning process because the core function has been taken to outlandish extremes. 

Everyone experiences occasions when they are NOT ready or willing to participate fully in instruction. 

But, when ALL the non-instructional spaces are stigmatized then anyone can be forced into sucking motivational energy from others in order to participate.

However, we can prevent the disease of motivational energy sucking by creating welcoming non-instructional spaces where members of the learning community can learn together in non-instructional ways. 

The task is to create schools that will protect the integrity and fidelity of instructional processes through having motivational pre-requisites for instruction. 

School Reform Biomimicry is Practical

I believe this strategy for re-organizing school spaces is practical for several reasons. 

While it will require some organized and motivated advocacy it does not require people to be better than they already are, they do not have to acquire specialized skills, nor have access to more technology. 

This strategy does require people to learn some ideas, coordinate conversations to spread those ideas (to figure out how to apply them in their school community), and eventually formulate a clear plan for implementing changes. 

But learning an idea, spreading it in their community, and then acting on how that idea resonates with the values of that community is what education is already supposed to do, isn't it?

P.S. Here's another article on how unschooling is a model for school reform biomimicry.

Leadership in Education: How to Play the Hero's Game

Leadership in education needs to be about aligning primary human need support across multiple levels of the school community before instruction is provided. 

But, before I explain my understanding of leadership, alignment of primary human need support and what the multiple levels are, please watch this playlist of a two-part video (~27 min. total).

It provides you with a framework for understanding the true challenges that leaders in education face; a set of challenges that are not yet found in the public dialogue about how we should be changing our K-12 schools. 

 

• Heroic Challenge #1: The Game of Paradigm Change
• Heroic Challenge #2: Saving the Children (and the Adults, too)
        #2 References
• Heroic Challenge #3: Treasuring Optimal States of Mind
• Heroic Challenge #4: Well-Being Through Primary Need Support
• Leadership in Education Resource Links

Heroic Leadership in Education Challenge #1: The Game of Paradigm Change

When a paradigm changes then what is taken to be obvious also changes. 

The change from the miasma theory to the germ theory of disease is a historical example of paradigm change. 

The appropriate historical parallel for the current moment in education seems to me to be about the 1850's in medicine. 

A variety of small changes have accumulated in local ways, and have largely been ignored because they don't make sense within the current paradigm. 

We are awaiting a fundamental idea that can guide the over-all enterprise of education to make sense of what matters in the field in new ways.

The process of paradigm change is complex and is not precipitated all-at-once. 

Naturally, there is no way to tell at the time which idea will be the one that is accepted as a comprehensive sense maker. 

However, I believe it is the time in the education change process in which someone needs to reframe the enterprise in a way that makes sense of the both the mainstream and the anomalies that are deviating from it. 

I am offering my ideas in the spirit of that kind of change. 

I've considered these ideas for over two decades and I have concluded that they constitute a paradigm change in the sense that Thomas Kuhn meant: a change in what counts as obvious and the questions that follow from what is taken to be obvious.  

Growing mental maps is the new paradigm in education. 

Content delivery is the old paradigm. 

Leadership in education needs to understand the difference and how paradigms function at the levels of society, an individual, and everywhere in between. 

(A Note on the Term "Paradigm": I have previously avoided the term due to it's having been a business “buzz word” that bore no relationship to the idea that Thomas Kuhn presented in his book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. 

Thanks to the marketing misusage I have tended to associate the use of the term as much with empty promises as with an actual social phenomena. 

However, I have recently concluded that there is no other relevant term for the change in education that I believe is immanent.)

Return to top. 

Heroic Leadership in Education Challenge #2: Saving the Children (and the Adults, too)

An abundance of data shows many children are harmed by the old paradigm**. 

A small but growing body of data also shows that children are nurtured in certain kinds of alternative schools that are mostly ignored***. 

In the new paradigm human nature is minimally specified by primary human needs that have been empirically validated. 

There are currently eight primary human needs that are accepted due to robust experimental data to support them, though more are possible. 

The eight are: 

• oxygen (a.k.a. air), 
• water, 
• material nutrients (a.k.a. food), 
• sleep, 
• protection from extreme environmental conditions (a.k.a. shelter), 
• competence, 
• relatedness, and 
• autonomy.

In K-12 schooling the autonomy need might be the most frequently thwarted need. 

And the thwarting of the need for autonomy seems to occur at all levels for both children and adults throughout the system. 

The most basic intervention to accomplish substantive meaningful change in K-12 schools will have to result in the support of the needs for both autonomy and relatedness. 

However, we are not required to navigate this challenge starting with a blank map. 

Alternative school models, such as democratic schools and home schooling, around the world were locally developed paths to the solution and can help show us the way. 

Return to top. 

Heroic Leadership in Education Challenge #3: Treasuring Optimal States of Mind

Currently education treasures instruction more that optimal states of mind that instruction should lead towards. 

This is wrong. 

Access to optimal states of mind needs to be a prerequisite to instruction. 

Schools still need to be about instruction, but instruction as shaped by properly motivated students and teachers. 

Hospitals are about treating illness and injury, but since the germ theory of disease became the paradigm for understanding disease they only provide treatment in the context of antiseptic protocols. 

In the same way the change I am advocating in education is about ensuring that instruction is provided in the context of nurturing protocols; protocols that ensure access to optimal states of mind is available to everyone in schools. 

Self-reports of intrinsic motivation and engagement with instructional activities are objective indicators of whether or not primary human needs are being systematically met. 

A hospital without antiseptic protocols would seem bizarre to us today because the protocols for antisepsis have become the “obvious” ways that things are done in hospitals. 

What if you took away all the uniforms, masks, gloves, and the ability to wash hands and disinfect stuff? 

A hospital might not look any different than a hotel (and probably a cheap one) except that the majority of people in it are sick or injured. 

The doctors would be wearing the same kinds of clothing as everyone else and would probably only be recognizable by their lack of illness or injury and perhaps a stethescope around their neck. 

That was the case before germ theory and it's implication brought about antiseptic protocols and the infrastructure to support them. 

Medical practice was largely ineffective except in a select few areas such as the setting of broken bones. 

Schools today are defined by their instructional function, but the results we get from them are poor indeed. 

However, that does not need to be the case if we can institute nurturing protocols and develop our infrastructure to support them. 

Return to top. 

Heroic Leadership in Education Challenge #4: Well-Being Through Primary Need Support 

In order to provide practical advice on the transformation of schools from this perspective it is critically important to distinguish between leadership and management. 

Management is the process of meeting the primary needs of an organization. 

Organizations must have people who belong to it, financial resources to exchange with their economic ecology, and must have a profitable pattern of using those resources. 

Those three factors are an organizations primary needs in the sense that if any one of the three is interrupted then the organization will cease to exist. 

Leadership, on the other hand, is how the different levels of need satisfaction align. 

Both the organization and the individuals that make it up have primary needs. 

Those needs could be mutually supported or one level of need satisfaction could thwart the needs at the other level. 

When a person puts their own interests ahead of the organization through skimming funds or in other ways then they might improve their ability to meet their immediate needs, but at the expense of the organization, then the organization is being harmed. 

An organization that allows managers to exert dictatorial control over their employees behavior will thwart the primary need for autonomy in those workers most of the time. 

The organization will likely benefit from the work gained but the employee will have less well-being as a result. 

Excellence in leadership is about aligning the meeting of all levels of need satisfaction. 

When the employees have all their needs met and the organization simultaneously gets it's needs met, then everyone is going to be optimally productive and the organization is going to be sustainable. 

Ultimately, if the need satisfaction alignment includes higher levels such as society and the planet the result is the kind of sustainability we need to survive and thrive as a species. 

A true leader knows what the management issues are and has a sense that there are ways to accomplish those basic organizational survival tasks in inspired ways that also serve the needs of individuals, the society, and the planet. 

They look for the opportunities to achieve an artful balance between the individual and the organizational imperatives that drive action.

This website is focused on educational policy so that leadership in education can be shaped in a heroic mold.

Return to top. 

Leadership in Education Resource Links

• Become a K-12 hero: Join Schools of Conscience.
• Research-based leadership in education: Education Evolving
• IDEA- Institute for Democratic Education in America

Return to top. 

Leadership in Education References:

**

"... abundance of data shows many children are harmed... "

The following 10 studies completed over the course of over 30 years all document declines in intrinsic motivation in traditional mainstream schools. 

Declines in intrinsic motivation imply the thwarting of primary psychological needs. The thwarting of primary psychological needs causes increases in symptoms of anxiety, depression, and other forms of psychological distress, which constitutes harm.

Prawat, Grissom & Parish, 1979; Harter, 1981; Wigfield, Eccles & Rodriguez, 1998; Gottfried, Fleming & Gottfried, 2001; Bouffard, Marcoux, Vezeau & Bordeleau, 2003; Hunter & Csikszentmihalyi, 2003; Pintrich, 2003; Lepper, Corpus & Iyengar, 2005; Otis, Grouzet & Pelletier, 2005; Corpus, McClintic- Gilbert & Hayenga, 2009. 

See my thesis for complete references.

Return to text. 

***

"... growing body of data also shows that children are nurtured..."

Berg, D.A., Corpus, J.H. (2013). Enthusiastic Students: A Study of Motivation in Two Alternatives to Mandatory Instruction. Other Education: The Journal of Educational Alternatives, 2(2), 42-66

Vedder-Weiss, D., & Fortus, D. (2011). Adolescents’ declining motivation to learn science: Inevitable or not?. Journal Of Research In Science Teaching, 48(2), 199-216. DOI: 10.1002/tea.20398

Return to text.