Schools 2.0: authority or leadership?

“The anguish and helplessness of teachers in the face of harassment and violence in public education classrooms could have its days numbered. The president of the Community of Madrid will announce today, during the debate on the State of the Region, a law that grants teachers the status of “public authority”, and that places the teaching civil service at the same level as police officers, judges, or other public officials. Diario ABC. Madrid.

I think it would be deeply reassuring for all of us to look at the current crisis of authority in our schools as a mere technical problem, which we can actually solve by giving special powers to teachers. I am afraid, however, that the reality is quite different, and that the problems of authority in our classrooms will remain the same after the new rule is introduced.

These types of laws cannot restore coexistence in our schools because they do not go to the root of the problem. What actually happens is that Society has questioned the authority of the teacher, and both students and their parents have lost respect for a key figure in our educational model. We have already analyzed the reasons for this phenomenon in a Previous Conversation, very singularly the impact generated on the educational system by the arrival of the first generation of Digital Natives in the classroom. He also mentioned there the opportunity offered by the Era of Collaboration to redesign our schools, and to move from a “teacher-centered” model to a truly “student-centered” model. Finally, he emphasized the need to follow this process that will facilitate the emergence of new Schools 2.0, true collaborative learning environments based on open knowledge and new values such as collaboration, transparency and authenticity. In today’s conversation I would like to delve into why the open crisis in our schools requires solutions that are very different from the initiatives proposed by the President of the Community of Madrid. Authentic authority is built day by day, and is the result of prestige and a job well done. Wanting to solve the enormous challenges facing our entire education system in this Age of Collaboration with mere political gestures will only reduce our sense of urgency about the problems we face, and pave the way for a longer and deeper crisis in our schools.

A complicated task

Let us begin by acknowledging that the task of leading any institution – educational or not – during a crisis such as the current one is an arduous and complicated task. This is because we have to face visible problems, such as the lack of means and resources necessary to manage the day-to-day running of our schools. And, at the same time, we have to address the underlying causes that really originate the crisis. Therefore, we must develop the new structures and capacities necessary to thrive in the new social reality without throwing overboard everything we have been able to build. In other words, we must be careful in the transformation of our schools, lest we happen to the doctor who said to the relatives: “The operation has been a success with only one exception: the patient has died…” Naturally, teachers, parents and students are clamoring for emergency solutions, when the reality is that we are facing very complex challenges, which require a lot of time, and whose solution we can hardly address individually. The first thing we must understand is precisely that: that it is a collective challenge. There is no magic wand. We cannot address the challenge of Schools 2.0 with emergency political solutions, short-term responses, senseless restructuring and electoral promises that only serve to weather the storm and let everything return to normal, little by little. Let us begin, then, with a gesture of humility. Because the truth is that

The challenge of transforming our schools into true Schools 2.0 is above the current capacities of our educational authorities. It is a challenge that requires the reinvention of our educational models, the redesign of our schools, and the development of new 2.0 skills in all our teachers. The transformation is very demanding. We must, therefore, be serious and get down to work as soon as possible: we have no choice but to leave our comfort zone to dedicate ourselves to a task that is going to take a very long time.

Technical challenges vs adaptive challenges

To face the challenge of transforming our schools, we must first be able to make our mental models more flexible. To address the future, what we “don’t know”, together with our ability to learn, is more important than what we have learned by solving problems from the past that are no longer relevant. Secondly, it is vital that we know how to differentiate the part of this challenge that requires a technical solution from that which requires an adaptive solution. Fortunately, we can do this with the help of Professor Ronald Heifetz, who for more than 20 years has been developing one of the most innovative leadership models: adaptive leadership. In his book

“Leadership without Easy Answers” (1994), Heifetz sets Two major categories in which we can include the problems we face as leaders: technical problems and adaptive problems. The former are easy to define, and to address them we usually have a clear and established solution. This does not imply that they are problems of low complexity. But it does imply that we can find someone with enough knowledge and experience to solve them. In other words, they can be solved within the framework of our previous experience, simply by using knowledge, methodologies and tools that already exist. In addition, and this is fundamental, the resolution of a technical problem does not require changes in people.

The only thing we need to change is the process. Thus, for example, a technical problem in the context of a school may be the following: adjusting the agenda of each year to the selected contents, the profile of the students and the hours available. It is clear that teachers can easily define the nature of a technical problem such as this, and are able to prepare a solution with some confidence that the results will be satisfactory. On the contrary, adaptive problems are unclear and difficult to identify, mainly because they are closely linked to the habits and customs most ingrained in the members of an organization. This implies that the people involved (educational authorities, students, teachers, parents) are both part of the problem and part of the solution. Therefore, theresolution of an adaptive challenge requires the actors to modify their behaviors, their skills and their mental schemes. And we know that this is one of the most complicated tasks to carry out in any institution. One of the most common mistakes among people in a position of authority is to try to solve complex social challenges through the traditional “command and control”, as if the challenge of transforming our educational model were simply a matter of making it clear “who is in charge in the school”. Of course, the teacher must have the necessary authority, and his work must be protected by society, insofar as he is a key piece in the entire training and educational process of our young people. But this is not the real problem, but one of the symptoms of a more global problem, which affects the entire educational model.

The crisis in our classrooms is a complex challenge, in which teachers, parents and students are part of the problem and the solution. The response we give to these complex challenges must be collective, and it no longer makes sense to play the card of the all-powerful leader who knows everything and is capable of telling us where the solution lies. The solution must be found together, changing the fundamental rules of the game, reforming the parts of our schools that need to be reformed, and redefining the work of teachers to make it possible, together, for the new Schools 2.0 to emerge as a new reality.

Change a little to change everything.

Every process of adaptation is, at the same time, a process of conservation. It is not a question of questioning everything we have done so far, as if it no longer made any sense. As it happens in nature, it is a matter of distinguishing the essential from the dispensable, to introduce a few small changes in the DNA of our schools – their culture – to change everything. What should we preserve from current educational models and what things should we change because they arose to solve problems that are no longer relevant? That is the question. Some of the elements that make up our schools today will have to mutate. Some content and methodologies will have to change. And many teachers will have to abandon habits of the past to develop the new 2.0 skills. They will have to redefine their “public authority” not in legal or tax terms, but based on values such as authenticity, transparency, integrity and the real contribution of value to the learning process of their students.

Brave conversations in search of the emergency

The changes that are really capable of generating a big impact do not come from the big visions, nor from the plans and strategies designed at the top of the pyramid of organizations. Quite the contrary. Most of the time, changes begin as small courageous conversations, like personal initiatives located in the playgrounds of our schools.
Normally, these conversations end in actions that usually remain isolated and have no influence on the rest of the organization. However, when we manage to connect these small local initiatives with each other, the exchange of information and the collective learning generated during the process produce a multiplier effect: from separate, seemingly irrelevant efforts, very significant changes suddenly emerge, changes capable of moving the whole system.

This “emergence” of innovative solutions is a collective process that always brings new levels of training to organizations.

Since we don’t really know where we are headed, or how to build the new capacities that will make Schools 2.0 emerge, the most important thing is that we start by making some change initiatives a reality. These small – and at the same time brave – initiatives will allow us to experiment in our schools with the new value creation models of the Age of Collaboration. We can do this without large detailed strategic plans. We can start by creating new collaborative environments between students and teachers, new spaces for open communication that take advantage of the potential of blogs, wikis, twitters, etc. This first step will lead us to the emergence of new communities, which will allow us to share best practices and knowledge between schools. Let’s think about the result: courageous, frank and open conversations between teachers, parents, and students about the challenges we face; conversations that will help us explore the new social reality, experiment with new educational spaces, and move forward in successive iterations towards School 2.0. Once the emergency process is underway, we have to orchestrate the conflicts we encounter, managing the changes with the empathy necessary to understand personal problems and the emotional side of the problem. We must negotiate taking into account the legitimate interests of the parties, but without sacrificing the future of our young people for a legacy of personal interests that today is irrelevant, and that refuses to disappear.

A Question of Leadership, Not Authority

Greater authority could help teachers if they really had the answers to the challenges we face. But the reality is that our teachers today have more questions than answers. This is the problem, and no other. Authority is necessary to set the direction and to enforce the rules, but this is not the case. Because what we need is not to maintain the rules, but to change them. It is not a question of avoiding the conflicts that arise in our schools, but of understanding their origins and seeking creative solutions to the issues that really generate that conflict. Sometimes, this requires accepting discrepancies as a source of creativity. On many occasions, it is necessary to ask questions instead of giving solutions, to force the organization out of its comfort zone, and thus get it to face the real challenges of the future. I sincerely believe that what is happening in our classrooms is not a question of authority, but a question of leadership. It is not a question of having the answers, but of not shying away from the questions and the real challenges we face. The adaptation of our schools to the new demands requires leadership that assumes responsibility without waiting for the answers. The challenges facing our education system cannot be solved with more laws. What we need is to ensure that both innovation and leadership become a shared work for all. We therefore need collective leadership at all levels, which makes it possible for our schools to face the reality of a new networked society; to leave their comfort zone and address the challenges that threaten the future viability of our education system.