Don’t hamstring your change before it’s begun.
When school’s embark on change, there are a number of obstacles that are faced. Some obstacles are in an individual’s control. Others are cultural. Let’s examine one obstacle we’ve seen of late and the ways industry and schools tackle them.
People don’t collaborate.
I get it. Collaboration is hard. Yet, it’s more vital than we realise.
“It’s all in my head so I need to do it.”
“I have a deep knowledge of x, y, z, so it’s best that I do it,” say teachers. A lot.
How might we unravel this kind of arrogance?
Trust each other. Real collaborative trust means that each of us recognises that no one person has the best idea nor the best knowledge.
#Sorry, not sorry.
“Because value creation is a highly collaborative, interdisciplinary activity, no individual will have all the necessary knowledge, relevant mental models, or insights.” Carlson, 2020, HBR.
Catmull (in 2008, HBR) acknowledges that getting talented people to work together is tough because that level of collaboration requires trust and respect which can’t be mandated. It “… must be earned over time.” Instead, what Pixar does is create environments that nurture relationships that embody trust and respect.
Good ideas can only become the best ideas in collaboration. Good knowledge can only become deep knowledge in collaboration.
“…creativity involves a large number of people from different disciplines working effectively together to solve a great many problems.” Pixar’s Ed Catmull.
How does Pixar embed collaboration into their culture? Forced collisions.
At Pixar, this means that to get anywhere in the building, one must cross paths with many different people from many different areas of the organisation. Margaret Heffernan would call this ‘water cooler’ moments.
The challenge in schools is that we often don’t cross paths with other professionals; neither in our organisation nor outside it. If value creation requires high interdisciplinary activity (as Carlson, 2020, puts it), perhaps the challenge for schools is to facilitate interdisciplinary collisions that engender trust and respect.
At Seaton High School, South Australia, they’ve designed a number of SACE (Yr 11–12 university entrance-designed) learning packages that are integrated. Some of these packages include:
- a course that involves PE and Event Management (and students receive a Cert III in Event Management as well as SACE credits if they pass),
- a course that involves PE, Coaching and Data Analysis,
- a UAV (drone) course that integrates coding, flight and aerodynamics, and meteorology.
Teachers work together across disciplines to create a package outline and purpose statement that’s first approved by leadership and then advertised to the student body. Teachers then design and teach the package collaboratively and, often, with student input.
Seaton High School also follows a 70–20–10 approach to lesson design. Seventy percent of learning time is hands-on. Twenty percent of time is learning from an industry-recognised expert and ten percent of time is structured teaching.
There you go. Collaboration, even interdisciplinary collaboration, can be done. It is being done. Even though it’s hard.
