FORMATIVE INTERVENTIONS FOR COLLECTIVE CONCEPT FORMATION : THREE CASES OF SCHOOL CHANGE

1. FORMATIVE INTERVENTIONS FOR COLLECTIVE CONCEPT FORMATION:THREE CASES OF SCHOOL CHANGE Yrjö Engeström CRADLE University of Helsinki LECTURE 4 JOHN DEWEY LECTURES 2013: Concept Formation in the Wild as Educational Challenge: An Activity-Theoretical Research Program CREAD – Research Center on Education, Learning and Didactics Brittany Institute of Education University of Western Brittany, Rennes, France November 2013

2. Historical change in school education The traditional form of school education is not appropriate for the education of an students with increasingly heterogeneous backgrounds, interests, specific learning problems, and levels of achieved competences. This contradiction leads to aggravating problems of academic achievement, lack of motivation and school drop outs.

3. Two policy responses, two strategies of school development • 1 Strategy based on rationalization and hierarchical pressure to perform in the prevailing structure • partition of the content to small measurable wholes • frequent tests, high stakes testing • competition • economic rewards and punishments • 2 A strategy based on mediating the contradiction between unified instruction and students’ varying needs • teachers’ collaborative planning of instruction in autonomous schools • continuous experimentation with instruments and cross-professional collaboration in diagnosing learning problems • elaborate system of remedial teaching and support of students’ learning Sahlman,2010; Miettinen, 2013

4. The Change Laboratory as a tool for the second strategy; a search for ways to mediate the historically evolved inner contradictions in school activity

5. KEY ELEMENTS IN THREE CHANGE LABS SECOND STIMULI GERM CELL EMERGING CONCEPT CONTRADICTION FIRST STIMULI JAKOMÄKI MIDDLE SCHOOL IN HELSINKI SENIOR SECONDARY SCHOOL IN BOTSWANA THE SCHOOL OF SELF-DETERMI-NATION IN MOSCOW Center for Research on Activity, Development and Learning (CRADLE)

6. CHANGE LABORATORY IN THE JAKOMÄKI MIDDLE SCHOOL IN HELSINKI, FINLAND

7. The Site • A middleschool (Junior HighSchool) in Helsinki, Finland • Morethan 30% of the studentsfromrecentimmigrantorrefugeefamilies • Jakomäki is a socially and economically disadvantaged area in Helsinki; in 1997, the unemployment rate of Jakomäki was 25%, compared to 15% in the city as a whole; only 5% of the adult population of Jakomäki had higher education, compared to 21% in Helsinki as a whole

8. The Intervention • Change Laboratory: 11 weekly meetings in the fall 1998 and winter 1999 • 26 teachers and research group • analyzed contradictions • constructed a vision • designed concrete steps toward the vision for the activity system of the school

9. Contradictions in the activity system

11. CHANGE LAB SESSION 3 Contradiction:Apatheticstudents vs. energeticstudents

12. Change Laboratory session #8 Teacher 7: What is strange is that when I teach them here in the daytime, nobody is interested and nobody cares. But when they come voluntarily in the evening, everything is fine and everyone cares. Yet the same faces are there. There is a huge contradiction there.

13. CHANGE LAB SESSION 3 Contradiction:Control vs. Trust

15. THE FINAL PROJECT -THE GRADUATING 9TH GRADE STUDENTS USED TO LEAVE THE SCHOOL WITH ONLY A REPORT CARD AND GRADES IN THEIR POCKET -THE TEACHERS FELT THAT THE STUDENTS SHOULD LEAVE WITH SOMETHING MORE TANGIBLE, WITH AN ACHIEVEMENT FOR WHICH THEY COULD BE PROUD OF -THE FINAL PROJECT IS A CROSS-SUBJECT PROJECT ON ANY RELEVANT TOPIC CHOSEN BY THE STUDENT -THE FINAL PROJECT IS TO BE COMPLETED DURING THE WINTER/SPRING SEMESTER OF THE LAST SCHOOL YEAR, AND A NUMBER OF SCHOOL HOURS IS SET ASIDE EXCLUSIVELY FOR WORK ON THE FINAL PROJECT -A TEACHER IS ASSIGNED TO GUIDE AND SUPERVISE EACH FINAL PROJECT; THE SUPERVISING TEACHER MAY OR MAY NOT BE A TEACHER RESPONSIBLE FOR TEACHING THE PARTICULAR SCHOOL SUBJECT CLOSEST TO THE TOPIC OF THE PROJECT -IF THE STUDENT WISHES HE OR SHE MAY ASK THAT THE FINAL PROJECT BE EVALUATED AS GROUNDS FOR RAISING THE STUDENT'S FINAL GRADE IN A SCHOOL SUBJECT -THE OUTCOMES OF THE FINAL PROJECTS ARE DISPLAYED IN AN EXHIBITION AT THE END OF THE SCHOOL YEAR

16. VOICES OF IMMIGRANT STUDENTS’ TEACHERS AS SECOND STIMULUS - THE TEACHERS OF IMMIGRANT STUDENTS IN PRACTICE AND IN DISCOURSE ANTICIPATED THE CHANGES; THE ADVANCED PRACTICES GAVE THESE TEACHERS A NEW PERSPECTIVE WHICH THEY REPEATEDLY VOICED IN THE CHANGE LABORATORY DISCUSSIONS AND FOLLOW-UP MEETINGS - EXAMPLE: IN THE LAST CHANGE LABORATORY SESSION, THE TEACHERS PRESENTED THEIR CHANGE PLANS TO A REPRESENTATIVE OF THE HELSINKI SCHOOL BOARD; AS THE FINAL PROJECT WAS BEING PRESENTED, THIS OFFICIAL ASKED WHETHER THE PLAN WOULD INCLUDE IMMIGRANT STUDENTS; AS THE SPEAKER OF THE TASKFORCE (TEACHER 3) STARTED TO EXPLAIN THAT THIS WOULD NOT BE THE CASE, A TEACHER OF IMMIGRANT STUDENTS (TEACHER 10), NOT A MEMBER OF TASKFORCE, TOOK THE INITIATIVE: CHANGE LABORATORY SESSION #11 SCHOOL BOARD OFFICIAL: I would still like to ask, i came to think about the immigrant students. Is it the idea that they, too, will do this final project? RESEARCHER: Has the taskforce thought about this? TEACHER 3: No. This is for ninth-graders… TEACHER 10: Personally i thought that at least my class will do this. In one way or another. One can use the students' special competencies in this work. There are skills which may not be so academic, but there are many such areas of competence that are terribly important.

17. THE FINAL PROJECT SECOND STIMULUS: VOICES OF IMMIGRANT STUDENTS’ TEACHERS: IT IS POSSIBLE…WE’VE DONE IT! STUDENTS AS APATHETIC; INSTRUMENTS OF CONTROL STUDENTS AS ENERGETIC; INSTRUMENTS OF TRUST REMEDIATING THE CONTRADICTION WITH THE HELP OF THE FINAL PROJECT

18. WORK ON A PERSONALLY MEANINGFUL TOPIC WORK TO IMPROVE GRADES THE FINAL PROJECT AS A GERM CELL OF ENGAGED SCHOOLWORK

19. IN THE SPRING OF 1999, 71% OF THE 9TH GRADERS COMPLETED THEIR FINAL PROJECTS; OF THOSE WHO COMPLETED THEM, 54% USED THEIR FINAL PROJECTS SUCCESSFULLY TO RAISE SOME OF THEIR GRADES • IN 2000, 91% OF THE 9TH GRADERS COMPLETED THEIR FINAL PROJECTS, AND 65% OF THEM SUCCESSFULLY USED THE PROJECT TO RAISE THEIR GRADES

20. HOW THE CHANGE LABORATORY CHANGED TEACHERS’ CONCEPTUALIZATION OF STUDENTS

21. KEY ELEMENTS IN THREE CHANGE LABS SECOND STIMULI GERM CELL EMERGING CONCEPT CONTRADICTION FIRST STIMULI STUDENTS AS APATHETIC VS. STUDENTS AS ENERGETIC; INSTRUMENTS OF CONTROL VS. INSTRUMENTS OF TRUST SIGNS OF STUDENT APATHY AND TEACHER DISTRUST JAKOMÄKI MIDDLE SCHOOL IN HELSINKI SENIOR SECONDARY SCHOOL IN BOTSWANA THE SCHOOL OF SELF-DETERMI-NATION IN MOSCOW VOICES OF THE TEACHERS OF IMMIGRANT STUDENTS THE FINAL PROJECT STUDENTS AS CAPABLE Center for Research on Activity, Development and Learning (CRADLE)

22. PUBLICATIONS ON THE JAKOMÄKI CHANGE LABORATORY -Engeström, Y., Engeström, R. & Suntio, A. (2002). Can a school community learn to master its own future? An activity-theoretical study of expansive learning among middle school teachers. In G. Wells & G. Claxton (Eds.) Learning for life in the 21st century: Sociocultural perspective on the future of education. London: Blackwell.

23. CHANGE LABORATORY IN THEMOLEFI SENIOR SECONDARY SCHOOL, BOTSWANA

24. THE SITE Location in the Mochudivillagenear the capital Gaborone in Botswana 1 800 students of of which 600 boarders Many orphan students because of AIDS A three-tack system based on number of science subjects: single, double and triple sciences. Students are allocated to the tracks based on their science marks in Junior School

25. Part of a broader project related to the use of ICTs at school. • Participants: members of the school’s ICT group13 teachers representing different subjects (interested in but not specialized nor competent in the ICTs. • Seven sessions, two sessions a week, september and october 2008: • analysis of current situation and history • development of three new practices to be experimented The ChangeLaboratory intervention

26. Differences in students ”academic calibre” The first stimulus Researcher: What else (…) worries you? Participant 1: The course work plan is quite a challenge. (…) especially for the single science students. Researcher: And what kind of situation is created by this? Participant 1: Like she has explained earlier we have students of different capabilities and abilities. With the higher achievers its fine, but with these single science students (…) we are thinking that that could only be given to the triple science students and the higher doubles, then leave out the single (…)

27. Researcher: (…) [can you] ask [teachers] for extra help? Student 1: (…) sometimes you feel too afraid to ask. Student 3: Because you are going to feel intimidated? Student 1: You are going to feel intimidated. Student 3: Especially when you are doing single sciences they just think that they have to give priority to the triple sciences and maybe double sciences, and if you say that you are single sciences, they just say hey you aggg. Student 1: Later, see you later. --- Student 3: They make extra lessons for the triple sciences Student 1: But not for the single. Categorization of students and discrimination of single science students

28. Discrimination of single science students Participant 2 (Second session) There is something that I picked from the video clip there that somehow doing the single science limits these students when they get to tertiary especially when it comes to science, if that’s true, then we have to do something about it. Because at the end of the day they are here they have their own aspirations, they want to be pilots like they say and may be doing other science-related courses and if us here in the school we still have a system whereby we have single science, it puts a majority of our students on the disadvantage side.

29. The contradiction

30. Second stimuli • getting more information about individual students’ problems, needs and interests; a dialogue with students about these • supporting students’ study planning

31. Dialogue with individual students’ about their problems, needs and interests and supporting their planning of studies Great number of students Example of group work in the ”developmental dialogue” method

32. Mediating the contradiction with the help of ’dialogicalstudyplanning practice ’ and ’co-teaching’

33. Emergingconcept Both the co-teachingmodel and the model of dialogicalstudyplanningcontained the idea of moreindividualized learning and support of studentsthrough bothteachercollaboration and student collaboration Moreabout the case: Virkkunen, Newnhamn, Nleya, & Engestöm, (2012): Breaking the viciouscircle of categorizing. Learning, Culture, and Interaction 1, (3-4),183-192.

34. KEY ELEMENTS IN THREE CHANGE LABS SECOND STIMULI GERM CELL EMERGING CONCEPT CONTRADICTION FIRST STIMULI STUDENTS AS APATHETIC VS. STUDENTS AS ENERGETIC; INSTRUMENTS OF CONTROL VS. INSTRUMENTS OF TRUST SIGNS OF STUDENT APATHY AND TEACHER DISTRUST JAKOMÄKI MIDDLE SCHOOL IN HELSINKI SENIOR SECONDARY SCHOOL IN BOTSWANA THE SCHOOL OF SELF-DETERMI-NATION IN MOSCOW VOICES OF THE TEACHERS OF IMMIGRANT STUDENTS THE FINAL PROJECT STUDENTS AS CAPABLE HETEROGENEOUS STUDENT GROUPS VS. UNIFORM MASS TEACHING & STUDENT CATEGORIZATION PROBLEMS OF STUDENT LEARNING AND MOTIVATION DIALOGUE WITH STUDENTS ABOUT THEIR NEEDS AND PROBLEMS DIALOGICAL INDIVIDUALIZED STUDY PLANNING, CO-TEACHING INDIVIDUALIZED SUPPORT THROUGH STUDENT AND TEACHER COLLABORATION Center for Research on Activity, Development and Learning (CRADLE)

35. CHANGE LABORATORY IN THE SCHOOLOF SELF-DETERMINATIONIN MOSCOW

36. Description of the research area The school of Self Determination” One of famous “author’s pedagogy schools” Strong democratic traditions (since 1970) Deepening crisis in last several years: Loosing the efficiency of pedagogy methods The educational results are falling down, Popularity amongst parents is decreasing, Reputation in local community is getting worse. It causes tensions and conflicts among the colleagues, they feel the threat of a collapse of the team In the situation of the reform they need to reconsider the concept of the school and to find the way to overcome the crisis

37. Change Laboratory intervention • 24 teachers and administrators of the school, represented all the departments and informal groups(оf 65 members of the school team) • 10 group meetings on the concept formation were organized twice a month from October 2012 till April 2013 • Prepared mirror materials (quotations from preliminary interviews with teachers, parents and children, videotaped fragments of work processes, etc.)

38. The list of the current problems (1st session) • The rate of change outside does not match the rate of reaction of school. • We cannot set the requirement bar for children and make it clear and significant for them. • The school and kindergarten have different problems: how to find the points of contact? • Collegiality in management does not work. Different teachers insisted on different words. • Mismatch in official and real duties, confusion in sharing of responsibilities. • Lowering of level of requirements to ourselves. • The decline of quality of education: lack of competitiveness, lack of efforts, “favorable atmosphere”. • The collective has no formulated priorities of developments. • Lack of system of interacting of all agents of educational process (teachers, administration, parents, teachers). • The lowering of requirements to each other for the sake of saving of kind relationships. • Vagueness of the general idea of self-identity of the school. • New wage system leads to discord insist of stimulating of development of the school. • Democracy has gone. • Inefficient of investment of personal efforts. • The opacity and unclearness of recourses available in the school and possibilities of their using. • The internal law space does not work anymore. • Relationships with parents: how to build the collaboration? • Decline of teacher’s agency leads to decline of children’s agency. • Lack of conditions for development of teachers. • We don’t understand how to use external changing for our benefits and don’t even try to do it. • The weakening of collaboration with children in developing of thee school. • The school encourages a freebie. • We cannot leave or reject anything. • Lack of methodical work in the school. Later the two more problems were added: 25. The renunciation of assessments no longer be compensated by other tools, it doesn’t work as a tool. 26. When we say “our problems”, non of us has in mind himself (herself).

39. 22 The mapping of the problems 6 18 10 23 3 9 1 20 8 2 19 4 14 15 11 7 17 5 13 24 21 16 12

40. Timeline making (2nd session)

41. Historical research The School History The correspondence between school and country history phases 1970 1974 1981 1985 1988 1998 2001 2003 2007 2010 2012 ! ! 1970 1979 1985 1991 1993 2000 2008 2012 The Country History Two long-term cycles (1970 – 1985, 1988 – 2012) of the school activity with the typical stages (Rise – Flourish – Decline – Crisis) have common features Temporal political climate (increasing – decreasing of the State pressure) influenced on the school development When the school turned from development of its activity to “conservation” strategy, it led to decline and following inner crisis

44. Contradictions INSTRUMENTS COMFORT – REQUIREMENTS SUBJECT STABILITY vs. DEVELOPMENT OBJECT «SCHOOL FOR ALL» vs. SCHOOL FOR KINDRED SPIRITS OUTCOME INDEPENDENT CULTURED PERSON – SUCCESSFUL PASSING EXAMINATIONS RULES FREEDOM OF CREATIVITY– ABIDANCE BY RULES DIVISION OF LABOR PERSONAL INITIATIVE– COLLECTIVE RESPONSIBILITY COMMUNITY EVERYBODY REQUIRES EDUCATIONAL QUALITY- QUALITY COMPREHENDS IN DIFFERENT WAYS

45. Overcoming the contradiction in the object The group elaborated the germ cell model of the future school, overcoming the contradiction in the object of activity:

46. EMERGING CONCEPT OPENNESS COMMONALITY OF VALUES REMEDIATING THE CONTRADICTION WITH THE HELP OF AN EMERGING NEW CONCEPT

47. OPEN EDUCATIONAL-CULTURAL CENTER FOR CHILDREN AND FAMILIES COMMONALITY OF VALUES OPENNESS THE GERM CELL OF A NEW CONCEPT FOR THE SCHOOL OF SELF-DETERMINATION

48. The new concept of the school: Open school oriented to freedom of choices differententrances to the school differentexits from the schoolat different levels from different places at different levels to different places selection of the pupils (families) individual learning trajectories Partnershipwith educational institutes, parents, local communities Choice by values Space of choices for self-determination, individual ways of education Diversity of ways Local families for graduates Kindergarten Children make choices to come in or out

49. KEY ELEMENTS IN THREE CHANGE LABS SECOND STIMULI GERM CELL EMERGING CONCEPT CONTRADICTION FIRST STIMULI STUDENTS AS APATHETIC VS. STUDENTS AS ENERGETIC; INSTRUMENTS OF CONTROL VS. INSTRUMENTS OF TRUST SIGNS OF STUDENT APATHY AND TEACHER DISTRUST JAKOMÄKI MIDDLE SCHOOL IN HELSINKI SENIOR SECONDARY SCHOOL IN BOTSWANA THE SCHOOL OF SELF-DETERMI-NATION IN MOSCOW VOICES OF THE TEACHERS OF IMMIGRANT STUDENTS THE FINAL PROJECT STUDENTS AS CAPABLE HETEROGENEOUS STUDENT GROUPS VS. UNIFORM MASS TEACHING & STUDENT CATEGORIZATION PROBLEMS OF STUDENT LEARNING AND MOTIVATION DIALOGICAL (INDIVIDUAL) STUDY PLANNING, CO-TEACHING DIALOGICAL (INDIVIDUAL) STUDY PLANNING, CO-TEACHING INDIVIDUALIZED SUPPORT THROUGH STUDENT AND TEACHER COLLABORATION OPENNESS OPEN EDUCATIONAL-CULTURAL CENTER OPENNESS VS. COMMONALITY OF VALUES SIGNS OF LOSS OF SHARED OBJECT COMMONALITY OF VALUES Center for Research on Activity, Development and Learning (CRADLE)