I read recently on twitter someone state there are four levels of change – conservatism (we keep doing what we are already doing), iteration (small incremental improvements), innovation and disruption (everything changes). Each of these have their place in reformation of education and while you can find an awful lot on the internet about innovative and disruptive teaching practices, we have to be reminded that some of our tried and true current practices are, well, tried and true. No sense in getting rid of things that work. At the same time, as a profession we should be looking for constant improvements in our practice.
It occurred to me today that this list was similar to another I came across a few years ago; there are four ways we can do things at school
- old things in old ways
- old things in new ways
- new things in old ways
- new things in new ways
These two lists are effectively the same, and this is the schema I came up with to compare the two
| Things | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Old | New | ||
| Ways | Old | Conservatism | Innovation |
| New | Iteration | Disruption | |