New imperatives of educational change to help build inclusive, stronger and democratic societies
Together with Education International’s Deputy General Secretary David Edwards, Boston College Professor Dennis Shirley discusses global trends in education and shares what he has identified as the five new imperatives of educational change.
In the latest episode of EdVoices, the podcast series from Education International (EI), Dennis Shirley, Professor of Education at the Lynch School of Education at Boston College, Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Educational Change and author of The New Imperatives of Educational Change: Achievement with Integrity, explains that one of the challenges in education is to work very hard within the profession to look outside of it at different global trends.
He stresses the five new imperatives of educational change to guide educators and policymakers towards a re-thinking of what it means to teach effectively and to learn in depth: the global imperative, the evidentiary imperative, the professional imperative, the interpretive imperative, and the existential imperative.
On the last imperative, Shirley says “we have neglected this dimension of education at our peril and our great loss over the last quarter of a century. We all crave connectedness, want meaning, purpose and beauty”. Noting that educators want to share that with their students, he regrets that policies get in the way of that connection - “we need to tend to that intentionally”.
On the role of education unions, Shirley says they must make these imperatives felt and acted upon globally and locally. He also highlights Alexis de Tocqueville’s view, saying that people need intermediaries in society, as “to be alone is a frightening experience in the world. You need family, friends, unions, faith-based institutions, sport clubs, you need all different kinds of associations, where enmity is overcome and replaced with relational trust, ties and reciprocity”.
Shirley also believes that individuals need to be members of groups that help them to defend their interests, and that a lot of the problems in society have to do with isolation, which is a by-product of market societies. So, markets must be corrected through civil society organisations, teachers’ unions being one of those, he notes.
Most of education around the world, he insists, has to do with educators teaching children what they know, because the world is a complex, coded place, and they want to help their students decode it, as they cannot do it by themselves and cannot always build on their previous knowledge.
The American academic adds that educators can be proud of their historical legacy and that this does have a moral dimension: “We have to stand up and speak on behalf of young people that nobody else will speak on behalf of, it could be immigrant youth, youth with disabilities, youth from impoverished backgrounds.”
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