[MUSIC] We're living in the world of change, but do you welcome change? Well there is a saying that the only human being who welcomes change is a baby with a wet diaper. Three authors, Barbara McGilchrist, Kate Myers and Jane Reid, it's about a world that is fit for learners, and said this. In an age of great change, it is the learners who inherit the earth while the learned are well equipped to deal with a world that is past. There is a website which asks the question, how old is Grandma? And it makes this claim, perhaps you agree, perhaps you don't, perhaps it depends entirely on where you live. But if you look at this slide, it has a whole list of things that apparently, grandma would never have heard of television, penicillin, frozen food, photocopying, frisbees, the pill, yogurt, ball point pens, air conditioners, dishwashers, and so on, and so on. Just look at the very, very long list here. And then with a slightly humorous anecdote. That's the word grass, it exists, grass was mowed. Coke was a cold drink. Pot was something your mother cooked in. Rock music was your grandmother's lullaby. Aids were helpers in the principal's office. Gay was a state of happiness. Hardware was found in the hardware store, and even software wasn't even a word. Well you might look at that and see to what extent that's true and answer the question, how old is grandma? Well of the Internet site it says 68. Although I'm inclined to think she was probably a little older than that. But there is a definition of insanity which goes like this. Noun, going on doing things the same way and expecting different results. So, as Seymour Papert has written, we have to really reinvent and rethink our way of knowing. Because if we think change is limited by imagining things very much like the ones we already know, even if better, or by confining ourselves to doing what we know how to implement, then he says, we deprive ourselves of participation in the evolution of the future. It will creep up on us and take unawares. Well even before Seymour Papert, a long time before that, Lewis Carroll wrote Alice in Wonderland and in that book, he quotes, he puts the words into the mouth of Alice. If you don't know where you are going, any road will take you there. So if we look at these three notions of impact, influence, and leverage. Impact refers to changes in a condition of well-being for children, adults, families or communities who are directly served by schools, by education, or by training. So impact is a change in conditions. Influence is described as changes in policy, regulation systems, practice, public opinion, advocacy, dissemination of ideas, exemplary practice. All of which may influence ultimately what happens in terms of the impact. And leverage is described as changes in resourcing, investments, public support, private bodies, strategies which affect the outcomes. So change in this scenario has three dimensions to it. The leverage, the nature of influence and the ultimate impact. Well over the course of the last few weeks we've talked about top down and bottom up change. And I think all the research points us in the direction of change as being a combination of both, bottom up and top down. And the top down change on its own doesn't change much and the bottom up change on its own may get lost. So, working from the bottom up we need always that kind of endorsement and support from the top. Pasi Sahlberg, the Finnish educator, claims this of all the best performing education systems. He says they've all built their change strategies on approaches that rely on collective professional and institutional development. All produce and rely on enhanced conditions for teaching learning multiple opportunities within their education systems. What Pasi Sahlberg have taught us, of course is talking about the Finnish context. Which is now regarded by many policy makers as one of the best performance systems in the world it figures in the OECD league tables at the very top. And he says contrary to what many other countries are doing, what we have done in Finland is built from teachers. From teachers self-efficacy, from teachers collective professional development, teachers sharing ideas together. And building a system from the bottom up with a trust endorsement from the top down. Then, a theory of change, Malcolm Gladwell, three key ideas which are worth having a look at, worth considering, when we think about change from top down to bottom up. His theory is that change starts with the vital few. A few exceptional people doing something different. Does this apply, can you think of examples of this where a few people, one, two or three people in a school beginning to do something a bit different and then it begins to become an epidemic. In the research in Scotland which we did a number of years ago, a school that was unhelpfully described as the worst school in Scotland. One young teacher, Matthew Boyle, brand new teacher started to do something very different and along with it, came one or two other teachers in that school. And eventually the school principal or the head teacher saw what was going on, endorsed it and helped to build a professional development program for all teachers out of what thought vital few, were actually doing it in a school. But the second criteria for Malcolm Gladwell is that it requires some stickiness factor. Stickiness, it's even difficult to say. A stickiness factor. Which helps the epidemic to endure long enough so that it catches and becomes contagious, becomes memorable. And it works through the school and through the system. But you need to have, like any epidemic thus it need to have a context which is enough for the epidemic to spread. So these three things, a few people doing something different, being sticky enough to catch and an environment which helps it to catch. So if you think of change in this way, as a few people, the innovators, the vital few, doing something different. The early adopters, they're friends or colleagues who come along and begin to adopt that same change. And then as it flows through the system, the early majority, and then eventually later majority. And perhaps at the end there are some laggards who don't ever come along with the change, who resist the change at the end of the day. Where do you invest the energy? Is it with the innovators and the early adopters trying to embed something in the system? Rather than fighting against those who we all know and recognize who will never change. So, to say it, if you think you're too small to make a difference, you've never been in bed with a mosquito. [MUSIC]
