CNN currently has a news link titled Six Steps to Creative Breakthroughs. They are:

1. Look behind you - Investigate the history of what worked, what did not work, and what might have worked given different scenarios.
   
2. Lose the routine - In other words, 'Play!' This might be reading, hitting seminars, attending conferences, etc. Taking time away from the routine of preparing, teaching, grading can have great rewards.
   
3. Use the brains you hired - Let employees (i.e., teachers snd ) take risks and not be penalized for failure.
   
4. Get cozy with customers - Get to know the needs of students, parents, and the community.
   
5. Share the load - Use resources in house, at the local college, or in the community to get things done.
   
6. Try to fail quickly - Quickly move from thinking about change, to doing it. Set benchmarks to determine if the innovation is working. Commit but don't be afraid to admit defeat.

These steps are powerful if put in terms of K-12 education. I wonder how many schools are willing to embrace this mentality? Should they?

Jayson W. Richardson
University of North Carolina Wilmington

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I recently returned from a state-wide teacher education conference, NC-ACTE. This is a local conference and thus tends to deal with local issues....yet I was glad to see some major issues introduced. One was brought up by our Teacher of the Year. Being a foreign language teacher, it is only natural that her luncheon talk dealt broadly with intercultural communication, embracing technological change, and the need for cultural exchange. These are points I advocate every day. The one point however that made me scratch my head is this idea of 'competition.' We often hear rhetoric such as "America is loosing its competitive edge" and "we need to understand others so we can compete against them' and my favorite is the sports analogy, "we need to understand the other team so we can beat them in the global marketplace."

Rationalizing international exchange under the guise of competition creates a dangerous space. This creates an us versus them mentality - this is negative, counterproductive, Fordist mentatlity. I would rather hear this exchange take place under the umbrella of cooperation. This may then create a we mentality. This is a positive space. I take students overseas, teach comparative education, and prepare educators to be technologically savvy school leaders by stressing reciprocal relationships and a focusing on a marketplace that is driven by working with others to create solutions for everyone. I feel my students leave me better prepared to create this new space.

Are we socializing and thus preparing our k-16 students through the lens of cooperation, collaboration, and intercultural understanding or are we holding tight to a paradigm where they are taking our jobs and we must win? The difference is not so subtle and the results may be huge!

Jayson Richardson
University of North Carolina Wilmington

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In today's tumultuous economy, we can hardly go a week without hearing of economic stimulus. We hear about the Cash for Clunkers  bill, U.S. bank bailouts, and corporate bonuses. The U.S. government even started a website called recovery.gov where a user can play with an interactive map to see where money was invested, peruse inspection reports, and explore tracking of funds.

For better or worse, it is fascinating to watch how the government has been when trying to address, deal with, and solve the crisis. Imagine if we, as a society, had this same sense of urgency about our education system. What types of stimulus efforts could be imagined and implemented if folks realized the crisis of the American education system? Here are some of my proposed bills:

• Create a set of pilot schools whose charge it is implement innovative uses of handheld devices like the i-Touch.

• Create a set of pilot schools where no websites are censored. This involves a educating students on finding appropriate sites and effective searching skills. Perhaps if hard research were available schools would realize how off the mark they are with blocking websites. (I know, imaging a world where kids can really access information at schools that is freely available to the rest of society.)

• Create a set of pilot schools to implement innovative uses of basic cell phones in schools. An easy idea is using the cell phone as a student response system. Sure some teachers are doing great things with this technology, but it is not widely accepted.

• Start a cash for clunker computers programs where schools get a rebate for turning in old, outdated computers for the purchase of new, powerful computers. The computers could be recycled to less fortunate families if they met minimum requirements.

•  Every school is allocated a technology coordinator for at least 2 years. This person would help teachers incorporated technology into their classes.

•  Provide funds where every superintendent and principal engages in professional development about technology, 21st Century skills, and global education. Perhaps a stellar set of online courses could be developed with the assistance of the best minds in the country and the world.

• Provide funds for educational games that engage students. This idea is based on Scott McLeod's blog post titled Do most educational games suck?

• Support and build on grassroots educational stimulus projects. There are so many interesting stories about grassroots economic stimulus projects. My favorites includes the 3/50 Project and the 10% Shift. What if every community business gave back 1% of their sales to schools and/or educational initiatives? What if community members donated 2 hours a month to local schools and local school initiatives? What if we, as a society, made concerted efforts to give back to the education system?   

I am sure there are tons of innovative ideas out there that need a 'stimulus' to get off the ground. How bad do U.S. schools need to fail to convince the government that our education system is in a recession? Do we need to wait until an entire generation of students graduate without the necessary skills and dispositions to contribute to a knowledge and innovation society? What will be education's stimulus to innovate?

Jayson Richardson
University of North Carolina Wilmington

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I just got back from spending two weeks in London, England. I have yet to get my body adjusted to US time, but that is a small price to pay for such an amazing adventure!

Scott Imig and I were fortunate enough to lead a group of seven University of North Carolina Wilmington (UNCW) Masters of School Administration students on this international trip. This was the first time I led an international cohort and the first time UNCW took school leaders to London. I have to say it went really well and I am eager to start preparing for next year.

So what did we do? The students spent one week in the schools and were given four days to explore individually and/or as a group. Our docket looked like this:

Saturday - Students arrived and toured the local area and took a short trip to Brick Lane. This was the first time many of these students tasted Indian food.
Sunday - Spent day in London seeing the sights.
Monday - Met with the Barking and Dagenham Local Authority to discuss data use, incorporating creativity in the curriculum, strategies used in various key stages to increase achievement, and the role of the Local Authority to improve schools.
Tuesday - Met at the University of Gloucester to learn about the National College of School Leadership, various routes into teaching, and Every Child Matters (this is similar to our No Child Left Behind).
Wednesday - Students paired up and spent the day in local primary schools shadowing school head teachers, classroom teachers, and students.
Thursday - Visited Jo Richardson, a community school that is doing amazing things with regard to the arts as well as private / public school partnerships.
Friday - Visited a secondary school that has dramatically improved in the past few years. Students shadowed teachers, chatted with the head teacher, and engaged in conversations with many international teachers.
Saturday & Sunday - Free time to explore. Students went to shows, took day trips, or simply hung out and explored the great city of London.
Monday - Students returned to North Carolina.

We are conducting research on this group to determine if this short international trip impacts or changes the way these students view diversity, education, leadership, or society and to longitudinally see if this trip has any impact on their professional practice. Even if the results of the study are not earth shattering, we already see that this trip was extremely powerful for each student. However, I am left wondering about the students who were not fortunate enough to come on the trip - how is the university preparing them for the real world? The students we took were exposed to diversity like they have never seen before. The students were able to see and hear how a national curriculum impacts leaders, teachers, and students. The students were able to live in a cosmopolitan city that is far removed from any Southeastern North Carolina community in which these students live. How do we, as university faculty members, prepare school leaders with a global mindset without these international experiences? Is it possible? Is it desired?

As an aside, researchers at the University of Minnesota through the SAGE project are writing up results of a study where they examine "long-term personal, professional, and global engagement outcomes associated with study abroad experiences." Preliminary results were published here.

Jayson W. Richardson
Assistant Professor of Educational Leadership
University of North Carolina Wilmington

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It was recently reported that California Governor Arnold Swarzenegger has created a plan to phase out school textbooks and adopt digital textbooks. This notion is getting some traction in the United Kingdom.

Here is 17 year old high school student talking about just that. In the video, the student talks about creating ischools based on the iTouch. This kid's idea includes adopting digital textbooks among other things.

Ray Schroeder has a great information blog called Recession Realities in Higher Education. This is a great one-stop shop to stay updated on how the "global recession is changing realities for students, institutions, and faculty members."

Maybe the current financial crisis will force our pk-20 schools to become more creative in how we deliver content, how students interact with the content, and the teacher's role in the education process. Will there come a day when we look back at pictures and videos of students sitting in brick and mortar classrooms with textbooks in hand, listening to the teacher, taking notes (OK, maybe even some students throwing paper airplanes) and wonder 'what were we thinking?' Or will another 20-50 years pass and the experience Mr. Winkle will continue to be relevant.

Bill Moseley, the 2008 NECC button design winner had it right....who is here for this learning revolution?

Jayson Richardson

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I just finished reading The Way We'll Be: The Zogby Report on the Transformation of the American Dream by John Zogby of Zobgy International, a public opinion polling company. In addition to compiling lots of interesting findings about how the American dream has / is shifting, Zogby creates a picture of generational differences. From many national surveys, the picture of the typical American is drawn based on generational attributes. Zogy describes the generations as:

The Private Generation (1926-1945)
• Defer gratification
• Oppose equal rights for gays and women
• Vote to cut school budgets
• Favor go-it-alone foreign policy
• Expect to live into their 80s and 90s
• Loyal and faithful

The Woodstock Generation (1946-1964)
• New set of values about gender, equality, sexual orientation, premarital sex, and the environment
• Want to remain youthful
• Endured high disappointments
• Most likely to demand products purchased be environmentally friendly
• Penchant for complaint

The Nike Generation (1965-1978)
• Learned no institution is permanent
• Reached sexual maturity with AIDS and STDs
• Raised by television
• Include Generation Xers
• Most libertarian generation in America
• Do not believe the government is the problem solver
• No institutional attachment
• Live for the moment

First Globals (1979-1990)
• Highly materialistic and self-absorbed
• Caring and tolerant
• Change-oriented
• OK with high educational debt
• Most cosmopolitan age group in America
• Does not expect job security

Granted, these generational traits are generalizations. But nonetheless, what does this mean for educational leaders? After just completing a book review of Learning Cultures in Online Education by Robin Goodfellow and Marie-Noëlle Lamy, I started thinking about the role of online education in meeting diverse generational needs and learning styles. The crux of the the second book is that a one size fits all online learning model simply does not work. Culture adds layers upon layers of complexity leading to the inevitable failure of online learning that takes this approach. Thus these generational students bring in unique sets of cultural qualities. For those of us in higher education, we need to create online courses that meet the needs of our diverse stakeholders. How I approach preparing an online course for my freshman (i.e., First Globals) should not take the same approach as I would in creating an online class for my doctoral students (i.e., The Nike Generation & The Woodstock Generation).

This leads me to the big question: "How well are online courses differentiating based on the needs/experiences/cultures of the students?"

Jayson Richardson

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Earlier this week, I posted this on Education Futures:

"Let your mind wonder for just a moment. As yourself this question: If I could redesign an entire teacher education program, what would it look like?

Here is my vision of a teacher education program. I imagine a teacher preparation program that:

-Challenges the individual. No one in this program would say "But I thought getting an education degree was suppose to be easy!"
-Is rigorous enough to attract intellectual, innovative, thought-leaders
-Robustly develops a student's ability to solve problem, become a critical thinker, and work collaboratively.
-Is packed with upper level courses in history, ethics, mathematics, law, economics, policy, research, engineering, biology, anatomy, chemistry, and computer sciences (just to name a few).
-Is academically challenging so that becoming a educator is professionalized at the level of doctors, lawyers, MBAs, etc.
-Stresses global, national, and local issues. Students would not only understand where Cambodia is, but have some understanding of its politics, culture, history, and relationship to the rest of the world.
-Mandates each student study abroad.
-Mandates the individual gain proficiency in a foreign language.
-Forces the pre-teacher to act on the tenants of social justice and peace education. This individual would be a skilled conflict mediator.
-Produces teachers who are intercultural leaders.

The main draw back would be that this individual may be too marketable for the teacher education profession. With skills like these, what Fortune 500 or innovate start-up company would not be banging on this person's door? This individual would be a cosmopolitan and in high demand. Thus, if such a teacher education program were created, how could we retain such individuals. Isn't this the person you want to teach your children? Why are we not doing more to create cosmopolitan educators? What is your vision? Are there revolutionary programs out there? I would love to hear about innovative approaches currently underway."

If a person were to completely redesign a principal preparation program, what would it look like? What components are must haves? What dispositions are needed by school leaders? I will post my list soon!

Jayson Richardson
Department of Educational Leadership
University of North Carolina Wilmington

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I recently returned from Charleston, SC where I attended the 53rd Annual Conference of the Comparative and International Education Society (CIES) conference. This conference is geared toward educators, practitioners, researchers, and policy makers interested in issues of comparative education, international education, and development education. This is one of my favorite conferences of the year. At this conference, a person can hear lectures ranging from online leadership training of school leaders in Oman to comparative perspectives on citizenship to HIV education in Uganda to measuring global engagement of students who study abroad. In other words, the range of conversations, the diversity of attendees, and the breadth of topics always wows me.

Every year I leave this conference wishing I was more plugged into international work and more engaged in the field. This year was no different...but there was a twist. Being that I am a first year assistant professor at the University of North Carolina Wilmington, my thoughts often focused on how I can share all of this great research and intriguing ideas with my students. My students are probably not going to leave my institution to be comparativists or development educators or relief workers:  My students intend to be teachers, school leaders, and district leaders in Southeastern North Carolina. So, how can I bring this ideas, concepts, and thoughts to practitioners? What role do conferences such as these have as we work to develop these local school leaders to create 21st Century schools?

To answer my own question, I jotted down a few ideas throughout the conference. Feel free to add to them:

• Plug students into my international research efforts. Even if this is limited to students looking at the literature and crunching the data, local school leaders can benefit greatly from my international research.
• Infuse my leadership and technology classes with international perspectives that includes non-western research and non-mainstream applications.
• Encourage students to include non-western research in their research papers.
• Encourage students to engage in their own local international community. Most college town have some degree of international folks.
• As an educator of school leaders, I can encourage my future school-level and district-level leaders to look comparatively at research topics thus learning from a world community of learners.
• Weave comparative education themes into my courses. Teaching local leaders to look comparatively at problems can be very powerful.
• Expose my students to digital connections that link the local with the global.

Perhaps the biggest lesson I learned is twofold. First, comparative education is not synonymous with international education. It can easily be infused into any school leadership program. In the US we can do a better job of comparing across classrooms, across schools, across gender, across race, across state, across nationality, and so on. This comparison is not simply to raise standardized test score, but to understand and accentuate uniqueness. Second, taking a comparative approach to studying education is not about global competition with the end result being to 'beat the other.' It is meant as a way to understand others and have others understand us (whoever your 'other' and 'us' is). Taking a comparative approach is meant to create a better global understanding. I am eager to start developing my next semester of courses! It goes without saying that I eagerly await the 2010 conference in Chicago. I will see you there!

Jayson W. Richardson, Assistant Professor

University of North Carolina Wilmington

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For the past few years, researchers at the University of Minnesota have been working on a project titled: Beyond Immediate Impact: Study Abroad for Global Engagement (SAGE). Recently, some preliminary findings have been released. The study surveyed nearly 6,400 graduates across 22 colleges. In short, results of the study indicate that students who engage in short-term study abroad opportunities (less than four weeks) are just as likely to be globally engaged as those students who study abroad for several months or longer.

These findings are huge! Let me repeat, this large-scale study indicates that short-term international experiences are just a powerful as long-term international experiences in created global citizens. University faculty members are scrambling to get their heads around how to best mold school leaders who are able to create and lead 21st Century schools. If a brief sojourn abroad statistically increases the likelihood that school leaders will be globally engaged and thus take these ideals into their institutions, the next step is a no-brainer.

I have long advocated for cultural immersion experiences. I, like many others, are disappointed to hear that longer immersions are not necessarily more meaningful. I am however pleased to hear that these short-term experiences can have impact and do have value. A warning must be sounded. In preparing school leaders who are globally-minded, globally engaged, and globally connected, universities should hesitate to create a market of cultural tourism. We need to proactively create opportunities for our future school leaders that focus on intercultural communication skills and intercultural sensitivities.

If we expect students to leave our schools with 21st Century skills, we need to start with the school leaders. At the University of North Carolina Wilmington, a component of our Ed.D. program is a mandatory international internship. I would love to hear about university programs that are infusing international experiences into their school administration / school leadership programs. Feel free to comment below.

Jayson W. Richardson

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