Researchers Without Borders, Blog

Much of the dialogue about education reform is focused on mending the deficits. We discuss the shortcomings of our system and give particular attention to the “gaps” it creates in achievement and accomplishment between different demographic groups. So it makes a great deal of sense that our reforms focus on mending those deficits so that our system serves all students well.

With that said, our Center’s interest in implementation and sustainability of reforms took us beyond the education literature to the health and prevention literature. And that started me thinking.

I started wondering about differences between reforms that are focused on mending problems, and reforms that are designed to prevent the problems from occurring in the first place. On one hand, it seems that an intervention that works to “close the gaps” would entail practices that are worthy of continuing. But it’s not so clear.

Are there two goals here that are perhaps working at odds with one another in some way? Are the strategies for mending problems the same strategies we should be using to prevent the problems from happening in the first place? It seems to me that we are making a lot of investments in closing the gaps depending on the assumption that these same reform practices will keep gaps from occurring in the future. We need to give our attention to both - not just closing the gap, but explicitly acting to prevent the gaps in the future. We can’t assume that strategies for the former will impact the latter.

Yesterday, a colleague and I met with members of the University of Chicago’s Arrete Initiative about an effort they are proposing to bring together mathematicians and social scientists. The idea of the Arete Initiative is that difficult problems can benefit from cross-fertilization of fields. This sounds familiar in that it is very much part of what Researchers Without Borders is trying to do. But of course, there are challenges. Individuals, including and perhaps particularly those in university settings, are very comfortable within the boundaries of their fields; they understand the details and nuances of their fields in ways that other can’t; and they value the problems of their fields more than problems in other fields.

These aren’t insurmountable barriers, but not to be taken lightly.

It seems that the answer comes in part by being able to convince individuals in other fields of the merits of one’s own problems. That will get us part of the way. But a better way to facilitate cross-disciplinary work is to identify a problem that is actually meaningful and interesting to everyone involved. The problem of sustaining innovation appears to be such a problem. It is general enough to cross boundaries, but still has much in common even when played out in different contexts. Having identified the problem, the question then is how to actually make the shared work happen. When all of us are so busy and so focused on our immediate needs and issues, how to we look ahead and act today to benefit the field at large tomorrow. 

These are the very things we are asking leaders and users of innovations to do. We need to do them ourselves.

I am well along reading Clay Shirky’s book, “Here Comes Everybody” and find that much of it is relevant to the work of RWB. In it, he writes about the fact that technology has brought about a “mass amateurization” to journalism. At a time when anybody can write a blog (like this one) the lines drawn between who is and is not a professional journalist are becoming increasingly blurry. Shirky discusses how calling something a “profession” brings with it particular norms about what it is and what it should be. These norms are not generated or enforced by the consumers of the profession but by the professionals themselves since they have an investment in maintaining those norms and bringing clarity to who should and should not be part of the profession. He continues to suggest that there are many positive aspects of this including the maintenance of standards and competence.

He points out, however, that in some ways, there is inherent hypocrisy in professional structures. Professionals become “gatekeepers” by providing a “desirable social function but also by controlling that function” and sometimes, “what has once been a service has become a bottleneck.”

In the RWB Sustaining Innovation project, we have seen evidence collaborative change processes and planning and continuing adaptation of innovations over time contribute to the spread of knowledge and endurance of innovation. And yet, norms for conducting and reporting on research in education sometimes stand in the way of those processes. Similarly, norms about the roles of participants in the process run counter to the types of processes and interactions necessary to make reforms take hold. Is the notion of “open research” a threat to the integrity of education research as some might argue journalism has been threatened by the mass amateurization of reporting as a result of technology?

I have been part of several meetings in the last few months that, while convening different audiences from different groups, have some common themes. Whether the group comprises foundations, museums, gamers, researchers, business people, school leaders, or some other group (or combination thereof) the conversation is about coming together to “innovate” and solve our shared problems.

No matter which point of view we bring to the education endeavor, it seems that we all recognize that this is a time like no other. We recognize that we need to change our path in education. But we’ve seen this before. And we recognize the power of STEM education. But we’ve seen this before. And we know what technology can do to change our interactions with one another and our ability to interact in the world. But we’ve seen this before.

But we have never been in this particular moment before. This is a time when the call for change is loud and the the opportunity is here. And the power of STEM and the capability of technology and most importantly…the will….have come together.

The problem, however, is that the communities that have invited me in to their conversations don’t know that the others exist. And perhaps they know of some that exist that I am unaware of. So we give ourselves another challenge - how do we come together - not with one voice, but in a coordinated chorus that will move us all ahead?

The Researchers Without Borders website, wiki and community is launching. In these spaces, we will continue the work of our projects, but do it publicly while extending the invitation to others to join us and help solve the problems we and many others face. With this, I must admit, comes some discomfort. It is not easy to show work before it is reviewed, confirmed, and polished. But it is that same discomfort that tells us that we are moving away from business as usual and in turn, a place of change.

The literature we have read tells us that they way research is developed and disseminated hasn’t worked. The premise that we should bring our work to completion and publish it with the expectation that people will read and use it may work in some fields in some contexts. But without a way to understand how all of our research fits together; with no framework for organizing our knowledge and accumulating learning, all of our work enters the field ungrounded, uncoordinated, and even though we often develop similar, related and even the same ideas, it’s difficult to put them all together. We are hopeful that in the RWB space, we will learn not only about the topics of the RWB projects, but also learn about this process and about ways to organize and accumulate this knowledge,