A dispassionate look at faculty development in India

Albert Einstein had said:
(Quote) "The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift." (Unquote)

And therein we can find our problems related to faculty development in India. It is, therefore, worth pondering:

• How might we create the environment for encouraging thought leadership?

As shared in my earlier post about the approach needed to create a contemporary learning environment, I repeat another one of Einstein's famous quotes: “We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.”

All institutions have problems and if we go back in time it is also easy to identify what or who created the problems that we are both individually and collectively facing today. But identification of the problem creator is not the purpose of this post. Rather, I hope that we take a different kind of approach to come out of these problems (as mentioned in my earlier post on creating a 21^st century learning experience).

Hence, it is worth pondering over some of the following HMWs:

• How might we create an academic environment that retains faculty for participating happily in the development of our schools?
• How might we redesign our approach to curriculum development and delivery to center around the needs and desires of our teachers and students? [Earlier post: DTE Toolkit Pg4]
• How might we redesign our school to elevate student engagement and academic outcomes? [Earlier post, DTE Toolkit Pg5]
• How might we create the environment that attracts faculty to participate proactively (without any fear) to create a vibrant learning environment?
• ….and more..

Universities should be hallmarks for creating a more humane work environment so much necessary in developing great institutions. It is important, therefore, to start the academic year with empathy towards fellow colleagues and students who are facing difficulties in our work environment.

I end this note by inviting attention to these two links from te@chthought & The Teaching Professor:

• Why Good Teachers Quit?  [22 Oct 2013, by Kay Bisaillon, Teacher] 
• What Is Teaching without Learning? [17 June 2015, By: Maryellen Weimer, PhD]

 

How might we create a 21st century learning experience at our school?

The above subject header (title of this post) is as relevant now as it was in FDP-2012 - as instantiated in this blogpost [Bottom line: Organizations need to exploit the transformative power of design thinking through appreciative inquiry.] 
Here is one useful toolkit for those interested in advancing their careers in education: Design Thinking for Educators  (The title of this blog post is from Page-3 of this toolkit)

An excerpt from this toolkit:

As Einstein famously said, “We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.” [Pg7]

There are problems (including some wicked ones) around us. Hopefully, organizations in India will open up to seeing that the problems in and around them can indeed be solved by applying the principles of design thinking (which emphasizes the importance of collective problem solving through empathy). In an educational setup this collective effort revolves around the learner (i.e., both the student and the teacher/facilitator).

Another excerpt:
Design thinking is a creative act and lets teachers understand that the act of creating a really effective learning environment is an art that is both reflective and intentional. If we want to change education and learning to make it more relevant, more effective and more enjoyable for all involved, teachers need to be the entrepreneurial designers and redesigners of the “systems” of schools and of the schools themselves. [Pg8]

So...the first step in Design Thinking: Start Empathy
(Please see the attachment/link from Ashoka)

Next steps in the Design Thinking Process: Empathize - Define - Ideate - Prototype - Test [Source: Edutopia]

Design Thinking @Infosys

In line with my earlier blog post titled: "Design Thinking @SAP – Lessons for India" (12 June 2012), it is good to see the following (The Hindu, Business Line dated 21 Sep 2014): How Infosys is switching to ‘design thinking’     [Click here]

Design Commons & Uncommon Common Sense

This refers to one interesting extract by Carliss Baldwin [Source: Citings, Economic Times, 4th Sept 2014, Thursday] that lends credence to sourcing ideas from the commons for common good (while designing new infrastructure development projects). It is quite relevant for the Indian context now with its own inclusive growth and developmental challenges ahead. Here is the extract:

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Design Commons

By Carliss Baldwin

This study empirically investigates the relationship between design structure and organisation structure in the context of new infrastructure development projects. Our research setting is a capital programme to develop new school buildings in Manchester, UK.

Instead of creating a controlled, hierarchical organisation that would mirror the buildings' design structure, the Manchester City Council created a 'commons organisation', and chose to share decision-rights with local claimants.

So, each school's faculty was given rights equal to council staff to participate in the design process and to approve the school's design. In the natural resources literature, commons theory predicts that if a robust governance structure is created, this complex form of organising gives claimants incentives to contribute to the enterprise whilst dampening collective action problems....

The design commons induced teachers to communicate their knowledge, but created corresponding tensions over interdependent choices for the final design. Yet, none of the projects succumbed to collective action problems such as budget overruns or users feeling disenfranchised.... We also discuss design flexibility that was critical in reconciling differences. We describe why a commons organisation can be advantageous for production of designs.

From "Sharing Design Rights: A Commons Approach for Developing Infrastructure"

Source:
http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/articleshow/41654481.cms?utm_source=contentofinterest&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=cppst

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The HBS working paper# 14-025 by Gil & Baldwin dated 21 Jan 2014 can be downloaded here => [Web link]

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The above goals are guided by design thinking for developing human-centered universal designs by using design commons. It shows the power of democratizing design for ease of implementation – which ought to make good common sense. Yet here is a common refrain: “Common sense is not so common” (Voltaire).

Just like the precepts of Total Quality Management (TQM), which some may say is common sense. Yet, organizations claiming to have adopted TQM practices continue to dismiss customer focus. Likewise, while seeking total employee involvement and empowerment, managers remain reluctant as ever to surrender control for empowering their sub-ordinates.

Recently, seeing too much positivism in the air, there was a need to share the following links (with a cautionary note) from my earlier blog posts:

Bubbles of positivism  (18 Oct 2008)

Design thinking and appreciative inquiry...  (24 May 2012)

The following excerpt from an article titled "Multicultural Critical Theory. At B-School?" is related to the above posts:

[Quote] In 1999, few others in the business-school world shared Mr. [Roger] Martin’s view. But a decade and a seismic economic downturn later, things have changed. “I think there’s a feeling that people need to sharpen their thinking skills, whether it’s questioning assumptions, or looking at problems from multiple points of view,” says David A. Garvin, a Harvard Business School professor who is co-author with Srikant M. Datar and Patrick G. Cullen of an upcoming book, “Rethinking the M.B.A.: Business Education at a Crossroads.” [Unquote]

[Source: The New York Times dated January 9, 2010 ]

Hence, as suggested quite often in my blog posts, “It is time Indian schools adopted these concepts for redefining education” – once again seen by some as application of common sense.

Yet…"Common sense is not so common"......Moving away from "Taylorism to Tailorism" is not an easy task (even though most of it is common sense). All it requires is questioning the status quo (read “old assumptions of the times past”). Perhaps "not to question" the state of affairs is considered more commonsensical - a trait that is "not so common" in a few who want to bring changes. They do this repeatedly with a hope to bring some positive changes around their place of work. Hoping that, as one senior colleague-cum-mentor said, "in each such iteration, a few fence sitters would change their ways--to become sharper, questioning, multi-minded..."---definitely a positive step toward "Tailorism" (i.e., not "one-size-for-all")....One interesting Learning Twig (click)…..[Note: The few who question are often seen as the whistle blowers – and hence gag orders are passed.]

Design and the future of business education

This refers to the Forbes article on the future of business strategy and the need to integrate design thinking [See article titled “Michael Porter and Clayton Christensen Are Both Wrong About Finding the Future of Business Education” by Marty Neumeier; dated 12 June 2014]. Also see discussions initiated by Alfredo M. @Design Management Institute: Should design be part of business strategy education? NOTE: As suggested by one discussant “Fortune 500 businesses, national security, governance, energy....and heath care constituents, can all use Design Methodology which is an accessible design thinking framework.” [Steve B., Director of Strategic Planning and Design at Abrams Learning and Information Systems, Inc.]

Here are some excerpts from the Forbes article by M. Neumeier:

• Porter’s argument for building an integrated brand is that copycats would have to recreate the whole brand to compete with Harvard’s online program. “Any competitor wishing to imitate a strategy,” he says, “must replicate a whole system.” Yet copycats are rarely the biggest threat to leading brands. The real threat is more likely to come from purpose-built organizations, unencumbered by legacy beliefs, that correctly imagine the future of education. They wouldn’t bother replicating Harvard’s system. They would render it irrelevant.
• This is where Christensen is strong. He knows that education is ripe for disruption, saying that “half of the United States’ universities could face bankruptcy in 15 years.” Necessarily, his approach is opposed to Porter’s.
• Christensen would set up the [online education] program as an independent business unit, allowing it to learn from experience without the need for immediate profits or slavish brand alignment. He sees innovation as something that unfolds over time on the public stage: You put out a cheap product that serves an unmet need, get some traction with it, improve it, begin to raise the price, and meanwhile start looking for your next disruptive innovation. It’s a Darwinian, way-of-the-world model of competition. What it doesn’t acknowledge is the potential of design to speed up this evolution, all the while keeping hard-won learning—and embarrassing mistakes—out of the public eye. Design can create disruptive innovation much faster and much more surely than a thousand monkeys with a thousand dry-erase markers. And it shouldn’t take a thousand years, or even a thousand days, with a talented team. 
• This [article] does not lessen the valued contributions of Porter and Christensen. Both professors are lighthouse figures in the world of business strategy. The Times simply used them to illuminate an irony—that the leading school for business strategy can’t agree on its own strategy. But there’s a bigger point. Their shining contributions lead straight to the need for design, not just in products and services, but in business models, organizational culture, and, yes, strategy.   

Also see: Design Thinking @SAP – Lessons for India

[NOTE: The highlighted text is based on the definitions of creativity, innovation and design in the book Design in Business by Bruce and Bessant; where design is defined as the purposive application of creativity throughout the process of innovation]