IT business leaders can help head teachers to let pedagogy, not IT operational logic, rule!
How to avoid IT operational logic, rather than pedagogical logic, driving the purchase of digital tools? How to ensure that teachers', and no one else's, requirements guide purchases? How to give school leaders a realistic picture of future working life? These were three aspects that I discussed with Mats Östling on Tuesday, apropos of the Swedish National Agency for Education's efforts to train school leaders in what the "digital ecosystem" looks like.
The entire school world is eagerly awaiting the national strategy for school digitalization that the Ministry of Education has been promising for quite some time now to come "soon". From the IT&Telecom companies' side, we have particularly wanted to highlight the importance of leadership.
However, the National Agency for Education has chosen not to wait idly for the government to decide on the strategy but has already, as I previously mentioned in this blog report from our meeting with the National Agency for Education on January 17, launched a number of skills enhancement initiatives.
The other day I met Mats Östling who works with one of the Swedish National Agency for Education's initiatives, "Digital Ecosystems". The origin of the meeting was what we brought up at the above-linked Skolverket visit, that we from IT & Telecom companies would like to contribute to the implementation of the strategy by starting some form of mentor exchange between leaders from IT companies and principals (an initiative that Per Grape from One Agency has taken the lead for).
Mats Östling has extensive experience in the introduction and use of digital tools in educational environments, and points to three aspects he believes principals really need help with:
- How can digital learning materials and resources be acquired without leading to lock-in effects and/or poor alignment with pedagogical activities? In the previous analog environment, individual teachers and their (and students') needs have guided the choice of learning materials and other resources, but in the new digital environment, the logic of IT operations comes into play, with uniformity, scale and vendor exclusivity as guiding factors.
- How can educators' involvement in digital initiatives be ensured so that it is their requirements, rather than those of IT departments, municipalities, etc.
- How can headteachers be given a realistic picture of what the future labor market looks like?
We believe that leaders from the IT industry can be a very good support for principals on all three points. However, a very important prerequisite for a fruitful mentoring relationship between principal and IT leader is that it is an independent relationship; the IT leader guiding the school leader cannot at the same time have a business interest linked to the school leader in question. To really be able to provide constructive guidance, the IT leader must be able to critically point out the pitfalls (such as lock-ins to certain licenses, lack of compatibility with other vendors' solutions, etc.
An independent mentor can also contribute their experience to point two, as securing commitment to implementation and use in the 'business' is a key challenge for all IT system providers.
Also when it comes to the third aspect, having a realistic view of the world of work, representatives from the world of work outside the school world in general and those from the IT industry in particular, can of course contribute a lot of experience and knowledge. Not least when it comes to balancing the image of all students now having to learn programming and other "future skills", and that robots will have replaced most jobs within a decade, which is now being widely trumpeted. There are certainly large grains of truth in these visions of the future, but there are also other aspects and possibilities that are important to bear in mind when assessing the extent to which this needs to be incorporated into school work.
Although IT industry representatives are reluctant to admit it, most students will eventually end up in industries other than IT. This does not make IT leaders as mentors for school leaders less relevant, on the contrary, as the whole of working life is affected by digitalization in different ways.
Note: Mats Östling can be reached at mats.himself@gmail.com.