Abstract
This book speaks to the growing corpus of work advocating for fundamental changes in education, or more specifically, schooling. Its premise is that costly government-led reform efforts, predominantly focussed on homogeneity and standardisation, have not prepared and do not prepare active, engaged learners and citizens for the 21st century and beyond. Transforming education: Reimagining learning pedagogy and curriculum is the third book in a series accompanying the work of a consultancy group, 4C Transformative Learning, which supports schools to implement a ‘4C’ approach through professional learning and networks. There is a companion website with links to further resources and information.
The first publication in the series, Transforming schools, explores the centrality of four themes (4Cs) – creativity, critical reflection, communication and collaboration in educational transformation. The second, Transforming organizations, focuses on how educational transformations might ‘enrich organizations and leadership inside and outside education’ (p. 3). This third book is oriented to an audience who believe that the 4Cs are fundamental to learning, are disposed to the challenge of reimagining education and are interested in how transformation might be realised. All three books draw on the authors’ experience working with a network of schools in using the 4Cs as a vehicle to generate transformational change. Its likely audience, then, is Australian educators familiar with the first two publications and the broader work of the 4C Transformative Learning group rather than the broader education community.
The purpose of the book is to explore rationales, research and frameworks as to how education might be transformed to better meet the needs of individuals and communities. The authors argue that education should be about learning in its broadest sense and that transformation can be achieved using the 4Cs. To this end, chapter by chapter, the reader is led through a conceptual kaleidoscope of narratives, metaphors and coherence markers, more reflective of an imaginary process than a practical guide.
Chapter 1, Transforming education for the infinite game, invites a reimagination of education as a context-contingent ecosystem that meets the needs of individuals and the broader community. It begins with an examination of the big picture of education through the metaphor of games; specifically, the notion of finite and infinite games after Sinek (2020). Then, the reader is invited to engage the 4Cs to view current educational practice through a prism of deep learning across the next nine chapters. Eight coherence markers are introduced: creativity cascade, critical reflection crucible, communication crystal, learning disposition wheel, pedagogy parachute, leadership wheel and transformation tangle, and the metaphor of ‘aerosol words’ before explicating the transformational potential of the 4Cs in more detail. The sheer number of frameworks used makes it difficult to discern overall cohesion and alignment between these different elements. Further confusion is generated by the interchangeability of key terms, such as education and schooling, capacities and dispositions, capacities and competencies. A glossary is provided at the end of the book, but the in-text use of these terms is not consistent.
In contrast, the structure of the book is clear, and a strength is the authors’ skilful and engaging use of academic literature, recent media, photographs and narratives, including practitioner voice, to illustrate different aspects of the 4C approach. Summaries of theory are precise and well-articulated in each chapter. The consistent structure is also helpful in helping the reader make connections between theory and practice. Providing an explanation of a particular concept, immediately followed by a section about what it looks like makes the research/practice link explicit. Reflection is encouraged while reading, using deep questions and prompts throughout.
However, some themes, propositions and assertions in the book read as selective simplifications or generalisations of key issues. Three examples include the role of education systems, notions of school improvement and teacher education. Whilst acknowledging the critical enabling role systems play in supporting innovation and transformation (p. 39), the authors position systems as somewhat separate from schools and in a predominantly negative way, as mechanisms of obstruction and interference. They also suggest that ‘systems that provide agency for schools to make their own decisions based on their own contexts are more likely to see transformation occur’ (p. 40). This is, at the very least, an oversimplification. Agency in and of itself is not likely to be successful, but strong alignment between the centralised system, schools, leaders and teachers is. The second example is the concept of ‘school improvement’ which the authors propose is a limiting approach to school change (p. 37) that focuses more on the status quo than transformation. A different and widely shared view is that school improvement is precisely about teachers’ day-to-day practice and its transformative potential (for example, Australian Council for Educational Research, 2016). The third example is in Chapter 9: Transforming teacher education where the authors argue:
Research consistently demonstrates that teachers are the most decisive factor in successful student learning. Yet the career continuum of teacher education is often disconnected, incoherent and piecemeal with or no recognition of teacher agency. (p. 183)
This reads like a generalisation. The theory and practice of designing teacher education as a continuum across the career-span is well-established. Further, in Australia and globally, education systems in developed countries have focussed on evidence-based approaches to teacher learning, including inquiry approaches (Timperley et al., 2009, 2020) which support and develop teacher agency.
The book makes a valiant attempt to cover considerable theoretical ground and make links to practice, artefacts and narratives to support the imaginative process and reflection. However, using the 4Cs as the only lenses through which transformative practice occurs throughout the text considerably narrows the evidence base from which the authors draw and leads to oversimplifications and generalisations as illustrated in the examples above. The number of frameworks and metaphors used works against clarity of purpose and coherence across the book. However, as the authors state, the book is for those who want to learn more about the 4Cs themselves, who are (already) convinced that the 4Cs are critical for learning and want to engage in reimagining education. It is also a resource for educators already involved in 4C work, so these issues may not be so challenging for those already familiar with the approach.