on a solid knowledge base. The goal of this exploration is to answer the questions: Why change? and Change to what? Visions constructed without this common rationale and foundation are often aspirational statements with little clarity, open to multiple interpretations, and full of “motherhood” statements. We believe that a vision and mission should be well-founded in a knowledge base and drive school strategy and actions.
The perspectives and interpretations from various stakeholders across the broader community enrich the collective visioning that emerges. It is our experience that leaders or leadership groups should implement a structure for fruitful engagement with the research and thought surrounding the future to maximize the effort of such an inquiry. We find it helpful to distribute the exploratory work by establishing subgroups that can delve deeply into specific areas of drivers of future change. These subgroups should include representation from various stakeholder groups and undertake the focused work that the whole community cannot. Groups of fifteen to twenty provide enough variety of perspective to engage in important discussions and collaborative learning. Groups of this size also help to parcel out various source material to ensure engagement with a wide range of research and thought. We have also worked with larger groups using this process, but logistics and facilitation can become overly complicated.
We also recommend providing a small set of informative starter resources to help the subgroups get started; however, it is also important to allow these groups to move beyond these starters if they so desire. Provocative TED Talks and materials from various think-tank organizations (such as KnowledgeWorks) are good places to begin. Your initial goal is to open eyes and challenge assumptions while helping people to understand that tomorrow will not look like yesterday (or even today). It’s important not to limit groups to a precooked set of resources, such as a limited number of advocacy materials that support one perspective or potential approach, for which you have already drawn your conclusions. At the same time, you don’t want to overwhelm people by having them start their research from scratch.
One practical technique for engaging groups in considering trends and drivers of change and imagining future possibilities is through the use of polarities and magic squares. We explore these in the next two sections.
Polarities
Polarities present a continuum displaying two endpoints reflecting different trends suggesting possible scenarios. For example, forces influencing 21st century schooling could push education to become more standardized on the one hand or highly personalized on the other. Other influences, like technology in conjunction with standardization, could cause learning to derive from a single source (such as all teachers in a school using the same standardized online curriculum) or from multiple sources (such as those teachers using a variety of open source courseware, online tutorials, mentors, internships, and independent projects). See figure 1.1 for two examples of polarities.
Figure 1.1: Two polarities.
By inquiring into various factors and trends, you can develop polarities that can help your community teams explore the numerous ways in which the future of education could unfold. Identifying these polarities is an important part of moving from developing a knowledge base to envisioning and designing a preferred future. Table 1.1 (page 14) presents potential polarities and accompanying questions.
Magic Squares
To see how the polarities and their accompanying questions in table 1.1 relate to one another and suggest potential futures, you can use a four-quadrant chart (sometimes called a magic square but more properly known as a Cartesian plane). By plotting two sets of polarities with accompanying questions, groups can workshop a variety of potential future scenarios. We have found these charts stimulate thinking and prompt rich conversations about the possible futures each quadrant suggests. Using the polarities we referenced in figure 1.1—standardized versus personalized and single sourced versus multisourced—we’ve created a sample magic square in figure 1.2 (page 15).
Using this chart, we now have four potential futures to explore with many shades between them. Quadrant A represents a potential future where education is standardized and has diversified the sources and suppliers of learning; quadrant D represents a potential future where learning is highly personalized, but the sources and suppliers of learning are not as diverse; and so on.
After graphing the polarities, compare the potential futures and have the group pick those it most prefers from each chart by discussing the following questions: Where are we currently? What would each potential future look like? What are the benefits and drawbacks of each? Where do we want to be? Figure 1.3 (page 15) represents the questions and challenges associated with the potential future that each quadrant of figure 1.2 suggests.
In a typical group workshop, mix four to twelve sets of polarities to create two to six four-quadrant charts. The ensuing discussion then results in the articulation of preferred futures from all the potential ones.
Table 1.1: Polarities and Sample Questions
| Polarities | Sample Questions |
| Local versus global | Will learning focus on local or national contexts or adopt a global perspective? |
| Public sector versus corporate sector | Is the public school model going to remain the same, or will the private sector become more involved and influential? |
| Career readiness versus college readiness | Should students be prepared for work or for institutions of higher education? |
| Career oriented versus citizenship oriented | Is learning geared toward college and career orientation or toward citizenship and satisfying, productive lives? |
| Specialized versus generalized | Should students gain deep knowledge in a few specialized areas or learn across a broader spectrum? |
| Short-term accountability versus long-term goals | Should we focus on short-term accountability measures or on long-term goals that may be more difficult to assess? |
| Disciplinary knowledge versus transdisciplinary skills | Do we educate for acquisition of knowledge and skills within traditional disciplines, or do we develop transdisciplinary 21st century skills? |
| Employees versus employers | Do we want to develop students destined to be employees or employers? |
| Individual versus collaborative | Is success, in our context, an individual or collaborative endeavor? |
| Face to face versus distance | In the future, will students learn through face-to-face interactions or through online or distance-learning opportunities? |
