Evolution of Digitally Connected Families 1990-2022

Posted on by

Mal Lee and Martin Levins

The just published peer reviewed study by Lee and Levins (Lee and Levins, 2023) alerts the world to two largely unheralded, education changing global phenomena:

  •  the evolution of digitally connected families
  • that the two-thirds of the world’s population digitally connected at the close of 2022 had naturally grown being digital, with the remaining third on trend to follow suite.

The authors’ posit it has been the digitally connected families of the world that have primarily grown nations’ young being digital. Schools and governments have played little or no part in readying or supporting them to learn informally everyday with the digital, with the trend vary much for the families to take a greater lead role and the schools less.

The lead role has been taken, likely unwittingly by the digitally connected families of the world, at a time in history when to live in a digital society citizens must be connected and growing being digital lifelong. The unconnected are marginalised and socially, educationally, economically and politically disadvantaged. 

The study was published in December 2023, in Studies in Technology Enhanced Learning. It can be viewed at:

https://stel.pubpub.org/pub/03-03-lee-levins/release/1

The Transformation of the Global Learning Environment

Posted on by

In the last 30 plus years the learning environment the world over has been fundamentally transformed.

Learning no longer requires using paper at a physical place in the same way it did in 1990.

In the world going digital and connected, moving from paper to the screen all can, and do learn 24/7/365, anywhere, anytime, often unaware the learning has occurred.

It is a reality that has been understood by the digitally connected families of the world since the release of Mosaic in 1993. From that point they have readied their children, and time the family to thrive within the new and continually evolving digital learning environment.  

For the last decade plus the connected young has naturally grown being digital from birth, 24/7/365 with the support and resources of their family, but with little or no assistance from government or schools that continue to operate within the traditional paradigm.

For 30 plus years the world’s young have experienced two modes of learning with the digital, the formal approach of the schools and the informal of the digitally connected families, with the two modes running in parallel.

The evidence strongly suggests the former did little to grow the young’s everyday use of the digital, with the latter primarily responsible for growing the world’s young being digital.

The opportunity arose to ready a refereed research publication on The History of the Global Evolution of Digitally Connected Families, 1990-2022.

That has been the focus of my work for the past year.

In has entailed studying with Martin Levins a naturally occurring global phenomenon, that largely unseen and undocumented has profoundly impacted the lives, work and learning of the 5.3 billion plus digitally connected at the close of 2022.

It has provided some fascinating and significant insights into the education of the world’s young in the new learning environment, particularly outside the school walls. The implications are potentially vast for most all societies and economies.

Particularly significant has been the almost complete absence of government and school involvement in the evolution of the digitally connected families, the trend for the families to play an increasingly greater role in growing the nation’s young being digital and how poorly positioned schools and governments are to have any telling impact on the young’s use and learning with the digital outside the school walls.

The research is now in press, ready for publication.

The intention is that on its release Martin and I will over time publish a series of follow up papers that build on the research and ask where to from here.

Papers have been prepared on the following topics for consideration by the families and another for educators.

  • Global Evolution of Digitally Connected Families. 
  • Imperative of Being Digital. 
  • Can Schools Grow the Nation’s Young Being Digital?
  • The Educational Leadership of the World’s Digitally Connected Families. 
  • The Nature of Digitally Connected Families. 
  • The Wisdom of Growing Your Children Being Digital. 
  • The Importance of the Family Digital Learning Culture.
  • The Digitally Disadvantaged Families of the Young. Should they be Assisted? How?
  • The Folly of Banning Mobiles in Schools.
  • The Individualisation of Learning with the Digital. 

In the last 30 plus years the learning environment the world over has been fundamentally transformed.

The Transformation of the Global Learning Environment

Learning no longer requires using paper at a physical place in the same way it did in 1990.

In the world going digital and connected, moving from paper to the screen all can, and do learn 24/7/365, anywhere, anytime, often unaware the learning has occurred.

It is a reality that has been understood by the digitally connected families of the world since the release of Mosaic in 1993. From that point they have readied their children, and time the family to thrive within the new and continually evolving digital learning environment.  

For the last decade plus the connected young has naturally grown being digital from birth, 24/7/365 with the support and resources of their family, but with little or no assistance from government or schools that continue to operate within the traditional paradigm.

For 30 plus years the world’s young have experienced two modes of learning with the digital, the formal approach of the schools and the informal of the digitally connected families, with the two modes running in parallel.

The evidence strongly suggests the former did little to grow the young’s everyday use of the digital, with the latter primarily responsible for growing the world’s young being digital.

The opportunity arose to ready a refereed research publication on The History of the Global Evolution of Digitally Connected Families, 1990-2022.

That has been the focus of my work for the past year.

In has entailed studying with Martin Levins a naturally occurring global phenomenon, that largely unseen and undocumented has profoundly impacted the lives, work and learning of the 5.3 billion plus digitally connected at the close of 2022.

It has provided some fascinating and significant insights into the education of the world’s young in the new learning environment, particularly outside the school walls. The implications are potentially vast for most all societies and economies.

Particularly significant has been the almost complete absence of government and school involvement in the evolution of the digitally connected families, the trend for the families to play an increasingly greater role in growing the nation’s young being digital and how poorly positioned schools and governments are to have any telling impact on the young’s use and learning with the digital outside the school walls.

The research is now in press, ready for publication.

The intention is that on its release Martin and I will over time publish a series of follow up papers that build on the research and ask where to from here.

Papers have been prepared on the following topics for consideration by the families and another for educators.

  • Global Evolution of Digitally Connected Families. 
  • Imperative of Being Digital. 
  • Can Schools Grow the Nation’s Young Being Digital?
  • The Educational Leadership of the World’s Digitally Connected Families. 
  • The Nature of Digitally Connected Families. 
  • The Wisdom of Growing Your Children Being Digital. 
  • The Importance of the Family Digital Learning Culture.
  • The Digitally Disadvantaged Families of the Young. Should they be Assisted? How?
  • The Folly of Banning Mobiles in Schools.
  • The Individualisation of Learning with the Digital. 

15. School Networking and Digital Equity of Access

Posted on by

Mal Lee

The COVID experience affirmed that within a networked world every young person must have ready use of the digital within their family home, if they are not to be disadvantaged educationally, socially, and economically. 

It is an imperative that many of us have been flagging for the last decade plus (Tapscott, 1998), (Lee and Finger, 2010), (Lee and Levins, 2012) but which thus far has not been accepted by most decision makers.

The importance of each of the nation’s young having ready, quality connectivity and apt digital access within the family home became clear for all to see during the school closures.

What might not have been apparent was that it was the young’s ability to learn with the digital in the home, coupled with the family’s digital resources that made the remote teaching possible. It was the digital mindset, the confidence and competence in using, communicating, and learning with the digital that made it seemingly so easy for students worldwide to be schooled remotely literally within days of the school closures.

It was the learning acquired in being digital, in using the kit and having the support of the family that allowed the young to partake in a fully networked mode of schooling.

The schools and governments of the world have played little or no part in growing the young being digital, in fostering their digital mindset, in nurturing their 24/7/365 use of and competence in using all manner of digital technologies and in the young taking charge of their use of and learning with the digital.

That had all occurred naturally within the digitally connected families.

But disturbingly not so in the families that lacked the connectivity.

That became starkly apparent with the first days of remote teaching.  

Also apparent was that governments worldwide had failed to ensure every one of their children had equity of digital access. 

The young without home connectivity were effectively shut out of the formal and informal learning processes during the school lockdowns.

Worryingly, the trend is for the digital disadvantage to widen, and for the disadvantaged to be further disadvantaged, unless there is astute intervention. 

If governments truly want to reduce the digital divide, to provide genuine equity of digital access and lift national productivity they must intervene, support those in need, accept the world’s young grow being digital in the home not the school, and provide the disadvantaged homes the relatively small funds required. 

In an ideal world governments should fund those families as part of the social services.

The likely reality is that it will be some time before most accept the family home is where the young grow being digital, and that the schools should support and build upon the lead role played by the families.

Understanding that reality, and while recognising there are some visionary governments that have accepted the lead role of the family and are providing the connectivity most are unlikely to do so for some time.

In the interim schools are ideally placed to step into the void, to intervene, monitor each student’s family digital access and if required to sensitively provide the home connectivity.

In most schools it will be a small, relatively inexpensive task that involves less than 10% of student cohort. Indeed, there will be schools where only a handful will need support, but each of those children are important.

What is the situation in your school’s community?

All schools need to do, if they haven’t already done so, is to put the support arrangements in place, publicise them and sensitively monitor all student’s home access. Teachers are ideally placed to do the latter. A divorce, a family blow up can quickly remove the vital connectivity within days.

How well placed is your school to provide the apt support? 

It is important to understand governments worldwide prior to COVID had done little or nothing to improve equity of student access to the digital technology within the family home. 

Some American state governments, particularly Republican, took the view it was not the role of government to support the disadvantaged within their homes (Auxer and Anderson, 2020).

While that likely is not the view of most developed nations, governments universally contended they chose to address the digital divide by channelling monies into the schools and local libraries.

Their argument was that schools were best positioned to teach the appropriate use of the new technology.

Not only did governments fund only its schools they adopted a strategy where the schools controlled every aspect of digital usage, limited the use to ‘serious academic study’, with the ‘appropriate technology’, within structured, linear programs.

Not surprisingly the billions invested did next to nothing to reduce the divide or assist already disadvantaged students grow being digital.

That said some national and provincial governments pre COVID sought to improve student home digital access and connectivity. As far as I can ascertain none were still operational at the start of the pandemic.

Central to all government programs pre-COVID, including those pitched at home usage, has been an unwillingness to trust and empower the children and their parents, and the belief that government and its bureaucrats know best.

Even England’s visionary Home Access Program of the Blair Government (Tolley, 2010) saw the ‘experts’ decide what devices were appropriate and what software must be used by the disadvantaged. 

Well meaning, but patronising.

What the pandemic did, at least for some decision makers. was to underscore the reality all children must have the facility to naturally grow being digital 24/7/365 in the home. 

They moreover understood that ‘all’ meant 100%, not 95% or even 99%, and that the family must be trusted and empowered to use the digital and the connectivity as it thinks best. 

Importantly they are adopting permanent long term arrangements, where the family owns the kit, to do as it wishes. 

They understand short term lending of devices, chosen, configured, and closely monitored by the ‘experts’ is simply an extension of an approach that did nothing to reduce the digital divide.

While President Biden’s vast 2021 national infrastructure initiative which aims to provide the disadvantaged US homes connectivity is a prime example of the new, home focussed approach the efforts by the new Mayor of Boston, Michelle Wu that are designed to ensure every home in the city is connected details what ultimately is desired universally.

The great challenge with these and like initiatives is the willingness and trust and empower the families.

Are they willing to give the families the monies and freedom to do what the other families of the young are already doing? Are they prepared to give those in need the agency to acquire, use and learn with the digital largely unfettered and for the children to naturally grow their being digital? They, like every other citizen must be free to innovate, to make mistakes, to learn from their errors, to use the technology of their choosing to pursue their interests and passions and like all of us bear the consequences of sitting on a smartphone!

It is a simple ask with immense social and educational ramifications.

Remember each child will want kit that allows them to live and thrive socially in a digital and networked world like their peers and friends, to be digital, to have the power to discover, to communicate, chat, order online, play the great games, video conference and to pursue their passions at depth.

The use of the kit for formal learning will be but one of a myriad of uses.

The latter point is critical. Those without want the wherewithal, like every other child to live, learn and in time work in a digital and socially networked society. 

  • Lee, M and Finger, G (eds) (2010) Developing a Networked School Community, Melbourne ACER Press
  • Lee, M and Levins, M (2012) Bring Your Own Technology Melbourne ACER Press
  • Tapscott, D (1998), Growing up digital: The rise of the Net Generation, McGraw Hill, New York
  • Tolley, R (2010) ‘UK Home Access Plan: A Case Study’ in Lee, M and Finger, G (eds) (2010) Developing a Networked School Community, Melbourne ACER Press

14. Schools and Digitally Connected Families

Posted on by

Mal Lee

COVID informed societies worldwide that the digitally connected families of the young had the digital technology and competencies to continue to play a major, often lead role in the education of the nation’s young.

Leave aside for the moment that the family has always been the children’s first teacher, but since the early 2000’s the digitally connected families of the world have played the lead role in growing their children being digital and readying them to use and learn with the digital 24/7/365.

Not governments nor its schools.

They have the agency, digital mindset, resources, and competencies to play a fuller role in their children’s education, particularly if schools are willing to astutely collaborate and support the parent’s efforts.

Research has long shown (Project Tomorrow, 2011) (Lee and Ward, 2013) that while most families have wanted to collaborate with their schools in the use of the digital few schools have demonstrated the desire to genuinely network.

There have been those that have distributed their control of the teaching and learning and created networked school communities, but they remain the exception – until at least the outbreak of COVID.

What the situation is post COVID time will tell.  

You are far better placed to gauge the thinking within your school, and system.

What is important is that educators understand the growing educational power of the digitally connected families, the learning happening in those families 24/7/365, the nature of the learning and how the schools and families can use the new scenario to better educate all the young. 

It is also time to recognise there are now areas of learning where the families will always lead the way, that the agential nature of the learning used by the families contrasts markedly with that used in most schools, how much better placed the family unit is to accommodate accelerating change and what schools can do to support ‘time poor’ parents.

While some might disagree schools and governments should also appreciate digitally connected families now have the wherewithal to decide how their children will be schooled. The COVID experience saw a significant increase in various forms of home and micro schooling, with the surveys suggesting a significant number want the remote teaching and testing option to stay, at least to some degree.

The digitally connected families can continue to provide their children a parallel, largely antithetical mode of learning with the digital, free of any links or support from the school or government, or if the school is off the mind, work with it to create a networked learning community, that pools the resources of the school and its families.

What is now a given is that the families and their children are going use and learn with the digital 24/7/365, lifelong, using a strongly laissez faire mode of learning regardless of the school’s and governments wish.

They are, in many areas of learning not going to use the traditional, linear, highly structured approach employed across the curriculum by schools. The young will continue to learn in context, anywhere, the instant desired.

The ball is in the school’s court. If schools wish to work more closely with their families, they will have to accept that given.

In talking about digitally connected families, one is looking at those that have normalised the use of digital in its many forms, in most every facet of their lives. Their use of the digital mindset and technologies is so every day as to be largely invisible.

Wellman and his colleagues described the development in a Pew Internet study in 2008 (Wellman, et.al, 2008), which indicated that ‘networked families’ had become the new normal in the US. 

Lee and Broadie (2018) preferred the term ‘digitally connected families’, that underscored the digital facet and the profound impact of connectivity, but both studies describe the natural, rapid, global shift to families being digital.

In considering the way forward it is important to recognise the accelerating pace, and global spread of what is is a natural evolutionary development, over which schools and society have limited control.

In early 2010 the schools and their communities didn’t have the devices, broadband connectivity, conferencing and critically the K-12 digital competencies required for universal remote teaching. The iPad, and the touchscreen tablets that were to transform world usage had not been released. Critically students K-6 had yet to universally embrace the use of the digital.

By 2014 they had, with over 90% plus of children 4-7 in the developed world owning or having ready access to an iPad (Rideout, 2014), (Johannsen, et.al, 2016), with children as young as three (Chaudron, 2015) taking charge of their use of, and learning with the digital.

By early 2020 90% plus of young people in the developed world had the technology, connectivity, and competencies to be taught remotely.

Government and school planners played no part in that dramatic global transformation.

The trend is for the current uptake to grow globally – albeit having reached the market saturation point in some nations – and for the technologies to become ever more sophisticated, powerful, and pervasive.

It was an expression of 50 years plus natural digital evolution and transformation, with the exponential element of Moore’s Law and the power of the market becoming that much more evident.

The families bought the technology and connectivity and chose to trust and empower their children to use and learn with the digital largely unfettered. 

Post 2010 the children from the very early years on operated in a laissez-faire environment, and took charge of their learning with the digital, learning how to self-learn, and individualising their learning and capabilities in the process.

Their learning was shaped by a strong digital mindset, with most being informal, non-linear, done the instant desired, in context, with innately curious children preferring a strongly self-discovery approach.

Pause a second a second, reflect and you’ll appreciate it is how most all of us learn everyday with the digital.

It is a mode the young and old will use throughout life, as we continually adapt to the evolving technologies and societal transformation.  

While schools, and particularly the bureaucracies are wedded to the belief that everything in schools all must, and indeed can be planned, the power of the global megatrends is such that even the largest of corporations realise that at best they can shape the megatrends to advantage.

That holds also for schools.

The COVID experience has already accelerated the networking of schools as organisations and their links with their families. 

COVID obliged them to rely on the digital resources of their families and do so while ever living with COVID.

While it has been argued that schools networking with their digitally connected families is optional the strong suspicion is that option has already gone.

The pace, and power of society’s evolving expectations, combined with the continued necessity of school’s having to operate with COVID, while struggling to get teachers in front of classes suggests some schools at least have accepted they must network with their digitally connected families to remain viable.

  • Chaudron, S (2015) Young Children (0-8) and Digital Technology Luxembourg, European Commission JRC and Policy Reports 2015 -http://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/handle/JRC93239
  • Johansen, S. L, Larsen, M.C and Ernst, M.J (2016) Young Children and Digital Technology – Aarhus University, Aalborg University, Danish Media Council for Children and Young People, February 2016 – http://www.aau.dk/digitalAssets/201/201213_national-report_2015_denmark_proofread-2-.pdf
  • Lee, M and Ward, L (2013) Collaboration in learning: transcending the classroom walls, Melbourne ACER Press
  • Project Tomorrow (2011) The New Three E’s of Education: Enabled, Engaged and Empowered Speak Up – How Today’s Students are leveraging Emerging Technologies for Learning – http://www.tomorrow.org/speakup/pdfs/SU10_3EofEducation(Students).

Pdf

  • Rideout, V (2014) Learning at Home: families’ educational media use in America The Joan Ganz Cooney Center 2014
  • Wellman, B, Smith, A, Wells, A and Kennedy, T (2008) ‘Networked Families’ Pew Internet October 19, 2008 – http://www.pewinternet.org/2008/10/19/networked-families/
  •  

13. The Digital Competencies of Teachers. Their Growth

Posted on by

Mal Lee

The COVID experience not only accelerated the natural growth of the teachers’ digital mindset, and its application in teaching but it also sped the in-school use of the digital competencies the teachers were using every day in their personal lives.

Both are developments that have profound implications for principals, school communities, education systems, teacher educators – and treasuries.

They point to an aged formal system of readying teachers for a networked mode of schooling that has failed to deliver and it being superseded by the naturally occurring development that grows the digital competencies of all the world’s digitally connected.

A number of us argued in the 80s that the latter should be the approach adopted in schools.

Rather schools and systems opted to employ ineffectually, for 40 plus years a traditional, ‘expert’ designed, structured linear approach that had its origins in the Industrial Age.  

Schooling worldwide since the introduction of personal computers into the classroom has seen the technology mainly as a tool, to assist improve academic performance. For most it has never been about change or evolution. Rather it has been and continues to be for most educators a ‘passive’ but increasingly sophisticated technology that can enhance traditional academic teaching and student performance. 

Some of us, considering the implications of Moore’s Law (1965) contended the digital would never be a passive technology, and that as the exponential power of computing impacted it would naturally bring marked societal and organisational transformation, and the necessity of the world’s peoples to continually adapt their ways, thinking and skillset. Seymour Papert succinctly observed:

…What we are interested in is not what will happen if you bring in the technology and change nothing else, what we are interested in is how that technology helps us to rethink everything else…’ (Papert 1990, p. 9)

Our belief was that in using the evolving digital technologies in context teachers would naturally grow their competencies as the technologies became evermore powerful, sophisticated, user friendly and ubiquitous. We recognised good use could be made of in-house workshops and mentors but even in the 80’s contended the most effective growth would always come from natural, just-in-time, in context usage, where the teachers had agency of their growth. 

Suffice it to say the establishment and its wish to control dismissed the natural evolutionary assumption.

Rather it contended that all teachers, K-12 must be formally taught how to use the ‘educationally appropriate’ tools, with all needing to be taught a largely constant, common set of competencies. 

That stance was actively supported by generations of technology companies, all arguing all teachers must be able to use – and buy – their kit.

It is as if there was, and is, something laudatory about promoting global sameness and constancy – and hierarchical control.

Some might remember that at the height of the Microsoft hegemony the desired key computer competencies for all teachers from kindergarten upwards were those required to use Windows on PCs.

For many education technology ‘experts’ the perceived nirvana has been, and continues to be, the identification of a set of key digital competencies, their codification in a set of mandated standards, and obligatory formal teacher training and accreditation. The quest is exemplified in the 2017 European Digital Competence of Educators (2017).

In that quest there has been an almost universal disregard for wider society’s adaptation to the digital and the propensity therein of digital users to teach themselves how to use the technologies they desired. It was as if schools weren’t part of a networked society.

Perelman astutely observed in School’s Out in 1992 that near all the world’s users of personal computers were self-taught.

Thirty years on, and 50 years since Gordon Moore alerted the world to the natural exponential growth in the power of computing five billion plus (ITU, 2021) digitally connected people, over 60% of the world’s peoples have taught themselves to use some 5.5 billion plus highly sophisticated smartphones and all manner of other digital devices (Ericcson, 2021).

Among that five billion plus are most of the world’s teachers, all using in their personal lives their desired digital devices, and naturally growing the desired digital capabilities.

Significantly teachers K-12 worldwide immediately drew upon those devices and capabilities when the COVID pandemic forced the school doors to close and the remote teaching to be done from the teacher’s homes.

They instinctively used the competencies acquired in being digital, with near all having the confidence, understanding, competencies, connectivity, and digital devices and infrastructure required to undertake most of their teaching competently online, invariably without any help from government.

Reflect on the competencies you used, and how you developed them.

Likely the most important was the confidence not only to use those competencies in your teaching but to build on those capabilities when needed. Relatively few teachers had been schooled in the use of Zoom, or Teams, or the use of smartphones to conduct remote tutorials, but within weeks they were naturally using all manner of new online facilities.

Allied was likely the shaping of your application of the technology with a digital mindset. You knew the scene would continually evolve, the technology would become ever more sophisticated, that you could teach yourself the desired new competencies desired and how to draw upon the resources of a networked world.

The speed with which teachers K-12 worldwide were able to teach remotely would suggest many of the competencies you employed were the same as your colleagues, and like them your interests and area of teaching would have seen you also employ a suite of distinct capabilities. While all teachers could search, check their sources, record, create multi-media presentations, video conference, socially network, prepare PDFs, archive, and use all of digital communication the same teachers all rightly made use of their particular, often idiosyncratic competencies. Early childhood teachers, teachers of the autistic, senior physics, digital music, and modern history rightly have used the digital competencies and resources pertinent to their work.

The suspicion is that you, like your colleagues, naturally grew your digital competencies by using all manner of digital technologies 24/7/365. You never stop to think how many competencies you have, what they are or how yours differ from your partner’s or children, simply appreciating that in a connected world one has constantly to adapt, be it with the smartphone, streaming services, or smart speakers. 

Every teacher, every citizen in living in a world of accelerating digital transformation has continually to learn how to use the new services and devices, and to put in the cupboard the dated technology, your beloved iPod, digital camera, games console, standard definition TV, CDs, and DVD player.  

Teachers, as individuals have always had particular skill sets that they have brought to the teaching. There has always been the pianist, social organiser, wordsmith, photographer, and the numbers person to whom staff could turn for support.

The digital and the networks have not only provided teachers the freedom and opportunity to develop their interests and passions to a very high level, but also to share that specialist capability within the networked school community. Think of the specialist digital capabilities of your colleagues. On staff there could well be the spreadsheet, blogging, VR, digital lighting, video conferencing, audio recording, copyright, and podcast gurus.

Staff room experience affirms teachers rightly laud and appreciate that individuality and those specialist competencies, no matter how way out some might appear.

Significantly, like all digitally connected, you decided which digital competencies you wanted, how strong you wanted each to be, which were of limited importance, understanding what to do to enhance those competencies or to acquire new capabilities.

While at first glance seemingly obvious it bears underscoring the ‘core’ digital competencies of the digitally connected will always be rubbery, impacted by context and ever evolving; evolving at an accelerating rate. Key technological developments will continually change the core.  

Globally schools and governments have long held a strongly hierarchical, insular view that they as the employer in charge of the ‘factory’ will decide on the digital competencies required of its employees.

Scant thought has invariably been given to the wider societal context, the digital transformation underway or the effectiveness of the socially networked world in identifying and growing those competencies.

In dismissing the notion of natural digital evolution and transformation schools and systems have since the early 80s employed in general terms a controlled, structured approach that has had as its the focus

  • common mass use
  • the mechanical skills required to use the ‘educationally appropriate’ tools devices
  • the competencies the ‘experts’ believed would enhance academic performance, not those of everyday life
  • teachers, K-12 – often across the education authority – mastering common computer/ICT/digital competencies
  • getting teachers to teach and test the identified competencies
  • the use of formal, linear instructional programs and, regular testing to develop the specified competencies. Control is paramount. Over the years all manner of ‘licenses’ have been awarded teachers on completion of those programs
  • out of school staff training, undertaken when it fitted with the instructor’s schedule.

Teacher adoption of the prescribed competencies has been very slow.

In the 80s, 90s and even the 2000s many, possibly most schools and systems, still believed schools needed only a few expert teachers with the digital competencies, and that it was better the computer/ICT experts taught all students.

Around 2015 it was not uncommon even in the developed world, particularly in secondary schools, to have 75%-80% of teachers not using the digital every day in their teaching.

And yet early in 2020 when COVID closed the school doors and obliged them to teach remotely most every teacher could do so.

As could the students from kindergarten upwards.

Both the teachers and students drew on the competencies that came with being digital in a networked society.

And virtually overnight embedded the expectation that every teacher K-12 would normalise the use of the digital in their teaching, would increasingly shape that use with a digital mindset and use the digital competencies they used 24/7/365 in every facet of their lives.

Unseen to most the COVID shutdowns affirmed the observation made 40 plus years ago, that the growth of teachers digital competencies is best done naturally in the everyday use of the technology in a supportive environment, where the teachers control their own growth.

Teachers have that agency in their personal lives.

COVID, and the networked environment gave many teachers that agency in their teaching, at least for a time.

The expectations of the ‘new normals’ will work over time to extend that agency permanently in the classrooms.

That said most education decision makers won’t have seen, or indeed accept the success of the natural evolutionary growth of teacher’s digital competencies. 

There are few signs that they will relinquish their perceived control.

I may be wrong.

What is the situation in your school? Is there any hint the school, or the system is rethinking its approach and giving staff greater agency and support to grow their own competencies?

The suspicion is that the issue of digital competencies will be another of the suite of traditional approaches being challenged, that will in time see the demise of the prescribed competencies.

  • Ericsson (2021) Ericsson Mobility Report November 2021. Ericsson 2021 – https://www.ericsson.com/4ad7e9/assets/local/reports-papers/mobility-report/documents/2021/ericsson-mobility-report-november-2021.pdf
  • ITU (2021) Measuring digital development. Facts and Figures 2021. Geneva International Telecommunications Union – https://www.itu.int/en/ITU-D/Statistics/Pages/facts/default.aspx
  • Papert, S 1990, The Perestroika of Epistemological Politics. Keynote delivered at the World Conference of Computers in Education, Sydney, 1990.

12. The Imperative of a Digital Mindset in Networked Schools

Posted on by

Mal Lee

To succeed in a disrupted world, leaders will need to forge an agile and connected enterprise with a future-focused workforce. For both individuals and organizations, there needs to be a reconciling of the demand for digital skills to deploy and manage technology, and the human skills to live and work with this technology. Positioning the enterprise for success as the work of humans and machines converges, will require a digital mindset. (KPMG)

The same kind of exhortation has been expressed by the other global management consultancies and throughout the business management literature. Lewis (2020) writing in the Harvard Business Review noted

……having a digital mindset means being constantly on the lookout for ways to introduce digital technology to your role, your team, and your organisation.

You’ll struggle to find the same advocacy in the school leadership literature. A Google search will unearth little.

Nor will you find it in lead teacher advertisements, the teacher standards, teacher accreditation documents or initial teacher training programs.

You will however find the mindset shaping the personal lives of most of the world’s teachers and the four billion plus digitally connected. While few have likely fully appreciated the profound change that has occurred, particularly in the last decade, it takes only a few prompts for them to appreciate it’s distinct nature, the magnitude of the shift, its continuing evolution, and the extent to which the mindset shapes their personal lives, 24/7/365.

The digitally connected have grown in their everyday use of the digital and networked world, a mindset, a set of expectations and behaviours that see them instinctively opting to use the digital in most facets of their lives. While strongest in the young, who have only ever known a digital world, the mindset is to be found in varying degrees in most every age group.

It is a mindset that expects instant connectivity, 24/7/365, anywhere, anytime, at speed and control of one’s chosen digital device/s, with the agency to use them how desired, when wanted, to do what and how they wish. It assumes everyone, from a very early age will choose the technology, configure it, use the apps they want and critically to learn what, how, when and where they want. Moreover, they expect to directly access the desired material, without going through gatekeepers.

While one might rightly debate the traits that combine to make the digital mindset, but most summaries would include:

  • An instinctive preference for a digital solution, and an acceptance that many traditional practises will be superseded by the digital
  • Normalised everyday use of the digital and social networking
  • A working understanding of the mores of the networked world 
  • Natural continual adaptation to the rapidly evolving digital and networked world
  • on-going enhancement of the desired digital thinking and competencies
  • a strong appreciation of the up and down sides of the digital and network use
  • Just in time, non-linear, experiential learning, done mainly in context
  • A preference for self-discovery, while being willing to network and learn collaboratively when desired
  • Increased and rightful individualisation of the digital capabilities, that flows from each if us having greater control of our learning, and being able to pursue our particular interests and passions.

The digital connected, in going about their everyday life, find themselves ‘being digital’ (Negroponte, 1995), on trend to grow and strengthen that situation lifelong.

Nearly sixty years ago Marshall McLuhan (1964) famously alerted the world to the reality that ‘the medium is the message.’

In today’s world the message is digital and networked.

The strengthening of the digital mindset has been accelerated by COVID, and particularly by governments’ taking as a given the population being digital, connected, and having at the centre of their lives, a smartphone.

Significantly the COVID experience also accelerated the nation’s teachers bringing the digital mindset into their teaching, as well as the digital competencies they had naturally grown in their personal lives.

While the educational leadership at the school and system level, and within most educational faculties have yet to have the digital mindset shape the school and its teaching most teachers used the mindset to advantage.

Significantly they used it astutely in teaching remotely with their digitally connected families, understanding the importance in so doing of working collaboratively, of individualising much of the teaching and support, of giving the students and their families agency, and resourcing the remote teaching.

A digital mindset shapes, as noted in earlier posts, a very different type of schooling to that with its roots in the Industrial Age.

It challenges much of the ‘grammar of schooling’.

The reality facing all school leaders is that society’s worldwide are going to increasingly shape the way forward with a digital mindset.

As will most every private and public sector organisation.

COVID accelerated the world’s teachers use of the thinking in their classrooms.

The new normal is already, as discussed, looking to be accommodated by all schools.

That accommodation is markedly assisted by a school and system leadership looking to shape the way forward with a digital mindset, and not one from an aged past.

  • McLuhan, M (1964) The Medium is the Message. NY. MIT
  • Negroponte, N (1995) Being Digital Sydney Hodder and Stoughton

Schooling 2050

Posted on by

Roger Broadie and Mal Lee are embarking on the quest to identify the major trends and issues that they believe will impact on the nature of schooling in 2050.

The late management guru, Peter Drucker, very wisely remarked

  1.  Trying to predict the future is like trying to drive down a country road at night with no lights while looking out the back window
  • The best way to predict the future is to create it.

We will limit our quest to the identifying the megatrends on course to markedly impact the nature of schooling in 28 years, and the major issues school decision makers worldwide will likely have address it they are to create the desired schools.

The great benefit of Naisbitt’s seminal, and immensely popular 1984 publication on Megatrends was that it provided the general reader a succinct and clear appreciation of the trends likely to impact both society in general and its organisations.

It is well worth a revisit to appreciate how prescient was much the work, and its continued validity today.

That is what we hope, in our own humble way, we can do for global schooling.  

One of the oft forgotten realities is that the ‘grammar of schooling’ worldwide is remarkably similar.

So too is the way the young of today’s digital and increasingly networked world use and learn with the digital 24/7/365 outside the school walls.

Our plan is to identify the similarities, the global trends, the philosophical and political flashpoints, and the issues to be addressed in shaping the desired schools.

As the digital evolution and transformation accelerates and impacts near every part of society school leaders in the next couple of decades will be expected to adapt to the evolving scene, while at the same time contending with ‘political masters’ who will invariably wish to maintain control of ‘their schools’.

It should make for an interesting challenge.

Between us we’ll draw on over 100 years of experience with schools and several decades of writings and research on the digital evolution and transformation of schooling and the education of the young.

Over time we intend inviting colleagues and interested readers to contribute to the thinking and finally drawing together of our read of the scene

11. Individualism, Networking and Mass Schooling

Posted on by

Mal Lee

The new normal that is going to seriously challenge most likely every school and education system is the expectation that learning with the digital, in a socially networked world will be strongly individualised.

The individual will expect to make the key decisions, not have the state.

Allied will be the growing recognition that all in society, from the early years onward, should be free and actively encouraged to grow their desired traits and capabilities, to pursue their own interests and passions, and in the process to develop the competencies they believe most apt.

Ironically this is happening at a time when many pressure groups in society are pressuring governments to compel the young to conform to a perceived ideal form. 

The question for all schools, do they want to better individualise their teaching and learning?

If so how do they;

  1. transition from a teaching and learning environment strongly geared to mass schooling
  2. create an ecosystem that gives students greater agency over their learning, and allows the students to pursue their interests and passions and to grow their particular strengths 
  3. in their school, at this point in its evolution provide an apt balance between the core learning society expects schools to grow in all the young, and student’s desire to develop the skills and attribute they value?

It is an immense challenge, that bids each school community address the purpose and nature of schooling in a rapidly evolving networked society.

In going digital and social networking the world has provided all, the young and the old the opportunity and tools to take charge of their learning and to learn what they want, when and where they want, how they desire.

Negroponte’s 1995 prescient observation has become the new normal.

In being digital I am me, not a statistical subset (Negroponte, p164, 1995).

A quarter of a century on the dramatic shift from the mass to the more personalised is evident in most every facet of society.

A notable exception is the world’s schools.

There the focus continues to be on the mass; on teaching class groups, on all students following the same, state mandated syllabuses, and assessing all students in the same way.

Near every facet of the school ecosystem is directed to mass schooling. Internally the schools are still invariably organised around common age class groups, with those class groups moving in a lock step manner through 12 -13 years of schooling. All classes invariably follow a common, externally prescribed curriculum, with every student obliged to sit the common tests.

Externally the exam boards, the curriculum authorities, the teacher educators, inspectors, and invariably the local universities and media all work to reinforce the focus on the mass.

While these bodies can provide the flexibility to individualise the teaching more fully most have chosen to strengthen the focus on mass schooling. 

It is seemingly an educational given that every student must learn the same things and develop the same competencies.  

Moreover, the sameness is being increasing imposed on teachers, on the competencies all must all have, what they’ll teach and how. 

Decades of bureaucratic and political control of schooling have spawned the assumption that the state, and not the individual, the parents, or the professional educators, should decide what the young will learn, how, when, where and with the ‘right’ technology. 

It is not the reality of everyday life and work, particularly within a digital and networked world. Rather every one of us – regardless of government desires – controls our own learning. We as individuals decide what we will learn, how, when, and where, with what tools and rightly develop the capabilities that go to make each of us who we are.

While many schools, and even systems have over the decades striven to better individualise the teaching and the learning most have struggled, stymied by an ecosystem preoccupied with sorting and sifting the masses, identifying the future leaders, and weeding out the perceived also rans.

If anything, the last fifty years have seen an increased emphasis in schools on shaping a conforming mass, in a manner the government and the pressure groups deems appropriate. Where some of us were fortunate to create an education system in the 1970s that sought to better individualise teaching and learning, and to cater for the full range of students, including the non-conformists, one will struggle today to find a system or government that seriously espouses nurturing the individualism of the young, of applauding the growth of distinct competencies and readying individuals to thrive within an ever more networked, inclusive, and interconnected world.

One wonders how serious many schools and systems are about democracy in their schools, of readying every young person to take ever greater control of their learning and nurturing their individualism?  

The provision of a more individualised schooling will, as flagged, be difficult.

The most important step is deciding it should happen.

It is appreciated there are heads and senior bureaucrats who have no desire to change or to cede any of their autocratic control.

The next is clarifying and strategizing one’s desires, and over time shaping a school ecosystem that naturally facilitates, grows, and recognises each student’s capabilities, all the while lessening the impact of the key elements of the mass mode of schooling.

It is about getting the balance right.

Respect, trust, empowerment, agency, inclusiveness, genuine collaboration, and the willingness by heads to distribute the control of the teaching and learning will be critical.

As will curriculum flexibility, the willingness to use different class configurations, project based teaching, collaboration, remote teaching, the recognition of, and the building upon student’s out of school learning —- and teachers willing to cultivate a class teaching environment that better individualises the teaching and learning.

The great aide teachers have today, compared to 50, even 25 years ago is the array of ever more sophisticated digital and network technologies.

In the 1960s many of us individualised our teaching using a typewriter, a duplicating machine, reams of paper and a library of books.

Countesthorpe College (UK) in the 1970s famously sought to individualise all its teaching, using the same paper base.

The shortcomings of the paper technology invariably proved too much.

Most all of those shortcomings can be overcome by the digital and networking technologies.

Serendipitously the COVID experience and the extensive use made of the digital resources and competencies of the connected families has alerted schools, parents, electorates, and treasuries to the relatively inexpensive facility to better individualise the children’s teaching and learning.

Now is not the time for me to propose how your school might better individualise its teaching.

That is best left to each school, its teachers and community.

What this post can do is alert schools and systems to the growing expectation worldwide that schools will continually mirror the ways and expectations of society, and that in time it will pressure schools and electorates to shift the focus from a strongly mass mode of schooling to one that better individualises every child’s teaching and learning.

  • Negroponte, N (1995) Being Digital Sydney Hodder and Stoughton

10. Teachers as Reflective Practitioners in Networked Schools

Posted on by

Mal Lee

All teachers should be reflective practitioners.

The need is that much greater when teaching within the more networked mode. 

Natural digital evolution, the pace and magnitude of the organisational transformation, the expectation that schools will continually accommodate the new normal, and the increased dependence on dynamic social networks should oblige all teachers to be reflective practitioners, able to apply the skill in their teaching and in enhancing the wider school community.

Teachers globally, particularly in the last couple of decades, have been readied in many schools and systems to make extensive use reflection in adjudging and enhancing their own teaching.

Extending the rationale underpinning the earlier post on teachers as specialists and generalists (Lee, 2022) all teachers should also be able to apply that skill to school’s working as a networked organisation.

It is no longer enough to restrict this vital professional skill to just their teaching.

It should increasingly be applied to better understanding the school’s ecosystem and networking.

In 1987 Schon astutely observed

In the varied topography of professional practice, there is a high ground overlooking a swamp. On the high ground, manageable problems lend themselves to solution through the application of research-based theory and technique. In the swampy lowland, messy, confusing problems defy technical solution. The irony of this situation is that the problems on the high ground tend to be relatively unimportant to individuals or society at, however great their interest may be, while in the swamp lie the problems of greatest human concern. The practitioner must choose. Shall he remain on the high ground where he can solve relatively unimportant problems according to prevailing standards of rigour, or shall he descend to the swamp of important problems and non-rigorous inquiry (Schon, 1987, p3)?

Significantly he made these observations before the digital and networking technology transformed the organisational landscape.

The imperative of adjudging the total topography, and not simply the ‘high ground’ is that much greater within more networked organisations, where near all operations are interconnected, the divisions are blurred and the organisation is naturally evolving, at an accelerating pace.

Tellingly the division between what is the ‘high’ and what the ‘swampy’ ground is even blurred.

Compounding the need is the increasing use being made of social networks, formal and informal, all of which are dynamic, some with a long life, others that exist only for a specific purpose. Few of the networks ever appear on an organisational chart, and few, if any have their contribution to the organisation quantified and included in a data analysis. 

That said any who networked to advantage or have observed their impact, positive and negative will appreciate the importance of both the teachers and heads being able to reflect upon, shape, grow and when apt abandon the networks. We are in a world where one ill-considered post in the school’s e-newsletter can within minutes go viral and impact the school’s marketing for several years.

The COVID experience affirmed the importance of not only understanding the workings of schools as networked organisations but all professionals being able to reflect on the totality of the school’s workings, to compliment the positive, and to flag the ineffectual procedures.

The pandemic hit most every school underprepared. Schools instantly put in place what were thought to be appropriate arrangements. The informal networks quickly provided their feedback and many schools within weeks had to markedly change their approach. There was not the time to go through the ‘desired’ data collection and analysis. Rather professional reflective practitioners, working in the ‘swamp’ listened, observed and with their educational expertise and years of experience immediately made the requisite changes.

At this point in time there is little, or nothing published on the application of reflective practice across total school ecosystems, and in particular those strongly networked. Indeed Schon’s 1987 work on Educating the Reflective Practitioner that devoted many pages to schoolteachers concentrated on the classrooms and post graduate practicums. 

That shortcoming needs to be rectified.  It is appreciated that will take time, and some astute thinking as folk seek to get a better handle on already highly complex, integrated, rapidly evolving, unique, synergistic ecosystems.

But that need shouldn’t stop schools immediately growing the ability of all teachers to better reflect on the practises of the total school.  As COVID underscored they are already working in networked schools that need to be better understood immediately.

Critical is the willingness of the head to genuinely respect, trust and empower all teachers, and to give them the requisite agency and support.

In brief the teachers have to be treated as education professionals.

Schon makes the oft neglected critical observation that all professionals in learning their profession grow their memory muscle, knowing instinctively what to do at any given moment. That holds equally in teaching. It is a vital quality that comes from years of experience, reflection and is a professional capability that should be respected and valued.  

Without respect for that professionalism by the head it is pointless a school or system contemplating the growth of reflective practitioners.

In growing the teacher’s capability to reflect upon, and adjudge the total ecosystem, particularly the ‘swampy’ elements it is important, as flagged in earlier posts, to grow their macro understanding of the school’s workings within the networked mode.

Much of that understanding can be naturally developed as teachers go about their daily work, but with a major caveat. The head must orchestrate the creation and evolution of a digital and networked learning environment and culture, that daily involves teachers in all manner of across school community projects, teaching teams, working groups, committees and critically networks, an involvement that naturally grows the understanding.

That involvement will, from experience also naturally grow the use of a stronger digital and networked mindset in every facet of their work.

While growing the macro understanding schools, as all the good ones do let their teachers also pursie their interests and apply their particular talents where best suited. 

Globally most every networked organisation is readying it’s professionals to better understand and shape the workings of increasingly interconnected, naturally synergistic, and complex networked organisations.

Some highly sophisticated research is being undertaken and quality tools are being developed.

In a networked society the art is to take advantage of those developments and to apply them to your own setting.

  • Schön, D (1987) Educating the reflective practitioner, Jossey-Bass, San Francisco. 

9. Schools as Networked Organisations

Posted on by

Mal Lee

All teachers and heads, and indeed all school decision makers should understand the workings of schools operating as networked organisations, the impact the new mode will have on their teaching and the school, the possibilities open and the implications that flow.

So too they should recognise the uniqueness of schools as networked organisations, and the constraints that uniqueness will impose.

But most crucially all should understand networked organisations are dramatically different entities to the traditional school, on trend to be evermore so. 

Networked schools oblige all within to continually attune their ways and thinking to a naturally evolving, increasingly integrated, socially networked, and complex synergistic environment.  It is a natural transformation over which governments have limited control.

It is a macro understanding that will assist them recognise the almost boundless opportunities the mode provides to enhance the teaching, but also alerts them to the need to continually adjust their ways as they seek to reap the potentially considerable dividends.

One of the greater adjustments will entail enhancing and making greater everyday use of their social networking skills and understanding. All need to appreciate the power and centrality of both the formal and informal social networks, their pervasiveness, dynamic nature, the openings they can provide, the efficiencies, and economies they can yield, the unintended impact they can have and why the art of networking is a core skill every teacher needs to grow throughout their career.

It is appreciated it’s art that isn’t likely recognised in any teacher standards document, selection criteria, data set, initial teacher education or professional development program but it is central to the workings, growth and critically the leadership (Asia Bank, 2017) of networked organisations.

Traditionally schools have operated as largely stand – alone, insular, segmented, organisations, that controlled their own affairs, used their own resources, all literally within the school walls.

That insularity was in large dictated by the use, and in time the dependence, on paper as the underpinning technology. Paper, while historically a revolutionary technology, was and remains a limited technology. Be it in the form of books, work sheets, exercise books or letters paper must be distributed by hand, and as such needed to be used within a physically compact site.

As Tyack and Cuban (1995) noted, few thought little about the situation. That is what schools were. Or at least until an infinitely more sophisticated technology began displacing paper and changing the operating base.

The schools were moreover relatively simple, loosely – coupled organisations (Weick, 1976), built upon largely autonomous, segmented divisions, invariably located within distinct sections of the school site. Likely paper played its part in fostering that segmentation and the creation of discrete infants schools, science faculties, art departments and the like, all having their own space, which most staff rarely left during the working week.

It was relatively easy to scrutinise the work of each division.

Even in the 1990s most schools operated as stand-alone entities, with the internal units run largely autonomously. 

Most schools in the 1990s had only telephone lines at best in the faculty rooms, rarely any within the classrooms.

The insularity and segmentation were heightened by the invariably strongly hierarchical organisational and communications structures, where all powerful unit heads focussed on their part of the educational production line. Few departmental heads were concerned about the macro workings of the school.

While astute social networking was important, particularly within the establishment schools, it’s use was very much limited by the communication’s technology. Some might recall long distance calls were a big deal, expensive, made only after gaining approval. 

That situation largely held until the start of this century.

As the networks spread, became ever faster, more sophisticated, inexpensive, and ubiquitous they unobtrusively began fundamentally transforming schools’ workings and challenging long accepted thinking and practises – on trend to evermore so.

Those challenges should be addressed by a knowing staff forever onwards.

The physical, and the associated social networking, allied with the efficiencies and opportunities that came with digital convergence soon lessened the use of paper, lowered internal and external school walls, transformed school communication, blurred long established boundaries, challenged the retention of aged practises, and promoted increased integration and staff and job reconfiguration.

While the rate and extent of the transformation has been different in every school, in less than twenty years schools worldwide have ceased being stand-alone, insular, largely segmented organisations working only with their own resources and have become more networked organisations, outward looking, increasing dependent on the resources and connectivity of the networked world.

As Lipnack and Stamps (1994) presciently observed the possibilities with networked organisations are virtually boundless, limited in the main by the human imagination.

In 2010 Lee and Finger, and group of international colleagues wrote of Developing a Networked School Community (2010).

They envisioned this type of scenario.

Figure 2.3: Networked School Community – Mid range structural Change 

Lee and Finger (2010, p42).

They moreover detailed the many educational, economic, social, and political advantages and challenges of the networked mode.

In reflecting on the model, it is much the same as that schools unwittingly employed during the COVID lockdown, with the ‘school’ operating online, the Cloud providing most of the resources, and the student’s and teacher’s homes the facilitating infrastructure and connectivity.

That networking, and the use of the expertise and resources of others is on trend to increase, but with several significant caveats.

Physical schools, that students attend most working days of the year will remain the norm. 

The fully virtual networked organisation will remain the exception in schooling, restricted in the main to distance education, and older age cohorts.

The full productivity of nations can only be achieved when the young attend the physical place called school and the free the parents to work.

Schools as networked organisations have thus – likely always – to operate and grow within the now century plus old traditional school structures.

The current, often dated, legislation of most every nation will moreover limit, likely forever, school – and hence government – control of the networked school to within the school walls, and school hours.  While the technology and desire might exist to extend that control several high level court cases have already made it clear the legislation will restrict school and government control to the traditional remit.

Any effort to extend that control will on present indications be vehemently opposed by most of the electorate. The young and old expect, nay demand they be in charge of their personal use of the digital 24/7/365, lifelong. By extension digitally connected families expect to control the family use of their technology, free from government involvement.

The emerging reality is that the more schools network and spread their operational footprint they won’t have formal control over a sizeable portion, unless they genuinely prepared to collaborate, and respect, trust and empower all powers in the wider networked community.

Currently the signs are that only in a small proportion of schools and education systems recognise the irrevocable transition to a more networked mode occurring, the possibilities and the imperative of better understanding the new scenario.

Presently most schools and governments appear to be more interested in using the network technology to unilaterally control ‘their’ schools and maintain as best they can traditional ways.

It bears remembering that the same network technology can be used equally well to control and micromanage every school operation, or to trust, empower and genuinely collaborate with one’s community.

You can be best attest to how it is being used in your situation, but it is highly likely that you are in a school that has transitioned to a more networked mode but where every facet of the school’s workings is still unilaterally controlled by the school and/or the state.

How long the electorate will allow its schools to reject the new normal time only will tell.

If you’d like a quick overview of the contrast between the traditional hierarchical form found in most schools and the networked look at John Kotter’s explanation at – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZIGkUDhuUJc

  • Asia Development Bank (2017) On Networked Organisations. Asia Development Bank 2017
  • Lee, M and Finger, G (eds) (2010) Developing a Networked School Community, Melbourne ACER Press
  • Tyack, D and Cuban, L (1995). Tinkering Toward Utopia. Cambridge. Massachusetts. Harvard University Press
  • Weick, K (1976) ‘Educational organisations as loosely coupled systems’. Administrative Science Quarterly21 1976