Closing the 2021 year and moving onto the New Year of 2022 inspires one to take stock of those actions and thoughts from years past and examine how they are renewed and revitalized moving forward. 2021 was a deficient bridge in many ways for educators and especially school administrators like myself. This imperfect bridge connected seasoned ideas and philosophies to new virtual technologies that questioned many existing school practices. Returning to in-person schooling demonstrated that additional changes were necessary as well. Learning gaps were exposed, and the use of virtual technologies in the context of the global pandemic and school closings created a multitude of additional challenges that exacerbated the already tenuous social and emotional well-being of students, teachers, and parents in the educational setting. The following are some ideas to flesh out and develop for the following year. I hope you follow me through the journey!
Education is the quintessential experiment of all human endeavors in many respects. Especially in the United States, education is designated as a place to connect students with democratic ideals of citizenship. Schools are places where we teach students the necessary skills to read, write, do mathematics, and provide knowledge to apply these democratic ideals. However, schools continue to come under attack for not producing these expected outcomes.
Over the years, the problem of education has become a distinct conversation from educational research and an important arena for the collective intellectuals, political parties, and secular cultures around specific structural and procedural changes. Conceivably, the problem of education may not lay only in the structural and procedural processes of education and their relationship to each person. Educational outcomes, as traditionally defined, are unique to individuals. Education encompasses the whole person as a rational, free-thinking body that embraces psychological, social and emotional, and theological inclinations. Therefore, each individual is part and parcel of both the problem and the solution to the educational dilemma.
Each learner is the data from which education is drawn, and the cognitional reasoning that arises produces a personal journey that is affected by that individual’s reaction to data and interaction with data. The characteristic of data is the personal experiences of the learner’s senses and experiences. In this respect, education belongs to each learner and cannot be discarded as not his or her unique opportunity. The integral interaction of cognitional reasoning with new data is also based upon each individual’s historical consciousness or experiences. Each learner moves between their current knowledge base and transcendence. Between affirmation and non-affirmation, each individual decides what is essential to keep and not keep in their knowledge base. The exercising of this choice to accept or reject represents the innate freedom in each person. The choice is also based upon historical and present experiences as learners engage with the learning environment. Schools are facilitators of this interaction, not the cause of learning.
Within these considerations, I imagine a conversation across all subject matter needs to develop at the intersection of global and local cultures within schools and communities. This conversation needs to be an honest dialogue around the collective historical consciousness of all stakeholders through “educational agency.”
Why educational agency? “Educational agency” is a self-reflective and introspective inquiry of action by each individual. Cognitional operations in inquiry and self-reflection provide intentionality to each individual’s intellectual process. It provides a structure to connect values, norms, and knowledge within educational conversations to the value beliefs of individual self-esteem, collaboration, and the practices of educational learning, leadership, and teaching. A single collective way of thinking does not dictate it. Each stakeholder within a community is a unique individual with the right to think and develop their ideas and feeling of self-worth. “Educational agency” goes beyond mere facts and figures or the unpacking of a curriculum. “Educational agency” gives each student, teacher, parent, and administrator the right to observe, collect, judge, and use the information to better oneself. This process of discernment gives integrity to both the individual and their ideas. In turn, these ideas serve as the building blocks of continual educational attainment, which may provide a pathway for each student to contribute to the overall advancement of human nature.
The learner’s interaction with their environment affords them a sense of control over their journey. This control can be viewed as a sense of educational agency. This sense of educational agency changes the perception of the educational environment and affects both structure and process of the school setting. The idea of educational agency can be extended to all stakeholders within a school. Within this concept, each stakeholder moves between and among each other with a degree of understanding of how administrators, teachers, parents, and students individually and institutionally view learning and the notion of education.
Thus, the question before us is not necessarily organizational structure or educational process. The question before us is: can we afford claims about structure, processes, and interventions while ignoring a learner’s place in the process, and can we assert full custody of a learner-centered approach to education while granting the learner only a partial presence of their individuality? What are the definition and current direction of education in our times? Does it genuinely include the individual or reflect just our understanding of education structures and processes? What should that definition of education be moving forward?
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