Conversations that are shaping the future of international education

Our friends in the corporate world woke up to this idea a few years ago.  Communication, they told us, is all about a new kind of ‘conversation’ in which everyone is talking to one another in language that is open, natural, open, honest, direct, funny, and often shocking.’[i]  Hardly could they have imagined how far we would have come.  Hardly could they have imagined a world, not even ten years later, in which almost every aspect of what we do is caught up in conversations mediated by the growing authority of Social Media.

David Perkins summed it up perfectly: ‘Organizations,’ he says, ‘are made of conversations.’[ii]  Today, it seems, there is simply no doubting the truth and relevance of this statement.

So surely, at some point, we have to ask ourselves about the quality of the conversations we are having, who we are having them with and where on earth they are leading us.  We also have to think about a key aspect of any truly authentic conversation, namely, who we are listening to. 

Schools are complex organizations.  It is hardly surprising that they tend to be dominated by numerous overlapping conversations. 

So if you want to eavesdrop, here are a number of conversations that we are having right now.

Listening to our students: we are talking with students about their learning; inviting them to rate this learning against commonly agreed standards. 

Listening to our parents: we are leveraging the power of web 2.0 technology to listen-in to what people are saying about us. We are also spending a lot of time in more traditional face-to-face meetings with parents.  We want to better understand the hopes, fears, expectations and concerns of families arriving from every corner of the world. 

Listening to companies: we are preparing our students for life beyond school, recognizing that many of them will pursue careers in the world of business and enterprise.  We cannot afford simply to assume that our programmes of learning are adequate in their preparation of these students; so we are talking to companies, listening to their present challenges and future predictions. Only in this way, it seems, do we stand any chance of equipping our students with the knowledge, skills and dispositions they will need in the future. 

Listening to other schools: no school knows it all! Not surprisingly, then, by some distance, the most utilized forms of learning for school leaders are the well-established global networks of ‘schools talking to schools’.  On any given day, schools leaders from across the globe are talking to one another, gathering best practice and finding new solutions on any number of practical or pedagogical issues.  Social Media is undoubtedly making these conversations more effective and more immediate. 

So where is it all going?
How we finally engage people, listen for understanding, problem-solve and reach collaborative solutions will vary. In some cases, we will focus on the promise of Social Media.  In others, we will do better to stick to traditional face-to-face meetings.  In the end, however, it is clear that the emerging future of international schools will never depend on smart business plans or even the most promising educational manuals.  On the contrary, we will discover a future for ourselves by engaging in better, more collaborative, more thoughtful, more honest conversations with the people who really matter.   

This article was co-authored with Kevin Bartlett, ISB Director.  It is due for publication in Newsweek (Europe and Asia) on 28 September 2009.  The ISB Let's Talk Campaign will also begin on this date.  Click here for details.

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[i] Levine et al, The Cluetrain Manifesto: The End of Business As Usual.  Pearson Education, 2000.

[ii] Perkins, King Arthur’s Round Table: How Collaborative Conversations Create Smart Organizations. John Wiley, 2003.