I would like to begin my answer with a statement of the obvious fact that schools are not corporate organizations and that the levels of disruption acceptable in the latter are simply not acceptable in the former! Disruption often leads to attrition and while attrition might be good in the Corporate world, (what with the continuous flow of fresh talent) for schools it might be negative. Schools happen to be different from Corporates for the very fact that students often form perceptions and impressions for their teachers over the years and often they expect to be taught by teachers who have established their credentials over the years. Often, experience and skills crafted through years of service might make older teachers more effective adept and proven than those coming in for the first time. While this does not in any way suggest that disruption is bad for schools or that inexperienced teachers might not make a mark, (thanks to their creativity and out of the box thinking) it does make monetary and commercial sense to hire new teachers every year and then send them off after a year but before you would have to hike their salaries!
In the longer term, excess disruption might be dangerous for schools and colleges in terms of its emotional and psychological impact on students and teachers. This stems from the fact the Social Emotional health has more relevance in school (unlike the Corporate office) for the very fact that schools and colleges cater to students who are more vulnerable to excess changes and therefore disruption. In schools where the focus ins Educare and Nurture, some degree of stability is required! A safe environment is most necessary for the well-being of the child, and where teachers and team leaders keep changing, throughout the year, it can only add to the bewilderment of the child. One of the reasons why we see so much violence in schools today is because of the overwhelming disruption being forced on them. The trend of hiring guest lecturers in Government schools, multiple changes in the syllabus and multiple formats of assessment can have a rather negative impact on students. Confusion, bewilderment, vulnerability, and anxiety could very well lead to a rise in the incidents of bullying in schools today.
However, the main idea behind writing this article was not to dismiss the importance of disruption as a means for better work culture in schools, and thereby better quality of education, rather it was about trying to understand how much of disruption would be beneficial! Before we go further into the topic, it would be essential for understanding what disruption means. Disruption, in the field of education, is about introducing new concepts, new thoughts, new inventions, new discoveries, and new beliefs. It is about challenging old patterns of thought, challenging accepted beliefs, doing things better and more efficiently, it is about renewal, evolution, adaptation and of course, it brings about extinction, upheaval, chaos, discord, and conflict. Our history has been marked with such upheavals and disruptions brought about by people who went against the accepted belief that the universe revolved around that Earth. Galileo and Copernicus were considered heretics just because they had challenged religious dogma.
It is clear, moreover that we cannot do without disruption in today's times, not especially in the case of schools, although the way disruption is introduced and the quantum of disruption is crucial for the social and emotional health of the students and their teachers. For disruption to have its desired impact, schools need to provide a suitable environment that is safe and non-judgemental in nature. Such an environment would have to be built out of a sense of mutual respect, inclusiveness as well as a common goal. Consistent policies, a unified and distinct leadership, a fair degree of stability is required for disruption to really work.
Perhaps the worst case scenario would be to promote disruption in a situation where there is a poor work-life balance, high teacher-attrition rates, inconsistency in policies and frequent leadership changes. But then to come back to the question of how much disruption should we entertain ideally, the answer in the words of one of my Journalism students was, "But then, how can we quantify an abstract concept?" My answer to him was that "one can always measure an abstract concept in units!" I had felt rather as if I was giving a rather simplistic answer to something that was as complex as ever, so I retracted my statement and told him that one might "guess" the correct amount of distraction. In the ideal case, there should be a fair balance between disruption and stability. Someone I know rather well likes to inject disruption into the organization roughly every five years, that too within a system that might be doing rather well. This disruption entails a change in the top executive leadership. In other instances, disruption might be in the form of changing teacher faculties, or even asking senior teachers to take up teaching with the junior most grade in the program. A few schools that I have known introduced rigor into the training programs for their own teachers. In other cases, the disruption would be in the form of a change in policies, school timings, lesson plan formats, maintenance of records, use of online learning modules, (which would probably fizzle out in a year's time), processes, timings, protocols, duties, roles, and so on. I have known schools where an entire teaching team resigned en masse and joined other schools just because their Principal had resigned.
How often do you introduce change, how often do you re-shuffle teachers and students, how often do you tell your teachers to unlearn old things and re-learn new things? How often do you change classroom arrangments from rows to crews and from crews to the semi-horseshape seating plan? The answer will depend on how much stability the organization has, how much change your teachers and students can take, and whether the change really has any benefit. progressive learning or training schools will be more disruptive than traditional schools, but then teachers have greater opportunities to learn new things and to progress professionally in progressive schools than in traditional schools. Ultimately a lot depends on the person who is being subjected to disruption. The experiential concept of pedagogy or even for that effect, the expeditionary form of teaching can be as disruptive as possible, but then it works quite well in lower classes than in senior classes!
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