The public education system that was born during the industrial revolution of the nineteenth century is slowly, painfully being transformed. New technologies and better understandings of how cognition and emotions impact learning are encouraging increasing numbers of elected officials, parents and educators to advocate replacing standardized, one-size-fits-all schooling with empowered teachers and students working in customized learning environments.
Predictably, these changes are generating strong political resistance from school boards, teacher unions, PTAs and others with long-standing ties to the status quo. This political struggle is playing out in numerous venues, including neighborhood associations, school boards, state legislatures, the courts and Congress.
Thomas Kuhn’s 1962 classic, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, is required reading for anyone wanting to better understand this conflict. Kuhn’s descriptions of how various scientific fields have progressed historically illustrates the psychology and sociology at play when communities are challenged to reconsider their most basic beliefs and understandings. His work explains why individuals and communities resist change, and why this resistance, while often frustrating and counterproductive, can also help ensure any changes are genuine improvements.
Kuhn argued that scientific progress occurs in the context of a comprehensive set of assumptions he called a paradigm. The word has been abused and misapplied in the decades since Kuhn published his book, but he saw a paradigm as a worldview that operates as the lens through which a scientific community perceives and understands its field. Continue Reading →