Standing in a classroom at University of Toronto Schools in the spring of 2004, global education consultant Dr. Michael Fullan, former Dean at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE), uttered one of his most memorable lines. “People only call me a guru, ” he joked, “because they can’t spell charlatan.” Appointed, for a second time, as a Senior Education Advisor to the Ontario government (2004-2018), he was in a buoyant mood after being welcomed back from a a period of exile (1997 to 2004) guiding Tony Blair’s New Labour education reforms.
Today, sixteen years later, the global education consultant still ranks 20th out of the top 30 “Global Education Gurus” as posted annually by All American Entertainment (AAE), the Durham, NC-based speakers’ bureau. Michael Fullan, O.C., now billed as Global Leadership Director, New Pedagogies for Deep Learning, still commands fees of $10,000 to $20,000 for his North American speaking engagements.
Now considered “a worldwide authority” on education reform, he occupies considerable territory in Education Guru Land. Preaching system-wide reform, advising ministers of education, and mingling with thought leaders, he’s far removed from the regular teacher’s classroom. He’s also more likely to be found in the company of other members of the pantheon, TED Talk legend Sir Ken Robinson (#8), school leadership expert Andy Hargreaves (#21), and Finnish education promoter Pasi Sahlberg (#28).
The world’s leading education gurus seem to have had a hypnotic effect on policy-makers and superintendents in the entire K-12 education sector. The profound influence of Fullan and his global reform associates is cemented by an intricate network of alliances which, in the case of Ontario, encompasses the Council of Directors of Education (CODE), the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE), the Ontario Principals’ Council (OPC), and a friendly parent organization. People for Education.
Challenging the hegemony of this entrenched educational change establishment is a formidable undertaking. “Teacher populism” inspired by British teacher Tom Bennett and exemplified in the spontaneous eruption of researchED from 2013 to 2018 made serious inroads, particularly in Britain, Western Europe, and Australia. It faced stronger headwinds in the United States and Canada, where the progressive education consensus is more all-pervasive. The fear and panic generated by empowered teachers (working around education schools) has sparked not only seismic reactions, but the closing of ranks.
One of the most recent responses, produced by Cambridge University School of Education lecturer Steven Watson, attempted, not altogether successfully, to paint “teacher populism” as a movement of the New Right and offered up a piece of Twitter feed ethnography smacking of contemporary “cancel culture.” That article completely ignored the fundamental underpinning of researchED — the crowds of educators attending Saturday PD conferences, paying your own registration fees, and engaging with teacher-researchers who speak without remuneration.
Curiously absent from Watson’s article was any reference to dozens of top-notch researchED speakers, including British-born student assessment expert Dylan Wiliam (#11 – 2020 – $10,000-$20,000), AFT magazine cognitive psychologist Dan T. Willingham, and How to Learn Mathematics specialist Barbara Oakley, who regularly speak without remuneration at such conferences.
researchED emerged to fill a gaping hole in K-12 teacher development. The researchED conference Model is decidedly different. Conferences are held on Saturdays in schools rather than hotel conference centres. Two dozen or more teacher researchers or practicing teachers are featured presenting in actual classrooms. researchED events showcase speakers reflecting a wide range of perspectives, spark lively pedagogical debates, and are increasingly diverse in their composition. Many of the short 45-minute presentations by volunteer presenters focus on contested curricular or pedagogical issues, including education myths, explicit instruction, cognitive load, early reading, mathematics skills, and teacher assessment workload.
Over 45,000 teachers on four continents attended dozens of researchED events over the seven years before COVID-19 hit us with full force. The London-based teacher research organization publishes its own bi-annual free magazine and is producing, in collaboration with John Catt Educational Publishing, a series of researchED guides to the latest evidence-based research. Since April 2020, the movement has continued with free virtual PD conferences under the banner of researchED Home.
Today’s education world is full of high-priced speakers who are featured at state, provincial and regional professional development conferences, mostly at events where the registration fees are many times higher than that of a researchED conference anywhere in the world. Dr. Fullan’s speaking fees pale in comparison with more messianic gurus such as Harlem Children’s Zone founder Geoffrey Canada ($50,000 – $100,000) and global tech researcher Sugata Mitra (#19 –$30,000 – $50,000), but he still commands fees comparable to American public school champion Diane Ravitch (#1 -2020), OECD Education director Andreas Schleicher, progressive education advocate Alfie Kohn, and Alberta ed tech innovator George Couros.
Almost forty years since the the publication of The Meaning of Educational Change (1983), Fullan’s real influence is reflected in the missionary work of his extensive Educational Change entourage, including Pearson International advisor Sir Michael Barber, Welsh education change professor Alma Harris, former York Region superintendent Lyn Sharratt, and OISE School Leadership professor Carol Campbell.
Although Dr. Hargreaves was mentored by Fullan at OISE, he’s branched out and, while at Boston’s Lynch School of Education, generated (with colleague Dennis Shirley) an interconnected network of his own. The Fullan-Hargreaves educational change constellation sustains two academic journals and is closely aligned with two American educational enterprises, Corwin Educational Publishing and PD resource provider Solution Tree. That alliance has produced a steady stream of books, articles and workshops inspired by the global school change theorists.
The prevailing educational reform consensus has largely gone unchallenged for the past few decades. Reading Steven Watson’s thinly-veiled academic assault on “teacher populism” demonstrates how little it takes to rattle the cage of the ideologues actively resisting teacher-driven research, the science of learning, and challenges to current pedagogical orthodoxy. Equipping today’s classroom teachers (and learners) with what the late American education reformer Neil Postman once termed “built-in shockproof crap detectors” is as threatening now as it was a few decades ago.
What sustains the hegemony of today’s educational reform establishment? How much of that controlling influence is perpetuated by education gurus committed to upholding the prevailing consensus and defending a significant number of uncontested theories? Will the recent COVID-19 education shutdown change the terms of engagement? Should “teacher populism” be dismissed as subversive activity or approached as a fresh opportunity to confront some of the gaps between philosophical theory and actual classroom practice?
Educhatter 
To answer your first question: frankly, laziness on behalf of the educrats who work at boards and ministries. It’s easier to promote the popular because they appear without threat to their own performance. The crats are too busy (or lazy) to sift through the evidence or even DO or allow the research that leads to alternate pedagogical results.
I disagree wth Doretta,i It’s much deeper than that. They don`t care about education research. They care about their views. OISE has been an advisor to the MOE since forever,in my field of passion, Dyslexia and the Science of Reading. I don`t just tub thump for phonics. A mountain of gold standard longitudinal studies support my views but it falls on deaf ears.
The major publishers, Pearson,Solution Tree and Nelson, support these people and their views and writings. It`s an insider`s game and most parents don`t know this is the case. (Edited)
My paper “The Glass is Half Fullan” circulated widely. When he is right one wants to say he has a profound sense of the obvious. Small classes, ECE are nice.
Thanks Captain Obvious.
Jo Anne I think you are also right. It’s a bit of both.
One thing about “reform” movements of all kinds is that they never know when to stop. They begin with a series of what are usually sensible, probably laudable principles and goals, and they work diligently at making changes to bring about their objectives. But eventually that work is done, or is asymptotically approaching “done,” and then the question is what comes next? Usually the ideas get pushed further and further, until the “reform” has become the orthodox and “progressive” becomes maintaining the status quo. This has been the case in Ontario education for close on 20 years.
It is unfortunate that the progress of education reform should die somewhere between laziness and willful neglect. The 2018 World Development Report – ‘LEARNING to Realize Education’s Promise’ – outlined three characteristics of complex education systems, which I think are a large part of the reason why reform is difficult. As stated, ‘First, systems are opaque. Many of the goals pursued by these actors are hard to observe, as are many of the interactions among the actors, whether they take place in the classroom or in the bureaucracy. Second, systems are “sticky”: reforms to improve learning are hard to launch, and they take time to bear fruit. Third, implementing reforms successfully requires capacity that many bureaucracies lack.’ In short, nothing will change until we tackle those three aspects.
Adam makes several valid points which add to my thinking as i prepare a response to be posted tomorrow. You should know re Michael Fullan that I first met as a classroom teacher in the mid 1970s. He became my boss 2 decades later. Generally I am quite +ve about him and his efforts, but as Adam notes this stuff is quite the challenge.
You have a way of raising the tone and level of discussion, Adam. Wondering if global gurus like Michael Fullan contribute to the inertia. I’ve often questioned Fullan’s emphasis on “building system capacity.” To me, it seems to be a way of getting us to focus on inputs, secure enhanced funding, and that ultimately contributes to administrative build-up. It happened in Ontario under Dalton McQuinty and Kathleen Wynne.
Well said Adam!
The influence of the “hegemony”, much of it actually based on real evidence-based research as Doug Little suggests, is largely imaginary. Political beliefs and the beliefs of classroom teachers count more than “facts”. In the area of social studies and history education (my fields) studies going back to J Carlton Bell in 1917 to Bernie Hodgett’s in the late 60s (What Culture? What Heritage?) to John Goodlad’s A Place Called School (1984) note is dominated, regardless of what official curricula might say, by too much teacher talk, too little student engagement, little effort to make study relevant to student life or to the future as citizens: I noted this in K-12 math in a previous thread. When I was a student in the 1950s and 60s we learned mostly English political and military history full of names and dates and no sense of how history is constructed and reconstructed based on inquiry and evidence from the past. Despite some attempted reforms in the 1970s to bring in immigration, indigenous and multicultural lenses and social history, including the roles of women, we still have a fetish on the wars. Attempts at global studies are mixed at best.
If one sees citizenship ed as important, like literacy and numeracy, then the “hegemony” has had little to offer and has not influenced politicians. One thing that a serious study of the history of education has clearly shown is that there was NEVER a time when literacy and numeracy were up to the standards some of us may have imagined them to be. Instead, the history of education has too often been a history of untested assumptions. As for the speaking fees of the “gurus”, they fall, sadly, into this history.
Thank you, John, for digging into the attendant issues. “How far does ‘hegemony’ get you?” is a great question. Inertia runs deep and so do entrenched ways of managing, teaching and thinking. That may be why Michael Fullan is rarely short of school change contracts.
Credibility, Part I
This blog post by Paul Bennett could very well be a starting point for some profound dialogue about the state of education in our current era. In fact, it is so pregnant with potential usefulness that it must be dissected, piece-by-piece, before any overarching insights or calls-to-action can ensue.
The first paragraph kicks off with a cute story about Michael Fullan’s seemingly humble joke about people calling him a “guru” because they can’t spell “charlatan”. But, please, let’s see this deflection as — maybe — a confession? See the difference between guru as expert and charlatan as imposter, fraud, fake, swindler, con, quack, counterfeit, pretender, sham, snake oil salesman . . .
Some quick homework brings up the influence of Fullan’s tenure (1997-2004) “guiding Tony Blair’s New Labour education reforms in the UK.”
Two newspaper stories don’t even need full reading — the headlines and quick summaries tell it all:
– Failed, failed, failed: Blair said his priorities were education, education, education. But Labour billions did nothing to raise standards, says report, Sept 12, 2011
• UK’s teenagers slipped down world league tables in crucial subjects
• Schools among most socially segregated across world
A lot of new research beginning to say there is absolutely no relationship between GDP growth, GDP per capita, national well being, and standardized test results or trajectory.
Are you trying to distract us, Doug? The issue is the effectiveness of Tony Blair’s New Labour education policies — and the role played by Sir Michael and Michael Fullan.
Credibility, Part II
– Bottom of the class: Blair pledged ‘education, education, education’. But after 10 years of Labour and billions being spent, Britain’s schools were actually worse, Mar 03, 2016
• Blair made ‘modernisation’ of schools a key part of his job as PM
• But civil servants claimed exam success was due to ‘dumbing them down’
• The number of youngsters not in education or employment also rose
• More than £800m was spent to fight truancy but cases actually increased
• By 2007, 40,000 more children were going to private schools than in 1997
In response to that last news story, Blair said to the BBC: “Education system ‘toughest to reform’, Mar 13. He said: “You have major interests that often stand in the way of it [reform]”
One must ask: In view of the glaring counter productivity and projected long-term harm of Fullan’s education reform contribution in the UK, how can he continue to be a leading “global education consultant”? Or, is blocking real reform the agenda of these consultants? Or, is perpetuating their empires so easy because of gullible publics? Or is there some political agenda besides true education that is at play?
Truly, the very credibility of education in these trying times is under greater scrutiny than ever!
Good to hear from you again,Tunya. You have added to the commentary by delving into what actually happened in the UK under the New Labour education program.
It’s happening, again, in Scotland, where the SNP Premier Nicola Spurgeon and her Education Minister have re-assembled the Fullan-Hargreaves entourage. It would be interesting to look more closely at their involvement in the introduction and implementation of the Scottish Programme of Excellence.
Canada is NOT the UK (neither England or Scotland) whose class systems, especially in England, affects whatever education changes attempted or not. Perhaps that is a lesson from the Fullan et al work there.
Guru List Challenged, Part I
The annual “Global Education Gurus” list looks like nothing more than a vanity project contrived to stroke the egos of speakers at education gatherings. An entertainment group that is a booking agent for agencies that are well funded by taxpayer dollars, after all, organizes the list. Out of the list of 30, perhaps only one speaker dares to rock the boat of the establishment. That is Salman Khan who provides free curriculum to thousands. All the others are in one way or other wedded by design to the compulsory public schooling systems of the world. And, even if proposing radical changes, they do little to alter the status quo.
That the government should control education is taken for granted. In fact, the state’s interest should not only dominate but also displace competition. Such is the general message of Guru #28, Pasi Sahlberg. His book, Finnish Lessons 2.0 is brimming with “welfare state” pronouncements:
• “Not only does the education system operate well in Finland, but it is part of a well-functioning democratic welfare state.” (163)
• “The Finnish welfare system guarantees all children the safety, health, nutrition, and moral support that they need to learn well in school.”(188)
Nothing like a great high quality state education system that is so good the tiny privateers hardly bothers.
Guru List Challenged, Part II
So, using the opportunity of the pandemic, it was reported (in the Globe and Mail, Aug 12 – Does Carney for Morneau really help?) that Prime Minister Trudeau is thinking of moving past being “incrementally progressive” but to be “bold”, “think big”, “take a more aggressive approach to being progressive”, in other words to greatly expand the welfare state in Canada.
And yet, in a story today in the Globe we have the center-fold devoted to how parents are hiving-off from organized public schooling to create “learning pods” or “education hubs”. This is a fast-growing phenomenon. Search those terms on the Internet: Parents are organizing so that their children are safe and away from dehumanizing rules — masks, distancing, cohorts, etc. They want education for their children so they become self-reliant and not dependent on government for everything.
Would an enlarged welfare state thwart this kind of spontaneity of parents?
If the grossly over-institutionalized education system is finally being shook up from its assumed domination (hegemony) aren’t we being reminded of — 50 years ago —Ivan Illich preaching deinstitutionalization, deschooling, learning webs, etc. All foretold.