Technology+Leadership+Book+Summary

Disrupting Class: How Disruptive Innovation Will Change the Way the World Learns a 2008 book by Clayton Christensen, Michael Horn, and Curtis Johnson describes an innovative approach to education reform. The authors came from the Harvard School of Business and approached the educational reform problem from a business model that describes how to change as well as what to change and why other models have failed. The first aspect that the book addressed was why other models have failed. Christensen describes that “the billions schools have spent on computers have had little effect on how teachers teach and students learn—save possibly to increase costs and draw resources away from other school priorities.”(p. 72-73) He describes several other processes that had the potential to change education have also failed mostly because of the way that the processes were attempted to be implemented. He describes how education has become a monopolistic government entity which is being protected by unions and special interest groups. Most changes that have tried to happen with technology to change education back to student centric education have been unsuccessful and usually leave the computers on the side of the room maybe supporting the monolithic instructional model. Christensen describes in multiple case studies how businesses failed and succeeded in true innovation. He also describes two terms detail that there are different levels of innovation: disruptive innovations and sustaining innovations. Sustaining innovations are what most companies do on a daily basis by improving, "their products at a much faster pace than customers need so that products, which at one point were not good enough, ultimately pack in more features and functions than customers can use. By illustration, every year car companies give us new and improved engines, but most of us can't use all of the engine power they give us, because speed limits and traffic jams get in the way."(Christensen p. 45-46) In contrast, disruptive innovations actually bring a product to the market that, "actually is not as good as what companies historically had been selling... But by making the product affordable and simple to use, the disruptive innovation befits people who had been unable to consume the... product"(Christensen p. 47). An example given was the computer industry in the early 80's. Computer companies like DEC were producing bigger and faster mainframes that were in competition to be the best machine for businesses this was an example of sustaining motivation, but Apple came along and made a small personal computer for the individual consumer with nowhere near the power of a mainframe but it created a new market a disruptive innovation. Christensen suggests that education should be transformed in much the same way by businesses and parents finding niche markets that can help the students that are on the fringe of learning either at the top(excelling beyond what schools can offer) or on the bottom(disenfranchised students who struggle because their learning style is different than the instructional style of schools). These markets would provide a showcase to demonstrate an effective model to schools and communities about effective student-centric education. Christensen believes that there are also many opportunities for companies to develop platforms that give students instruction based on their intelligence and cater to their needs without showing all of the other models something that cannot be done in a traditional classroom. Christensen believes this will solve many but not all of the disruptive and attendance issues in classes as students are able to be engaged in school and excited in the classroom. Christenson throughout the book painted the picture of Randall Circle High School a school that is struggling to meet accountability standards. It has overachieving students and underachieving students. It has teachers that have taught the exact same lesson to parents and now to their kids. It has parents that blame every possibility at PTA meanings for their child's lack of success. Most importantly though it shows a school in transition that is becoming an engaging place for students that traditionally struggled and depicts what Christenson's vision for education is in the not so distant future.