“When I choose to see the good side of things, I’m not being naive. It is strategic and necessary. It’s how I learned to survive through everything.”
Waymond, from Everything, Everywhere, All at Once
At last we’ve managed to produce a full analysis of the feedback received in response to the survey distributed via the FutureMakers website and social media channels earlier in the year. Our grateful thanks to everyone who contributed.
The survey asked two simple questions about people’s perceptions about the change we’re experiencing in education:
- What’s driving change? – list or describe the things you can think of that are currently driving change in education? Be specific, think of things in your own context that are impacting the way you and your organisation are working.
- What are the roadblocks? – list or describe the things you consider are roadblocks to change – e.g. the things that inhibit or slow change down, the things that make change difficult, that cause change efforts to deviate or stop altogether.
These two survey questions were intentionally broad, in order to generously capture what respondents are thinking and feeling, rather than restrict responses to a set of preconceived ideas.
The responses received came from a broad range of people, mostly educators, across all levels of the education system in New Zealand and internationally. The responses were diverse and sometimes random, providing us with a rich data set for analysis.
Informed by the responses to the FutureMakers “Roadblocks and Drivers” survey, we conclude that the factors driving change in education are varied and complex, with influences coming from a range of sources, including government policy, educational research, community needs, student and parent expectations, and technological advances.
The dataset also reveals a comprehensive list of perceived roadblocks in the New Zealand education system, indicating complex and interconnected issues. The most prevalent challenges include initiative overload leading to fatigue and lack of follow-through, inadequate resources in terms of staffing and funding, resistance to change driven by a focus on tradition, and difficulties related to leadership, such as vision deficits and poor communication.
It is important to note that this is not a complete analysis upon which to base any definitive assertions. Rather, this reflects an early phase of the recursive process of thematic analysis, involving engaging and re-engaging with the data, generating themes, reviewing relevant literature, and developing theories through further inquiry.
Towards the end of the paper we’ve identified three ‘meta’ themes, which we’ve summarised with some practical suggestions for education leaders to act on in order to address some of these drivers and roadblocks in their own context.
