Fernando Reimers
Building Entrepreneurial
Organizations to Make Learning
in School Relevant
Innovations Case Discussion:
iDiscoveri
The chronicle of the journey of the iDiscoveri team as they developed the XSEED
Living Knowledge System, an approach to improving the quality of education in
Indien, demonstrates that there is room for entrepreneurs to innovate in education
and to help fill the gap in the quality of education. This quality gap affects the vast
majority of the world’s children, who have gained access to school as the result of
the reforms and innovations of the last four centuries, which made basic education
accessible to most around the world.
The achievement of universal schooling was the result of a series of innova-
tions introduced by policy and social entrepreneurs who built the global architec-
ture that sustains compulsory access to basic education. The first among those
innovators was Jon Amos Comenius, a Moravian minister who, upon reflection on
the sources of violence and conflict, concluded in the seventeenth century that the
foundation of peace rested in educating all people. This novel idea formed the
foundation of national public education systems, a social innovation that would
expand to a number of countries in Europe over the next two centuries. Central to
the development of public education systems were technological innovations that
made it possible to educate large numbers of children, with a limited number of
skilled teachers, at low cost. Chief among them was the monitorial system of edu-
cation, developed by Joseph Lancaster in the early nineteenth century, welche
allowed teachers to be assisted by students in a system of peer education in which
a narrow, well-defined curriculum could be taught by more advanced students, oder
Fernando M. Reimers is the Ford Foundation Professor of International Education at
the Harvard Graduate School of Education. He teaches courses on educational inno-
vation and social entrepreneurship, and on education policy and instructional
improvement. He is the founding director of the International Education Policy
Programm.
© 2010 Fernando Reimers
Innovationen / Frühling 2010
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Fernando Reimers
monitors, to students with homogeneous levels of ability and knowledge. Das
basic architecture of education institutions as centers where learning is structured
around a prescribed curriculum, sliced in sufficiently narrow bits so they could be
managed by instructors of limited knowledge and skills, to students grouped by
age and levels of knowledge—that is, grades—is still the dominant form of school
organization two centuries after it was designed.
A third innovation in the expansion of universal schooling extended access to
the vast majority of the world’s children, including those born in the developing
Welt. The innovation, a short text containing 30 articles, was the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights, a global compact designed to underwrite global
peace and stability. Article 26 in the compact affirmed that every person has a right
to education. That simple sentence in this powerful document, accompanied by
Die
Zu
institutions built
advanced those rights, würde
transform humanity. A world
in which the majority of chil-
dren did not have the opportu-
nity to set foot in a school has
become one in which most
children enroll in school and
complete at least several years
of schooling.
The chief challenge
confronting educators today is
that while many children
indeed spend a number of
years in school, many appear to
learn little during those years.
Standing on the achieve-
ments of this first generation
of reforms that partnered the
innovation and technology of
entrepreneurs with established government systems to give each child the oppor-
tunity to be schooled, it is now time to identify a new set of challenges and to deal
with deeper discontent.
The chief challenge confronting educators today is that while many children
indeed spend a number of years in school, many appear to learn little during those
Jahre. Perhaps more importantly, they learn little that will serve to expand their
ability to achieve success in the world outside of school. This challenge calls for a
second generation of reforms that will enhance the effectiveness of schools and
make sure that what they teach indeed alters the life chances of their graduates. Als
with the first generation of reforms, this second generation will benefit from entre-
preneurs who promote innovative ideas, technologies, and creative partnerships
with governments, which regulate, Kontrolle, and finance much of the education
architecture around the globe.
There is growing consensus in the education community that teachers’ knowl-
edge and capabilities are central to addressing this second generation of education-
al challenges. There are alternative, and to some extent competing, strands in the
current debate about how to produce good teachers. One strand focuses on the
importance of attracting highly qualified individuals into the teaching profession,
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Building Entrepreneurial Organizations to Make Learning in School Relevant
another on the importance of high-quality early education, and the third stresses
the importance of effective, ongoing professional development throughout teach-
ers’ careers. Approaches to professional development range from facilitating effec-
tive pedagogical practices with curriculum and instructional materials and script-
ed instructional guides, to emphasizing the development of teachers’ professional
knowledge and informed judgment to help them determine the most suitable ped-
agogical practices for particular contexts and students.
Schule
to entire
Building a knowledge base that can inform the debate on how to provide each
student with a good teacher, one who is capable of offering effective and relevant
Ausbildung, is a complex undertaking that requires systematic study and action.
Much of the research on instructional quality has been generated in quasi-labora-
tory conditions or in studies involving
a small number of classrooms, welche
limits the generalizability of the find-
Systeme.
ings
Darüber hinaus, much of
that research
focuses on effective pedagogies or
teacher practices, not on how to pro-
duce teachers who are effective in
institutional settings. daher, a cen-
tral question in the enterprise of
teacher professional development is
not what approaches can best equip
teachers with the necessary skills and
Verständnis, but what approaches
to professional development can scale-
up and sustain teachers’ effectiveness
in the institutions where they work. Es
is that ability to scale-up that distin-
guishes the first generation of reforms,
which brought each child in the world to a school, from budding second-genera-
tion reforms, which have yet to ensure that those children learn something of value
once they get to school.
iDiscoveri was established
to achieve quality
education at scale, Und
that focus on scale is what
has driven a critical
examination of their work
and results to produce
significant organizational
learning.
iDiscoveri’s journey in developing the XSEED Living Knowledge System began
with an initial focus on professional development that helped teachers develop
skills and capabilities, primarily through workshops based on reflection on past
Erfahrung. That focus has now shifted to professional development that supports
teacher practice with scripted lesson plans and instructional resources for stu-
dents, as well as training for teachers and principals. According to Anustup Nayak,
the latter approach has proved to be more scalable than the training workshops as
an approach to support changes in instructional practice. Preliminary evidence
reported in XSEED article suggests that students whose teachers receive such sup-
port perform better in a number of domains on standardized tests.
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Fernando Reimers
The system used to support teacher professional development is multifaceted.
It includes a clear instructional approach involving a five-step sequence: aim,
Aktion, analyze, apply, assess. The implementation of these steps is supported by an
academic plan, a series of curriculum manuals with lesson plans specifying how to
teach each concept, workbooks and content books for students, practice-based
training for teachers and principals, and a program that frequently assesses stu-
dents’ skills and shares the results with students, Lehrer, and parents.
As reported in the article, this system provides scaffolding that ensures that
every teacher performs more effectively, in contrast to the effects of the training
workshops, which seem to have a lasting impact only for the best teachers.
The main contribution of this article is not in settling the question of how best
to provide all students with good teachers, even though the preliminary results are
encouraging in this respect. The most important contribution of this case is that it
demonstrates the positive role social entrepreneurs can play in stimulating educa-
tion innovation in a way that is disciplined, results oriented, sensitive to the needs
of customers, and able to learn from experience and research. iDiscoveri was estab-
lished to achieve quality education at scale, and that focus on scale is what has driv-
en a critical examination of their work and results to produce significant organi-
zational learning. Their search for innovation was fueled by a desire to find a mar-
ket for high-quality teacher professional development. The entrepreneurs leading
this journey in innovation did not seek the shelter of grants or donations from
foundations or angel investors, but instead designed a product that could be sold
at a competitive price, building a business model that increased the likelihood of
scalability and sustainability. Because these entrepreneurs viewed the beneficiaries
of their services as their clients—the people for whom their service proposition
was most valuable—they strived to understand their clients’ needs and constantly
sought feedback from those they aimed to serve. What they learned through this
process led to a fundamental redesign of their product to make it more scalable,
and thus better suited to the teachers working in the communities they serve.
The exponential growth in the number of schools using XSEED in the last five
Jahre, a direct result of this redesign, speaks well not only for the potential of this
innovation to scale-up, but also about the virtues of building mechanisms and
processes that allow an entrepreneurial organization to innovate continuously in
the search for improvement. In this practice, iDiscoveri makes a most important
contribution—teaching by example—to the teachers and students it seeks to serve,
and modeling a way that education can remain effective and relevant.
Social entrepreneurs like those who led iDiscoveri clearly have much to offer
in the ongoing struggle to make sure that what children learn in school has prac-
tical value. Societies and governments that create a welcoming, supportive climate
for energetic, disciplined, and capable leaders to build social enterprises that can
address this challenge will lead the world in extending Comenius’ dream, aus
offering equal access to school to providing true opportunity to develop talent—
perhaps even to achieve peace.
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