
“When written in Chinese, the word ‘crisis’ is composed of two characters. One represents danger, the other represents opportunity” John F Kennedy
There are numerous frameworks and theories behind ciris management. Two favourites of mine include Five Stages of Crisis Management from Jack Welch (as described by Tom Morrison) and the crisis management model from Gonzalez-Herrero and Pratt (1995)
The approach builds on these and goes beyond the crisis, shaping this as an opportunity that will occur across three stages:
1. Urgency:
This is not to say that student experience is being forgotten and there isn’t a lot of exemplar practice out there, but in general, most people are focused on retaining learning through access to resources.
The opportunity here is to source the many valuable resources already being utilised and sharing these within schools, between schools, across jurisdictions and further afield. Professional Learning already available or currently developed will support teachers and learners to gain the most from their learning experiences as they undertake them at home and / or online.
2. Improvement:
This phase will kick in as the urgency settles and online / learning at home becomes the norm for students and teachers, all parties will start investigating opportunities to improve learning experiences. This will also allow us to reimagine the opportunities for, and the meaning of learning that doesn’t take place in traditional environments and contexts, embracing those in our communities, both physically and virtually.
Across this stage there will be further considerations for:
- Building eLearning communities, encouraging interaction. Cooperation and feedback, and identifying and utilising the affordances of virtual communication.
- Aligning learning theories with learning online
- The changing role of the teacher: virtual tutor, facilitator, mentor
- Accessibility, copyright, safety and compliance considerations, and
- Assessment and evaluation
3. Opportunity:
The learnings from stage 2 and the continual desire to improve learning and engagement will drive this, twinned with the learnings and change that took place through Phase 2.
Authors
Kathleen Donohoe is the Director and Founder of Leading Thinking International. She supports school and industry to reimagine learning experiences across physical, virtual and social learning space, bringing national and international teaching, academic, research and executive experience. She is a Honorary research Fellow at the University of Melbourne, MGSE, with the ILETC Project. Kathleen has vast experience developing and implementing strategy for transformation, curriculum renewal and physical virtual and social learning space, including as Director, Futures Learning at NSW department of Education.