BFTP: Is educational experimentation ethical?

A weekend Blue Skunk "feature" will be a revision of an old post. I'm calling this BFTP: Blast from the Past. Original post(s) April 7, 2006 and April 9, 2006. This is mash-up of the two. Go back and read the comments by Miguel Guhlin and Wes Fryer among others who took me to task on these posts.

Now one of the problems with being an administrator is that you start thinking like one after a while. The lure of the dark side (or as  Miguel would say "Gadget Gestapo, the Network Nazi") is formidable. Here are some questions that to me get at the heart of the control vs. creativity question [related to what teachers can do with school owned computers].

These are questions I don't have a good answer to. Questions that come from the dark, cynical side of the force...

• Does technology management come down to a choice between reliability/security and creativity/experimentation? If it is not possible to have both, which best serves student interests?
• Why should a teacher be given any more latitude to be "creative" with a computer than an accountant? Why should a teacher not be required to use district adopted software, much as they are required to use district adopted reading series or textbooks?
• Should a teacher experiment rather using established best practices? (A medical doctor who "experiments" on his patients would be considered unethical - that job is for specially trained research scientists.)

I am especially interested in the last question. So much of what is being written about in the educational technology blogosphere promotes the experimental use of technology with students. At what point do we need to ask ourselves is this healthy for students? Without studies showing that student blogging or writing in wikispace or the cool thing du jour increases student learning, am I acting professionally? What is the difference between untried methods and crackpot methods except one's point of view? (If I wear green socks and stand on my head as I deliver  lectures in Latin, I know student achievement will go up. But your ideas about using computers with kids are wacko!)

I'm not satisfied that either experimentation or even creativity by teachers is in-and-of-itself a prima facie good. I'm not convinced that teaching is an art, nor should it be. I'm worried that we have the potential of doing as much harm with new approaches as we have of doing good.

Why should we treat our children's intellectual health any differently than we do our children's physical health?

For those teachers who wish to deviate from research-based best practices, established curricula, and adopted resources - who wish to use either technology or leeches, the following requirements ought to be in place:

1. The purpose of the changed practice needs to be clearly stated in terms of a student outcome.
2. There needs to be a quantifiable method of measuring the effect of the new practice.
3. The result of the experiment/creative approach is shared with other professionals in such manner that it can be replicated.
4. The rigor of the above requirements should be high, all experiments should be externally monitored, and all data should be statistically validated.

Would we ask any less of those whom we entrust our kids physical health?

One of the reasons that we have NCLB is that the educational establishment itself never addressed its own accountability to the satisfaction of the public. Now we are chaffing under the short-sighted (but measurable) metrics non-educators have placed on our shoulders. If we are to be creative in our methodology, to use new technology tools, to emphasize new skills over basic skills, we better damn well take the time to make accountability a part of our efforts - and respect parents' and the public's need for it.  Do we really want to continue to be known as good-hearted, but fuzzy headed, artistes?