Many educational researchers and practitioners, in particular Phil Schlechty (Leading for Learning, 2009), are proposing a new view of the student–as a customer rather than a product of the school, as a 21st century knowledge worker rather than a 20th century factory worker, and as an intellectual volunteer rather than a physical conscript. This view is controversial since it has many implications for the type of work students are given and the way they are treated.  

Educators who view students as customers provide:

Work that is intellectually, socially, and emotionally engagingOpportunities for intrinsic rewards such as pride in relevant and authentic productsLearning environments that are personalized, flexible, and enabled by the latest technologies

How would this description of today’s students be viewed by your staff members and why?

What needs to change from a leadership perspective to shift the paradigm to student as customer?

What are the implications  in terms of curriculum, pedagogy, classroom management, and assessment practices?

I agree with the notion that students are volunteers.  In order for students to learn at high levels, they must be engaged in their work. 

Students are bombarded by so many sources of media.  We can share information through a lecture format, but students can decide to tune this out and thus not learn.  

To engage students causes us (educators) to know our students and design work that appeals to their interests – - that causes them to want to do the work.  This is why lesson design is so important and part of lesson design is knowing our students – - knowing our “who.”  By knowing our who, we must design work and/or experiences that cause students to want to do the work and ultimately learn the content at high levels.

Trussville City Schools has actually been in existence for five years and have worked with the Schlechty Center since our inception.  At first, this was very hard for some of our teachers and even community members to embrace.  It is a major paradigm shift from how we traditionally think about students’ role.  Historically, we have thought  . . . I taught it (the content) and they learn it. But this is really superficial and in many cases regurgitation of facts, but not profound learning. 

We know so much more about learning now.  We know that for students to learn at high levels (profound knowledge); they need to be deeply engaged in their work.  Their curiosity must be peeked; they must see relevance to the real world so that they do not viewed their school work as busy work, irrelevant, or a waste of their time.  So, we have grown in our understanding and appreciation for the notion of students as customers. 

To do this, the leadership (especially the superintendent, principals, and board members) must be committed to this belief and then work together to build capacity.  In other words, create experiences that cause teachers, parents, and community to understand why it is crucial that we must respect students as learners and see them as our customer. 

One of my favorite quotes is from Phil Schlechty, “Students don’t learn from work they do not do.”  Once teachers spend time thinking about their “who” (viewing students as their customers) and begin designing work that causes students to be engaged and thus learn the content at high levels, teachers become affirmed and then see the value of creating work and learning experiences tailored to the students’ interests and motivation (but the content is non-negotiable). 

For this to occur, it is essential for leaders to create powerful learning experiences for teachers and staff to develop an understanding of how viewing students as customers increases student learning. Once there is a critical mass (enough people understand and embrace this), it starts to change the overall culture of the school and system.

Our teachers started by identifying difficult to teach and hard to learn concepts.  They ask the question, is this difficult concept worthy of design?  If so, teachers work together to create a learning experience that causes students to be deeply engaged in their work.  When students are engaged in their school work, student behavior improves. 

Assessment is a slippery slope.  I worry that some of the things we teach are not assessed on standardized tests.  For example, we are really focusing on helping students think mathematically, not just solve algorithms. This still remains a challenge, which is why we really need to rethink and revise some state mandated assessments. However, local assessments can be tailored to assess students’ level of understanding.  I still think we have a long way to go on assessing students’ learning.

Currently, the national (or state or provincial) curriculum provides the standards for what needs to (must) be learned/accomplished in various subject-areas and grade levels.

How can we re-design the national curriculum so that it will force all of us in the system, from administrators to teachers, students and parents, to implement education 3.0?

We definitely need to make learning reflective of 3.0 education.  This really makes learning come alive for students because networking and with others across the globe and solving real problems makes their work more authentic and meaningful.  However, I am not sure that this should be a top down approach (i.e. National Standards).  I really think local communities need to grapple with this and in turn teaches design what this would look like and implement.  Schools and school systems would then network and share ideas (as we do now) and these innovative practices would bubble up – - not as a way to make every school or system replicate and look the same, but to inspire others to be innovative and redesign schools so that they are true learning organizations, in which students experience profound learning.

I definitely believe that we need to rethink the way in which we conceptualize students, but student as customer to be is problematic. Teachers do need to rethink how we view students, but to put students in the role of consumers waiting to be serviced is too passive for me. I prefer to see my students as my partners in this learning process.

Student as customer is not a trivial transfer of responsibility but may yet be worthy of consideration. In many parts of the world teachers see their primary task to be to maintain discipline. In reality, taking responsibility for someone else’s behavior can be onerous. It is possible that one perspective of the customer concept is related to the idea of mutual engagement in the learning process in an environment of respect. That is something that could impact the idea of discipline by making that discipline internally rather than externally driven. For that reason alone it may have value. Teachers’ abilities to adjust in the near term is something that may change the cost benefit ratio, while assessment in a student as customer environment may open new avenues for learning.

More worrying is the idea of large classrooms where each student is clamoring to be heard, and be engaged. It may be worth considering that those who work as trainers to adult audiences are quite accustomed to the idea of student as customer, and one does not hear many protests about that, so presumably it can be done successfully. Working with children may of course present different challenges.