Creating old meaning: When new concepts are repurposed to mask an absence of change.

Michael Fullan (see The New Meaning of Educational Change) argues that the key to educational change is the creation of new, shared meaning to define novel contexts that help us address issues of concern. Through the decades we’ve seen a range of constructed meanings that have changed significantly how we view education, for ex. “student-centered learning”, and especially in Europe, “lifelong learning”. However, as novel concepts are picked up there is the potential that they will be repurposed to maintain the status quo, i.e. using new meaning to refer to old stuff. I call this tendency, “creating old meaning”. Here are some examples of how old meaning is created in relation to educational technology:

Teachers’ powerpoints = “technology integration”
Glorified computer labs = “classroom of the future”
PDF copies of printed materials = “e-books”
Youtube videos = “interactive content”

By creating old meaning using new concepts, educators and policymakers are able to present a semblance of progress where there is, in fact, none, or at best, very little.

My point is this, when actual change occurs it probably isn’t possible, or at least shouldn’t be possible, to describe what has changed using old concepts. Thus, new concepts emerge by necessity. However, the opposite doesn’t hold true, i.e. that new concepts can be, and commonly are, repurposed to describe things that haven’t changed, thereby giving them an air of newness. Insofar as educational change is a preferred goal, policymakers, educators, researchers and stakeholders have ample reason to be weary of those instances where the “new” is little more than a re-creation of the old.