Why we resist change, and what we can do about it

No one really likes change, and schools are no exception. Here are five reasons why change hurts, and what we can do to ease the transition into an AI-supported world.

Even though we’ve had countless attempts at innovation in schools, not much has stuck. We’ve tried interactive whiteboards, VLEs, iPads, Chromebooks and the like, and none of them have led to a wholesale shift in our daily practice. We still stand at the front and deliver, and students still fill out worksheets.

The apotheosis (or perhaps nadir) of this was recently explained by my 16-year-old daughter, who told me that her history teacher asked students to stick double-sided worksheets into their books. ‘But what about the other side?’ My daughter enquired. ‘Just stick it in’ came the considered reply. True story.

But why don’t we change? Why can’t we change? Contrary to popular belief, this resistance is a profoundly human thing, not limited to the classroom. However, because of the entrenched structures of the school system it is likely that teachers are rather more prone to resistance than more agile sectors. And as I explored in an earlier article, we are teaching children who can be a real pain if we don’t handle them right. And you wonder why we want to keep them facing forward with their eyes on us?

Let’s spend a moment looking at five reasons why humans in general struggle to change. I’m sure you’ll recognise most if not all of them.

1. Cognitive Dissonance

Can you remember back to when you first stepped into a classroom solo? How hopeful you were that you were going to be ‘the one’, that teacher who would make a difference? You arrive at your new school and immediately encounter the jaded, cynical physics teacher sitting in the corner of the staff room who everyone else ignored. ‘Why did you choose this profession?’ he asks you. ‘Worst choice you could have made.’

Lessons begin and, step by step, you start to wonder whether he was right. Your supported teaching practice seems a long way off: you feel totally on your own, you forget much of the instruction you were given, the students seem uncontrollable, and by the end of the day you’re exhausted and depressed.

What you experienced is known as cognitive dissonance, a feeling of disconnection between your beliefs and your actions or experiences. You believed you could make a difference on day one, yet your experiences strongly suggested otherwise. What tends then to happen is that you readjust: you may still hold on to the fact that you’ve made the right choice, and in time you feel more comfortable with the reality you now face and gain a level of control and respect that does indeed enable you to make a difference (at least to some). But you will also adapt your behaviour and your expectations to the reality you now experience. You quite simply expect less of yourself, the school the students and the profession. It’s a perfectly normal, perfectly reasonable reality check that ensures you preserve your sanity. That’s not to say that you become the jaded physics teacher by the end of day one. You have simply adapted, managed your expectations.

There are some teachers who refuse to allow this to happen, who continually fight the system at every turn, who are loved by students, quietly feared by their leadership team, and left alone. I would argue that they are in the minority: most of us (including me) go through a period of adaptation to the point where there’s no longer any cognitive dissonance and we’re able to operate effectively, doing what’s needed whilst still ensuring the students in our classes get a high degree of care and attention. However, when that dissonance does not leave, or perhaps reasserts itself (as can happen with a change of leadership of life circumstances) it’s usually time to change jobs.

When bringing anything new into a school (with AI being about as new as could be possible right now), aligning values and expectations with reality is critical. There is little point in giving an inspirational talk on your bold new future if the first comment you hear is “yes, but what about sorting the wifi and getting us some half decent laptops for staff?” You have to get the basics in place before you can shout from the rooftops your bold plans to change the world. For those whose cognitive dissonance is so strong when it comes to anything technical (the ‘you’ll never get me using that in a million years’ brigade), what you must not do is make it mandatory, threatening disciplinary action if every does not start using AI in every lesson. This goes for any introduction of innovation. Start to use it, get others using it, build the energy, and the bone fide laggards should come round soon enough. And if they don’t, does it hurt anyone? Probably not.

2. Social conformity

Allied to this is humans’ innate desire to conform, to fit, to not stand out as being somehow weird or unconventional. Every school has outliers and divergent thinkers, but in general we prefer to blend in and not call too much attention to ourselves. Each school will have its own culture, and we will tend to adapt at least our appearance to that culture. Some schools are formal and expect shirts and ties; others are casual and allow students and teachers to wear whatever they like. Most are somewhere in between, expecting teachers to look professional but not like they’ve just stepped from a board meeting.

It’s not only how we look that we adjust: our behaviour and values also change depending on the environment in which we find ourselves. This is why leadership is so critical, and why the wrong leader in a school can spell disaster. It is also why any change must come from the top: it is fruitless even the Deputy Head driving AI implementation if the Head and governors aren’t aligned. That’s why, for those of you who are not in the top position in your school, you need to start there. Present some quick wins to the Head, perhaps showing him or her how ChatGPT can immediately save them time with policies, surveys, board reports and so on. For the Head they will likely be more impressed initially by how generative AI can save them time on the more process-based elements of their job, rather than anything more transformational pedagogically. Start there and then show them its impact in the classroom. Ask to present to the board. Get them excited. Then trickle it down to the teachers and TAs. If you go about it the other way around, you’re less likely to get the backing (and perhaps the budget) that you need to move things forward.

3. Operant Conditioning

This theory states that our behaviour is shaped by its consequences, with those behaviours followed by positive outcomes more likely to be repeated than those which end up bad for us or our students. We soon learn what we are able to ‘get away with’ and where the red lines are. Over the last 30-40 years this red line has become more circumscribed which in general is a good thing in schools it’s meant safer spaces for children and the adults who teach them. However, what it can also do is stifle creativity. If you focus all your classes’ attention on getting through exams, worried about the impact of a different curricular or pedagogical approach on the final grades, then you may miss opportunities to develop other equally important skills.

In order to tackle this barrier, we need to ask ourselves what is most important in schooling. Is it a core focus on prepping for exams or is it to create the conditions for learning to be absorbing, varied and relevant? Because if children are truly immersed in the learning process, and learning experiences are carefully tailored to move students towards the knowledge, skills and understanding needed to pass tests, then success will happen. With the advent of AI comes the opportunity to finally be free of ‘teaching to the test’: if we can begin to use AI in some of the ways I have already begun to explore in other articles, then we will be well on the way to creating the sorts of schools that actually mean something to our children, as we will no longer be operantly conditioned to avoid anything that might seem even vaguely risky.

4. Self-preservation

This links to the above. If we strip away anything more superficial we are left with one fact: as humans, our ultimate instinct is to survive. In the earliest days it was ensuring we were safe from harm from wild animals or poisonous plant life. Now it is ensuring we keep our job and money in the bank to pay the bills. School teachers or leaders who push aggressively against the system are likely to find themselves out of work quite quickly, as we need a degree of conformity in order to maintain the status quo. And so we stay quiet and grumble to ourselves that if we were in charge things would be very different. Then we get into a position where we are ‘in charge’ and realise there are other pressures that push us into survival mode. If we are a professional there are always people above us who can significantly impact on our chances of success in both a positive and negative way.

It is all about adaptation. On the savannah we adapted by creating communities where some could sleep while others kept watch, later building homes where walls and doors protected from many harmful external factors. As Yuval Noah Harari explores in Sapiens, the process started during the Cognitive Revolution some 70,000 years ago, when we began to create more sophisticated social structures, moving towards a more settled status and the creation of built communities around 10,000 years ago: "The Agricultural Revolution...enabled the pursuit of an easier life, as people could now settle down in one place, grow their food, and build stronger, more permanent homes”.^⁠2

We are now in a society where, for most of us, the majority of existential threats have been eliminated from our daily life. Yet we are more anxious than we have ever been, the instances of teenage depression and self-harm are on the rise, and our addiction to screens and social media has robbed us of much human connection. Where is the self-preservation there? It is a strange anachronism for sure.

However, what AIs like ChatGPT have shown us is how they can actually make us better at what we do, providing we use them well: and this is where they are an easy sell into boardrooms, staffrooms and classrooms the world over. Because if you have a tool that enables you to write excellent schemes of work, lesson plans and resources, that can assess student work and give ideas to improve, and that can act as a mentor and guide through any topic, then this should make you more successful and stand out from the crowd. Do not currently underestimate the arbitrage potential of AI in your job right now: it is still a relatively unknown quantity, and the fact that you’re reading this article shows that you understand enough the potential to be prepared to read, learn and develop yourself. If anything, not using it stands against the desire for self-preservation. Whether or not the already well-worn mantra ‘AI won’t take your job, a person using AI will’ turns out to be true, ignoring AI now seems foolish, particularly in sectors like education where it stands to have one of the largest impacts.

5. Learned Helplessness

You may be reading this and thinking ‘yes, that is all well and good, but let’s have a reality check. How much can we really change our current system? And even if we do make some small tweaks here and there, the fact remains that we are not in control of outcomes and never will be. So what’s the point in even trying?’

If so, you’re exhibiting what is known as learned helplessness, when we come to believe that our efforts to change the system are futile, leading us to adapt our attitude and behaviour rather than to continue to fight against it. It’s the ‘c’est la vie’ and ‘it is what it is’ attitude, and in education it’s alive and kicking. If we can do nothing to change university entrance requirements for example, or our SLT hammers progress 8 subjects over the arts, then what can we do?

The answer is to work within our sphere of influence and slowly build it out by showing we know what we are talking about when it comes to the practical application of AI in our classroom. We experiment, perhaps quietly at first, make mistakes, learn, grow, and share. We join communities on LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter and we start to comment, post and generate debate. We should not be afraid to take some risks, to say things that others might disagree with. The fact is that no one has the complete picture at the moment: we are all, to some extent, making things up as we go along. It might be that some of us are asking more of the right questions, but none of us have all the answers. So don’t be afraid to join the debate - come follow me on LinkedIn or here on Substack as there is plenty to discuss.

¹ ChatGPT-4, April 2023.

² Sapiens, Yuval Noah Harari