IGI Global Scientific Publishing recently published a chapter co-authored by Vinny Tafuro and Walter Fernando Balser. Our chapter, Shifting Schools From Strategy to Foresight: Infusing Educational Leadership With Futurist Thinking, Planning, and Action, was published in the book, Reimagining the P-20 Landscape for School Leadership Learning.
The book featured chapters focused on enhancing school leadership through innovative and effective professional learning practices critical for improving education at all levels.
Shifting Schools From Strategy to Foresight
IGI Global Scientific Publishing recently published a chapter co-authored by Vinny Tafuro and Walter Fernando Balser. Our chapter, Shifting Schools From Strategy to Foresight: Infusing Educational Leadership With Futurist Thinking, Planning, and Action, was published in the book, Reimagining the P-20 Landscape for School Leadership Learning.
The book featured chapters focused on enhancing school leadership through innovative and effective professional learning practices critical for improving education at all levels.
Chapter Abstract
In this chapter, the authors use the impacts of the global pandemic on educational systems as a muse to highlight the need for educational leaders to transition from strategic planning to foresight thinking. They analyze the shortcomings of traditional bureaucratic models and emphasize the importance of adaptive leadership in addressing contemporary challenges. They present the Three Horizons Framework as a tool for envisioning long-term educational innovations and integrating foresight into school leadership. By examining issues like teacher shortages, school choice, and facilities management, the chapter provides practical steps for fostering a future-focused mindset in educational environments, urging leaders to embrace innovation, adapt to emerging trends, and cultivate resilience in the face of an ever-evolving educational landscape.
Introduction
In 2019, a global pandemic cast a harsh and revealing light on strained infrastructures across the globe, and perhaps nowhere were these challenges more pronounced than in our schools and systems of education. Schools struggled to move to distance learning overnight; millions of educators and parents were thrust into new roles with inadequate support; millions more students navigated a labyrinth of tools, games, and gadgets; all the while, educational leaders struggled to manage this chaos using an industrial model upon which reliability and efficiency were its primary advantages. Organizationally speaking, the advantages of Max Weber’s bureaucratic model (Weber, 1947) had met its match as the education world was unprepared to deal with a transformation that included infinitely more nodes and clusters of variability.
However, one could argue that this was not a sudden shift and had little to do with the pandemic itself. The crisis accelerated our inevitable shift to a world where learners were interconnected, interdependent, and integral to the complex digital environments they already inhabited. Stripped of the rational order of predictable start times, bus schedules, and class periods, we saw the state of education absent its convenient apparatus—in other words, we witnessed the future of learning in its most primal, and digital, form. And it was messy.
By the spring of 2020, 77% of public schools in the United States transitioned to online distance learning. By that fall, 93% of households with school-age children were engaged in some form of online schooling (NCES). By the end of the 2020-2021 school year, almost all schools had shifted to either hybrid or full-time online learning. To facilitate this shift, 96% of public schools provided digital devices to students who needed them by the beginning of the 2021-2022 school year. Additionally, 70% of schools provided some form of internet access at home for students in need (NCES). With numbers like these, it might appear that the furious response to this liminal moment was met with success. And to be fair, in some ways, it was. Yet the harsh truths remained to be revealed.
The Fissures Revealed
As the full force of the crisis receded, the true impact on schools and students began to reveal itself. The National Teacher and Principal Survey (Berger, M., et al., 2022) collected data on the impact of the pandemic on education, and the results were not encouraging. Despite the rapid shift to online learning, many schools lacked robust systems and pedagogical frameworks suited for effective remote education. Teachers felt unsupported and inadequately prepared for online teaching. A study published by Mclean et al (2023) indicated that teachers faced increased symptoms of anxiety and depression in the face of school closures, with teachers of color even more so. Teachers reported feeling overwhelmed and less effective, contributing to high absenteeism and students being less prepared for grade-level coursework. A study by the RAND Corporation found that student engagement and motivation plummeted during remote learning, with teachers reporting mounting difficulties in keeping students engaged (Stelitano, L., et al., 2020).
The shift to remote learning varied significantly across different demographic groups. For example, 61% of children from households with incomes below $25,000 were learning virtually, compared to 51% of children from households with incomes above $100,000. Similarly, racial and ethnic disparities were observed, with a higher percentage of Asian and Black students remaining in remote learning compared to their white counterparts (USAFacts). Compounding matters, the pandemic significantly influenced school choice dynamics. According to a survey conducted in early 2022, over half of American families considered changing their children’s schools, driven by the desire for higher quality education and disruptions caused by COVID-19 policies. Specifically, 34% of parents cited pandemic-related disruptions as a primary reason for seeking new schools, while just as many sought better educational quality (Blad, 2021; US Department of Education, Office for Civil Rights, 2021). During this time, the homeschooling rate saw a 400% increase, rising from 2.8% of students in 2019 to about 11.1% in 2020 (Ray, B., 2024). Today, over 2 million students are engaged in some form of homeschooling.
As most students have returned to face-to-face learning, studies continue to show significant learning loss due to the pandemic. McKinsey & Company indicated that students, on average, were five months behind in mathematics and four months behind in reading by the end of the 2020-2021 school year (McKinsey & Company). Further, the CDC reported increased instances of anxiety, depression, and other mental health issues among students during the pandemic.
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