1.1 Organisation theory vs changing paradigms in practice.

I have always found Roninson’s (2010) multimodal explanation of the impacts of changing education paradigms problematic. In some ways I do agree that many schools continue to be bound by outdated organusational structures that are a strong reflection of our societal obsession with measurable economic output. However, the idea that we, as parents or educators, choose to medicate neurodivergence on a ‘whim’ to create a culture of compliance or that ADHD is a pseudo-symptom of obsolete educational environments is extremely troubling to me. Since Robinson’s (2010) video, 15 years ago, the scientific around the neurodivergence, and in particular ADHD, has been proven as a neurological and/ or developmental disorder and I believe that the Australian education system has begun to recognise and respond to this validity- albeit slowly. I personally, would love to see an updated, and neuro-affirming, rerelease of this video so as not to further denigrate the experiences of our neurodivergent students. In the least, I’d like to see this video removed as current teaching material.

That aside, it is true that young people live in an information saturated world and, in my experience, reading stamina and reading for enjoyment has declined overall. For this reason I am choosing to reflect on the way our school has responded to the cultural driver of change mentioned by Robinson (2010) by examining the culture of reading and responding through Bush’s (2015) organisational theory lens. Earlier this year, as a collaborative team of teachers led by myself as the Teacher Librarian, we met to discuss the cultural shift in reading. We identified that reading was no longer perceived as socially acceptable and reading was undervalued at home. We developed structural changes to our home reading program with the hope of shifting both student perceptions of reading as well as develop better reading habits.

Dubbed the ’25 Nights Smarter, Funnier, Cooler, Kinder’ Challenge we developed promotional material that showed iconic people reading. We used quotes that helped to instil the message that every night of reading made you smarter/ funnier/ cooler or kinder as you learnt more about the world around you and the diverse experiences of people. We got parent buy in by presenting this to the P&C and with their $500 donation as well as support from local businesses we were able to create prizes to incentivise reading. For every 25 nights home reading, students could earn a golden ticket into a twice-a-term draw. The prizes reflected the benefits of reading including an outdoor beanbag for reading and relaxing, a head lamp for nighttime reading, book vouchers, hot chocolate vouchers and other bits and pieces. It didn’t take long for students to start buying into the status of the golden ticket club. After a few short week, I know have students running to me in the morning to update me on their progress. I hear them chatting amongst each other about the books they are reading or the places and times they like to read.

It is too soon to know whether this organisational and structural change will influence a cultural shift at our school, but I can’t help but share in the excitement our students are feeling. My hope as the teacher librarian is that through our challenge, we can convince more than a few kids that reading really does make you smarter, funnier, cooler and kinder and that we instil good reading habits that follow them through life. We have our first prize draw in two weeks’ time so I will update you on how this goes.

Bush, T. (2015). Organisation theory in education: How does it inform school leadership? CORE. https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/162657439.pdf