The 2019 NewSchools-Gallup Survey of Educator & Student Perceptions of Ed Tech, released this fall, crafts an interesting narrative about selling to the education market. The survey emerges from a partnership between the NewSchools Venture Fund, a group that has been “investing for 20 years in nonprofits and companies that develop digital learning tools”, and the famed Gallup polling organization.
The survey provides a statistically sound sample of educators and students, specifically portraying the thinking of no less than 1,219 district administrators, 1,163 principals, 3,210 teachers, and 2,696 students. If you enjoy details, you can download the complete survey summary here.
The survey is replete with insight-filled findings, such as
- Teachers and students are using technology more frequently than in past years.
- The value proposition of technology in the classroom is clearly driving ed tech’s “staying power” in schools. (The plurality of educators recognizes that ed tech helps improve their “effectiveness and efficiency”.)
- Across all grade levels, students confirm that technology helps them personalize their learning. (It “helps them learn things on their own, learn at their own pace and makes school more interesting”.)
The NewSchools-Gallup survey also postures that teachers in in high-poverty schools—contrary to popular thinking—do indeed value and employ technology in their teaching. The survey notes that far fewer of these teachers in high-poverty settings use ed-tech for “collaboration, creation and independent research”, which suggests that any notion of a digital divide may be in how technology is used, not if it is used. (Of course, this finding is not new at all; it echoes the technology concerns of Seymour Papert more than 30 years ago. Not much has changed.)
Now to my main point: if your company aims to reach the education market, it is useful to understand some of the distinct ‘camps’ of thinking we see at work, positions that are echoed in this new survey. Yes, there are key differences between ed-market customers. In many ways the market is awkwardly bipolar, with educators (teachers and administrators) sometimes looking in opposite directions. Pluses for educational leaders (who control the purse) can often be minuses for teachers (who are student-facing).
Some of this survey’s findings illustrate this plus-minus paradox in education to a T and much of what they say may be true about the higher ed market, as well. The key discovery about these customer ‘differences’ can be summarized in two simple strands: what I call the trust formula and the selection calculus.
The Trust Formula
According to the survey, school principals and district leaders are “more reliant on evidence-based reports than teachers.” And conversely, teachers rely more on the trusted experience of other teachers “in another classroom down the hall.”
The Selection Calculus
As far as making purchasing decisions, teachers tend to focus on engagement and personalizing learning. (Quoting again from the survey, these are tools that can help students “learn things on their own, learn at their own pace and makes school more interesting”.) Building principals and district leadership, however, are “more likely to make their selections based on the product’s ability to generate outcome data required for reporting and for justifying its purchase”.
Both of these strands of difference demonstrate what I call the input-output philosophies at odds with each other in the education arena. Here’s how the input-output dichotomy works:
INPUT. I have found over many years in the field that classroom teachers tend to exhibit an ‘input’ mentality, i.e. a strong proclivity towards acquiring resources, getting the ‘stuff’, obtaining the needed tools or ‘inputs’—fine and thank you. And the classroom door closes. “Just let me teach”.
OUTPUT. I have observed that most educational leaders (e.g., principals, district officers, school board members, and superintendents) think on a different plane—with an ‘output’ mentality, Results. Accountability. Evidence. Data. Show me.
The clash of these two cultures or mentalities, which I call input-output friction, is a contradiction I alluded to in a previous article, Procurement Sparring. And the bottom line? When selling to the ed market, manufacturers, vendors and integrators must know which philosophy is actually front and center; or they must know how to carefully maneuver the interests of both, and in which proportions. In terms of sales literature, booth presentations, and calling on the customer, each purchasing culture must be approached differently. It’s comforting to read that the NewSchools-Gallup survey agrees.–Len Scrogan
