Tribalism, Technology Platforms, and Education’s Divided “Camps”

Many of us are bewildered by the “tribalism” of current politics. Those of us who have been involved in the tech industry a long time have experienced the precursor for this behavior: all-or-nothing embracing of computer platforms and later smartphone platforms.

All my life I approached technology as an “agnostic.” Certainly you embrace the platform you learned on, often leaning toward the familiar, but recognizing that other platforms offered advantages, often reaching the point where it was worth switching over. I embraced using multiple platforms, even though that often meant more work, strictly because it fed a higher need for me–staying current with multiple tools.

Using multiple platforms opens up viewing the bigger picture on technology progress. Having spent years with iOS tablets while simultaneously using Android phones provided opportunities to see things often platform centric people missed, e.g watching Apple make it difficult to break out of their walled gardens (“what do you mean I can’t pair an Apple Watch with a cell-enabled iPad?”) or watching Android absolutely fumble away their advantages with their tablets and wearables.

But even early in the 80’s I saw rigid tribalistic behavior emerge around technology platforms–if you worked with both platforms, then in their minds you were a part of the “other” camp; you had to exclusively choose one side or the other. This thinking baffled me–why miss out on advantages of both platforms? Early on it was Apple vs PC, later MacOS vs Windows; for file servers Novell vs Microsoft, and eventually Linux vs Microsoft; in the 2000s it was iOS vs Android vs Windows Mobile(Microsoft eventually pulled out of that competition).

Even more baffling was the attitude that using the “other” platform was a sign of weakness. The political fights could get wicked. I became the technology director of a split district with the entrenched camps constantly maneuvering to not only emphasize the advantage for their own side, but most baffling: working to disadvantage the “opponents” even to the detriment of themselves. It rarely followed logic, people going out of their way to intentionally blinding themselves to advantages/disadvantages of the platforms.

Finally at an all-tech staff meeting, I forcefully announced the district was going to be a multi-platform district, so get over it and quit trying to out-maneuver the other platforms. While the bickering calmed, I wasn’t naive enough to believe it was gone–the camps moved to less overt actions and became more covert in their efforts. But the pressure for out-maneuvering the other side relaxed.

The important lesson for everyone is that setting norms is crucial step in fighting outright division and tribalism. Leaders must anticipate these divisions set the stage on how the multiple camps will work and address each other.

Our nation’s current political situation has reinforced for educators to double down and use “scorched-earth” approaches with opponents.

I observed similar camps with personalized learning and traditional learning. Some schools/districts choose personalized for all, but many often set up “pilots” or school-within-a-school. These often put parents in a position to choose, and sets up division between staff and parents. If leaders don’t anticipate and head off the camps maneuvering against each other, you will often see splits that cannot be rectified (more on that in a later post).

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