a force, pushing them into a new state, or that a change in funding and direction is required to create such a change.
The useful perspective this offers is that it is not about wholesale change and debunking of a previous approach, but moving from one state to another. Such a view allows greater continuity between developments in education than the Silicon Valley narrative permits.
Conclusion
The resilience model in ecology offers a model for considering how adept a system is at absorbing change. It thus offers a useful model for analysing an institution’s ability to adapt within an altered environment, while retaining its core functionality. It is not without its critics or difficulties, however. One should always exercise caution as to the extent an analogy with the natural world can be applied to sociological constructs such as education. Like disruption, it could also be seen to be advancing a neoliberal agenda, and one could certainly contest Walker and Salt’s conclusion that the end of the conservation stage is always inevitable. It does, however, serve three purposes in the consideration of the battle for open. Firstly, it provides a framework for analysing any particular impact, as with the MOOCs example above; secondly, it offers a means of considering individual areas of impact within the larger system; and lastly, it suggests that other narratives apart from the dominant Silicon Valley one are possible.
Considering the first of these functions, the model can be used as a qualitative analysis tool to highlight areas of concern and to help set priorities. The scoring method set out in this chapter is one method of achieving this, but there are no correct scores; these will be subjective. The methodology was conducted with
