why we learn

Classroom instruction is complex but do we treat it as such? Is “sensing” a priority of teacher education? How would an instructor who waits for “patterns to emerge” be viewed by their supervisor? As laid back? Aloof? And does outcome-based education (unintentionally) result in educators treating complex situations as complicated, or worse yet, simple in nature? These questions find their origins in the work of David Snowden and Mary Boone, as they apply the principles of Snowden’s Cynefin Framework to leadership in the 2007 Harvard Business Review article A Leader’s Framework for Decision Making.

Rather than summarize Snowden & Boone’s application textually, I’ve generated a graphical representation. Clicking on this smaller image will produce the full-sized document.

Initially, my interest in this article was peaked by a blog posting of David Clark in his series of writings aimed at describing how the tenets of Agile software development can be applied as a system of instructional design. The HBR article had the added advantage of using this framework as a lens from which to view leadership, a topic of focus for me now as I begin supervising staff at my school. However, its application to the classroom teacher is intriguing.

Aren’t teachers really classroom leaders, or leaders within a complex educational / instructional setting? David Williamson Shaffer, in his 2004 TCR article Pedagogical Praxis: The Professions as Models for Postindustrial Education states the following.

We know a great deal about some of the epistemological and pedagogical underpinnings of compelling learning environments. However, orchestrating these elements into a coherent whole remains a challenge (p. 1417).

Shaffer suggests that professions have unique epistemologies, or “ways of knowing”, and thus have the potential to be used as models for instruction. Daniel Willingham, in his new book Why Don’t Students Like School?, alludes to the complexity of the educational setting as well as he explains the disconnect between controlled experimental studies and the classroom.

But mental processes are not isolated in the classroom. They all operate simultaneously, and they often interact in difficult-to-predict ways (Kindle edition, Location 126).

Marzano et al., in their work Classroom Instruction that Works: Research-Based Strategies for Increasing Student Achievement discuss nine categories of instructional strategies.

• Identifying Similarities and Differences
• Summarizing and Note Taking
• Reinforcing Effort and Providing Recognition
• Homework and Practice
• Nonlinguistic Representations
• Cooperative Learning
• Setting Objectives and Providing Feedback
• Generating and Testing Hypotheses
• Cues, Questions, and Advance Organizers

Throughout this work, the presented strategies are also (necessarily) related to content and instructional situation. Doesn’t this make instructional choices more complex? If we agree with Willingham, who differs from Marzana et al. in this regard, there’s another layer of complexity that must be superimposed onto the extant relationships between content and strategy, topic specific ability. He contends that we must present problems to learners that fall within a specific range, not too tough (which causes despair), or too easy (no satisfaction, nor release of dopamine), but just right. (Goldilocks analogies are welcome.)

Thus, we will seek out opportunities to think, but we are selective in doing so; we choose problems that pose some challenge but that seem likely to be solvable, because these are the problems that lead to feelings of pleasure and satisfaction (Kindle edition, Location 400).

At this point, I’ve identified several variables that must be considered by a teacher as they teach.

• What needs to be taught
• What has been taught
• What is to be taught in the future
• Individual abilities of students with regards to content
• Individual abilities / preferences of students related to instructional strategies
• Situation / relation between content and potential strategies (what “fits” best)

But there is another, most important factor, life outside of the classroom. What happens beyond the classroom walls, in other classes, and more significantly outside of school, affects each learner. The combination of these variables supports the idea that classrooms should be classified as “complex” with the Cynefin Framework. If we review the traits of “Complex” systems, it is clear that often times there is “no right answer” in terms of instructional choices, that classrooms are “systems in constant flux”, and that the “ability to understand” (from the teacher’s perspective) comes after class has been dismissed.

The ability to work within this complex system (the classroom) is typically part of the teacher observation process. For example, Domain 3e in Charlotte Danielson’s Framework for Teaching is entitled Demonstrating Flexibility and Responsiveness, and includes the elements Lesson adjustment, Response to students, and Persistence. However, outcomes are the focus of this work, not the manner in which those outcomes are reached. Admittedly, factors such as rapport and teacher-student interactions are also part of these assessments, and these might be considered constituents of “probing”. However, the emergence / identification of patterns is not addressed in any meaningful way.

Is there a need, then, to construct a formalized framework / structure for “probing” and “sensing (for emergent patterns)” specific to the classroom? Is this something teachers need to know how to do? Would familiarity with the tenets of the Cynefin framework lead to more effective instruction through appropriate responses to the different categories of complexity manifest within that setting?

Comments and/or critiques are welcomed.

An Overview

Professional development can be a sticky topic, sometimes bleeding into areas such as contractual obligations and monetary reimbursement. There is, however, lurking below the surface, a more implicit and problematic dissonance. Not all professional educators are consciously aware of this disconnect, but the contempt with which some view staff-wide professional development indicates that they “sense” its existence. I’m referring to the incongruity between how we ask our instructors to teach, and how we ask them to learn. The premise of this post is that the combination of Critical Friends Groups and Personal Learning Networks has the potential to offer deep and meaningful professional development.

Differentiated instruction is a term that is used to describe the instructional strategies / philosophy aimed at reaching the needs of every student. That is to say that the teacher takes into account a student’s

academic abilities, learning styles, personalities, interests, background knowledge and experiences, and levels of motivation for learning.

(No, I’m not going to comment on learning styles, but I’m aware of their unsubstantiated nature.) Thus, differentiation refers mostly to pedagogy – how we teach. But, at a more abstract level, aren’t teachers being asked to cater to the individualized / idiosyncratic needs of each student? And, does staff-wide professional development do the same? (Not typically.) Opportunities for instructors to attend workshops and conferences outside of the building are often better in this regard, but such opportunities aren’t frequent enough to cultivate intellectual growth.

Alternatives

Alternatives to structured, staff-wide professional development exist. Two such possibilities are Critical Friends Groups and Personal Learning Networks. These entities might be best described as “communities”, and differ in the relationship of the individual to the group, ranging from central (the focus) to the periphery. This vocabulary is derived from Lave & Wenger’s communities of practice, specifically the term ‘legitimate peripheral participation’. Their idea was that individuals move from the periphery towards the center as they become comfortable with the community and, to a lesser extent, the content / information. As an aside, these ideas have been around since the Middle-Ages and find their roots in the ideas of apprenticeship.

Critical Friends Groups were developed by the Annenberg Institute for School Reform in 1994. They focus on creating a professional learning community in which “teachers talk to teachers about teaching”. These discussions are led by trained practitioners who follow protocols (strategies) specific to the topic of deliberation. Marnie Curry’s 2008 work, entitled Critical Friends Groups: The Possibilities and Limitations Embedded in Teacher Professional Communities Aimed at Instructional Improvement and School Reform examines one school’s implementation of the CFG framework. A visual representation of her findings is below. Clicking on the image will produce the full sized version.

Curry’s judgement is that the ambitious nature of CFGs hampers their overall effectiveness. Further, she refers to them as “politicized entities” in which “in-depth attention to subject matter is unlikely” (p. 770). As such, she recommends careful considerations of the inherent constraints of the CFG framework. One can see from the visual representation of Curry’s findings that the strengths of the framework lie in its ability to cultivate community and a shared understanding (of school-wide initiatives), while it mechanistic and diverse nature impedes in-depth discussion of both subject-specific and emergent issues.

A Personal Learning Network, according to David Warlick:

involves an individual’s topic oriented goal, a set of practices or techniques aimed at attracting or organizing a variety of relevant content sources, selected for their value, to help the owner accomplish a professional goal or personal interest.

Kate Klingensmith identifies the potential components of PLNs. Her list includes the following technologies.

• Social networking sites
• Microblogging
• Professional profiles
• Wikis
• Blogs
• RSS Reader
• Nings
• Social bookmarking
• Webinars
• Backchanneling of conferences

It’s interesting to note that Kate doesn’t include face-to-face conversations with colleagues, as I would have. I think it’s unwise to exclude those with whom we interact everyday, especially if they are related to our topic of interest (our co-workers, for example). What is most interesting about PLNs is how they shift the locus of control completely towards the learner. This shift, combined with the corresponding sense of autonomy should, research tells us, lead to an increased desire (motivation) to learn. It’s important to note that contributing is a fundamental piece of the PLN. That is to say that the majority of the components listed by Klingensmith allow for both the consumption and creation of content/knowledge. Individuals who take PLNs seriously participate in this way.

A Hybrid Model

Administrators must prioritize their objectives as they consider professional development initiatives. An honest assessment of school-wide professional development workshops should make it clear that a significant percentage of staff don’t participate therefore making their experience meaningless. The interpretation of this reality is pivotal. Either (a.) the supervisor blames these staff members for their inattentiveness (often the case, I assume), or (b.) the supervisor blames his or herself for providing a “one size fits all” learning opportunity. If he or she chooses the latter, than a “community” approach might be considered in place of the traditional didactic conference.

At the end of Curry’s paper, she alludes to a potential solution to the inherent constraints of CFGs.

Instead, solutions may have to come from elsewhere, perhaps in the form of multiple and complementary CFG-like professional development opportunities in subject matter departments and academies (p. 770).

What if PLNs are used in conjunction with CFGs? The primary advantages of CFGs is the sense of community and an awareness of school-wide initiatives/events that they promote. Certainly, their ability to debate pedagogy in a general sense is a powerful attribute and an advantage as well. But, it is one that could be replaced via an instructor’s PLN, which would have the added benefit, if correctly constructed, of addressing subject-specific pedagogy, a weakness of the CFG. Combining these two constructs might allow the school to run abbreviated versions of the CFGs, focusing specifically on cultivating a sense of community through conversation of school-wide initiatives and individuals “reporting out” on their work with their PLN.

In summary, the suggested model is based on 3 tenets.

• A member’s CFG is the foundation of their PLN
• Individual’s learning objective(s) with (outside/online) PLN are determined by the individual
• CFG gatherings focus on tying each member’s outside PLN experience to the group and to the school as a whole

It is assumed that meetings with the CFG would lead, periodically, to revision of individual learning objectives. Comments/critiques are welcome.

Benjamin S. Bloom has two works from which to draw when interpreting the results of a new study by Carnegie Mellon. The key finding, related to the efficiency of this design, is summarized in the following quotation.

By combining the open-learning software with two weekly 50-minute class sessions in an intro-level statistics course, they found that they could get students to learn the same amount of material in half the time.

Essentially, the inclusion of this intelligent tutoring system allows the professor to discuss more nuanced and/or complex aspects of the content, and do so in one less class period. Bloom might infer that the observed improvements were due to an increase in the amount of time spent analyzing, synthesizing, and/or evaluating, i.e., at the higher levels of “his” taxonomy, while in class. Alternatively, he could point to his work on tutoring, and its corresponding “2 Sigma Problem”, which suggests that one can expect to observe a difference of +2 standard deviations when students work with a teacher in a one-to-one setting.

I’m inclined to agree with both of these hypothetical conclusions. I’m also reminded of Ewan McIntosh’s recent response to Will Richardson’s post commenting on an image of a lecture hall filled with (mostly Apple) computers. McIntosh’s critique, in he differentiates between curriculum and pedagogy, noting that teachers can control pedagogy but not curriculum, culminates with the following assertion.

The reason the picture presents a dubious message is that neither curriculum nor pedagogy have changed an iota in this learning space: it’s about the same layout – with as many apples on laps – as a Victorian classroom would have appeared.

I wonder how instructional design fits, as Carnegie Mellon’s design offloads the mundane, didactic portions of instruction to technological entities, thus freeing up space and time for the instructor/professor to do the sorts of things that are much harder for computers, even “intelligent” systems, to replicate. This is a good start, but can we go further?

The program’s efforts to maximize the contributions of technology are impressive. They’ve applied adaptive algorithms similar to those that are used in the GRE, which monitor and subsequently respond to students understanding. This is one of the first times this technology has been used outside of the assessment arena. (The article refers to its use as “novel”.) What needs to be considered, however, is a design that manufactures or generates time for face-to-face. That is to say that although the tutoring aspect of Bloom’s research is (partially) present in the form of the intelligent tutoring system, the potential of human tutoring is greater.

This is not the first time that I’ve considered using technology to offload the sort of lower level tasks of instruction. My presentation, entitled “A Shift in Focus: Designing for Face-to-Face” can be found here. Comments/critiques are welcome.

The integration/utilization of mobile technology into the educational setting will be one of my primary focuses in the coming months. It seems clear that the use of mobile technology, phones specifically, as a means of facilitating educational experiences will only increase in the future. There are a variety of reasons, not the least of which is the fact that teens are using mobile phones at an astonishingly high rate. 85% of 16 year-olds owned a cell phone in 2008. This percentage is significantly greater than the 63% of the US population that has broadband access. My guess is that this number would move towards 80% if you included dial-up connections. There is a generational component here as well, i.e., students are unquestionably attuned to the mobile lifestyle.

Read more

Language experience is defined as

a general method in which children’s oral language, such as their narratives about their experience and observations, is dictated and written down; what is written then becomes the basis for reading. Thus, skills are taught in the context of the child’s own direct experience with language and the world¹.

I’ll be looking at some of the extant research related to these efforts. My school is looking at Read 180 as an intervention. I don’t know enough about it to make a judgement as to how effective it would be, however my understanding is that it’s pretty pricy. Dragonware looks like it’s fairly inexpensive. On the Macintosh side, MacSpeech Dictate just won Best of Show at Macworld 2008. A Macintosh implementation of speech recognition software is particularly appealing due to Leopard’s Universal Access and its ability to read text to the individual.

1. Bruning, R. H., Schraw, G. J., Norby, M. M., & Ronning R. R. (2004). Cognitive Psychology and Instruction. Upper Saddle River: Pearson Prentice Hall