why we learn

The following is an exercise aimed at informing oneself of their values with regards to school administration.

Identifying My Core Values of Leadership

I was to first generate a list of values that I believe “guide my behavior”. That list, constructed over breakfast a couple of days ago, is below.

• Honesty
• Integrity
• Openness
• Commitment
• Inquisitiveness
• Compassion
• Fairness
• Strength
• Scholarship

Next, I was to read through a list of values and their definitions, and subsequently select my “top five values” from this list. The idea here (I think) is to force you into prioritizing. There was a total of 46 values, and while there was some redundancy built into the list, focusing on such a large number is unrealistic. My strategy (though I’m not sure I was supposed to pursue this task strategically) was to look for the most inclusive values. I then assigned the remaining values as subordinate members of the five groups identified by these “top-level” qualities. A visual representation of my work can be viewed below. Clicking on the image will load the original (PDF) file in a new window.

For the most part, the values that I originally listed showed up on the new list. Certainly, there were some items enumerated here that I had not considered originally. I’ve filled in the nodes corresponding to those items that I initially itemized. (A full-sized, unfilled in version of the chart can be obtained here.) Those qualities that did not have a counterpart are identified by the term (Added). I took some liberties, as I judged “Life-Long-Learning” and “Scholarship” to be one and the same. Similarly, “Initiative & Sense of Urgency” was deemed so close to “Commitment” that creating a new node seems unnecessary.

Identified Values Impact on My Behavior

Below I attempt to describe my values and beliefs about the people, ideas, and philosophies associated with school leadership.

• Leadership: I value leaders who have a vision, who are calculated yet take risks if need be, and who fight/stand up for this vision if challenged. I believe that this type of leadership is hard, tough psychologically (it wears on you), and nearly impossible to recover once one has moved towards a more political position.
• Students: I value students energy, their creativity, their compassion, and their stubbornness. I believe that students are right about school in more ways than we’d like to admit; I believe that many spend too much of their time on their own or in poor situations, and that considering these realities when engaging them in any way often determines the way in which they choose to respond.
• Staff members: I value staff member’s dedication to their students, their willingness to take work home (grading/planning), and their openness to new ideas. I believe that it is very easy to loose one’s passion (I know that I did at times), and that becoming less passionate about teaching can be self-reinforcing. I believe that the commitment of educators, as in any other profession, varies a great deal. And, this reality is problematic (for school leaders in particular) due to the large degree to which our future is based on their performance.
• Community building: Community building is important in that communities serve so many functions within an organization. They cultivate a feeling of togetherness; they allow individuals to feed of each other’s energy and to learn from each other. Community fights to remove the lines and divisions that so often and so easily materialize within organizations, helping return the focus to the individual and each person’s humanity, rather than their title or role.
• Curriculum, instruction & assessment: I value the interrelatedness of these pillars of teaching and learning, as I do their product instructional design. Their value cannot be overstated. But, without a teacher’s belief in themselves, their students, and a commitment demonstrated by the dedication of time required to cause real change, they grow brittle and weak, unable to bear their hefty responsibilities.
• Learning: I value the way in which learning opportunities arise out of the unlikeliness of circumstance, and conversely, the degree of concentration that learning often requires. I believe that learning can be implicit or explicit, that good teachers notice and act on learning opportunities as they arise, and that the best teachers learn with their students.
• Professional Development: I value the way in which traditional professional development allows staff to congregate and work towards a common goal. I value it’s ability to generate a sense of togetherness and a staff-wide understanding of large goals / initiatives. However, I believe that large, whole-staff professional development events, by their very nature, fail to reach a significant number of staff members. And, for this reason, I believe that individualized approaches to professional development should be pursued.
• Supervision: I value the supervisor’s ability to provide a vision and inspire an organization to meet the goals necessary to fulfill their potential. I believe that the qualities that make a good supervisor are not so different from those that make a good teacher; one must be caring, compassionate, honest, fair, and hard working. Most of all, good teachers and supervisors must be willing and able to critically assesses a multitude of variables, and subsequently act in ways that are empathetic and self-assured.
• Communication: I value thoughtful questions, and the ability of non-verbal cues to make all the difference when two human beings converse. I believe in what Rogoff called “intersubjectivity”, or shared meaning, though sometimes I fail to live up to these lofty expectations when involved in a heated exchange. I believe that that the most difficult things are those that need to be communicated most clearly and with the most care, and that regardless of our efforts and/or intentions, there will always be times when we must apologize because we have misspoke.
• Change: I value the ability of change to allow individuals to reinvent themselves and to encourage personal growth. I believe that change is the only constant, and that those who fight the “inertia” of change maintain a uniformly one-dimensional view of the world.

Personal Vision Statement

My school’s mission statement is worded in the following way.

Provide knowledge, skill development and experiences necessary for a lifetime of personal and professional growth.

From my perspective, there is a very real difference between a “mission” statement and a “vision” statement. A mission statement describes what we want to do. A vision statement is more about who we should be. My personal vision statement might be constructed as follows.

Public education’s future rests on its ability to harness the natural energy of the young, and the degree to which educators can cultivate a culture of collaborative participation based on openness, mutual respect, and citizenship.

It’s a bit wordy, I know.

The point is that we have to allow our students to participate/contribute in/to the online world. They know, even if it is only at the level of the subconscious, that something is wrong when school blocks out so much of the world. It’s really as simple as this: Would you rather write something for your teacher to read, or something for the entire world?

Comments and/or critiques are welcomed.

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.

As we engage in discussions regarding the integration of technology, arguments inevitably arise. Deliberating how to allocate of funds can be a contentious process. The merits of the multiple positions that one might take with regards to these conversations is not the focus of this post. Instead, I would like to consider the precursor to any such dialogue. Isn’t the quality of instruction, face-to-face or online, most directly related to the teacher and his or her way of being? And if so, how do we reconcile the use of Web 2.0 technologies with such a assertion?

I find it difficult to accept arguments that emphasize technology over pedagogy. However, if we accept the premise that the effectiveness of classroom instruction is most directly we related to the teacher, mustn’t we also consider the role of the student. That is to say that we might choose to identify the nature/quality of both participants the individuals, and their “way of being” with each other, as the preeminent predictors of the degree to which the desired objectives are achieved. For a thorough conversation on the topic, see Rogoff and her idea of “intersubjectivity”. This is where technology comes into play. The collaborative and communicative powers of technology and online media are impressive. Thus, these interactions can be carried on after class has ended.

The combination of the Internet and cellular, or mobile technology renders both time and space inconsequential. At a time where the performance of America’s schools is being questioned daily, in a world in which other countries send their youth to school more often and for longer duration, the (un)willingness of public educators to shift from a 8-to-4 mindset to one of continual or ongoing discussion is, or should be, a concern. The discussions do not have to end, they can continue. Teachers must make themselves available to their students, via SMS, their mobile phones, and a plethora of Web 2.0 tools, before and after school.

There is a problem, I think, with the way we talk about technology. It may not be as big of a problem with our younger generation of teachers, but it’s critically important that we think about how we discuss, or “represent” technology in front of veteran educators. Technology is not one thing, but it is often represented as such (see Learning Management Systems). Communicating now is very different than it was only 15 years ago, when essentially three forms of media, the written word, the telephone, and television existed. Educators must understand that the growth, the modification the evolution of technology is rapid. If an individual feels that they “have got it”, they are wrong, regardless of their degree of understanding at that point in time.

More than anything teachers must be encouraged to buy into the idea that there is an exciting, engaging, collaborative exercise unfolding minute by minute online. They are leaders of a group of young people that, as a whole, can add to this ongoing construction of artifacts, tools, and virtual documentation. The idea is for them to pass this excitement onto their students. The degree to which they buy into this idea is directly related to their ability to use these collaborative, constructive, online activities as motivational rationale. One would think that contributing to something meaningful and real is a much more attractive exercise than the sort of repetitive, managerial tasks that are so often observed in today’s classrooms. Today’s youth are the early adopters of new technology. If they are to be allowed to use it as they see fit, then those individuals who must assess their “contributions” (teachers) must be comfortable using such technology.

Each new school year will present teachers with new students prepared, through their experiences outside of school, to implement technology the latest way. The teacher’s options are to either force their students to adopt technology he or she is most comfortable using, or to adapt themselves. The progressive educator, the innovator who embraces the rapid evolution inherent to the Web, will be most comfortable (possibly energized) by the later possibility. Research related to motivation, goal orientation, and locus of control, have a place in this conversation. If we choose to integrate technology in a way that allows students to interact with their teachers when they want and in the way that they want, that permits their demonstration of knowledge, skills, and efforts using the tools they want, we are essentially shifting the locus of control towards them. This allows students to operate more autonomously which has been shown to increase intrinsic motivation, or motivation from within. However, adopting this approach requires much more, in terms of time/accessibility and technological proficiency, from the instructor.

There were many things that I realized as I worked through my first week in a supervisory position. A large portion of what I had to accomplish was procedural, e.g., the signing of documents and attending meetings. But, it has become obvious that I will have to be tactful in my approach, as I am responsible for two distinct staffs, operating independently, at different times, and with different student populations. Moreover, my unfamiliarity with one of these groups, the adult education programs that I supervise, makes things more difficult.

Balancing Act

One week in and I can already tell that balancing my role as supervisor of high school and adult staffs is going to be a challenge. I am much more comfortable with the high school staff, as I’ve worked with them since I was first employed nine years ago. The adult education component of the school has always been foreign to me. I did teach an adult physics class in the evening, maybe five years ago. This was, up until just recently, my only experience with the adult programs.

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