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A measure of concern

A measure of concern

Research-based program aids innovation by addressing teacher concerns

By Karel Holloway

Tools for Schools, February 2003

Copyright, National Staff Development Council, 2003. All rights reserved.

What happens when programs intended to improve student learning aren't successful? Staff carefully researches potential programs, hand-selects one to address the specific needs of the students, and thoroughly prepares teachers. But, once implemented, the innovation doesn't produce the desired results.

Often, researchers say, the problem is not the program, but the way individual educators respond to it.

Each administrator, each principal, each teacher approaches a new program, any change, with a personal set of concerns, researchers have found. Individuals question: Why should I do this? How long is it going to take me to work through this? I know my kids and I don't think this will work. Helping educators work through these concerns is crucial in making certain that changes happen.

Just as there are research-based educational innovations, there is a research-based program for aiding innovation--the Concerns-Based Adoption Model or CBAM. It offers a way to understand, then address educators' common concerns about change.

CBAM has other components but the most readily and commonly used is "stages of concern." The ideas were developed in the mid 1970s and many staff developers have integrated the concepts into their work over the past 25 years.

"I run into people all the time who have heard of the stages of concern and kind of keep them in the back of their minds," said Shirley Hord, program manager with the Southwest Educational Development Laboratory. She is one of the principal authors of the system.

Hord said the program is helpful because it is based on research. "We didn't just think this up," Hord said. Through questioning and correlating answers from teachers and college professors about change, Hord and her colleagues identified common concerns that most educators--or any group confronted with change--harbor. Some will go through all the stages, leaving one and moving up to the next. Most will skip around and may have several concerns simultaneously, Hord said.

CBAM's seven stages of concern are:

Being aware of the concerns allows those in charge of the innovation to tailor aid given to individuals.

"Using the stages of concern, you can get a whole profile," said Gene Hall, one of the CBAM researchers and dean of the college of education at the University of Nevada at Las Vegas. For example, if a leader knows a teacher is concerned about how the innovation will be used in the classroom, that teacher can be given additional preparation or paired with a teacher who is using it well.

ASKING QUESTIONS

Determining a person's stage of concern can be as simple as asking questions, Hord said. Educators can be asked informally during a chance meeting in the hall or in the lunchroom, something Hord calls a "one-legged interview." Or teachers can be asked to respond to open-ended questions as part of the original training. For those interested in building statistical data, teachers can be asked to fill out a survey developed by university researchers. That method is best used only by those who have received training and have a particular need for the data, Hord said.

For most, the informal questions of Hord's "one-legged interview" are the most productive. The questions should be fairly specific: How are your students managing the new math manipulatives? If a teacher answers, "I haven't really had a chance to use those," the teacher is at the first stage, awareness, not really concerned about the innovation.

A teacher who answers "Mary Jo and I have been working on some ways to let the students use them more for discovery" has reached the collaborative stage.

Teachers can then get the follow-up support for their stages. The first teacher may need retraining to get more information and be impressed with how important the innovation is. The second teacher needs to be encouraged to continue and expand the collaboration.

OPEN-ENDED QUESTIONS

A more formal way to assess an individual's stage of concern involves asking teachers to respond to an open-ended question. The question can be asked at the beginning of training, the end, or both. Before and after training, teachers can be asked a question such as "What concerns you about the new program?"

If asked before and after, facilitators can see where teachers started and how much movement has occurred. Similarly, when asked at the end, responses indicate what type of follow-up is needed with specific teachers.

USING A QUESTIONNAIRE

Sister Karen Dietrich, principal of the Mt. Saint Joseph Academy near Philadelphia, has used the questionnaire developed by Hord, Hall and their associates and said bar graphs of teacher responses provide comforting proof that technology use is taking hold in her school.

After a technology institute last summer, teachers were asked to fill out a 35-statement survey. Dietrich and a technology facilitator used the results from the 24 responses to address their concerns individually. The teachers filled out the survey again and there was clear movement, Dietrich said.

"When I look at my first 24 bar graphs, there is real density in self concern. In December, that has clearly spread out. What is so significant is that in eight weeks, there has been clear movement," she said.

The survey and later personal interviews revealed some real surprises, she said. A teacher who had already been using technology to arrange video conferences with a school in England had responses that showed her concerns were at the bottom stages of awareness and informational. "She had the skills, she just needed the confidence," Dietrich said.

Dietrich used the formal survey and is working out statistical data because her results are part of her doctoral dissertation. But she said the informal interviews have been key. Each interview lasts five to 30 minutes. Some of the exchanges have been by e-mail.

Quickly addressing the concern following an interview was important as well, she said. A teacher who can't figure out how to do something may abandon most technology use if not given aid. "They weren't left hanging for weeks or months," she said. While Dietrich has done much of the evaluation and follow-up, she has had help. The school hired a teacher technologist and Dietrich said she sends some responses to her. Other teachers have been referred to other teachers. "We have a culture of teachers helping teachers," she said.

Finding the time to use CBAM has not always been easy, she said. With a limited budget, hiring the technologist took careful planning. And teachers asked to work with other teachers must get the free time to provide help.

CBAM isn't fast but it provides the ongoing, steady support needed to move an innovation forward, she said.

Dietrich said she felt that using the method to assess how the technological innovations were going was a necessity. "We've invested in the technology. If we are going to invest $50,000, $60,000, or $70,000 in new computers and mobile technology, I can't let it go to waste and be covered with dust."


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