Generative Professional Learning

At NSDC’s 2005 Annual Conference keynoter Beverly Daniel Tatum told participants, “We teach who we are,” a reminder of the importance of educators’ inner development as well as their acquisition of “external” knowledge and skills. Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot, another keynoter at that conference, pointed out that teaching is a “deeply relational activity” and emphasized the importance of respect in teaching and all other human interactions. In her speech, Lawrence-Lightfoot used the phrase “generative professional learning,” a term that resonated with me. My notes from the conference indicate that once back home I consulted my dictionary and added in the margins that “generative” means “having the power or function of generating, originating, producing, or reproducing” and that “generate” means “to bring into existence.”

I was motivated to retrieve my 2005 conference notes when I recently reread Thich Nhat Hanh’s No Death, No Fear. Hanh, a Buddhist monk, points out that “Just because we do not see something does not mean that it doesn’t exist.” To illustrate he offers the example of a room without a TV or radio in which one might reasonably claim that TV and radio signals do not exist. “But all of us,” he observes, “know that the space in the room is full of signals. The signals are filling the air everywhere. We need only one more condition, a radio or a television set, and many forms, colors, and sounds will appear. It would have been wrong to say that the signals do not exist because we did not have a radio or television to receive and manifest them.” Hahn uses the term “manifest” to describe the processes through which latent and invisible forces becomes visible and active.

Schools, I believe, possess latent and often recognized potential—which could be thought of as invisible signals—for improved performance. Professional learning designed to release this potential would recognize and tap the talents and strengths that already reside in the school community rather than produce dependence on outside expertise, an unintended but not uncommon byproduct of traditional forms of staff development. (See my JSD interview with Jerry Sternin, who pioneered the Amplifying Positive Deviance approach to reform.) Such professional learning would also develop and refine, through intellectually rigorous, team-based activities, the otherwise unarticulated forms of “craft knowledge,” wisdom, and professional judgment that are essential to successful teaching and school leadership.

Viewing professional learning as manifesting that which is present but not apparent is a significant change in perspective from a conveying-the-information-through-presentations approach to staff development that continues to pervade our field. Skillful school and system leaders will manifest generative professional learning as they create school cultures that are appreciative, respectful, and oriented toward continuous improvements in teaching, learning, and relationships among all members of the school community.

As always, I invite your responses to the ideas I pose.

Influencing Mental Frames Related to Professional Learning

In February and March postings I explored the power of language and mental frames to either preserve the status quo in teaching and leadership or to provide the intellectual structure for new habits of mind and behavior. The goal, as I see it, is to assist school leaders in creating frames that promote continuous improvements in teaching and learning. And I view the means for the creation of such frames as learning processes.

To remind myself of what I already knew about such processes I took a few minutes to review a chapter titled “Create Professional Learning that Alters Educators’ Brains” that I had prepared for Leading for Results: Transforming Teaching, Learning, and Relationships in Schools, 2nd edition . In it I wrote: “Meaningful professional learning has the same attributes as other meaningful human learning. It activates the brain in ways that create new neural networks or strengthens those that already exist. Like the brains of their students, teachers' brains are changed when they engage with the concrete tasks of their work in ways that promote meaning, emotion, and reflection through cognitively demanding processes such as reading, writing, observing, listening carefully, speaking thoughtfully, and practicing new habits of mind and behavior to the point they become habitual.”

Given that introduction, I’ll briefly explore three general ways for shifting language and mental frames (or “rewiring” neural networks) (LINK TO “FINAL 2%” JSD ARTICLE), acknowledging that this is an area in which I feel like a novice in search of expert guidance. (See a JSD article I wrote on this topic in 2005.

Elicit and Build on Prior Knowledge

It is difficult to alter something if both the learner and the teacher do not fully understand existing conceptions (or misconceptions) and the connections made by learners between various ideas and concepts. Therefore, a useful starting point for acknowledging and addressing mental frames are learning methods that make explicit already existing concepts and ideas about a subject. Such processes include brainstorming, free writing, and the creation of mind maps.

Awareness of existing mental frames can sometimes in itself be a sufficient force to overcome the inertia of the status quo and to begin the often demanding cognitive process of constructing new frames. At other times the process can be helped along by asking learners to compare the similarities and differences between their existing mental frames and the new frames and to weigh the merits of each related to the achievement of organizational goals.

Push for Deeper Understanding

The creation of new mental frames often requires a deeper understanding of a subject, the kind of understanding that can only be possessed through intellectually rigorous processes that demand the full and sustained attention of learners’ minds. The close reading of relevant books and articles, writing for learning, problem-based learning, and dialogue are potent means for developing such understanding. Learners can also cultivate deeper understanding when they teach others about the topic through processes such as cooperative learning jigsaws.

Provide Experiences

Sometimes new frames are best understood through direct experience based on the principle that it’s often easier to “behave” your way into thinking than to “think” your way into behavior. For instance, it’s much harder for school leaders to truly understand the value of team-based professional learning for teachers if they themselves have never worked in a setting in which such peer-to-peer learning was encouraged and expected. Consequently, school systems that value team-based learning for teachers might organize principals into ongoing teams to address meaningful problems whose resolution requires such interdependence. This experience would provide principals with a first-hand sense of the power of such a process, an insight that may be unachievable through more abstract means such as lectures or reading.

As always, I am eager to hear readers’ views on both the nature of the “framing” problem (or even whether you agree it is a problem) and ways in which it can be addressed.

The Power of Language and Mental Frames, Part 2

In February I noted that the mental structures related to some commonly used terms in our profession enable those who possess them to achieve their goals by providing direction, clarity, and a steady flow of energy. Other mental structures disable by cognitively freezing the status quo in place. Consequently, the frames created by language and the ideas they link in our minds are critically important aspects of professional learning and improvements in practice.

This problem first came to my attention several years ago when an issue of the JSD devoted to “restructuring” elicited manuscripts whose authors more often than not simply added the term restructuring in front of long-standing programs (“restructured Madeline Hunter” comes to mind as the subject matter of an article which described a training program not unlike that offered at that time in countless “unrestructured” school districts).

Likewise, that same phenomenon occurs today when educators say they are part of a “professional learning community.” Even a brief conversation often reveals that the term is applied to already existing and virtually unmodified groupings such as grade-level teams, departments, school improvement committees, etc. in which participants do what they’ve always done. All that has changed is the name, and professional learning continues to remain separated, at least in some teachers’ minds, from teaching. (A tip-off for me is when teachers say “I am going to my PLC.” Similarly, teachers who are part of “delivery system” forms of staff development perceive themselves as leaving their jobs to be “inserviced” and rightfully see such activities as separate from their real work rather than as a fundamental part of it.)

Such commonly-used terms as “teach” and “dialogue” also suffer from the same problem. Teaching, in the mental web of many educators, means “delivery system for the curriculum,” “presentation of information,” “performance” (as in performance evaluation), etc. That web is obviously quite different from the schema residing in the mind of someone who deeply understands constructivist theory and methods, to cite but one example. Likewise, “dialogue” is often used interchangeably with the terms “discuss,” “talk over,” and “have a serious conversation.”

What these terms and many others have in common—in addition to the imprecision with which they are used—is that their meaning can be incredibly difficult to alter, at least in my experience. So when I explain “job-embedded professional learning” to educators and offer lots of examples, I’m no longer surprised when in our next conversation they revert to the language of workshop, training, and presentation (with the distinction that these events should occur during work hours and probably in the school).

A similar thing happens when I explain Noel Tichy’s concept of the “teaching organization” to educators, being very careful to note that leaders’ teaching does not mean directing, telling, or persuading, but rather a dialogue-like interaction that includes tentativeness, an openness to mutual influence, and the continuous refinement of one’s point of view. Those with whom I’m interacting nod their heads and then continue to use words that illustrate a “convey the information” and compliance-oriented view of teaching and leadership.

My point is not to criticize those who don’t “get” things in the ways I’d prefer. Rather, it’s to recognize the substantial influence of language and mental maps on professional practice and to encourage exploration of ways that such cognitive structures may be revealed and altered.

Next month’s posting will discuss ways I think language and mental maps may be influenced. In the meantime, I look forward to reading your comments on this important subject.

The Power of Language and Mental Frames, Part I

Language shapes the way we think, and determines what we can think about.
—Benjamin Lee Whorf

What do the terms teach, dialogue, staff development, and professional learning community have in common? They’ve all come to mind recently as I’ve reflected on the significance of language and frames in response to a question Joan Richardson, NSDC’s director of publications, posed in an interview she conducted with Stephanie Hirsh and myself for publication in the Summer 2007 JSD. Joan asked: What words would we like to see used less frequently in our field?

While considering how I’d respond to Joan my thought flashed to the Thinkmap Visual Thesaurus, a piece of software into which the user types a word or term and a mindmap or web is created with the word in the middle of the page and related terms clustered around it whose proximity to the key word show the strength of the relationship. Joan’s question prompted the immediate creation in my mind’s eye of such a mental map for the term “staff development” as it seems to exist in the minds of many teachers and administrators—“delivery system,” training, trainer, presentation, presenter, inservice days, PowerPoint, CEUs, program, project, and so on were the concepts that quickly came to mind.

Such a conceptual map drew me back to the writing of George Lakoff, whose views on the power of frames I shared with you some time back. "Frames are mental structures," Lakoff writes in the "Preface" to Don't Think of An Elephant. "As a result, they shape the goals we seek, the plans we make, the way we act, and what counts as a good or bad outcome of our actions. . . . Reframing is changing the way the public sees the world. . . . Because language activates frames, new language is required for new frames. Thinking differently requires speaking differently."

My experience is like Lakoff’s--some mental structures enable those who possess them to achieve their goals--enabling frames provide direction, clarity, and a steady flow of energy. Others disable by cognitively freezing the status quo in place. Consequently, the frames created by language and the ideas they link in our minds are critically important aspects of professional learning and change in practice.

The other terms I’ve mentioned--teach, dialogue, and professional learning community--each have their own cognitive structure of linked words or terms that are immediately activated and provide a frame of reference for both those who are speaking and hearing them. And because such commonly used terms are often vague in their expression, activate different mental maps, and are sometimes linked to antiquated ideas, people often talk past one another in ways that inadvertently preserve current understandings and practice. Trying to change those mental structures is very demanding, particularly if we are unaware of their existence and power. Addressing them, I believe, is at the core of professional learning that produces deep understanding of complex subjects and lasting change in mental and behavioral habits.

I’ll have more to say on mental frames and how they can be accessed and altered in upcoming postings, but in the meantime I look forward to hearing your views on this subject.

Professional Learning’s “APGAR”

According to a chapter in The Big Moo, a recent book edited by Seth Godin, as post-World War II America shifted from home to hospital births, physician Virginia Apgar “. . . created a simple yet accurate assessment tool for evaluating a baby’s health during the crucial minutes after birth when diagnosis and intervention could help save its life.” The “Newborn Rating System,” the book said, became an international standard for evaluating a baby at birth. Another physician adapted a five-criteria scoring system using the APGAR acronym (appearance, pulse, grimace, activity, respiratory) to make the criteria easier for physicians to remember and use. “The APGAR score has made a worldwide impact on saving babies lives,” the author noted. “It costs nothing, is simple to teach, and requires no complex technology.”

I liked the simplicity and clarity of that approach and found myself wondering whether the volumes of information available today regarding high-quality professional development sometimes overwhelm and confuse educators rather than clarify its essence, point to that which is essential, and promote the most highly leveraged action. Instead of enabling sustained, disciplined efforts focused on a small number of critically important factors, I suspect that information overload sometimes leads to either decision-making paralysis (particularly for those who are uncomfortable acting without feeling like they know everything) or frequent, abrupt changes in direction.

At about the same time I was learning about APGAR I saw an ad in Fast Company for a health-care system that read in part: “Dr. Thomas Gest and his colleagues eliminated traditional lectures in favor of hands-on lab work in our Gross Anatomy Department. This active learning sets us apart and gives our medical students the knowledge and experience they need to become the best doctors. It’s another example of what can be accomplished through collaboration. For our triumphs are not in research alone, nor in the hands of a single doctor, but rather in the rewards realized from working together.” I appreciated the clarity and simplicity of that description of the learning method in this particular medical school—hands-on, active, collaborative.

“APGAR” and the ad’s simplicity stimulated my thinking about the value of a similar acronym that would be easy for school leaders and staff development providers to remember and consistently use in their day-to-day decision making. The starting point, of course, is to identify a small number of critically important factors that are within the circle of influence of principals, teacher leaders, and district administrators.

In the spirit of stimulating dialogue on this subject, I offer the following criteria: learning focused on clear and measurable goals for student outcomes guided by several types of disaggregated data and other forms of evidence; learning that for the most part occurs simultaneously with the execution of the core tasks of teaching and leadership (teachers and leaders learn while doing rather than learning about things they are expected to do); and learning that predominantly occurs within school-based teams.

In the spirit of Virginia Apgar and with the assistance of others, I developed two acronyms (one moderately self serving)—SPARKS and CREATE—to stimulate and clarify my thinking:

1. Student-learning focused, Practice continually improved, All teachers engaged, Routine & daily educator learning, Knowledge-based decisions, and Staff teamwork (SPARKS)

2. Core tasks of teaching, Results for students, Every day, All teachers, Team-based learning, Evidence-based decision making (CREATE)

Taken together, the ideas I’ve suggested above offer a compelling purpose that energizes the demanding work of creating high-quality professional learning and teamwork in schools and provide a manageable set of indicators to guide in its implementation and to assess progress. I encourage you to develop your own APGAR (or use one of mine) and welcome your views on this subject.

Drafting a Purpose Statement for Professional Learning

Too often, I’m sad to say, professional development is viewed by teachers and administrators as an obligation to be met or an onerous problem to be solved (How can I acquire CEUs for recertification? or What will we do on our mandated “inservice day”?) rather than a compelling purpose to be served through sustained and focused learning and teamwork. The importance of a succinctly and powerfully expressed purpose was underscored for me in a May 2006 Fast Company article on organic farming ("A Farming Fairy Tale" http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/105/food-organic.html). An advocate for this approach observed, “The conversation isn’t really about ‘going organic’—it should be about how we change the world for the better, how we deal with the world as we currently see it.” Charles Fishman, the article’s author, concluded, “Whether we get to 100% organic is not the issue. It’s whether we become a sustainable society.”

I took that as a challenge to describe the purpose of professional learning in similarly compelling language. I wrote: Students’ economic and life prospects are profoundly affected by the quality of teaching they experience. That is particularly true for low income and minority students. Unfortunately, the quality of teaching often varies dramatically even within a single school. High-quality teaching for all students can be realized, however, if teachers routinely collaborate with the intention of continuously improving their teaching so that all students achieve at high levels. A culture of continuous improvement in teaching and learning and the structures that support it requires skillful leadership in schools. Leaders’ deep understanding of high-quality professional learning and teamwork in schools and their ability to explain clearly, precisely, and concisely their attributes is essential in the creation of such schools. Sustained professional learning and teamwork for all teachers and school leaders focused on the core tasks of their daily work is essential in ensuring outstanding teaching in every classroom for all students.

That seemed too long and complex and lacked the “change the world for the better” punch of organic farming’s purpose, so I tried again: Students’ life chances are affected by the quality of teaching they receive, and the quality of teaching across all classroom in a school is determined by the quality of leadership within the school. The sustained quality of teaching and leadership is, in turn, determined by the quality of professional learning and teamwork experienced by teachers and school leaders.

Still too long, so I made a third attempt: At its heart, educators’ professional learning profoundly affects students’ life chances, particularly those young people who are most in need of quality teaching.

I encourage you to write your own purpose statement for professional learning. As a starting point feel free to use phrases or sentences from my statements, and be prepared to write successive drafts. I encourage you to share your results with other readers of this posting.

Plans That Make a Difference

A superintendent I met at a “Leading for Results” workshop I conducted told me with some pride about his district’s strategic plan. To help me understand the elements of the plan, he pulled a decidedly low-tech tool from his bag—a laminated piece of poster board which contained a diagram illustrating its key feature. He propped it on the table top in front of me and explained that the plan’s focal point was “reflective practice”—what the system and its members had to do differently to serve all students rather than on how students had to change to serve the desires of the organization. To that end, the plan empowered teachers to teach less by “cleaning their curricular attics,” emphasized holistic achievement through which all forms of intelligence are developed and recognized, and nurtured professional relationships that focused on teaching and learning, particularly on the design of classroom work experiences for students.

It was easy to imagine the superintendent using this simple diagram in one-on-one conversations or in small group meetings to explain and remind teachers, principals, parents, school board trustees, and other community members of the district’s priorities and the means by which they would be achieved. It was also easy to imagine the incredible focus that district and school leaders could achieve as educators continuously deepen their understanding of these concepts and seek to apply them in their classrooms.

That conversation prompted me to reflect on what I’ve learned about strategic planning from NSDC’s previous efforts extending back to 1986 and from planning I’ve observed in countless schools and school systems. From my experience some of the key attributes of a powerful strategic plan are:

• A stretch goal that appeals to both leaders’ heads and hearts. A strong plan, I believe, motivates organizations and their staff members to stop doing some things that are hard to give up and to initiate at least a few activities that feel scary because they require deep changes in beliefs, understandings, and actions.

My assumption: If nothing of significance changes in professional learning and relationships, leadership, teaching (including the curriculum), and assessment, nothing of significance will change in student learning. Or to put it a bit differently, if we do what we’ve always done we’ll get what we’ve always gotten.

• A coherent theory of action related to a small number of clearly defined and powerful strategies. Because the theory of action explains in simple, direct language—preferably in the form of stories—exactly how a plan’s strategies will lead to the desired result, everyone in the organization (school board trustees, district leaders, school leaders, teachers, etc.) understands them and can describe how the strategies affect their work.

My assumption: Clear, logical thinking demonstrated in clear, logical writing and speaking regarding both ends and means is essential to avoid entering the “zone of wishful thinking” and dissipating energy in minimally effective, fragmented efforts.

• Indicators of progress that truly inform the actions of teachers and school and system leaders. Such data produces meaningful and actionable knowledge (not “true but useless” information, to borrow Jerry Sternin’s phrase). Data will be simple enough to collect and interpret that educators can provide both individualized and immediately useful forms of “just-in-time” assessment and aggregated information across a team, school faculty, school system, and state or province.

My assumption: Data that is easily understood and actionable is a key component in improving individual and organizational performance.

For me, those are the essential elements of a powerful strategic plan—an intellectually and emotionally compelling goal, a clear explanation of how the goal will be achieved through simple declarative statements and stories to illustrate the organization’s theory of action, and understandable and easy to apply “metrics” that guide mid-course corrections and motivate continuous improvement in professional learning, leadership, teaching, and student achievement. I welcome your thoughts on this important subject.

Developing a Point of View on Closing the Achievement Gap

As someone constantly on the lookout for examples of the 80/20 principle, I immediately tuned into an assertion made by Robert Balfanz and Nettie Legters in their Education Week “Commentary” (“Closing ‘Dropout Factories’: The Graduation Rate Crisis We Know, What Can Be Done About It,” July 12, 2006) that just 15 percent of American high schools produce close to half of this nation’s dropouts (we might call this the 50/15 principle). They also claimed that “poverty is the fundamental driver of low graduation rates” with a near perfect correlation between it and schools’ tendency to loose students between the 9th and 12th grade. Research the authors have conducted indicates that half of one large school district’s dropouts could be predicted in the 6th grade through just four variables: attendance, behavior, and course failure in math and English. Among the concrete solutions Balfanz and Legters offer is “greater investment in research, development, and invention . . ., particularly in the areas of curriculum, instruction, and assessment.”

I would add to the researchers’ list of solutions the development of an unshakable belief on the part of system leaders regarding the capacity of all (or virtually all) students to learn at high levels. That thought was underscored when I met this summer with a group of 15-20 rural and small system superintendents and other district administrators who were discussing in a very open and honest way whether schools can be expected to educate all students to the level of their state’s rigorous academic standards.

Speaking in the context of NCLB, a superintendent in the group said that a goal that put higher levels of achievement many years out in the future was unacceptable to him; he believed his school system could do much better job of educating all its students right now and that it was his job to ensure that it happened. Another superintendent took exception with that view, a position that probably took some courage to express openly in such a public setting. He said, in effect, that based on his experience poverty trumped the influence of schools in determining student achievement. The two superintendents talked back and forth for a few minutes, with others joining the conversation from time to time.

After the session the doubting superintendent followed me down the hall, clearly wanting to continue this discussion and to further explore my views. We stopped to talk, and another participant who had not spoken in the larger group joined us. It was clear to me that both superintendents were looking for an honest, respectful, and thoughtful conversation about schools’ responsibilities and capacities to close the achievement gap given the existence of serious social problems such as poverty and racism.

I, too, have struggled to develop a coherent point of view on this critically important subject, and the following essay I prepared for the Fall 2006 issue of the JSD reveals how I have tried to clarify my own thinking in this area. (The published “Overview” will be somewhat briefer due to space restrictions.) I hope that it is useful to you and to others in stimulating serious and sustained dialogue regarding this issue.

“Create Your Point of View Regarding Schools’ Capacity to Close the Achievement Gap”To be honest, I feel angry that our society asks teachers to take on a disproportionate share of the responsibility for ameliorating the profound negative consequences of poverty, racism, and inadequate health care for poor and minority children. I am angry that the public schools that serve our most challenged students are grossly underfunded. And I am angry at political leaders who willfully ignore the damage done to children by these social problems or who act in self-serving ways that intensify the problems.At the same time, I know that each day hundreds of thousands of teachers make a positive difference in the lives of young people who are challenged by forces far beyond their control. These teachers know first hand the grinding circumstances that some children face and yet persist day after day in the demanding task of teaching all student to high standards.This issue of the JSD challenges me to reconcile these perspectives by determining my point of view regarding the capacity of schools to close the achievement gap. Here’s the result of my effort.

Competent, firm leadership by knowledgeable, skillful, and committed principals and teacher leaders is essential in creating schools in which all students achieve at higher levels. While such leadership cannot be abdicated by principals, in high-performing schools it is distributed broadly within the school community.

Most human beings—educators included—underestimate their ability to affect positive change. Skillful leadership on the part of principals and teachers can create a sense of expanded possibility and higher expectations for everyone in the school community—teachers, principals, students, and family members. This increased sense of efficacy leads to more ambitious goals, improved teaching, and the development of school programs that address equity issues.Teachers’ deep understanding of the content they teach matters. So, too, does their knowledge of instructional practices that produce high levels of learning for a diverse student population.

Teachers’ attitudes toward their students affects motivation and learning. Positive attitudes are revealed in the high expectations teachers hold for students and for one another, in the genuine respect they display for students and their families, and in the enthusiasm and sense of possibility they bring to their work each day.

The quality of relationships teachers have with one another affects whether professional learning is put into practice and whether other school improvement resources are wisely used. Trust among teachers as revealed in candid conversation about traditionally “undiscussables” such as race and social privilege is a critically important feature of high-performing schools that serve poor and minority students.

All the factors mentioned above can be affected through persistent, deliberate effort. Closing the achievement gap, as this issue of the JSD makes clear, requires steadiness of purpose in the face of what at times may feel like insurmountable challenges. It also requires professional learning and teamwork that has its heart sustained and candid conversations within the school community about learning, teaching, relationships, expectations, race, and poverty.While the exercise of preparing this “Overview” helped me clarify my views, it is your perspective as school and system leaders that will ultimately influence the life chances of poor and minority students. I hope that you use the articles found in these pages to help you articulate your point of view regarding the responsibilities and capacities of schools to educate all students to high standards. It is a critically important task that no one—article authors, publication editors, or education associations—can do for you.