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.