http://beta.aalf.org/blog/abertolini abertolini's Blog in XML! http://beta.aalf.org/blog/abertolini/view?PostID=340 I have been following with much interest the blogs, news articles and debates about teacher rating occurring in the USA. Part of my interest stems from the discussion that is starting to occur in Australia, driven by our Federal Government, about teacher performance and productivity. I want to say something upfront here … I actually believe measuring teacher performance is critical to the process of developing quality learning and teaching. However, I think that virtually every government driven approach that uses student value-added data as the key measure is flawed and will drive teacher behaviour that will destroy the great things about education and learning. I know that I am supported by many others in the opinion about the destructive nature of the current teacher evaluation approaches. The essence of my belief stems from three points: Teaching and schools are team environments Student mindset, attitudes and learning abilities have an enormous impact on their ability to perform Socio-economic factors have an enormous impact on a student’s ability to perform So rather than pointing out why this system is destructive without pointing out a possible solution, let us look to where else we could find possible approaches to measuring a teacher’s performance inside the team environment that student learning occurs. The most highly measured teams in the world occur in sport. Whether the player plays American Football, Soccer, Australian Rules Football, Baseball, etc. a wide range of statistics are gathered. In EVERY SINGLE high performance sporting team in the world, who all have an enormous commitment and reliance on performance, one does not measure the value and performance of individual players in a team sport by the touchdowns or goals scored. You measure the value or performance of a player by their ability to perform their role – normally measured by a range of key performance indicators. The game is won by the cumulative effect and effort of the individuals delivering on their roles within the game (including dealing with the counter-strategies and plays of the opposing team). Now drawing a link to schools and learning. The game being played is the student demonstrating the skills and understanding required by the educational system for that year level. In the case of schools the measure of success, in many teacher performance approaches, is the value-adding to students of their ability to perform on a single test on a particular day in a particular year. To win that game the team in the school must perform in their role - so that is what we must measure. So what could we measure that would give a reasonable indication of the ability of a teacher to perform in their role? A team’s victory is the accumulation of actions that leads to a winning score – the winning score itself is a secondary effect of those actions. In the same way the student performance is a secondary effect of the school team’s accumulated actions. The measures would have to be based on what the teachers are directly responsible and accountable for. So what are they directly accountable for that would lead to a reasonable set of measures? I have been inquiring into this with a working party of teachers as I support them in developing a teacher performance framework for their school. We ended up with similar thoughts to teacher performance that Bill Gates (shock horror) discussed in a recent article. After several months of work this is what we ended up with … and it makes complete sense. A teacher is accountable for three major areas that lead to student performance as an effect: Their capacity to build a professional working culture defined by aspects such as being in positive staff relationships, being a team member, being professional, and being self-reflective. Their capacity to build positive relationships with students and parents defined by aspects such as role modelling, praise and encouragement, creating a safe environment, communication, encouraging risk-taking in learning, etc. Their capacity to deliver the curriculum through appropriate pedagogical practices defined by aspects such as curriculum documentation, unit planning, evidence-based powerful learning practices, etc. This can be represented by the following Venn diagram. The Venn diagram indicates that the best performance comes from the conjunction of all 3 elements. A Teacher can have some performance by being strong in one or two of the framework areas but the greatest performance will occur when all 3 are present. If a teacher is challenged in their personal capacity to be a team member, be professional, self-reflect … then of course it would affect their ability to build relationships with students and do their job. If a teacher is challenged in their capacity to role model and build relationships with students and parents, then it again would impact performance and delivery of curriculum. If a teacher is challenged in their ability to apply evidence-based pedagogy, plan authentic learning units, have quality educational learning rituals in classes, this would also affect performance. What we have done as a working party (which includes teachers, heads of departments, senior management within the school) is to create three formative rubrics that are designed to describe explicitly what the behaviour of teachers would be on key focus areas within these 3 domains. We are currently identifying a scaffold of structures, habits, and processes that would support the development of teacher performance along the spectrum we have defined. In my next blog I will go into the formative rubrics we have designed to support teacher development in these 3 key areas and how we are intending to use these both support building teacher capacity and measure their performance. When you see the rubrics you will be quite surprised about how empowering they can be for teachers. Please feel free to comment on this blog. If you are interested in finding out more about our work please email me at adrian@intuyuconsulting.com.au. Sat, 15 Sep 2012 02:35:00 EDT Adrian Bertolini (abertolini) http://beta.aalf.org/blog/abertolini/view?PostID=208 I thought I would provoke some discussion and thinking up front in today\'s blog. I want to be especially confronting to the status quo that schools are in at the moment because we have a belief ... opinion ... viewpoint ... that most schools are living in lala land about the Australian Curriculum. [Note: Lala Land is that land you go to when you put your hands over your ears and shout loudly \"lalalalalala\" to block out the conversation someone is trying to have with you!\"] We have been working with a range of schools in Victoria, Queensland and Western Australia and our opinion about the readiness of schools for implementing the Australian Curriculum is a resounding NO!!!!!! This is not a critical issue at the moment but I don\'t believe many schools (nor the governments for that matter) have confronted what it is actually going to take to authentically and professionally implement the Australian Curriculum to honour both its intent and the possibility available from its embedding. We have some perspective on this because we have spent the past 18 months working with primary and secondary schools, government and independent schools, teacher teams that are on board and those that are not, and across several states, and have spent an enormous amount of time and thought looking at what are the factors that will empower and enable the effective implementation. We have HAD TO DO THIS as part of being paid by the schools and being effective as a consultancy. The implementation of the Australian Curriculum is an extraordinary opportunity to create a shift in the learning and teaching profession. It is one of those line in the sand sort of moments that will define education in this country ... or not (if schools don\'t act). The next few years will involve some enormous transitions for the way that schools and teachers think, plan, and operate in their learning environments. It will challenge the habits and rituals of learning within the learning environments. It will demand that teachers develop themselves continuously to be more masterful. It will be confronting, challenging, sickening, and thrilling. What it IS going to take for the Australian Curriculum to be delivered well is a paradigm shift in the way that teachers provide learning and schools support learning. To give you a sense of our thinking and observations of what it will require, I sat down and wrote out a list of some of the actions schools would need to take at a minimum to be effective and cause learning performance across their school. Have you mapped out the Achievement Standards across the year levels to see how they flow and fit and could be linked? Have you audited your current curriculum documentation to get a sense of what you are currently delivering? Has there been a skills mapping that articulates how both the subject specific skills and the general capabilities will be coherently built upon through the year levels? Have you set benchmark expectations for each year levels end-of-year expected skills and understandings to measure progress against? Has the school set time aside for teaching teams throughout the year to map out and plan each year level\'s implementation of the Australian Curriculum? Have you begun to trial some Australian Curriculum units? Have you documented any Australian Curriculum units already delivered and reflected upon what worked and what didn\'t and refined the unit? Have you looked at the timetable and thought about how to redesign it to allow for new learning approaches and cross-curricular learning? Has the Senior Leadership developed a progressive plan over the next two years of how they will support teachers with time, professional learning, and critical friends to support the cultural shift? Are there developmental structures to support the embedding of new teacher practice, strategies, habits and thinking? Are there frameworks to support teacher growth, acknowledge teacher performance but also to professionally deal with teacher non-compliance? We are working with schools on all of these aspects and over the coming months our blogs will be sharing the results of our work with various schools so you can start to see the unpacking of this thinking. My question to you (and please email me at adrian@intuyuconsulting.com.au) is ... what do you see needs to be addressed and where are you stuck? Tue, 03 Jul 2012 21:53:00 EDT Adrian Bertolini (abertolini) http://beta.aalf.org/blog/abertolini/view?PostID=161 One of the clear facets of the Australian Curriculum is the requirement for teachers to explicitly develop skills in the students. These skills include both the subject specific skills as well as what are now termed the general capabilities (another name for interdisciplinary skills). The challenge for teachers is figuring out HOW they are going to be more explicit about developing the required skills. Part of the challenge is that, for the most part, teachers have operated with the HOPE that students will develop the required skills by practicing or participating in activities. Well … to a certain extent this does develop the skills but in a world of performance this is insufficient. K. Anders Ericsson has pioneered the research into deliberate practice. One of Ericsson\'s core findings is that skill expertise has more to do with how one practices than with merely performing a skill a large number of times. An expert breaks down the skills that are required to be expert and focuses on improving those skill chunks during practice or day-to-day activities, often paired with immediate coaching feedback. Another important feature of deliberate practice lies in continually practicing a skill at more challenging levels with the intention of mastering it. One of the structures that we use as we facilitate teacher’s Australian Curriculum planning is the formative rubric. We use the structure of a formative rubric (see the Rubric Student Version and the Rubric Teacher Version) to support the teachers to unpack not only what the skill chunks are at different stages of skill development, but to provide a structure for teachers to articulate the explicit approaches they will use to develop and challenge the students. Our experience is that teachers have a ‘light bulb’ moment and suddenly it all becomes clear. The thinking behind the formative rubric is this. Expert teachers generally know what level of skill a student is displaying in the way they are demonstrating in their work. However, this is an instinctual thing with teachers which they address when they see it. If we are going to actually support the students in developing a mastery approach we have to move this from an anecdotal \'on-sight\' approach to explicitly articulating what it is we are looking for, the evidence that we require them to produce to demonstrate that they are at a level, and the strategies we will be using to develop their skill. Once we have captured this information suddenly the process of developing visible feedback mechanisms that the students drive becomes much easier. The result is that performance increases, the more competent students have a structure that can extend them, teacher\'s have more time to support the struggling students, and the students begin to have tools that allow them to become independent learners. It does take time to articulate it well as it challenges the teachers to get really clear about WHAT demonstrable behaviour it is they are looking for. I have attached a sample rubric for research so you can get an idea of how we unpacked one skill at a year 8 level. Another benefit of going through the process is that the teachers suddenly realise their mastery of a particular area and can coach and give away their understandings and mastery to others. Win-Win really! Any thoughts or comments? Tue, 08 May 2012 22:24:00 EDT Adrian Bertolini (abertolini) http://beta.aalf.org/blog/abertolini/view?PostID=131 I have this belief that the planning documents need to lead teachers through the thinking and behaviour you are trying to encourage in them. They are not just to capture information (although this is an important part of the process). How the teachers fill in the documents will tell you a lot about their current thinking. So when you look at HOW the teachers fill in their current documents, their detail, their use of the current planning documents, and so on ... their actions will reveal their mindset and understanding and how much they value the process of planning. It will identify gaps in their thinking and possibly their understanding. It could also identify gaps in rigour and the discipline of planning. In designing the process of planning I would want to make sure that the documents and the planning process lead the teachers through the thinking I want them to undertake to develop a coherent, cohesive unit that meets the school\'s pedagogical focuses. There is a step by step process you want them to go through. If you look at Jay McTigue\'s Understanding By Design approach the planning templates are filled in a particular order and the process takes one through the process. Now I, personally, am interested in performance - enabling both teachers and students to perform exceptionally. When you look at the performance of people there are four major areas which get in the way of them performing successfully. They don\'t know WHAT to do They don\'t know HOW to do it. They don\'t know WHY they do it? Or there are OBSTACLES beyond their control When I look at many school planners ... there is a lot of identifying WHAT to do. Most of the HOW in teacher unit plans are very vague to my \"Engineer\" oriented brain. The WHY comes from having clear Key Understandings. Obstacles can be addressed via \"common misconceptions\" or the teacher identifying the common barriers to progress (whether they be understandings or skills or whatever) and identifying strategies to support students to overcome them. If I am looking at Planning Documents (whether they are house plans, learning plans, game plans for a sport, plans for an organising a conference, etc) I really want to be able to see; WHAT is the goal and WHAT it will look like when it is all completed (goal skills, understandings) HOW will we get there (what tools, skills need to be developed, resources, learning strategies, and the explicit steps to get there) WHY (how it links to past learning and future learning, big picture) OBSTACLES (what could be some potential obstacles and HOW we will overcome them) The planning documents should be clear in showing this. When I see this information we can then be clear that the event is going to happen (whether it is a unit, house, conference, bridge, or whatever). That is what plans are for. For me, planning documents should begin with the end point (the destination) - the WHAT What are the key understandings (achievement standards) I want the students to gain by the end of the unit? This will link into what they already know and the WHY of the unit. What skills am I wanting to be developing through this unit (both subject specific skills and core competencies/general capabilities pertinent to this cohort of students)? What thinking do I want them to do? What content will be the vehicle for this journey? Knowing all of this ... what could be a culminating event where the students can summatively and authentically demonstrate their understandings and skills to achieve? What does this look like? feel like? We now get to the HOW So now knowing the WHAT ... what would be the list of steps I would take to have the students successfully accomplish reaching the end point having developed the skills and grasped the understandings? What tools will I use when? What resources will I need when? What graphic organisers? What incursions or excursions? How will I hook them or engage them? What questions could I formulate to begin and to guide them through the process? What could be common misconceptions of barriers for these students? How will I support the students to overcome these barriers? What structures will I use to support the students and myself to facilitate the process? This outline of my thinking is WHY I would include documents such as a check list, and formative rubric in the planning documentation. This would address part of the how. When you look at your planning documents you really want to be able to see the whole picture and process. Do you see this in your school teaching / learning plans? Wed, 04 Apr 2012 20:41:00 EDT Adrian Bertolini (abertolini) http://beta.aalf.org/blog/abertolini/view?PostID=129 This week\\\'s blog comes from Narelle Wood. Narelle is our Australian Curriculum expert and has worked extensively across a range of schools in supporting powerful learning in the literacy and English domain. ---- An indulgence of mine is jigsaw puzzles. I will sit for hours trying to complete a particular section and it has got to the stage where I have sat at the table for 2 days straight to complete one. I recently completed one of penguins standing on a sheet of ice; there is not much colour in Antarctica. By the time I had completed the puzzle I had the usual self-satisfied feeling of solving a problem but this was muddled with feelings of frustration and annoyance. It’s safe to say the lack of clarity in what I was trying to achieve diminished the normal enjoyable experience. I have come to realise completing a jigsaw puzzle is much like learning; fitting smaller pieces together to see the bigger picture. Where we sometimes fail as educators is in not giving our students sufficient information to complete their learning jigsaw puzzle. I’ve came to this realisation when I was teaching Literature in 2010. I had a small and reasonably capable class. What was new for me was that the students knew how they learnt and demanded, nicely, that I teach them in the way they knew worked best. Early in the year I had spent some time with the Year 11 Literature teacher and we had mapped out a very detailed scope and sequence chart. Walking into each class I knew what outcomes needed to be addressed and how they related. The route altered occasionally to respond to the needs of my students. But the students were demanding me to share that curriculum map with them. They wanted to see the big picture as well as the small details on each individual piece, and they wanted to know how it all fitted together. The demand first appeared as; “what are we learning this for?” I refrained from biting and explained the benefits of deconstructing poetry; we were skill building. Each lesson I faced similar questions. Exasperated by the seemingly constant challenges I finally took in the scope and sequence chart and all the other curriculum documentation, sat down with the students and explained it. The exercise, initially, was really a way to shut them up, but to my surprise and delight, they were generally interested. The questions asked about the curriculum were intelligent and insightful, and in most cases questions that we had posed ourselves in developing the curriculum documents. I also found it interesting that the students were surprised we had gone into so much detail; we had mapped out when and what meta-language they would learn. When I explained that meta-language was a significant component of Literature, you could see the pieces fit together. No longer was euphemistic language something that Miss Wood just liked to talk about, it had a purpose. I thought, initially that the interest was because of the stereotypical students that take Literature – the more bookish or academic types. So I decided to experiment on my Year 9’s; in a completely ethical and educationally sound way of course. I did the same activity. I had a greater range of the so-called academic ability and I was curious to see their response. It sparked much debate and we did get stuck on “why write essays” for about 30 minutes of the 45 minute lesson. They too had some very interesting and well formed arguments about their learning and its purpose in their lives. What both experiences showed me is that students are interested in their education but we, unwittingly at times, limit these opportunities by limiting the information we give them. This is like asking them to complete an extraordinarily detailed jigsaw puzzle with no pictures, instructions or clues - an overwhelming task for even the avid jigsaw puzzler. So, why do we not share the curriculum with students? Why do we not involve the students in writing the curriculum? Surely if we wish our students to take more responsibility in their learning we need to give them some ownership over what and how they learn. The results of Robert Marzano’s 2003 research on school effectiveness strongly supports that a clearly documented and workable curriculum at the whole school level is the most important factor in student achievement. The documentation is worth doing for a large number of reasons. It provides: an understanding of where the students learning is going allows the students to make explicit connections between subjects can allow them easier access to past learning by seeing the skills as accumulative rather than replacing old knowledge with the new it provides them a framework for reflection by asking them to self-assess where they are at in the learning sequence it is a practical demonstration that planning matters Granted, it is a daunting task, especially if all the documentation needs to be student friendly. So, how do you complete a giant exceptionally complicated jigsaw puzzle? One piece at a time. I know the work I did made a profound difference to the way I approached my teaching. And I now live with hope that after students have long left the classroom they continue to ask “what am I learning this for?” and keep adding pieces to their jigsaw puzzle. Sun, 25 Mar 2012 19:29:00 EDT Adrian Bertolini (abertolini) http://beta.aalf.org/blog/abertolini/view?PostID=127 The most challenging, rewarding work we do in schools happens when we have the opportunity to build a partnership with the school over time. We really love this aspect of our work. Through these partnerships we gain a deep understanding of the school’s culture and priorities, develop meaningful relationships with teachers and often we act as a consistent, driving force for change. The advantages of having a relative outsider come into the school community are many – but one in-particular stands out to me. At a number of schools, I have reached an optimum level of integration into the landscape of the place. That is to say, I am known and familiar but am still objective enough to see the ‘big picture’ of the school. Because of this, I am able to ‘connect the dots’ of its people and culture in order to design suitable curriculum, engage teaching teams in effective planning and map the actions that will lead to culture shift over time. When speaking about this to a fellow coach recently, I referred to it as ‘standing across the street, looking into the school.’ Close enough to see everything, but with a wide enough perspective to see the whole picture. I strongly believe that there is not enough perspective in our schools – and that there is an urgent need for it. No matter how competent and skilled the internal personnel of an organisation may be, the fact remains that schools are like bubbles encasing small, intense communities that can become all-consuming to those inside them. Our role as consultants who are practical and passionate about learning and teaching is clear in this scenario: Bring perspective and clarity to the development of school-wide initiatives Model positive, effective relationships with both leadership and teaching staff Bring global education experts and initiatives into the school’s sphere for discussion and application in relevant areas Promote a shared language of learning throughout the school community that reflects a highly consistent approach to culture and pedagogy Facilitate substantive conversations about developing evolving practice Skill the teaching team to provide progressive, differentiated challenges to students across a range of disciplines Support and facilitate exploration and application of teaching strategies that align with the general capabilities of the National Curriculum in order to promote deep, practical understanding of these transferable concepts View ourselves as lifelong learners who have as much to discover from working within a school community as we have to impart. By modelling these practices, reinforcing the pedagogical beliefs and language that the school wants to build and nurturing real relationships with teachers, we are able to make a definitive difference. The relational aspect of teaching is often emphasised by classroom teachers and educational experts alike – and trusting relationships are undoubtedly at the core of education. But trust must also mean challenge, measured risk-taking and a strong sense of shared responsibility. This is vital when building a high performance school culture – both in terms of teacher-student relationships, and teacher-teacher relationships. As facilitators and coaches on this journey, we need to be deeply empathic towards those who are finding change confronting, but also to send high-expectation messages about accountability, openness to change and developing resilience in the process of dynamic culture shift. We are able to play this critical role because we occupy the space between school and society - and it is this ‘big picture’ view that can sustain schools through transition from what Sir Ken Robinson refers to as ‘industrial-age education’ to a twenty-first century learning community. The final, critical piece of the coaching for change puzzle is to develop classroom teachers as coaches. One of my colleagues refers to this process as ‘doing ourselves out of a job’ and this is the ultimate indicator of our effectiveness. As we know, the best teaching is that which achieves genuine transfer of the skills we want students to build so that they can apply them to a range of real-world situations. To do as this a coach means being skilled in assisting teachers to develop the skills of meta-cognitive reflection so that they can monitor their mindsets and stay vigilant in evaluating the conscious and unconscious habits and practices that they bring to the learning space. Additionally, it requires us to be able to teach the critical skill of design to teachers so that they become strategic, innovative planners of curriculum. At present, this seems to be the ‘missing link’ between organised professional learning and implementation of new teaching strategies. The professional conversation often ends after a ‘one off’ session and the ideas discussed remain ideas, nothing more. We must change the way we offer and access professional development so that we see consultancy as a partnership in moving the school forward and give teachers the real, ongoing support they need to be able learn, trial and reflect on their practice. If we can do this, the ‘bubble’ will burst and schools will become empowered places where people can not only see the possibility of change, but with supported, consistent effort, can embrace it with enthusiasm. Tue, 13 Mar 2012 20:16:00 EDT Adrian Bertolini (abertolini) http://beta.aalf.org/blog/abertolini/view?PostID=123 For those of you who are new to this blog, we spend a lot of time working with teachers and schools at the fore-front of shifting their school learning culture and their pedagogy. This week we had an revealing experience with one of the schools we are working with. It is early days in this school and the individual is receiving push back by internal (students, certain staff, etc) and external forces (e.g. parents). By the way this is normal as schools\' shift their practice and habits. I thought I\'d post the reply by one of our consultants to the individual who is responsible for being the beacon of change within the school. ---- Hi X, I experienced the same reactions (the whole range!) at the two schools at which I worked to implement Inquiry programs. Some of the students were very threatened by having to move outside their comfort zones - they had been very comfortable and used to the idea of the teacher doing all the work (in terms of the thinking) and them being positioned as recipients of information in the traditional classroom. They were very concerned about potential impact of \'taking time\' away from traditional, discipline-based learning to develop the skills and competencies of inquiry. At one stage (I think I may have shared this story with you early in our planning last year) we invited parents and students to an evening meeting at the school to give us feedback about the Project - and it was very mixed, with strong opinions on both sides (and of course many who kept quiet on the issue). The bottom line was that, whilst we in no way minimised the students\' fears, we understood that we were the ones who had developed the understanding of the pedagogical principles underpinning the program - the students believed they knew what would serve them best in the \'real\' world because that was their dominant experience of learning up until that point. You could say the same of many of the parents. We know what the research, the data and the experts say. Introducing Inquiry IS challenging, and I know, first-hand the feelings of stress, pressure and concern that teachers can feel during the process (particularly in the early stages of implementation). The fact that some students are feeling uncomfortable is a good sign - it means that we have created something that is genuinely different and that there is obviously a need for, as the students must develop their awareness and competency in the skills needed for the twenty-first century world - skills and competencies that the VCE alone cannot provide. My understanding of the structure of the curriculum at your school was that the Inquiry Projects run separately from key disciplines like English and Maths so the students can be reassured that they will get their discipline-based, traditional preparation for the VCE in those subjects. What inquiry will do for them is develop the independent learning and coping skills that they will need to effectively deal with the stressors of experiences like VCE, university, living independently and later, to navigate the unpredictable and ever-changing jobs-market that they\'ll be entering. Without question, as part of my learning curve as I developed Inquiry in schools, the most important skill that I developed (out of absolute necessity!) was resilience. I had to look to collegiate support - particularly through those who shared my beliefs and an excellent mentor - to the research, to the work the students began to produce over time and to my own conviction that the work we were doing to transform learning into an active, thinking partnership was not only valid, but critical. On the odd evening, I would even watch video clips in the mould of Sir Ken Robinson\'s \'Changing Education Paradigms\' to remind me of our purpose and reasons for working to transform the student experience. Rest assured that what you are all experiencing is very \'normal\' and I have been there myself. We are already experiencing success because we are challenging staff and students. ------- If you are a teacher or in the leadership team at a school who is out to shift the learning culture at your school - then expect the push back! You ARE pushing people out of their comfort zones and challenging their thinking. Unless the school is aiming for excellence and being extraordinary then the school will naturally devolve into mediocrity. It is your job to keep the vision alive. It is also the making of you as a leader of developing exceptional learning. It is not easy. It is not simple. You have to have the determination and the vision to be the one causing the shift. The results and difference for everyone is profound in the end. Until next time! Sat, 18 Feb 2012 22:20:00 EST Adrian Bertolini (abertolini) http://beta.aalf.org/blog/abertolini/view?PostID=122 The following is an except from my book Exceptional that will be published later this year. For those of you who are first time readers - welcome. For those of you who are constant readers - welcome back for 2012! Everyone has an opinion about education. I do. You do. Kids do. Parents do. Grandparents do. Teachers do. Politicians do. The media does. Radio shock jocks do. Billionaires do. There aren’t many days that I don’t hear some comment about education from someone. Unfortunately for a large percentage of the population much of it is misguided and uninformed. You might believe that is a big statement - not really. You have to consider on what people base their knowledge and understanding. Opinions are based on what people know from reading, listening, others people’s opinions, media, cultural background, and on their life experiences. Life experiences have the greatest effect on shaping our perceptions. For example; If you are a student and your Grade One teacher created with you that “mistakes are your friend” and then set up the learning environment to allow you to make mistakes and learn from them, then you would probably love learning all the time. If you are a student and you failed assessment under test conditions, despite “knowing the material”, how long would it be before you decide that you “don’t get it” and progressively build an opinion about you and school? If you are a parent who has had poor educational experiences you can unconsciously impart your beliefs and mindset to your children (“I’m no good at maths”, “school is hard”, “I hated homework”, “I couldn’t wait to leave school”, etc). If you have an ingrained belief that maths is “hard” then, unless you deliberately tackle that self-belief as a parent, there is a pre-disposition for maths being “hard” for your children. If you are a “Tiger” parent with a strong belief that it is only by working long hours and doing lots of rote learning that your children will succeed, it is likely you will drive your children incessantly to perform academically – sometimes to the detriment of other skills. If were teased at school, perhaps bullied, maybe even had a humiliating experience, that would affect your perceptions of education and learning. This is the same if you grew up in a tough socio-economic environment. If you as a teacher believe that you don’t need to adjust your teaching practice and the way you structure learning in the classroom for different students and different generations of students (“I’ve been teaching this way for 20 years and it has always worked”, “I’ve always produced good results with my students … well the good students … the rest didn’t want to work and that’s not my fault”, etc) then this will affect how you teach. Whatever the life experiences, people form a mental model or picture of the way that education is and then hold on to that – sometimes for a lifetime. And it is quite challenging to shift that mental picture when you have a lifetime of reinforcement from looking through the lens you have looked through for years. I still vividly remember one student from my first year of teaching Engineering at university. He approached me to give him some one-on-one tutoring for a subject he had failed twice previously and he needed to pass it that year to finish his Engineering degree. I agreed, looked up the textbook and set a problem up on my whiteboard. My intention was to get a sense of what he knew and what he didn’t know. In my mind I thought I had a chosen a reasonably simple example. As this student approached the board to have a go at answering the question I heard him mutter to himself “this is going to be hard”. I stopped him in the moment and asked him if he realised what he had just said. He said “No”. I repeated back to him what he had muttered and said “That’s what we are going to go to work upon – your belief that it is hard. I am going to make sure you start to see how to think about the subject so you can make it easy for yourself”. It was an extraordinary learning experience for me as an educator because I really had to get into his world and understand what his misconceptions and understandings were first before having him step into my thinking and methodology. It took time and persistence on both our parts. And yes he did pass with flying colours when he took the exam again. In this discussion I am not implying or asserting that people’s opinions are invalid. They all have some validity – at least to them and their personal experiences and understanding. For that student who struggled to the point of failing that Engineering subject twice, it was reality that the subject was hard – for him. However, that is my point really. Our opinions and beliefs are mostly personal. Understanding and experience on the small scale. People’s opinions are rarely built upon exploring and coming to grips with the context and assumptions upon which those lessons and understandings were built. This is also true about governments and the media. How many governments have implemented change programs without actually looking at what the research shows works in schools and for learning (No Child Left Behind policy in the USA, Merit Pay for teachers, and so on)? How many millions of dollars have been spent on what looks good and is politically impressive rather than what actually works? How many media organisations report on education and learning from a very narrow perspective? How many rank or discuss the quality of schools based purely on standardised testing that only measure very limited outcomes of student abilities? It is not easy or common to look at the context or assumptions within which you learn and understand things. These contexts are like the air that we breathe. They are often so invisible to us and just part of everyday living that we don’t think about it. Shankar Vedantam discussed a number of these “unconscious forces that influence us” is his book “The Hidden Brain: how our unconscious minds elect presidents, control markets, wage wars, and save our lives”. We will go into much more depth about unconscious biases and mental models at another time. Suffice to say right now that people’s opinions are quite often not based on hard facts and research but hearsay, personal experiences, and unchallenged underlying assumptions. If we are interested in creating and building educational systems that will allow / encourage / support ALL young people to become exceptional then we have to go beyond the normal everyday opinions about education. Notice the emphasis on ALL. We need to look at the contexts and assumptions that underlie our beliefs and actions. What do you think? If you are interested in our work and research see some of what we do on www.intuyuconsulting.com.au Thu, 09 Feb 2012 00:18:00 EST Adrian Bertolini (abertolini) http://beta.aalf.org/blog/abertolini/view?PostID=114 This past week of visiting a range of schools has reinforced my perception about the critical importance of structures and non-negotiables in creating a powerful learning and working environment. In everything we do as individuals we have habitual ways of operating, thinking, and organising ourselves. They are so habitual that we are unconscious to them. In fact, it is just part of how our brains operate efficiently - making the habitual practices we have unconscious. You don’t have to think about walking, you just do. You don’t have to think about speaking, you just speak (unless you are speaking in a language that you are new to and then you are often thinking about each word). This is exactly the same in schools. The way a school operates is through systemic habitual practices. From what topic is covered when, to “bells” or “music” to signify the beginning or end of lunch or recess, to the habitual practices teachers have as they teach, to the way that staff and students interact. In fact, there are many programs and ideas that have been designed to create habitual practices in the classroom to improve learning: DeBono’s 6 Hats, Thinkers Keys, You Can Do It Program, Habits of the Mind, Bloom’s Taxonomy, using graphic organisers, etc. Consider that systemic habitual practices are EVERYWHERE and that they are so unnoticed that you wouldn’t even think about it as something you do … “it is just the way that it is”. Consider that a number of those systemic practices have arisen, not because of any thought out strategy, but perhaps because they have always been there or someone thought it was a good idea. Inside a commitment to creating an exceptional learning environment, extraordinary deep thinking is required to examine and challenge old habits, and implement systemic habitual practices that actually (with evidence and research) provide the learning environment you are out to build. One school that I visited this week has been on this journey for the past 7 years. The primary (elementary) school lies in an area with generational poverty, sometimes up to 3 generations. Around 7 years ago the principal and the staff decided that it was insufficient for them to continue on as they had. While the results were OK nothing was shifting in the community and the students would end up caught in the cycle of poverty. The team created the vision for learning of “breaking the poverty cycle in the community”. A daunting goal, but one that the staff believed was worth their time and effort. This thinking aligns with creating a Level 5 Tribe as defined within the work of Logan, King and Fischer-Wright in Tribal Leadership. The principal and staff looked at everything based in evidence. They began investing in a range of systems to be able to examine the student learning data. They started asking “WHY?” to everything they had done. They started looking at the progress of students through the school and what was missing. They looked at their habitual practices for professional development and paying replacement teachers (when out on PD). They looked at how teachers developed themselves. They started looking at every aspect of the child’s learning experience growing up in generational poverty. They then created what it could look like / feel like / sound like and started exploring the HOW. They created specific school-wide focuses and non-negotiables. Here are some of their structures and the thinking. 1. Literacy and Numeracy are key focuses in the school. Research shows that by the time children from lower socio-economic families attend school they have heard only 10 million words of lower order thinking and language structure. This is compared to 40 million in higher socio-economic families. Actions? Some children use Fast ForWord to support the development of auditory processing abilities and linguistic development The use of a range of literacy programs from Prep – Grade 6 to build up all dimensions of literacy (THRASS, SWST, QuickSmart, etc) Focus on the language the every teacher and student uses in every interaction (built upon Ruby Payne’s work on the differing language between economic classes) In the lower grades, students have take-home readers but they only take them home after they have been read in class 4 times by the teacher. The repetition builds the decoding ability of children such that when they read them with their parents at home (some who struggle with these books) they can continue to build and grow. Awards are based on students taking ground in Literacy and Numeracy and they are given books as prizes. This builds up the library within the home – something these families can’t afford. The Principal has sourced getting black and white versions of books such that the children can take them home to keep. Again building the library at home. By the end of being at the school the child will have well over 100 books that are theirs. If the data shows that the children in grade 4 are struggling with a particular area in literacy or numeracy, then it is not solely a grade 4 issue. It is a whole school issue. The senior staff will go back and look through the data for the whole school and design a whole school action plan to eliminate the “missing” that all teachers will implement. The “bells” in the school are replaced with a musical version of the timetables which rotates through up to 12 times table. This has arisen because the school has the belief that learning is ALWAYS occurring! 2. Staff structures. Quite often the Principal and staff have to deal with many competing demands that have very little to do with the learning within the school. The Principal, Assistant Principal, and two Learning coaches (Literacy and Numeracy) share SAMs (Staff Administrative Managers) who handle most of the administrative day-to-day tasks thus freeing them up to focus on learning. The senior management are crystal clear that they are there to focus on the learning and development of each and every child. Inside of this, the professional development budget is rarely used to send staff out to PD but to fund in-house development. The Replacement Teacher budget is used to fund another position within the school to have extra teachers available all the time. Each staff must hand in an action plan by 9am Monday for how they are “value-adding’ to each of the students in their class. 3. Culture. It was critical that there was a consistent and coherent culture being built for the students and the staff. The staff are clear that their focus is student learning – all the time. This is not about covering certain material and ticking boxes, this is about whether the students have learnt what they need to learn to move forward. There are teacher rubrics that explicitly outline what the differing levels of the journey to a “great” teacher looks like / feels like / sounds like including room setup, how lessons run, building self-esteem, work displays, etc. The teachers are coached from these rubrics and supported in their development to achieve. Observational coaching and the viewing of other teachers are encouraged. The teachers are expected to develop mastery in consistently using the Covey “Leader in Me”, Habits of the Mind, De Bono’s 6 Hats, Thinkers Keys, Visible Learning in every interaction. We could go on with a range of aspects but the point is that this school has done and continues to do the thinking to WHY and HOW they can achieve their goal. It hasn’t been an easy journey. The Principal is constantly looking for funding. The school receives visits from 200 schools per year. There were back-lashes and upset staff at the beginning. The staff does work longer hours than the norm. Yet … they are inspired, passionate, challenged, and fulfilled each and every day. As you finish reading this I invite you to ask yourself some questions: Is the school crystal clear about what its vision and focus (at most one or two areas) is? Has the school identified, examined and challenged (WHY?) all the systemic habitual practices and measured them against the question “do these practices deliver, with researched evidence, the future that we are building” Has the school identified, explored and implemented HOW they are moving towards the vision and fulfilment of the focuses? Is there a high performance learning culture being built? How? How is the school address the 3 major stakeholders in a child’s learning – student, staff and community (parents quite often)? I promise you, if you begin to do this thinking and address these areas … your school will produce exceptional learners. NOTE: if you want to see more examples, videos, audio files, etc they will be uploaded on the website (www.intuyuconsulting.com.au) soon! Wed, 19 Oct 2011 21:09:00 EDT Adrian Bertolini (abertolini) http://beta.aalf.org/blog/abertolini/view?PostID=111 Recently I wrote a reply to a school who was asking me about Growth mindsets as a school philosophy and also how to go about framing the need for school cultural change. While I was writing it I realised how critical what I was writing was for many schools. As such I have included it for all of you. I would love any thoughts you have. Do you know of a ‘template’ or model for a curriculum framework? When you say “curriculum framework” it could mean many things… so I have found and edited a document (Useful Links for Planning the Transition to the Australian Curriculum) that could inform you for your question. It is partly put together by the Victorian Education Department so there is a Victorian Essential Learnings focus but the thinking and processes are equally applicable to what I believe you are up to. Do you know of any schools who are using the “Growth Mindset” as their ‘philosophy’ of teaching and learning in some way? or pursuing it in a systematic way? Developing a Growth Mindset can be considered a fundamental way of operating that underlies all contemporary programs. When you explore schools and classes that are high performing they develop a growth mindset in their students and staff. Perhaps the most integrated systematic approach to doing this I have heard about is “The Leader in Me” approach by Stephen R. Covey. Check out http://www.theleaderinme.org/. The concept is about applying and developing the 7 habits of highly effective people in students as part of the way that the curriculum is delivered. When you look at the Covey program after reading the book you see that what they are doing is building a growth mindset within the students by developing them in the set of strategies and thinking that a Growth mindset individual would have. It is also worth checking out Masada College in NSW who implement this program in their Leading Learning Program (http://www.masada.nsw.edu.au/home/leading-learning-educational-package/masada) I have also found articles about ‘Brainology’, a program teaching the Growth Mindset available from the USA. However, the Australian articles seemed to be about one main school. Are you familiar with that program? Do you know of any schools using it? Is it necessary to ‘buy into’ a program like that?Or would that be a good way to go? Brainology (http://www.brainology.us/) is obviously Carol Dweck’s work implemented into a program. Whether one needs to do it depends on the school’s vision. One of the challenges about the questions you ask is that until you are clear about what the school’s vision for learning is then taking on any of these programs will just be another thing to do that “hopefully” will make a difference. Inside of knowing what the school is “building” then you can judge whether it fits with that vision or not. Could it be valuable? Probably. I haven’t come across a school using it yet in my travels. It is also worth checking out how Kathleen Kryza and her wonderful team has used the Growth Mindset idea in their work of Differentiation. They have just created a book called “Give it a Go” http://www.inspiringlearners.com/store/give-it-go-guide-developing-growth-mindsets-inspiring-classroom which is all about creating growth mindsets in a class. I want to include our recommendation that a ‘culture change’ could be needed at our school with regard to ‘teaching and learning’ and would appreciate hearing your ideas on how this could be ‘framed’ or expressed in the report/proposal. Ok. Let me have a go at this. One of the conversations I am now having with schools is leading an inquiry into “what is student centred learning?” This reveals an enormous amount the perception of the teachers and the culture in the school. At one session I led it was interesting to hear teachers expressing opinions giving students more choice, more control, etc, When you looked at all the statements together what you got was sense of the teacher maintaining control and giving something to the students so they ‘felt like they had a say’. The next inquiry question was “who is more important in learning in a classroom – the teacher or the student”, and we can draw a see-saw with the teacher and student balanced on either end of it. Of course, teachers answers vary depending on their perception. Here is the crux. The teacher vs student thinking is industrial age paradigm. In a contemporary learning environment everyone in the classroom is both at different times … and it is critical to realise that you need to THINK this way to have that occur. At different times you learn from your students just as much as they learn from you. We need to reinvent what it means to be a “teacher” because at different times you can be a teacher, coach, facilitator, guider, supporter, coordinator, organiser, and so on … but at all times you are a learner. In fact I believe in a school it is more appropriate to think of our roles along a continuum Beginning Learner ——————————-> Master Learner In particular areas educators are masterful … such as specific domain areas or even in how one learns. In others we are not … but the students have a certain capacity and competency in those areas. Other people may have a greater mastery in those areas and so we learn from them or have them partner us to achieve our goal. Our job is to partner the students to develop mastery of learning in areas that they are currently weak in such that they are prepared for an ever-changing world. That involves mastering the skills, thinking, understanding and mindset that will adapt and thrive in the world. Can you become masterful without the doing? No. This is why student-centred learning is important. Student Centred Learning is a profound shift in the way that teachers think about learning and teaching. It is a shift in context from Teacher as the Driver of Learning (this is what I have to cover, this is what I must make sure they know, this is what I have to teach), to Educator Setting the Destination and They Drive. In this new culture of learning and what it means to be a “teacher”, the focus becomes about getting clear about what the learning destination (skills, understandings, concepts) and planning on how we can create an environment where the habits, practices, activities, learning experiences supports the student to drive where we believe they will develop what they need for their future. “Teachers” move from being the Drivers to the Driving Instructors. They don’t have their hands on the steering wheel but sit beside the learners, masterful at understanding the rules of learning and the skills of learning, and provide what is required for the learner to arrive at the destination. Unless the school has a clear overall destination in mind they will be making many side-trips to destinations that can leave the student confused, disoriented and ultimately not where they need to be. This is why it is critical to align school culture, practices and planning such that everyone is on the same page. At the moment many schools have not done the thinking and the curriculum planning to achieve this. A school needs to have a clear vision for who they are and what they are building, a clear scope and sequence of skills and understandings they are developing through the years, a clear map and plan of how they are going to do it, and also how they are going to measure progress towards the destination(s). Assessment is not a destination … it is your measurement guide towards the destination. You could say it is your GPS! I hope this helps! Wed, 14 Sep 2011 22:00:00 EDT Adrian Bertolini (abertolini) http://beta.aalf.org/blog/abertolini/view?PostID=96 As long time readers of our blog will know I am working with a number of schools to support them in creating a culture of high performance learning. If you read back through the blogs you’ll find some of the earlier discussions we have had around becoming clearer about what was their actual vision for the school and what that would look like. We are now moving from the WHAT to the HOW. This requires us to explore WHO we need to enrol in the new vision and also addressing some of the barriers that can slow down the building of the culture. Just as a reference for this blog, the school is “deeply passionate about developing passionate, inspirational and exceptional people” and be best in the world at “Building Learning Teams” which for the leadership group means “Groups of people with a common goal / vision, working collaboratively (learning from and together), removing mediocrity, developing 21st century social competencies, inspiring passionate and exceptional people”. 1. What are the groups you need to enrol and what is the access? The intention of this discussion was to highlight the accesses and people the school would need to address if it was going to create an environment where everyone was on board with developing passionate, inspired and exceptional people. Every communication with these groups would have to be designed with a clear message and from the intention of developing the school’s passion. Any inconsistency of message will slow the process down. The aim is to ingrain a “way of being” into all the stakeholders of the school. People come to the school with their own mindset and point of view about learning, what education is and should be, how to do things, how to communicate with one another, expectations about the students and the staff, and hundreds of opinions and thoughts. There is nothing wrong with that but they may be inconsistent with what the school is building. We certainly don’t want everyone thinking the same way … what we want is that there is clarity in what the school is building and that there is disciplined thinking, action and practice inside of that framework. A Cathedral takes time and effort to build. For the rest of this article go to http://blog.intuyuconsulting.com.au/ Mon, 13 Jun 2011 23:48:00 EDT Adrian Bertolini (abertolini) http://beta.aalf.org/blog/abertolini/view?PostID=94 It might seem odd to begin a blog post with this title but hopefully you will find that the analogy is quite apt. We all live in houses. However, the style, the quality, the fittings, the size, and the neighbourhoods that our houses are in are all different. It seems to be a trend in most countries that many people aspire to the larger house, the higher quality fittings, the expensive neighbourhoods, the more impressive styles, and so on. It would be a rare person that aspires to a small hovel. The aspiration of living in one of the grander houses drives many people to act to raise the money, work hard, and commit to mortgages so they can live in one. Certainly in Australia we have seen the rise of larger and larger houses on smaller blocks of land. What’s the point of this conversation? Well, consider that all of our conversations are housed in contexts and the size, quality, style and conversational neighbourhoods of these contexts are what drive actions and motivates people. If an organisation or a school or a class is living within a large context then what you would find are actions that are consistent with an inspiring compelling context. The context automatically creates an environment where people want to take action – they are compelled to live a bigger life, taking large actions, produce higher quality efforts and products – stretching themselves. If you are living in a hovel of a context then the actions are similarly small. This blog arises because I have been working with a range of schools over the past few months that I have begun to notice the variations in contexts that different teachers and schools are housing. It is crystal clear which schools and teachers have created large mansion-sized contexts for themselves and which are operating inside of small outhouse contexts. Schools that are creating and building large contexts and aiming for being world-class educational institutions (regardless of the current status of facilities, funding, teacher experience, government or corporate support) have staff who are inspired, creative, working collaboratively, experience being valued. Their classes, while rarely perfect, demonstrate students who are thinking and acting big. Both staff and students have a purpose and they are working together in a disciplined and structured manner to accomplish that purpose. The schools that struggle quite often lack the larger context. The senior management have not clearly articulated the large vision that their school stakeholders can aspire to – they are living inside a contextual hovel. Sometimes they have a large vision but that vision lies in a filing cabinet somewhere – the vision is a merely an architectural plan. Sometimes the vision is on display on posters and various signages around the building but the systems and practices from which the school operates (the curriculum, the staff interactions, the stakeholder relationships, the classroom activities, etc) do not reflect that vision - the builders are not following the architectural drawing. Sometimes you have an environment where some teachers and administrators are operating from the vision and some are not – your house will be inconsistently built with some great parts and in other parts it is apparently shoddy work. In fact, what one will find is that trying to build a fabulous house on top of shoddy or inconsistent work is virtually impossible. If you are going to build a cathedral it is a long term goal. You have to have quality architectural plans. The vision must be articulated clearly. You have to refer to them all the time as you build it. You have to have quality builders working together, communicating and collaborating together, people with different strengths and skills in a team – all of them valued. You will need a group that leads the process who is clear about the vision and the plans, everyone aligned on the plan and the steps that will lead to the finished product. You need to have a team that confronts and overcomes obstacles together – sometimes working out solutions that no one else has thought of because the challenges that this group faces are profoundly different from others. There has to be a high level of trust and everyone being collectively responsible for the journey. If you look at any major undertaking, any architectural construction that has a lasting impact and survived over large swathes of time, this has been what has driven the process. In fact, if you look at any major undertaking in any field you will find it is the same. Why not operate this way in schools? In fact, to build a high-performance educational environment you would automatically follow this approach. Just look at Finland. Just look at Singapore. Just look at those schools, school systems, and teachers that you admire. My questions to you are … what house do you live in? What are you building – a cathedral or a hovel? Thu, 19 May 2011 04:22:00 EDT Adrian Bertolini (abertolini) http://beta.aalf.org/blog/abertolini/view?PostID=88 I have realised over the past 6 months how few schools are actually clear about what their long term vision is. Part of the impact of this lack of vision and disciplined building of this vision is that schools can quite often be focussed on things that disperse their power and ability. They become like a thirsty person wandering in the desert – going from one mirage to the next. Teachers become inured to change and morale can suffer. In an increasingly competitive educational and financial environment, and as part of the paradigm shift occurring as we move further into the Information Age, it has become critical for schools to be clear and focused in their vision and actions. Even more so is to develop a culture of disciplined people, disciplined thoughts, and disciplined actions. There are a number of steps to this process includingGood to Great Developing 21st Century School Leadership * Empowering Level 5 Leadership (as Jim Collins speaks of in “Good to Great”) * Getting the right people on the bus – getting a strong core group of leaders within the school who will be the team who will take responsibility to create and build the vision within the school community * Creating a hedgehog concept for the school * Creating clearly what it means, what it feels like, what it looks like when that hedgehog concept is accomplished * Creating the non-negotiables as you move forward * Confronting what is actually the current state of the school – what is working, what is not against the vision, mission statement, or hedgehog concept. * And so on What I want to share about this blog is how we worked with a leadership team at a school to create the hedgehog concept and began the process of uncovering their collective meaning, vision and actions to deliver on that vision. A Hedgehog concept is idea that Jim Collins shares about in his book “Good to Great”. The idea comes from the story that the hedgehog succeeds because is only good at one thing – it rolls itself up into a ball with its spines outwards and it is protected against any dangers (such as foxes who have to come up with many strategies to succeed but rarely ever do). What Jim Collins found is that the most consistently successful organisations follow this concept as well. They adhere fanatically to their vision (Hedgehog Concept) and ignore taking on anything not consistent with it. This gives them an ability to remain focussed and able to develop consistent structures, approaches and culture. There are three elements to the hedgehog concept: * What can you be the best in the world at? • Understand what you can and cannot be the best at • Let your abilities, not egos, determine what you attempt * What drives your economic engine? • What has the greatest impact on your economics (reputation for a school)? * What are you deeply passionate about? • Great organisations focus on those activities that ignite their passion You can see in the diagram below the result of doing this work with a school. ScreenHunter 01 Feb. 28 11.11 Developing 21st Century School Leadership Some of the discussion that raged as the leadership team created the 3 elements was fascinating * In distinguishing what they were deeply passionate about the team really cottoned on that this was not just a statement for students or learning but their bigger vision for all people. They wanted everyone (teachers, students, parents, etc) involved with the school to be exceptional, inspired and passionate. We toyed with the idea of “the best they can be” but distinguished this was limiting. How do we even know what people’s best is? We toyed with extraordinary but that is a quite oft used word that has lost its meaning for many. This led to exceptional – an exception to the norm. * The team wanted to be the best in the world at building learning communities. I confronted the group this week to define what that actually meant. In the first few minutes of discussion it was interesting to note that different people had different conceptions about what that meant or looked like. WE spent most of the session doing the work to be really clear about what that meant. Here is what they created: Groups of people with a common goal / vision Working collaboratively (learning from and together) Removing mediocrity Developing 21st century social competencies Inspiring passionate and exceptional people * The leadership team had to define some not-negotiable items in the shifting of the school to deliver its vision. These included: o Working collaboratively o Removing mediocrity o Passion and Professionalism o High levels of literacy and numeracy o Making informed decisions on student learning o Developing 21st century social competencies o Every child matters o All aboard or not on board In the whole process it became clear that as questions and ideas arose it pointed to that certain structures, systems and thinking had to be embedded in the staff (including having the staff plan for delivering social competencies first and then strategically looking at the content to be covered and discussing how the content be used to develop the competencies). The homework the leadership team is now working upon is to become clear about what each aspect of the hedgehog concept means and what it looks like. They will also share with another staff member who they consider to be a leader within the staff community. The purpose of this is to start enrolling the staff in a future being created and to ignite feedback and leadership. Finally, against the future and vision they have created, they will outline where they are now in that journey. This will allow us to plan the steps to achieve that future. Sun, 06 Mar 2011 23:03:00 EST Adrian Bertolini (abertolini) http://beta.aalf.org/blog/abertolini/view?PostID=84 It is currently a frustrating and challenging time in education. It seems as if teachers and educators are speaking one language and having one set of outcomes for the students they teach, and politicians, the media, and parents are speaking another. Because they are. It is occurring because they are standing in different paradigms. We are in the midst of the biggest paradigm shift in the human existence and we all are experiencing issues that I suggest are normal to the shifting of paradigms. To give you a sense of this and give some context to what the education system will be going through over the next few decades let’s look back at the last global paradigm shift. Pre-Industrial Age to Industrial Age (up to mid-1700’s) Prior to the Industrial Revolution (1770’s) a broad (or liberal) education was limited to the wealthier middle and upper classes who could afford tuition. For the most part education was provided by religious organisations and focussed on Latin, scripture study and Aristotle’s works (logic). This was appropriate to the social and economic structures of the time as it was the wealthy middle and upper classes that controlled trade and political power. There was no need to educate the large proportion of the population as they only needed sufficient education to ply their trade (which for most people was quite local). Life for the masses was subsistence living and life expectancy and quality of life was quite low for the majority of the population. During the 18th and 19th centuries there were several important developments that led to the creation of the current educational system. Firstly, following the Reformation, education theory took a leap forward with Comenius (1592 – 1670), amongst others, proposing the idea of human learning as a progression from youth to maturity and from elementary to advanced knowledge[1]. This lead to the concept of universal education covering topics and subjects that were actually useful to the life of the increasingly urbanised towns and cities where the population had grown significantly. There was resistance to this movement as “too much schooling would make the working poor discontented with their lot”.[2] The class system saw the education of the poor as a threat. It was really the Industrial Revolution that spurred Governments into providing national education systems because industry required workers with more than limited reading skills and a catechetic focus. As the period of the new Industrial Age progressed and democracy widened, development of public education was slow. It took many years and an extraordinary amount of investment and political will to develop the educational systems. In countries such as Australia and the USA the push was for a common model of education to reduce ignorance (and thus crime) and create good, moral and law-abiding citizens[3]. In the UK the public school system was initially developed in-line with the entrenched class system and later theories of “intelligence” to ensure a divided public education system. Regardless of the country, public education focussed on what could be considered a factory-model with children in “date of manufacture” groups[4], “one size fits all” teaching and curricula, where most learning was by rote, memorisation and instilled in students “the advantages of being orderly, clean, punctual, decent and courteous, and avoiding all things which would make them disagreeable to other people”[5]. To ensure quality control students were tested to determine if they knew what they needed to know to work in industry. As the prosperity of the countries grew, this industrial educational model embedded into the fabric of society and the systems and structures have become entrenched in how western society functions. During this growing Age of Industrialisation this educational approach worked well. It allowed for the economic and social rise of people from the lower classes. In the countries that educated their populations, there has been a huge leap in the quality of life and life expectancy for the masses. It expanded trade for manufactured goods and services beyond localised villages and created opportunities worldwide. It prepared people to operate in an industrialised and urbanised society. It allowed for countries to efficiently build their infrastructure and economic output around an industrial framework (as Seth Godin points out in “Lynchpin”, most corporations and organisations still follow the factory formula[6]). It allowed for economies of scale by being able to educate large groups of people quickly using minimal resources. For around two hundred years worked really, really well. What there is to note is that in the shift of paradigms during the Industrial Revolution are: * It took a while for the infrastructure, governmental systems, and educational practices to create the public educational systems to be formulated and then mature to be effective * It took visionary political will working over a long period time to ensure the embedding of the paradigm * There was resistance by people and organisations in power * Economic necessity and profitability drove the change * Education lead to the increasing democratisation of the countries as people gained the knowledge and wherewithal to create a more equitable system for all. * Corporate, government and educational working structures and systems began to match the new paradigm for efficiency and prosperity purposes * People were educated and trained to fit the new industrial paradigm Industrial Age to Information Age (1980’s ff) With the advent of personal computing, the internet, and social networking there has been another profound paradigm shift in humanity. No longer is information scarce and knowledge held by the few. There is a wealth of information and knowledge accessible within moments. Experts around the world are at your fingertips on any topic you wish with increasing access to live feeds, videos, lectures, blogs, podcasts, webinars, and so on. And this will become progressively richer and expansive over time with better search engines, more validated and expert voices going online, and the exponential growth in computing technology and software. No longer is trade confined to your local suburb, state or country. Individuals and organisations can develop niche markets and create sustainable income by reaching out to individuals and marketing worldwide. Companies can compete globally online. In some domains there is no longer the need to have the same bricks and mortar investment to run a successful company. Everyone now has access to creating businesses (not just those with capital, wealth or power). No longer is media only the purview and voices of the rich and powerful. Individuals can express their views, argue and debate, follow the news, create the news, campaign, learn about what is happening in the world … all from home. A progressively greater number of voices will be heard and interests served. I could go on but you know many of these things and probably see much more than I. In its essence we are at the beginning of a period of human history that is rapidly changing. We cannot predict what the world will look like in 10 years let alone by the end of this century. What you should note however is that: * It will take a while for the infrastructure, governmental systems, and educational practices to create the new public educational systems to be formulated and then mature to be effective This will cause much of the debate raging in countries as they compare themselves via assessments like PISA and then explore and develop structures and systems that are forward thinking and prepared for the constantly changing world. I suspect that Finland’s model of education will lead the world for many years to come. * It will take visionary political will working over a long period time to ensure the embedding of the information age paradigm This is one of the challenges because we have yet to see people with the political will to challenge the status quo and plan for the long term future. In fact, the system of short terms for political parties and pandering to the status quo has resulted in a democratic system that only allows small incremental changes. * There will be resistance by people and organisations in power We are currently witnessing this quite a lot from the poor media portrayal of schools, politicians and parents still thinking purely from an industrial age concept of the world, and businesses trying to model the education system on their industrial model * Economic necessity and profitability will drive the change As prosperity becomes driven by opportunities arising from the Information Age Paradigm then this will become more so. I suspect that there will be a greater diversity of blended industrial and information models arising for companies and corporations. We never lost the need for agricultural structures and systems with the shift away from a purely agricultural paradigm. * Education will lead to the increasing democratisation of the countries as people gained the knowledge and wherewithal to create a more equitable system for all Notice the rise of organisations such as Avaaz, GetUp in Australia and Wikileaks. As people are more informed and able to collaborate and organise over vast distances there will be a resultant increase in the rise of equitable democracy. * Corporate, government and educational working structures and systems will begin to match the new paradigm for efficiency and prosperity purposes See Google, Facebook, Amazon, Zappos, Intel, etc. Their workplaces are models of creativity, fun, industriousness, and innovation. * People will be educated and trained to fit the new information age paradigm Educational systems and approaches will change. The one size fits all teacher directed model is already experiencing challenges and digital native students are no longer satisfied with boring, content-focussed education. I can imagine that within 10-15 years the development of educational hardware and software will match to address the wide student interests and academic variance that exists within our schools. Currently we are dealing with the technological challenges that our funding and infrastructure does not allow for. It is interesting to note that educational approaches such as inquiry learning, divergent thinking, and differentiation has been around for decades (much like Comenius educational philosophy was around for decades) and is only slowly now being implemented in schools. However, there is no throwing the baby out with the bath water. Great education has always been great learning. The work that we (Intuyu Consulting) focus on in schools is working with them to shift their thinking, staff culture, staff planning and structures to the new information age paradigm BEFORE they necessarily have the technology in place. Technology has always been an accelerator … not the answer. We empower the staff to be the creators of what works for them and their circumstance as they stand in the bigger picture. What we have found is that they are enlivened and begin to work with each other and the students to create exceptional learning, projects and results while still operating inside of the current educational and funding paradigm. [1] Gillard D (2011) Education in England: a brief history, www.educationengland.org.uk/history [2] Chitty C (2004) Education Policy in Britain Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. [3] The Evolution of Education in Australia, http://www.historyaustralia.org.au/ifhaa/schools/evelutio.htm [4] Sir Ken Robinson, Changing Education Paradigms, 2010 [5] http://www.historyaustralia.org.au/ifhaa/schools/evelutio.htm [6] Lynchpin: Are you Indispensible? Seth Godin, 2010 Creative Commons Copyright: Intuyu Consulting 2011 Tue, 08 Feb 2011 00:29:00 EST Adrian Bertolini (abertolini) http://beta.aalf.org/blog/abertolini/view?PostID=76 I just finished scanning through a fascinating report that I think is worthwhile reading by Secondary School teachers and administrators about “How High Schools become Exemplary”. Here is an excerpt from the abstract that I am thinking about: “The main lesson from the presentations was that student achievement rose when leadership teams focused thoughtfully and relentlessly on improving the quality of instruction. Core groups of leaders took public responsibility for leading the charge to raise achievement. Stakeholders crafted mission statements that later helped keep them on track; planned carefully, sometimes with outside assistance, for how they would organize learning experiences for teachers; clearly defined criteria for high quality teaching and student work; and implemented in ways that engaged their whole faculties. As they implemented their plans, these schools carefully monitored both student and teacher work in order to continuously refine their approaches. Leadership teams succeeded initially because they used their positional authority effectively to jump-start the change process. Then they built trust. More specifically, they demonstrated commitment through hard work and long hours; they studied research-based literature to expand their knowledge and competence; they persevered to follow through on the promises they made; and they found ways to remain respectful of peers, even when asking them to improve their performance. In these ways, leadership teams earned the respect of their colleagues and the authority to push people outside their comfort zones. With cultivated competence and earned authority, they were able to help their colleagues overcome the types of fear and resistance that so often prevent effective reforms in American high schools. All these schools remain works in progress, but they are not typical. Their stories convey critically important principles, processes, and practices that can help high schools across the nation raise achievement and close gaps.” You can go to my personal blog (http://blog.intuyuconsulting.com.au/) if you want to download the full report This summary reflects completely the work that we are doing in two realms – coaching schools and coaching companies. We are working with a couple of schools to assist their year 7 teacher teams to redesign the way they approach educating new high school students. Year 7 is a critical year for a student as they come from their primary school communities to a new high school community made up of many smaller groups. Year 7 thus begins as a mish-mash culture that needs to be created and built right from the moment they walk in. However, if the language and the schools’ approach is not consistent this can lead to many transitional challenges as well as poorer learning outcomes. So the work we have been doing with these schools and colleges is to have them identify what is the culture they wish to create and then how are they going to develop it in every aspect of the educational life of the students. From this point we support them in developing classes, rubrics, and curricula that reinforces the culture and language used through out the year level. The process is remarkable and what we are finding is that it ignites the willingness of the teachers to experiment and think from empowering the whole (not just the individual).speed2 300x273 How High Schools become Exemplary Which then leads us to the domain of coaching the company. I discovered a fabulous book through the year as I was coaching a particular financial company called the Speed of Trust (by Stephen M.R. Covey – son of the “Effective Habits” Covey). Stephen Covey clearly and simply articulates the power of building trust and creating trust at the personal, relationship, organisational, market and societal levels. The ideas contained in the book have assisted us in transforming the culture of the company and doubled its profit in the past year. The comment made in the abstract quoted at the start of this blog reflect exactly what Covey was saying. As trust grows so does productivity. In schools, if we are building a culture, one of the questions we need to be asking is “How are we building trust amongst the teachers, administrators, parents, students, and the community?” Fundamental action taken to build trust will create an extraordinary school. What do you think? Wed, 27 Oct 2010 18:30:00 EDT Adrian Bertolini (abertolini) http://beta.aalf.org/blog/abertolini/view?PostID=69 What gets students engaged in a topic? It is a constant question that many educational consultants get from teachers. The answer is both simple and complex at the same time! In some ways it is two questions - \"how do I get the students interested and engaged in what we are covering\" and \"how do I keep them engaged\" According to neuroscience what causes engagement is novelty. Something out of the ordinary. Something .. novel that the brain hasn\'t seen before or rarely experiences. Novelty electrifies attention. Why? Our brains are designed to constantly constantly scan for danger because its prime mission is to keep the body healthy and safe. The limbic system within the brain is the oldest part of the brain and it controls memory, emotions, smell and hunger. It also controls the flight or fight function of the brain. You can consider the limbic system is the foundation of our operating system. So if you can create something that grabs the attention of the brain it will engage your students. Emotion is also a key factor in engagement and learning. If you can connect through to what matters for students and they can connect to the rest of their knowledge (in their day to day life). If you are not concretely connecting to what the students know or are too abstract then this is where students become disengaged. This is where domains such as mathematics really struggles. One of the strengths I created for myself when teaching engineering at university was to ensure that the students realised that all the mathematics had a practical and real world application and derivation mostly in their day to day life. Interestingly enough ... what embeds knowledge is rituals. The ritualising of actions, or repetition, will create the deeper neural connections. Sports organisations are brilliant at this. In Australia the Auskick program (associated with the Australian Football League and funded by the National Australia Bank) does a remarkable job of engaging kids and doing the rote drills (rituals) to embed the learning. You can see how successful it is by the skills development of the game at both junior and senior levels. Senior AFL players are much like Formula One drivers in their ability to react and interpret the game. We can ritualise activities and templates and role modelling as teachers. Use graphic organisers in your classes consistently and ritually. Model the behaviour you want to achieve. If we do the thinking about how we are going to develop skills in our students then there will be a range of approaches you can use. Key to all of this is to ensure that students are connected to the context of the learning. If it is something that is not connected to what matters for them then their brains will automatically tune out. My question to you as a reader of my blog is ... how are you creating novelty and rituals in the class? I coach teachers on how they can do this in my Practical Inquiry Based Learning Workshops (http://www.intuyuconsulting.com.au/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=3&Itemid=9). As a final piece to this blog, Charles Leadbeater, quite a world reknown speaker about creativity and innovation, presented the following talk at a TED conference earlier this year from research that he did into Innovation in Education around the world. He not only found that enormous innovation is occuring in the slums around the world but many of the principles that we talk about around Inquiry Based Learning (espeically about engagement). Enjoy the presentation! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6X-8TA4RBog Mon, 19 Jul 2010 22:23:00 EDT Adrian Bertolini (abertolini) http://beta.aalf.org/blog/abertolini/view?PostID=67 I just returned from running workshops in Queensland, Australia and the group of teachers and I had a fantastic discussion around safety, connection and learning. Let me tune you in to how we got into it by reproducing a bit of the morning of the Advanced Inquiry Workshop. Our brain is designed to to ensure the safety and survival of our bodies. So it is always scanning to ensure that the body is safe. Given that survival and safety is paramount for the brain … the learning environment must be safe. But .. are our learning enviroments safe for the brain? Fear is the foremost inhibitor to learning and growth. The brain, however, cannot distinguish between fear of failure /getting things wrong / making a mistake in a peer environment vs fear of dying or suffering injury. Research has shown that the physiologically they produce the same body reaction. This is understandable because the environment that we exist in has evolved from the dangers of survival out in the wild to the dangers of survival in the modern world. What this points to is that we must go beyond looking at physical saefty issues like bullying or many of the overt factors that create an unsafe environment for learning. We need to also look at the systemic structures that the brain will interpret as a danger or survival issues. One of the unfortunate byproducts of a content focussed traditional school environment is that we have created an environment of wrong / right, good / bad … a breeding ground for fear. Students over time adapt by unconsciously becoming passive learners as a way of mitigating this fear as they haven’t yet learnt the skills to mitigate the fear using their pre-frontal cortex or reasoning part of their brain to reframe their perception. By the time we become adults many of us have not developed the capacity to mitigate the emotions and feelings that fear drive up – notice how public speaking is still feared more than death! When I shared that with the teachers that I had a face to face example of the passivity that our education system breeds with a large group of first year pre-service teachers only last week … they began to share about their experiences of students from year 8 onwards and how they developed themselves to overcome the fear suppressor with the students. Social networking research indicates that unless the individual has very strong self-confidence and wherewithal to go against group behaviour (the fear of speaking up and being wrong or humiliated) they will be passive and go along with the beliefs of the groups they are in. A simple example of this is how we can be chameleon like when we are in different groups of people. Fitting into a group is a survival technique that is fundamental to design of the brain in most species. So a learning environment must be safe and develop the self-confidence of the child to question, to challenge, to develop their own place in the world. Young people must learn how to fail and learn from those experiences without fear of consequences for failing (e.g embarrassment, teasing, bullying, etc). How do we create this? Well the very best teachers practice it all the time. They know that they must be connected on a deep level with the students. They actively build a safe environment. They share their lives and create mutual respect. They honour their word. They consistently role model behaviour and relate to the students as their learning partners. They create environments where it is Ok to fail and make mistakes. They sometimes ask the students for feedback so they can improve their ability to deliver lessons that are more inspiring or have the students learn better. Even more than this … why inquiry learning is becoming a more spoken about learning approach is that it is not about right or wrong, good or bad … but it allows students to discover and voice opinions and try different things out in an environment of discovery. You might realise my point by this time. Unless we move from a content focussed paradigm which is all about passing the test, getting things right, etc .. we will not be preparing students for a world that is profoundly changing. If we want our students to be self-confident, risk-taking thought provokers who adapt to an ever changing social and technological environment then we need to shift OUR paradigm of education. The leap isn’t large … but it is becoming more and more urgent. Tue, 01 Jun 2010 00:32:00 EDT Adrian Bertolini (abertolini) http://beta.aalf.org/blog/abertolini/view?PostID=63 Rubric (noun): “perscribed guide for conduct or action” One of the most significant challenges that teachers are experiencing at the moment in the Australian education system is shifting the paradigm of how they approach delivering education. Most schools suffer the schizophrenia of knowing that the development of essential skills and capacities is as critical as content knowledge but being driven by the need to deliver content knowledge via NAPLAN testing at Year 3, 5, 7 and 9 and the exams for year 11 and 12. A number of schools are now teaching to the tests with the aim of raising their test scores and thus being seen as schools that are performing. The problem with this is that it is a destructive approach to developing young people being prepared for the 21st century. Students do not predictably come out of such a system as active learners with a curiosity and drive to want to continually learn. In fact what we are witnessing is students becoming more and more passive and failing to adpat to a world that is changing very quickly (and will continue to do so for generations to come). One approach that I have started to use with teachers as a way of systemising the progression of skill development throughout the years of schooling is to design formative rubrics appropriate to the cohort of students. These rubrics would be student centred and in the language of the age group. Most rubrics that I have seen in schools have been assessment rubrics. These rubrics are designed so that the students are clear about the level and quality of work required to achieve particular marks. Whilst this rubric is important for the students to deliver material that the teacher can assess it is a poor vehicle for developing the skills of the students. Much like the assessment (or summative) rubric gives a guide to the student as to what to provide to achieve the best marks, the formative rubric is an explicit guide to how a student can adapt or modify their behaviour or skills to perform and act at a higher level. In the workshops I run with schools I have the teachers articulate not only the skills they would love their students to have but also to explore and articulate what would demonstrate a student having those skills at differing levels. Part of this process is moving the teachers from “teacher speak” to age appropriate language. What teachers discover is that it requires a very thoughtful process to “unpack’ the skill and to then design practices, templates, modelling and short classroom activities to develop the skills. What many teachers and schools become aware of in this process is the necessity to develop a bank of formative rubrics for each year level within the school. Another way of saying this is … if you aren’t explicitly defining the skill development progression then you are living in hope (and the skill development is all teacher dependent … not systemised). One of the side benefits of having formative rubrics such as these is that teachers now have a tool with which they can discuss with both students and parents that will allow for REAL partnership in developing student capacities. I’d really love to hear back from you about this process and what you see is possible? Sun, 09 May 2010 21:59:00 EDT Adrian Bertolini (abertolini) http://beta.aalf.org/blog/abertolini/view?PostID=62 “It’s the things people know … that ain’t so”, Howard Armstrong, Inventor of FM Radio What is it that allows people to come up with ideas outside the box? When I ask teachers what do they see are the skills required for the 21st century some of their answers include lateral thinking, risk-taking, problem solving, etc. So teachers are also interested in creating thinking that is “outside the box”. Gregory Berns, in his latest book “Iconoclast”, addresses the world of people who create breakout ideas and distinguishes where they come from, how the brain often works against us and what we can do to seize the day. Our brain is a physical organ that consumes energy and performs feats of astounding complexity. The brain has a fixed energy budget (around 40 watts) and it can’t demand more power when it needs to do something more powerful thus it has evolved to do what it does as efficiently as possible. In its essence our brain is designed to: * make what is conscious … unconscious * take shortcuts all in order to ensure that its energy usage remains within its budget. Inside of these two principles we discover humanity’s greatness … and its constraint. The greatness comes in the brain’s ability to adapt … its constraint comes in the shortcuts it takes to ensure that it remains within its energy budget. I have two children and currently my 6 year old, Chiara, is learning to read. She began with looking at the pictures and interpreting what was happening on the page to tell the story. Bit by bit Chiara started to associate the words on the page with the pictures on the page. As she developed her sense of what the meanings behind the squiggles on the page meant I began to notice that she had created a bank of words in her head. Sometimes that bank of words were the actual words on the page and she reproduced them because it seemed right. Sometimes the word on the page had similar letters to ones that she knew but it was a different word … and my wife and I corrected her. Bit by bit she is training her brain to recognise the words and attribute meaning to them from the context she is reading them in. Bit by bit the brain is making unconscious what is conscious. Through repetition and correction Chiara is developing her reading skills. It was the same when you and I learnt to walk. It was the same when I learnt how to throw a discus during my years of competing in track and field athletics. It is the same in everything that we learn. We learn a skill or knowledge such that we can refer to it automatically and unconciously. So that we don’t have to THINK! But the problem with this is that the brain takes short cuts in developing our concepts of the world. Kanizsa’s triangle appears to indicate that there are 2 triangles in the centre. One that is “white” and one that is bound by the vertices in 3 corners. But … that is your brain making a shortcut. What is actually on the page is 3 pacman type symbols and 3 angles. Notice how difficult it is to just see those 6 figures without associating the two “triangles” with the figure. Our brains take shortcuts all the time. It interprets the world and creates feelings, emotions, contexts, and ideas from its shortcuts. Paraphrasing Berns … when confronted with information streaming from the eyes the brain will interpret this information in the quickest and most efficient way possible (time is energy). The longer the brain spends performing some calculation, the more energy it consumes. This means it must draw on both past experience and any other source of info (such as what other people say) to make sense of what it is seeing. This is why having inquiries and having the students question their ideas and contexts is so important. In a world that is changing exponentially (many of your current students will be going into jobs and careers that have not been invented yet) the individual who does not challenge their ideas and beliefs will be left behind. If you want to develop new ideas and have students who think “outside the box” it will only occur in an environment that allows for that. Given what I wrote earlier, we must also have explicit teaching and rituals to embed knowledge and processes. However, the challenege I throw down to you today, and for the future, is How are you creating an environment where your students challenge their own thinking? If you are interested in joining a group of teachers developing 21st century skills register at http://twentyfirstclearning.ning.com/ Next: Developing formative rubrics Tue, 04 May 2010 02:33:00 EDT Adrian Bertolini (abertolini) http://beta.aalf.org/blog/abertolini/view?PostID=58 It is interesting when you start reading out of your field how many interesting ideas one discovers that are applicable to education. Ken Blanchard is one of the world leading experts on management and leadership. He is the author of a series of books called the “One Minute Manager”. He, and his team, have sold millions of books and empowered managers and leaders in a range of industries worldwide in simple and effective approaches to developing leadership and managing their organisations. In “Leadership and the One Minute Manager” I discovered an interesting table (see Figure 1 below) where the One Minute Manager discusses “Situational Leadership”. The principal behind the approach reminded me greatly of how inquiry–learning, project-based learning can be designed to empower and develop skills in young people. It actually reflects the essence of what Bertram Bruce from the University of Illinois pointed out about the stages that teachers must go through to develop skills in leading inquiry learning (Figure 2). The table outlines the relationship between four developmental levels and the four leadership styles that a manager / leader would use with the person in that developmental level. 1. Directing – for people who lack competence but are enthusiastic and committed. They need direction and frequent feedback to get them started. 2. Coaching – for people who have some competence but lack commitment. They need direction and feedback because they are relatively inexperienced. They also need support and praise to build their self-esteem, and involvement in decision making to restore their commitment. 3. Supporting – for people who have competence but lack confidence or motivation. They don’t need much direction because of their skills, but support is necessary to bolster their confidence and motivation. 4. Delegating – for people who have both competence and commitment. They are able and willing to work on a project by themselves with little supervision or support. Click here for more (http://blog.intuyuconsulting.com.au/) Sun, 28 Feb 2010 23:57:00 EST Adrian Bertolini (abertolini) http://beta.aalf.org/blog/abertolini/view?PostID=56 I have just been reading Malcolm Gladwell’s latest book, What the Dog Saw (Allen Lane, 2009), and one of the articles in the book had me thinking. In this particular chapter of the book called “Open Secrets” Malcolm discusses a distinction made by a national security expert (Gregory Treverton) between puzzles and mysteries and the different skills involved. Something is a puzzle when we have to figure something out from not having enough information. Finding Osama Bin Laden is a puzzle. As Gladwell points out ” The key to the puzzle will probably come from someone close to bin Laden, and until we can find that source, bin Laden will remain at large”. Watergate was a puzzle where Woodward and Bernstein were search for a buried secret. Something is a mystery when there is too much information and one is required to sift through the information and use one’s judgement and assessment to come to a conclusion. Gladwell used the cases of Enron and the British Intelligence prediction of the German V1 Rocket to show the distinction. Now, while Gladwell is using his article to explore and examine the different skills required in the intelligence community given the nature of the world, it had me thinking about teaching and our schools. Are we skilling our students to just solve puzzles or are we also preparing them for a information rich world where they also need the capacities to solve mysteries? The actions of a puzzle solver would be to find more and more information that would shine a light on the puzzle one would wish to solve. When one is researching for a cure for cancer, or a new theory about physics, or why the beetles in a particular area of the bush are dying … then one would need to gain more information. Many thriller movies (e.g. The Davinci Code) and video games are based on puzzle solving. The blockers to resolving an issue would be factors like withheld information, lack of funding to do the research, etc. As Gladwell states “puzzles come to a satisfying conclusions”. Mysteries, however, require another set of capacities because they are a lot “murkier”. It is like having a 500 piece jigsaw puzzle with an extra 500 pieces that look similar and could fit in the mix. Sometimes the information we have is inadequate or inconsistent. Sometimes having more information clouds up the issue. Sometimes the question asked itself cannot be answered (perhaps it is the wrong question or one that does not reveal what is actually being looked for). Mysteries require people with skills of analysis, of judging what is useful and consistent and what is not. Gladwell suggests, “it requires more thoughtful and skeptical people with the skills to look more closely at what we already know …”. Are we not in a world where information is plentiful and there are many more inconsistent and contradictory references? When a student, or a teacher for that matter, wants to know something what is the first thing they do? Probably use a search engine (e.g Google) or go to Wikipedia. But there are reams or information there to sift through. What is accurate, precise or even relevant? My question to you, as someone reading this blog, is are you preparing your students (or in the case of parents … your children) to solve mysteries? To be people who challenge ideas and are skeptical about information until it can be validated and made consistent in its pattern. To be people who network and ask questions to fit the information into a coherent whole. One capacity of someone who is a mystery solver is someone who challenges the status-quo. Do we do that as teachers and parents? I suspect that, for the most part, we are purely preparing our students’ and children to be puzzle solvers. And that is not preparing them for even now … let alone the future. Wed, 10 Feb 2010 09:38:00 EST Adrian Bertolini (abertolini)