In this month’s issue …
Opening thoughts
Wrapping up 2020.
Whispers from the frontier
Marlene Scardamalia and Carl Bereiter on Knowledge Building.Carlson Ng writes to teachers everywhere.
Assessment as an ongoing, responsive practice?
Guy Claxton on psychological safety.
Theory on my mind
Bevan on the difference between sharing for performance and sharing for learning.
Reading spotlight
Let the Children Play by Pasi Sahlberg and William Doyle.
Guest Writer
Tim Cavey writes about professional comparison as an empowering tool, as long as the mindset is right.
Opening thoughts
This issue is the last one for 2020. I’d like to thank you all for reading, and making The Smata Bulletin more than I ever thought it would be.
The idea for this started during lock-down, way way back in April. I hastily threw Issue #1 out there, and it’s been great to see it gather pace as the year has gone on. The Smata Bulletin now has subscribers in New Zealand (where it all started), Australia, England, Canada and the USA. And it made Guy Claxton’s “top ten things to watch or check out online to get a feel for The Learning Power Approach” list, which I’m really proud of.
So, to all of you who have shared The Smata Bulletin, touched base to give me feedback, loved or commented on the odd smata-note, contributed to the live-chats (they’ll return next year) or quietly read it - cheers!
In thinking about how to round off the year I put my metaphor hat on; I can’t help it, being a former English teacher and all. It felt appropriate to have the focus on what makes life worth living - others - and so I settled on three words: sharing, gifts and connection. I think these three words, and all the connotations they carry, offer a nice guide for how teachers who see learning as a dynamic, relational process that works best when the learner has control, can position their role and relationship to teaching and learners.
Congratulations to you all for navigating 2020.
I wish you a safe and happy holiday season.
Bevan.
Whispers from the frontier
Marlene Scardamalia and Carl Bereiter offer Knowledge Building as a theory of learning in this video from a workshop, which is intimate, decidedly low-tech and fascinating.
‘What’s really impressed us is the differences between school based activities and what happens in real knowledge creating organisations.’
Carlson Ng’s article is short, but packs a nice punch.
‘It would be ineffective teaching if what a teacher teaches never makes its way to the student’s heart.’
The New Zealand Curriculum Online is full of great resources. In this one for school leaders, they position assessment as an ongoing, responsive practice where the point is to inform teaching for the learner’s benefit.
‘Remember who you are assessing for! The primary owners of assessment information are your students.’
Guy Claxton’s work writes about how the mental mode we are in affects the way we learn.
‘It sounds complicated, but that’s the teacher’s job, like it or lump it. It isn’t about “How do I get or keep control?” or “How do I get the results up?” It’s “What can I do to optimise Learning Mode in my classroom?”’
Theory on my mind
I’ve had a number of students say variations of this to me about the process of sharing work and giving feedback, and I find it fascinating.
When everyone does the same thing, sharing work is intimidating because it’s seen as a comparative act. They fear having a negative learning narrative reinforced (ie, My work is no where near as good as theirs) or they worry that others will ‘steal’ ideas from the good work they have done and received undeserved grades.
In contrast …
When many things are possible, and there is variety in what is being done, sharing work is easy because it’s seen as an act borne from curiosity. The work of others is inherently interesting, which they enjoy engaging with and discussing. The variety makes looking at what others have done an inspiring process where they are often sparked by new ideas - they can’t copy or be copied from. Students tell me they are more likely to share without prompting when this is the case.
As students get older, it’s not uncommon for teachers to use peer-feedback as a way to support learning. Yet, despite it’s widespread use, I always hear teachers complain that students ‘can’t do feedback effectively’, and for them to do so requires preparation and guidance which takes up valuable learning time.
But when I think about what students have told me about sharing work, I’m not so sure. It seems clear to me that students know how to engage with the work of others, if they have control and see it as a genuine learning opportunity. For this to be true, it must be a non-judgemental process that is focused on ideas (eg, This is interesting), not personal notions of comparison (eg, I’ll never be as good / I hope they don’t steal).
I wonder if the difference boils down to the difference between having a learning focus or a performance focus? Nancy Falchikov says that
‘In self assessment, students are required to rate their own performance against a standard, while in peer assessment they rate the performance of their peers.’
Rating performance is inherently a task that is narrow in orientation: performance is good or poor, on or off target. If I rate this myself, it is likely to be influenced by how I see myself as a learner. Rating peers is prone to be coloured by a whole range of social and relational factors. I’m not saying rating performance is bad - there are times when it is required. What I am saying is how this happens needs to be carefully considered as it has a huge potential to shape how a learner feels.
It doesn’t take much effort to consider the markedly different emotional landscapes of the two approaches to sharing. The first, associated with rating performance, will bring with it fear and apprehension. Those two emotions tend to shut down motivation. The second, associated with a learning orientation, will bring with it openness, willingness and support. When those emotions are present, we generally see motivated learners.
The American Psychological Association says
‘Acquisition of complex knowledge and skills requires extended learner effort and guided practice. Without learner’s motivation to learn, the willingness to exert this effort is unlikely without coercion.
…
Effective strategies include purposeful learning activities, guided by practices that enhance positive emotions and intrinsic motivation to learn, and methods that increase learners’ perception that a task is interesting and personally relevant.’
Students have told me this is true time and time again. One way it can be made real is by creating learning contexts where variety is present and students have the freedom to engage with that variety. In doing so, we are more likely than not to cue motivation, positive emotions and interest. To me, that feels like a gift worth giving.
Reading spotlight
It’s not uncommon to hear play dismissed: ‘Oh, they’re just playing’ or ‘They play too much and don’t spend enough time learning’ are common sentiments often expressed. However, this book by Pasi Sahlberg and William Doyle challenge this way of thinking head on in their book Let the Children Play.
‘The world is in a world against play.’
I’m sure many of you feel that way, especially those of you who are proponents and practitioners of teaching and learning through play. Yet, as the American Academy of Pediatrics says,
‘The importance of playful learning for children cannot be overemphasised.’
Given this, what are the forces that act against the idea of play as a vehicle for learning? Sahlberg and Doyle identify four main ‘problems’ that, they say, are leading to schools becoming ‘play-starved stress factories’:
The misuse and overuse of standardised testing
‘There is no strong evidence to support the claim that using universal high-stakes, standardized tests is positively associated with improved learning outcomes, student well-being, or better quality of education overall.’
One-size-fits-all teaching
‘global tests serve as education policy and reform beacons for administrators and education leaders … The hierarchy of subjects taught in schools is looking increasingly similar across nations … Standardisation has become a common solution to these developments.’
Narrowed curriculum and conceptions of learning
‘The standardization movement … focuses on enhancing efficiency and accountability … accepted a mechanistic or instrumental view to learning that typically means the linear transmission of information and assimilation of externally motivated, isolated knowledge.’
Seeking success by demonising failure
‘Driven by high-stakes standardized testing, the culture of many schools now prefers safe and “results-proof” teaching and learning practices that demonise trial and error and devalue new ways of learning or problem solving … In real life … the courage to fail and take lessons from failure is a valuable asset’
At times, I found myself getting angry as they chart the decline in play for children, both in and out of school, and the downward creep of academic pressure. Some of the school practices they describe I came close to labelling child abuse, and I wonder how we have allowed school to become a place that robs children of the magic of childhood. However, for those who believe that learning should be a process of experimentation and finding a place in the world, with all the inherent freedom and safety that entails, this book is a welcome tonic.
Guest piece
Tim Cavey, editor of Teachers on Fire magazine and podcast, and middle school Vice-Principal at Vancouver Christian School, writes about how, when done in a way that honours learning over judgement, sharing professional knowledge and expertise is a worthy exercise.
If you’d like to continue the conversation, Tim can be reached on email TeachersOnFire18@gmail.com, or found on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube at @TeachersOnFire, or on LinkedIn at https://linkedin.com/in/timwcavey/.
In my last teaching context, our middle school teaching team ended each week with an hour of professional learning. Fridays were intentionally shortened to send students home early, allowing teachers the bliss of professional conversations that didn’t start after the final bell. Relieved of the mental burden of preparing lessons for the next day and armed with a plate of delicious snacks, I enjoyed these opportunities to build on my practice.
As seen in our middle school
One of my favorite features in these sessions was led by our fabulous instructional coach, Kathy Holmes. Calling it ‘As Seen in Our Middle School,’ Kathy took 5–10 minutes out of these meetings to share pictures and videos from the practice of teachers right in our building.
These pictures and videos were taken from class visits, gallery walks, scans of Seesaw or Google Classroom, or anything else that grabbed her attention. Kathy would introduce an image or video clip to the team, share about the pedagogical principles it captured, and then invite the teacher to speak to it or explain more about how they are using said strategy in their classroom.
The experience was always positive. Predictably, you could hear admiration and encouragement around the room as teachers grasped the power of what one of their colleagues was trying in their classroom. Follow-up questions would come in a flurry: “How did you do that, Megan?” or “How did students respond, Riley?” Practices and strategies were always connected with learning targets so that the why was clear to everyone.
An obvious culture win from these episodes was that the teachers who were featured felt publicly affirmed for their hard work and innovative instruction, and Kathy intentionally spread the spotlight around in order to recognize everyone on our teaching team over the weeks and months. Most importantly, teachers were given easy on-ramps and resources (as in the teacher next door) to help them try new strategies or otherwise improve their teaching.
Brian Aspinall once tweeted, “Sometimes the greatest PD is the teacher down the hall.” I think that’s so true. Our colleagues do tremendous work, but it can be surprisingly difficult to find the time and means to actually show what they’re doing and explain the how and why behind it.
There are big benefits to be realized when we create the time and structures to allow teachers to actually see and understand the work that their colleagues are doing.
Warnings against professional comparison
In recent months I’ve noticed some strong warnings coming out against the idea of professional comparison.
In October, Todd Nesloney wrote that “if you’ve caught yourself comparing a lot lately, you know that comparison is your enemy — not your friend. It can destroy you from the inside out if you’re not careful.”
The next day, the Teaching Channel featured this quote from Dr. Douglas Fisher, a former guest of the Teachers on Fire podcast and prolific author who I regard as one of the great thinkers in our space: “Stop comparing yourself to other people. It’s not healthy.”
Of course I understand what these leaders are getting at. There’s a danger of looking at the work of others and allowing it to shake our confidence in our own competence. It’s possible to see nothing but our own inadequacy.
But there’s more to consider here.
We learn from each other
Two months into the pandemic, I wrote that remote learning must get horizontal. In the absence of physical classrooms where students can easily see the work of their neighbors, and with children learning in isolation, teachers need to leverage technology more than ever to help learners look over each other’s shoulders.
Human beings learn from modeling, from imitation, from exemplars of best practice. Research makes this clear.
It’s how students learn.
It’s how teachers learn, too.
It’s an issue of mindset
One of the reasons I encourage educators to join Twitter is for the constant flow of innovative ideas and practices that I find there. By only following teachers and education leaders, the topic in my feed is always education. When other educators share pictures from their classrooms, describe powerful learning activities, or post links to resources, I take notice.
These explorations into the work of others inevitably contain an element of comparison. How is this activity or resource different than my own practice? How can I learn from it? What can I imitate or apply in my own work?
In Mindset, Carol Dweck calls this a learn-and-help-learn orientation:
“Mindset change is not about picking up a few pointers here and there. It’s about seeing things in a new way.
When people — couples, coaches and athletes, managers and workers, parents and children, teachers and students — change to a growth mindset, they change from a judge-and-be-judged framework to a learn-and-help-learn framework.
Their commitment is to growth, and growth takes plenty of time, effort, and mutual support to achieve and maintain.”
When it comes to professional comparison, we have two choices.
We can indulge in the judge-and-be-judged framework by avoiding the work of other education professionals in order to protect our self-confidence.
Or we can embrace the learn-and-help-learn framework by engaging in professional comparison and building professional competence.
It’s a question of mindset.
Thanks for reading. The next issue will arrive in your inbox on 31 January.