How receptive are educators to changing how they teach? That’s obviously a loaded question with a host of potential reactions. One major factor that impedes change is a fear of taking risks. Behind this fear lies issues of control, issues of embarrassment, and a fear of failure.
What are some concrete strategies for working with educators to assist them in overcoming these barriers, these emotional fear factors, and embrace change?
Fear Factors
I have taken Elaine Showalter’s (2003) teaching anxiety categories, modified them a bit, and placed them into seven typifications:
- Lack of Training
- Feelings of Isolation
- Tension Between Teaching and other Related Professional Activities
- Coverage Demands
- Performance Issues
- Assessment Challenges
- Student & Peer Evaluations
Risk Aversion
Researchers, including Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman, suggest that we do not consider gains and losses, costs and benefits, rationally. Our primary motivation is to avoid loss. When the stakes are high, when our pride is on the line, our intuition attempts to tackle the issue quickly rather than thoughtfully considering all sides of the decision. Reflective thinking only takes us so far when we feel under duress. So what do educators fear they are losing?
When content is considered “king,” it is natural for educators to fear losing control over the amount of content covered. When a certain amount of requisite information demands attention, employing new technologies or pedagogical innovations limits an educator’s ability to see the advantages of changing their approach.
Strategies to Overcome Fear
Reducing Anxiety
My father had a saying he learned from his father called the Seven P’s: Proper Prior Planning Prevents Piss Poor Performance. I cannot tell you how many times I’ve heard that saying. As pithy as it may sound, it’s true. Winging it in a classroom never left me feeling all that well. Improvisation works well in a comedy club, but it can cause great anxiety in a classroom of expectant students. For educators, the more prepared you are, the better you feel. Practice does lead to perfection, so before attempting to employ any new innovation, it helps to be comfortable with what you are doing, to have some experience with the technique or technology before jumping in blind.
Model Learner Behavior
On the other hand, if you look at the classroom as a learning environment, as the teacher, you might find comfort in taking on more of a learner role. In this light, everything you do turns into an experiment. If you go into a teaching situation explaining this to students, the learning environment becomes a place where failure becomes a teachable moment. The bottom line here is, be open and honest with your students; don’t pretend to have all the answers. Be prepared to be transparent and reflective: check your ego at the door and model problem-based learning.
Addressing Coverage
How much time should you spend covering requisite material? One solution involves taking lots of smaller measurements of student learning along the way. Frequent low stakes quizzes and prompts can provide a good indicator of how well students understand the content being presented. Students know they need to read and study. Knowing they need to come to class prepared to be quizzed or called on can be a strong motivator. This process can help educators gauge how much time is necessary to spend on specific course content as well as determine appropriate scaffolds to be constructed.
10 Feet Tall and Bulletproof
One of the greatest fears I see in the many educators I have observed over the years is the fear of feedback, the fear of peer review. Nobody likes to be told what he or she are doing is wrong, so feedback needs to be offered in light of specific practice. For example, when I invite a trusted peer to observe me in class, I ask them to keep an eye or ear out for a specific area of concern. In one case, I felt I was not transitioning from one critical concept to the next clearly. I knew the material I wanted to cover in my head, but I felt it was not translating well for my students (based on the glazed looks I was seeing). My peer observed me engaging the students at this critical juncture and was able to feedback what she saw, acting as a mirror, which allowed me to see for myself where I was missing the point and adjust my practice. (Why do medical doctors call what they do their “practice”?)
All the world’s a stage
Seeing one’s self in an open and honest light can be difficult for many educators. Admitting anxiety, admitting they made a mistake, can be the last thing any body feels comfortable doing. A helpful technique in diagnosing one’s way of seeing can be done through using metaphors. For example, if I were to ask you to describe yourself as an educator, what metaphor might you use? Are you a policeman? A tour guide? A drill sergeant? A gardener? In what ways can you qualify your answer based on your practice? Is this ho you want to see yourself? Is this the most effective role for you? How so? Thoughtfully and honestly reflecting on your practice and sharing your thoughts and feelings with trusted peers can be an effective means for changing one’s behavior, opening an educator to the possibility of trying something different.
More on Failure
None of the solutions I have mentioned are guaranteed. They are only meant as suggestions, as opportunities to addresses feelings of fear and anxiety associated with adopting new teaching practices. You can lead a horse to water, or you can lead a faculty member to a good professional development workshop, but you can’t force either one of them to do anything (master of the obvious I am). Our culture is one that frowns on failure.
Terry Wassall writes:
To take risks and innovate means to be prepared for some failures. But failures can be successes if something valuable is learnt from them. If the innovation is taking place within some worked out theoretical framework, then failure does not have to be measured only in terms of the specific objectives and aims not achieved; it can also be measured in terms of what the failure tells us about the theoretical framework within which the innovative activity was designed and applied. In this sense at least, there should be no such thing as a failed experiment. The implication of this is that risk-taking innovators need to be operating within a theoretical framework that informs their activity and its continuous evaluation. If they haven't got this they won't learn from success either. It occurs to me as I write this that this is pretty much, at a high level of abstraction, what the experimental method is.
The other aspect of failure that must be considered is how it impacts upon the subjects of the 'failed' innovation, the students. I think there has to be some sort of fail safe aspect to the instructional design. I speak here with the wisdom of someone who has never done this consciously!
In response Tom Campell suggests:
So how do we get educators to feel that they are or can be risk takers? There is no one simple answer. Yet there are internal and external steps educators can take to address their fears. But it needs to start with the educator first. Yes, there are risks when a physician attempts to heal him or herself. Yet, is it a risk worth taking?
Buckminster Fuller opined:
"There is no such thing as a failed experiment only experiments with unexpected outcomes."
The other aspect of failure that must be considered is how it impacts upon the subjects of the 'failed' innovation, the students.
We must tell the learner what we are doing with them and get them thinking that one learning outcome is to embrace the experiment and abet it.
I have too many 'A' students - but once we alter the design to make them 'own' their learning and broaden our biases to include the widest possible representations of mastery, we end up finding a worthy place for the unexpected outcomes.
Keywords: educators, failure, fear, innovation, innovators, instructors, learning, pedagogy, risk taking, success, teachers, teaching
Comments
I spend all of my working time working with teachers to bring about pedagogical change. Whether it's inthe educational design of their learning materials, discussing the way in which they might apply 'new' pedagogy to the way they teach or simply encouraging them to think in a differnt way about how they work with learners.
You are so right - there are real and deep seated fears at the heart of resistance to change. My approach has always been 'softly, softly, catchee monkey' and finding one thing that teachers can latch onto and say - now I can do THAT, it's valuable to me. This often translates into 'This is a familiar bridge I can use to make the transition to doing things differently less fearful, less risky. I can succeed in this, it makes sense to me.'
Thanks for some great additions to the collection of 'success' strategies. They are so important.
And to answer your final question - is it a risk worth taking? - I believe so - we are dealing with a new kind of learner, with different expectations and different skills and understanding. Teachers no longer have automatic authority, credibility and respect by virtue of being custodians of the knowledge and skills. Like everyone else, they have to earn it.
Knowledge changes on a daily basis. Teachers cannot possibly be conduits and founts of all learning. It's too big. For our students' sake and ouor own sanity, we need to teach differently and engage them in active, reflective, authentic, independent and collaborative learning. A teacher's role has to be to prepare them for a lifetime of continuous learning and change that they will need to manage for themselves.
If there is one change that teachers MUST make, it is to focus on teaching learners how to learn, not on content.
Thanks!