Recently, I had the opportunity to encorporate the 6 word learning plan idea I found here on Stephen’s website (via Mark Oehlert and Dave Pollard). Last night in a class I am co-teaching on teacher learning and professional development, we were scheduled to discuss (among other things) the notions of change, modernity, and post-modernity in light of school reform articulated in the first three chapters of Andy Hargreaves’Changing Teachers, Changing Times. Two of the course’s major pillars are change and working with teachers to improve their practice. Given the various issues associated with these pillars, I asked students to put themselves in the role of an educational consultant and gave them the following scenario:
You have been hired by a school to advise them on how to improve their students’ state test scores. How would you frame you’re your approach in six words?
We took a few minutes to compost our plans, then shared our results aloud. Here are a few examples:
We all listened intently to each other’s work and then began recognizing ideas or concepts we overlooked in our initial compositions. I watched as some students took notes and modified their original work.
I felt this sense of real collaboration, real listening, thoughtfulness and critical reflection.
This exercise provided a wonderful opportunity to begin shaping and refining our philosophical approaches to working with school personnel.
This exercise reminds of a classic haiku from the Japanese poet Basho
Old pond a frog leaping -- splash!
So much said, so little space.
If you haven’t already, you can read more about the six word plan here.
Let me know what you think or how you might use the idea in your own settings.
Educational achievement is not to make the strange seem familiar, but to make the familiar seem strange. It is seeing the wonderful that lies hidden in what we take for granted that matters (Egan, 1992).
I recently ran across this post by blogger/animator Kevin Koch on his TAG Blog which shares his notes from the Screenwriting Expo 5 that outlines Pixar’s storytelling framework.
Storytelling and narrative are essential parts of any teaching and learning endeavor. Stories and jokes, if told well, elicit our interests; they serve as a means for capturing our attention and offer the potential for improving our understanding and retention of material (Egan 1989). Stories, like language itself, serve as a “symbolic mediator” in our ability to think and learn (Hicks 1995).
In Teaching as Story Telling (1989), Kieran Egan suggests that good stories provide mental experiences that allow people to move from concrete to abstract concepts that light our imaginations. Stories and jokes are wonderfully efficient tools for learning that organize the spaces between physical and imaginary worlds. And as Denning notes, “[s]torytelling brings people together in a common perspective, and stretches everyone’s capacity to empathize with others and share experience” (Denning 2001).
Koch’s post offers the advice of professional storytellers as they share perspectives on their craft that offer equally important advice for educators. After each quote, I’ve attempted to draw parallels to teaching and learning.
Storytelling is no different from gossip -- we want to know what happens. The joke or story, and the way it's told, are important . . . but we want to know what happens. And the payoff should be unexpected and satisfying. And, more importantly for the writer, one should know that punch line as one is writing.
In a teaching and learning environment, the teacher is essentially serving as the master storyteller. He or she prepares lessons and knows where the “punch lines” are. Therefore timing is crucial as one rolls out data and information that moves students from the concrete to the abstract (then back to the concrete). Talking about adverbs or algae is different from telling a story about adverbs and algae. Which would you suppose would be more engaging? [Note: While this particular interpretation places the teacher center stage, there is no reason this role cannot be switched with learners in the class.]
Why Pixar creates such great stories:
-- No politics
-- No studio execs
-- It's a director-driven studio, with a stable "brain trust" for oversight
-- Only in-house original ideas are used, with a 1:1 ratio between developed ideas and films made
-- It's fairyland”
Here’s how I interpret the previous ideas: No politics— Think of a classroom as a place to look at concepts from multiple “objective/subjective” lens’. In other words, check you own political views at the door and try to approach ideas and concepts in an unassuming fashion. You’re role is to serve as a guide; you point out the facts, the theories, the interpretations, but you never judge these things. You allow your students to come to their own conclusions.
No studio execs— This means an administrator’s job is to support you as an educator, not micromanage your particular processes or your curriculum. Director-driven studio, with a stable brain trust— Teacher’s are essentially director’s of the teaching and learning environment. They can choose to operate as dictators, coaches, hands-free, or somewhere in between. The bottom line is, educators must decide for themselves how they want to “run the show.” The brain trust is the educators’ community of practice, the other educators with whom they negotiate the teaching and learning enterprise. The tighter this community is greatly influences how the individual educator is able to perform.
Only in-house original ideas are used— Curriculum should be developed based on the needs of the learners, not dictated by state or district standards.
Fairyland— Schools and classrooms can be magical places; they possess certain qualities that can enlighten or destroy a student’s sense of self and their imagination. This is also true of the students’, the administrators’, and the community’s affect/effect on educators. As such, schools contain tremendous powers.
It's about audience participation -- that a good storyteller makes the viewer connect the dots and form a conclusion. This was a recurring theme, that the audience has an unconscious desire to work for their entertainment.
Teaching and learning is also about participation; it’s about showing learners how to connect the dots. And for me, learning has always been a form of entertainment, i.e., a means of holding my attention. (Heck, I’m 40 years old and still in school! I guess some people never learn….)
Kevin’s notes also cover advice for screen writers – another role that educators play as they script lessons for a variety of audiences: Dare to be different, and to do things your own way, without relying on formulas.
I believe this quote speaks for itself. A key to a great story is to like your main character.
I read this to mean like what you do and be able to empathize with your students.
Unity of Opposites -- characters need clear goals that directly oppose each other. [Toy Story’s] Woody's selfish goal, to get back in Andy's good graces, directly opposed Buzz's goal.
In storytelling, it’s often helpful to set up dichotomies to illustrate similarities and differences. Similarly in teaching and learning, sometimes it is useful to compare black to white as long as you also recognize and note that most concepts exist on a spectrum with many shades in between. Writing is rewriting -- the story will emerge as one rewrites, and the first draft is always nothing more than a starting point. Therefore, "be wrong as fast as you can" -- blast out that first draft, then dig into the rewriting and do the real work.
This quote reminds me of the notion that “the best laid plans of mice and men often go awry.” Ideally teaching and learning are fluid activities, not linear ones. The classroom should be a dynamic interplay between educators, students, texts, movies, dialog, facts, opinions, stories, all shaping and changing the way we think and feel about the world around us. Thus, the real work of an educator is in the re-thinking, the re-visioning, of lessons to provide maximum impact. Building a scene -- you need to have something to say, something that gives the scene purpose. This is not necessarily a message, but a truth (which you can debate in the story). The example here was the scene of [Toy Story’s] Woody in the crate at Sid's house. He begins by giving a phoney pep talk to Buzz, but as the scene unfolds he reveals the truth that he is deeply insecure. This unfolding truth is what powers that sequence.
I love this quote. The teaching and learning environment is a scene. Lesson plans give the scene purpose, and that purpose aims towards uncovering fundamental truths. This “unfolding truth” powers the entire teaching and learning enterprise.
Key Image -- a key image should epitomize the core of the story (this is similar to what I've read from Stanley Kubrick). This image embodies key elements of theme and story and helps keep the storytelling on track. As examples, he showed the image of Woody being knocked off the bed for Buzz, of Sully holding Boo's hand in a doorway, of the last vulnerable egg in Finding Nemo. And he noted that A Bug's Life didn't have such an image, causing him to struggle with finding the heart and a core of the story.
I relate the notion of a key image to the pillars that sustain a course. What are the pillars, the key images that support your lessons and designs? What key messages or ideas do you desire your students to take away with them? What do you want your students to remember as they encounter new situations?
The ideas I have shared here are nothing new to many educators. I found reading them from the perspective of animators and screenwriters who study the art of story telling to be refreshing and invigorating.
Plato recognized the educative value of telling a good story (see Meno). As do the hundreds of writers and comedians that have existed throughout history (and what is history?). Jokes and stories reflect “social attitudes” and can provide “a vehicle through which people can voice feelings for which there is no socially acceptable or easily accessible outlet” (Winick 1976). Comprehending a story or a joke “requires the capacity to meet its cognitive demands and contributes to the pleasure it provides” (Winick 1976).
As educators, I believe stories and jokes serve as a helpful framework to create and weave lessons upon. Filmmaker Francois Truffaut is reported to have said, “Filmmaking is the art of leading the thoughts and connotations of the audience.” Educators face a similar situation as they guide students through curricula. For some it comes naturally. For others, it’s a matter of time and practice. And still for some, it never works.
So, heard any good stories lately? If so, please pass them along. Maybe we can learn something from them.
References:
Denning, S. (2001). The Springboard: How Storytelling Ignites Action in Knowledge-Era Organizations. Boston: Butterworth Heinemann.
Egan, K. (1989). Teaching as story telling. Chicago: University of Chicago.
Egan, K. (1992). Imagination in teaching and learning. Chicago: University of Chicago.
During the interrogation process known as the “oral defense” of my doctoral qualifying examination, I presented an outline for the research that I am pursuing as part of my dissertation (aka the “big science fair project”).
I am curious to know how a medium like weblogs might add value in supporting a geographically dispersed group of facilitators working with practicing teachers engaged in action research.
Committee members asked what my unit of analysis would be: would it be the facilitators, the weblogs, the community? My answer was “yes.”
Apparently, they didn’t like that answer; it wasn’t specific enough. What theoretical lens would I use to study this seeming mass of activity? In reality, I was still looking for the right approach to examine how knowledge creation could be supported by weblogging. My answer: Can I get back to you on that in a few weeks?
Now, my committee is pretty bright. Yet, I was entering uncharted waters for most of them. How does one go about creating knowledge on a weblog?
I found myself arguing from a situative perspective that suggests that knowledge and learning is a social phenomenon (Lave & Wenger 1991). Weblogs are a social medium, especially when they are ‘plugged” into a community of practice or interest. Since I was curious how weblogs might assist a community of facilitators, I suggested that perhaps weblogs might be a means of capturing the facilitators thinking processes (given a set of prompts to get participants actively thinking and writing about their thinking). I mentioned I was curious to see if in the process of thinking aloud on their weblogs, participants could read each others’ thoughts, make comments, provide feedback and offer suggestions in an effort to improve each others’ practice. Would this lead to better facilitation and more robust action research projects?
Since this initial meeting I have been actively engaged in four projects that support my initial inquiry.
The first project is a weblog community created in an Elgg environment. This site is designed to support a face-to-face course wherein I created a “motherblog” that serves as an announcement space and coordination hub connecting participants and their weblogs. Each week students use their weblogs to reflect on weekly class readings and discussions as well as turn in all written assignments and projects. We also use the community space as a document distribution site for class readings and lecture notes/powerpoints. I intentionally provided few directions on how to use the site. None of the participants were active bloggers prior to taking this class. I wanted to see how students would take to it, how they might use it. Would they use their own blogs for anything other than classwork? Will they use the site only if prompted by the instructor? What value, if any, will they perceive? Perhaps it is too soon for these particular students to tell.
The second project I am involved in is the co-creation of a weblogging community (built in Drupal) designed to support geographically separate facilitators working with classroom teachers on action research projects. This is essentially a pilot study that allows me to better understand a) what value weblogs might provide facilitators and b) how one might design an online community to support a particular practice (i.e., facilitating facilitators). We have 15 participant facilitators who are working with between 6-10 practicing teachers each. We meet with facilitators three times face to face throughout the course of this project that culminates in April 2007 at a showcase of teacher action research projects. In between these meetings all communication will be supported via the community site. Facilitators have been given a schedule and timeline for working with their teachers and we have created a number of weblog prompts to stimulate critical reflection on the facilitation process.
The third project involves looking for the right lens to analyze weblogging for formal research purposes. After swimming through the cognitivists (Vygotsky, Piaget) and the situativists (Lave, Wenger, Engestrom, Bereiter) I have recently come across a framework that I think might fit the bill: activity theory. Bonnie Nardi has done a stellar job compiling the reflections and research of a number of scholars into a text titled Context and Consciousness: Activity Theory and Human Computer Interaction (1996). The activity theory framework posits the activity itself as the context or unit of analysis. So, if we want to study the value of weblogging among a specific group, i.e., the relations among individuals and the artifacts created, activity theory provides a systematic conceptual framework for the study of consciousness and intentionality within a specific context. Using this framework I am hoping to uncover the broad patterns of activity that participants bring to the weblog community, how participants collaborate (or don’t collaborate), how much of their thinking do they reveal (or not reveal), what might participants reveal about their own sense of self-efficacy? etc.
Finally, I am working to develop a rubric to help identify what a robust action research project looks like. I found a helpful developmental framework from the Center for the Integration of Research, Teaching, and Learning (CIRTL) that I will be adapting then sending out for feedback using a modified Delphi approach. I hope to use this rubric as a tool for assisting facilitators in their work with teachers as they develop and refine their action research projects.
So in between, eating, sleeping, reading, writing, commuting, attending conferences, hanging with the fam, and my full-time job, this what I’ve been up to (whew). At this point I would be curious to knowyour thoughts on these projects and any feedback or advice you might be willing to share.
References:
Lave, J. & Wenger, E. (1991). Situated learning: Legitimate peripheral participation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Nardi, B. (1996). Context and Consciousness: Activity Theory and Human Computer Interaction. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.
Ask In a nutshell, Waters was able to demonstrate that asking questions in an online discussion forum generates more participation. While this seems like a no-brainer, I found this presentation to be helpful as it reminds us all that if we want to create an engaging online presence (be it formal or informal), asking questions, a method with a long history, still works wonders in activating and stimulating dialogue and interactivity. Go figure?
Post Early, Post Often Other notes from Waters presentation included an analysis of which posts generated the most action. He found that within the course he was investigating, those participants who posted early (i.e., once a question or prompt was put forward) where more widely read and more attended to by other participants.
Student Roles in a Community of Inquiry As participants in an online community of inquiry, we can adopt a number of roles and stances. Waters and Gasson note such roles as the initiator, the facilitator, the contributor, the knowledge-eliciter, the vicarious-acknowledger, the complicator, the closer and the passive-learner. (More information on these roles can be found here.)
In his research, Waters noticed that the type of message posted had much to do with its attendance and reading by others. Specifically, posts that acknowledged and drew out debate on a question, i.e., facilitated knowledge creation and discussion, were read and attended to more often.
Role of the Facilitator This leads to an interesting notion of the role of facilitation in online teaching and learning environments. The role of a facilitator is more than initiating or contributing to a conversation. Waters’ notes that facilitators “often resolve external or logistical problems for other students, moderate discussions, warn the community when a debate is wandering off topic, and actively acknowledge other students’ contributions.” A facilitator must be able to expand upon ideas presented and push them along adding additional insight.
So, if posts that facilitate discussion and knowledge creation are the most attended to, should educators be encouraging and training students to become facilitators in online communities of inquiry?
Do we do this through modeling such behavior? Is it through directly stating student expectations? Do we take the schema developed by Waters and Gasson and share it with our students? Will a well-defined rubric/matrix help?
Clearly if we make our thoughts and feelings known to students as to what we expect and model such behavior, we provide a basic structure that can be built upon. I hesitate making any generalizations because so much depends on the context and activities we are engaged in.
More on Vicarious Learners Finally, Waters’ mentioned his next research steps included investigating ill-defined and well-bounded questions and the role of vicarious learners (aka lurkers). I was recently engaged in a similar discussion about vicarious learners with a colleague at school. Erik brought up what he calls the “the 1% meme,” i.e., 1% of users utilizing 100% of an application.
He writes:
I am pondering the concept that the richness of information available via blogs can be a bit overwhelming and actually limit interactivity in some cases. Rather then participating in a few blogging spaces and defining a presence through 2-way discourse in these spaces, I witness many students visiting and reading many blogs but rarely posting. Is this a genuine observation?
Rather than proffering a response, I would like to turn the question over to you.
What might be accounting for the various levels and attitudes behind vicarious learners/learning?
You can click on the “site meter” link on this weblog in the right navigation panel and see the number of visitors, the length of their visit, etc. You will probably notice a small fraction of visitors who spend any time here actually comment on a post.
Am I not asking good questions? Are my questions ill-defined or not well-bounded? I can quickly think of a number of reasons why people do not respond. However, one of the main reasons I write and blog is for the feedback. I would be curious to know if you find the information here useful, not useful, boring, not what you’re interested in, etc. (Anonymity is an fascinating side effect of Internet communication, to say the least.)
As always, your thoughts and comments are encouraged.
Jim Brandenburg, principal of Alachua Elementary School in Alachua, Florida visited our class on Teacher Learning and Professional Development last night to tell us how he has been working to build a culture of teacher inquiry in his school.
Jim comes across as a simple man working in a rural school serving a diverse range of students. Florida schools are subject to accountability standards set by the governor that assigns grades or marks to schools based on student performance on the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test (FCAT) and demonstrable gains by students who score in the lowest percent in previous iterations of the test. It’s a punitive system that monetarily rewards schools that do well and punishes/humiliates schools that perform poorly (that makes sense, no?).
Jim came right out and said he could give a flip about test scores. Instead, he talked about comparing school improvement initiatives to Weight Watchers. Yes, that’s right: Weight Watchers – a worldwide organization of helping people lose weight.
Jim engaged the class in a discussion around what makes Weight Watchers successful:
Weight Watchers is an organization/model built on helping individuals make the positive changes required to lose weight. It guides and supports individuals in making positive behavioral changes in their life. It provides inspiration in supporting the belief that individuals have the power to succeed and it provides motivation every step of the way. Weight Watchers is successful because it is built on the notion of sustainability and realistic expectations. It uses sound principles of nutrition that focuses on a balanced lifestyle and an individual’s health and well being. Participants in the program share a common goal (losing weight via adopting a healthy lifestyle) and there is a mutually supporting social network of people and technology that is non-judgmental.
Similarly, Jim suggested school improvement plans and activities should be structured the same way, i.e., as a systematic, intentional effort based on increasing student engagement through
a shared focus
a shared pedagogy
and a shared inquiry – a desire to examine the work of teaching and learning and improve upon it.
This sense of inquiry is more than action research, more than a “fad diet,” – it is a philosophical stance or a way of thinking about how the issues and problems within teaching and learning environments are framed (Cochran-Smith & Lytle 1999). An inquiry stance can be likened to a professional curiosity that fosters a sense of wondering about how we engage learners. An inquiry stance provides a shared focus for a school that builds on an intentional examination of pedagogy. By taking such a stance, Jim (and others) believes that his school is able to address status quo thinking that drains creativity and innovation from teaching and learning. In Jim’s mind, school improvement is really about creating a healthy academic diet (or live it as Richard Simmons would say).
Given an inquiry approach that examines the genuine problems teachers face, Jim suggests that the following topics need to be clearly addressed:
• Leadership support – school improvement needs to be important to school administration. School leaders can work out logistical issues, provide focus, and clear organizational roadblocks.
• A willingness to experiment – by both leaders and practitioners. Inquiry into improving student engagement requires a willingness to make mistakes and (hopefully) learn from them. This is not necessarily easy to do given the way most of us were raised.
• Trust – trust is clearly necessary between teachers and administrators. Trust involves building sound relationships with individuals in the school; it is also a way to deal with the various toxic elements that threaten change for the better.
• Congeniality – you cannot foster school improvement without participants willing to playing nice in the sandbox. Without it, there is little ability to share and cooperate.
• Collegiality – after congeniality comes collegiality. Collegiality leads to opportunities for sharing, for collective reflection, for thinking aloud, for participants to be able to talk to each other and potentially collaborate in an organic sense.
What strikes you most about listening to Jim’s approach to improving his school’s teaching and learning conditions is that very little of what he offers is book-learned. His advice comes through experience and partnering with people who possess a theoretical understanding of change and change management.
For Jim, creating a climate of inquiry is like a leap of faith. His interest is in designing non-punitive opportunities for teachers to continuously expand their capacity to learn, to care, to help each other, and to teach effectively.
Will adopting such a stance make his students’ test scores go up? Well, like a Weight Watchers plan, results do not happen overnight, but the impact of a healthy diet over a sustained period of time can lead to marked improvement. It’s like losing a half-pound a week for 50 weeks versus dropping thirty pounds in three weeks. The secret is in finding a balance that works for the people involved in light of sound, healthy principles.
Jim’s story was inspirational on many levels. His school’s focus on the needs of each child clearly trumped the carrots and sticks mentality of the state. Jim’s mantra is simply do the right things for the right reasons. Test scores are not the goal, learning is. He remarked how the teachers in his school use test scores as one indicator among many to gauge the effectiveness of instructional strategies; they are only a means and not the end.
Whether you consider Jim’s work a leap of faith or the results of sound practice is certainly up for debate. While he didn’t talk about a points system commonly associated with a Weight Watcher’s program, this idea would be worth thinking about in terms of rewarding teachers for their work. Yet, I must admit I worry about models that proffer rewards. (However, this might be the type of token economy that works well in certain settings.) His school provides an example of how an inquiry stance and action research model provides a measurable means for improving student engagement. Now if I can just get him to start blogging!
Reference:
Cochran-Smith, M. and S. L. Lytle (1999). "Relationships of knowledge and practice: Teacher learning in communities." Review of Educational Research in Education 24: 249-305.
It is difficult for innovators to stand idly by and watch others not get it. It is equally difficult to imagine educators acting complacent in a world changing at such an accelerated pace. So what can we offer educators as a way to get them to try something different, to take on an inquiring stance?
What Action Research Has to Offer
Action research provides a model that allows educators to experiment with different approaches to teaching and learning. If framed in the right way, action research offers a safe-to-fail methodology that essentially says “here’s what I tried and here’s why it did/didn’t work.”
When we frame our actions in terms of experimentation, we can be somewhat relieved of the burden of being perfect. Experimentation is an opportunity to try out ideas, activities, ways of seeing and doing in a controlled way that allows us to document and critically reflect on the results. Educators experiment all the time in the classroom; however, the action research model provides a set of disciplined guidelines that offers the potential to generate genuine and sustained improvements in schools.
Knowledge of Practice
The process of getting others to learn for themselves, to become innovators, is not an easy enterprise. And neither is action research. Meaningful research is hard work. And doing good research, like learning to teach well, takes time and effort. Investigating how weblogs might improve students’ reading scores is an example of an inquiry or action research project that could allow an educator or group of educators wanting to experiment with weblogs a great opportunity to test them out. Can using a wiki to support students’ collaborative learning projects lead to meaningful participation? Can podcasting improve students’ literacy skills? Sound like fantastic research opportunities, no?
By framing such endeavors as research, educators are afforded an opportunity to learn more about their own practice. And this is where meaningful shift can occur. Getting people to change requires a number of variables, all of which involve the ability to understand who we are and what we want. Action research is one way that educators can begin to look at their practice that invites seeing things differently. And perhaps that’s just the invitation some educators need. By taking such a stance, the notion of teacher practice becomes both practical and critical wherein knowledge creation can be seen as emergent rather than prescribed. As such practitioners come to know their practice, they are no longer burdened by the role of “expert” and instead can act as fellow learners along with their students. Also, sharing their results with fellow practitioners is an important element of research. It not only adds to the collective teaching and learning knowledge base but it can serve other educators as a model or jumping off point.
Making It So
So, I have briefly presented a way of leading educators to water, but I have not shown how to make them drink. The reality is, no one can force any one to drink when they don’t want to (unless you might be waterboarding them…). Richardson talks about the importance of modeling such behaviors, and I believe he is correct. I think it’s also important for the collective known as edubloggers to continue to share their thoughts, ideas, and experiences as a way to both model innovative thinking as well as contribute to a formal/informal educational knowledge base. It also helps if you work in a school that encourages innovation and experimentation. If you don’t, chances are no amount of teacher in-services and one-off workshops will lead to much of anything.
So take heart Will. I’ll keep evangelizing, if you promise to do so as well. Remember: IT takes a Village!
In case you have not participated already, there is only one week left to make sure that your favorite blogs, bloggers and projects are nominated for the Third International Edublog Awards!
The Edublog Awards is an independently run, community-based awards program that recognizes and promotes excellence in the educational use of social software.
The Edublog awards are more relevant than ever. Edublogs provide a space for us to refocus the debate surrounding young peoples use of technology as irresponsible, dangerous or illegal, and look at the positive, powerful and transformative work that continues to be demonstrated.
Gardner, an admitted cognitivist, offers an interpretation of what it takes to change minds in significant ways (a theme that I have been exploring lately).
The book’s focus falls on change agents, people who practice or aspire to be mind-changers. Gardner lays out his argument in a manner that is immediately approachable by non-academics. This method, while working well for the masses, offers a host of rabbit holes for practicing researchers. Nevertheless, like his theory of multiple intelligences, Gardner sets the stage for further research and debate that makes it a worthwhile read. I have chosen to limit my post and analysis to the parts of the text associated with educators. The book itself goes into greater detail about changing minds on a number of levels that would take far too long for me to adequately and appropriately cover.
When we think about an idea (i.e., the contents of the mind) we generally conjure a mental image in our mind that contains both content (semantic meaning) and a form/format (the language or system of symbols in which the content is represented). Gardner argues that multiple versions of the same idea represent a potentially powerful way to shift our way of thinking (other contents of mind that can affect change include concepts, stories, theories, and skills). Gardener then introduces a framework of seven factors or levers that could be at work in cases involving changing minds (pp. 15-18):
Reason – a logical, rational approach
Research – a collection of relevant data/findings that is formal or informal
Resonance – the approach/change feels right or fits the situation
Representational Redescription – the change lends itself to multiple representations in a number of different forms
Resources and Rewards – positive reinforcements
Real World Events – the broader context surrounding one’s environment
Resistances – difficulties associated with change or reasons not to
For Gardner, “a mind change is most likely to come about when the first six factors operate in consort and the resistances are relatively weak” (p. 18). When resistances are strong, good luck and good night.
Growing up we acquire prevalent sets of concepts, stories, theories and skills that make up our mental schema for interpreting the world around us (i.e., our underlying belief system). Changing our mind requires us to first be open to change (which, for some, is no simple feat). Change also requires a level of trust; we must trust those outside experiences, forces, and/or people that are attempting to sway our opinions (e.g., they must appear reasonable, they must resonate with us, the rewards for taking on this new point of view must present themselves clearly, etc.). Gardner explains:
“It is more difficult to change the mind when perspectives are held strongly, and publicly, and by individuals with rigid temperament. It is easier to change minds when individuals find themselves in a new environment, surrounded by peers, of a different persuasion (for example, when one enters college), or when individuals undergo shattering experiences (for example, a severe accident, a divorce, an unexpected death) or encounter luminous personalities. Even so, however, fans of mind changing must often mute their claims of victory. The opportunities for backsliding are patent among those who make a lot of noise—indeed, they may be especially patent among those who are given to histrionic statements (“it’s an entirely new ballgame”) and then register disappointment when the rest of the world remains much as it was before. In other words, it’s easier to talk about changing minds in general than to effect enduring changes in any particular mind (p. 62).
When discussing changing minds, Gardner means changing the way one thinks or behaves (i.e., significant changes) as opposed to trivial changes like eating bagels for breakfast instead of eggs.
In terms of educating educators, I have attempted to adopt some of Gardner’s findings as they apply to working with students. As such Gardner suggests that three conditions must first be met:
Resistances must be clearly recognized and confronted. In other words, it is necessary to directly confront the myriad of conceptual and methodological misconceptions that educators hold. This means confronting people’s inadequate modes of thought and conclusions about the world and technology head on using sound principles, logic, and reason. Second, we must provide many rich, illustrative examples culled from research, practice, and the work of others. Finally, once we fully immersed in our examples, we then have the opportunity to approach the topic from multiple perspectives, using a variety of lens’, tools, and ways of seeing.
For working with students/learners, Gardner offers the following entry points for changing minds (pp. 140-141):
Narrative – telling stories about the topic and the people involved with it
Quantitative – using examples connected to the topic
Logic – identifying the key elements or units and exploring their logical connections
Existential – addressing big questions, such as the nature of truth, beauty, life and death
Aesthetic – examining instances in terms of their artistic properties or capturing the examples themselves in works of art
Hands-on – working directly with tangible examples
Cooperative or social – engaging in projects with others where each makes a distinctive contribution to successful execution
Essentially, Gardner feels that educators need to address the “multiple intelligences” he associates with the mind when attempting to influence the thinking of others. He does offer the following caveat:
“The mind changes involved in disciplinary learning are profound ones; given the strength and ubiquity of resistances, they are difficult to effect even under favorable circumstances; and those educators who can help to bring them about constitute a precious human resource” (p. 141).
The take away from this conception is that there are many effective ways to present content, and the tipping point is most likely to come about if educators use “several formats flexibly and imaginatively” (p. 141). I associate this way of thinking with differentiating instruction; that is, providing multiple opportunities for students to engage with both the content and each other.
For the educational technologist in all of us, I feel it is critical for us to model how we, as innovators, go about looking at the world (see Brown, Collins & Duguid’s notion of cognitive apprenticeship). We need to show (not tell) how we are demanding of ourselves; how we look for holes, how we are skeptical, how we conduct research, how we probe, how we experiment, how we try to break things, and how we are willing to suspend our beliefs until we are proven otherwise. We need to show others what motivates us, how we know when something feels right to us, and how we utilize our resources.
Overall, I find Gardner’s work thought provoking. I can’t say that I find all that he says resonating. I feel that he overlooks a lot of important research associated with the social nature of teaching and learning although I find it seeping into his work occasionally (and unattributed).
I like the essence of his seven factors, even though he seems to be consciously limiting himself by only incorporating words that begin we the letters R & E.
His preface includes one more important point that I hinted at earlier and I wanted to reprise, and that is the notion of trust and trustees. “No community can exist without a measure of trust” – author’s emphasis (p. xiv). This includes the desirability of trustees – those members of the community who have an ability to see things clearly; those members who are wise, skeptical, and who look out for the best interest of the community as opposed to their own interests. Trustees have power and sway over others and are important elements of change. To be a powerful agent of change, then we must instill a sense of trust in those we want to affect. This essence of trust may not be earned in 5 minutes or perhaps it can, as long as we perform our work with integrity, with honesty, and with truthiness.
I would be interested to know your thoughts, especially if you’re familiar with Gardner’s work.
References:
Brown, J.S., Collins, A., & Duguid, P. (1989). Situated cognition and the culture of learning. Educational Researcher, 18(1): 32-42.
Gardner, H. (2006). Changing minds: The art and science of changing our own and other people’s minds. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Business School Press.
I am wondering about large comment threads and how valuable they are to the originator and others participating within the thread.
For example, when you read a post that interests you and you notice there are 40 comments attached to the discussion, do you read through each comment?
Do you skim the topic sentences of the comments?
Do you “walk away”?
Do you add your two cents worth?
What are the benefits from long threaded discussions?
What if there are 2, 4, 6, 8, 10 comments?
Are you more likely to read and comment when there is less commenting?
What are the psychological reasons behind why we choose to respond or choose to walk away?
In a related vein, I ran across this article by Christopher Allen on his Life With Alacrity weblog that focuses on group size and maintaining a sense of connectedness in online communities. I am curious what research says about optimum group sizes in online collaborative environments. Is there really a general rule of thumb or is it always context dependent?
Director-driven studio, with a stable brain trust—
Teaching and learning is also about participation; it’s about showing learners how to connect the dots. And for me, learning has always been a form of entertainment, i.e., a means of holding my attention. (Heck, I’m 40 years old and still in school! I guess some people never learn….)
Writing is rewriting -- the story will emerge as one rewrites, and the first draft is always nothing more than a starting point. Therefore, "be wrong as fast as you can" -- blast out that first draft, then dig into the rewriting and do the real work.
I relate the notion of a key image to the pillars that sustain a course. What are the pillars, the key images that support your lessons and designs? What key messages or ideas do you desire your students to take away with them? What do you want your students to remember as they encounter new situations?
Hey sports racers,
During the interrogation process known as the “oral defense” of my doctoral qualifying examination, I presented an outline for the research that I am pursuing as part of my dissertation (aka the “big science fair project”).
Now, my committee is pretty bright. Yet, I was entering uncharted waters for most of them. How does one go about creating knowledge on a weblog?
The first project is a weblog community created in an 
The third project involves looking for the right lens to analyze weblogging for formal research purposes. After swimming through the cognitivists (
Reporting from the 
So, if posts that facilitate discussion and knowledge creation are the most attended to, should educators be encouraging and training students to become facilitators in online communities of inquiry?
Rather than proffering a response, I would like to turn the question over to you.
What strikes you most about listening to Jim’s approach to improving his school’s teaching and learning conditions is that very little of what he offers is book-learned. His advice comes through experience and partnering with people who possess a theoretical understanding of change and change management.
Whether you consider Jim’s work a leap of faith or the results of sound practice is certainly up for debate. While he didn’t talk about a points system commonly associated with a Weight Watcher’s program, this idea would be worth thinking about in terms of rewarding teachers for their work. Yet, I must admit I worry about models that proffer rewards. (However, this might be the type of token economy that works well in certain settings.) His school provides an example of how an inquiry stance and action research model provides a measurable means for improving student engagement. Now if I can just get him to start blogging!
After reading 
What Action Research Has to Offer
Knowledge of Practice
Making It So
I am currently reading 
The take away from this conception is that there are many effective ways to present content, and the tipping point is most likely to come about if educators use “several formats flexibly and imaginatively” (p. 141). I associate this way of thinking with differentiating instruction; that is, providing multiple opportunities for students to engage with both the content and each other.
Overall, I find Gardner’s work thought provoking. I can’t say that I find all that he says resonating. I feel that he overlooks a lot of important research associated with the social nature of teaching and learning although I find it seeping into his work occasionally (and unattributed). 
