This blog post is part of our series on leadership and governance.
Over the last three decades, we have seen a trend toward the centralization of decision-making in public education and the erosion of power of democratically elected local school boards across Canada. In some jurisdictions, their continued existence has been called into question. My personal experience as a superintendent has demonstrated that school boards can be strong and effective institutions of leadership in public education and are central to community voice and the local democratic process.
For those of us who currently serve or have served as superintendents, we understand that governance issues are paramount to our work as education leaders. We collaborate with school trustees to meaningfully engage members of the community in understanding and supporting their school division/district’s mission, vision, values and priorities in support of the learning and well-being of all students.
In my previous career as a superintendent in rural Manitoba, I served four different school boards and observed that even though the dynamics of these boards differed, the trustees were highly committed people who genuinely cared about the learning and well-being of our youth and the sustainability of our communities. For most trustees, they came into their role with little or no governance experience. When I assumed the superintendency, our board had over three hundred policies (which they did not know) and our meetings focused primarily on administrative and management issues. My role was to help them understand how they could be more effective in fulfilling their mandate and serve the best interests of the youth and communities that they represented through changes in their governance.
Our work involved changing their governance philosophy to a more strategic focus with committees restructured to reflect where they needed to spend more of their time (i.e. policy, community connections, board development, fiduciary oversight). Our board, while skeptical at the outset, came to the understanding that they could be more effective in fulfilling their role through a change in their policy and practice. After two years of preliminary work with the board on effective governance, they made the decision to change to a strategic governance model underpinned by high-level policies. The policy manual was revised to include a total of twenty policies focused in three areas – their role as a board, goals and standards for the school division and the relationship between board and CEO.
This change was transformational for our school board, which now focuses their time and efforts on planning, policy development and connecting with our communities. We worked collaboratively with our students, staff and communities to establish a new vision, mission, values, beliefs and priorities for our school division. To embrace student voice as a key strategy in our change efforts, we were the first board in Manitoba to designate a student representative. We engaged in open and transparent dialogue with our stakeholders and moved our school division forward with focus and deep commitment, placing us on the leading edge of initiatives that have now become commonplace in public education in Manitoba.
Over the past decade, we introduced many new programs and initiatives focused on student achievement, engagement and well-being. Some examples include the establishment of a band program, career and mentorship programming, early childhood programming, a fiber optic network and a focus on education for sustainable development. These new initiatives would not have been possible without the vision and commitment of trustees who were clearly supporting what their communities prioritized for the youth that we served in our school division.
It should be mentioned that in Manitoba, school boards have retained the ability to levy local taxes to support public education. Without this authority, the programs and initiatives that I have cited above would not have been possible under provincial funding frameworks. It should also be noted that this did not mean that our trustees overlooked their fiduciary responsibilities. Our school division had one of the lowest mill rates in the province during this time frame. This required good planning, a commitment to priorities, aligning resources to priorities and collecting evidence to support positive outcomes for our students.
Externally driven or imposed change runs a risk of resentment, passive resistance and cursory compliance. The public education system cannot succeed to its highest level through compliant behaviour. It also requires commitment that must be earned through respect for people’s viewpoints who are united to a compelling moral purpose. This involves an inclusive approach that invites staff, students and community into a mission-driven dialogue about the desired change, involves them in defining it, and supports it’s ongoing implementation. This approach takes longer and is far more complex, but is the only way to effect genuine, lasting change.
School boards constitute one of the oldest and most enduring forms of elected representation in Canada and in my opinion, continue to serve a vital role in sustaining the success of Canada’s education system.
This blog post is part of our series on leadership and governance and part 2 of this post.
To paraphrase Geoffrey Moore[1], the greatest point of peril in technology adoption lies in transitioning from early adopters—dominated by a few visionary users—to mainstream users who are predominantly pragmatic: in between the two lies the chasm. In my first blog entry, When You Bring Tech to the Teacher, But You Can’t Make ‘Em Click , I offered the following six evidence-based ideas to increase technology adoption in school districts.
Now I’d like to share the strategies that could underpin the implementation of these ideas and foster technology adoption in your school district.
5. Personalize the learning
Technology adoption has costs – in dollars, human resources hours, cognitive load, stress, etc. Even some of the most promising educational technologies end up gathering dust in those places where good technology goes to die in your district. To be fiscally, as well as educationally responsible, our technology planning must include monetary, infrastructure and organizational factors. Yet in our planning processes, consideration of the factors influencing adoption by individuals is perhaps the most important and most overlooked factor. The Straub citation from my previous post bears repeating: “understanding and facilitating the process of acceptance may be more important than the adoption itself”.[8] I hope my contributions to this blog improve your success when fostering technology adoption. Let me know.
[1] Moore, G. (1991). Crossing the Chasm. New York: PerfectBound (Harper Collins).
[2] Bergeron, B. (2002). Achieving clinician buy-in to technology. Medscape. Retrieved from
http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/446224
[3] Carrington, A. (2015). Padagogy wheel v 4.0. Retrieved from
[4] Puentedura, R. (2006). Part 1: A model for technology and transformation. Transformation, technology, and education. Retrieved from http://hippasus.com/resources/tte/
[5] Holliday, J., Audrey, S., Campbell, R., & Moore, L. (2015). Identifying well-connected opinion leaders for informal health promotion: The example of the ASSIST smoking prevention program. Health Communication.
[6] Starkey, F., Audrey, S., Holliday, J., Moore, L., & Campbell, R. (2009). Identifying influential young people to undertake effective peer-led health promotion: The example of A Stop Smoking in Schools Trial (ASSIST). Health Education Research, 24(6), 997-988.
[7] Evidence-Based Intervention Work Group at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. (2005). Theories of change and adoption of innovations: The evolving evidence-based intervention and practice movement in school psychology. Psychology in the Schools, 42(5), 483.
[8] Straub, E. (2009). Understanding technology adoption: Theory and future directions for informal learning. Review of Educational Research, 79(2), 645.
This blog post is part of our series on leadership and governance.
Much is made of the amounts of money sunk into technology in education – sometimes with few extensive innovations in teaching and learning. Alfie Kohn recently discussed the issue in his blog post, “The Overselling of Ed Tech”[1]. Technology in education can be a physical object, software, or both, but ultimately, what technology leaders desire is an uptake (adoption and diffusion) of technology that improves teaching and learning – and/or the various other processes (clerical, administrative, HR, etc.) that support education. When evaluating the success of technology in education, it cannot be measured solely by the extent to which it transforms personal or institutional pedagogies or practices.
As Puentedura illustrated in his SAMR (Substitution, Augmentation, Modification, & Redefinition) technology adoption model, technology uptake spans a continuum from enhancing existing educational practices to transforming them.[2] In some cases, even a lack of adoption and diffusion may be acceptable when technology doesn’t suit the individual or the context.[3] Like students, educators (and by extension their organizations) can be at different developmental stages in regard to pedagogies, methodologies and technologies. Expecting technology to rapidly transform pedagogy, practices and the institution belies the cognitive load inherent in learning new concepts and/or in new methods through unfamiliar technologies as well as the conservative nature of the institution. Educators experience cognitive load like other learners – and perhaps schools do too.
The topic of individual behavioural change – which includes technology adoption as a subset – has been the focus of much research, most frequently related to public health initiatives. Most technology adoption literature focusses on the organization and factors external to individuals (e.g. funding, release time, policies, access). While important, these factors are often considered in isolation from more individualized aspects.
Below are six key intrapersonal and interpersonal aspects to consider when fostering technology adoption. They are taken from the literature of individual behavioural change across a variety of fields. (Some specific strategy ideas will be provided in a follow-up blog post, You Can’t Leap a Technology Chasm in Two Jumps.) The importance of these considerations will vary according to the individuals and their contexts.
Willingness to adopt new[4] technology can be affected by factors including: upbringing, experience, age, personal values, self-efficacy, confidence, reliance on routines, as well as interest in novelty & new stimuli.
ROI is a business term for “return on investment”. TPROI is my term relating to the balance between a) an individual’s investments of time, effort, etc. in learning/using a new technology; and b) if/how the technology improves the individual’s situation. TPROI encompasses more granular terms like perceived usefulness & perceived ease of use, as well as the practical reliability of a technology (e.g. limited glitches or time-outs).[5] The greater a TPROI, the more likely a person is to think about adopting a new technology and begin using it. Positive experiences can boost self-efficacy, and increased self-efficacy can increase the values individuals place on TPROI for subsequent technologies to adopt.
Some practices define or fortify a core identity – for individuals, professionals and organizations. The more a technology is perceived to substantially change a core identity practice the more adoption resistance there will be.[6]
Elements of choice, flexibility, & volunteerism can support technology adoption. Straub suggests even when “it is difficult if not impossible to make technology adoption a free choice…building in flexibility for teachers to have the perception of a choice may improve adoption facilitation”.[7]
Bergeron[8] found among clinicians, individuals “have very little in common with each other, in terms of their daily work routines, need for information and time pressure”, they each adapt differently to a new technology and “within each specialty, there are technology adoption patterns that become apparent as a function of individual differences”. Parks, Bansal, & Zilberman[9] tell us that a technology fits differently across disparate groups due to “differences in socio-cultural, economic, geographic, and environmental factors”. They go on to say that techniques like modelling and demonstrations can increase “adoption efficiency by providing a better match between individuals and the technology”—even when such strategies appear to decrease demands for a technology. An observed decline in interest after a demonstration could indicate reduced waste (e.g. not blanketing a school with technology that ends up unused) and get technology into the hands of people who will use it.
When adoption spreads from one individual to another, you have diffusion. While innovators & early adopters readily latch on to new technology, and can provide visible (e.g. public relations level) examples for a school or district, these groups don’t necessarily share their learning with the larger population. One study found that only about one in four innovators/early adopters shared their learning with the larger group.[10] Unlike innovators and early adopters, the ‘early majority” of the wider population “aren’t interested in the nuances of the underlying technology but in what it can do to solve their problem[s]”.[11] Educational practitioners may rely more on contextually based practices, personal experience and communication with colleagues than research papers when considering new technology.[12] Moore referred to the gap between innovators/early adopters and the early majority as a chasm and states it can be difficult to bridge.[13] Social influence relates to how others can influence individuals’ opinions, behaviours, and attitudes. In the case of a new technology, leveraging social influence is thought to be a significant strategy to bridge the chasm, though “the late majority and laggards may accept innovative [technology]… only though the pressures of conformity”.[14]
A major consideration seemingly absent from the technology adoption literature is the role (if any) played by educators’ considerations of their students: “The teacher is not only an adopter of the innovation but also must act as a change agent for his or her students”. Straub compares our current relationship with continually emerging technologies to that of Sisyphus and the rock he perpetually rolls uphill, concluding, “understanding and facilitating the process of acceptance may be more important than the adoption itself”.[15] I’m inclined to agree.
[1] Kohn, A. (2016). The overselling of ed-tech. Retrieved from http://www.alfiekohn.org/blogs/ed-tech/
[2] Puentedura, R. (2006). Part 1: A model for technology and transformation. Transformation, technology, and education. Retrieved from http://hippasus.com/resources/tte/
[3] Straub, E. (2009). Understanding technology adoption: Theory and future directions for informal learning. Review of Educational Research, 79(2), 625-649.
[4] “new technology” refers to technology new to the user; it could be emerging technology new to society or education in general, or technology new to an individual’s practice.
[5] Davis, F. (1989). Perceived usefulness, perceive ease of use, and user acceptance of technology. MIS Quarterly, 13, 319-340.
[6] Jaffe, D. (1998). Institutionalized resistance to asynchronous learning networks. Journal of Asynchronous Learning Networks, 2(2), 21-32.
[7] Straub, E. (2009). Understanding technology adoption: Theory and future directions for informal learning. Review of Educational Research, 79(2), 645.
[8] Bergeron, B. (2002). Achieving clinician buy-in to technology. Medscape. Retrieved from
http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/446224
[9] Parks, M. Bansal, S., & Zilberman, D. (2015). Technology adoption under fit risk: What should development project donors and managers know? Procedia Engineering, 107, 3-10.
[10] Morrison, P., Roberts, J., & von Hipple, E. (2000). Determinants of user innovation and innovation sharing in a local market. Management Science, 46(12), 1513-1527.
[11] Bergeron, B. (2002). Achieving clinician buy-in to technology. Medscape. Retrieved from
http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/446224
[12] Evidence-Based Intervention Work Group at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. (2005). Theories of change and adoption of innovations: The evolving evidence-based intervention and practice movement in school psychology. Psychology in the Schools, 42(5), 475-494.
[13] Moore, G. (1991). Crossing the Chasm. New York: PerfectBound (Harper Collins).
[14] Lin, M. & Hong, C. (2011). Opportunities for crossing the chasm between early adopters and the early majority through new uses of innovative products. The Review of Socionetwork Strategies, 5, 27-42.
[15] Straub, E. (2009). Understanding technology adoption: Theory and future directions for informal learning. Review of Educational Research, 79(2), 645.
This blog post is part of our series on leadership and governance.
We’ve all done it – Meyers Briggs, True Colors, DiSC or some other workplace personality test designed to help us gain personal insight and build team cohesion.
But, as education leaders, how do we apply our understanding of different personalities and workstyles to our leadership personas and practice? How do we not only manage, but also successfully lead, across an array of workstyles?
As leaders, we need to be on top of industry trends, organizational bottom line and our boss’ priorities – before breakfast. But the difference between managers and leaders is being people-smart. It starts with knowing yourself and being good at “people reading.” When you’re meeting with someone, think: is this person fast-paced and outspoken or thoughtful and reflective? Questioning and analytical or warm and intuitive? This immediate analysis will start to give you a quick read on the person’s preferred style.
At the same time that we’re reading others, we need to turn that people-reading radar onto ourselves too. As leaders, we can tend to get caught up in action – but we need time for self-reflection, too. We need to make sure we’re actively self-aware of our leadership strengths and of the areas in which we need to let others shine.
It’s natural to gravitate to those who share workstyle traits similar to yours. But, as a leader, you’ll benefit from a “council” that represents a cross-section of diverse workstyles. This might be a formal group you meet with regularly or an informal group you check in with as you walk around. They might not all be inside the organization.
These trusted voices can help fill in gaps and remove your blinders. Use this group to brainstorm, gather feedback on new policies and initiatives and test ideas. When you’re particularly excited about a pet project, ask this group to see how “problem proof” the project is by asking them questions such as the following:
Regardless of your style as a leader, you’ll deal with people who have a variety of different styles. As a leader, you can’t go wrong with all workstyle types by communicating regularly, giving people time to think about your message, and offering many opportunities and venues to give you feedback.
As leaders, our teams flourish when we understand how our personal style gels with the styles of those around us. Unless we understand how our leadership style meshes with others around us, we might overpower others. So we need to temper our workstyle power and let others step forward into the spotlight, so they can shine and be authentically themselves – rather than merely adapting to our way of working, simply because we’re the leader.
Of course, as leaders, we have high expectations and standards for those who work with us. It’s essential to clearly communicate those expectations and standards. Evidence also shows that a compelling vision is vital to effective leadership. So, leaders communicate the vision and expectations – but allow our people the freedom to use the approach that best suits them in fulfilling the expectations.
Though we would all agree that we value diversity and all work styles, it’s essential to be aware of our own implicit biases and micro behaviours that speak louder than words about what – and who – we value as leaders.
This blog post is part of our series on leadership and governance.
Three years into our four-year term, some members of the Halifax Regional School Board (HRSB) thought there was money being left on the table in the form of lost governance opportunity. To the extent defined, we were getting the job done, but it seemed that, tackled differently, we could do better. Things weren’t in crisis or disrepair. No one was calling for our heads. But there was the sense that we could aspire to set the bar higher. In true “good-for-the-goose-good-for-the-gander” fashion, the continuous school improvement to which our schools subscribed could apply to us as well in the form of continuous board improvement.
By year three we’d established a rhythm with our collection of discrete responsibilities – strategy, planning, budgeting, reporting, oversight. But were we getting at the whole picture? What were we overlooking? It seemed we could use a framework to both stretch and better define us, something into which to grow and better focus our efforts. Something that allowed for a bigger, more expansive and aspirational view while also providing greater definition of roles and responsibilities in the present. We were still prone to discussion and decision-making around day-to-day operational issues. Too inclined to attempt the work of staff. Like most boards, we could spend ages talking about things that played to our inherent weaknesses – the nitty gritty of programming, school administration, finance, etc. – while our strengths, the unique value that we brought to the board as outsiders, were left untapped: the ability to invest discussion with the point of view of community at a high level, channelling its desires, monitoring outcomes, and, in concert with staff, serving the best interests of students.
The board gave the study of governance its official stamp of approval with the forming of a committee with the mandate to “investigate a new governance model for HRSB and make recommendation of a preferred model(s), if identified, to the Governing Board.” It goes further but that’s the nut of it. The decision received an accidental endorsement in the form of a report from the provincial Auditor General that pointed to the need for greater clarity of purpose and role for elected school boards in Nova Scotia generally. And then the provincial association, the Nova Scotia School Boards Association, hot on the heels of its success with spearheading the development of a board self-assessment tool on behalf of member boards, indicated its interest in throwing its resources behind its own dedicated look at governance. The planets had aligned. Something that had seemed to be of interest only to Halifax had, by happy coincidence, become a subject of multi-agency interest. We had critical mass.
An informal, follow-our-noses, survey of the school board governance landscape in the form of interviews, readings, and conversations revealed that boards all over Canada and the U.S. had undertaken to deliberately organize themselves along different lines, whatever the framework, in pursuit of new levels and types of effectiveness. And they were achieving it. We heard this from board members and superintendents alike. The stories were inspiring. It was business as usual in Halifax, business as performed by ourselves and others since the beginning of time, but we were becoming increasingly aware of the advantages of doing things differently.
The Halifax committee, first out of the gate, includes elected members, staff, and association and provincial personnel. Working separately and together, each drawing on our own perspectives, strengths, and expertise, we pool our contributions, the final product intended to include analyses of each of the models studied, our research, and a recommendation as stipulated in the mandate. The recommendation is pre-embryonic, the involvement of others introduces new considerations and possibilities, but the work is enormously gratifying and the possibility of harnessing our energy differently and more effectively, truly exciting.
This blog post is part of our series on leadership and governance.
A friend of mine served for many years as a school trustee. It seemed a thankless job: she fielded phone calls from angry and sometimes desperate parents, sat through endless graduation ceremonies, attended board meetings that dragged on way past midnight, and wrestled year after year with budgets that were stretched too thin. This is, to a large extent, the work that puts the “public” in public school – but not everyone is convinced it’s an important or even functional way to ensure public oversight. New Brunswick overhauled school board governance 15 years ago; Quebec is on the verge of dramatically altering school boards and school board elections (discussed in depth in our French articles); and after the recent implosion of the Toronto District “megaboard,” a National Post feature asked whether our school boards have been amalgamated until they are “too big to succeed.”[1]
For this issue of Education Canada, themed Governance and Leadership, we look at what makes for truly effective governance and also explore emerging trends in educational leadership.
As Kenneth Leithwood and Catherine McCullough point out in their article, school district organizations are largely invisible to the public, except when conflicts like school closures or strikes arise. Yet districts, and their boards, have a significant impact on student well-being and achievement. The authors report on a multi-year study to identify the effective leadership practices that lead to strong districts with positive impacts. Our web-exclusive article, “District Leadership for Democratic Governance” by Jim Brandon, also focuses on the importance of effective districts, and argues that elected trustees who advocate for local needs are a valuable component of educational governance in a “rapidly changing, pluralist, and globalized context.”
Camille Rutherford brings the leadership lens to the school level, exploring how technology and social media have contributed to a democratization of school leadership and encouraged teacher leaders and collaborative leadership to emerge. Cale Birk offers a different perspective on collaborative leadership, encouraging leaders at all levels to borrow from the design sector and make “user experience” a touchstone.
There are many more facets to governance that, space permitting, we would have loved to tackle. We’ve only kicked off the conversation – please continue it with each other, on social media, and with us (by email, Facebook or Twitter).
[1] Joseph Brean, “After years of amalgamation, are Canada’s school boards too big to succeed?” National Post, Dec. 31, 2015
She arrived last week, in the midst of freezing rain, school closures and the last minute preparations that normally precede a busy Easter weekend. I had been waiting for this day since I first met her in January, and the anticipation that had been building was close to being resolved. Or at least that’s what I thought.
It’s Sunday afternoon and we’re less than 24 hours away from getting some carpet replaced upstairs. We’ve been fairly ambitious with the first part of this project, wanting to get as much done as possible in the first round. This has involved some rather ruthless decision-making in terms of what we keep and what we decide to give away.
Ok, if I’m totally honest, one of the main reasons that I’m embarking on this project now is that the very act of having to “touch” practically everything we own is one of the best forms of spring cleaning that I know! (But, you’re sworn to secrecy on that.)
So, I’m sitting here all alone looking at two IKEA bookcases full of books—my books. The family is off working on something else (and they seem to be getting along!) and its just the books and me caught in a type of literary staring contest. The books know that they are survivors from a similar act of purgation that decimated their population about 2 years ago. It had taken a good year and a half after retiring from Dufferin Peel for me to finally accept the fact that many of the books I had been collecting over the course of my teaching career would, at this point, likely be better off in someone else’s hands. At that time, I had dedicated two full days to the act of thinning out my collection, shipping some off to our local used bookstore and others to the brand new school down the street. I had managed to part with two full bookshelves worth of treasures.
But now, I realize that I still have too many books that will likely remain unopened, unappreciated, collecting dust.
I love books. I love buying them. I love owning them. I love reading them. I love the way they look when they’re standing at attention on a bookshelf.
I would say that 80% of my collection is connected in some way with education: books about teaching, learning, schools, design, drama, the Arts, philosophy, sociology, psychology. I have books about technology, about blogging, about coming to the profession, about leaving the profession—and everything in between. There are books about reading, writing, mathematics and science. Books about imagination, creativity and innovation—lots about innovation!
But having made a commitment to move from two bookshelves to just one, I need to make some serious decisions about what I keep and what I give away. And so I’ve started with the desert island question. You know the one: If you were destined to be stuck on a desert island, what are the 5 books that you would want to have with you?
So, looking at my bookshelf, here are the five (OK, six) books that I’ve decided to keep, no matter what. In their own way, they have inspired me and have earned their “place on the case” by also being books to which I have returned several times for guidance and insight:
1. Teacher by Sylvia Ashton-Warner
Published first in 1963, Ashton-Warner was a New Zealand teacher who, in found that the Maori children she was teaching didn’t respond to the British style of education under which she, herself, was trained. The book is a wonderful reflection on how she learned to respond to the children in front of her.
2. Teacher Man by Frank McCourt
I’ve read this one three times! This is McCourt’s memoir about his 30-year career as a teacher in the New York City school system. His passionate attempts to engage his students makes for a memorable story.
3. Teachers and Machines: The Classroom of Technology Since 1920 by Larry Cuban
Ok, I know that this book was published over 30 years ago, but there is something about Cuban’s review of the attempts that we’ve made to move technology into classrooms that still resonates.
4. Pedagogy of the Oppressed by Paulo Freire
I first encountered this book during my faculty of education year in Toronto and it immediately captured my imagination. Opening my eyes to how the very enterprise of education was a source of power in the world, this book has kept me connected with the voices and thinking beyond my own little corner of the world.
5. The Courage to Teach by Parker Palmer
Teaching is as much about the inner life and journey as it is about what other people—our colleagues and our students—see on a daily basis. Palmer provides a way of looking at teaching as something more than designing unit plans and assessment tools. There’s something deeper to all of this, and this book has provided some touchstones along the way.
6. A Life in School—What the Teacher Learned by Jane Tompkins
I first encountered this book during a time in my career when I was trying to connect with what was important to me as a teacher. Immersed in a new wave of technological advance, including the expansion of the internet, Tompkins’ book spoke to me of relationship, challenging assumptions and re-imagining what our teaching lives could be.
There’s a bit of risk in presenting a list like this, isn’t there? I’m sure that if my desert island experience went on too long, I would be craving more choice. And I’m sure that there are others in my electronic collection that will also stand the test of time.
But, several things have become apparent to me during this Sunday afternoon purge. The first is that I will continue to be inspired by the lives and work of those who have dedicated themselves to the pursuit of teaching. Second, stories are important and carry with them the common threads of our work. Third, I still love books and, although most of my purchases are now electronically driven, the physical presence of books will always be important.
Finally, for me a moderately-priced Cabernet Sauvignon is the best companion for this type of endeavour.
In our modern education system we have come to pride ourselves on an ability to build into our environments sophisticated processes and protocols designed to mitigate risk of all types. We see it in the types of activities that are permitted in schools and those that are not. We see it in the way that teaching has developed into a system that values best practices over teacher intuition and ingenuity, pre-identified learning outcomes over serendipitous delight, and a prediliction for data sets and indicators over the look of joy and surprise (or the lack of joy and surprise) in the eyes of our students.
In a sense we have developed a sense that, for education to work, we need to take the guesswork out of the project and take risk out of the equation.
It is against this backdrop of safety and risk management or, better, the complete avoidance of risk, that Gert Biesta introduces the compelling thesis of his recently re-released Beautiful Risk of Education. For Biesta, the core dynamic of the education enterprise is, to be blunt, always (and necessarily) risky:
The risk is not that teachers might fail because they are not sufficently qualified. The risk is not that education might fail because it is not sufficiently based on scientfici evidence. The risk is not that studetsn ight fail because they are not working hard enough or lacking motivation…The risk is there because education is not an interaction between robots but an encoutner between human beings. The risk is there because students are not to be seen as objects to be molded and disciplined, but as subjects of action and responsiblity. —Gert Biesta, The Beautiful Risk of Education
Biesta insists—and this is something that will resonate with those with any degree of proximity classroom life—that the central energy of education exists in that relationship between teacher and student. But it is not a relationship based on a simple “input-output” logic but, instead, on a dialogue between two living, breathing entities. Success in education is not about making the learning process more efficient, more predictable, more reliable—more risk-free. This would be to take the human element out of the equation. In fact, in Biesta’s mind, “there is a real chance that we take out education altogether”.
Instead, the real dynamic of education is grounded in an approach to relationship that would, in my opinion, be considered strange, in not foreign, in today’s risk-free classroom. It requires an attitude of patience, resilience and vulnerability that is not only “not demanded” in today’s education climate, but is actually discouraged.
But Biesta challenges us to think of this as the type of risk that we must take if we are serious about education. It’s risky business because, in many ways, it forces us to empty ourselves of the things that we are used to bringing to the table: tools for management and control, practical knowledge, exquisite approaches to planning, well-established sets of success criteria and a keen eye for efficiency and results.
In doing so we come to the stark, sobering realization that we have nothing but ourselves to offer.
And for many of us, the real risk will be that we may not think that’s enough. But, isn’t that what makes it so beautiful?
I recently entered five words into Google’s Ngram Viewer: weather, love, sex, money and risk. The Ngram is designed to track the relative frequency of words used in Google’s vast text corpus. I pushed the tool to the limit by asking it to plot the “text history” of these words starting in the year 1500. Well, here are the results.
Not surprisingly, the words love and money have tangled with each other for centuries. (I was able to find occurrences of the phrase, “for love nor money” that dated back to the mid 1700’s).
But what I found most interesting in looking at the Ngram results was the slow, but steady rise of the frequency of the word “risk”. If Google is correct, 1966 marked the year that the English-speaking world began talking about risk more than weather. In 1984, the year I began my teaching career, risk began to overtake sex in terms of single-word frequency. (You may be interested to note that a very sharp rise in the use of the phrase “safe sex” began at almost the same time.)
I believe that the world of education has reflected this apparent increase in talking about risk. At the district level, we talk about risk management. At the school level, security cameras, safe schools and “blacktop recesses” have become commonplace. In principal qualification courses, risk aversion often receives more attention than curriculum leadership. And then there is the whole idea of “at-risk” students!
More recently, we have attempted to thread the idea of risk-taking into our 21st century narratives—sort of. How many times have we heard speakers or authors insist, “We need to make it safe for our students (and educators) to take risks.”
I think that it’s time to unpack the idea of risk, especially as it relates to school, to learning and to the broader idea of education. And that’s precisely what I would like to attempt to do over the next few weeks. I don’t pretend to have all of the intellectual tools to untangle all of the ideas and issues that have become wrapped up in our thinking about risk, but here are a few questions that might serve to get things started:
How do you define/describe risk? What is the role of risk in the learning process? How might we balance the responsibility to protect our children with the desire to let them go? Can the two ideas live side-by-side? Have we become too risk-averse in education?
I would love to get your opening thoughts on some of these questions. I would also appreciate hearing what other questions emerge for you when you think of risk. What other ideas, tensions and opportunities are lurking under the surface? What are you reading, watching or hearing that might enrich and enliven the discussion.
Let’s talk about risk—some more!
In his new book, Creative Schools: The Grassroots Revolution That’s Transforming Education, Ken Robinson calls for a changing of the guards in terms of the metaphors that we use to think about our work in education. In particular, he wonders how our approach to schools and systems of education might be transformed if, instead of the familiar industrial/mechanistic metaphor that currently grounds education design, we begin to think in terms of natural ecosystems.
Well, this got me thinking a little more deeply about the natural world that we inhabit and what other insight and inspiration might emerge if we look at little more closely. From a biological perspective, you can’t look much closer than the fascinating world of single cell organisms.
And that’s where I found my mind going this week. In particular, I couldn’t stop thinking about—you guessed it—AMOEBAE and PARAMECIA. I forced myself to move beyond some of the struggles I had with high school science class and landed on the differences between the way the amoeba and the paramecium get from one place to another. Here are couple of video clips that may remind you:
Notice how the paramecium moves from Point A to Point B as a single unit, propelled along by the coordinated movement of hundreds of tiny cilia. It appears to be very deliberate and intentional, doesn’t it? Our friend the amoeba, on the other hand, navigates its world by sending out part of its cytoplasm into the desired direction. The rest of the body then eventually flows into the pioneering pseudopods, gradually establishing a new location. Notice that there are multiple pseudopods being formed at any given time!/p>
I’m thinking that, as a metaphor, the amoeba may hold some promise for our conversations about change in education.
Now, I have nothing against the paramecium. In fact, its controlled and predictable movements will be attractive to many. But, in terms of a possible new metaphor for innovation and change, I think I will spend a little more time thinking about the amoeba!
There are some who like to talk about system change that is planned, coordinated and very deliberate. It’s change where the entire system is on the move, in the same direction. It’s sometimes risky for creative thinkers to consider sticking their neck out to move off in a different direction.
But what might happen if we used an amoeba metaphor to help frame our approaches to change as well as the way that we support imagination, creativity AND innovation?
And just to get you thinking about it a little more, I’ll leave with you with one of my favourite Christine Lavin tunes, illustrated here by young students from the Park School in Brookline,Massachusetts:
I have developed a practice in my own life that, as it turns out, is good for both my body and my mind. I head off to the gym each morning at about 5:00 with a bottle of water, my iPhone and two or three TEDTalks loaded into my playlist. I’ve tried the music thing but it just doesn’t keep me going in the same way that fresh, provocative ideas do. TEDTalks are perfectly keyed to my workout routine—a twenty minute session on the weight machines, followed by twenty minutes on the treadmill. And none of this “every-other-day” thing for me. Unless I make my journey to the gym a daily routine, I find excuses! That means I listen to quite a few Talks over the course of a year!
This morning, I listened to two inspiring pieces. The first was by singer/songwriter, Meklit Hadero who encouraged us to be attentive to the music around us: in nature, language and even in silence. But it was the talk by NPR Host, Celeste Headlee that had me thinking well beyond my 20 minutes on the treadmill. In 10 Ways To Have A Better Conversation, Ms. Headlee reminds us of that, while many of us are great talkers and some of us are great speakers, not many of us are great conversationalists. She points out that, when properly combined, the elements of honesty, brevity, clarity—and a generous scoop of listening will invariably result in good conversation.
Living in a connected world does not automatically mean that the quality of communication has gone up. Some would argue that it has actually gone down or, at least, flatlined. Sure, Twitter might force us into brevity and clarity. Blog writing may encourage a certain level of honesty and a culture of “listening in” to what others are thinking, but it’s the combination of Headlee’s elements in a personal and personalized context that makes for good conversation. As a seasoned NPR broadcaster, Celeste Headlee has interviewed a whole lot of people and she uses what she has learned to give us some sobering insights into conversational practices in our 21st century world.
In my own household, mornings are usually a hectic time. As I prepare breakfast for the family, Zoe gets lunches ready. We’re often working in the same space and, although we share words with each other, we have rarely engaged in conversation that has really connected us. In fact, we normally begin our days rather disconnected—never a great way to begin the day!
This morning, however, was different. I made a point of sitting down with Zoe and, applying some of what I learned from Celeste, attempted to engage in conversation. But it wasn’t until Zoe was heading out the door for the day, that I realized the power of the experience—for both of us. I felt a little more connected and I knew that she did as well. Her last words to me: “By the way, thanks for the conversation!”
I can’t help but wonder about how some of this might apply to our work as people dedicated to nurturing the health and well-being of our young people. You know, Communication appears as one of the “C’s” in whatever list of 21st Century Competencies you encounter. Most often, however, the focus is on the “push” of communication—getting your message out there in a coherent, compelling way. Rarely do we hear about Conversation as a type of “push-pull” process. So, in listening to Celeste Headlee’s TEDTalk I’m left with some questions of possibility:
What might happen if we spent time in our schools exploring the art of the conversation? What might happen to our online conversations—many of which can become polarized very quickly—if we tried to apply Ms. Headlee’s 10 principles for good conversation? How might our family lives be enhanced and enlivened if quality conversation became something around which we gathered? What would it look like if conversation found its way into our approaches to assessment?
I realize that some of you are likely already playing with some of these ideas. I would love to hear about what you are doing! I would also like to hear what ideas others have for engaging in the powerful conversations that could result in our spouses, our colleagues and our children declaring at the end of the day, “Thanks for the conversation!”
Consider the following two data sets. The first table is a listing of the final marks for Marta, a Grade 10 student at a public secondary school in Ontario. The second shows final marks for Shekar, a classmate of Marta’s at the same school.
Marta J:
Math: 52%
English 69%
Science 65%
History 72%
Phys-Ed 74%
Visual Arts 88%
Music 92%
Comm Tech 85%
A quality is jagged if it meets two criteria. First, it must consist of multiple dimensions. Second, these dimensions must be weakly related to one another.
A few weeks ago I was preparing to speak with a group of teachers about the importance of “report cards” as I was growing up and, specifically, how what the education system said about me had a tremendous impact on the identity that I developed as I moved through my schooling. As I was going through that manila envelope of chronologically-ordered reports and transcripts that my mother had handed me when I left home as a young adult (and one that I happen to come across at the most interesting times), I noticed something intriguing. At the bottom of each of my high school reports was a section of long division in my mom’s own script—her ongoing attempt to determine and track my overall term average.
In fact, there were two questions that framed the lenses through which mom interpreted the very sparse data presented to her each term during my high school years: “How did my subject marks compare to the class median presented on the report?” and “What was my personal term average?”
The first of these questions helped my parents make sense of my progress when compared to other kids in the class. The second question helped them understand my chances of getting into a quality university program. And this was a very well-accepted way making sense of the information. I know this because talk of averages made their way into family conversations, annual Christmas newsletters and many conversations about career aspirations.
In his recently-released book, The End of Average: The Science of What Makes Us Different, L. Todd Rose takes on our culture’s love affair with the idea of the average, exposing its historical roots, its shift in meaning over time and, most important, how it sucessfully masks discovery of individual uniqueness, talent and potential:
The central premise of this book is deceptively simple: No one is average. Not you. Not your kids, Not your coworkers, or your students, or your spouse. This isn’t empty encouragement or hollow sloganeering. This is a scientific fact with enormous practical consequences that you cannot afford to ignore…
Historically, Rose points out, the Average Man (and later, Norma, The Average Woman) was a type of aggregated ideal—a model of perfection that, as it turns out, described absolutely NOBODY. It wasn’t until later on that average came to mean something less ideal—something rather “bleh” and mediocre. Today, in terms of educational attainment, not many of us would settle for average!
As we move forward in our discussion about 21st century schools, there is increased talk about creating learning environments that allow for more personalization and individualized learning. But, as Rose suggests, all of this talk will mean nothing unless we are prepared to deal with the reality that we are still very much steeped in our love affair with the idea of average. We see it in the way we continue to rank and sort students, schools, districts and, indeed, entire nations. It is a strong narrative that runs through most of our institutions of opportunity. And until we take time to challenge that narrative head-on, we’re not going to be able to make any real progress in building schools that are actually attuned to the individuals that walk in and out of them each day: students, educators, administrators, and parents.
Through his new book and his Centre for Individual Opportunity, L. Todd Rose has attempted to develop a strong counter-narrative that may just begin to push up against the fundamental beliefs and assumptions we have about the way many of our institutions are constituted and, more important, how people learn to see themselves through those institutions.
Over the next few weeks, I would like to explore the three principles that Rose presents to help us develop a stronger capacity for developing institutional capacity for valuing, recognizing and nurturing individuality. For now, however, I would invite you to think about the places in your own personal and professional life where an average mindset are strong and what it might take to develop a different sort of perspective.
In what areas of your life do you find average thinking strongest? In what contexts might this way of thinking be particularly helpful? What dimensions of our lives are being masked by our tendency to want to compare ourselves with the average? Where do you recognize the myth of the average at its strongest in your school system?
For many of us, an important part of the story of who we are are and who we could become was created by the education system. In The End of Average, L. Todd Rose makes a good case for recognizing how our obsession with the idea of average might help to develop systems and institutions that expand and deepen that story—for us, for our children and for our communities.
I think that we need to pay attention.
Next…The Jaggedness Principle
There’s a golden opportunity lurking deep below the surface of one of the most challenging issues facing school systems right across the country. But while more and more districts are grappling with the increased interest in and high uptake of French Immersion (FI) programs—some opening their doors to students as early as Kindergarten, the opportunity to take a deeper dive into questions of mission and vision may be missed along the way.
In a sense, this is understandable. After all, the popularity of FI among Canadian parents continues to be on the uptick, bringing with it closely-connected challenges around staffing, transportation, student support and the viability of English programming in some communities. These are very visible issues and can quickly become hot buttons for district and school administrators, trustees and parents. Solutions don’t come easy and consensus is often very difficult to reach.
But there is a sense in which these immediate concerns might take us away from the opportunity to tackle some more fundamental questions that, despite their currency in the professional literature and the blogosphere, likely aren’t regular items on many school board, staff meeting or parent council agendae. So what might those questions be and how are they connected with conversations about French Immersion programs?
Well, first, I’m going to go out on a bit of limb and suggest that, choosing a French Immersion program may not always be about French, per se. When you think about it, the option to choose a French or English stream for our children may be the only choice that most parents actually get in a publicly-funded system! In most Canadian contexts, school assignment is largely a function of geographical location and we know that geographical location is largely a function of socio-economic status. But, whether offered in the neighbourhood school or whether enrolment will require moving schools, the option to say “yes” or “no” to FI is one of the only choices that parents of younger children currently have. For many, that is significant.
So, if we travel just a little below the surface, we encounter this rather sticky question about choice in public education and its a question that has implications for individual families, neighbourhood schools and entire systems.
But it isn’t the only issue that we meet on our deep dive. In fact, adjacent to the question about choice is another about equity, especially in terms of access and support. There was a time when French Immersion programs was perceived to be a more rigorous option—one that might preclude some students from entry. These days, however, many districts make it abundantly clear that all students are welcome to apply. Fine to say, but what pressures and concomitant effects does this place on the system in terms of being able to support all who choose the program? And what commitment is there to the success of all who enrol in an FI program? These are important questions arising soon after you wade into the choice discussion. It’s also a question that touches down at the personal, local school and system levels.
A third area of conversation is probably best understood not as a question, but as more of a tension—a fundamental tension. And even though it has likely always existed, it’s a tension that, I believe, is becoming more pronounced as we move further into our re-visioning work in public education. It’s a tension that pulls between two polarities: the success of MY child and the success of ALL children. Refreshed narratives around personalization, the development of individual potential and the desire to have our children maintain a competitive edge appear, in some ways, to be diametrically opposed to a vision of systems that are committed to social justice, equity and the success of all. Again, its a conversation that invites consideration by individual families, school communities and entire districts.
While the French Immersion context is not the only one that could lead us into a consideration of these more fundamental questions and challenges. But it seems to be a context that has currency and import for many Canadian districts. So, what might happen if, alongside our deliberations about the practicalities and logistics connected with offering sustainable FI programs in our school districts, we also took the time to develop the space to engage in these deeper, admittedly philosophical, questions about purpose, choice and access. What might be the result if some of these questions found their way onto the agenda at local school board meetings, parent gatherings and provincial roundtables?
My sense is that the result will be a different understanding of the importance of programs like French Immersion (and other forms of language instruction). Beyond that, however, (and, I would argue, more important) it will also open up some important dialogue about the meaning of public education in the 21st century. How can we develop viable and vibrants systems that are comfortable offering valuable choices like French Immersion, but still have a commitment to the broader social values of public education?
There’s an interesting juxtaposition in the latest issue of Education Canada. Flanking Roland Case’s helpful reflections on the debate between a “back to the basics” stance and an “inquiry model” of curriculum design are two articles presenting two different perspectives on the Challenge to Change within Canada’s education systems.
On the one hand, Simon Breakspear argues that educators need to be afforded the creative space to develop the type of responsive curriculum that is meaningful for them AND their students in their particular context. It is an attractive vision that calls for a shift in the way teachers on the ground see themselves and the work that they do:
To enable systemic innovation, we must support educators in adopting new identities as learning designers. Innovative change can only come from frontline educators forming insights, learning, and experimenting with new ideas and methodologies – in partnership with their students. Leading innovative change in schools is thus not a question of finding the right idea to implement, but rather harnessing the creative talent of educators and students(emphasis added)
On the other hand, Michael Fullan calls for a concentrated effort to strengthen “the middle” by building the capacity of districts and networks of schools to respond to the demands and challenges facing the modern school system:
Leadership from the Middle can be briefly defined as: a deliberate strategy that increases the capacity and internal coherence of the middle as it becomes a more effective partner upward to the state and downward to its schools and communities, in pursuit of greater system performance. The goal of LftM is to develop greater overall system coherence by strengthening the focus of the middle in relation to system goals and local needs.
As someone who has worked at a variety of different levels within a large district in Ontario, I have to admit a sense of affinity for both perspectives. As a classroom teacher, I found myself working (sometimes struggling) to assert my own creative individuality in order to make a difference for my students and, admittedly, myself. There was something very exhilarating about introducing a new idea or approach to my practice. The ability to “think different” became part of my identity as a teacher.
On the other hand, in those periods where I was called to work from a broader systems perspective, I began to understand the need for a sense of coherence—a type of sticking together—when it came to vision, practice and even resources.
On their own, the Breakspear and Fullan articles seem to present opposing responses to the challenge of how to build systems that have the most impact for the greatest number of students. While it may be tempting to simply choose a side, framing their perspectives in an oppositional way masks some of the important dynamics that are at play both inside and outside of the 21st century school system. At the same time, it’s way too easy (and not very helpful) to say, “well, they’re both right”, without opening up the floor to a conversation around the ways in which both perspectives can inform our efforts moving forward.
In both cases, there is a danger that we’ll continue to reach for clean, well-defined solutions to very messy, complex challenges. Instead, I think that we need to read between the lines and discover what is not that well-defined and what is not being made explicit. So, I would encourage you to take a look at both articles. Read them on your own. Read them with your colleagues. Read them in the context of the work that you are currently doing Read them from the perspective of someone who plays a different role in the system: a teacher, an administrator, a parent.
Some of the questions that are emerging for me:
What are the assumptions that the writers bring to their perspective? How do they connect with the assumptions and beliefs that you have about purpose and approach?
What has been left unsaid or uncontested in the articles? How can what has been sidelined in the conversation help us to move deeper into the conversation?
How can we imagine and build systems that honour the need for individuality and the desire for coherence?
I’m off to pour myself another cup of coffee and take another look. I’ll meet you back here!
I’m not sure if Steven Johnson loves coffee as much as I do, but he certainly has a great deal of appreciation for the coffee house! In his 2015 TEDTalk, Where Good Ideas Come From, Johnson points out that, in addition to the coffee being consumed:
I found myself beginning this New Year with what seemed to be two conflicting ideas running through my head—one inspired by our family’s New Year’s Eve trip to a production of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Cinderella and the other by a re-reading of Steven Johnson’s Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of Innovation.
The rags-to-royalty trope that grounds the Cinderella story, among other things, dares us to dream big and hold true to a belief in the power of possibility. No matter how large the leap, our imaginations can be the driving force behind significant change in our lives and our world.
As educators we are inspired by “big leap” stories where the lives of individual students, whole classes or entire schools were turned around by innovations in practice, changes in mindset or the adoption of a new set of strategies. They are great stories and we certainly don’t want to make light of them or underestimate their importance in the broader education narrative.
But, as Steven Johnson suggests, the ideas that really take root and end up transforming our lives, our institutions and, indeed, our cultures—in other words, the innovation that sticks—tend to follow a different path.
Borrowing from the work of evolutionary biologists Stephen Jay Gould and Stuart Kaufmann, Johnson encourages innovators to look at the adjacent possible—the set of new combinations and reactions that present themselves at the edges of our current reality:
“The adjacent possible is a kind of shadow future, hovering on the edges of the present state of things, a map of all the ways in which the present can reinvent itself”(p. 31).
Exploration of the adjacent possible invites us to look around our present reality with new eyes and, instead of dreaming miles into the future, understand that our next innovative idea is actually closer than we think. In fact, we’re likely standing right next to it! It encourages us to understand where the boundaries of our current reality are, and what possibilities for change might exist at the edges of those boundaries.
It also invites us to look at how the resources that are currently at our disposal might help us to support the creation of new ideas and practices. Instead of lamenting the fact that we don’t have what we need to achieve our big innovative dreams, we learn to ask how we might use what we have in different ways.
In a sense, an awareness of the adjacent possible can help us turn our dreams about someday into practical conversations about Monday. But, it doesn’t stop at Monday: moving into our adjacent possible means that existing boundaries are shifted and, as a result, we are faced with a brand new adjacent!
So, in looking around your own education context, what are some of the ideas that might take flight if you were to look at your particular adjacent possibilities?
A few ideas have been percolating in my own mind over the past several days. Each is inspired by conversations that I’m currently having with educators:
These are some practical ways that I’ve started to look around my own particular context and start to become more open to the idea of the adjacent possible—one of the seven patterns for innovation identified by Steven Johnson in Where Good Ideas Come From.
I’m not suggesting that we wipe the Cinderella story from our larger narrative. It’s important to dream big and be wide open to a sense that anything is possible. But tempering that story with an eye to the idea of the adjacent possible may just allow more of us to work towards the innovations about which we are dreaming in a way that is grounded in our current reality—whatever that happens to be.
What are your dreams for innovation in 2016 and how might the concept of the adjacent possible encourage you to work towards making those dreams come to life?
How fitting that I should have read Thomas King’s examination of creation stories “You’ll Never Believe What Happened” on the first day of 2016. How delicious that as I read it sunlight blanketed my shoulders and back.
The ideas of appreciative inquiry (appreciative mindset, growth mindset and the like) are all born from the stories we wrap around ourselves. Is it a world of chaos or a world of balance? Why do we, as King puts it, tell our kids that life is hard when “we could just as easily tell them that it is sweet”? (26).
I imagine I am an optimistic person – I think I couldn’t do the work I do with any other mindset. However, I just have to close my eyes to hear myself telling my daughters that life isn’t fair or to toughen up. I think I even said that today as we walked along the Fraser admiring the bald eagles and my girls got into a disruptive argument about something only a 2 and 5 year old could.
When we hear educators in any role talking about a class from a deficit perspective, when we hear ourselves do this, we need to stop and ask ourselves, “to what purpose?” Our own desire for simplicity? The bottom line often comes down to convenience and over-simplification, doesn’t it.
However, education and educating riddle with complexity. It’s so easy to refer to a class as being a “behavior class” or to that student as being a “behavior problem”. I wonder at the cost of this labeling – labeling which so clearly comes from a hierarchical and deficit stance. Obviously, the children about whom we speak lose something – surely we who speak that way lose something as well.
What I find about appreciative mindset/inquiry is that it is so energizing. And it takes time. Opening a meeting or class with an appreciative circle protocol, for instance, takes time; yet that time, in my experience, moves us into the meeting/learning with more strength, creativity, and possibilities than we would have otherwise experienced. We make up that time in effectiveness.
So perhaps we must resist simplicity and take a breath for a minute or two to set the context of our “behavior” class by telling what we appreciate about the class as well as what challenges us. Resisting simplicity in this way can open possibilities and therefore solutions we might otherwise miss. Rather than steeping in frustration or exhaustion about the “behavior” class, we might generate the energy to rumble with the challenge as we move forward.
Easier said than done? Maybe. But once you say something, you can’t call it back. So what we say might as well move us forward rather than boil things down to a staunch simplicity that simply doesn’t exist.
I was invited to submit a blog response to this question based on the recognition of Simcoe County’s Fieldcrest Elementary School as one of the 2014 Ken Spencer award winners. We were recognized for our success in supporting student engagement, learning and achievement in mathematics using the Balanced Mathematics framework developed by SCDSB teacher Lee Sparling.
Balanced Math has contributed to the designation of Fieldcrest Elementary School as one of 11 “Promising Practices” schools in Ontario based on a consistent five-year growth in EQAO Mathematics scores. Its components include math journals, shared and independent problem-solving, guided math, math facts and math games. This framework promotes consolidation of learning through the spiraling of concepts throughout the year and a blend of conceptual understanding and procedural fluency.5 6 It also encourages a Math Talk Learning Community through problem solving and math journals.
So what are the best ways to teach math? The best part about the question is the recognition that there are many ways to do so. In Simcoe County, we embrace the idea that teacher mathematics content knowledge, a blend of conceptual understanding and procedural fluency, and assessment-informed instruction are essential. 1 However, educators are encouraged to differentiate the instructional strategies used in order to be responsive to the needs of the learners in their classrooms. Furthermore, our Board Learning Plan (BLPSA) emphasizes the importance of making authentic connections between mathematics and other subject areas, such as the arts, science and social studies. 2 To support these beliefs, educators have voice and choice in their professional learning, which includes a variety of collaborative inquiries:
The foundation for mathematics education in Simcoe County is based on three overarching goals detailed in our Math Action Plan: Inspire Positive Math Mindsets, Deepen our Focus, and Customize Support for each Student/School. First and foremost, we recognize that student, educator and parent mindsets about learning and mathematics have a significant impact on achievement.3. To support Positive Math Mindsets, we have collaborated with PERTS Lab at Stanford University to bring mindset learning to students and educators.4 To Deepen our Focus we are embedding Paying Attention to Mathematics Education monographs, assessment and the use of digital tools into our inquiries. Customizing Support for each Student/School is accomplished through responsive professional learning opportunities based on School Learning Plans (SLPSA-WB) and individual teacher and student needs that arise through assessment.
Balanced Mathematics is one example of an instructional framework from which we have experienced measured success. Of 232 Junior/Intermediate students surveyed, 73%reported that they “definitely” or “most times” feel more confident about problem solving, and 69% reported that they are better at communicating their math thinking.
In No More Math Wars, Ansari suggests that effective mathematics education includes a combination of procedural and conceptual understanding: “all of the literature clearly suggests that both instructional approaches are tightly related to one another and are mutual determinants of successful math learning over time.” Often mistakenly viewed as “discovery learning”, the Ontario Mathematics Curriculum is actually a blend of both. 7 The Balanced Mathematics framework honours this blend through a combination of problem-solving and math facts and games.
In Simcoe County, it has been our experience that instruction which includes a rich combination of problem-solving opportunities that challenge student thinking, delivered through a range of responsive practices, results in the greatest learning and achievement for our students.
[1] “Wintertickle PRESS – Balanced Mathematics – ClicShop.” 2012. 17 Oct. 2015 <http://www.teacheasy.net/c378000384_en/index.html>
[1] “Download Presentation – Association of Educational …” 2014. 17 Oct. 2015 <http://www.aero-aoce.org/uploads/6/6/0/0/6600183/aero_presentation_2013_suurtamm.pdf>
[1] “16903 LNS Effective Math Posters-SoftProof (R).” 2015. 17 Oct. 2015 <http://www.edugains.ca/mathposter.pdf>
[2] “SCDSB – Math Action Plan.” 2014. 17 Oct. 2015 <https://www.scdsb.on.ca/Programs/Assessment-and-Curriculum/Pages/Math-Action-Plan.aspx>
[3] “The Power of belief — mindset and success … – YouTube.” 2012. 17 Oct. 2015 <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pN34FNbOKXc>
[4] “PERTS: Raising Academic Achievement.” 2012. 17 Oct. 2015 <https://www.perts.net/>
[5] “Paying Attention to Math – EduGAINS.” 2014. 17 Oct. 2015 <http://www.edugains.ca/newsite/math/payingattentiontomath.html>
[6] “Math in Motion Issue #14 – EduGAINS.” 2015. 17 Oct. 2015 <http://www.edugains.ca/resources/SystemLeader/MathInMotion/MathinMotion_Issue12_October2015.pdf>
[7] “No More Math Wars | Canadian Education Association (CEA).” 2015. 17 Oct. 2015 <http://www.cea-ace.ca/education-canada/article/no-more-math-wars>
[8] “Math Talk Learning Community Research … – EduGAINS.” 2010. 17 Oct. 2015 <http://www.edugains.ca/resources/LeadingChange/KeyDirectionsandFrameworks/MathTalkLearningCommunityResearchSynopsis.pdf>
[9] “Download Presentation – Association of Educational …” 2014. 17 Oct. 2015 <http://www.aero-aoce.org/uploads/6/6/0/0/6600183/aero_presentation_2013_suurtamm.pdf>