21st Century Classrooms: Moving Education Forward

... and in relation to my last post, there's this:

 

Blueprint for Moving to 21st Century Student-Centered Schools and Classrooms

“Too many organizations---not just companies, but governments and nonprofits as well---still operate from assumptions about human potential and individual performance that are outdated, unexamined, and rooted more in folklore than in science.” Daniel Pink, Drive: The Surprising Truth about What Motivates Us

It’s not just businesses that are still caught in outdated assumptions about performance and motivation. Schools are caught in that same time warp too. Much of how our classrooms and schools are structured and operate are designed to take advantage of extrinsic motivation, and we are finding that in the 21st century, this structure and way of operating no longer works.

But the question is, how can we transform our schools so that they no longer operate under these outdated assumptions about student potential, student performance, and student motivation? If one were to make a list of how our schools still operate and what these faulty and obsolete assumptions about education and schooling are, that list would look somewhat like this.

• Students are motivated by grades.
• Students are incapable of directing their own learning.
• Classrooms (and schools) must operate under strict control with specific rules and consequences governing student behavior.
• Teachers are the primary dispensers of learning in the classroom.
• Education is something “done to students” rather than something in which they engage.

If these basic assumptions about classroom operations and education are faulty, what would would 21st century assumptions about how classrooms and school operations look like? In other words, what would a classroom or school operating under the principles described in Daniel Pink’s book, Drive: The Surprising Truth about What Motivates Us look like? Perhaps educator Mark Barnes provides with some answers to that question in his new book ROLE Reversal: Achieving Uncommonly Excellent Results in the Student-Centered Classroom.

In ROLE Reversal, Barnes describes what he terms a Results Only Learning Environment or ROLE. As the name implies, in a ROLE the focus is entirely on results, or student work. Also, in this environment, the principles of fostering intrinsic motivation described by Pink are implemented fully. According to Barnes, a ROLE basically upends many of the traditional assumptions about education and learning. Here’s some of ways these traditional assumptions are upended.

In a ROLE, or Results Only Learning Environment:

• Grades and grading systems are replaced with a “narrative feedback system” that focuses specifically on student work and improving that work. In Barnes’ result-only classroom, teachers do not use numerical grades to provide feedback because numerical feedback systems fail to provide feedback students need to improve their performance. Instead, students are given extensive, comprehensive, and ongoing narrative feedback on their work. This feedback is specific and can be used by the student for work improvement. In ROLE Reversal, Barnes shows teachers how to provide this kind of feedback.
• Instead of teacher-directed learning activities, students are given broad, long-term projects to complete, and they make the daily decisions on how to complete those projects. The intrinsic motivation model described by Pink demands that autonomy be employed to engage people in the tasks at hand. Under Barnes’ results-only classroom model, students engage in six-week long projects that provide a great deal of choice, or autonomy, on how and what is learned and when. Autonomy is a built-in component of his results-only classroom practice.
• Classroom rules and consequences are jettisoned and the use of opportunities to engage in meaningful work, collaborating with peers, and trust/respect are used instead to manage classroom behavior. Too often, classrooms become more about focusing on the enforcement of rules rather than the learning students are being asked to do. In Barnes’ results-only classroom, behavior is managed through well-designed, engaging, and collaborative learning projects that leave students little time to engage in problem behaviors. Also, the results-only classroom described by Barnes fosters a high-level of respect and trust that makes having rules and consequences less necessary.
• Teachers are no longer the “dispensers of information/learning.” According to Barnes, in a ROLE, teachers become coaches and facilitators of student learning. In the results-only classroom, teachers step away from the front of the classroom and spend more time facilitating student learning and coaching students on their work. Teacher-centered activities like worksheets, quizzes, and homework are jettisoned. Instead, students engage in long-term, meaningful activities that challenge them.
• Education and learning moves from being something done to students to something in which students actively engage in on a daily basis. The 20th century traditional model of education is very much still with us. The heart of that educational philosophy and model sees education as a process by which we subject students to, in order to add value determined by test scores. Under Barnes’ result-only model, education and learning is something students actively engage in every day. They are active participants in their learning.

Mark Barnes, Role Reversal

For the teacher and school leader looking for a model of learning that truly captures Daniel Pink’s principles of intrinsic motivation---autonomy, mastery, and purpose---Barnes’ book ROLE Reversal: Achieving Uncommonly Excellent Results in the Student-Centered Classroom offers just such a model. Best of all, Barnes results-only classroom offers the kind of classroom in which students achieve at higher levels. I highly recommend Mark Barnes’new book, ROLE Reversal: Achieving Uncommonly Excellent Results in the Student-Centered Classroom published by ASCD. This book would make an excellent book study to foster discussions in schools about how we can move toward the student-centered schools and classrooms we so desperately need in the 21st century.

Letting Youth Lead in Ontario

In her first jobs roundtable discussion with members of Ontario's Jobs and Prosperity Council, business leaders and young entrepreneurs, Premier Wynne reiterated her commitment to create jobs and build a stronger economy and a fair society by ensuring our young people have the tools and confidence they need to succeed.

 

 

Good lord, but Premier Kathleen Wynne is off to an exciting start! 

There are established, successful business leaders out there in search of new ideas.  Social entrepreneurs, many of them young and without track records or well-positioned contacts, are cranking out innovative, value-add solutions to our modern problems.  The thing that's been missing is some way to connect these folk and give them the comfort they need to take a risk and trust each other enough to collaborate.

 

What we need is a stone in the soup, a leader who can serve as a conduit of opportunity for all these groups.

 

With a background in both education and mediation, Wynne's got what it takes to be the rock for an innovative Ontario.  She's proving as much right now, walking the walk and leading by example.

 

Something else, too - by empowering the private sector with opportunity to access new marketplaces for ideas, Wynne is building business sector confidence in her leadership.  By proactively creating opportunity for youth to develop the tools and contacts they need to succeed, she's demonstrating a deep understanding of what teachers do - helping to give them faith that she can be an ally, not an opponent.  This doesn't mean higher salaries or increased benefits, but ensuring that our education sector, too, has the tools needed to succeed.

 

Poor leaders divide and conquer to protect their own position.  Exceptional leaders invert the pyramid and see themselves as servants of the people - making leadership a form of public service, as it were.  When the goal is collaborative accomplishment rather than personal wins, everybody moves forward.

 

Call me biased, I'm incredibly hopeful about where Wynne will take us - we now have not just the leadership we want, but the leadership we deserve.

 

 

 

Kool, Topp & Guy Public Affairs: Teaching Clients to Fish?

The three partners won’t act as lobbyists themselves – making them part of an increasing number of firms that offer strategic advice on whom to talk to and what to say rather than approaching government decision-makers for their clients.

Smart people of different opinions pooling their resources and perspectives together, collectively providing advice to clients on how to fish for partners and support?

This is notable.  And quite possibly encouraging.  We'll see where this trend leads next...

FURTHER: As this piece is suddenly quite popular, here's where I think we're going wrong with selling public services in a quasi-capitalist model and an idea or two, conversation starters really, on how to capitalize on expanded knowledge of how people behave and new technology to nurture a more empowered, sustainable system.  A healthy society, as it were.


UPDATED:  This piece seems to be getting a lot of attention of late, which I will take as a positive thing.  So, for those interested in learning more about the "teach to fish" model of doing business, be sure to check out Swerhun Facilitation as well.  They make more than enough money doing what they do (amazing facilitation) to allow for them to dedicate staff time to their core objective of putting themselves out of business.

Yup, you read that right.  The Swerhun folk (special props to Bianca and Yulia) want everyone - politicians, community groups, residents - to have the capacity to facilitate as well as they do.

They know it won't happen in their lifetime and even if it did, they're smart enough to find something else to get paid doing.

Empowering others - is there a future business model in this?  Flies in the face of traditional capitalism, so we'll see.  I remain hopeful.

If You Are a Leader, Teacher, Manager or Parent, You'll Probably Enjoy This:

The best way to lead, always, is by example.

Train a Parent, Spare a Child

Hulton Archive/Getty Images

By BRUCE FEILER

Published: January 13, 2013

SOMEONE asked me recently what my New Year's resolution was as a parent. Without thinking, I said, "more creative bribing."

 

I find the issue of bribing children - or to be more precise, the giving of blunt, uncreative rewards for desired behavior ("If you just stop kicking that seat in front of you on the plane, I'll give you 10 minutes of iPad time"; "Clean your room this weekend, I'll give you 10 bucks"; "If you use good manners at Grandma's house, I'll let you have an extra brownie") - to be one of the more nagging challenges of being a parent.

 

On one hand, I've read a small library of articles that have laid out with undeniable persuasiveness evidence that giving children tangible rewards - from money to sweets to an extra hour before bedtime - not only doesn't work in the long term, it actually has a negative effect on them. As early as the 1960s, Edward Deci, then a psychology graduate student at Carnegie Mellon, showed that when external rewards are given, subjects "lose intrinsic interest for the activity." More recently, Daniel Pink, in his best-selling book "Drive," reviewed four decades of research and concluded that offering short-term incentives to elicit behavior is unreliable, ineffective and causes "considerable long-term damage." (The main downside: People perform the task merely to get the reward; when the reward is removed, they stop doing it.)

 

So I got it: bribing is bad. And yet I, my wife and nearly every other parent I know resorts to this tactic with appalling regularity. As one father said to me recently when we were discussing our approaches to parenthood: "My philosophy is simple: threats and bribes."

 

So what's a beleaguered parent to do? I reached out to some of the harshest critics of bribing for tips on making my resolution come true.

 

THE TALKING CURE Dr. Deci, now a professor of psychology at the University of Rochester, said the biggest problem with tangible rewards is that they actually work, at least in the short run. "If you want somebody to do something, and if you have enough money, you can get them do it," he said. "Practically anyone, practically anything."

 

But with children, he pointed out, since you are trying to get them to do the behavior "more or less ongoingly for the rest of their lives," the technique will backfire unless you're prepared to offer the same reward every time. "You don't want them coming to you when they're grown," he said.

 

Dr. Deci recommends a three-step alternative. First, be clear about why what you're asking them do is important. Second, be interested in their point of view. "If it's something they hate doing, acknowledge that, tell them you understand it's not fun, yet the reason they need to do it is as follows," he said. Finally, communicate in a way that's not controlling. "Don't use words like 'should,' 'must' and 'have to,' " he said. "All of those things that convey to them you're a big person trying to push around a little person."

 

MAKE IT A GAME Alan Kazdin, the director of the Yale Parenting Center, said the problem with incentives is they focus too much attention on the desired result instead of the behavior that leads up to the result. "You can't throw rewards at behaviors that don't exist and get them," he said. "If someone says I will match your retirement fund if your perform a flamenco dance right now, my reaction is, 'Great, but it turns out I can't do that.' You have to develop the behavior very, very gradually."

 

For example, if you want your children to eat more vegetables, he said, instead offering them $10 to do so (a technique I once stooped to, I confess), he suggested turning the process into a game. First, take the pressure off by telling them they don't have to eat vegetables now but just keep them on their plate. "You tell them they're probably going to want to eat vegetables when they're older, because there's a nice little challenge in there," he said.

 

Then you offer a point to whomever can put the least amount of vegetables on their fork. The next day you have a competition for who can touch the fork to their tongue and you escalate from there. "The research is very clear," he said. "Choice is related to getting compliance in any behavior, but psychologists distinguish between real choice and the illusion of choice. Real choice doesn't make a difference; it's the feeling of choice."

 

SWITCH FROM IF-THEN REWARDS TO NOW-THAT Mr. Pink said the problem with bribing is not the rewards; it's the contingency, which is a form of control. "Human beings have only two reactions to control," he said. "They comply or they defy. I don't think most parents want compliant children, and I don't think they want defiant children. They want children who are active, engaged and motivated by deeper things."

 

He recommends replacing what he calls if-then rewards with now-that rewards, meaning the prize is giving spontaneously and after the fact. "Let's say your kid's room is a complete, utter mess, and you say, 'Fred, you really need to clean your room, or you're not going to be able to find anything,' " Mr. Pink said. "And maybe Fred does clean his room and really works hard at it. There's no harm in then saying, 'You did a great job. Let's go out for a milkshake.' "

 

Mr. Pink cautioned that after-the-fact rewards should be given sparingly, as they can quickly turn into an entitlement.

 

PRAISE IS REWARD ENOUGH If you do give rewards occasionally and unexpectedly, what type of rewards are best? Is there a preferred choice among money, treats or quality time? Carol Dweck, a professor of psychology at Stanford, said while there is no empirical research to suggest a qualitative difference, she recommends having children pick the reward rather than the adult foisting it on them. "It feels more integral to the process and gives the child a sense of ownership."

 

Having said that, research clearly suggests that praise is usually a sufficient reward, she said. Dr. Dweck suggests parents make their praise specific, and focus on the process the child went through to achieve the behavior, not merely the behavior itself. "You could say, 'I really liked the way you waited patiently for me to finish my phone call, because you understood that phone call was important,' " she said. "Or, 'I really liked how you expressed gratitude to Grandma, just like you appreciate it when I thank you for doing something for me.' "

 

I was surprised and, frankly, relieved that all the experts I spoke with said it's O.K. to resort to old-fashioned, blunt rewards on occasion. If you simply must get that child on the plane or it will take off without you, or if you absolutely need that child to stop misbehaving so you can speak to the doctor, go ahead, bribe away. As Dr. Deci told me, "If you're under a lot of stress or in a bad place, then having a conversation at that moment is not going to work."

 

But, he emphasized, don't let the situation end there. "You need to sit down the next afternoon when everyone's calm, talk it through from both sides, then discuss ways so the behavior doesn't happen again," he said. "Always use the blow up as a learning moment the next day."

 

And that, in the end, may be the biggest lesson of all. While my New Year's resolution started out as a way to get better results from my children, the real person I needed to retrain was myself.

 

Bruce Feiler's latest book, "The Secrets of Happy Families," will be published in February. "This Life" appears monthly.

Consumer Based Health

I've always been fascinated by the way we view our relationships with service providers. In my blissfully ignorant youth, when people referred to "their" real estate agent or "their" trainer, I assumed they had to be exceptionally wealthy to afford a retinue of specialized retainers like that.  Of course, we don't actually own our consultants and contractors.  Implying we do is simply a way of denoting status, the modern equivalent of long fingernails; we don't have to do the work, we have people for that.    It's not a notion that has ever sat comfortably with me.  Now that I'm actively out there consuming specialized services, I make a point of not propertizing (a neologism for you) those providers. I use a real estate agent; he's not mine. I see a physiotherapist - I don't own her.

It's this last that got me thinking about how we view health care.  I was in for physiotherapy today and got to talking with the kinesiologist treating me  about how the brain adapts to pain.  A funny little thing, this: we pattern things like posture and physical response to the programming our noggins have created to adapt to injury, even after the original source of pain is gone. If you spend long periods hunching over a computer terminal and find yourself hunching the rest of the time, too, it's that behavioural patterning at play.  Left unabated, it can change the curvature of your spine and cause all sorts of spin-off problems.

The kinesiologist and I also talked about the sorts of exercises and activities people can do to reset these posture programs over time - a key part of the injury recovery process. The challenge is, one visit a week to "your" physiotherapist isn't going to do that. Significant changes in behaviour come from regular, consistent practice - something you can only pay someone to do to you regularly enough to have long-term impact if you are rich as thieves.  For the rest of us, we have to internalize our own care through exercise regimens, etc.

A big challenge this kinesiologist faces is getting this message through to her clients.  If they don't make the time to do their exercises at home, they will not get better.  She can give an initial push and serve as a stop-gap, but a full return to health involves active patient participation.  The problem is, everyone is too busy with work, kids or the commute and far too stressed out to worry about their own health. Besides, they can pay someone to do that (like their physiotherapist) or pay for a product like ibuprofen to fill the gap.  That's how we solve problems in our society - by buying the solutions.

How often do we view our family doctor as just another service provider, like our accountant or our real estate agent?  Have we hired them to make sure we stay in good working order, like a car mechanic?  The capitalist theory suggests that if there's sufficient demand, supply will emerge to match; we are specializing our skills to an increasing degree to be competitive and besides, we define success as having the ability to pay others to do the stuff we don't want to.   When was the last time you made your own furniture?  Do you grow your own produce?  Heck, do you even know where those things come from?  The further up the food chain we are, the more stuff we can have and the less general work we need to do.

This, naturally, got me thinking about Mitt Romney. We've all seen or read the quote:

"All right, there are 47 percent who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it."

Romney is a pro-free market capitalist who is a big fan of consumer culture. In his mind, everyone should have the responsibility to work hard and by hook or crook, find profitability. When they do, they'll be able to pay for more stuff and expand the economy.  They'll also be able to afford not to do things, like serve in the military.

Whatever the Romneys of the world try to tell themselves, we are working hard.  At the lower end of the economic spectrum there are countless folk holding down two or more jobs, trying to make ends meet and save up for their kids' education. In the middle you have folk busting their butts to garner recognition and earn the next raise or promotion. Even at the top you have executives putting in 12 hours a day to keep their operations afloat. Heck, I even see homeless beggars in position starting at the crack of dawn.  It's a very scant percentage of people who can afford not to work at all.

We work hard at what we do - we expect others to work hard at what they do. But what happens when those interests collide? What about when the service we are paying for is the maintenance of our own personal health?

Healthcare is a huge industry. Everything from pills to acupuncture and even health promotion services like spin or yoga classes generate a lot of revenue. Public health services are also a multi-billion dollar industry. In fact, public health care cost the Ontario taxpayer $49 billion in 2011.  But are we getting better?  Whether we thinks we're victims or players, how healthy is our reliance on outsourcing health - and, like bad posture, is this pattern-forming behaviour?

We live in a consumer/producer based society. Every aspect of our life, even parenting, has been affixed with a dollar value and is offered on the market by someone as a for-profit service.  Maybe you think this is a good thing.  Me, I make a point of getting in my exercises so I can heal myself.  for me, independence isn't about holding ownership over the labour of others; it's about gaining the ability to be master of my own fate.

 

Does the EQAO Accomplish What It's Meant To?

I'm all for public education, metrics and accountability.  I just think we need to consciously consider what the implications of a given system will be.

EQAO is a recitation game; absorb info, recognize question, insert info for response.  Done, move on.  It puts a lot of pressure on teachers, who are personally held accountable, on principals, who are judged on results but most of all it puts pressure on students.  If they don’t learn and respond to the question in the right way, they’re failures.

Some argue that’s a good test – life is stressful, you need to learn how to manage stress.  I suppose there’s validity that, but it’s like saying “lifting stuff is heavy, get used to having sore arms.”  We can teach our kids how to do heavy lifting, but we can also nurture their critical thinking and creativity and teach them to formulate different solutions to existing challenges.  Like, say, a lever or pulley system.

Innovation isn’t stressful – it’s fun.  People like making new things and gain satisfaction from doing so.  Society benefits, too – especially now, when innovation is what the economy is seeking, we should be thinking ahead to how we can better and more efficiently get the results we want.  When we teach people how to be stressed, they stay that way.  They stay that way in gridlock, when they get home, when they're at work.  The goal shouldn't be to train kids how to be uncomfortable, but how to be resilient, adaptable, proactive turning potential stresses into opportunities.