Ripples in the pond

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Image source: Julian Böck, CC0

Throw a stone into a pond, and you will create ripples. The ripples will undulate outwards from the source of the disturbance towards the edges of the pond. There is a cause and effect relationship. These particular ripples will not happen without the stimulus of your stone-throwing action. You can choose the size of the stone, the force of the throw, the direction of the throw. These choices will have a flow-on effect to the size, magnitude and force of the ripples. But there will be other forces at play too. Sometimes the size of the ripples may appear to be disproportionate to the size of the stone, or the strength with which it was thrown. While we do know that there will be ripples when we throw the stone, we cannot completely accurately predict exactly how those ripples will evolve.

So it is in education.

We plan learning experiences – they will have some impact, but not the same impact on every learner, and we can’t be certain about what kind of impact they will have. Further, we can’t know of the unintended, but still potentially beneficial, learning that may occur for some learners.

We conduct inquiries into our teaching. After careful thought and deliberation, we select a particular strategy or concept to experiment with, and gently lob it into the pond of our learning environment. We notice and observe the ripples the stone creates. We reflect on whether these ripples are desirable, as well as noting the unintended ripples. We might then wait for another opportune moment to select another strategy, another stone, and to toss that into the pond.

The analogy works in other ways too.

The pond, like a learning environment, is a complex ecosystem. It is made up of many different parts: the water, the flora and fauna, bacteria, microbes, etc. Every part has its own role to play, and interacts and intersects with some or all of the other parts in both predictable and unpredictable ways. This ecosystem appears generally stable, but can easily be affected by other influences: the weather, a person throwing a rock into it, the introduction or decline of a constituent part: the dynamics of the ecosystem shift in response to changes.

Our classrooms are the same. They are made up of many different parts, not the least of which is a range of individual and distinct personalities and their learning interests, preferences and needs. Most days the learning environment ecosystem appears generally stable, but can be easily affected by other influences: the weather, the actions of an individual, a new person coming into the environment, or a familiar person leaving. The dynamics of the environment shift in response.

So how is thinking about education in this way helpful?

It supports us to consider the idea that everything we do as educators creates ripples – both intended and unintended. Being mindful of the stones we choose, and paying careful attention to the ripples that result, is part of being an effective educator. Additionally, the analogy honours the agency we have as educators: we are inherently part of our learning environment, our learning ecosystem. What we do creates ripples. The stone can be a pebble or a mighty rock: everything we do nudges the ecosystem, which dynamically shifts in response. The system is not external to ourselves. What we do matters.

Like to think about this some more?

 

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Transformation Theory: A theory of adult learning

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Image source: Suzanne D. Williams, CC0

I am often skeptical of some of the language we use in education, and that is common in other sectors too. This includes words such as: disruption, innovation, transformation. I wonder about the human impact using these words has. How does it feel to be ‘disrupted’, to be asked to ‘innovate’, or to ‘transform’ one’s self or one’s practice? This isn’t to say though that I don’t believe in challenge or provocation, nor that I don’t see the value in encouraging people to test their assumptions and question their underlying beliefs. Indeed, far from it.

So let’s think more about transformation for a moment.

Common metaphors for transformation include the butterfly, which evolves from its humble beginnings as a caterpillar into a beautiful, soaring creature. Another metaphor is a Biblical one: St Paul’s conversion to Christianity on the road to Damascus. Both of these metaphors encompass the idea of a sudden, dramatic, and profound change in direction or orientation or worldview. When we talk about transformative experiences, we might say something like: ‘the scales fall from your eyes’, or use what is a favourite quotation of mine (attributed both to Ralph Waldo Emerson and Oliver Wendell Holmes): “The mind once stretched by a new idea, never returns to its original dimensions”.

But there is another aspect to transformation I think it’s useful to know of: the adult learning theory – Transformation Theory. Transformation Theory is generally ascribed to American Jack Mezirow based on his study of women returning to university in the late 1970s. Mezirow (2009) offers this definition of transformative learning: “Transformative learning may be defined as learning that transforms problematic frames of reference to make them more inclusive, discriminating, reflective, open, and emotionally able to change” (p. 22, emphasis in original).

Transformation Theory focuses on critical reflection and dialogue to support people to adapt their worldview – to orient it towards being agentic, inclusive, open, seeking social justice and equity. Therefore we could say that transformative learning occurs when a person is able to change their their worldview, for example about what knowledge is; how society operates; or about their beliefs about themselves (Kitchenham, 2008).

In practice, Transformation Theory could look like CORE Education’s Dr Vince Ham eFellowship. The Dr Vince Ham eFellows are committed to exploring ways of doing education differently for their schools, kura, centres and communities. The purpose of the Dr Vince Ham eFellowship is to inspire transformational practice through inquiry. eFellows are mentored through their own deep inquiry journey that generally takes the form of an action research project. They experience workshops, field trips, critical reflection and dialogue – learning from and with one another.

Further, Transformation Theory can also support school and kura leaders to think about how they design professional learning and development opportunities for their colleagues. Some of the challenges include: nurturing robust professional learning conversations; creating safe environments where people feel comfortable in being vulnerable: admitting they don’t know, or made a mistake. It is important that leaders value and model critical reflection and dialogue with one another, and with colleagues.

To that end, leaders might consider the following questions:

  • How might we encourage teachers to understand their current worldview and assumptions about education, including their position within the education system?
  • How might we foster supportive, safe, and inclusive relationships that allow space for critical reflection and dialogue to unfold?
  • How might we respectfully challenge our assumptions and our assumptions of others so that we can learn other ways in which to view the world?

References and further reading:

Kitchenham, A. (2008). The evolution of John Mezirow’s Transformative Learning Theory. Journal of Transformative Education, 6(2), 104-123. Retrieved from doi:10.1177/1541344608322678

Meluish Spencer, K. (2016). Can we create conditions for transformation? Retrieved from http://blog.core-ed.org/blog/2016/04/can-we-create-conditions-for-transformation.html

Mezirow, J. (1991). Transformative Dimensions of Adult Learning. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Mezirow, J. (2000). Learning to think like an adult. Learning as transformation: Critical perspectives on a theory in progress / Jack Mezirow and Associates (pp. 3-33). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Mezirow, J. (2009). Transformative learning theory. In J. Mezirow & E. W. Taylor (Eds.), Transformative learning in practice: Insights from community, workplace, and higher education (pp. 18-31). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

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Words, words, words

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Ko tōu reo, ko tōku reo,

te tuakiri tangata.

Tīhei uriuri, tīhei nakonako.

Your voice and my voice are expressions of identity.

May our descendants live on and our hopes be fulfilled.

(Learning Languages Whakataukī, NZC 2007)

We language our world and ourselves into being. We have ideas. We think thoughts. We express these things to ourselves and to others using words. The words we choose to use say something about the person we are, and the way we perceive the world to be. So we may say that language shapes our culture, and shapes our identity.

Words, to perhaps use a construction metaphor, are the building blocks of stories. Words, strung together in sentences, held together with the mortar of grammar (and punctuation, if the words are written down), create worlds and the characters who inhabit these worlds. Some of these characters become ‘larger than life’: Māui, Harry Potter, Gollum… By the words we choose to use, and the stories we choose to tell, we convey important messages and ideas about who is important, what beliefs are valued, whose perspectives we honour. In this way, words and stories, and storytellers, have infinite power. Hana O’Regan spoke about this kaupapa at uLearn this year.

Let’s consider a couple of examples.

It is reasonably commonplace these days to speak of the ‘industrial model of education’. This phrase employs factory metaphors. We can see these ideas in words like ‘classes’, the ‘timetable’, and teaching ‘units’ to make sure students know all the necessary ‘nuts and bolts’. The overarching factory metaphor suggests that we see knowledge as ‘stuff’, and that education is about putting knowledge into people’s (empty) heads. And that this is best done by breaking knowledge down into small, manageable chunks, and telling people what they need to know, because we store knowledge in our own individual heads (see Gilbert, 2005).

When we say that we’d like to embrace ‘21st century’ or ‘future-focused’ teaching and learning, alongside unpacking what this means for us, we also need to examine the words we use to imagine and conceive of school and its purposes. Often we’ll find it very hard to move away from these words, as they are the signs that show us that we still think about education in this way. Finding new words, embracing new metaphors, telling new stories until these become ingrained, is a challenge.

Or perhaps this example:

We need teachers to come on board with our new initiative or strategy, or to adopt a new practice. Some teachers seem quick to embrace this innovation. When this happens, we sometimes say that they are the ‘early adopters’. This is a reference to the popularised research by Everett Rogers in the 1960s (see also the Diffusion of Innovation theory). ‘Early adopters’ we might find to be a comfortable phrase or label, but who is at the end of the scale? The ‘laggards’.

Can we use one term in isolation from the other? Who would choose to be known as the ‘laggard’? What do these words suggest about how we think of others – of our colleagues and peers?

When we tell stories, we generally speak from our own perspective, and because of this we tend to make ourselves the hero of this story. Jennifer Garvey Berger and Keith Johnston explore this idea in their book Simple Habits for Complex Times. It can be useful to keep this in mind when a colleague does or says something that you struggle to comprehend. Garvey Berger and Johnston recommend asking yourself: “If I had just done what that person did, and I thought my actions were perfectly reasonable, what story might I be telling myself?” (p. 24). We can use language to practice respect and empathy. We can challenge ourselves to be imaginative and compassionate.

We could apply these ideas about words, language, and stories to many phrases we use in education:

And more. What springs to mind for you?

This is an invitation to reflect on your vocabulary choices and what stories they may have to tell about you and the way you see the world around you. How do you refer to your learners? What words do you use to describe them? How do you refer to your colleagues? What words do you use to describe them?

Language is a dense and thorny thicket. Making your way through this thicket is rife with dangers. You must pick carefully your path through. Be mindful; be present – lest your words bite like thorns on the vines.

We can tell this story another way though.

Language is a seed bursting with possibilities. Plant it carefully in rich soil. Give the seed kindness, love and attention. Nurture its shoots, and protect it from harm. Be mindful; be present – so that your words may inspire.

What words do you use? What stories do these help to tell?

References

  • Garvey Berger, J., & Johnston, K. (2015). Simple Habits for Complex Times: Powerful Practices for Leaders. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
  • Gilbert, J. (2005). Catching the knowledge wave? The Knowledge Society and the future of education. Wellington: NZCER Press.
  • Title reference: 2.2.192 Hamlet

Image by Bogomil Mihaylov, CC0 

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Be neotenous: The importance of curiosity for teachers

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“Brown paper packages tied up with strings / These are a few of my favourite things…”

Oscar Hammerstein, Richard Rodgers, 1965

I put the gift bag in the centre of the table. While the handles were tied together with ribbon, you could still see variously-shaped packages, wrapped in innocuous brown paper, peeking out. Like five-year-olds about to play ‘pass the parcel’, the teachers turned towards the bag, eyes following my every move, eager to poke, prod and explore.  

They were invited to pass the bag around and to choose an item that captured their imagination. As they unwrapped their parcel, they were full of questions: What’s in there? What have we got? What is it? How does this relate? Does this belong to her? Is it valuable? Can we eat them?

Sitting with questions confettied around them on sticky notes, a group of teachers became gripped with a narrative they had formed around one of the items. They were convinced it was an antique, that it must have been passed down to me, cherished, from grandmother to mother to me. That they must take care with it, lest it get lost or damaged. That it must have significant meaning: culturally, historically, sentimentally. They were dying to know the true story behind the item. They were hungry for knowledge.

As teachers, I think we are genuinely interested in generating and nurturing curiosity in our learners. We worry about squashing curiosity and the childlike wonder in our learners, particularly when they start school. We believe that curious learners are engaged, passionate, excited. But I’m not sure that we invest enough in our own curiosity as adults.

Many teachers are involved with inquiring into their practice. They use the teaching as inquiry cycle from the New Zealand Curriculum (2007), or perhaps the Spiral of Inquiry from Timperley, Kaser and Halbert (2014) to explore the needs of their learners, and what they can do to make a difference. These inquiry cycles are important and useful frameworks to guide professional learning. And they must start with a teacher’s own curiosity about what’s happening and why it might be happening.

Christopher Clark (1992) calls on teachers to “make the familiar strange”. He says that “this involves at least two steps: first, to believe that interesting, exciting, amazing things are happening all around us all the time; and second, to question the traditional ways, reasons and explanations that we usually take for granted” (p. 81). In other words, we should seek to see our world with fresh eyes, and to wonder about it. We need to be neotenous – retaining childlike dispositions into adulthood (Berger, 2014).

We may need to invest some time to nurture our neoteny. And looking outside of education may be useful – you never know what interesting and unusual potential connections you might make. So, go to the museum, the art gallery, the theatre. Spend some time in the bush, or walk around the block and challenge yourself to notice three things you haven’t before. Attend a public lecture, play a new game, listen to a TED talk or podcast.

We know from observing our own children and our students that curiosity drives a need to know; a desire to find out; that it can be the spark that can ignite a passion. To be curious is to be driven to learn. It opens doors and makes us eager to explore. Curiosity also sustains us through the messy pit of learning. It helps us to know that although we might not know yet, we are on the path to knowing more than we did previously. So pursue relentless curiosity. Question ferociously. Wonder and ponder and brood.

 

Where do you find inspiration within and without of the classroom? What do you do to nurture your own curiosity?

Curious to learn more?

Here are some links to curiosity for students:

Here are some links to curiosity and teaching as inquiry:

And here are some references to relevant literature on curiosity:

  • Berger, W. (2014). A more beautiful question: The power of inquiry to spark breakthrough ideas. New York: Bloomsbury.
  • Clark, C. M. (1992). Teachers as designers in self-directed professional development. In A. Hargreaves & M. G. Fullan (Eds.), Understanding teacher development (pp. 75-84). London: Cassell.
  • Thomas, D. & Seely Brown, J. (2011). A new culture of learning: Cultivating the imagination for a world of constant change. Lexington: CreateSpace.
  • Timperley, H., Kaser, L., & Halbert, J. (2014). A framework for transforming learning in schools: Innovation and the spiral of inquiry. Melbourne: Centre for Strategic Education.

Photo by Benjamin Davies on Unsplash

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DT in DT and HM: Design thinking in the Digital Technology and Hangarau Matihiko Curricula

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“With its focus on design thinking, technology education supports students to be innovative, reflective, and critical in designing new models, products, software, systems, and tools to benefit people while taking account of their impact on cultural, ethical, environmental, political, and economic conditions.” (Technology in the New Zealand Curriculum, Ministry of Education, 2017)

design thinking process
With the strengthening of Digital Technologies and Hangarau Matihiko within the Technology learning area in the New Zealand Curriculum, and the Hangarau Wāhanga Ako in Te Marautanga o Aotearoa, this has prompted change for schools, kura, and Kāhui Ako. While there is certainly much that is new to the learning areas, something that is not is design thinking.

Design thinking has always underpinned the Technology and Hangarau curricula because this these are learning areas that are process-driven. Both technology — in all its forms — and design thinking are about identifying problems, creating solutions for people, experimenting, refining, acting on feedback.

So, while we’re grappling with new concepts and content, perhaps the strengthening of Digital Technologies and Hangarau Matihiko is also an opportunity to put the spotlight back onto the process of design thinking and its mindsets.

What is design thinking?

Design thinking is a creative process that can be adopted to find solutions to complex problems. There are various models of design thinking, but one that is often cited is that created by the d.school at Stanford University. This has five phases, as can be seen below:

the five phases of design thinking

The NZC doesn’t suggest a particular model, but in the English translation of the draft Hangarau Matihiko document, the following steps were outlined:

  • Dedication — to people and their thoughts and feelings and knowing the users and their needs. (Empathy)
  • Define — the major issues and the available pathways.
  • Propose ideas — formulating concepts, and outcomes / solutions. (Ideate)
  • Original model — construct an original model. (Prototype)
  • Experiment — test the model and adapt correspondingly. (Feedback)

The two models map comfortably onto one another. But, design thinking is about more than process, it is also about choosing to adopt innovation mindsets.

What are the design-thinking mindsets?

Again, Stanford’s d.school suggest the following mindsets as being key for design thinking:

mindsets of design thinking

Given the opening quote from the New Zealand Curriculum, and the design-thinking process suggested by Te Matauranga o Aotearoa, here, we will focus on three particular innovation mindsets:

  • human-centred
  • culture of prototyping, and
  • bias towards action.

Human-centred

In the context of Digital Technologies and Hangarau Matihiko, the focus is on creating technology to support people. People are, and must be, at the heart of the design process. There is no use designing a solution to a problem that doesn’t work for the people concerned. This is why empathy, being human-centred, is the fundamental component of design thinking.

Culture of prototyping

When we think we have a solution that might just work, it’s important to get that idea out of our heads and into the real (or digital!) world. This allows the idea to be tested, for us to challenge our assumptions, and to find the flaws. Prototyping — making a model — invites us to use our creative and critical thinking. A prototype is primarily a vehicle for feedback from the very people for whom we are designing the solution. Based on their feedback, we refine, adapt, and change our solution: we iterate. This mindset calls on us to hold our ideas lightly, to be human-centred, and to be prepared to alter, or even abandon, our proposed solution based on new knowledge.

Bias towards action

When grappling with a problem it is easy to be stuck:

  • What is the problem?
  • Who is it a problem for?
  • How do we know it’s a problem?
  • What can we do about this problem?
  • What if we try…?

A bias towards action mindset calls on us to acknowledge this learning phase and to move towards doing something about the problem. It is closely linked to the above culture of prototyping mindset. Identify and define a problem; let your imagination loose to find multiple ways of solving the problem; then filter down to one or two key possibilities that you make tangible and test. It is like being in ‘beta mode’. We are used to having to update the apps on our smartphones in order to make them work better and more efficiently. We don’t sit around and wait for everything to be perfect before we release the solution into the wild. We prototype, test, and refine. We innovate.

How might we…

Let’s not lose sight of the underlying design-thinking process and its mindsets when exploring the brave new world of Digital Technologies and Hangarau Matihiko. In fact, we could well use the design-thinking process to give structure to our exploration. Perhaps a starting question could be:
How might we integrate Digital Technologies and Hangarau Matihiko into our local curriculum?

 

If would like help with building a design-thinking approach to your curriculum, get in touch!

 

Resources

 

Image credits:
Feature image: by the author
5 phases – d.school K12 Lab Wiki (used by permission)
Mindset for design thinking – d.school K12 Wiki (used by permission)

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