“Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up.”

            Pablo Picasso

“I used the logic of creative problem-solving that I’d witnessed as a kid: rolling up your sleeves and saying, ‘This isn’t quite working. How might it work? What should we do? What do you think?’”

            Ron Howard on how he worked with Bette Davis, an Oscar-winning diva, on a movie set where she was resistant to his direction, in “Life’s Work” with Alison Beard in 

Harvard Business Review, January-February 2023 (Vol. 101, #1, p. 156)

“Sometimes I feel like people want to be called on their behavior. They want someone to say, This is important.”

            Elena Aguilar (see item #2)

“When we normalize teaching problems, we foster a culture in which teachers are less anxious, have greater self-efficacy, and feel more supported in their professional growth.”

            Indu Chugani Singh (see item #1)

“There is a huge irony in the fact that something billed as ‘the science of reading’ may well be undermining the impact of the real research on classroom practice, due in large part to lack of quality reporting.”

            Maren Aukerman (see item #3)

“Kids who don’t like to read won’t read when they don’t have to.”

            Maren Aukerman, 2022

“We… suggest districts consider employing definitions of readiness that focus on ready schools rather than unready children.”

            Kristin Lyn Whyte and Cynthia Coburn in “Understanding Kindergarten Readiness”

            in Elementary School Journal, December 2022 (Vol. 123, #2, pp. 344-361) 

In this article in Independent School, Indu Chugani Singh (Lynch Leadership Academy, Boston College) says the annual teacher goal-setting process used by many schools “is simply not adequate in a field that is so dynamic.” The real work of teaching unfolds on a much shorter time-span: a lesson doesn’t go well and needs to be revised; a unit plan isn’t resonating with a class; some students are disengaged in discussions of a Toni Morrison novel; assessment results suggest the presence of the teacher’s implicit bias. Challenges like these are central to teachers’ lives, says Singh, yet they’re “rarely documented; they often occur without feedback from colleagues, and their impact on student learning can be unclear.” 

            The solution, she believes, is for schools to create a more systematic and responsive approach to instructional improvement focused on the immediate problems teachers face, not a long-term vision of what it means to be an educator. “Teaching problems are the challenges teachers face in helping a student realize their fullest potential,” says Singh. “They can offer us the richest kind of professional learning because they are grounded in tangible, observable student and teacher behaviors.” The traditional goal-setting process is sometimes helpful, but it can miss – or avoid – the issues teachers are grappling with in real time. 

            Imagine a sixth-grade teacher who aims to build students’ mastery of a set of academic skills by the end of the school year. The relevant focus should be on “what inevitably might get in the way,” says Singh: “a difficult class dynamic, a wide range of students’ prior knowledge, content gaps in the teacher’s knowledge, poor student self-esteem, etc. What if professional learning were grounded in these problems?” Some challenges may be particular to one teacher, others may be shared by several or across a grade level, department, or a whole school.

Taking a problem-focused approach to professional growth requires a school culture that acknowledges the presence of such challenges and embraces addressing them with candor and without judgment. “When we normalize teaching problems,” says Singh, “we foster a culture in which teachers are less anxious, have greater self-efficacy, and feel more supported in their professional growth.” 

She suggests three key steps for implementing a short-cycle approach to professional learning throughout a school year:

• Pick problems worth solving. They should focus on ways in which student learning might be compromised, especially for the most marginalized students. And there should be solid evidence that the problem exists – quantitative, qualitative, or anecdotal. “Helping educators see their practice with greater clarity requires the ability to identify and work with classroom-based data,” says Singh.

• Identify high-leverage interventions. The short-term action plans that flow from looking at data should be strategic and informed by expertise and research. Effective interventions are much more likely to emerge in schools with access to high-quality information, designated time and space for inquiry, and a culture of questioning, listening, and empirical solution-finding. 

• Assess the impact. Teachers and their supervisors might look at students’ exit tickets, test results, performance tasks, surveys, and interviews. “While the process of measuring impact isn’t entirely scientific,” she says, “it makes student learning trends visible in new ways and can be affirming to educators, regardless of their years of experience, their content area, or the nature of the challenges they face.” 

Singh’s conclusion: “While naming problems may seem counter-cultural, the act of making teaching visible can be transformational, both for rebuilding faculty culture and responding to the remarkably complex pedagogical challenges of our time.”

“What’s the Problem?” by Indu Chugani Singh in Independent School, Winter 2023 (Vol. 82, #2, pp. 49-53); Singh can be reached at induchuganisingh@gmail.com. 

In this Cult of Pedagogy article, Jennifer Gonzalez says there are three reasons a lot of school professional development falls flat:

-   It’s designed as a one-size-fits-all and many participants don’t find it relevant.

-   It’s a passive learning experience, not acknowledging or using people’s perspectives.

-   The audience isn’t physically and emotionally comfortable enough to fully participate.

The third problem – establishing psychological safety – is the subject of Gonzalez’s discussion with author/consultant Elena Aguilar. Gonzalez remembers sitting in PD sessions as a teacher and “feeling like I couldn’t ask questions or speak up about concerns I had, even at times acting like I wasn’t interested in the material we were learning, because apathy was the prevailing mood in the room and I didn’t want to look uncool.” 

            This dynamic is all too common, especially for teachers emerging from a hectic day, perhaps having skipped lunch, vulnerable to being triggered into a fight/flight/freeze/appease reaction by the group dynamic or something the presenter might say. Aguilar suggests five ways that PD presenters can counteract these hazards:

            • Cultivate your emotional intelligence. Participants pick up nonverbal cues from you –  openness, enthusiasm, annoyance, stress – so monitoring and regulating your own feelings is vital. “What you think and feel is everything,” says Aguilar. “If you feel like your learners are skilled, capable, smart, caring people, then your learners, the people in front of you, are much more likely to be open and receptive.” 

            • Cultivate the group’s emotional intelligence. Aguilar suggests starting a PD session by having participants around each table share three words describing how they feel at that moment (perhaps prompted by a list of possible emotions projected on the screen). “It gives people an opportunity to cultivate self-awareness and empathy for each other,” she says.

            • Explicitly teach communication skills. There are lots of ways PD participants can be thrown off by their colleagues: interrupting, talking over, judging others’ ideas, listening with an eye to rebutting, doing other stuff, checking out. Aguilar suggests that facilitators talk about listening with curiosity, compassion, and hope and asking questions that probe for understanding.

            • Use norms and community agreements. When Aguilar works with a new group that doesn’t have established norms, she suggests these:

-   Take care of yourself.

-   Be fully present.

-   Take risks.

-   Be mindful of other learners.

She follows up by eliciting some specific examples of what these norms look like – for example, not interrupting, no side conversations, coming back from breaks on time. 

            • Address conflicts and breaches of psychological safety. Aguilar describes some problems she noticed while conducting a two-day workshop: during silent activities there were side conversations, and some people were on e-mail. When it became clear that the learning environment was deteriorating, Aguilar realized she had to do something. Just before an afternoon break, extremely nervous, she addressed the group:

“I’m feeling really uncomfortable right now, but I have to name something I’m observing. Over the last couple of hours, I noticed that some people have been disengaging from this learning. And my concern is about the impact that that’s having on others in your groups. Some of you have noticed me noticing this. You’re watching me noticing what’s going on, and I realized that I’m risking losing your trust that I can hold this safe, focused learning space unless I name this breakdown of the norms. This feels really awkward to say, but it’s my responsibility to make sure this is a safe learning space. If you are unable to participate in these activities, for whatever reason, I invite you to step out and return when you are. So if you’re in this room, I’m asking you to recommit to these community agreements and keep this space focused on learning.” 

Half the group applauded, and during the break, several attendees thanked Aguilar for speaking up. After the break, everyone came back and there were no more side conversations and checking phones. “Sometimes I feel like people want to be called on their behavior,” she says. “They want someone to say, This is important.” 

Aguilar acknowledges that there are schools where the culture is so toxic that creating psychological safety and delivering high-quality professional learning is a heavy lift. But in most schools, once the floor of safety has been established, good things can happen and “people feel calm and centered and connected and curious and engaged and absorbed and joyful and satisfied… saying, That was so great. I learned so much. I feel so energized. It was so much fun. I feel like I know people better.”

“How to Build Psychological Safety in Professional Development” by Jennifer Gonzalez and Elena Aguilar in Cult of Pedagogy, December 16, 2022; Aguilar recently co-authored (with Lori Cohen) The PD Book: 7 Habits That Transform Professional Development. Aguilar can be reached at elena@brightmorningteam.com.

In her third article in this Literacy Research Association series, Maren Aukerman (University of Calgary) continues her critique of journalists’ coverage of the “science of reading” controversy. In the first two articles (summarized in Memos 963 and 966), she cited a number of problems in stories in The New York Times and Time: lack of due diligence, incomplete descriptions of literacy research, and uncritical acceptance of advocates’ claims that one approach to early reading instruction (intensive phonics) is settled science. 

            “Taken together,” says Aukerman, “these errors raise serious questions about the trustworthiness of journalism about reading education.” She cites similar mistakes in Education Week and many literacy-related websites and social media posts, especially the widely distributed Ladder of Reading and Writing, which claims that a “structured literacy” approach is essential for at least 50-60 percent of students and beneficial to almost all others. Aukerman can find no peer-reviewed research backing up this claim, and says the author has conceded that “there is no agreement on the percentages” – but the infographic is still online and is used in numerous contexts to make the case for increased emphasis on phonics.

            With one side of the reading debate being reported as fact, says Aukerman, there have been a number of consequences:

            • Actual research is marginalized. “When the media fails to engage deeply with the fuller body of reading scholarship,” she says, “advocates of an instructional technique can circumvent the need to make a compelling scholarly case for their perspective that is convincing to the research community.” Sincere and committed as phonics advocates clearly are, she continues, their approach to early reading instruction has convinced barely 20 percent of experts in the field. 

            “The media should be engaging substantively with a range of perspectives,” says Aukerman, “and – even more importantly – with the actual research literature, which tells a nuanced and complicated story about the teaching of reading in general and about the teaching of phonics specifically. In the absence of such engagement, advocacy rather than reading research has come to drive educational journalism, and ultimately public discourse and policy. There is a huge irony in the fact that something billed as ‘the science of reading’ may well be undermining the impact of the real research on classroom practice, due in large part to lack of quality reporting.”

            • Policymakers are led to bark up the wrong instructional tree. School districts around the nation are ramping up phonics instruction, and some politicians have jumped on the bandwagon, passing laws that mandate phonics drill, revised teacher training, and keeping students back based solely on their decoding assessment scores. “The problem is not with phonics being ‘in,’” says Aukerman, “but with much else being crowded out” – language-building activities like shared book read-alouds, developing ELs’ English proficiency, opportunities to read actual texts, and engaging in writing and critical and complex thinking – without which economically disadvantaged students fall further behind. 

            • Teachers and teacher educators are positioned as ignorant and out of touch. The blanket condemnation of early reading instruction by “science of reading” advocates undermines the teaching profession and dovetails with other efforts (e.g., pushback on critical race theory, gender politics, and social-emotional learning) to police what teachers do in their classrooms. Top-down phonics mandates limit teachers’ ability to use professional judgment, says Aukerman, and that matters: some students need more intensive phonics than others, and some phonics programs are more effective and engaging than others. 

            • An adversarial climate undermines productive dialogue. There is actually a lot of common ground between the two sides, says Aukerman: “Balanced literacy” advocates believe there’s an important role for phonics, and “science of reading” proponents increasingly acknowledge the need for instruction beyond decoding. Yet the media keeps talking about a “reading war” and people are pushed into polarized positions and are less likely to listen to one another. “While competing perspectives on reading instruction are hardly new,” she says, “the vitriol and distrust in the past few years feel different, eerily similar to the frenzied lack of civil discourse in other arenas of public life that some scholars have called a threat to democracy.” 

            What we should be talking about instead, says Aukerman, is outcomes, methods, equity, differentiation, and values: 

-   Outcomes – What kinds of readers should we be developing? What is the role of fluency, critical thinking, and imagination? 

-   Methods – What are the pros and cons of different methods of teaching and assessing decoding, comprehension, and students’ motivation?

-   Equity – How do we ensure that emerging bilingual students and other historically marginalized populations learn to read with understanding?

-   Student variation – When and how should we differentiate for students with reading disabilities, gifted learners, or those with ADHD?

-   Values – Do we embrace the importance of children finding reading and writing engaging and meaningful?

“All of these conversations should be informed by the wealth of perspectives and research that the field of reading has to offer,” Aukerman concludes. “Reading educators and other stakeholders all want children to read well, after all, and we need each other’s voices, perspectives, and research in conversation, rather than in battle, in order to best make that happen.” 

“The Science of Reading and the Media: How Do Current Reporting Patterns Cause Damage?” by Maren Aukerman in Literacy Research Association, December 17, 2022; Aukerman can be reached at maren.aukerman@ucalgary.ca. 

 In this Teachers College Record article, Jonee Wilson (University of Virginia) says that what we know about effective mathematics instruction – especially what works for historically marginalized students – is not reflected in commonly used classroom rubrics and observation tools. “If there is any truth to the notion that we value what we measure or we measure what we value,” says Wilson, “then it is telling what we, as a field of mathematics education researchers, have and have not included in the tools we use to observe, examine, and assess the quality of classroom instruction.”

To fill this void, Wilson developed the Equity and Access Rubrics for Mathematics Instruction (EAR-MI) and refined it based on feedback from colleagues. The rubrics are based on multiple classroom observations and videos of teachers who were successful and unsuccessful with students, always with an eye to equity. Here is a summary (reproduced almost verbatim):

• Explicitly stating expectations – Teachers make the implicit and otherwise invisible or abstract (both mathematical and social) explicit and more concrete.

• Coaching students – Teachers support students in negotiating productive ways of participating and meeting expectations, without decreasing the rigor of the task, by deliberately intervening, scaffolding, or providing additional support.

• Supporting connections and engagement between student context and mathematical learning – Teachers connect students’ lives to discussions and interactions that take place in math class. They support students in viewing issues, problem-solving, and other scenarios discussed in a math class as significant to either the students themselves or a broader audience.

• Attending to language and including cultural dialects – Teachers support all students in understanding the language used in the classroom.

• Attributing responsibility to students in response to their requests for assistance – Teachers support student agency to work through and solve math problems by ascribing or “pushing back” responsibility to students, particularly when the students’ questions get at the essence of the math they are being asked to wrestle with. When they do this, teachers can 

(a) communicate that “the struggle is real”; (b) normalize the feeling and convey that what students are wrestling with is common (i.e., it is not an individual or private struggle that is exclusive to them alone); and (c) reveal that what students are working through is intentional or mathematically difficult by design. 

• Positioning students as competent – Teachers frame students’ actions and statements as intellectually valuable by explicitly and publicly identifying and acknowledging their actions and statements.

• Supporting a nurturing environment – Teachers generate dialogue, establish personal relationships, and develop a sense of community in the classroom. This helps create a space where students are more likely to feel comfortable taking mathematical risks. That is necessary if they are to use complex, non-algorithmic thinking to create strategies for solving problems, making conjectures or forming generalizations. That also helps students learn from each other while providing evidence for or justifying their own ideas, and draw connections between, build on, or disagree with each other’s ideas.

“Initial Steps in Developing Classroom Observation Rubrics Designed Around Instructional Practices That Support Equity and Access in Classrooms with Potential for ‘Success’” by Jonee Wilson in Teachers College Record, November 2022 (Vol. 124, #121, pp. 179-217); Wilson can be reached at vma8ze@virginia.edu. 

In this article in Mathematics Teacher: Learning & Teaching PK-12, Ashley Schmidt, Treshonda Rutledge, Tandrea Fulton, and Sarah Bush (University of Central Florida) say that engaging students in mathematics discussions “requires a deep understanding of students who share our classroom space and the awareness of our own role in our instructional decisions.” One key, they say, is being in touch with our potential biases, which can reveal themselves in several areas:

            • The types of tasks assigned and the questions asked – Unwittingly lowering expectations by limiting tasks to procedural rather than conceptual mathematics based on a preconception that students will find the latter too difficult; not using material relevant to students’ lives, cultures, and experiences;

            • Selective listening – Overlooking reticent or quiet students; not calling on students who are seen as unable to answer questions – or those who already know the answers; not monitoring students seen as unable to reach the target;

            • Which students are called on – Selecting the same students to share their thinking and not elevating the voices of all students; ignoring unique solution ideas so as not to “complicate” the discussion;

            • Overvaluing correct answers – Interjecting our own opinion on the “right” solution at the beginning of classroom discussions; verbally praising only the correct answers and not recognizing students for thoughtful reasoning and bravery in sharing incorrect answers; not discussing what’s interesting in incomplete solutions; missing opportunities to highlight conceptual value in incorrect answers;

            • Not making connections – Teaching only procedural strategies versus more-sophisticated areas of the curriculum that would build conceptual understanding; focusing only on the current topic without forging links to other parts of the math syllabus.

“Addressing biases in instructional practices is a team sport,” conclude the authors; “we need one another to help identify biases, hold one another accountable, and transform the teaching and learning of mathematics to a place focused on building from students’ strengths.” 

“Mathematical Discussions: Revealing Biases” by Ashley Schmidt, Treshonda Rutledge, Tandrea Fulton, and Sarah Bush in Mathematics Teacher: Learning & Teaching PK-12, December 2022 (Vol. 115, #12, pp. 850-858); Schmidt can be reached at ashley.schmidt@ucf.edu.

In this Journal of the Learning Sciences article, Antonia Larrain (Universidad Alberto Hurtado, Chile) and eight colleagues describe a study in which sixth graders in a high-poverty area were asked to explore novel concepts in evolutionary science, argue about them among themselves, and then hear their teacher’s explanation. The researchers wanted to see whether “productive failure” – students wrestling with material in which they had little background knowledge – combined with group argumentation would result in better learning than teachers explaining concepts first. 

            With each of six evolutionary scenarios, students were shown a brief video, presented with a question and some possible explanations, and encouraged to debate the question among themselves. The scenarios:

-   Over 20 generations, mice have their tails cut off; will offspring eventually be born without tails?

-   Fossils of animals that lived at the same time millions of years ago; how can we explain current differences?

-   Why do insecticides become less efficient over time at eliminating flies in a barn?

-   Why did large-billed ‘I’iwi birds disappear in an area in which smaller flowers are abundant?

-   How do bacteria become resistant to antibiotics?

-   How does the Chilean False Toad develop stronger suction cups?

Students engaged in lively debates and frequently changed their minds in response to their peers’ arguments. Sometimes students agreed on the correct evolutionary answer, other times they clung to misconceptions and incorrect explanations. After each round, students got a brief explanation of the evolutionary concept.

            After several weeks of grappling with one scenario after another, students were given a post-test on their understanding of evolution, received direct instruction from their science teacher, and then took additional post-tests spaced over several weeks to gauge retention. Students in the productive failure/argumentation understood evolutionary concepts surprisingly well – even before they received follow-up instruction. 

            Larrain and her colleagues believe this approach was effective because of the interplay between students grappling with challenging scenarios, having time to debate among themselves, consider different arguments, confront misconceptions, and correct mistaken theories. The authors stress that this was an qualitative study and more research needs to be done to explore this instructional approach.

“Productive Failure and Learning Through Argumentation: Building a Bridge Between Two Research Traditions to Understand the Process of Peer Learning” by Antonia Larrain, Valeska Grau, Maria José Barrera, Paulina Freire, Patricia López, Sebastián Verdugo, Marisol Gómez, Francisca Ramirez, and Gabriel Sánchez in Journal of the Learning Sciences, September-December 2022 (Vol. 31, #4-5, pp. 673-688); Larrain can be reached atalarrain@uahurtado.cl. 

In this Harvard Business Review article, David Noble (View Advisors) and Carol Kauffman (Harvard Medical School, Institute of Coaching) say that when leaders are faced with a significant challenge or opportunity, there are four possible stances: lean in, lean back, lean with, and don’t lean. Here’s how Noble and Kauffman suggest deciding which to use – always looking for signs that it might be time to pivot to a different stance:

• Lean in: Deciding, directing, guiding, challenging, confronting. 

When to use it:

-   Colleagues seem rudderless and passive and need help getting organized and focused.

-   They need to be energized without triggering fear.

-   Change is happening rapidly and chaotically and the situation needs to be stabilized.

When not to use it:

-   Colleagues quiet down when you walk into a room.

-   They aren’t offering other options.

-   People need more support and time to think.

-   Your emotions have been triggered.

• Lean back: Collecting data, analyzing, asking questions, delaying decisions. 

When to use it:

-   People need more information.

-   Emotions are running high and more data will help everyone get grounded.

-   You are working with introverts who respond better to data than inspirational rhetoric.

When not to use it:

-   Team discussion has reached the point of diminishing returns.

-   People seem overwhelmed and more data will obfuscate rather than clarify.

• Lean with: Empathizing, coaching, collaborating, encouraging. 

When to use it:

-   Morale is low.

-   You’re working with extroverts and connection is a key workplace value. 

-   You notice how a smile or an affirming remark energizes colleagues.

When not to use it:

-   A team member appears to need space to think.

-   The team is operating well on its own and doesn’t need support.

-   People want to feel independent.

• Don’t lean: Contemplating, being still, visualizing, breathing. 

When to use it:

-   Team members need to work something out on their own and your presence may be an intrusion or impede their progress.

-   The team is frenetic and needs a break or a timeout to calm things down.

When not to use it:

-   The team needs to step into planning or action mode.

-   A crisis hits and people turn to you for guidance.

“Mastery of the four stances is about being able to read each moment and shift your stance quickly, under stressful circumstances,” say Noble and Kauffman. “For the highest-stakes interactions, you will need to draw on all four.” 

“The Power of Options” by David Noble and Carol Kauffman Harvard Business Review, January-February 2023 (Vol. 101, #1, pp. 108-115); the authors’ forthcoming book, on which this article is based, is Real-Time Leadership (2023); the authors can be reached at david.noble@view-advisors.com and ck@carolkauffman.com.

A Video Commentary on ChatGPT – This YouTube video by Evan Puschak follows up on the articles in Memo 966 on the controversial artificial intelligence writing program.

“The Real Danger of ChatGPT” by Evan Puschak on YouTube, December 30, 2022