Anyone can improvise with no restrictions, but that’s not jazz. Jazz always has some restrictions. Otherwise, it might sound like noise. The ability to improvise … comes from fundamental knowledge and this knowledge limits the choices you can make and will make.
—Wynton Marsalis (in Iyengar, 2010, p. 214)
If the structure does not permit dialogue, the structure must be changed.
—Paulo Freire
Former LA Dodgers manager Tommy Lasorda was one of the most successful (and colorful) managers in the history of Major League baseball. A member of the Baseball Hall of Fame, he won two World Series championships, four National League pennants, and eight division titles in his 20 years of managing the Dodgers. Asked to describe the secret of his success, Lasorda used a simple analogy: “I believe that managing is like holding a dove in your hands. If you hold it too tightly, you kill it, but if you hold it too loosely you lose it” (quoted in Sutton, 2010).
In Good Boss, Bad Boss (2010), Robert Sutton writes that this analogy, which he refers to as “Lasorda’s Law,” captures the delicate balance that every good boss seeks between managing too much and too little. According to Sutton, “Managers who are too assertive will damage relationships with superiors, peers, and followers; but managers who are not assertive enough won’t press followers to achieve sufficiently tough goals.”
Lasorda’s Law also applies in the classroom. An effective teacher maintains control while ensuring that there is sufficient freedom. Too much control damages relationships. Too little control leads to frustrated students, wasted time, and too little learning. Skillful teachers create learning situations in which students are authentically free to make decisions, set goals, and construct their own learning, while at the same time creating structures that ensure learning is productive, positive, and meaningful. I refer to this balancing act between choice and control as freedom within form.1
Most people recognize that we learn best when we have some freedom or autonomy. As numerous research studies have shown, students are most motivated by learning when they set their own goals, and rarely motivated by goals that are set for them (see selfdetermi nationtheory.org for many articles on this topic). Unless a goal matters to an individual student, chances are that student will not be very interested in learning (Pink, 2011).
In addition, telling students what to do without providing some degree of freedom often leads to resentment. People, adults and children, want to control their actions, and when leaders control others without acknowledging their needs for autonomy, that creates resistance. As the saying goes, “When you insist, I will resist.” Ironically, a teacher’s attempt to control students can lead to more disruptions if she doesn’t recognize the universal need we all have for some control over what we do.
When a teacher’s desire for control collides with a student’s need for self-direction, the results can be messy, and the conflict often significantly inhibits learning. Students must experience some form of autonomy if they are to get the most out of their learning experiences. Being autonomous means that people are free to make their own decisions; that they have choices. Indeed, “choice,” as Barry Schwartz wrote in The Paradox of Choice (2004), “is essential to autonomy … [and autonomy] … is absolutely fundamental to well-being” (p. 3).
Paulo Freire, in Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1970), describes autonomy as “the indispensable condition for the quest for human completion” (p. 31) and sees education without autonomy as dehumanizing. This is in part what Freire was referring to in his famous criticism of “banking education,” a form of schooling, he writes, “in which the scope of action allowed to the students extends only as far as receiving, filing, and storing the deposits” (p. 58). During banking education
the teacher … leads the students to memorize mechanically the narrated content. Worse yet, it turns them into “containers” into “receptacles” to be “filled” by the teacher. The more completely he fills the receptacles, the better a teacher he is. The more meekly the receptacles permit themselves to be filled, the better students they are. (p. 58)
Banking education dehumanizes because it leaves no room for choice—and if students cannot choose, they cannot reflect. Reflection is impossible without choice since it involves making up our own minds about learning. When we remove freedom, we remove reflection, and removing reflection makes learning a dehumanizing experience.
While freedom is essential for learning, simply opening up the classroom to an infinite number of choices is not the solution. As Barry Schwartz (2004) has explained, too much choice is little better than no choice:
When people have no choice, life is almost unbearable. … But as the number of choices keeps growing, negative aspects of having a multitude of options begin to appear. As the number of choices grows further, the negatives escalate until we become overloaded. At this point, choice no longer liberates, but debilitates. It might even be said to tyrannize. (p. 2)
If too many choices tyrannize, and too few choices dehumanize, what can a teacher do? Too much freedom leads to anarchy; too little freedom leads to student resentment, resistance, and apathy. Should teachers focus on freedom and just accept that freedom is messy and students will inevitably feel frustrated and waste learning opportunities? Or should teachers focus on control and just accept that resistance is inevitable and many students will never be motivated? The solution is both: Honoring students’ freedom by providing meaningful choices throughout the fabric of the entire day, and providing sufficient form for learning by designing experiences that enable students to take advantage of the freedom they are granted in the classroom—freedom within form.
This chapter describes approaches and strategies that teachers can employ to make freedom within form a central part of their learning community. Strategies and approaches include (a) employing dialogue structures that organize collaboration while respecting the autonomy of each individual, (b) using procedures and rituals to liberate and organize learning, (c) offering choices that are guided by clear criteria, and (d) being caring and controlling in the classroom.
When students work together, they often run up against the paradox of freedom. On one hand, they will be alienated from group activities when they don’t have choices about the tasks at hand. On the other hand, if groups are loosely structured with unclear goals and no direction and every student has input whenever and however he or she wishes, some voices will likely be drowned out, and some children may end up leaving the process more frustrated than empowered. Keith Sawyer (2007), writing about creative teams, describes how the paradox of freedom lies at the heart of much of the collaborative work of any team:
The key to improvised innovation is managing a paradox: establishing a goal that provides a focus for the team—just enough of one so that team members can tell when they move closer to a solution—but one that’s open-ended enough for problem-finding creativity to emerge. (p. 45)
Sawyer’s comments are about adult teams, but they are equally applicable to students. In Unmistakable Impact, I identify dialogue structures as one way to balance the need for freedom and form. Too much freedom leads to chaos; too much control leads to alienation. This is where dialogue structures come in. Dialogue structures are activities that are propelled by students’ free choices but organized so that outcomes are reached effectively.
To understand what a dialogue structure is, let’s start by analyzing the concept of dialogue. As David Bohm (1996) has written, dialogue is “thinking together.” In On Dialogue (1996), Bohm explains that the etymology of dialogue reveals that the word describes a form of communication where meaning moves back and forth between and through people. The original Greek meaning of “logos” is “meaning” and the original Greek meaning of “dia” is “through.” Bohm explains:
The picture or image that this derivation suggests is of a stream of meaning flowing among and through us and between us … out of which will emerge some new understanding. It’s something new, which may not have been in the starting point at all. It’s something creative. And this shared meaning is the “glue” or “cement” that holds people and societies together. (p. 1)
Dialogue structures unleash the free-flowing sharing of ideas by organizing student collaboration. The following are examples of structures teachers can use with students.
Brainstorming, Affinity Diagrams, and the Labovitch Method. Brainstorming is a dialogue structure familiar to most. First described by Alex Faickney Osborn in Applied Imagination (1953), brainstorming is a simple process whereby a group of people lists ideas or thoughts about a particular topic. A family might sit around the kitchen table brainstorming possible names for a new puppy, and a group of students might brainstorm ways their class could do something important for children in the developing world.
While brainstorming is a free activity, it works best when it is organized by guidelines. Two rules are basic to effective brainstorming.
During brainstorming, a group should try to come up with as many ideas as possible; the more ideas the better. The assumption here is that sometimes the best ideas come at the end of a brainstorming session.
Criticism should be put on hold during brainstorming so that people feel free to generate more, and more innovative, ideas. If participants aren’t worried about how good or bad an idea is, they are more likely to make suggestions. Evaluation of the ideas can occur after every idea has been listed.
The idea of brainstorming was adapted by Japanese anthropologist Jiro Kawakita, who created affinity diagrams. The affinity diagram process involves three steps. First, students pick a topic to be discussed and write down their ideas on sticky notes. Second, they affix all their sticky notes to the white board or a wall in the classroom. Then, usually without talking, they sort the notes into groups that are related. Affinity diagrams allow a large amount of information to be generated and organized very quickly.
My friend and former colleague Ben Labovitch, a master teacher at Humber College in Toronto, Canada, uses a method of analysis with his students that incorporates aspects of brainstorming and affinity diagrams. Ben uses what he refers to as the Three-Fold Method of Analysis to model interpretation of literary works, but the Three-Fold Method may be used in any subject area that involves analysis, which is probably most subjects (see Figure 12.1).
For the first step of the threefold analysis, Ben asks students to come to class ready to identify sections that stand out as important or memorable in a novel or other work they have just completed. During the class, following the methods of brainstorming, Ben writes down every important scene students suggest without judgment.
Once the white board is filled with scenes the students have identified as important, Ben follows the methods of affinity diagrams, asking students to group the scenes into different categories. For example, if his students were reading Huckleberry Finn, they might identify groupings of scenes that show Huck’s growing awareness of racism, the symbolic meaning of the river, or Mark Twain’s use of irony.
After brainstorming and grouping, Ben asks students to identify the big ideas or messages that they see. Ultimately, the big ideas become the thesis statements for essays, the groupings of scenes become the source for the main ideas, and individual scenes become the supporting details for each student’s essay.
Open Space. Harrison Owen’s Open Space Technology (1997) describes a group conversation process that is driven entirely by the interests and choices of participants. Although open space is frequently used by groups of adults interested in exploring topics from multiple perspectives (e.g., multinational corporations looking to identify breakthrough innovations or small not-for-profit organizations looking to identify effective fundraising), open space can be used in all sorts of ways in the classroom (see Figure 12.2).
During open space, participants list topics they would like to discuss and then organize themselves by joining with others who are interested in the same topics. Whoever proposes a topic to be discussed is expected to serve as a host for the conversation and generally keep the conversation moving once students move into groups. After all topics have been proposed, and perhaps posted on paper in different parts of the room, students join the group that most interests them. If students don’t feel they are contributing to or learning from a given group, they are free to move to another group. Owen calls this the Law of Two Feet, suggesting that if a conversation isn’t working for someone, they are free to use their two feet to find another one.
| Figure 12.1 | Labovitch’s Threefold Method of Analysis |
| Figure 12.2 | The Open Space Process in School |
Teachers can adapt aspects of open space for use in the classroom in a variety of ways. For example, a secondary science teacher might use open space to prompt deeper understanding of climate change by asking students to identify what they want to explore in a major project. Students might then identify a list of topics, such as scientific explanations of the causes of climate change, climate change’s impact on glaciers, a public relations campaign to educate the general public about the topic, a call to action describing what individuals can do about climate change, interviews with public figures to identify their views on the topic, and so forth.
The host for each topic of discussion is the student who proposed the topic, and students choose which topic they want to explore. If students don’t like the topic, they are free to propose a new one. If a topic is proposed that no one wants to do except the host, the host has the option of joining another group or working individually.
Aspects of open space may be used in any subject area. Students reading To Kill a Mockingbird, for example, might self-organize into discussion groups to discuss such topics as whether or not the book is still relevant today, personal applications of the book’s main theme, the writer’s craft, and so forth. Open space may also be used for content review, with students hosting discussions of content they know well, and other students joining groups to deepen their understanding. When using open space in this way, teachers may want to give all students a chance to be an expert and a learner, so that everyone gets to both share their knowledge and receive assistance.
Teachers can also choose to use only one or two strategies from open space. For example, a teacher might list the topics students will discuss, but let the students choose what they want to discuss. Or a teacher might assign “hosts” for a classroom discussion, let the group choose their own host, or arrange for “hosting” to be a responsibility that every student experiences. Teachers may also decide not to introduce the Law of Two Feet. The amount of freedom teachers provide depends on how well students have learned to use their freedom (through the teaching and reinforcing of expectations, procedures, and rituals, as described below), which in turn determines how much scaffolding is necessary. The challenge is recognizing that too little choice leads to alienation from the task, but that too little structure leads to inefficient learning and frustration. So the sooner students can experience more freedom in an orderly manner, the sooner they will be more engaged in learning.
To increase the likelihood that open space will be effective, teachers should teach the skills students need to be successful. This includes the strategies in this part of the book (expectations for activities, procedures, learning rituals, etc.) as well as skills specifically needed for open space. Thus, teachers might teach students how to host discussions, how to listen and encourage other students to speak up during discussion, criteria for the work produced during group work, and so forth. The open space process is a rich opportunity for students to work on content that they are personally interested in while also learning about collaboration. Finally, by providing a structure for free choices, open space is also a great example of freedom within form.
Structured Choices. When teachers provide students with the opportunity to have meaningful input into their learning, students sometimes have to make decisions before everyone can move forward. For example, when a group of students are working together on a project, they may need to make decisions about the direction of their project. Other decisions might address how students will work together, how students will contribute to their community, what content will be covered in a particular topic (in settings where such freedom is possible), or simply how students will celebrate a group or individual success.
One way to address these decision points is by simply opening up discussion—much can be learned from a freewheeling conversation. However, a lot of time can be burned up discussing what treats will be served at the end-of-year party and similar topics, and often teachers would rather have their students use that time to learn something more important.
To move the discussion forward while also providing students with meaningful choices, teachers can provide structured choices. A structured choice is one that is controlled by the teacher but that also gives students some meaningful choices. For example, if a class needs to decide on how it will do some form of public service, a teacher can offer a structured choice by asking all students to write down their ideas and hand them in. She can then sort through the suggestions, identify the most popular ones, and have the students vote on the choice they prefer. By offering a structured choice, the teacher can still give each student a voice in the process but ensure that a minimal amount of time is taken for the decision.
One well-known method for structuring choices is the nominal group technique, a simple four-step dialogue structure that can be used to lead a group to a decision. Students can work in groups or work together as one large group when using this approach. The steps are as follows:
The process begins with the teacher presenting a question or problem and asking students to write down their ideas on slips of paper or index cards. Each student writes down his or her ideas without consulting other students.
During the next stage, all the students’ ideas are recorded. To do so, the teacher might gather all the notes and write down everything she finds or ask students to read their ideas out loud as she records them. If students are working in groups, the host of the group discussion can record comments on chart paper or some other form of poster paper.
The teacher or host of the discussion (if students are meeting in small groups) then directs the students’ attention to each of the ideas and asks for comments. Anyone who wants to say something about a topic should feel free to speak up.
Once the discussion is complete, students vote privately. Sometimes students generate a list of criteria for the vote, at other times the teacher gives students criteria, and at yet other times students do not need criteria. All the votes are tallied and shared with the group.
Structured choices and nominal group technique can be used to make decisions about actions that might or might not take place in a classroom, or the process can be directed at content in the class. For example, in a contemporary history class, students could explore ways to address social problems related to the environment, poverty, the developing world, teenage pregnancy, or whatever is most important for learning. Students could also explore solutions to historical problems. For example, a teacher might lay out the interests of all countries sitting at the table to draft the Treaty of Versailles, without giving the details of the treaty, and ask students to suggest possible solutions. Students could even be prompted to use nominal group technique to solve scientific or mathematical problems.
Other Dialogue Structures. There are many other dialogue structures that can be used in the classroom. Formative assessments, such as exit tickets (see Chapter 3), can be used to ask students, “What was the most important thing you learned today?” “What important questions do you still have?” or “What was the muddiest point in ______?” (Angelo & Cross, 1993, pp. 154–158).
Pro and con grids, in which students are asked to come up with a minimum number of pros and cons on a topic, can be used to enable students to see an issue from more than one perspective. Or students can be asked to use the FOG method of analysis to identify whether ideas in a piece of writing are Facts, Opinions, or Guesses (Straker, 1997, pp. 27–34). What counts with all of these structures is that students have a real voice and choice in learning and that that freedom is organized so that everyone truly can contribute in meaningful ways.
If students are to experience the kind of freedom inherent in dialogue structures, rituals and procedures must be in place to ensure that that learning doesn’t go awry. One way to do that is to teach students certain procedures and rituals that organize experiences and keep learning productive.
Procedures. In Teach Like a Champion (2010), Doug Lemov describes a video of a teacher, Doug McCurry, teaching his students to hand out papers. In the clip, McCurry explains that students are to “pass across rows; start on his command; that only the person passing gets out of his or her seat if required and so on.” Then McCurry has the students practice the procedure until they can do it fluently. He even times the students until they can pass out papers in less than 10 seconds.
Lemov reports that when he shows this clip in workshops, some teachers inevitably find fault with what they see as poor instruction. Then Lemov explains why he thinks McCurry is actually using highly effective instruction:
Assume that the average class of students passes out or back papers and materials twenty times a day and that it takes a typical class a minute and twenty seconds to do this. If McCurry’s students can accomplish this task in just twenty seconds, they will save twenty minutes a day. … Now multiply that twenty minutes per day by 190 school days, and find that McCurry has just taught his students a routine that will net him thirty-eight hundred minutes of additional instruction over the course of a school year. (p. 7)
Although some may question whether or not students would or should hand out papers 20 times a day, Lemov’s point is a good one. Teaching student procedures saves time and, perhaps more important, creates the kind of order necessary for student freedom to exist. When students have learned the procedures for small-group discussion, for example, it is much easier for them to participate in open-space kinds of activities. But if students haven’t learned how to listen to each other, discuss ideas constructively, and take turns, the kind of freedom offered in open space will end up being chaotic and unproductive.
In Classroom Management for Secondary Teachers, Emmer, Evertson, and Worsham (2003) explain how important it is for teachers to explain procedures:
It is just not possible for a teacher to conduct instruction or for students to work productively if they have no guidelines for how to behave or when to move about the room, or if they frequently interrupt the teacher and one another. Furthermore, inefficient procedures and the absence of routines for common aspects of classroom life, such as taking and reporting attendance, participating in discussions, turning in materials, or checking work, can waste large amounts of time and cause students’ attention to wane. (p. 17)
Teaching students exactly how to do the procedures Emmer and colleagues list may seem to inhibit student freedom, but the reality is that freedom is not possible unless procedures are explained, modeled, and practiced. Only when students know exactly how to do tasks such as hand out papers, pass out supplies, or move desks into different groupings are they able to experience freer dialogue structures and other learning experiences.
Teachers adopting the freedom-within-form approach set out to teach routines and procedures that increase freedom. One way to accomplish this seeming paradox is through the use of learning rituals that structure students’ experiences while making it easier for them to participate as they see fit. I use the term ritual here to refer to an action or set of actions that are used in a routine, consistent way. A number of learning rituals that foster freedom within form are described below.
Talking Stick. The talking stick ritual originated with indigenous North Americans and was likely first used during tribal council circles. The talking stick, often a carved wooden staff, was passed around the circle to whomever chose to speak. Since only the person holding the stick was allowed to talk, the ritual ensured that everyone had a chance to speak and everyone listened to the speaker. When the speaker was finished, he or she passed the stick to somebody else, and if that person wished to speak, he or she would hold the stick while speaking. In this way, every speaker had an opportunity to speak, and no single voice was allowed to dominate and silence others. The ritual increased each speaker’s freedom since every speaker had an equal chance to speak.
When I observed Sandi Silbernagel teach in Slidell, Louisiana, I saw how she used a variation on the talking stick ritual. When Sandi brought her second-grade students together for a discussion circle, she gave them a stuffed animal (a talking crab) to pass around to see who wanted to add comments to the discussion. Whoever held the talking crab had the chance to speak, and everyone else was expected to listen. What worked for aboriginal tribal council circles worked just as well in Sandi’s classroom, for each of her students had an opportunity to speak up and everyone listened to each speaker. Freedom was increased by form.
Timers. Teachers can also increase freedom through the use of timers. Teachers can use timers—such as those that are built into Promethean Boards or Smart Boards, or simple kitchen timers—to let students know how much time they have for an activity. Explaining precisely how long students can work on a cooperative learning activity helps maintain student focus and often increases how much students learn.
Attention Signals. There are many ways that teachers can get students’ attention. These include counting to five, ringing a bell, raising one’s hand, and saying “may I have your attention please.” By ensuring that every student understands and responds to an attention signal, teachers can maintain control and significantly increase the amount of time students are actually learning.
Taking Roll. To ensure that the least amount of time is consumed by taking roll, teachers should create a simple ritual and use it each day. There are many ways to do this, but what matters is that the students have something meaningful to work on while the teacher takes roll. By doing it the same way every day, the teacher ensures that students always know what to do while she takes roll.
Beginnings. To get the day off to a good start, many teachers start each class with a warm-up activity such as silent reading, journal writing, or a review assignment. Some teachers begin by asking students to review the learning map, if one is being used. Others begin class with an advance organizer in which they explain what will be learned, why it is important, how the new knowledge fits with what has been learned, and what students need to do.
Endings. Rituals can be used just as effectively at the end of a class as at the beginning. Teachers can end class by prompting students to add newly learned content to their learning map (see Chapter 4) or by asking students to complete an exit ticket (see Chapter 3). Teachers can also simply ensure that every class ends with a post organizer in which the teacher guides students, through questions, to discuss such topics as (a) what was learned today, (b) how does what was learned fit with the bigger ideas being learned in the unit, and (c) what will be learned tomorrow.
Learning rituals create an orderly learning environment, and as such they make it easier for teachers to provide freer experiences for students. In a classroom where simple rituals are in place and acted upon every day, there are many ways for the free spirit of a child to find its natural place. In a classroom where there is a lack of order, the free spirit of a child must fight to find expression and often never is given a voice at all.
Freedom is primarily about making choices, so teachers who want to create freedom in their classrooms make student choice a central part of what happens in every class, every day. Students can make meaningful choices about many important and foundational aspects of their learning, including (a) the norms and expectations of their learning community, (b) the material they will read, (c) the learning activities they will complete, (d) how they will do their work, and (e) who they will work with.
Simply providing choices without some structure to guide those choices may not lead to productive learning. Giving students complete freedom to choose everything about their learning, for example, without establishing guidelines or criteria for work could lead to poor-quality student products and limited student learning. If students’ free choices are truly to lead to optimal learning, that freedom must be contained and set free with some kind of structure. Here are a few suggestions for how to balance choice with criteria.
Reading Material. In The Book Whisperer: Awakening the Inner Reader in Every Child (2009), Donalyn Miller provides a great example of how the freedom of choice can be set free by form. Based on her experience teaching reading, Miller asserts that “providing students with the opportunity to choose their own books to read empowers and encourages them … Readers without power to make their own choices are unmotivated.”
Miller believes that allowing students to have free choice is an essential part of engaging them in reading. However, she is also very clear that simply letting students pick books is not sufficient to inspire and develop readers. First, Miller says that in her class it is simply not acceptable for students to choose not to read. Second, all students are told that she expects them to read 40 books in a year. In addition, Miller references the work of Australian researcher Brian Clairbourne to suggest several guidelines for learning:
For Miller, choice is a critical part of student learning, but that choice must be balanced by criteria and guidelines for action. Criteria can also shape many other aspects of what takes place in a classroom.
Classroom Norms. Clearly describing rules and procedures can be an important part of creating an effective learning community, but once again, rules and norms are best created through a combination of freedom and form. Marzano et al., in Classroom Management That Works, explain that “research … indicates that rules and procedures should not be simply imposed on students. Rather, the proper design of rules and procedures involves explanation and group input” (p. 16).
One way to create norms is to use some version of structured choices or nominal group technique. In that way, all students can have input, and even vote on the norms, and once they are created, norms can provide the structure for many free learning experiences.
Learning Topics. When students choose their own topics, they often bring prior knowledge to the learning task, and that prior knowledge enables them to experience deeper learning. However, not all learning experiences fit all topics, and not all topics are sufficiently challenging. Teachers may need to articulate what types of topics are acceptable and what types are off-limits.
Learning Tasks. Students can also make choices about how they learn. Indeed, when students choose how they want to learn, they frequently choose activities that especially speak to their strengths. A student who is interested in video, for example, might learn an enormous amount more from creating a video than from writing a paragraph, so providing choice can greatly enhance his or her learning. To ensure high-quality work, teachers might establish specific criteria for what quality work involves (research, organization, editing, creativity, thoroughness) and confirm the criteria with students before they start the assignment. In this way, students have the freedom to choose their work, and teachers can rest assured they will do quality work.
Learning Partners. Students often want to choose their learning partners. The risks are that students working with friends might distract each other from the learning at hand or that some students might be skipped over in the selection process. For that reason, a teacher can ask students for suggested partners, and after reviewing students’ choices, make the ultimate decisions about student pairings. Also, if a teacher has carefully taught expectations for all activities and transitions, she can use those as ground rules for all activities. When clear expectations have been laid out for all activities, much more freedom can be offered in choice of partners.
The Measures of Effective Teaching Project, best known as the MET project, has mounted a comprehensive study to “test new approaches to measuring effective teaching” (see metproject.org). Their work brings together partners from multiple organizations, including Harvard University, Teachscape, the New Teacher Center, Stanford University, and Educational Testing Service, all focused on the shared goal of building “fair and reliable systems for measuring teacher effectiveness that can be used for a variety of purposes.”
The MET project has worked with more than 3,000 teacher volunteers in six school districts and employed a comprehensive range of assessments, including student achievement, classroom observations and teachers’ reflections, measures of teachers’ pedagogical knowledge, student perceptions of the classroom instructional environment, and teachers’ perceptions of working conditions and instructional support at their schools.
A central part of the MET project is the Tripod survey instrument developed over 10 years by Harvard researcher Ron Ferguson, which “assesses the extent to which students experience the classroom environment as engaging, demanding, and supportive of their intellectual growth.” The survey asks students if they agree or disagree with a variety of statements. After giving the survey to thousands of students in elementary and secondary classrooms,2 the authors found the following:
Student perceptions of a given teacher’s strengths and weaknesses are consistent across the different groups of students they teach. Moreover, students seem to know effective teaching when they experience it: student perceptions in one class are related to the achievement gains in other classes taught by the same teacher. (p. 9)
After reviewing an enormous amount of data, the researchers identified two variables that most consistently identified effective instruction: caring and control.3 These results are similar to what we have observed in schools. If a teacher is in control but lacks caring, his controlling approach may lead to resentment, as students feel their autonomy limited by someone who doesn’t seem to understand their situation. If a teacher is caring but not in control, however, students might ignore classroom expectations and boundaries and waste a considerable amount of time.
A conversation I had with instructional coach LaVonne Holmgren, a highly experienced educator whom I featured in my book Instructional Coaching: A Partnership Approach to Improving Instruction (2007), reinforces these findings. “What the students tell me,” LaVonne said, “is that there are two kinds of teachers, mean ones and easy ones. The students resent the mean ones, and they walk all over the nice ones. Effective teachers need to learn how to be nice and in control, not one or the other.”
In Chapter 11, Power With, Not Power Over, I explained several ways by which teachers can be caring toward their students. They can empathize, listen authentically, demonstrate respect, be a witness to the good, and model caring behavior for all students to see. More than anything else, caring is about seeing children as people who deserve the same respect as we give to adults.
But what about control? One way teachers maintain control is by demonstrating a respectful level of confidence. This means teachers carry themselves in a way that nonverbally communicates that they are in control. For example, they make eye contact, turn their bodies toward students, speak clearly and confidently, and so forth.
This is easier said than done. Thus, telling novice teachers that they need to be confident is a bit like telling batters that they shouldn’t strike out. They know what they are supposed to do, but they’re not sure how to do it. Robert Sutton (2010), in his discussion of effective leaders, offers some sage advice. He asserts that good bosses (and I extend his ideas to good teachers) exude confidence even when they don’t feel confidence. Sutton writes:
Faking it until you make it can trigger a self-fulfilling prophecy: by acting as if you know what you are doing and in control, even if it isn’t true at first, such confidence can inspire you and others to achieve great performance. (p. 52)
For teachers, this means that they must remain calm, no matter what craziness descends on the classroom. Books on conflict resolution and relationship building, such as Difficult Conversations (2009) by Douglas Stone, Bruce Patton, and Sheila Heen or Fierce Conversations (2002) by Susan Scott, although designed for the corporate world, can teach us a lot about how to remain calm and in control under pressure; besides, teachers can apply the Name It, Reframe It, and Tame It strategies described in my book Unmistakable Impact: A Partnership Approach for Dramatically Improving Instruction (2011).
Acting in control is a start, but it does not make up for poor planning and boring assignments. The easiest way for teachers to increase their confidence and control is to use effective teaching practices such as those described throughout this book. When teachers develop and share learning maps that describe appropriately challenging unit plans, use formative assessments, engage students through the use of stories, thinking prompts, cooperative learning, or other practices, and provide students with relevant, challenging assignments and activities, they will find it much easier to project confidence.
The community-building strategies described in this part of the book also help teachers lead the classroom with confidence. Teachers who develop and teach expectations for all activities and transitions, and reinforce those expectations with frequent praise and calm consistent corrections, will find themselves more and more at ease. In addition, teachers who build relationships with students and create learner-friendly environments will find it easier to be in control every day in every class. Finally, when students’ needs for autonomy are respected, students are much more likely to work within structures. Giving students real choices makes it easier to control students when there really is no choice.
Control is important, but it does not mean that teachers need to control every student’s every action. Kids need to play; they need to have fun; and fun is just as important in the classroom as it is on the playground. Indeed, when teachers create a setting where students know that their teacher has things under control, they are much more likely to genuinely enjoy and get the most out of their learning—the ultimate goal of effective teachers everywhere.
Lori Sinclair explains how she organizes her class for freedom within form.
Video 12.1 www.corwin.com/highimpactinstruction
Lead a book study with teachers around this chapter. Consider discussing such questions as these:
One way to assess the impact of freedom within form is by assessing student engagement. Students will most likely be engaged in learning when they are free to make choices that lead them to see learning as meaningful and when sufficient structure is provided for them to act on that freedom. If there is a lack of engagement, probably one of those two factors needs to be adjusted—more freedom, or more form.
Engagement can be assessed in a number of ways. Many educators assess time on task, that is, how many students look like they are engaged. Time on task can be measured by counting the number of students in a class, counting the number who are on task, and then calculating a percentage. In a class of 25 students, for example, if 20 are on task, then the on-task percentage is 80%. A good goal for time on task is 90 or 95%. For more information on time on task, see the book’s companion website, www.corwin.com/highimpactinstruction.
Another way to gather data on engagement is to simply ask the students to tell you if they are engaged. Teachers can accomplish this by explaining to students each of the levels of engagement and then asking for feedback. In her second-grade classroom, Sandi Silbernagel from Slidell, Louisiana, gives her students Popsicle sticks and has them put them in cans marked for the three levels of engagement, so she can assess their level of engagement.
Teachers can also get feedback on students’ level of engagement by surveying them at different times during a class. I call this experience sampling. This is accomplished by giving students a simple form such as the one included in Figure 12.3, with numbers arranged across the page under the headings engaged, compliant, and noncompliant. Discussion of the form can be a springboard for a healthy dialogue about the importance of engagement in learning. Teachers might ask students what engages them or how they can find personal connections in learning to make learning more relevant and thus engaging, or what could be changed in class to increase their learning.
Once everyone understands the three levels of engagement, the teacher can explain that she will be setting a timer to ring every 10 minutes (the timer may be a simple kitchen timer or the timer on a cell phone) and that when the bell on the timer rings, students are to circle the number that best reflects their level of involvement.
Teachers can learn a lot by keeping track of what students are doing at each ring. They should review their data the day they do the engagement sampling and look for trends. They can also calculate a mean and then repeat the sampling a few weeks later to see if student engagement has changed. If you try out a new practice, you can also use the form to see how effectively it engages students.
Sandi Silbernagel explains how she assesses engagement.
Video 12.2 www.corwin.com/highimpactinstruction
Download information on assessing time on task at www.corwin.com/highimpactinstruction
| Figure 12.3 | Engagement Form |
Copyright © 2013 by Corwin. All rights reserved. Reprinted from High-Impact Instruction: A Framework for Great Teaching by Jim Knight. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin, www.corwin.com.
Download this form at www.corwin.com/highimpactinstruction
• Form without freedom is oppressive and decreases interest and motivation.
Several publications lay the theoretical groundwork for this chapter, and all of the them deserve further study. Daniel Pink’s Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us (2011) is a great summary of much of the research on motivation. Pink’s statements about goals as motivation are important for any educator to review. Two books, Barry Schwartz’s The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less (2005) and Sheena Iyengar’s The Art of Choosing: The Decisions We Make Every Day (2011), convincingly make the case that while choice is an essential part of a free, authentic life, too much choice can be just as limiting as too little choice.
David Bohm’s On Dialogue (1996) is a concise, wise book about the importance of dialogue as a part of life. Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1970) is a profound, important, and challenging work about the role freedom and dialogue play in humanizing education, in conversation, and in life.
Harrison Owen’s Open Space Technology: A User’s Guide (2008) offers excellent suggestions on how any facilitator (e.g., a teacher or an organizational consultant) can lead open space sessions. Donalyn Miller’s The Book Whisperer: Awakening the Inner Reader in Every Child (2009) is the best example of freedom within form that I have read.
1. My wife, Jenny, introduced me to the concept of freedom within form, an idea that extends back to classical times. Jenny learned it from her friend and mentor Charlotte Ostermann.
2. A total of 963 elementary classrooms with more than five students responded, and 2,986 secondary classrooms with more than five students responded.
3. For more information on the MET project methodology see www.metproject.org.
4. You can learn more about the Tripod project at www.tripodproject.org.
