4 Mindframes for Leaders From a Distance
How you think about your work has an impact on the way you do the work and the decisions you make. We have saved this section for last as we believe that the following mindframes will serve you well, long after the current crises has passed. In fact, during distance learning you have an opportunity to practice and develop these mindframes. We encourage you to take some time to think about your internal operating system, or mindframes, and how these might help you lead from a distance and into the future.
“We’ve got this!” That’s how principal Jesse Salcedo starts and ends each session with teachers and staff. As he says, “We have to focus on the things that are in our control and lead with confidence. I want the people I work with to feel the confidence, even if I don’t have all of the answers. I want people to know that we are working hard to ensure that they are supported and that their students continue to learn. It’s actually my choice, how I choose to view the world. I choose positive. It’s my mindset that makes the difference.”
We agree with Mr. Salcedo. The underlying beliefs that you have will influence the decisions you make and the way that you interact with others. The Visible Learning research calls them mindframes and they are the mental attitudes and habits important for leadership. We have saved the leadership mindframes for last because we recognize that there are many logistics that must be addressed in leading from a distance. But even more importantly, we hope that these mindframes endure long after distance learning. In fact, we hope these mindframes guide your efforts to bring schools back even better than they were before. In this section, we present ten mindframes for leaders, which were first introduced by Hattie and Smith (2021) but we have adapted for distance learning. Each mindframe is a principle that serves you well, irrespective of the format of schooling. The following mindframes focus on self-regulation—or the ability to control and direct one’s behavior, emotions, and thoughts:
- I am an evaluator of my impact on teacher and student learning.
- I see assessment as informing my impact and next steps.
- I collaborate with my peers and my teachers about my conceptions of progress and my impact.
- I am a change agent and I believe all teachers and students can improve.
- I strive for challenge rather than merely doing my best.
- I give and help students and teachers understand feedback and I interpret and act on feedback given to me.
- I engage as much in dialogue as in monologue.
- I explicitly inform teachers and students what successful impact looks like from the outset.
- I build relationships and trust so that learning can occur in a place where it is safe to make mistakes and learn from others.
- I focus on learning and the language of learning.
What are your initial thoughts as you read that list? Did you recognize yourself in some or many? Are you interested in how developing these mindsets can serve you well as you lead your school or system from a distance? Before you move into this section of the playbook, take a few minutes to self-assess where you currently are in building a virtual school climate.
Mindframe 1
I am an evaluator of my impact on teacher and student learning.
As we have noted earlier, the average impact from principals on student learning is 0.37, slightly below average. Like all averages, it hides the remarkable variance in the impact of school leaders because of their mindframes. Thus the question is, what are the mindframes of school leaders such that you can increase your impact? If you work to create a healthy climate, deliver on the promise of equity, serve as an instructional leader, and guide the professional learning of teachers, your impact should be significant. So a better question is, how do you know that you are having an impact? And what can you do if the impact is not where you want it?
One way to plan for the eventual assessment of your impact is to create a simple logic model. Logic models provide an overview of how your effort is supposed to work and describe what happens when the actions are accomplished (Julian, 1997). Others call this a theory of change or even a road map. Having a logic model allows you to identify a common challenge, allocate resources, project the impact, and then monitor it for success. There are a number of different tools that you can use. We’ve included a simple logic model that a leadership team developed to increase attendance in distance learning (see Figure 4.1). Attendance in synchronous sessions had decreased and teachers were concerned. As the principal noted, they had a challenge and knew the outcome they hoped for. Thinking evaluatively allowed the administrative team to determine their impact.
DescriptionFigure 4.1 Goal: Increase attendance in synchronous distance learning sessions.
Available for download at resources.corwin.com/DLPlaybook-leaders
Make It Actionable
The first step is to diagnose a common challenge. What is something that is impeding the learning of teachers or students? You may have a few logic models operating at the same time. The goal is to determine if they are effective and having the desired impact. To engage in diagnosis, develop logic models, and then implement them to ensure effectiveness and impact requires a particular way of thinking. Evaluative thinking is the core principle underpinning all of the mindframes for leaders. As Clinton (2021) noted, “evaluative thinking is a cognitive process; it’s a way of being” (p. 14). It involves the proficiency to ask, “What is my impact?” and collect the evidence of your actions and leadership of teachers that will help to answer this evaluative question. Thus, as you think through the logic model, consider the ways in which you can ask questions, collect data, and take action.
From there, identify the resources and activities that are likely to be useful and identify the outputs and outcomes. This is not a solo activity; use your leadership team. But remember this mindframe is about developing a type of thinking: that of an evaluator who looks at data, is skilled in interpretation and storytelling based on these data, and makes decisions based on what the data say. And it’s about reflecting on the impact that you had on both teachers and students.
Mindframe 2
I see assessment as informing my impact and next steps.
Schools are awash with information. But most of it is not used to determine the impact that teachers and leaders have on students. Imagine if we used the available data to determine our impact and then planned next steps for personal and school improvement. It’s much like we recommend to teachers. It’s about interpretation, shared interpretation, and action based on these interpretations. Use the interpretation of the data you have around you to make decisions about your impact and how you can move student learning forward.
The students at DuPaul Middle School were not performing well on their end-of-unit assessments. As the principal noted, it was pretty much across the board. The attendance and participation rates, reported in the data, were respectable. In fact, they were better than many of the schools in the district. But the assessment results, and thus grade point averages, were far below those from the previous year and at least half of the other middle schools in the district. These data are begging for defensible interpretations. The team combed through the data and could not reasonably determine why the scores were so low. Then they visited synchronous sessions, talked with teachers, and reviewed assignments in the learning management system.
And there it was. The tasks that were being assigned were not aligned with grade-level expectations, but the assessments were. In fact, the assessments had been developed during previous school years. But the tasks were less rigorous than the assessments. This is not uncommon as others have documented the fact that assignments are often not aligned with grade-level expectations (TNTP, 2018). In their discussion with teachers, the leaders noted that the teachers were well intentioned and wanted to ensure that students were successful in distance learning. This tension—between ensuring students experienced success in a new learning environment and expecting students to achieve—was the source of the challenge. And the leaders had to engage in dialogue with teachers to better understand the next steps and to ensure that students learned what they were supposed to.
Depending on the results of your team time discussions, you are likely to need additional time for gathering the data. If the data needed are not immediately available, develop a list of tasks so that the data will be made available for the next meeting. Be sure to charge specific team members with gathering the data the team members agreed they needed.
Data Needed | Who Will Gather It | Date Needed |
|---|---|---|
Preparing for the Data Analysis Protocol How will the data be assembled and shared with the team? |
Make It Actionable
Once you and your team have a sufficient amount of data, the next step requires an analysis of the data to determine potential steps moving forward. A protocol can serve as a powerful resource in keeping the team focused and efficient during data analysis. It is easy and tempting at times to digress into topics that are not going to impact student growth and achievement. Using a protocol is a way to avoid these diversions while maintaining a structure that supports the intended purpose of the analysis. Take a moment to review the following protocol, which is adapted from the National School Reform Faculty.
This is a formal protocol that involves a team. As this mindframe develops, you will internalize this process and start to naturally use assessment information to help you determine your impact and your next steps.
Mindframe 3
I collaborate with my peers and my teachers about my conceptions of progress and my impact.
Collective teacher efficacy is the belief of a group that they possess as a team the wherewithal to positively impact student learning. Members of a group with a high degree of collective efficacy have confidence that they can successfully execute a course of action (Bandura, 1997). Evidence of collective efficacy transcends professions. Athletes draw on their beliefs about the success of their team to win the game. Military forces count on their beliefs that fellow soldiers are providing top-notch information and making wise decisions. In medicine, patients under the care of nurses with a high degree of collective efficacy heal more rapidly.
Collective teacher efficacy refers to a staff’s shared belief that through their collective action, they can positively influence student outcomes, including those who are disengaged or disadvantaged. And it’s powerful with an effect size of 1.39. In part, leaders need to foster and support teacher collective efficacy. Doing so requires that teams set goals, allocate resources such as time and effort, and collect evidence to determine their impact. It’s an ongoing cycle that allows teams to see that their efforts are effective and, over time, they come to attribute success to their efforts. We noted the power of a professional learning cycle in the section on professional learning.
Collective teacher efficacy: a staff’s shared belief that through collective action, they can positively influence student outcomes.
But this mindframe also notes the value of collaborating with peers. Donohoo (2021) notes that “collective leadership efficacy refers to principals’ shared beliefs about their collective capacity to improve student outcomes within and across schools in the district” (p. 37). When leadership teams within the school and across the district believe that they will impact learning, set goals, allocate resources, collect evidence, and attribute their success to their efforts, the power of the collective is enhanced.
Your reactions to these reflective statements are real. We don’t want to discount or diminish your experiences and feelings. But if any of them are true for you, your ability to impact students’ learning through collective efficacy will be compromised. And if your peers are engaged in the same reflective work, you might all just come to realize that we need to put some of our histories aside for the benefit of students.
Make It Actionable
Distance learning has presented a number of challenges for teachers and some have even suggested that their belief in themselves has been compromised. As leaders with this mindframe, you want to ensure that your colleagues are motivated and supported.
Motivation comes, in part, when people see the task as relevant. Parenthetically, motivation also increases when people feel that they can be successful. The expectancy-value model of learning (Wigfield & Eccles, 2000) suggests that expectations regarding success and the value of completing a task affect an individual’s behavior. Over time, cost was added to this model as individuals consider the return on their investment. There are many ways to use an expectancy-value-cost scale, including the value that people have for their collaboration with others or their engagement in distance learning. We have adapted the tool Kosovich, Hulleman, Barron, and Getty (2015) developed to determine students’ motivation in math and science to learn. In our adaptation, this instrument can help you gauge teachers’ motivation for continuous improvement of distance learning.
Item | Strongly Disagree (1) | Disagree (2) | Slightly Disagree (3) | Slightly Agree (4) | Agree (5) | Strongly Agree (6) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
I know that I can learn to be an effective distance learning educator. | ||||||
I believe that I can be a success teaching at a distance. | ||||||
I think my class is important. | ||||||
I value my class and what it offers students. | ||||||
I think my class is useful for students. | ||||||
My preparation for distance learning classes takes too much time. | ||||||
Because of the other things that I do, I don’t have time to put into my class. | ||||||
I am unable to put in the time needed to prepare well. | ||||||
I have to give up too much to teach from a distance well. |
This adapted survey has not been validated, but it has been used in a number of schools to provide leaders with data about teacher expectations, values, and costs. It helps leaders allocate their time and efforts to support teachers and maintain the collective efficacy of their teams. You could modify this tool and ask about the value, expectations, and costs of being part of team as well.
Mindframe 4
I am a change agent and I believe all teachers and students can improve.
Effective school leaders work together with others to effect change. The collective efficacy of any group is powered by trust and relationships. Efficacious groups seek out feedback and provide feedback to one another. Importantly, they resolve conflicts, make decisions and adapt based on their results. But the collective efficacy of a school staff is undermined when the school leader adopts a heroic stance (Robinson, Lloyd, & Rowe, 2008). Hardly anything will rob a group of its agency more quickly than having one person communicate that they alone are the Solver of All Problems. Instead of empowering colleagues to address challenges together, the hero-principal ushers in an era of learned helplessness. A global pandemic and the necessary shift to distance learning certainly counts as a change in need of lots of solutions. You simply cannot do it alone.
Building the agency of the group requires investing in the professional capital of the group (Hargreaves & Fullan, 2012). Professional capital refers to the human, social, and decisional capital of an organization. Social capital is a measure of the quality of the trusting relationships, while human capital is a measure of the professional skills of its members. The authors described the work of Leana (2011), an organizational management researcher, as an example of the effects of these two on student learning. She measured each in 130 schools and correlated them to mathematics achievement at the beginning and end of the school year. In other words, she wanted to gauge impact. Schools with high social capital (trusting collaborative relationships) did well. Schools with both high social capital and human capital (technical skills) did even better. Here’s where it gets interesting. Students of teachers in schools that had high social capital but who themselves possessed low human capital did better, too. It turns out that when the conditions allow for staff to collaborate meaningfully with others, good teaching rubs off. In other words, you can build your human capital through social capital. However, the reverse is not true.
Decisional capital is the third factor. This is a measure of how one gains the ability to make judgments and decisions. Medical professionals, as one example, learn not just the technical skills needed, but they also acquire an increasing ability over their careers to make decisions about treatment. Educators must learn to do the same, both in the moment of active teaching (a practice referred to as noticing) and in planning future instruction. The ability to reflect, make decisions, and collaborate with others are all necessary for decisional capital to grow. Similarly, you can build human capital through decisional capital.
As a school leader your mindframe must be one that fosters the social and decisional capital of the organization. In terms of distance learning, we are all learning in real time. It is essential that emerging good practices are quickly disseminated. A major way to do so is ensure that teachers have opportunities to collaborate with one another. Just as importantly, staff must have an inclination to take up those emerging good practices. That’s the trust factor. Your involvement is vital. You are a co-learner with them and you empower them to make decisions. You amplify what they are learning by feeding back to them to clarify ideas and decisions. Most importantly, you act upon those emerging solutions, helping to disseminate and support the uptake, and directing resources that support development. Fullan (2019, 2020) calls this “new leadership” and the timing couldn’t be better. Figure 4.2 is a visual illustration of this model.
DescriptionFigure 4.2 New Leadership
Source: Hattie, J., & Smith, R. (2020). 10 mindframes for leaders: The Visible Learning® approach to school success. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin. Used with permission.
Make It Actionable
As a change agent, you build the agency and collective efficacy of school teams. Access your current status as a school leader committed to building the professional capital of your organization in order to better address distance learning and speed the rate of change in adopting emerging wise practices.
Mindframe 5
I strive for challenge rather than merely doing my best.
We have noted the value of goals in the instructional section of this book as well as the value of teams working on common challenges in this mindframes sections. Having goals is important. You should have instructional goals and you should have common challenges that are part of your logic model(s). But this mindframe is more personal. What goals do you have for yourself? How do you challenge yourself to be a better leader?
Some people thrive on challenge; others avoid it. In fact, some people shrink away from challenge and just try to do their best. With all due respect, leaders must embrace challenges with confidence and support the members of their school community in doing so. None of us expected to be suddenly leading schools from a distance. But we are. It’s a challenge. There have been challenges before and there will be challenges after this.
None of us expected to be suddenly leading schools from a distance. But we are. It’s a challenge. There have been challenges before and there will be challenges after this.
When you strive for challenge, you establish personal goals. And not just any goals. Your goal orientation is important. Goal orientation can be either mastery or performance. Martin (2013) explains, “Mastery orientation is focused on factors and processes such as effort, self-improvement, skill development, learning, and the task at hand. Performance orientation is focused more on demonstrating relative ability, social comparison, and outperforming others” (p. 353). In other words, it’s the difference between saying, “I want to learn to speak Spanish” (mastery) rather than “I want to get an A in Spanish (performance).” Leaders tend to set both types of goals. They want their schools to be successful based on whatever measures are used in their systems. And they want to continually improve their leadership skills. Consider the following goals that some of the leaders who educated us about leading during distance learning set for themselves:
- Improve time management
- Develop emotional intelligence
- Strive to be antiracist
- Cultivate resilience
- Listen actively
- Improve public speaking skills
One of the tips from the world of business about setting personal, challenging goals is to focus on what you can control and then plan for the rest. That seems like good advice during a pandemic—or any other crisis.
Make It Actionable
Stephen Goldberg of Optimus Performance recommends the KSS method. The K stands for keep doing, the S stands for stop doing, and the other S stands for start doing. By using this approach, you are recognizing what you do well, what you should no longer do and what you need to begin doing. They have developed a template that you can use to articulate your personal, challenge goal.
Mindframe 6
I give and help students and teachers understand feedback and I interpret and act on feedback given to me.
Feedback has the power to create change. But it doesn’t always do so. It is important to note that the ultimate arbiter of the usefulness of feedback is the receiver, not the giver. It is the individual receiving the feedback who determines whether it is understandable, which means the giver must be attuned to feedback language. If an individual doesn’t understand the feedback given, then it isn’t useful. Period.
Further, perceptions about feedback are influenced by cultural and personal factors specific to the receiver, to be sure. However, a major factor is the relationship between the sender and receiver. If there is a weak relationship between the sender and receiver, the feedback is less likely to be received and used. When there is a strong relationship, the feedback is more likely to cause change.
Importantly, one of the best ways to ensure that feedback is received is to ensure that it’s based on something that the receiver has asked for. There is a model of feedback called GREAT. The GREAT model developed by LarkApps, a team productivity and engagement company that specializes in supporting businesses whose employees work remotely but collaborate regularly. They note that building camaraderie at a distance is especially challenging, and that empathetic feedback is key to high performance. And don’t we want the same thing for our students, whether face-to-face or in distance learning? The GREAT feedback framework consists of five facets:
- Growth-oriented: signal one’s intention as constructive and focused on improvement
- Real: it’s honest rather than that false praise as well as targeted, not holistic or vague
- Empathetic: combine criticism with care and a quest for understanding
- Asked-for: encourage the receiver to ask questions and seek feedback
- Timely: feedback gets stale fast, so you want to make sure it is delivered soon
Let’s explore empathy a bit more. Given the realities that many students and teachers face during the pandemic, it’s important to remain empathic while providing feedback. Empathetic feedback relies on micro-feedback and can be as simple as one thing to start, stop, or continue doing. Empathetic feedback is meant to be a dialogue, not a monologue. After providing the feedback, thank the receiver and ask questions that invite their input. After discussing their understanding, ask for feedback about your feedback. “Was this conversation helpful for you? Do you have advice for me about getting better at feedback?”
Finally, empathetic feedback shifts perspectives to ensure that the receiver benefits from your viewpoint while also seeing that you appreciate theirs. Once again, affective statements in the form of “I” messages are of value. Rather than voicing feedback in terms of “you” directives, affective statements frame the feedback as your own perspective. This allows psychological room for the student to listen and reduces that initial defensive clench that might otherwise shut down the conversation before it has begun. Empathetic feedback starters such as those in the Note to Self can set the stage for humane and growth-producing feedback.
Make It Actionable
Thus far, we have focused on part of this mindframe, specifically that you give feedback and work to help receivers understand the feedback. But the other part of this mindframe focuses on seeking feedback yourself. Do you regularly seek feedback? Do you recognize that the feedback offered to you from others will depend on the relationship that they have with you and how much you are trusted? Remember the trust scale from Section 1? That might help you self-assess. In addition, the principal trust survey in Figure 4.3 might be useful in analyzing your beliefs and might just raise some issues for you that you can choose to address such that you receive, and then can act upon, quality feedback.
DescriptionFigure 4.3 Principal Trust Survey
Source: Tschannen-Moran, M. & Gareis, C. (2004). Principals’ sense of efficacy: Assessing a promising construct. Journal of Educational Administration, 42, 573–585.
Mindframe 7
I engage as much in dialogue as in monologue.
Having acknowledged that sometimes the school leader must make their expectations clear, the daily operation of the school requires that school leaders engage in more dialogue than monologue. A monologue occurs when the leader tells people what to think or do. During a dialogue, leaders listen and respond, share thinking, ask questions, and work to reach consensus. Garmston and Wellman (1999) describe several ways of talking that occur frequently among professionals. There are two that are relevant here:
- Discussion is talk that has a purpose—often to make a decision. Discussion may seem unstructured at first as people brainstorm ideas and explore possibilities, but it becomes more structured as people choose sides. It may, in fact, begin to resemble debate.
- Dialogue is less structured than discussion. Dialogue engages people in building their understanding of an issue without the pressure to make decisions or be “right.” People inquire into ideas, rather than advocate for their own or others’ ideas. Doing so builds trust, which is critical to creating a climate in which teachers feel comfortable working.
We consolidate our understanding when we interact with others. As we engage in dialogue, we have an opportunity to extend our thinking and clarify our own understanding. Through interactions with others, our ideas can be challenged and we may come to a new understanding. It is this give-and-take that ensures that ideas are interrogated and understood. In terms of an organization, people need to feel involved and valued if they are going to commit. When school leaders engage in excessive monologues, teachers and other school staff are less likely to feel a sense of ownership in the organization and may not commit as deeply to the mission. When teachers feel involved, through dialogue about important issues, they tend to dedicate themselves to the organization and work to accomplish its goals. School leaders have the potential to be magnifiers and multipliers of effective teaching, but it only happens when they engage in more dialogue and less monologue. Some key dialogue skills include the following (www.thinkingcollaborative.com):
- Pausing: Take time to listen fully to others before responding.
- Paraphrasing: Rephrase what you think you heard and ensure that you understand the perspective of others.
- Posing questions: Ask questions to encourage people to share their thinking and to ensure that you understand the thinking of others.
- Putting ideas on the table: When you understand others, you can add information to the conversation. Try to focus the conversation on the idea rather than the positional power you have.
- Providing data: Give groups information to work with and allow them to draw inferences from the data.
- Paying attention to self and others: Notice your emotional state and nonverbal language and ensure that it aligns with your message (everyone else in the group is already noticing).
- Prompting turn taking: As a leader a major job is to not let a few dominate, to ensure all feel an opportunity to contribute, and a major predictor of success in developing a strong culture of collective leadership is the amount of turn-taking within any meeting.
- Presuming positive intentions: Assume that members of the group want the best for students and are willing to work toward that outcome.
Make It Actionable
These dialogue skills are important in any circumstance, but especially when it comes to gaining ideas and making decisions about the logistics, structures, instruction, and administration related to distance learning.
Mindframe 8
I explicitly inform teachers and students what successful impact looks like from the outset.
Some of us remember the goals established by previous U.S. education laws: 100 percent proficiency for all student groups. It’s laudable. And it’s hard to set policy that does not suggest that all students can achieve greatness. But the punishments for not achieving this level of success caused concern as teachers and leaders were terminated and schools were closed. In addition, some argued that it was not reasonable to expect that level of success in such a short time. Consider a school that had 55 percent of its students achieving mastery. What is reasonable to expect for the next year? When told that they had to achieve 100 percent for all student groups, some stopped trying because they believed that the expectation was unreasonable in the short term.
At the time, progress was not valued. The laws were built on proficiency. And to be clear, we want students to learn a lot. But growth matters as well. Imagine examining the data using both progress and proficiency, as in Figure 4.4. There would be some students who did not achieve well and who made little progress. And others who made a lot progress but not yet to the expected level of proficiency. And still others who achieved but made little progress. And finally, some who made progress and achieved at the expected level. (Daniel and Diana both started with similar levels of achievement but Diana has made strides in her progress compared to Daniel—merely evaluating your impact on achievement alone would send false messages about your impact on Diana compared to Daniel).
DescriptionFigure 4.4 Reading Progress and Achievement
Source: Fisher, D., Frey, N., Almarode, J., Flories, K., & Nagel, D. (2020a). PLC+: Better decisions and greater impact by design. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin. Used with permission.
Based on Figure 4.4, what would you expect success the next year (or next unit of instruction) to look like? (In Figure 4.4, the grid lines are the mean achievement and mean progress for this group.) If you say that you expect 100 percent of the students in the upper right quadrant achieving high levels of mastery and making significant progress, you might alienate some of your teachers. Would a 10 percent growth be reasonable? Five percent seems too low. Could you double the achievement of a specific group of students? Who knows? We’re not here to tell you what success looks like in your school in the times of COVID-19. But people look to you for direction and they appreciate knowing what the target is.
Make It Actionable
Part of this mindframe says, “from the outset.” There are many opportunities during a school year to inform teachers and students about success. Naturally, we can do so at the start of the year. But what about after a school holiday? What about at the start of a new unit of instruction? How often do you articulate what success looks like?
Start by downloading the progress versus achievement tool from Visible Learningplus®, available on our companion website.
You’ll need pre and post data to use this tool. You may not have state achievement test data, but what do you have? How will you inform the people you work with about successful impact? What is your plan to inform various stakeholders about the expected impact?
Mindframe 9
I build relationships and trust so that learning can occur in a place where it is safe to make mistakes and learn from others.
Let’s get real. No one likes to be wrong. When was the last time you failed at doing something and cheerily reminded yourself, “Now I’ve got an opportunity to learn!” The failure to accomplish something can be demoralizing, especially in the absence of support. However, failure can also be productive, especially when it is followed with further learning and feedback. Imagine if schools were places where errors were celebrated as opportunities to learn. Over time, we might all learn to welcome the opportunities that our errors provide us for learning.
Kapur (2016) describes four possible learning events: unproductive failure (unguided problem-solving), unproductive success (memorizing an algorithm, without understanding why), productive failure (using prior knowledge to figure out a solution, followed by more instruction), and productive success (structured problem-solving). Of the four conditions, unproductive failure yields the smallest gains, as the thinking is not guided in any way, and people are just expected to discover what should be learned. Unproductive success is also of limited value, as individuals in this condition rely on memorization only but don’t ever get to why and how this is applied. There’s just no transfer of knowledge.
Now let’s move to the beneficial conditions: productive failure and productive success. Kapur explains that
The difference between productive failure and productive success is a subtle but an important one. The goal for productive failure is a preparation for learning from subsequent instruction. Thus, it does not matter if students do not achieve successful problem-solving performance initially. In contrast, the goal for productive success is to learn through a successful problem-solving activity itself. (p. 293)
Based on Kapur’s model, we identified four possible learning events and their impact.
Make It Actionable
We have lost count of the number of times we have heard teachers recording, rerecording, and rerecording videos to make them “perfect” for students. It’s causing a lot of stress and it sends the wrong message. As their leader, let them know that they do not need to do this. Mistakes are a natural part of the learning process. Teachers make all kinds of mistakes during physical school and then self-correct. Over time, their students learn that self-correction is a natural part of learning. If every video that students see during distance learning has been scrubbed of errors, young people will miss out on the modeling of self-correction.
In addition, note your own errors and mistakes. Make it known that we are all human, fallible, and vulnerable. Perhaps you would even be willing to share your failure resume?
More recently, there has been attention to the idea of a failure resume. For example, the New York Times included an article about this (https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/03/smarter-living/failure-resume.html) asking if they kept a failure resume, and if not why they should start. As noted in the article, “Failure isn’t a roadblock. It’s part of the process.”
What would be on your failure resume? Take some notes here:
Take a risk and be vulnerable with your colleagues. Start slow, but let them see that you are a complex person who has ups and downs. Let them know you a little more so that you develop the closeness that all humans crave from the adults who teach them. We promise, it will pay dividends. And it gets easier.
Mindframe 10
I focus on learning and the language of learning.
Do your students know what they are supposed to be learning? Or do they see the class as a list of things to do? There is a big difference between these two. When students know what they are expected to learn, they are more likely to learn it. Having said that, it’s hard to imagine that simply completing a bunch of random tasks will cause learning. If school is reduced to a checklist of things to do, students may complete those tasks without developing a deep understanding of their own learning and the purpose or relevance of that learning. Teacher clarity has an effect size of 0.75. In other words, it’s a potential accelerator of student learning. We have organized this into three questions that contribute to teacher clarity, and are answered by three corresponding practices (Fisher, Frey, & Hattie, 2016).
3 Questions That Drive Learners | 3 Answers That Accelerate Learning |
|---|---|
What am I learning today? | Post and discuss learning intentions |
Why am I learning it? | Link learning intentions to relevance |
How will I know that I learned it? | Provide success criteria students and teachers can use to gauge progress |
For several years, these questions have driven our conversations at the school where three of us work. Throughout the week, we ask students about their learning using this frame and report overall results every Friday in our professional learning session as a way for us to collectively take a temperature check. We don’t disaggregate the data by teacher or department, nor do we ask the same students each week. But it has allowed us to detect patterns and trends while keeping the data neutral. We have also had to change the way we ask questions. No more asking a student what they are doing. Instead, we ask what they are learning. This language has permeated classrooms and students regularly hear the same messages from their teachers.
As we have moved to distance learning, these practices have followed. Distance learning plans for students include each of these elements and are present in each synchronous and asynchronous event. When we virtually visit live sessions, we pose the same three questions to the group, asking them to explain to us what their learning focus is. It continues to be a way to infuse the language of learning with students.
Adults have the same questions in mind whenever they are in a meeting or a professional learning session. It has caused us to be far more intentional about using the language of learning intentions, success criteria, and relevance each time. What’s interesting is that we have noticed that formulating each when preparing for a meeting has brought a higher degree of clarity for our own work. After all, if we can’t coherently articulate each of these elements, then perhaps the focus of the meeting is incorrect. In some cases, the meeting itself is unnecessary. We are also now including it in our communications with parents about how they can support their children’s learning. We invite parents to ask their children the same three questions: What are you learning today? Why are you learning it? How will you know you have learned it? During a time when we need to lessen the demand on parents during distance learning, we want at the same time to allow them to focus on what they can do that is truly helpful. Short conversations in the home about learning that is not limited to grades and compliance gives them a way to convey the value of learning.
Make It Actionable
The language of learning elevates student awareness about their accomplishments and goals. For teachers, it transforms the discussion from a narrow focus on teaching to a deep understanding of the link between learning and impact. We broaden the scope of influence when we assist families in understanding the learning of their children.
As we come to the close of this book, we thought a moment of reflection might be in order. None of us wanted COVID-19, and there has been terrible loss around the world. But it is here and it can be a school’s Golden Ticket to upgrade to a desired state, such as becoming a Visible Learning school or model. What if this crisis encourages teachers to stop talking so much? Or to not permit students to be so dependent on teachers and instead teach them how to self-regulate and monitor? And what if this leads to students working more with each other to problem solve? Students are more likely to talk to teachers and peers about what they do not know, their confusions, and their thinking aloud at a distance than they do person to person. Teachers can focus the thinking of students and interpret, respond, and evaluate as they invite the student to interpret, respond, and evaluate. COVID has shown that
- School leaders CAN change schools and quality of outcomes.
- Educators have remarkable skills and these are most evident in this change and new forms of teaching and learning.
- Educators can lead and are leading this change (we did not need to wait for administrators or superintendents to mandate change).
- School leaders can quickly convince parents that the new model is worth bringing back as the new normal.
- This change leads to new evidence well worth capturing such that we bring schools back better than they were before.