4 Reflective Conversations—The Fundamental Professional Act

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Life must be understood backwards. But it must be lived forwards.

—Søren Kierkegaard, Journals, 1843

To be vested as a professional requires certification—proof of enough knowledge to be considered competent in a field. Certification usually means an end to formal education and the beginning of practice-based learning. This learning is not static and requires regular, personal reflections on practice. Yet all too often, reflective practices are left to happenstance. Instead, what is offered as professional development becomes an endless parade of workshops or dull collaborations organized around institutional demands.

This book is about flipping the professional development paradigm inside out and advocates for putting the professionals in charge of personal learning—not as sole practitioners, but in conversation with others. Because teachers can be lone professionals in a sea of students, they benefit from forums for reflection about practices; and those new to the profession require chances to learn from experienced professionals. Being able to reflect on actions in relationship to the outcomes is a fundamental professional practice and occurs cyclically: before in anticipation, during in response, and afterward to improve. Reflection in–on–for action is an essential outcome for all the conversations of this book. Our aim is to foster a school culture that has a reflective act at the center of every conversation about practice.

Personal and Collective Honesty Leads to Professional Growth

In their core, most professionals are conscious of their own abilities and, when honest, know where they fall short. It is this deep reflection that drives improvement—knowing one can do better. Collective reflection requires deep trust and a commitment to work through differences. When honest reflection is practiced in community, teachers find that they are not alone and, more importantly, discover others with the expertise they need. The intention of collective reflection is about exploring, expanding, and improving repertoires of practice. Based on this broad definition, each chapter in this book is a reflective conversation framed in a variety of ways. While the reflective conversation offered in this chapter is the most open ended, others are goal focused, data focused, or more directive, but each one calls for reflective practice. For it is in reflective practice that each person takes responsibility for his or her own developmental trajectory to not only author a future, but to transform thoughts and actions in the face of challenges.

When reflective conversations are the norm in a school, professionals learn to embrace feedback and will take the necessary steps to modify behaviors. Indeed, we would argue that this ability to reflect on practices and make changes toward improvement is an essential professional skill. Furthermore, when teachers reflect on practices, the changes they make are interwoven with current practices and produce a higher likelihood of success. Those who are able to self-supervise in this way show the greatest potential to become expert.

In writing this book, we had many a conversation with colleagues who wanted to use these Nine Professional Conversations as a way to diagnose where to go next with a person or group. Many administrators think supervision and professional development are directive processes and that diagnosis and prescription are the important ingredients for change. In the hubris of supervisory activity, administrators get trapped in a belief that incremental learning will make a difference. By this, we mean that learning is perceived as a series of steps for improvement. While this may work for simple techniques, it is ineffective for the multifaceted changes that require a deeper examination of capacities for and assumptions about teaching. Teachers that examine their capabilities, along with core values and beliefs, learn to align their actions with their thinking—they walk their talk—and perfect their practices daily.

One of Diane’s stories best describes how a principal’s blindsight can play out in the classroom and impact supervision. A ten-year veteran teacher new to the district makes a rash of behavior referrals to the principal. A pattern emerges. The teacher claims that the students are at fault and seems clueless about the power struggle that now marks the student–teacher relationship. This blaming the victim is an example of protective behaviors described in Chapter 3. For whatever reason, this teacher has never learned to transcend these defensive behaviors, which blocks his ability to reflect. The principal makes recommendations to improve the student–teacher relationship, such as the teacher greeting students at the door, having lunch with students to learn more about them, and waiting for silence instead of speaking over student voices. The problem is that the teacher does not see the root of the problem as his teaching, but rather as the kids with the behavior problems. Hence, these incremental changes make no discernable difference on classroom climate.

Later in the year, when the issue of tenure for this teacher came up, the defining question for Diane was this: What evidence did the principal have that this teacher embraced problems as challenges and actively work to reflect upon his teaching? Diane was clear; she wanted teachers who demonstrated reflective practices. The principal liked this teacher, so he lobbied hard to retain him. His rationale? “If given enough time, I know that I can fix him.”

Diane, being clear on her values, said two things to this principal:

The principal admitted that he had spent far too much time trying to fix this teacher and agreed that teachers who require this much time probably do not belong in the profession.

Quite frankly, in schools we do not have time to help those who cannot help themselves; our students deserve the best now, not later. Others also reinforce this belief that excellence grows out of reflection. For example, when Sheryl Sandberg, the CEO of Facebook, was asked what she thinks is the number-one thing to look for in an employee, she said, “Someone who takes feedback well. Because people who take feedback will learn and grow quickly” (Bariso, 2016).

Our job is to serve students with quality teaching and learning; it is not to save teachers with incremental directives. Reflective practice is a habit of mind and should begin early during preservice and then continue into the profession. It takes hard work; it requires a willingness to examine failures. When teachers practice this habit, they become contributing members of reflective school cultures. When schools develop collective reflection practices, they move toward the path of collective efficacy—they know what they do that makes important differences in the lives of all students. They are honest about what they do and do not know and always strive for the best path forward.

Reflective Practice Conversations

We begin the journey through these conversations with the more generalized Reflective Practice Conversation. Of all the conversations in this book, it is the most open ended; hence, practitioners can take this kind of conversation in any direction important to them as professionals. This work draws from Donald Schön (1983), who wrote the Reflective Practitioner and defined reflection as “an important human activity that requires an ability to step outside of the action, think about it, mull it over, and evaluate it so as to learn by doing.” Schön wrote that practitioners’ ability to do reflection-in-action “depends on certain relatively constant elements that he may bring to a situation otherwise in flux: an over-arching theory, an appreciative system, and a stance of reflection-in-action which can become . . . an ethic for inquiry” (1983, p. 164). The conversations described in this chapter explain how to make this process explicit so that this “ethic of inquiry” becomes a norm. We were struck by Schön’s deep understanding that inquiry requires an ethic. All too often, inquiry can drift to a line of questions directed toward a known outcome. This is not inquiry, but manipulation, in which known solutions are inferred through the questions. The ethical stance is to always ask questions from a point of genuine curiosity.

In 2016, Bill completed the third edition of Reflective Practice for Renewing Schools with colleagues Jennifer York-Barr, Gail S. Ghere, and Jo Montie. In this updated edition, these authors changed the end of the title from Improving Schools to Renewing Schools. While much had changed, much was still the same, and their hope was that they would add to a growing body of knowledge about renewal. They state, “Reflective practice is at the root of renewed life and energy in schools. Reflective practice is the vital and largely untapped resource for significant and sustainable effectiveness” (2016, p. xxii). In each edition of this book, the authors identified the attributes of a reflective school, which were demonstrated by an ability to stay focused on education’s central purpose—student learning and development. These schools commit to continuous improvement of practice and assume responsibility for professional learning, which aligns with new understandings.

Furthering this line of inquiry, we also aim to create school cultures that support professionals in their reflective practices by making more time for teacher talk in collaborative learning environments. The real payoff is that when faculties can articulate how they make a positive difference in the learning of all students, they manifest collective efficacy. To review important research reasons for this emphasis, we once again remind the reader of the research of John Hattie. Hattie (2015) reviewed 1,200 meta-analyses of the effects on learning and identified collective teacher efficacy as the number-one factor that influences student achievement. The effect size is 1.57, meaning that collective teacher efficacy is two or three times more effective than other positive strategies. Developing collective efficacy takes time; to develop this mental discipline requires practice.

Reflection-on-Action

Coaches celebrate when the teacher begins a reflection conversation with, “If I had it do over again I would . . .” When teachers start a conversation by knowing what to change, coaches need only to listen and reflect on the teachers’ thoughts. Sometimes just pausing, paraphrasing, and asking a few discrete questions are enough. When professionals do not meet expectations, most will engage in reflection-on-action and seek ways to self-correct. Schön (1983) found that professionals often knew more than they could say, so this “thinking out loud” made it more conscious. Talking with others requires a degree of specificity in the service of clarity that is often not present in our private thoughts.

Even the writing of this book required deep reflection-on-action. As authors, we found that we had developed a kind of shorthand to describe each conversation. Because this book draws from years of practice, we had to slow down and become reflective to really understand the value of each conversation and to seek examples of these practices in action. These conversations always contributed to a deeper understanding, and the sum was always greater than the parts.

The reflective conversation can be used in any situation to simply reflect on actions and to determine what was learned from these actions. As groups or individuals ponder, they puzzle about what they are coming to understand. They discover the deeper and nuanced understandings that others have developed through personal reflective practices. Box 4.1 outlines a basic reflection-on-action conversation.

Box 4.1 Reflection-on-Action Conversation Outline

Invite others to think out loud about the actions just taken:

  • ■ What worked?
  • ■ What didn’t seem to work?
  • ■ What surprises came up?
  • ■ What assumptions are informing these practices?
  • ■ How might this be done differently next time?
  • ■ What might be increased and how?
  • ■ What else is important for us to think about?

As we introduce this first set of question tools, we remind the reader that we have developed these questions with two goals in mind: first, to focus the conversation, and second, to make sure the conversation has a beginning, middle, and end. All too often, conversations are allowed to follow the free flow of thought and do not really honor the ethic of inquiry. It is essential that these conversations be considered chances for deeper inquiries into practice. If groups just answer the questions and do not converse about what they are coming to understand, they are not in conversation, but are in an obligatory, get-the-job-done stance. We remind readers that success is measured by what we learn, not what we get done. For the purposes of our work in schools, we have sometimes changed the words of the original authors. With respect, our aim is always to stay true to the intent of the original authors or to point it out to the reader when we take a different stance.

Reflection-in-Action

To help the reader understand the real value of reflection both in and on action, we turn to the work of Gary Klein, who wrote Sources of Power (1998), in which he studied the in-the-moment thinking of people in high-stress jobs—firefighters, EMT workers, and operating room staff. Klein found that the top performers in these emergency fields had an uncanny ability to not only anticipate, but in the heat of the moment, they were able to display reflection-in-action by taking decisive and lifesaving actions. In the study of the thinking patterns that supported this high performance, he identified two key concepts: pattern recognition and mental simulation. Not only did these emergency responders have a high degree of knowledge about what to expect, but they were keen to notice and adapt when a pattern did not fit expectations. It turned out it was this moment—a change in noise from the fire or a breathing pattern in a patient—that triggered decisive and often lifesaving actions. Pattern recognition and mental simulation are forms of reflection-in-action that become even more powerful when made explicit. His book is full of stories about how these brave people used reflection-in-action to save lives.

Pattern recognition and mental simulation are forms of reflection-in-action that become even more powerful when made explicit. As Schön (1983) noted and Klein (1998) discovered, these experts knew more than they could say. It was not uncommon for them to start out describing what happened in vague terms such as, “The patient didn’t look right.” When prodded, however, they often could describe in detail what it was that they had noticed, and this detailed recall could then be used to create simulations or mental maps for the future. It turned out that these emergency workers had skills that others had not learned; hence, they were positive deviants (see Chapter 9).

We have found that many teachers have deep reservoirs of unconscious thought process, which they draw from in moments of need. If this deep intuitive knowledge were shared, it would greatly enhance teacher excellence in schools, yet this intellectual capital goes untapped. It marks the distinction between teachers who year after year seem to be working too hard and those who become more conscious and make teaching seem effortless. This knowledge that lives deep in teachers’ psyches goes well beyond the standards. In particular, this is where teachers could learn about the nuances of dealing with high-stress moments in the classroom. In the chapter on positive deviance (Chapter 9), we offer many examples.

For a conversation of reflection-in-action, see Box 4.2 for questions to delve into the consciousness of teaching in the moment.

Box 4.2 Reflection-in-Action Conversation Outline

Invite others to think out loud about moment-to-moment decisions made during the action:

  • ■ When teaching is not going as expected, what do you do?
  • ■ What did you notice in the moment that you did not expect?
  • ■ What else did you notice? (Repeat several times.)
  • ■ What data could you collect to expand your observational skills in the moment?
  • ■ How can you test your new knowledge?
  • ■ What assumptions may be limiting your thinking?
  • ■ How will you know when you are successful?

Reflection-for-Action

Schön (1983) did not discuss this type of reflection in his work, but early in the application to teaching, reflection-for-action was added. Hence, in most education-related writing, the authors start with the planning cycle. This is likely because teaching is ultimately a performance art that requires planning before action. Indeed, lesson planning has always been considered an important teacher behavior. In the business world, however, this type of thinking is often separated from reflective practice. Instead, this forward thinking is often described as scenario planning, which is a form of reflection-for-action that focuses on creating multiple stories about the future that serve as a blueprint for actions.

In the feedback about this book, we were told to put reflection-for-action first in this chapter’s discussion. We discussed this and realized that to stay true to Schön’s work, we needed to put it last. Schön did not address reflection-for-action directly; for him, planning for the future was part of reflecting upon the past to change behavior. In the business world, these conversations for action or planning almost always come out of a reflection-on-practice. This is that old adage “If I had it to do over, I would . . .” Essentially, reflection-on-action turns into reflection-for-action, demonstrating the cyclical nature of these conversations. For teaching, reflection-for-action, which includes planning and goal setting, has always been a natural starting place. In Chapter 6, we will return to this goal-setting pattern again when we describe Cognitive Coaching. Box 4.3 offers the basic questions for a reflection-for-action conversation.

Box 4.3 Reflection-for-Action Conversation Outline

Invite others to think out loud about what is planned:

  • ■ What are the goals or outcomes?
  • ■ What steps are necessary to accomplish this plan?
  • ■ How will you know that you are successful?
  • ■ What data might you collect to measure success?
  • ■ What learning question have you framed for yourself?

The Quality of Reflection Is Evidenced by the Responses

Diane is a lover of art and has worked for over ten years with a community involved in Visual Thinking Strategies (Yenawine, 2013). Philip Yenawine’s program instructs teachers how to engage others—adults and children alike—in reflection conversations about fine art. It uses the elements of authentic listening to encourage the viewers to talk about what they are coming to understand as they linger over a piece of art. What is amazing to watch is how even young children go from short, vague responses to long, descriptive responses. Some start to organize their thinking in paragraphs. They dig deep and go well beyond the surface, interpreting nuances and giving evidence as to why they think that way. Likewise, when given a chance, teachers will give lengthy, nuanced responses. In the dedication for this book, we describe how one teacher dealt with bullying in an elegant and nuanced approach. She described how she could read subtle changes in classroom climate and identify antecedent behaviors and intervene early. Teachers who have learned to linger and reflect on practices have great insight and will give very complex answers to questions about how they responded in the moment in the classroom.

It is a joy to converse with these reflective, thoughtful professionals. As longtime administrators, we give credit to these teachers for increasing our own professional repertoire. We have learned more from our conversations with colleagues than we ever learned sitting in our offices or classrooms with the door shut. When given the chance, educators’ professional learning is accelerated through these highly refined conversations. One teacher described her two years as a writing mentor:

Those years were so rich in learning. It was such a gift to work with other professionals who had such a high degree of understanding about writing. When the funding was cut and I no longer had this professional partnership, I got angry. I felt robbed; my grade-level partner and I do engage in deep conversations, but my school never spends time on quality conversations.

At this point, it is appropriate to ask the reader to stop and reflect upon what you are learning from this text. Bill offers his technique for learning something new—for example, he might copy the information in the Reflection Box onto an index card and then keep it in his front pocket for quick reference. Because Diane doesn’t always have a front pocket, she likes to put her memory jogs on the top bar of her computer. When working on agendas, they remind her to think about these processes.

Reflection

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A Place to Pause

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Direction Setting

  • ■ Where is your organization in the journey toward reflective practice?
  • ■ Where might you go next?

Recalibrating Process

Do you need to reflect . . .

  • ■ on practice? (Reflection)
  • ■ in practice? (Awareness)
  • ■ for practice? (Planning)

Reflective Practice in Action

By reflecting on practices together, teachers gain a collective understanding of each other and of their capacity as a group to effect change. They build collective knowledge—deep understandings about practice—and pass this on as knowledge legacies. We have found that when schools regularly share knowledge and expertise through reflective conversations, the learning is exponential. Excellence is spread throughout the school. The cycle of reflection can start at any point, as each step leads to the next. The point is that the context dictates the type of reflection needed. Over time, it becomes that all-important cycle of reflection.

In our bid to develop knowledge legacies, we have also begun to think in terms of building learning histories, often oral and sometimes written. The questions that focus on what has been learned from reflection almost always elicit a level of “layered complexity.” By layered complexity, we mean a multifaceted, rich description of how this reflection fits into practice, or a provocative question that pushes at the group to seek a coherent understanding.

With the advent of professional learning communities (PLCs), we have found that asking explicitly about what has been learned during the PLC meeting is essential. We measure the success of each conversation by the value it adds to teaching practices and find that these types of questions are invaluable for calibration of the success of a conversation. Essentially, we are asking this: How will this conversation make a difference in professional work? What is important to remember, and how will it deepen practices?

As David Perkins said in Smart Schools (1992, p. 31), “Learning is a consequence of thinking.” Here is our corollary to that: Thinking is a consequence of questions that emerge out of our own innate desire to learn. And we would offer that when groups slow down conversations to authentically listen and engage in an ethic of inquiry, the questions emerge out of our own innate curiosity. That is the secret of engagement.

When teachers begin to appreciate the fractal nature of learning improvements, they seek more diverse ways to challenge the knowing–doing–learning gap. They are emboldened to find their own paths and communicate a collective efficacy. In this environment, teachers self-organize and collaborate on real problems of practice. Instead of mandated grade-level meetings, they organize around mutual challenges and seek understanding from each other. They trust that collective wisdom brings clearer understanding and increased capacity to respond adaptively in the classroom. Adaptive teachers are conscious and purposeful in choosing from a repertoire. They grow in the capacity to learn, and instead of being left behind, they shine a torch toward the future.

In conclusion, the process of collaborative reflective inquiry has great potential to change professional habits. There are many definitions of reflection, all of which date back to Dewey’s (1933) definition: “active, persistent, and careful consideration of any belief or supposed form of knowledge in the light of the grounds that support it and the further conclusion to which it tends” (p. 9).

In each of the next nine chapters, we offer a minimum of two learning scenarios, with the idea that stories provide important narratives that help us remember. Scenario 1 is always a story that demonstrates a dyad or small group at work; Scenario 2 will always be about how to work with a larger group. On occasion, we’ll offer a Final Note, which will offer an additional process that we have used based on this particular conversational pattern.

Scenario 1

This reflection comes from a special education supervisor who was working with a teacher who was struggling with classroom management. During the reflective conversation with her supervisor, the teacher explored what was and was not working. Through the reflective inquiry, the teacher discovered an inner tension; she had assumed that her main job was to teach and not to manage behaviors, yet she was spending all her time managing behaviors. As the teacher grappled with this tension, she decided she needed to spend less time on behavior management, so she needed some new strategies. Together, the teacher and supervisor brainstormed ways to intervene. They listed intervention strategies that took fewer than thirty seconds to implement and then sequenced the list from most promising to least promising, providing a layered action plan.

One month later, the teacher beamed and reported, “That thirty-second rule helped me change my behavior in the moment, and that has made all the difference.” The supervisor smiled, excited to note how the teacher was reflecting and changing behaviors based on student responses. For the observation on that day, the teacher asked the supervisor to collect specific data on her interactions with two students. Afterward, they laughed as they reviewed the data: Both students had been on task and engaged—gone were the behaviors of a month ago. The teacher said, “So can we focus on another question I have about my teaching?” She was now seeking reflective conversations as a regular part of her growth and development.

Scenario 2

During her second year as principal, Diane’s superintendent reminded her he needed a nomination for the teacher of the year. Fortunately, the teacher Diane wanted to nominate warned Diane that this was a “hot topic” for this staff. It turns out that years ago, these teachers had agreed to never single out just one teacher—after all, they were all excellent. Realizing that there were deeper issues, Diane missed the superintendent’s deadline but resolved that when she had a chance, she would engage the staff in a reflective conversation about the assumptions behind this decision to opt out of a district program.

When they had some extra time on an agenda, Diane used a reflection-on-action conversation to focus on an assumption check to get at beliefs and values. She went into the conversation with no preconceived expectations. To begin, Diane started the conversation with a simple statement of facts: The superintendent expected her to make a recommendation that spring for the teacher of the year program, and she needed to better understand how the school wanted to respond to the superintendent’s request. As she explained, if she was going to say no, she needed to have some good reasons for why. (Notice that Diane was also asking these teachers to self-author a future they were willing to support.)

Diane’s inquiries focused on the underlying assumptions behind their beliefs and what the other teachers thought of these assumptions. For example, early in the conversation it became evident that the award was not considered an honor and that at most schools the teachers took turns receiving the honor. These teachers believed that an honor should be given for honorable behaviors. Much to Diane’s surprise, the group said they loved to be appreciated, but only when it was for specific things they had done well. For example, the superintendent at that time often sent personal notes to teachers, thanking them for things they had done, and they all treasured those notes. They had no problem with recognition if it was specific and for something that was worthy of recommendation. And if Diane would only recommend when she had a teacher worthy of that honor, they would participate. Diane laughs, “I should have known this. If this school had a fault, it was their high standards. Not only were they known for setting high standards with kids, but they had set them for themselves.”

As Diane looks back, this conversation was a pivotal one in changing the school culture. What made the difference was not that Diane asked them to comply, but that she asked them to think deeply about what they believed and to develop a way of informing the superintendent about those beliefs. Even though the solution put the pressure on Diane to make a selection, Diane almost always had a teacher who had gone above and beyond, and when she checked in with the leadership team, they always agreed. What also surprised Diane was that some of her teachers who had seemed the least reflective about other topics were the most reflective and thoughtful about this conversation. It reminds us: Not all conversations are created equally, and not all conversations are of equal value. In fact, those who normally do not speak up often have the most nuanced responses.

A Final Note—A Process to Engage in Reflective Practice

The School Culture Reflection tool reproduced at the end of this chapter is from Bill’s book, Reflective Practice for Renewing Schools (York-Barr et al., 2016, p. 3). Bill quickly adapted this to use as a focus for group reflection in his staff meetings. Any one of these questions could be slightly reworded and would be worthy of a whole-school inquiry.

A Possible Staff Meeting Adaptation

Choose at least two of these questions and ask participants to complete a quick write at the end of a meeting. Between meetings, tabulate the data and bring it to the next meeting for a reflecting conversation. By having a wide variety of viewpoints, it opens the discussion quickly and breaks down barriers of distrust. At the end of the reflecting conversation, have the teachers reflect on the process with these questions:

  • ■ How were our discussions pertinent to teaching and learning?
  • ■ How do structures and processes support reflection during the meeting?
  • ■ What evidence do you have that we either listened well or not so well?
  • ■ How did we make our learning explicit and visible to the group today during the meeting?
  • ■ How are we growing in the desire to create a culture of openness and inquiry?
  • ■ Inquiry—What are the questions we want answers to? What data do we have now that is relevant? What data do we need that we do not have?
  • ■ Insight—Are there knowledge and skills that we need not found in the school? What observations from experienced staff can be useful? Where else can we gain insights?
  • ■ Action—What actions can we take that we think will answer the questions and help staff and students? What leading indicators will tell us we are on the right track?
  • ■ Results—What will be the assessment plan? If the plan is working or part of the plan is working, how do we scale it up or let people know about the results? If the plan is not working, what are some alternatives that we might try, and how will we let people know so they do not waste valuable time?

When a team takes time to answer these questions, they can then return to them later to assess how the reflective conversations are going and to determine if they are meeting expectations or need to be adjusted in some way to better serve the group or school.