Posts Tagged ‘learning’

Professional Development: A Defense

May 26th, 2010

Teacher conversations about professional development often include the terms worthless andwaste of time, and a general disdain for typical approaches is often evident. The back-and-forth can be a bruising arena for those who actually provide professional development, and I’ve been feeling a bit bruised recently. Don’t worry. The bruises have only been blows to my ego. (The only actual bruise I have came compliments of a concrete planter on the corner of New Jersey & M Streets in Washington, D.C., and that’s not a tale I care to retell.)

I must confess that my own experience supports such derogatory comments. I once spent an entire morning of “professional development” brainstorming alternate ways to earn a living. Though I’m sure the administration’s intent and the presenter’s goals were worthwhile, the session was so poorly designed that worthless and waste of time accurately described the result.

Why, then, do the current perspectives of professional development seem bruising? A few years ago I began an organization committed to “investing in teachers,” a “school’s most valuable asset.” And, yes, professional development is a significant component of what we do. So, allow me to provide a brief defense of professional development based on what it can do when it’s effectively designed.

Professional development can contribute to increased student learning. As we learn more about teaching and related topics, such as findings from neuro- and cognitive science, we discover principles that can improve our teaching. As our teaching becomes more effective, our students understand more. Our growth in teaching influences their depth of learning.

Many times, our growth in teaching relates to our instructional design—an element that directly influences student learning:  “Many breakdowns in student learning may be a function of poor classroom curriculum design,” suggests Robert J. Marzano. “…the expert teacher has acquired a wide array of instructional strategies along with the knowledge of when these strategies might be the most useful.”1 Professional development can equip us with additional strategies for fostering learning.

Professional development can provide a common language for teachers to talk to teachers about teaching. This increases the possibility of collaboration, a practice known to improve practice:

Surgeon and author Dr. Atul Gawande details conclusions of a Harvard Business School study on the learning curve surgeons experience when learning new surgical techniques. Practice in itself proved an unreliable predictor of learning rate and success, but how surgeons practiced made a significant difference. A surgeon leading one of the quickest-learning teams picked “team members with whom he had worked well before” and kept “them together through the first fifteen cases before allowing any new members. He had the team go through a dry run the day before the first case, then deliberately scheduled six operations in the first week, so little would be forgotten in between. He convened the team before each case to discuss it in detail and afterward to debrief.” In contrast, a surgeon who had significantly more experience led one of the slowest-learning teams. He involved different personnel in each surgery, “which is to say that it was no team at all,” and led no pre- or post-operation discussions. Increased collaboration quickened learning rate and improved performance. Most important, patients benefitted from the surgeon’s collaborative approach.2

Educational research reaches a similar conclusion: collaboration improves teacher performance. Unfortunately our learning institutions often impede professional growth by inhibiting collaboration. As a result, we can actually hinder student learning by failing to sharpen one another through collaboration.3 Common professional development can provide a basis and means for such collaboration.

Professional development can provide new research that equips teachers to be more intentional. New research often illuminates why what we already know to be successful teaching is effective. This recognition helps us become more intentional in our use of various methods and approaches. When we understand why something works, we know better how to optimize its effectiveness. A consistently good teacher is an intentional teacher, and the more we understand about teaching and learning, the more intentional we can become.

Professional development can do these things, which also means it can fail to do them, and this is a source of teacher frustration and justifiably bruising comments:

Unfortunately, schools provide little help. Most professional development programs for teachers, claims Richard Paul, are “episodic, intellectually unchallenging, and fragmented” with “very little discussion on or about serious educational issues, and when there is such discussion it is often simplistic.”4

Those leading professional development session have a critical responsibility. In the next post I’ll explore some principles that should be considered when designing and leading professional development. We need effective, high quality, meaningful professional development.

Otherwise we do a disservice to hard-working professionals and deserve the bruises their opinions inflict on our egos.

References

  1. Marzano, R.J., What Works in Schools: Translating Research into Action (Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, 2003), 106, 78.
  2. Gawande, A., Better: A Surgeon’s Notes on Performance (New York: Henry Holt, 2007), 230.
  3. Sergiovanni, T.J., Moral Leadership: Getting to the Heart of School Improvement (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1992), 88.
  4. Washburn, K.D., The Architecture of Learning: Designing Instruction for the Learning Brain (Pelham, AL: Clerestory Press, 2010), 191.
Image: ‘Audience’ http://www.flickr.com/photos/30127486@N00/267785927

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    Learning Leadership Lessons: Culture… People… Determination

    April 29th, 2010

    Of late, I find myself in the early morning hours in front of the late night blue screen searching for words to emerge to describe how I feel about micro-conversations in which we share, chat, discuss, and, with some predictability, argue about all things education on twitter. There have been few moments in my life when I could not find words to describe perspective on this. But of recent, I just couldn’t get anything to stick to the page. But today in a room full of kindergartners, I think I remembered the words I need- not new words, not 21st century words, not ed-jargon words- but simply the words of the person who helped me understand that nothing holds more power than the voice of an educator who remembers that we are first teachers, no matter our position.

    We are, at any given moment, in 140 characters or less, political, social, educational, and emotional bedfellows, living in word-based relationships that occasionally verge on divorce or fickle love over the turn of a phrase. We bridge distance and time in a real-virtual world that sometimes pulls me into a fleeting thought about the philosophical conundrum of materialism-dualism in our world. But then, I am pulled back to the reality of iPads, charters, teacher quality, testing, unions, TFA, Ravitch, Rhee, performance pay, grading, tenure, assessments… a place where sometimes, I worry that my own words inside the tweet world create an identical magnitude of earthquake out of every cause on my list. Then, I begin to ask myself, “Of all the things I can choose to spend time on and care about, what’s most important to the learners and educators I serve?”

    And it is that question which led me back to my mentor and to connections, reconnections and bonds that began on thefirst day of my teaching career and ended two years ago when I was tapped to speak the eulogy voice of educators’ he had touched. He was a champion of the powerless, a fierce voice of passion on behalf of our profession, and a mentor who cut to the heart of what it means to be a leader, a teacher, and a learner. He might have been a TFAer if growing up today, but instead he entered the Peace Corps after his Ivy League school graduation; then dedicated a life to our profession. He taught me long ago about the hope our profession offers; and what I learned from him helps me see beyond our issues, divides, and the current crises of our educational heart.

    Lesson I:  You the leader set the tone for the culture in the classroom. Build and model a culture of learning, not punishment, for adults and the children they serve.

    How can you create chaos in the first ten minutes of your teaching career? Pull a snake out of a pillow case in a roomful of seventh graders, say something like, “ he won’t bite.. “ and then stand there with a black rat snake chomping down on your hand, dripping blood on to the floor. With kids screaming, standing on tables and chairs, I knew “this will be my first and last day as a teacher.” Then the principal opened the door, never saying a word as I attempted to regain crowd control, and waited just long enough to know I was okay.  It was my first teachable moment with this mentor. I said to him later that day when we talked, “I thought you were going to fire me.” His response, “and how would that help you teach?” I laughed, he smiled, and in that moment we together launched my career in education.

    Lesson II: Keep your door unconditionally open and be available to the people you serve. Relish the opportunity to help them find solutions to problems. In doing so, you both become part of the solution and not the problem.

    He was the eternal optimist and where some people see problems as rocks that cannot be moved or surmounted, this mentor worked like water flowing in a river; always finding pathways over, under and around problems. There have been many times over the years when I would knock on his door or pick up the phone and call or email after our pathways diverged. I can hear his voice now, a caring, but confronting, voice which did not brook escape from responsibility:

    “So, are you going to spend your time admiring the problem or actually solve it? Do you just want to ‘awfulize’ about this, or work it out? You might as well spend your time rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic unless you are willing to really do something about this problem.” Or, I might hear his favorite comment on who really owned the problem, “Pam, you can bring your monkey into my office- and I will pet your monkey- I will even feed your monkey, but when you leave- you need to take your monkey with you.”

    Lesson III: Determination comes from inside people. It’s what keeps young people learning when adults move out of their space. It’s what moves adults to remain open to trying new ways of reaching a young person disconnected from learning. It’s the realization of passion, inspiration, and joy through both work and serious play.

    • Our children are still developing adults, they make mistakes, and our job is to make sure they learn from them and are not defeated by them.
    • Make decisions based on what is best for children, no matter what.
    • Trust that teachers are always in the best position of making instructional decisions.

    This mentor, a master weaver, created a fabric of influential professional voices over time; facilitating many of us to find our teaching voice, our leadership voice, our personal voice in the service of young people. He articulated a powerful vision that all children (and educators) will learn, given enough time. He taught me that what’s important to learn transcends that which is simply rote, and, we must walk the walk of commitment to create rich learning options for every child we serve. Every day he modeled unswerving passion for and gratitude to our profession; a lifelong choice for a man whose brilliance and resources allowed him the option of pursuing any career.

    These lessons that I learned frame the compelling work of teaching, learning, and leading and define a profession that must be about culture, people, and determination. The kindergartners with whom I spent time surprised and delighted me with their enthusiasm for all things learning, seeing themselves as growing up to be scientists, Olympic swimmers, artists, paleontologists, and, yes, even teachers. When I think about all the “earthquakes” on my list, it’s the kindergartners who remind me of what’s most important. I thank them for reminding me of my mentor’s learning lessons, the most important of which is make sure our young people leave us with a love of learning.

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    Creative Thinking in the Classroom, Part 2

    April 12th, 2010

    Time. Is there a greater challenge for educators? It seems like instructional time is often the target of well-meaning but time-devouring programs. Assemblies, pep rallies, fund-raising motivational events, and those intercom announcements eat precious minutes, and these are on top of an already bloated curriculum. As a result, we tend to eliminate anything that has a whiff of being extraneous.

    One major casualty: creative thinking. However, as I discussed in Part 1, for the brain creative thinking is not just the predecessor to producing art. It is a means of deepening understanding. In other words, creative thinking is a cognitive gateway to deeper, more meaningful learning. Let’s examine how learning can spark creative thinking, which can lead to deeper learning.

    Learning involves four “core processes,” two of which are comprehension and elaboration. If learning proceeds in a straightforward fashion—experience→comprehension→elaboration→application—it can bypass opportunities for creative thinking. This is unfortunate because learning can spark creative thinking:

    The resulting understanding prompts a creative curve. The mind says, “Wait a minute! Let’s explore that again, but this time from a different perspective, or with a different reference point, or in multiple dimensions, or by combining it with _____.” Neuroscientist and writer Gregory Berns describes this as “reverse perception.” Creative thinking, claims Berns, “comes from using the same neural circuits used to perceive natural objects,” but in reverse. Instead of perceiving what is and acting on it, the mind seeks what else could be. The individual re-explores the new data, returning to comprehension to disorganize, relabel, and re-sort the data in a different way. This difference may be in perspective, in scale, in dimension, or in any ways that alter initial thinking about the data. For example, the creative individual may engage a creative tool (e.g., drawing an analogy) or explore representational variety (e.g., a multiple intelligences approach, such as representing verbal data in a musical or spatial form).1

    This figure shows the “creative curve.”

    When given the opportunity to re-explore understandings, the brain often engages in re-comprehension, the sorting of critical details, and re-elaboration, the recognition of new patterns. These new patterns may be new, unique, creative. As the individual examines these new patterns, methods of expressing them may come to mind. These possible expressions are then examined for potential, and if deemed effective, the individual may proceed to producing a creative product. At this point the individual’s skills in the chosen medium come into play—i.e., an experienced and capable painter will likely produce work of a higher quality than the novice. However, both beginner and master benefit from the thinking preceding the expression because it’s the thinking that deepens understanding of the original topic.

    Note that learning and creative thinking are actually overlapping processes. Both engage
    (re-)comprehension and (re-)elaboration, and as a result, both have the potential to deepen understanding. If deep learning of subject matter is the goal, creative thinking can help achieve it.

    Also note that creative thinking requires time and space. If learning proceeds too efficiently, opportunities for creative thinking are lost. Challenging students to revisit subject matter, reorganize its details in different schemes, and explore those reorganizations for new patterns can initiate creative insights. Those insights contribute to deeper learning.

    When creative thinking leads to creative products, another opportunity for deepening learning is generated:

    …creative works can deepen learning in the classroom. For example, Erica, a middle school teacher, has her students develop a series of symbols to summarize a work of literature. For example, one student summarizes Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol in a series of three symbols: a tightly clenched hand, that same hand with three different colored streaks of light surrounding it and a large timepiece in the background, and finally an open hand extending forward. The results become new data for the other students. As they examine the symbols, the students reprocess the details of the literature, consider the connection between the story and the symbol, and make a decision regarding the symbol’s effectiveness. This reprocessing—interacting with the symbols as if they were ‘another person’—mirrors learning’s core processes, engaging recall and thought about the original stimulus. This rethinking fosters deeper learning of the subject matter.2

    There are also implications for our teaching. Want to be creative in your instructional design? Your brain needs the time and space to explore the subject matter—to reorganize it, search for new patterns, and apply the resulting insights to teaching plans. Unfortunately this time and space is probably the biggest challenge to our teaching more creatively. One way I deal with this is to look ahead and identify the major upcoming instructional units. This look ahead creates a space between what I’m currently teaching and what I will be teaching and gives my mind time to explore the subject matter in ways that enable creative thinking.

    Getting away from my normal work space seems to help. Many of my creative ideas find me during morning runs. Actually, research suggests such a change of scenery increases the likelihood of creative thinking:

    Sometimes a simple change of environment is enough to jog the perceptual system out of familiar categories. This may be one reason why restaurants figure so prominently as sites of perceptual breakthroughs…When confronted with places never seen before, the brain must create new categories. It is in this process that the brain jumbles around old ideas with new images to create new syntheses.3

    Creative thinking and learning are complementary processes. Learning enables creative thinking, and creative thinking deepens learning. This is why my target-based organization of thinking does not include a separate ring devoted to creative thinking. I see creative thinking as a type of learning. As such, teaching students to think creatively is critical if we seek to develop self-directed learners. Add skill in expression, such as the methods and approaches taught via the arts, and we’ll be graduating creative thinkers with the skills to engage the world through art—or at least bring artful expression to their lives and work.

    Sources

    1. Washburn, K.D., The Architecture of Learning: Designing Instruction for the Learning Brain (Pelham, AL: Clerestory Press, 2010), 231-232.
    2. Ibid., 234-235.
    3. Berns, G., Iconoclast: A Neuroscientist Reveals How to Think Differently (Boston: Harvard Business School Publishing, 2008), 33.

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    Making the Shift, Part 2: Toolboxes not Suitcases

    August 17th, 2009

    Ever go through a turnstile and realize something you needed was left on the other side of the gateway? During my first encounter with a public transit system, I tried to take a rolling suitcase through a subway turnstile. Of course I ended up on one side of the gateway with my luggage on the other. Fortunately a friendly New Yorker (They do exist!) saw my dilemma and hoisted my suitcase over the turnstile.

    Such gateways are one-way by design; they promote lawful movement in single directions. However, a similar design for teaching, learning, and thinking limits student learning and its usefulness. Much of what we should emphasize ends up like my suitcase—on the wrong side of the turnstile.

    For example, we may teach a biology unit on cell construction and emphasize new terminology and locations of various cell parts. Then, after students seem to have absorbed the information and can recite it back, we may engage them in “critical thinking” by asking questions that represent various “levels” of a taxonomy. Like my suitcase, thinking gets pulled along behind and occasionally doesn’t make it through the gate. It gets left behind because of pressures to cover the curriculum or because the assessment will only involve the memorization elements of the unit. If time allows, if the gateway stays open, we might pull in some thinking.

    But what if thinking were not a wheeled suitcase but a toolbox, something we carry in-hand and set in a central place to enable our work, our learning? What if instead of thinking of ourselves as teaching content, we viewed ourselves as teaching thinking?

    That doesn’t mean students would not learn any content. In fact, content would be exactly what they’d gain by making thinking the force that “pulls in” new understandings. After all, students need to learn how to learn to function successfully once a teacher is no longer telling them what to know.

    Activating executive function (EF) offers a potential gateway for developing both understanding of new content and strategic abilities for future learning and success. Executive function comprises “complex cognitive processes that serve ongoing, goal-directed behaviors,”1 including goal setting and planning, self-regulation and metacognition, and working memory processes, such as organizing and patterning data. Executive function serves both as “infrastructure” and “overseer” of other cognitive functions.2 By itself, EF lacks purpose, but when infused with ideas and concepts, it illustrates the brain working at its best. Perhaps most importantly for us as teachers, EF enables intention, the transfer of new learning to novel situations. Teaching only to know—that is, to repeat on demand—does not engage the cognitive processes that promote intention. Martha Bridge Denkla describes such knowing as being able to recall a strategy without the capacity to be strategic.3 Simply knowing does not require the level of EF activation that doing does.

    Philip David Zelazo suggests that the EF processes of solving problems and attaining goals reveal EF “subfunctions.” These subfunctions can be easily understood by viewing their roles through the questions they attempt to answer:

    • representation: “What do I need to accomplish? What is preventing me from accomplishing it?”
    • planning: How can I get from the current state to the desired state?
    • execution: What’s next? Check. What’s next?
    • evaluation: Did that action accomplish its intended result? What do I need to change to make progress toward the desired state?4

    Teaching students to successfully engage these subfunctions equips them to learn independently. Engaging these subfunctions as a means of learning new content equips students to use their learning beyond the classroom. This brief look at executive functions reveals some principles that provide guidance for making thinking more of a toolbox and less of a rolling suitcase. An emphasis on teaching for action, or on teaching for knowing how, is more likely to produce transferable learning. Since doing requires greater executive function engagement than simply knowing, teaching that engages students in doing better equips students to transfer their learning to new situations.

    Knowing that should become more of a by-product of applying know-how. Rather than just asking, “What do students need to know?” we need to ask “What can students do/produce to foster learning of what they need to know?” (This has additional implications for what and how we teach. I’ll explore these in a future post.)

    Increasing an emphasis on executive function is better education for life. It’s impossible to know what knowledge and skills will be essential in the future, but it is certain that EF will continue to enable successful living.

    Before concluding, allow me to attempt to prevent some potential misunderstandings. First, I am not advocating abandonment of the disciplines. As the Purview Project states, the disciplines “have contributed to man’s construction of knowledge for ages.” I believe the disciplines will continue to form much of the content schools teach. What I am suggesting is that how we teach the disciplines needs to change. Others have recently suggested similar ideas—e.g., Jose Bowen’s “Teach Naked” approach, which advocates increased thinking in the classroom. But an implication of changing the “how” is changing the “what.” If we’re going to engage students in more thinking, we need to equip and strengthen them to think optimally. I’ll explore this more in future posts.

    Second, the ideas expressed here are easier to envision in content-heavy disciplines, such as social studies than in skill-heavy disciplines such as reading and math. I’ll explore these differences in future posts and suggest ways these principles can be applied in both types of material.

    In conclusion, I have a confession. I’m writing this post as much to process these ideas as I am to communicate them. I’m in the learning process, which means I have more questions than answers, vague ideas than concrete specifics, and swirling concepts than guiding frameworks. Over the weekend I was asked what was “going on” in my head. In reply, I listed at least seven different major elements. This post is a very initial attempt to sort through some of them. I hope to explore and clarify these ideas in future posts. Stay tuned!

    1. Meltzer, L. “Executive Function: Theoretical and Conceptual Frameworks,” in Meltzer, L. (ed.), Executive Function in Education: From Theory to Practice, (New York: The Guilford Press, 2007), 1-2.
    2. Denckla, M. B. “Executive Functions: Binding Together the Definitions of Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder and Learning Disabilities,” in Meltzer, L. (ed.), Executive Function in Education: From Theory to Practice, (New York: The Guilford Press, 2007), 7.
    3. Ibid, 11.
    4. Zelazo, P. D., “Executive Function Part One: What is executive function?” http://www.aboutkidshealth.ca/News/Executive-Function-Part-One-What-is-executive-function.aspx?
      articleID=8024&categoryID=news-type

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    Self-Regulation Supports Student Learning and Achievement

    May 26th, 2009

    By Dr. Kevin Washburn, Contributing Editor

    You sit in a room with almost nothing in it. It’s just you, a table, and a single cookie. The researcher who left a moment ago said you could eat the cookie—two chocolate wafers connected by a cream filling. Or, you can wait until he returns in a few minutes and have two cookies. You sit, thinking, “One now? or two later?”

    Oh, one more detail: you are four-years-old, and whether you eat one cookie now or wait for two later may predict many aspects of your future.

    Thanks to recent Radio Lab episodes, coverage on news programs, and attention from bloggers such as writer Jonah Lehrer and educator Aaron Eyler, self-regulation has become a hot topic.

    Much of the attention has focused on the original study, often called the “Marshmallow Test,” conducted by Walter Mischel in the 1960’s. (The researchers switched to cookies shortly after launching the experiment.) But more recent research provides insights into the relationship of self-regulation and academic achievement.

    Also known as self-discipline, researchers describe self-regulation as the ability to consciously suppress or delay responses in order to work for a higher goal. Examples include “deliberately modulating one’s anger rather than having a temper tantrum, reading test instructions before proceeding to the questions, paying attention to a teacher rather than daydreaming, saving money so that it can accumulate interest in the bank, choosing homework over TV, and persisting on long-term assignments despite boredom and frustration.” Self-regulation predicts academic success better than IQ. It also better predicts GPA, standardized test achievement, homework completion, the potential for GPA gains during the course of a year, and even SAT scores.

    Because it significantly influences student achievement, it makes sense to develop students’ self-regulation capacities. But how? How can teachers and schools aid their students’ strengthening of self-regulation? Self-regulation is much like a muscle. It can be exercised and strengthened. Any task that requires ignoring and delaying reward or that requires persistence through boredom or challenge exercises the self-regulation “muscle.” For example:

    • Exercise students’ “muscles” of self-regulation. By engaging students in activities that require delayed gratification or perseverance, we provide a self-regulation workout. Just like exercising yields slow but steady results, gradually increasing the amount of self-regulation required for tasks slowly builds capacity. As Aaron Eyler suggests, engage students in complex assignments that require time spent thinking about how ideas connect instead of separate, quickly-completed assignments focused on individual ideas.
    • Teach students stick-to-it and wait-for-it strategies, such as self-talk. The messages we consciously “speak” to ourselves influence our thinking, and our thinking influences our actions. In several recent studies, researchers have found that “mental tricks,” motivational and instructional self-talk has “small but significant effects” on “physical exertion…[and] performance” and help us stay “focused.”
    • Teach students “cognitive transformation.” Cognitive transformation involves distracting the mind by shifting the focus. For example, in the famous “marshmallow test,” some children managed to avoid eating the marshmallow by imagining it as something else—a cloud, a table, a chef’s hat. This “distraction” prolonged their ability to resist eating the marshmallow.
    • Engage students in attention training, such as listening for details, observing closely, and solving complex puzzles. Again, increasing the level and duration of attention required for success can strengthen the self-regulation “muscle.” Reading aloud to students is one of the best ways of accomplishing this. Throughout a school year, increase the amount of time you read to children and the complexity of the texts you read.
    • Implement a school FITNESS program. The emphasis needs to be on fitness, not on competition or learning a specific sport. Students engaged in regular physical activity score higher on self-regulation measures.

    Some may argue that because self-regulation is non-academic it should not be addressed in school. This perspective fails to recognize the strong connection between self-regulation and learning. Perhaps a metaphor can help. Imagine a suspension bridge, such as San Francisco’s Golden Gate or the Bristol Channel’s Severn. If the road, carrying travelers from one shore to another, represents a student’s learning, the cables, the roadway’s essential support, represent self-regulation. Weak cables limit the roadway’s depth and distance. Strengthening students’ self-regulation capacities supports the academic learning we’re seeking through our teaching.

    Duckworth, A. L. (2008). Self-discipline, IQ, and academic achievement. Presented at Learning & the Brain: Using Emotions Research to Enhance Learning. Boston (Fall 2008).

    Duckworth, A. L., & Seligman, M. E. P. (2005). Self-discipline outdoes IQ in predicting academic performance of adolescents. Psychological Science 16(12), 939-944.

    Duckworth, A. L., & Seligman, M. E. P. (2006). Self-discipline gives girls the edge: Gender in self-discipline, grades, and achievement test scores. Journal of Educational Psychology 98(1), 198-208.

    Eyler, A. (2009). Hybridizing education. Stretch our minds (May 22, 2009): http://stretchourminds.blogspot.com.

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    Physical Spaces in Support of Whole Child Education

    May 21st, 2009

    By Ann Etchison, Virginia ASCD

    Recently I spent a day visiting the physical spaces inhabited by the students and educators of Manassas Park City Schools in Northern Virginia—a revamped learning community more than ten years in the making envisioned by educators, the School Board, the community, and a group of architects. I thought I would be writing about this rather sleek concept of how/where school design and instruction intersect, but I’m stuck at the keyboard with more thoughts about engaging and caring school cultures, program-based school design, effective instruction and inspirational leadership. Perhaps the intersection occurs where these four ingredients of effective schools overlap—a recipe of complementary efforts with a common focus on what’s best for children’s academic, emotional, social, and physical health. I’m reminded of ASCD’s Whole Child campaign and think this school division epitomizes its tenets.


    The story of Manassas Park Superintendent Tom Debolt and the School Board’s mission to create community investment in a vision for quality education is well chronicled by University of Virginia Professor Daniel Duke in his 2008 book, The Little School System That Could: Transforming a City School District. I won’t delve into that story in this post, but suffice it to say that since the mid nineties, Dr. DeBolt has led a reform effort that transformed the school-community culture, raised student achievement, and created wide support for physical learning spaces designed to foster a caring and creative learning community.

    One of the goals within the system’s plan includes providing world-class facilities for all students, and in the last ten years, Manassas Park has replaced each existing school facility with a new building and added a pre-K facility. Interestingly, planning the educational program for each of these schools began well before the school was designed and built. The instructional program drove the design, and the architects listened to the educators to inform their work. At the elementary level, school staff chose a parallel block schedule to optimize learning, and the schools were designed to support the schedule, which allowed for small group instruction in core subjects, common planning for teachers, and dedicated time for both physical and arts education.



    The newest school, Manassas Park Elementary School and Pre-K addition, opened weeks ago and exemplifies the school system’s focus on design that enhances instruction and positive school climate. Similar to the other facilities, the interior is bathed in natural light, wide and inviting stairwells, and common areas for students to gather; the library serves as a central hub. All schools employ the concept of “passive supervision” with interior glass that promotes both an openness but also a sense of ever-present supervision. Teachers belong to a teacher cluster space that includes a person space, group meeting space, and kitchenette. In this gold LEED environmentally friendly school, design includes solar tubes throughout that maximize natural lighting, a rainwater harvesting system, and a geo-thermal heating and cooling system. Moreover, the instructional program incorporates teaching students about the systems used in the school and wall plaques throughout the building explain reasons behind each with computer monitors that provide energy usage data to the entire school community. Physical and arts education serve as an integral part of the school schedule, and every student learns to play an instrument during the upper elementary years.

    Interestingly, this is not a wealthy community full of parents with advanced degrees. Half of the very diverse student population qualifies for free or reduced lunch, and many have felt the pains of economic recession and home foreclosure. But the proud investment in the public education system looms large, as witnessed by the fact that 1000 people showed up on the last Friday in April for the official move to the new school. Teachers, parents, community members, administrators, high school students, and most of the staff of the architectural firm that designed the school joined forces in what Superintendent DeBolt described as the educational equivalent of a barn raising and completed the move in less than two hours.


    School buildings deteriorate and have to be replaced or community growth mandates the need for new structures. Children enter those buildings, look around, and decide whether they feel valued and welcome. Teachers often spend as much if not more time in their respective school buildings than they do anywhere else, and a community speaks volumes through the leaders it chooses, the programs it creates, the culture it nourishes, and the physical spaces it designs for learning.

    Last week the House of Representatives passed a bill intended to funnel millions of dollars into each state coffer to promote healthy educational spaces for children to learn. It’s exciting to picture more schools like the ones I saw in Manassas Park that promote the development of the Whole Child through innovative and effective program design, learning-focused school culture, high quality teaching and leadership, and valued community support.

    I’m curious about school facility design processes in other communities, especially in the midst of an economic recession. What other factors not included in this post should influence school design? How have people and available resources worked to create learning-focused spaces for children and/or what obstacles must be overcome?

    Ann Etchison (@ann1622) is the Executive Director of Virginia ASCD (@vascd).

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    Learning: Three Basics to Improve Teaching

    April 28th, 2009

    “Well, I don’t really know much about how a car runs,” the mechanic explains, “but I do have a garage full of tools that I know how to use. One of them will probably do the trick.”

    Would you trust your car to this repairperson? What if you were given a similar explanation by a plumber? a pharmacist? a surgeon?

    We expect experts to have more than a collection of tools; we expect them to have an understanding of what they need to accomplish so they can tailor their actions accordingly. An air pump, while a useful tool for certain tasks, will do little good if used to address an oil leak.

    Similarly, teachers need more than a collection of teaching methods. They need to understand learning. Knowing how people learn increases a teacher’s intentionality, the capacity to design instruction that fits both the material and the learners.

    What, then, are some basics of learning that every school leader and teacher should know? Here are three starter principles:

    Memorization ≠ Learning: It amazes me how many times teachers argue that memorization equals learning and offer the times table as proof. Let’s imagine that a child memorizes the times table but never understands the concept of multiplication (same-sized groups being combined and the total items tabulated) nor the pattern that calls for multiplication as a solution (same-sized groups needing to be combined to determine a total). Of what value, beyond the teacher’s timed tests, will having memorized the times table be? The student will not understand what he is doing when answering multiplication questions from memory, nor will he be able to ever use multiplication to solve word or real-world problems. Yes, some elements need to be memorized, but equating memorization with authentic learning is a mistake, because…

    The brain constructs learning. “We often talk of knowledge as though it could be divorced from thinking, as though it could be gathered up by one person and given to another in the form of a collection of sentences to remember,” explains Richard Paul. “When we talk in this way we forget that knowledge, by its very nature, depends on thought. Knowledge is produced by thought, analyzed by thought, comprehended by thought, organized, evaluated, maintained, and transformed by thought. Knowledge exists, properly speaking, only in minds that have comprehended it and constructed it through thought.” To learn, the brain labels and sorts incoming data, seeks patterns within it, and recalls prior experiences related to it. The new data and the prior experiences are then blended to construct understanding. Unless we engage students in thinking about new material, they will not learn. And they will lack the ability to use new knowledge because…

    Authentic learning empowers transfer. Students transfer learning when they use it outside of the classroom. Unfortunately, transfer rarely occurs. According to Eric Jensen, the “abysmal failure of students to transfer learning from school subjects to real life…cuts across age, IQ, and social status.” What contributes to a student’s ability to use knowledge in widened or varied contexts? “The first factor that influences successful transfer is degree of mastery of the original subject,” conclude Bransford, Brown, and Cocking. “Without an adequate level of initial learning, transfer cannot be expected. This point seems obvious, but it is often overlooked…Transfer is affected by the degree to which people learn with understanding rather than merely memorize sets of facts or follow a fixed set of procedures.”

    Understanding learning involves more than comprehending these three principles, and neurocognitive researchers are uncovering new insights almost every day. However, even basic knowledge of learning influences instructional decisions. Teachers who grow in their understanding of learning develop more than a cache of instructional methods. They increase in intentionality. They are able to design instruction that fosters authentic learning. They know why they do what they do, and they know why what they do achieves the goal: student learning.

    Bransford, J. D., Brown, A. L., & Cocking, R. R. (Eds.), How People Learn: Brain, Mind, Experience, and School (Washington, D. C.: National Academy Press, 1999), 41, 43.
    Jensen, E., Enriching the Brain: How to Maximize Every Learner’s Potential (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2006), 20.
    Paul, R., “The State of Critical Thinking Today: The Need for a Substantive Concept of Critical Thinking,” retrieved December 2006 from http://www.criticalthinking.org/resources/articles/the-state-ct-today.shtml.

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