Will Richardson

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On Learning and Common Sense

October 11, 2017 By Will Richardson 4 Comments

As I continue my trek through some of the “classics” regarding learning and schools, I’m finding it interesting the belief systems that many authors take pains to articulate when it comes to answering my current favorite question “What do you mean by learning?” And while there are some similar overtones, to be sure, each comes at it a bit differently.

Carl Rogers, best known as a psychotherapist who championed “client-centered therapy,” was also a vocal advocate for one of today’s most prevalent edu phrases, “student-centered learning.” And this was 50+ years ago.

Freedom to Learn: A View of What Education Might Become is Rogers’ most focused work on education. It highlights the stories of three different teachers at the outset and their work to create conditions in their classrooms where students had a great deal of agency over the what and how of the learning they were doing. The stories are not unlike those you read from a number of schools who are currently reimagining what their practice in classrooms looks like. Later, Rogers goes into the practical aspects of facilitating classes like these, and dives into the types of relationships that teachers and students must have in order to develop kids as learners.

To that end, Rogers’ principles for learning interest me and resonate to a great degree:

  1. Human beings have a natural potentiality for learning. They are curious about their world, until and unless this curiosity is blunted by their experience in our educational system.
  2. Significant learning takes place when the subject matter is perceived by the student as having relevance for his own purposes.
  3. Learning which involves a change in self organization—in the perception of oneself—is threatening and tends to be resisted.
  4. Those learnings which are threatening to the self are more easily perceived and assimilated when external threats are at a minimum.
  5. When threat to the self is low, experience can be perceived in differentiated fashion and learning can proceed.
  6. Much significant learning is acquired through doing. Placing the student in direct experiential confrontation with practical problems, social problems, ethical and philosophical problems, personal issues, and research problems, is one of the most effective modes of promoting learning
  7. Learning is facilitated when the student participates responsibly in the learning process. When he chooses his own directions, helps to discover his own learning resources, formulates his own problems, decides his own course of action, lives with the consequences of these choices, then significant learning is maximized
  8. Self-initiated learning which involves the whole person of the learner—feelings as wells as intellect—is the most lasting and pervasive.
  9. Independence, creativity, and self-reliance are all facilitated when self-criticism and self-evaluation are basic and evaluation by others is of secondary importance. If a child is to grow up to be independent and self reliant he must be given opportunities at an early age not only to make his own judgments and his own mistakes but to evaluate the consequences of these judgments and choices
  10. The most socially useful learning in the modern world is the learning of the process of learning, a continuing openness to experience and incorporation into oneself of the process of change. If our present culture survives it will be because we have been able to develop individuals for whom change is the central fact of life and who have been able to live comfortably with this central fact

Much to unpack in that, but as I said earlier, almost all of it resonates with my own thinking and that of others I’ve read. A couple of specific comments.

First, in my work with leadership, I see the resistance alluded to in #3 all the time. Robert Evans calls it the difference between “first-order changes” which deal try to improve the “efficiency or effectiveness of what we are already doing,” and “second-order changes,” which are “systemic in nature and aim to modify the very way an organization is put together, altering its assumptions, goals, structures, roles, and norms.” Substitute “individual” for “organization” in that last sentence as well. Very few leaders in my experience are willing to level up to take on with seriousness those second-order changes.

The whole “external threat” aspect of learning Rogers talks about in #4 and #5 is a huge barrier to learning, and change. Federal and state governments have placed explicit threats on schools and teachers, which in turn tempers their ability to learn. (And yes, we need schools that learn.)  It also speaks to the way we currently assess our kids and the consequences of “failure” that we place on them. Deep learning can be uncomfortable, and absent a supportive, nurturing environment, it does not flourish.

In #7, I love how Rogers uses the word “responsibly” and the stark distinction between his use of the word and the way it’s most often applied in schools. There, being “responsible” means acceding to the demands and norms of the system, as in do your homework, be on time, don’t cause a ruckus, etc. To Rogers, however, it means using freedom and agency to pursue personal learning in depth. Shifting the way we think about the word in schools would be a “second-order change,” no?

Finally, the one that resonates the most is undoubtedly the last. But it’s not just the goal of we the adults developing “individuals for whom change is the central fact of life.” It’s that we adults, especially in education, have to become those individuals ourselves. As much as schools have changed over the past 100 years, and they have changed a lot, present day school cultures are still resistant to change. It only happens when it has to, as a reaction to external edicts or pressures. I see little evidence of school cultures that embrace change, and act proactively to learn through it.

As with most of these lists of principles or beliefs, there’s little here that belies common sense.

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Filed Under: Change, leadership, On My Mind Tagged With: learning

Zen and the Art of School Change

January 27, 2017 By Will Richardson 8 Comments

About a week ago I grabbed Zen and Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert Pirsig off my bookshelf and cracked it open for the first time since I first read it probably 30 years ago. I didn’t remember much of the story, but I did remember thinking it was an important read the first time around. And I’m finding that again. For the uninitiated, it’s the true story of the author, his son and two friends on a motorcycle trip through the high plains and Rockies, and the search for a deeper understanding of life and existence. It is, for me at least, a pretty deep and challenging text that I’m enjoying struggling through.

Anyway, last night I read this one passage that when I read it made me go “yeah…that’s what I’ve been trying to say but haven’t been able to.” Pirisg is writing about Phaedrus, who, it turns out, is actually a younger, darker version of himself. He writes:

“He felt that institutions such as schools, churches, governments, and political organizations of every sort all tended to direct thought for ends other than truth, for the perpetuation of their own functions, and for control of individuals in the service of those functions.”

I love passages like this one that literally (and I mean literally) give me goosebumps of resonance, if you know what I mean.

So let me try to break that down a bit more in terms of my sense of the schools part of that quote.

Do schools “direct thought for ends other than the truth?” This is what I’ve been trying to suss out in my never ending homilies around beliefs and common sense in schools. I think, too, this is what Frank Smith argues so well in The Book of Learning and Forgetting. There are just truths about learning and schooling that we deny. Truths like we don’t remember what we don’t want to learn or what doesn’t have relevance in our life. That we don’t learn when we are oppressed. That standardizing an education pushes against the inherent uniqueness of children. That learning in schools doesn’t reflect learning in real life, and so on. This is the Russell Ackoff quote, again, where we do things right at the expense of doing the right thing. It’s why so many people go “aw, crap” when I show that side by side slide of conditions that we know kids (and we) need for deep and powerful learning and the conditions we actually create.

And the idea that schools (meaning the people in them) do this for “the perpetuation of their own functions” is absolutely true. If we truly were to move agency over learning to the learner and hew to the truths about learning, our functions would radically, fundamentally change. Teacher wouldn’t be teacher. The architectures of schooling would be seen as barriers to learning, not as paths to efficiency. The narrative would have to be completely rewritten. But the reality is we’d rather be “better” than “different” because the former doesn’t require huge change.

Finally, do we avoid the truth and instead focus on the “control of individuals in the service of those functions” that are already well established? No question. This is what Seymour Sarason writes so passionately about in terms of the power relationships that have existed and currently exist in schools. I’ve written before the literally hundreds (if not thousands) of times where I’ve talked to teachers who have told me they are “powerless” to change. They are, in other words, controlled by the system, by the standards, by the narrative. And no one doubts that kids are controlled; they have little voice in what happens to them, and classroom management is still high on the list of things that teaches are evaluated on.

So, yeah, we ignore what we know is true because if we didn’t, we would have to seriously change what we do. It’s just easier to work within the well established norms of learning and teaching, the efficiency model, and to impose power over those who may want to challenge those norms in a quest for truth and effectiveness in learning. In other words, as much as we as individuals may want to change, the institution we’re stuck with is built not to. It works to “perpetuate its own functions,” which is why real, high-bar change in schools is so hard to effect.

Thoughts?

(Image credit: Alan Levine)

Filed Under: Change, leadership, On My Mind

The One Word That Prevents Real Educational Reform From Happening

August 3, 2016 By Will Richardson 2 Comments

Given the common sense arguments for learning that run counter to the current day structures and practices of schools, it would seem that a real rethinking of our education system would have happened long before now. It’s hard to argue that forcing kids to learn the same thing on the same day in the same place at the same pace with other kids their same age from their same neighborhood with the same teacher to be assessed in the same way is built on any sound theory of learning and not instead focused on being as efficient as possible in “delivering” an education to our kids. Kids don’t learn that way before they become school age, and no one learns like that in real life. Imagine, if you can, if we set the same conditions for our adult learning. We wouldn’t stand for it, would we?

But despite the obvious problems with the structures, we come up with all sorts of reasons for not changing. It’s because we can’t ignore the state assessments. Or we can’t change the structures. Or we can’t make the parents upset. Or we can’t ask the unions to change. Or we can’t risk our college placement rankings. Or we can’t…

And that is the word, “can’t,” that we use to quell any real discussion of change and reform. Real change is just not possible. It just can’t be done.

15519253863_2fc81c8dd4_bBut here’s the thing: in my travels, I’ve seen every one of the “can’ts” overcome in one school or another. A number of schools don’t give grades because they think they’re detrimental to learning, yet their kids end up going to great colleges if they so desire. Other schools have mixed age groups because they believe that’s a better condition for learning. There are schools that have created relationships with parents so that when change is needed, the community comes out in support of an at times even initiates the change. And there are schools who have stood up to the state assessors and asked for and received waivers to what they see as counterproductive policies and practices. Or, they convince constituents that the test scores are not where real learning and preparedness for the modern world resides.

If we’re honest, it’s not about “can’t.” Instead, it’s about “won’t.” We won’t do those things, even though common sense says we ought to, because we don’t have the conviction or the courage or, importantly, the conscience to do them. And so, we introduce cosmetic changes meant to soften the disconnect between what we believe and what we do all the while knowing deep in our learning minds that we’re trying to do the wrong thing right. (I know, broken record.)

Sure, real change that requires us to think differently about the experience we provide for our kids is extremely difficult. And it challenges centuries of history and practice.

But let’s be clear: it is not impossible.

It’s happening all around us.

If we want to resist real change in our schools, so be it. But let’s just own the fact that it’s not that it can’t be done.

It’s that we won’t do it.

(Photo Credit: Maurits Verbiest)

Filed Under: Classroom Practice, leadership, learning, schools, Vision

The “New Basics”

May 16, 2016 By Will Richardson 5 Comments

books delete“What beliefs guide your work in your school?”

I ask that question over and over when I visit schools and talk to teachers and leaders. And I’m not so much wondering what exactly those beliefs are (though, that’s important) as much as whether or not there is some collective belief system that undergirds the practice, and subsequently, how that’s shared and manifested in the classroom.

Take, for example, Beaver Country Day School in Massachusetts.

At Beaver everything we do is student-centered and future-focused.  We recognize today’s students live in a world that’s different from the world 25 to 30 years ago and education needs to respond – just as it did in the late 19th century in the face of the Industrial Revolution.  We believe students need to develop essential new skills, what we call the New Basics: creative problem-solving, collaboration, iteration, visual communication, empathy, tech & media literacy, and presentation skills.

And it’s not just a list; it’s a culture.

Prioritizing the development of these skills must live everywhere in the school – in 7th grade math and in 11th grade English, in science and in art, on the stage and on the turf.  To gauge effectiveness of this approach, we use a pretty simple measuring stick. At any given time, in any scenario, our students need to be able to answer two key questions: “What am I doing?” and “Why am I doing it?”

If you really want to change what you are doing in schools, one of the “new basics” is to state what you believe, and make sure it’s contextualized in the realities of living an learning in the modern world.

Image credit: Patrick Tomasso

Filed Under: leadership, On My Mind, Vision

Adapt. Fast.

May 5, 2016 By Will Richardson 3 Comments

bikes2 deleteStewart Hase:

The ability to learn, for both individuals and institutions, is critical to survival. While it has always been so, adaptation in the past could comfortably take place over a long period of time. Now, that is no longer possible.

One of the biggest challenges to schools is that the timeframe for “adaptation” is speeding up. If you don’t believe that you need only look at the current U.S. election cycle and how, at least on the Republican side, the traditional playbook has not only been tossed out but may have been totally erased from the political hard drive. Or look at the early but quickening effects of climate change on our societies. Businesses, medicine, science…everyone seems to be in “perpetual beta” when it comes to figuring out what to do next.

So when we talk about “modern learning,” we’re not just talking about the learner; we’re talking about the institution as well. And while the learner (Read: kid with a smartphone) is doing an ok job of “adapting” to this new environment, schools and “education” seem to be struggling. Adapting doesn’t mean overlaying technology on top of traditional practice when learning with technology defies those practices . It doesn’t mean hewing to traditional power relationships at a moment when modern organizational hierarchies are flattening. And it also doesn’t mean installing a maker space or a “Genius Hour” or a coding class and calling it a day.

Right now, schools that learn understand that their central function is changing.

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Right now, schools that learn understand that their central function is changing, that “an education” is no longer the delivery of a set curriculum but, instead, is about building the capacity for individuals and groups to learn deeply and powerfully in the world. That moving forward, an “education” will be determined by the learner as they play out their lives, not by an institution attempting to predict what may or may not be relevant or useful in the future. That’s a significant rethinking of practice and architecture required to make that happen.

The fact is, few schools reflect the ability to learn. Few have cultures where the emphasis is on questioning and wondering and iterating new practices for the new contexts that now surround us. Instead, schools are focused on doing the old stuff better. Better policies. Better assessments. Better practices, not new.

The question then is not whether schools who don’t learn will survive. In the short term, most will;  there is an important child care function that’s not to be overlooked. The more pressing question is will the students in those schools survive and truly flourish in their lives as adults who are constantly being asked to adapt, and not given much time to do it.

Image credit: Maico Amorim

Filed Under: leadership, On My Mind, schools, The Shifts, Vision

“Where Are You Going?”

April 14, 2016 By Will Richardson 2 Comments

cloudsdelete“Where are you going?”

We ask that all the time of our kids, our spouses, our friends. Do we ever ask that of our schools?

We should.

And I’m not talking about being #FutureReady or other such recipe. I’m talking about the unique vision that every school should grapple with as the people in it look to the future and try to move forward. A vision that challenges our current practices.

Seth Godin:

“We’re trained not to speak up and say “I want to go over there, and I’m going to be responsible for getting us over there, and no one has ever been over there, and I’m not exactly sure how to get over there…’Let’s go!’ That’s hard. So we’re to go in acknowledging that it’s hard. That the difficult work of leadership begins with understanding that our responsibility…is to describe a future, a place where we want to go.”

If I asked “Where is your school going?” could you answer?

(Photo by Olivier Miche)

Filed Under: leadership, Vision

Wanted: School Chief Learning Officer

May 6, 2009 By Will Richardson

So here’s a question I was discussing a couple of weeks ago with a superintendent at a gathering of educational leaders: What percentage of the teachers at your school do a good job of preparing kids to take meet the requirements, pass the tests, and get prepared for college, and what percentage do a good job of teaching them how to learn? Not suggesting that the two are mutually exclusive, but as we talked about it, she shook her head at one point and said “I think 90 percent of my staff is really good at delivering the goods, but only about 10 percent really get student centered, inquiry driven, lifelong learning.”

That answer stuck with me. I would guess that’s probably the case for most schools, and the reasons are obvious. I know many schools and districts have full-time positions for testing coordinators and college counselors and data-driven decision makers. We put a great deal of emphasis on outcomes with our kids, but I keep wondering how much more we could do in emphasizing the process of learning as well, not just for students but for everyone in the school.

So when I read Jay Cross’s latest piece in CLO magazine, I wondered how many schools could point to someone, anyone, who is in charge of learning. By that I mean someone who manages the culture of the school by focusing not on outcomes as much as how learning is writ large in the system. Someone who also understands the ways in which social Web technologies accentuate the need for the learning skills we’ve desired all along: creativity, critical thinking, independent thought, collaboration, etc. I know I keep going back to this, but I wonder how many of us can look at our colleagues and answer the question “How does that person learn?” And think of the leaders in our schools in that light as well.

And it really is about a culture that supports, celebrates and shares learning. Jay points to a survey about CLOs from TogetherLearn that I think acts as a good barometer of that work. Does your school:

  • Welcome innovation and contributions from its teachers?
  • Encourage (and provide time for) reflection on successes and flops?
  • Tolerate mistakes and reward thinking out of the box?
  • Share information openly?
  • Foster learning for everyone?
  • Experiment with new ways of doing things?
  • Work across departments and unit boundaries with ease?

All of that suggests a place that emphasizes process, not outcomes. (The rest of the survey is definitely worth a look in the context of schools as well.) And it also suggests intent, not just serendipity. We need to hire for learning, plan for learning, and share the learning of the entire system, students, teachers, and support staff alike. We need to leverage the potential of the local personal learning communities as well as the global networks of which we can become a part. We need people to lead that work, however, people who understand deeply the passion-based, self-directed potentials for learning in a connected world, and the importance of a vision for true learner-centered classrooms and curricula for everyone in the building.

So I’m wondering, do you have a CLO in your school either by name or reputation? Should we be thinking about hiring CLOs in our schools and districts? Modifying other positions to include these ideas?

Filed Under: leadership, learning Tagged With: learning, schools

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