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School Model - Teacher Training
Posted by Martin Schaffernicht on 1/24/2014
In Reply To:School Model - Teacher Training Posted by Tim Joy on 1/22/2014
Hi Tim,
I've been captured by the subject. As a "system", whatever we design around children will be very complex. to analyze let alone to simulate (my opinion). Indeed, as far as the purpose of your effort is "school change", one might hope the focus makes it a little less complex.
Based on the last messages in this thread, I reflected upon what I believe about children. I have never worked as school teacher, my "pupils" are university students, but I've been involved in a Montessori school Project since 1996 now; so my points of are framed by my personal case. But anyway, here I go.
As far as a school is meant to help children develop, one basic question is "how do children function" as far as needs and wants, the drive to grow, to imitate, mental and abstraction capabilities (and so forth) are concerned. Assume we were able to give a list of relevant characteristics, some dealing with what favors development (learning), others that hinder development.
Then the school's purpose would be to offer an environment with features which will take advantage of the favorable characteristics and diminish the hindering factors. In that case, the experiences which children make at school would foster their learning and development. The "environment" is everything which is perceived: the teachers and everything else; the teachers have a double role, because not only is their behavior directly perceived, but also they define and design the organizational ant physical features of the school environment. In such a case, we can use the "list of relevant characteristics" (mentioned in the previous paragraph) and, one by one, ask how well the current situation of the school covers each characteristic.
So we can imagine a "degree of adjustment" of the school, which would be the quantification of how well the school environment is adapted to the pupils' needs.
Suppose we can really give this list of characteristics and also determine the degree of adjustment: on the way, we'd have identified all the shortcomings in the school's characteristics. If the school staff is willing and able to correct them, improvements in pupils' development achievements should be observable (if not, either the implemented "corrections" were wrong or the list of characteristics).
If you allow me to speak of mental models, it seems to me that there is a hierarchy on mental models involved, responding to the following questions (numbers indicate hierarchical order):
1) how do we believe that school children function? (-> the list of characteristics)
2) what are children supposed to learn or have learned at a certain age (or development stage)?
3) how do we believe a school environment can be helpful? (our pedagogical and didactical beliefs)
4) how can we detect shortcomings and decide where the fault is?
5) how can we correct ourselves and our school upon detecting a shortcoming?
Faults or errors can exist at any of these levels. Probably many of these things are not explicit, but surely modeling is an excellent way to change this.
Assuming that children's characteristics do not change too quickly, a school could develop (change) such as to dynamically increase its "degree of adjustment" and allow its pupils to develop "optimally" (as far as such a word can be used in this context).
Teachers (and the other organizational roles which influence the specific characteristics of a school) will have to be real supermen and superwomen.
Let us suppose we have already answered question 1 and have a map of the answer. Then we may have been able to derive the second answer, too, so we know what we want our pupils to achieve at each school-year. If we start mapping at level 3: what are the "resources" (tangible and intangible) needed to materialize the question of "how do we believe a school environment can be helpful"? Of course I do not know the answer, but I am sure the set of relevant resources is rich. Some will be simple: classrooms have to be sufficiently big to assure a minimum m2/pupil; there must be sufficient working materials per pupil and so on. Of course this involves money, so there appears the question of harmonizing funding sources with these material resources. Then there are human resources, like how teachers think of themselves ("I know everything and I transfer it to my pupils" is often met here in Chile, but we might prefer "I enjoy learning") and how willing "we" are to question ourselves.
I find that I cannot possibly imagine how many characteristics there are. Some may count as "curriculum", others as "methodology". My problem now is that if they are already "compressed" into stocks, they have become anonymous (did you develop more detailed maps on your way to the current model?). And I fear that there are other intangible resources (not part of the "curriculum" or "methodology" stock) which are essential for a schools capability of changing (in an endogenous manner). You know, like: if you think of yourself as "I know everything" then you will perceive underachievement in a way that does not threaten your self-image - so you do not perceive any need for change or improvement. What are the beliefs and attitudes (resources) which help/hinder, and how and with what speed can they develop (or be developed).
I copy this message to Paula Moreno, my wife and director of our school: I believe she will be interested in this dialog.
Thanks for inspiring me!
Martin
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