Subject: School Model - Teacher Training

Posted by Tim Joy on 2/1/2014
In Reply To:School Model - Teacher Training Posted by Barun K. Pani on 1/24/2014

Message:

Martin:

You have put quite a lot on the table to talk about. Let me preface my comment here by stating that I have read through other comments before coming to this moment when I am responding to each one. Therefore, my comments will have a more global quality to them. But, I should say, that is what I wanted to do.

Let me - and, perhaps, us - take a step back from the many models of education (Montessori, Unschooling, et al) and think, in the broadest terms, how do teachers foment change in a school? That is really the model I am after . . . leverage available to teachers to assert change in pedagogy and - limited though it may be - curriculum.

The traditional model of a high school is a vast building with classrooms, what one researcher called "a mall filled with one-room schoolhouses." Everyone working as independent contractors, none working as a team. That's the model my efforts are attempting to undo.

I clipped, here, the section you compiled on "mental models":

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?

My responses:
1. Too large and inexplicable for me to unpack right now.
2. This is the curriculum, sometimes known as benchmarks. These are the things "children should know and be able to do." Immaterial to me, really, in the model.
3. I am really enamored of this item, and am thinking about how to embed this notion of "school culture" in a model. Since I run a Catholic school, this element is crucial to training teachers and helping students.
4. What are the report out mechanisms? Are we measuring the right things? While I don't know precisely where to place this in the model, I know what sector it belongs in. Schooling is ALL ABOUT STUDENT LEARNING so the school's dashboards need to be providing data from that part of the system. "Data Teams" operate throughout schools. Zooming in on this mechanism - say, a math department working as a team to helps students with linear equations - would be a useful little model.
5. I believe my original model attempts to respond to this very question. Noting a gap in Student Learning, teachers (on a Data Team) turn to Research the Problem of Practice; from there, they seek out Professional Development either to change curricula or enhance pedagogy.

Staying at a high level while model building (Disclaimer: this is a runnable model, but a map only.) helps me think about the mechanisms of change. They are many, no doubt. I am sensing that attempting to do this will generate a model heavily laden with factors to account for all manner of change. I'm not much interested in that model.

You're right, Martin, there are too many variables to capture it all. In this respect, keeping the model to a few key stocks has been my aim.

Thanks so much for participating in this discussion.