In Search of Agency

Posted on March 29, 2012 by Bud Hunt

It sure seems like a lot of things just happen to people. You know, beyond our control and all. We’re well-intentioned, and rocking along, and all of a sudden, but on a pretty regular basis, something just happens.

And we are helpless in the face of all this happening stuff. Right?

Of course not, but when it comes to teaching and learning, I have come to see that way more often than I’m comfortable with, teachers and students alike just let their schooling happen to them rather than acknowledging that they have control over what and how and even when they learn. Even in the face of mandates and political pressure. Even then.

But folks feel helpless more than I think they actually are. Learning, or school, or whatever, seems to happen to them, rather than the other way around. It’s supposed to be the other way around. Folks are supposed to own their actions and habits and the way they spend their time. And our culture too often supports passivity and compliance.

I feel like folks forget they are the agents of their experiences. We have agency. Power. Control. Maybe not over everything that happens. Certainly not all. But over more than we realize more often than not.

So how might we work to build agency in teachers and learners? Let me simplify that question – how can we help folks develop the ability to recognize the constraints of a situation and to begin to play with them?

As I delve more into elements of play and hacking, and even maker culture, it seems to me that there’s fertile ground there. Play, if you recall, is the ability to move freely within constraints. Hacking is the ability to see the system – and a problem with it – and work to improve it. Making is creating. It’s fiddling with the constraints of lots of different systems. Yarn. Blocks. Food. Circuits. Classrooms. Textbooks. Laws. Whatever.

Hacking and making and playing are how you figure out where the constraints are, and how you might be able to fiddle with them. As well as what happens when you do. These skills/habits/attitudes/frames of thinking are useful when thinking about developing agency.

That was where I got to in my wondering and thinking when it was time for Michelle and Kyle and I to think about what we’re going to work on next. And then I got a whiteboard pen in hand. And we did this¹:

Enter hacking/making/playing. Or, more specifically, Hack/Make/Play. It’ll be a multiple day and ongoing PD experience that we do in the district. In conversation with other folks. If school’s but one node in the learning networks of children, well, we want to play nicely with the other nodes. And we want to use our time with teachers to help them make things. To help them understand how to identify building blocks. And to help them figure out when and how to take things apart and put them back together differently.

Building on others’ successes in maker and hacking spaces, and on the idea that learning is, to some extent, playing with information, deconstructing and reconstructing it, we would like to create some professional learning experiences that would help people to begin to feel equipped, and to a more important extent, empowered, or permissioned, or whatever the word is for “it’s okay to do this”-ed in order to build those senses of agency for teachers and students and anyone involved in learning.

Right now, it’s just notes on a board. And messy ones. We started thinking about a week-long camp. But that wasn’t right. We want lots of entry points into this kind of thinking. Lots of ways to engage and get involved. So the “days” I spell out are probably not going to happen sequentially. We don’t know yet. But I do think that each of them is a kind of entry point. Hacking the Web seems an important way of thinking. Making stuff another. Hacking curriculum? Well, you get the idea.

The essential question at the bottom is, I think, the big piece – “How do I approach a system to determine where my agency lies?” If you’re able to play, you can see the constraints. To see them, you’ve got to know how and where to look. Hacking, making and playing seem to be useful ways to answer that question. Not the only ways – not everyone needs to play with Picocrickets, or build toy cars. Heck, the knitting circles I’m familiar with in our district likely embody the ethos we’re aiming for. Everyone needs to be making something.

Over the next several weeks, we’ll begin to flesh it out and look for the connective tissue that will hold various groups of hackers, makers, and players around our district together. In some cases, we’ll probably start new groups. In others, we might help existing groups to find one another. I don’t know. But I do know that something I said earlier in this post is worth saying again – there’s fertile ground here. Hackers and makers and gamers are really good at learning.

You might already be farming spaces like these – so I’m asking: Where do we go next?

I should not be allowed to use whiteboards without some serious remedial handwriting work. [↩]

#DML2012 – The Experience of Listening. Was (Too Often) All.

Posted on March 5, 2012 by Bud Hunt

One of my takeaways from the DML 2012 conference is that the messages of connected learning have not quite caught up yet with the practices of academic conferences.

It’s a common complaint – both that I hear and that I sometimes make – that the learning spaces that we want for children should at least attempt to be modeled by the conferences/meetings where we go to talk about and explore learning possibilities. And while I get that there’s a culture or cultures to academia, and that much of the DML community is rooted in research and dissemination practices that are fairly formal, well, I’m struck that the medium and the messages of the event seemed to be in slight conflict. Even on the mothership, the interesting stuff was still rather on the edge.

Having run conferences and meetups and managed the learning of others’ both grown ups and children, I understand that it is a most difficult undertaking, so I should say right here that I found the DML event nothing short of wicked good. I learned a bunch and will be processing some powerful learning for a while to come. And yet. I’d gently suggest to the organizers of DML 2013 a few small points.

The first being a softball. I’m sure that everyone noticed that the space where the conference was held seemed far smaller than the people of DML. I think the folks there were the right folks – it was a fascinating mix of students and teachers and professors and researchers and makers and geeks.¹ But the way the conference was set up – or at least my version of it² – the sessions were overcrowded and packed into too small rooms and I couldn’t get to many of the things I wanted to see. Even when I could get a seat in a room – and to do so I had to stake out a space early – there were two or three other concurrent sessions I didn’t want to miss.

Here’s the tricky thing. At an event where the messages from the community and presenters and panelists were all about experiencing powerful participatory learning, well, we sure were expected, by design and practice and custom, to sit still and listen a lot. Certainly, we were listening to fascinating stories of promise and practice and learning and teaching and exploration and study and wonder – but we were listeners, and that’s a very particular kind of experience.

I listened to Super Awesome Sylvia talk about making things that mattered. And I really enjoyed hearing from her, particularly when she raised the differences between her learning at home and at school. But might we have made something together?

I listened to Jess Klein explain the potential of a HackJam. I love the tools and mindsets that Mozilla is building in that space. Having experienced a HackJam³, I know they are transformative. They are a Big Deal. Might we have done that together? At least a little bit? Perhaps this happened and I missed it.

I came to one session where a presenter began to read from a paper – the same paper excerpted in the conference program – on the power of media for engaging students. The presenter read from the paper that was provided to me already.

Even in our session on the multiplicity of composition – a session that we intentionally attempted to do differently than a talking head panel – we struggled to make it an active learning experience⁴. I don’t know if we were struggling against the Internet access in the hotel, or the expectations of the audience, or the limits of our imagination. Or maybe something else.

There’s work to do.

I thought the idea of the Mozilla Science Fair – an hour and a half long reception showcasing many of the institutions and organizations doing important learning work – was a great idea. But an hour or so of crowded tables meant we got short looks into thoughtful work. Those same twenty or so tables should’ve been parceled out over the entire event, with five at a time running engaging events modeling their fascinating and engaging practices. There was a big empty space in the conference area that cried out for us to use it for playing and making and exploring and doing together.⁵

How can we collectively do a better job of modeling the structures, habits, and aptitudes we want to see of learning and learners, particularly when DML learns together? And what can we do with the listening we’ve done to improve the experiences that are to come? Yeah, I’m saying “we” and “DML,” because, like Chad, I’m willing to say that I am engaged by this group of thoughtful people. I’d feel lucky to be counted as a member of the DML community. I so want them/us to do well.

And there’s room to grow.

That said, I didn’t see lots of IT folk there – but perhaps I wasn’t looking hard enough. Or maybe operations types aren’t the crowd of DML. Oh. That’d be sad if it were true. [↩]
Everyone, you know, has their own conference experience, a collection of what they saw, with whom they spoke, and a variety of other factors. No two people have the same experience, of course. I may well have had the “bad” one. [↩]
That was masterfully facilitated at ISTE 2011 by Chad and Meenoo. [↩]
The writing some of the participants shared during that session, I thought, is worth more of my time. [↩]
The impromptu Occupy Badges session – a spillout of the overcrowded session on Badges – was a good example of what might’ve happened in that space. [↩]

Three Things I’m Thinking About Right Now

Posted on March 1, 2012 by Bud Hunt

1. Looking forward to attending my first #DML2012 conference. Should be a fascinating opportunity to learn from and with folks who are thinking about learning. Also, as I’m mostly facilitating others’ learning lately, it’s nice to attend an event in a primarily learning role¹.

2. I’m honored to be a participant/facilitator for a session at this conference. It’s called “Tapping into the Mutiplicity of Composition” and is a panel featuring several teachers who are making interesting things with students in the service of teaching writing and composition. That should be a fascinating conversation. And, of course, we’ll be writing together. Never a bad thing to do.

To support the conversation, we’ve built a couple of Pinterest boards as ways of creating galleries that show some of the texts that students are making in the panelists’ classrooms. A second board focuses on the testimonies of the panelists as a way of providing some background that might not surface during our conversations. The agenda for that session is taking shape and will be finally finalized soon. At a time when so much of the “interesting learning” that is taking place for students is taking place beyond the classroom, and sometimes in spite of it, I wonder about the role of schools moving forward into new learning landscapes. I hope that schools see the potential in other ways of learning that haven’t been privileged in our classrooms. I wonder how to bring the fringe learning into those spaces. I know that the National Writing Project has a role to play in these conversations².

3. I’m struggling to write about some of my adventures in building cultures of play and love both in my school district as well as in my classroom. I hope to get chunks of that thinking out here on the blog over the next few days. My lens for this conference is basically “How do we promote cultures of learning and playfulness and care and concern for each other?” Important.

Which isn’t to say that I don’t approach teaching as a learning opportunity – but that sometimes the logistics of facilitation interfere with my ability to process what I’m learning as it’s happening. [↩]
Disclosure – the NWP has supported my attendance at this event. I’m grateful for that. [↩]

#Educon 2.4: Talking Teacher Research

Posted on January 28, 2012 by Bud Hunt

Later today, I’m honored to be joining my friends and colleagues Jon Becker and Meredith Stewart as we facilitate a session at Educon 2.4 on teacher research and professional development. Specifically, on how we can be critical, in a good way, in our choice and craft of professional development. Here’s the session description:

#edchat
#RSCON3
#140edu
#TEDx______
#edcamp____

Many of the educators who participate(d) in the events listed above and others like them report that the events are/were perfectly wonderful; amazing even. Apparently, this social media-aided PD is more powerful than any PD they’ve ever done; better than any grad school course they’ve taken. And, it may very well be.

But, many of the folks who take part in events like these have been at it for a couple/few years now. And, we’ve become pretty good at sharing what they’re learning and even doing. Theres value in talking about and sharing ideas and actions, but that only gets us so far. Furthermore, many knowledge claims are made about how awesome these ideas are. Students are learning more! Students are so much more engaged! etc.

So, then, what are the warrants for these knowledge claims? What evidence is there that all of these new forms of professional learning are making a difference for kids?

Think of it this way: imagine parents of a student in your classroom wants to know if the new stuff you’ve tried with their kid this year worked. How would you respond? What evidence would you offer? Imagine a principal considering awarding you professional development credits for participation in these events. How would you convince the principal that these professional learning experiences are legitimate?

My favorite part is that we’ll be talking about what a teacher research study designed by the participants of the Educon session might look like. If you’re around at 11:00am Mountain/1pm Eastern, we’d love to have you join us for the conversation. Here’s the session information on the Educon website. A stream should be available from that page.

Join us.

#DMLBadges for Teachers: We Missed Here, Too

Posted on January 24, 2012 by Bud Hunt

Justin Reich and I recently submitted a proposal to the DML Teacher Mastery and Feedback Badges Competition. And, like my recent submission to the DML Conference, it wasn’t accepted.

But that’s cool. I was curious about the process and I learned a bunch about the problems and opportunities of badges and badging. In case you were curious, below is the full text of the application. You can read the winning Stage 1 proposals on the DML Competition Website.

Teacher inquiry has long been recognized as a valuable way for teachers and students to critically examine their learning and pedagogy. We define teacher inquiry, sometimes called teacher action research, as a process by which teachers identify a problem of practice, gather data about that problem, systematically analyze that data, prepare a public presentation (lecture, workshop, published article) about their findings, and then adopt a series of action steps to improve instruction. In countries with very successful national curricula, such as Japan and Singapore, systematic teacher inquiry practices such as lesson study are central to efforts to improve educational systems and help individual teachers develop as practitioners.

In the decentralized education ecosystem of the United States, teacher action research has been adopted less systematically, but it remains a promising and powerful approach. For instance, the DataWise program at the Harvard Graduate School of Education has had tremendous success in helping schools and teachers adopt a structured cycle of inquiry in order to use assessment data to improve instructional practice. We propose the development of a badge recognition system for teacher recognition activities. Such a system would both encourage teachers to engage in these effective professional learning practices and to provide teachers and districts with a map through the complex landscape of teacher action research.

Several structural factors in American schools limit the degree to which teacher have opportunities to practice teacher inquiry and teacher action research. In particular, most districts structure professional learning time around a series of “early release” or professional development days. Often, these days are filled with lecture-based teacher professional development which teachers often find to be both useless and boring (teacher professional development is one of the truly shameful elements of our national education system). Teachers are rewarded for their seat time in these professional learning opportunities with Professional Development Points or Continuing Education Units, which are required for recertification, tenure, salary steps, or other rewards in the system. These structures and schedules are not well suited for nurturing teacher action research, which requires a more flexible allocation of time and energy. Generating questions, data collection, data analysis, preparing reflections, and adopting refined practices cannot be broken up into arbitrary chunks of time throughout the year, as these activities need to be tied in with the classroom lessons, projects, and activities that a teacher is trying to improve.

In an attempt to change this dynamic, the St. Vrain Valley School District in northern Colorado created the Digital Learning Collaborative in the Fall of 2009. The DLC introduces intentional institutional subversion through a model that re-centers teachers as both learners and researchers and incorporates a two-year approach. Attachment 1 gives more background on the DLC. Through a partnership with the Colorado State University Writing Project, and informed by the teacher inquiry work of the National Writing Project, these teacher researchers in the DLC are emerging as experts in residence in their schools, not as outsiders, but as insiders invested in the schools and students they serve. The DLC by design allows for the research of its members to spread throughout the district and, through the use of the Web, beyond.

As these teacher researchers, and others like them, move from novice to more experienced roles, they have value to add to their communities as practitioner researchers who are well equipped to ask difficult questions and seek out answers from the communities they serve. But how do teacher researchers develop the skills that they need to possess to engage in thoughtful inquiry? And, how do others know that these teacher researchers are well equipped to serve in that role within organizations they might join later?

Badges, we believe, can help.

We envision that open badges might have two specific roles to play within the teacher researcher community, both outlined below.

1. Teacher Researcher Badges as Instructional Pathfinders

The role of teacher researcher is not too terribly different from the role of a teacher. Like researchers, teachers are expected to make good use of the data around them in order to better understand a situation, in this case, a studentʼs learning. A teacher researcher has a more formal and specific role to play with regards to how he or she interacts with the data to dig for deeper understanding. Badges can help to identify the skills involved in conducting teacher research and provide an instructional path for prospective teacher researchers to follow as they begin to explore and apply the ideas of teacher research. For prospective teacher researchers, a badge or series of badges might function much in the same way as Pac-Man uses power pellets, or Sonic uses rings, or Mario gold coins. The badge serves not just as a carrot or a prize, but as a map.

We propose that within teacher research there are at least five specific skills that might benefit from badging:

1. Asking thoughtful questions
2. Intentional Data Collection
3. Systematic Data Analysis
4. Publishing Findings
5. Improving Instructional Practice

By providing teachers with a structure for exploring teacher action research with badging, we provide teacher-researchers with a map for using teacher inquiry to improve practice. Since professional development structures in schools are not designed to support teacher action research, we believe that a badging system could help teachers use their own more flexible prep periods or team and department to make progress towards these goals. In total, the five badges would represent a sixth badged identity – that of teacher researcher.

Several organizations seem likely candidates to participate in the infrastructure to award these kinds of badges. Districts like St. Vrain could be responsible for awarding badges to their own faculty who participate in projects like the DLC professional development program. Consultants or other professional development organizations, such as those providing training on the DataWise method, would also likely be willing to serve as distribution nodes in a badge network.

2. Teacher Researcher Badges as Signals to Organizations

All learning organizations need more thoughtful, reflective practitioners who carefully study their own practice. Teacher Research Badges can serve to signal to organizations the presence of these teacher researchers in the organization or within the larger community granular detail about the kinds of professional learning that teachers have explored, and are much better suited to helping teachers spotlight their teacher action research.

Moreover, Teacher Researcher Badges could be used to build bridges across districts and demonstrate a national or international “teacher researcher community,” one where teacher researchers could discover and support one another.

The democratization of education reform requires that teachers and students are engaged and informed voices for the practices, habits, and mindsets that are essential to an informed citizenry. Teacher research is a powerful force for institutional subversion that can lead to a better learning environment and experiences for all. Badges that help to cultivate and mentor the next generations of institutional subverters can lead to thoughtful and inquiry-grounded innovation that can be nurtured through an organization and shared beyond.

The Podcast: A Culture of Inquiry?

Posted on January 19, 2012 by Bud Hunt

In this edition of the podcast, I explore some of my frustrations lately regarding some pushback I’m seeing as I facilitate some teacher research in my school district. I also wander through some first draft thinking on why that pushback exists.

I welcome your comments and suggestions, as always.

Direct Link to Audio

#dml2012: (Not Accepted.)^3 But I Still Like It.

Posted on December 16, 2011 by Bud Hunt

Last night, I got word that my proposal for the 2012 Digital Media and Learning Conference was not accepted. While I am a bit disappointed that the session wasn’t accepted, I know I’m in good company – according to my rejection notice¹, they have a 30% acceptance rate, so lots of good stuff got left behind. I suspect what made it in will be pretty interesting. But I liked the language of the proposal, and thought it might be of interest to others, so I’m posting it below exactly as I submitted it.

Practitioner Inquiry in the Digital Learning Collaborative: Teacher Research for Reform from Within

Educational reform efforts are often conducted on schools and teachers, rather than with and through them. Teachers are asked to conduct scripted lessons nested within scripted curriculum. Too often, genuine inquiry, an essential skill and mindset for students and teachers, is given lipservice rather than real attention and focus in the classroom.

In at attempt to change this dynamic while also creating a new way of thinking about teaching with technology, the St. Vrain Valley School District in northern Colorado created the Digital Learning Collaborative in the Fall of 2009. The DLC is an attempt to introduce intentional institutional subversion through a model that recenters teachers as both learners and researchers. With their students as partners, teachers in the DLC engage in a two-year professional development program. In year one, teachers are encouraged to explore, in small teams, technologies that they are curious about in an attempt to better understand them. In year two, they bring those technologies into their classrooms and use a teacher research (Cochran-Smith & Lytle, _Inquiry as Stance_, 2009) model to explore the impact of that technology on student achievement. With students as partners in this inquiry, teachers in the DLC have explored the effects of computerized assessment, the use of iPods as visual vocabulary tools, and online networking and writing environments, among others. Through a partnership with the Colorado State University Writing Project, and informed by the teacher inquiry work of the National Writing Project, these teacher researchers in the DLC are emerging as experts in residence in their schools, not as outsiders, but as insiders invested in the schools and students they serve. The DLC by design allows for the research of its members to spread throughout the district and, through the use of the Web, beyond.

In this workshop, we will explore the DLC model, as well as engage participants in an exploration of the inquiry produced in projects like these. We will also explore the opportunities and challenges that such a model for professional development presents and consider the impact practitioner inquiry, and also intentional institutional subversion can have on an organization. Participants will leave with a better understanding of how teacher research, and teacher researchers, have much to offer conversations on education reform while they are working to improve their practice. Participants will also consider the implications of teacher research on a school through some scenario explorations, and explore how teachers in the DLC can become colleagues from a distance as the power of the Internet can bring us into each others’ inquiry work as partners and responders.

The democratization of education reform requires that teachers and students are engaged and informed voices for the practices, habits, and mindsets that are essential to an informed citizenry. Teacher research is a powerful force for institutional subversion that can lead to a better learning environment and experiences for all. Through the DLC, and groups like it, thoughtful and inquiry-grounded innovation can be nurtured through an organization and shared beyond.

Which I got three times, I’m guessing due to a glitch somewhere. That stung a bit. [↩]

Reports from Cyberspace at #NCTE2011

Posted on November 21, 2011 by Bud Hunt

I had the pleasure of once again joining with friends and colleagues Troy Hicks and Sara Kajder on Sunday to share the 2011 edition of Reports from Cyberspace at the 2011 NCTE Annual Convention. The wrinkle, for me, this time around, was that I actually was present via cyberspace, as I was co-presenting from my basement office.

The archive of the session is available for viewing if you’re interested.

One oddity for me – as my video link into the room was from the webcam of a laptop on the podium, I had zero sense of the physical audience in the room and relied on the tweets and texts from those in attendance as my only sense of the audience. That’s always one tricky element of presenting from afar – the sense of the room.

I am grateful to Jeff Golub for starting this collection of smart folks three years ago – I’ve sure learned lots. Hope it’s been useful to NCTE.

If you were “there” for the session, either via Adobe Connect or in the room, I’d love to know your impressions of the time – did it work that I was not physically there, or was that more distraction than helpful?

Visiting with a Neighbor. Sort of.

Posted on November 11, 2011 by Bud Hunt

Had a short visit the other morning with monika, who’s trying something new ((Or, really, quite old, perhaps.)) just up the road from where I work and down the road from where I live. I can’t quite sum up her work in a one sentence “this is what she’s doing” statement – but I can say that she and her students are exploring something important. They’ve been on a journey for a few years now that’s leading them to some interesting spaces.

And I’m looking very forward to hearing from her and them on this month’s CLN Webinar next Tuesday, November 15th, at 3:30pm Mountain. You should come, too.

On a semi-related note, I just had to share with you these words monika wrote recently in response to something I said back here a week or so ago.

i think we compromise too much be seeking proof for things.
what if we experimented more with a culture of trust.
that people are good right now.
that you are fine today…. let’s just start being/doing more of you.

Poetry there.

We Didn’t Choose the Title

Posted on November 8, 2011 by Bud Hunt

I’m pleased to share with you that a piece that Michelle and I wrote about our work to create our school district’s Digital Learning Collaborative is in this month’s Journal of Staff Development. Here’s a copy of the article, called “Teaching 2.0: Teams Keep Teachers and Students Plugged Into Technology.”

I think it’s a good overview of the work that we’re up to here. We would love to know about intersections with your work.

Bud the Teacher

Inquiry & Reflection for Better Learning

Category Archives: Professional Development