#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.

What Counts

Posted on September 9, 2011 by Bud Hunt

On Thursday night, I was helping to introduce the concept of teacher research to a group of teachers in my school district. And it happened. The thing that often happens when you introduce qualitative methodology.

We read a sample teacher research study that Michelle and I are fond of. I like the study, a short piece on a teacher wondering about the value of a pullout literacy program in her school, because it emphasizes three things I think are essential to consider, and often re-consider, when ot comes to teacher inquiry specifically and qualitative research generally:

Teacher research is an opportunity to dig into the “I wonders” and the “what ifs” that come up from time to time in your classroom. But it’s not the same as “what good teachers do every day.” It’s more intentional and purposeful than that. And that’s a good thing.
Teacher research is contextual. It comes from you, the researcher. The classroom you teach in, the students you know, the wonderings you have. That works two ways – both the questions and your answers to them are contextual.
Teacher research involves “data” that doesn’t show up in a quantitive study. Stuff that doesn’t count because it can’t be counted. Or, at least, not as easily. And what matters, or at least what should, when it comes to measurement and paying attention is not either/or but yes and. Qualitative and quantitative measures are friends. Honest¹ .

And it’s the third point that usually involves controversy. Things get heated. And that troubles me.

Folks make statements, when we start to fiddle with traditional notions of “data,”² about their stats professors, or n values, or other things that suggest that Math Is THE Way of Knowing The Universe.

While I find lots to like in science and math, it’s not the only way to go after what’s right and good and true in the world.

Teachers, of all people, should have a good and always developing sense of this: they should know and understand what it means to measure, and how measurement affects the thing you’re measuring, and how there are ways other than percentages and standard deviations to explore vital areas of life and living and learning.

If you think that’s wrong, and that cold, hard numbers are the only way to Know Something, well, consider this -

How do you know you love your spouse? Your best friend? Your children? Your parents?

Prove it.

But you only get numbers. I’ll wait here. Take your time.

As I write this, I’m in the middle of a mixed-methods study. The two go nicely together. [↩]
And the air quotes make appearances usually at this point in the conversation. [↩]

A Year of Learning

Posted on September 2, 2011 by Bud Hunt

Tonight, we kicked off the first team leader meeting of the year for the new cohort of the Digital Learning Collaborative.

The DLC, if you didn’t know, is a two-year professional development program we’re in our third year of developing. Year one is a year for personal and professional learning. Year two, which we’ll kickoff later this month for a different cohort, is a year of teacher inquiry into what happens for students when we use technology in the classroom.

Last night, we attempted, with our teacher team leaders, to set the culture for what it means to learn as teachers in community. We reviewed some of our habits – making sure we have a plan for all of our monthly team meetings, how we use Google Docs to share those plans and to share notes we take when and as we meet, and making sure that we’re separating time for learning¹ from time for collaboration and sharing. And, yes, that’s messy. Messy is okay.

But we spent the bulk of our time last night reading and thinking and talking to each other about a couple of pieces, written by Will Richardson, that explore connected and passion-based learning not just for students, but for teachers, too.

That led to some good conversation. I heard Kelly, a first grade teacher, when she asked about how we help connect students to passions that they might not realize they have, and how we can encourage students to explore areas of themselves and the world when they might not have any knowledge about, well, much of anything. I heard Rebekah, a high school math teacher, when she said that somewhere, students have learned that it’s cool to not like math.

I hope that folks heard me when I invoked Mr. Rogers, and his definition of teaching, the idea that what teachers do is that they love something, and they love it in front of their students. Passion, indeed.

I heard Mollie when she said that it was important for teachers and students to follow their passions, and that, in a time of scripts and pacing, we’d do well to make sure that we’re injecting student interests and differences into our work.

I heard others, too. It was a fine culture setting conversation.

We also talked about the power of reflective writing, and took some time to write together, as we will do during all of our meetings. While I cannot share their writing with you just now, know that we’ll be hearing more from these teacher leaders and their teams as they begin to dig into their learning this year.

It was a fine start.

Sometimes, this is training. Other times, it’s time for reading and conversation. There are other things this learning might look like, too. Learning is complicated. [↩]

The Podcast: Two Fall Projects

Posted on August 29, 2011 by Bud Hunt

In today’s podcast, I talk about a couple of projects that are keeping me pretty busy this fall – finishing my thesis and building a course for P2PU’s new School of Ed with some friends from the NWP. Oddly, they go together. Which is a good thing. Keep your fingers crossed. And, as always, would love to hear your thoughts in response to mine. This time, I could definitely use the help.