In this article by Joe Hirsch for Edutopia, he talks about a change in teacher evaluation from top-down assessments of effectiveness and performance, to more of a self-guided and self-assessed reflective process. Hirsch also connects this movement to:
Marshall Goldsmith's highly acclaimed feedforward concept in which employees are asked to suggest ideas for their own improvement in the future. . . . Feedback, by its very definition, is focused on the past, which can't be changed. Feedforward looks ahead at future possibilities that still fall under our control. Feedback tends to reinforce personal stereotypes or negative self-fulfilling prophecies. Feedforward looks beyond what is in favor of what can be.
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| I think the colours of the cans are reversed . . . Recycling should be Green! |
Working in an international school, I can see elements of the feedforward idea taking shape in my school, both for me as a technology coach and for the faculty that I work with everyday. Hirsch breaks down the feedforward idea and offers three models for achieving it in your school or for your own professional development, which are receiving Instructional Coaching, conducting Peer Observations and Instructional Rounds, and developing your own Professional Learning Communities. My current school is still coming to grips with educational technology, integrating technology into the classroom, having a laptop program, and what that all means for teaching and learning. Many of the teaching faculty still have a bad taste in their mouths from what has happened here in the previous years before me, and from ongoing problems with IT that never seem to get sorted. There are struggles with leadership as well, who really do not know "what ed tech does all day" and want to use the coaches as subs, technicians or secretaries. As with any school, there are people who get it, and who are actively looking to shape the future rather than dwell on the past.
I think too much time and energy is wasted dissecting the past, and trying to prevent all of the problems and mistakes of history from appearing again. Aren't we supposed to learn from our mistakes, even if they belonged to someone else? Isn't that a primary component of a Growth Mindset? Constantly looking at the past and thinking "things will not change" and not learning from it are hallmarks of a Fixed Mindset. So how do we move school leadership forward? How do we flip their mindset? How do we shift from feedback mode (dissecting the past) to feedforward (looking to the future and what could be)?
As an ed tech coach, how all of this connects to tech integration, teacher evaluation, professional development/growth/sharing is part of my daily work life. It's all interconnected and intertwined, so much so that each piece cannot be developed without considering the impact and parallel development of the other aspects. I think this might be the crux of the problem, the bigger picture that leadership perhaps does not realise. They don't see how ed tech integration is enmeshed with PD, teacher evaluation/appraisal, goal setting, collaboration, creating a professional culture of sharing and growth, and changing pedagogy. Perhaps this is why we are treated as ready-made subs to cover classes, glorified technicians who can actually communicate with teachers and students, or someone who has the "skills" to do "complex" jobs like fixing the formatting in a Word document (I kid you not). Right now, I don't have any solutions to offer here, except to keep fighting the "good fight" and trying to get people to better understand your role through articles like the one above.
"We are all technology teachers" is something that I have been repeating a lot this year. I just hope that it is starting to sink in, especially in the places where it really needs to be part of the thinking and culture of the school.
