Coaching with Mindsets in Mind - Part 2

It's that time of the school year for reflection, which also means surveying the teachers that I work with in order to improve my practise and to better support the faculty in the future.  Over the past few years, I have found the faculty survey process to be enlightening, definitely useful and seriously stressful all at the same time.  As I work primarily with faculty, it is an inherently different process than surveying the students in your class.  I just sent out my tech coach survey and the responses are starting to trickle in - it's a very busy time of year for everyone so I do not expect to get a 100% response rate.  Last year, I received feedback from almost half of the faculty, which I reckon was pretty good.  I have read that with some big schools and universities, that they consider a 1/3 return rate as highly successful.  But I don't think that the previous response rate will be repeated this year, as we have a huge turnover of teachers in the high school - I wonder if the leavers will find the time to do my survey at all, over the myriad of other tasks that must be on their plate right now.

As the first responses come in, I can't help but have a look at the written comments and think about what I can learn from them.  One comment has stuck in my mind (for the last few days ;-) went something like this:

Could you audit a unit in everyone's class and give suggestions about how tech could improve the unit?

Coaching is active and self-reflective, should be initiated by the teacher and focus on the teacher's own pedagogy.

This has really made me think and I have flip-flopped back and forth about whether this suggestion has merit, whether it is very practical or productive, and whether it would even work.  I have gone from "there isn't time to do that", to "how would I choose which unit to audit?", to "this approach could work for some, but not everyone."  To me, there are a number of facets to this suggestion which determine how successful such an approach would be, which include:

• Evaluation - as a tech coach, my role is strictly non-evaluative which means that I cannot/should not randomly audit a lesson or unit and then present my ideas about how it could be changed or improved; unsolicited feedback generally does not go over well with faculty and can sometimes have the opposite effect where the walls go up and doors close; this approach would only work if I was invited in to observe, initiated by the teacher
• Time and Practicality - as I work with about 35 faculty members who teach over 100 different courses across the high school, finding the time to audit whole units from everyone's courses seems to be totally impractical; again, having the teacher identify the unit or lesson in advance would be more practical
• Focus - taking the time to audit a unit of a course without having a specific focus for the observation would not be productive; in order for this approach to be successful, the focus of the observation needs to be identified in advance by the faculty member rather than the coach; furthermore, discussing the focus of the observation in advance would also be important as that could lead to identifying the best lesson or unit to be observed, rather than the other away around
• Mindset - in order for coaching to be effective, the teacher being coached must have a growth mindset and be willing/wanting to improve/update/change/transform their unit, lesson or project . . . if the teacher has a fixed mindset then any suggestions I have for them will likely be met with resistance and defensiveness; I have experienced this before when a teacher has asked for "general feedback and ideas" but is unwilling to even consider trying any of them due to "not having any time", or they "don't really know if it would work", or "maybe next year when they do this project again".

I recently read Carol Dweck's "Mindset - the New Psychology of Success" and have been reflecting on how people's mindset impacts on my work, and how I can apply her research to working with faculty.  Framing this faculty member's comment in Dweck's work makes me think that this suggestion has some positive elements which can be extracted and used next year.  Dweck says that you can screen for mindset, to look for those who are growth minded.  Applied here, I should not use a "one-size fits all" approach and try to audit a unit from everyone's classes - that just would not work.  Instead, I should make a bigger effort to actively ask faculty to invite me into a lesson or to audit a unit or to plan a project, in order to find the growth minded.  I do this already, but perhaps this person never took me up on the offer.  Perhaps being more forward with this and providing a little more encouragement would tip the scales for this person and for others as well.  By screening for mindset, I would also be able to identify the units/lessons/projects that the faculty member wants to work on and focus on the specific aspects that they want to improve upon.  

With respect to educational technology, do you have a Fixed or Growth Mindset?
Are you set in your pedagogy, constantly recycling lessons and units from one year to the next?

Dweck also talks about putting someone into a Growth Mindset, just by talking with them.  Growth minded teachers are reflective and are looking to improve their pedagogy/approach/delivery, rather than passively waiting for someone to tell them what and where to improve.  Waiting for someone to tell you what to do is a clear sign of a Fixed Mindset which made me think at first that this comment was coming from such a faculty member.  On further reflection and application of Dweck's ideas, I think this person could be in the middle of the continuum between Growth Minded and Fixed Minded, and just needs a little nudge to get to across the fence.  For the teacher who is open to me auditing a unit or lesson in their class, but does not have a focal point in mind already, perhaps they can be moved into a Growth Mindset simply through a professional planning conversation.

So my takeaways from this comment are to give some more nudges and opportunities to the faculty, which I can easily do when I touch-base with everyone on my regular Walkthroughs.  When I check-in with them I will now extend my initial ask "Is there a lesson/unit/project that you would like my help to plan" to include "or which you would like me to sit in on to give you feedforward and ideas?"  I think this added nudge will help to engage some of the faculty who don't want to take the time or risk to plan a lesson/unit/project with me, but are willing to invite me into a lesson(s) where they choose what they want me to focus on for collecting data and providing feedforward (note that I purposefully use feedforward here based on this article by Joe Hirsch for Edutopia which explains how feedforward is looking for positive change in the future).  It will also help me to screen for the Growth Minded teachers who just need a little encouragement to take the next step forward with tech coaching to improve their teaching practice.  Even small steps forward will eventually get you to where you are going in the end!