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!

Coaching with Mindsets in Mind - Part 1

I have been reading Carol Dweck's "Mindset - the New Psychology of Success" and have been thinking about how it connects with my role as a tech coach.  In various coaching workshops, two "models" have come up which classify my clientele (i.e. the faculty that I work with) into different groups - the Train Model and the Garden Model (as I call it, for lack of a better name).  

In the Train Model, you can envision the faculty as being in one of three cars of the ed tech train, which is constantly in motion moving down the tracks.  There could be spur-lines that branch off of the main tracks, but everyone is generally moving in the same direction.  The first car contains the early adopters, the techies, and the gurus who are constantly exploring new ed tech tools and how they can be employed in their classrooms.  The last/third car has the tech sceptics, the tech-phobics and those teachers who use the minimal amount of technology or no technology at all when it comes to conducting their lessons.  In the middle car are most of your faculty, who use some technology in their classrooms and generally stick to what they know and have used before.  In this model, the early adopters are leading the way, and the sceptics are trying to slow the whole train down.  As a tech coach, we talk about focusing on the middle car to try and expose them to new ed tech tools, and to move them up into the lead car.  By moving the middle group ahead, others in the middle group and hopefully some of the sceptics in the caboose will be drawn along with them.

In the Garden Model, you can envision two groups - the plants and the rocks.  I know this may sound derogatory but I don't think it was ever meant to be.  As a tech coach, I have been told that "you have to feed the hungry" which means nurturing and fertilising the plants in the group so that they thrive and grow.  At the same time, I have also had conversations about "always remembering to water the rocks", meaning that I have to work with everyone on staff (which is very true) no matter where they are on the ed tech spectrum, or where they are in the garden.  With this model, it focuses more on working with everyone, rather than spending most of your time working with the group in the middle (plants that need a little more nurturing and care ;-).

So which model is better?  Which model better describes what we as coaches should be doing?  Dweck's "Mindset" has given me a new perspective on these two models and how they can be blended together.  When you apply mindsets to the Train Model, the first car is clearly the Growth Minded - always taking risks, trying new things out, constantly learning and reflecting.  The last car is the Fixed Minded - wanting to keep things static and comfortable, not believing that they can learn new things, and simply feeling overwhelmed by all things technology (they feel that it is beyond their ability to learn these new tools).  So what about the middle car?  People here are in the middle of the mindsets spectrum, somewhere near the border between Growth and Fixed.  Dweck talks about screening for mindset and working with those people to move them forward - this would mean looking for the people nearer to the front of the second car.  Dweck also talks about putting people into a Growth Mindset simply by talking to them or putting them in a specific situation - this means finding the people in the middle of the second car and nudging them forward by connecting with them, exposing them to new tools, and putting ed tech into contexts that they can relate to (such as demonstrating a tool in a class which they can observe and see for themselves).  Working with those people in the middle car does make sense, as you are trying to pull the trailing car along with the rest of the train.

Dweck's Mindsets can also be applied to the Garden Model in the same way.  Plants = Growth and Rocks = Fixed (sorry, no pun intended ;-).  The parallels are obvious here, I think.  "Feeding the hungry" refers to working with the Growth Minded, which Dweck explains can achieve great results in a very short amount of time, reflect and move off in new directions, and create new innovations.  "Watering the rocks" refers to creating opportunities and experiences which serve to shift people's mindset to Growth, even temporarily, so that they can learn and move forward . . . one small step at a time.  When you apply mindsets to the Garden Model, coaches need to be working with everyone across the spectrum and differentiating how we work with people according to their mindset rather than their tech abilities and skill set.  If you think ablaut it, this really makes sense as you can be far along the ed tech spectrum, but still have a Fixed Mindset - this is the teacher who is very comfortable with the ed tech that they employ in their class and good at it, but unwilling to consider new tools as they don't have the time.  

So which model is best?  Personally, the Mindsets Model really appeals to me and makes sense.  The more that I think about it, the more instances come to mind which fit Dweck's model or are explained by Dweck's thinking.  Moving forward myself, I will continue to write a few more posts about Mindsets and how it connects with my role as a tech coach and with my work in educational technology.  If you haven't read "Mindset" yet, you really should - even if you are not a coach yourself . . . it has totally changed my thinking.

Things That Must Not Be Forgotten - Google Lit Trip Launch

Just a Short Jaunt to China . . . in the 1930's . . .

It's finally finished and published . . . my Google Lit Trip to go with my father's memoir "Things That Must Not Be Forgotten - A childhood in wartime China" by Michael David Kwan.

It has been over a year since I attended the Google Teachers Academy in Stockholm (GTA SWE 13) and set out as part of my Googley project to build a GLT to go with my father's book.  It has been a long journey that involved a lot of digging into the past, both physically and digitally (you can read more about my journey in a previous posting here).  This is just to announce that the GLT has been published and released online, and that further details and background information can also be found at the accompanying Site that I built here.  Enjoy!