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- Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
- Kategorie: Bildung
- Sprache: Englisch
Discover why and how schools must become places where thinking is valued, visible, and actively promoted
As educators, parents, and citizens, we must settle for nothing less than environments that bring out the best in people, take learning to the next level, allow for great discoveries, and propel both the individual and the group forward into a lifetime of learning. This is something all teachers want and all students deserve. In Creating Cultures of Thinking: The 8 Forces We Must Master to Truly Transform Our Schools, Ron Ritchhart, author of Making Thinking Visible, explains how creating a culture of thinking is more important to learning than any particular curriculum and he outlines how any school or teacher can accomplish this by leveraging 8 cultural forces: expectations, language, time, modeling, opportunities, routines, interactions, and environment.
With the techniques and rich classroom vignettes throughout this book, Ritchhart shows that creating a culture of thinking is not about just adhering to a particular set of practices or a general expectation that people should be involved in thinking. A culture of thinking produces the feelings, energy, and even joy that can propel learning forward and motivate us to do what at times can be hard and challenging mental work.
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2015
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CONTENTS
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
List of Figures
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Introduction: Demystifying Group and Organizational Culture
A New Standard for Education
The Forces That Shape Culture
Tools for Transformation
Chapter 1: The Purpose and Promise of Schools
Thinking Differently About Outcomes
Teaching as Enculturation
Culture as the Enactment of a Story
Enacting Our New Story, Realizing Our Vision
Chapter 2: Expectations: Recognizing How Our Beliefs Shape Our Behavior
Focusing Students on the Learning vs. The Work
Teaching for Understanding vs. Knowledge
Encouraging Deep vs. Surface Learning Strategies
Encouraging Independence vs. Dependence
Developing a Growth vs. A Fixed Mindset
Chapter 3: Language: Appreciating Its Subtle Yet Profound Power
The Language of Thinking
The Language of Community
The Language of Identity
The Language of Initiative
The Language of Mindfulness
The Language of Praise and Feedback
The Language of Listening
Leveraging Language
Chapter 4: Time: Learning to Be Its Master Rather Than Its Victim
Recognizing Time as a Statement of Your Values
Learning to Prioritize and Always Prioritizing Learning
Giving Thinking Time
Investing Time to Make Time
Managing Energy, Not Time
It's Time to Rethink Time
Chapter 5: Modeling: Seeing Ourselves through Our Students' Eyes
Dispositional Apprenticeship: Being a Role Model of Learning and Thinking
Cognitive Apprenticeship: Making Our Thinking Visible
Gradual Release of Responsibility: Modeling for Independence
Interactive Modeling: Learning from Examples, Practice, and Reflection
Learning from Models
Chapter 6: Opportunities: Crafting the Vehicles for Learning
Constructing Character: Using Mathematics to Understand Othello's Iago
Voice Thread: Using Storytelling to Understand Migration
Music 2 Save Music
Categorizing, Recognizing, and Realizing Learning Opportunities
Chapter 7: Routines: Supporting and Scaffolding Learning and Thinking
A Routine is More Than an Activity
Using Claim-Support-Question to Delve Into Number Theory in Fifth Grade
More Than a Game: Differentiating Mathematics in Second Grade
Making CSQ Fly in Secondary Mathematics
Tools, Structures, and Patterns: Establishing Routines in the Classroom
Chapter 8: Interactions: Forging Relationships That Empower Learners
New Roles for Students: Empowering Disenfranchised Learners
Beyond Sit and Get: Teaching Students to Build on One Another's Ideas
Building Culture Through Affect and Actions
Shaping Interactions Through Roles
Asking “Good” Questions
Creating New Patterns of Discourse
Chapter 9: Environment: Using Space to Support Learning and Thinking
New Learning in an Old Container
Curating a Classroom
Designing for Thinking
Creating Environments to Enhance Learning and Build Culture: Four Fronts
Chapter 10: Moving toward Transformation
A Close Look at Substantive Change
Sameness and Difference in the Journey to a Culture of Thinking
Appendixes
Appendix A. My Reflections on the Learning Activities in this Class
Appendix B. Ladder of Feedback
Appendix C. Success Analysis Protocol
Appendix D. Looking At Students' Thinking (Last) Protocol
Appendix E. Six Key Principles of the Cultures of Thinking Project
Appendix F. Laying the Foundation for a Culture of Thinking
Appendix G. Leading a Culture of Thinking at My School
Appendix H. The Development of a Culture of Thinking in My Classroom
Appendix I. Assessment Ladder
References
Subject Index
Name Index
End User License Agreement
List of Illustrations
Figure 6.1
Figure 7.1
Figure 9.1
Figure 9.2
Figure 9.3
Figure 9.4
Figure 9.5
Figure 9.6
Figure 9.7
Figure 9.8
Figure 9.9
Figure 10.1
Guide
Cover
Table of Contents
Chapter 1
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Creating Cultures of Thinking
The 8 Forces We Must Master to Truly Transform Our Schools
Ron Ritchhart
Cover Design: Ron Ritchhart
Cover Image: © Justin Lewis | Getty
Author photo: Max Woltman
Copyright © 2015 by Ron Ritchhart. All rights reserved.
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List of Figures
Figure 6.1
: Duration and Scope of Opportunities
Figure 7.1
: Jemma's Triangles
Figure 9.1
: Accordion Display of Documentation on the “Large Number” Exploration
Figure 9.2
: Documentation of the Class's Learning in Reading
Figure 9.3
: Student's Drawing of the Heart
Figure 9.4
: A Parent Looks at Documentation
Figure 9.5
: Science Provocation
Figure 9.6
: Stick Sculpture
Figure 9.7
: Students Work at Standing Desks with Swinging Footrests
Figure 9.8
: Two Different Sources of Lighting Provide Good Illumination for Learning
Figure 9.9
: Students Use the Idea Wall as They Work in Groups
Figure 10.1
: Four Areas of Attention in Shepherding Change
Dedication
To the great teachers who are never satisfied, always expecting more of themselves and more of their students.
Acknowledgments
As with creating a culture of thinking, writing a book is very much a collective enterprise. My efforts have not been realized by working alone in isolation but have been elevated by the support and encouragement of those around me. I am lucky to be surrounded by people who have allowed me to develop my ideas. These individuals have listened to my nascent thoughts while asking me questions and offering up challenges to push my thinking. As my ideas developed, these individuals have been willing to give them a go and try them out in the classroom. In doing so, they have made the ideas that much better. Among my cadre of collaborators are those who have invited me into their schools and classrooms to learn from and with them. I am greatly indebted to all those who have encouraged my learning, and thus to this book. At the risk of leaving out some important contributors to my thinking, research, and writing, I want to acknowledge a few organizations, schools, and individuals who have played a particularly significant role.
My exploration of the importance of classroom culture to learning started in 1998 with the generous support of the Spencer Foundation to study six exemplary teachers to understand how they developed students as powerful thinkers and learners. That early research produced the framework of eight cultural forces explored in this book and set the stage for nearly two decades of work with schools around the world. Since then, other funders have supported my research, allowing me to move the ideas forward in the world, most notably the Carpe Vitam foundation in Sweden; Abe and Vera Dorevitch in conjunction with Bialik College in Melbourne, Australia; and the Melville Hankins Family Foundation in Santa Fe, New Mexico. As a researcher, I am indebted to all these entities for their backing and encouragement.
In addition to my major funders, many schools and school districts have been interested in pursuing the ideas that embody “cultures of thinking,” and thus they have proven invaluable partners. I could not have produced the rich stories shared here without their willingness to support this work through the substance of their practice, inviting me into their schools and classrooms to learn with them. The list of these schools is extensive. However, I would like to mention specifically the International School of Amsterdam in The Netherlands; Bialik College, Melbourne Grammar School, and Wesley College in Melbourne, Australia; Marblehead School District in Marblehead, Massachusetts; Washington International School in Washington DC; Way Elementary, Bemis Elementary, Clarkston Community Schools, West Middle School, and West Hills in Oakland County, Michigan; and Pymble Ladies College, Shore School, Masada College, and Emanuel School in Sydney, Australia.
These schools and many others have allowed me to spend time in their schools and classrooms taking notes, talking with teachers, and gathering the pictures of practice that breathe life into the ideas explored in this book. Many of these individual teachers' stories are included here. To all of these teachers, I owe a special obligation. They not only took the ideas of a culture of thinking seriously but also put them into practice in truly transformative ways. Through their examples, I have been stretched. In addition to inviting me into the classrooms, they allowed me to interview them, and they read the drafts of their cases to make sure I accurately represented them and their students.
In the actual writing of this book, I am particularly indebted to Julie Landvogt, Connie Weber, Lauren Childs, Jim Reese, and Mark Church. These individuals read, commented on, and offered suggestions on early versions of this book. They also provided careful proofreading and editing skills to help make the writing as clear as possible. Many other teachers read the chapters of this book as they were being written, allowing me insight into how the ideas and stories might be received. Finally, there are my family, friends, and colleagues who supported in the wings providing encouragement to keep writing. Of special note are Kevon Zehner, David Perkins, and Karin Morrison.
At its best, a culture of thinking lifts up the individual to achieve heights that he or she could not reach alone. The worldwide community of educators that surrounds me is my culture of thinking. I owe each and every individual in that community a debt of gratitude for his or her support. It has been my pleasure to learn with and from them all.
About the Author
Ron Ritchhart is a senior research associate at Harvard Project Zero and fellow at the University of Melbourne, Australia. Prior to becoming a researcher, Ron was a classroom teacher working in New Zealand and later in the United States. In 1993, he received the Presidential Award for Excellence in Mathematics Teaching from the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics in the United States. The thread running through all of Ron's work as an educator and researcher has been and continues to be the importance of fostering thinking, understanding, and creativity in all settings of learning. His research is classroom based and often focuses on understanding the complexity of teaching by examining the work of expert teachers.
In 2002, Ron published the book Intellectual Character, which put forth the idea that a quality education is about much more than scores on tests; it is about who students become as thinkers and learners as a result of their time in schools. Ron's research into how teachers developed students' thinking dispositions illuminated the important role that classroom culture plays in nurturing the development of students as thinkers. His identification of the forces shaping the culture of groups and organizations resulted in a framework now being used widely to help educators both in and out of the classroom think differently about teaching and learning. This framework has also been the foundation for much of Ron's research and development work in schools around the world.
In 2011, Ron coauthored Making Thinking Visible with Mark Church and Karin Morrison. This best-selling book documents one aspect of teachers' development of a culture of thinking: the use of thinking routines as tools to make thinking visible. These simple structures scaffold and support learners' thinking in all kinds of learning situations. Making Thinking Visible has done much to popularize the use of thinking routines at schools and museums throughout the world.
These three core ideas—that schools must be about developing students' thinking dispositions, the need to make students' thinking visible, and the crucial role of classroom culture in supporting and shaping learning—are the foundation of Ron's decades-long work to help schools transform themselves into cultures of thinking.
IntroductionDemystifying Group and Organizational Culture
When and where have you been a part of a culture of thinking? That is, when have you been in a place where the group's collective thinking as well as each individual's thinking was valued, visible, and actively promoted as part of the regular day-to-day experience of all group members? It might have been any type of learning group—a book study, committee, graduate course, online community, museum tour, or hobby group—or it might have been a school or classroom. Take a moment to identify a single instance from your life as a learner in which you were a part of such a group. A time when you felt that everyone's thinking in the group was valued, that thinking was expressed in a way that made the thinking itself visible, and you felt pushed to think and to advance your thinking.
Now, with that particular experience in mind, what were some of the practices or ingredients that helped shape, promote, advance, and sustain that group? Try to think beyond general features or qualities to identify specific actions. For instance, you might well identify “leadership” as a key ingredient in such a group. However, most groups have leaders, yet not all would be considered cultures of thinking. Even “having an effective leader” doesn't really help us understand the types of practices we might want to employ in our own quest to create cultures of thinking, considering that one might say that virtually all leaders set out to be effective. In contrast, “The leader kept the group focused on our goal” offers a glimpse of an action that helped promote and sustain a culture of thinking. Try for that level of practical specificity if you can. After you have made your list, you might want to pick a second example from your experience that represents a different type of learning group and see what new action items you can identify.
This set of memories and actions you have just identified is a good place to start our exploration of what it means to be a part of and to create a culture of thinking. A culture of thinking isn't something mysterious or foreign to us, but rather represents some of our best and most productive experiences as learners. Drawing from this experience has been the basis of my research over the past decade and a half.
Over the years, I've asked thousands of people—teachers, administrators, parents, businesspeople, academics, museum educators, doctors, and so on—to reflect on the cultures of thinking they have experienced. The qualities that each of these constituencies identify as being effective “shapers” of cultures of thinking are surprisingly similar. Here is a short list of the most common responses:
Everyone in the group had a high interest in the topic and brought a sense of passion.
There was a shared vision and common goal that was both challenging and attainable so that everyone had buy-in.
Everyone's input was valued, creating a sense of respect.
We developed a shared language and vocabulary for talking about ideas.
There was constant questioning and probing of ideas by everyone in the group, not just the leader.
The chairperson/leader monitored participation and shared the floor so that no one dominated.
The leader was engaged, interested, and passionate. She was a learner with us.
There was open communication and active listening going on. You felt heard.
We had time to think, respond, and develop ideas.
We felt safe to take risks and make mistakes. It was even expected as part of the process.
There were stimulating group interactions. We liked each other. We pushed and supported one another.
Our learning was connected to our lives. It had value and meaning.
How does that list fit with your own reflections? Does your experience of being in a culture of thinking echo the sentiment of these statements if not their exact language and framing?
Looking through this list of practices, it is clear that people's experience in cultures of thinking and their responses to this exercise tend to be clustered around a few important themes. One of the most common responses from groups is that in a culture of thinking, there is a sense of purpose to the learning. This not only provides a sense of direction and a goal to pursue but also imbues the group's efforts with personal and collective meaning. Having a well-articulated purpose lays the foundation for the development of commitment, both to the task at hand and to the learning of the group as a whole. People often mention that in a culture of thinking, they feel committed to the learning of others and not just to their own. It is this commitment and the recognition of the symbiotic relationship between one's individual learning and that of other group members that help create a sense of community. That feeling of community is further enhanced through a dedication to promoting equity within the group. People often mention shared leadership, valuing everyone's contribution, a nonhierarchical structure, and the leader's being a learner as important actions or characteristics that support the development of equity.
It might go without saying that once you have a sense of purpose and a commitment to both the task and the group, you will also have engagement. Indeed, the idea of engagement is one that is often mentioned as people talk about the very active nature of cultures of thinking. There is a sense that one can't sit back and that everyone must take part. That might be because of another quality: challenge. People often mention that in cultures of thinking, they feel propelled by the leader and the group as a whole to do their best. In addition, they feel that their thinking is constantly being pushed. They aren't sitting back. They are learning.
Together these qualities, and the practices that breathe life into them, create a dynamic group of people who feel that they are learning together and creating something greater than that which any individual might produce. This is not to say that people aren't aware of their own individual growth and development, only that they are uniquely aware of how much their learning is tied to that of the group. In short, we might say that the leitmotif running through cultures of thinking is that of connection: connection to the task at hand, to the topic, to the leader, to each other, and to the learning.
When you thought of a group you had been a part of that was a culture of thinking, how did it make you feel? Uplifted? Energized? Eager to step back into that space? In collecting these ideas from groups, I am always struck by the sense of enthusiasm and excitement on people's faces as they recount their involvement in such groups. They become animated as they recount their experiences. It feels good to be a member of a culture of thinking. It produces energy. It builds community. It allows us to reach our potential. This is something we as educators need to remember. A culture of thinking is not about a particular set of practices or a general expectation that people should be involved in thinking. A culture of thinking produces the feelings, energy, and even joy that can propel learning forward and motivate us to do what at times can be hard and challenging mental work.
A New Standard for Education
This book is about transforming our schools and classrooms into the kinds of learning communities we have just brought to mind. As educators, parents, and citizens, we must settle for nothing less than environments that bring out the best in people, take learning to the next level, allow for great discoveries, and propel both the individual and the group forward into a lifetime of learning. This is something all teachers want and all students deserve.
Admittedly, there are amazing schools all around the world, and many remarkable teachers, too, who regularly accomplish this goal. You'll be inspired by just such teachers in the chapters to come. Nonetheless, such environments aren't the norm for many students. Low-performing schools often lack the energy for learning; high-performing schools may narrow learning to simply preparing for tests. In both cases, and those in between, we as a society should want more for children. Indeed, the twenty-first century will demand that we provide more and that we rethink the purpose and promise of schools, a topic I take up in chapter 1.
I believe that culture is the hidden tool for transforming our schools and offering our students the best learning possible. Traditionally, policymakers have focused on curriculum as the tool for transformation, naively assuming that teachers merely deliver curriculum to their students. Change the deliverable—Common Core, National Curriculum, International Baccalaureate Diploma—and you will have transformed education they assume. In reality, curriculum is something that is enacted with students. It plays out within the dynamics of the school and classroom culture. Thus culture is foundational. It will determine how any curriculum comes to life.
The Forces That Shape Culture
If culture is the key to transformation, then we must understand how group culture is created, sustained, and enhanced. We must have a framework for understanding and assessing it. Some people look on culture as a mysterious, nebulous ethos that somehow grows up amorphously around a group. Others view group culture as a mere reflection of the leader's or teacher's personality, a view perpetuated in Hollywood movies about great teachers or books on the business genius of the latest CEO guru. Both of these takes on culture are misleading and unhelpful.
Culture does emerge and define a group. However, it needn't be mysterious. Likewise, although it may be true that some people have an intuitive knack for harnessing the forces that shape culture, once we are clear what those forces are, then anyone can begin to work with them to move a group's culture in a more positive direction. I will identify and briefly introduce the eight cultural forces here and then explore them more fully with case studies from various classrooms in the chapters to come.
Expectations
Ask teachers about expectations, and they will often talk about their expectations of students. For instance, expectations of behavior, the amount and type of work, or neatness. Although important in terms of class order, which is a concern for teachers, such expectations do little to motivate the actual process of learning and can, in some cases, represent “defensive teaching” that maintains order while actually decreasing learning (McNeil, 1983). The expectations that help to shape culture are those that outline and define the learning enterprise itself while signaling the kinds of thinking necessary to its success. Not our expectations of students, but our expectations for students.
This means that we teachers must have expectations that focus our teaching—for instance, the expectation that school will be about learning rather than the mere completion of work and merely accumulating enough points to score a top grade. Likewise, when we hold the expectation that understanding is a chief goal of learning and take students further and demand more of them than solely focusing on the acquisition of knowledge and skills, then our teaching becomes focused on deep rather than surface learning. An expectation for student independence rather than dependence demands a different way of teaching as well, one that empowers rather than controls students. Finally, when both teachers and students have the expectation, or mindset, that one gets smarter through one's efforts, then challenge and mistakes can be embraced as learning opportunities.
Language
Words mediate, shape, inform, and solidify much of our experience. Lev Vygotsky (1978), whose work explored how learning unfolds within social contexts, wrote, “The child begins to perceive the world not only through its eyes but also through its speech. And later it is not just seeing but acting that becomes informed by words” (p. 78). Through language, teachers notice, name, and highlight the activity, thinking, and ideas that are important within any learning context, drawing students' attention to these concepts and practices in the process. To many teachers' surprise, they often find that when they begin to notice and name students' thinking and positive learning moves, their students begin to exhibit more of those behaviors.
Time
Time is one of the scarcest commodities in schools, a constraint that every teacher feels and something we all struggle to manage. This pressure makes it hard for some teachers to allow time for thinking, but giving students time to think actually helps teachers achieve learning goals faster because students are more engaged. Of course, wait time after asking a question is important, and so is providing longer blocks of time for students to gather ideas and thoughts before a discussion. Teachers must be cautious about asking students to jump into complex discussions without providing them with time and structures to gather their thoughts first. This might mean giving a prompt and then a chance to write down a few ideas before beginning the discussion, as well as stopping discussions periodically to take stock of the learning.
Modeling
Teachers are quite familiar with notions of modeling. However, this is often limited to instructional modeling, the “Now watch me and I'll show you” kind of modeling. Instructional modeling certainly has its place, but it isn't really a shaper of culture. The kind of modeling that creates culture is more subtle, ubiquitous, and embedded. It is the modeling of who we as teachers are as thinkers and learners. This kind of modeling can't be “put on” for students' benefit; it must be real. Students know if a teacher is passionate about a topic, interested in ideas, engaged as a learner, reflective, and deliberative.
Teachers can struggle with this kind of authenticity, however, particularly when it comes to modeling risk taking, reflection, and learning from one's mistakes. Some teachers try to derive their authority from their superior content knowledge (Buzzelli & Johnston, 2002) and worry that showing any lack of knowledge will be perceived as ineptitude. This view harkens back to the notion of teaching as transmission. However, when teaching is seen as fostering engagement with ideas, a teacher's fear of inadequacy is reduced. Furthermore, teachers often find that students respond to authenticity better than they do to false bravado.
Opportunities
Typically the language teachers use to talk about teaching is in terms of lessons, activities, tasks, units, assignments, and so on. Sometimes, these words may reinforce a work rather than a learning orientation. By instead thinking about creating opportunities, we focus on what it is that is potentially powerful for learners within a lesson. Even when teachers teach a lesson out of a book, recognizing the opportunities the lesson affords allows teachers to focus on maximizing those opportunities. Does it allow students to challenge misconceptions? Does it push learners to clarify a position? to consider different perspectives?
Powerful learning opportunities invite all students to the learning, having a low threshold for entry and a high ceiling so that learners can take themselves as far as they wish. Such opportunities provide students with the chance to apply their skills and knowledge in novel contexts even as they acquire new understanding. Powerful learning opportunities don't feel merely like doing work for the teacher but have their own worth that students readily perceive.
Routines
Classrooms and groups are dominated by routines, often invisible to outsiders. This is why it is often difficult for new teachers to learn classroom management and organization from experienced teachers. What appears to happen effortlessly in well-managed classrooms is actually the result of established routines. Getting new teachers to think about creating patterns of behavior is important, but this must extend beyond managerial concerns. We must also establish learning and thinking routines in our classrooms that offer students known structures within which to operate and tools that they can take control of and use for their own learning. Ultimately a routine can be thought of as a pattern of behavior, as a manifestation of a group's way of operating. One way of thinking about a routine is simply, “This is how we do things here.”
Interactions
Perhaps nothing speaks louder about the culture of a classroom than the interactions that take place within it. This is also where mystery and the power of personality dominate, but this needn't be the case. Listening and questioning are the basis for positive classroom interactions that can in turn shape meaningful collaboration, which can then build a culture of thinking. At the heart of these two practices lies a respect for and interest in students' thinking. Of course, these practices apply equally to student-to-student interaction, and therefore teachers must teach students these skills through their example first.
Environment
Walk into any classroom or learning space, even in the absence of students or teachers, and you can tell something about the learning that happens in that space. The arrangement of furniture will tell you about how the group is expected to interact. What is up on the wall will tell you what the teacher or leader thinks is important to highlight and showcase. What learning needs is the environment set up to facilitate? For instance, does the space facilitate learners' needs to communicate, discuss, share, debate, and engage with other learners—or is it meeting only the students' need to see the board? Thinking about the messages an environment communicates and the needs it facilitates can help us construct environments that better support students' learning.
Tools for Transformation
The eight cultural forces represent the tools or levers we have for transforming school and classroom culture. In the first chapter, “The Purpose and Promise of Schools,” I lay out the case for a new vision of schools and schooling and identify ways you can better understand the current culture of your school or classroom. Each of the eight subsequent chapters then addresses one of the aforementioned cultural forces.
Although I have thought carefully about the order of the following chapters, placing the most engrained and foundational forces (expectations, language, time, and modeling) first, followed by those more easily designed and planned for (opportunities, routines, interactions, and environment), the fact is that there is no hierarchy or order to the cultural forces. One is not more important than the other, and all interact simultaneously in a group setting. As Nellie Gibson, whose case is presented in chapter 9, once said to me, “I think of the cultural forces as dominoes. It doesn't really matter where you start; you will soon find yourself knocking up against the others and addressing them at some point in your teaching.” Therefore, feel free to start your reading with whichever cultural force you like. However, I do make references to earlier chapters as I go along, so reading sequentially will have its benefits.
In writing about each of the cultural forces, I draw on my work with schools in Australia, Europe, and the United States as part of the Worldwide Cultures of Thinking Project to demonstrate each force within the embedded practice of teachers. Many of these teachers have been involved with these ideas for years and have created robust cultures of thinking that produce powerful learning—often with amazing results. Where I have the information about student performance on standardized tests, I make mention of those data as a way of providing context. However, I am not reporting on the results of experimental research in doing so, merely providing you with additional information. Although we all want students to do well on tests, I hope I have portrayed the real power of each teacher's efforts through the actual example of his or her teaching presented here.
These cases of teaching offer inspiration as well as a contextualized understanding of both what and how each force contributes to the culture of the classroom. From these cases, I then pull out and identify core elements or practices that all teachers can use as they seek to better engage that cultural force to its best effect. In doing so, I have attempted to weave together research with real teaching in a way that illuminates that research and, I hope, makes it more accessible.
Because this book is about transformation and not simply learning about culture, I conclude each of the following chapters with a set of possible actions. These actions should be viewed as first steps teachers can take to better understand and leverage that particular cultural force. In some cases, teams of teachers may want to collaborate to take action together as part of an inquiry-action group. Working through this book in cycles of reading, discussion, action, and reflection can be a powerful mechanism for whole-school change.
To take this charge for transformation further, I conclude this book with a series of case studies in chapter 10 written by a superintendent, a principal, an instructional coach, a head of professional learning, and two educational consultants. All of these individuals provide a unique picture on what it means to grow these ideas to truly transform a classroom, school, district, or county. As these cases demonstrate, there is no single way to go about the process of developing a culture of thinking. You will need to consider your own context to determine what is most appropriate.
Clearly this book has been written with school leaders and classroom teachers in mind; however, the fact is that anyone interested in group learning will find herein the tools needed for unlocking, understanding, and shaping powerful learning environments that get the best out of people. This includes educators in nonschool settings as well as those who manage groups in the business world. Indeed, the eight cultural forces, first identified as part of my analysis of great teachers' teaching, have proven to be a very robust model for understanding all groups, whether they be a museum tour, committee meeting, retreat, or project team.
The creation of any group culture is ongoing and evolving. As educators, we construct classroom culture over time with the active participation and input of those around us. This emergent culture is powerful because it sends messages about what learning is and how it happens. For teachers, understanding this process and how they might more directly influence it, as well as having the language to talk about classroom culture, can go a long way to demystifying teaching. Awareness of the presence of the cultural forces in any group context helps prospective and experienced educators alike take a more active role in shaping culture. In doing so, we move away from the view of teaching as transmission and toward the creation of a culture of thinking and learning in which curriculum comes alive. Let the transformation begin.
Chapter 1The Purpose and Promise of Schools
How do we talk about the value of school? How do we define the meaning of a quality education? The value of school has traditionally been measured in term of results—grades on exams, projects, and essays designed by teachers to match the taught curriculum and dutifully recorded in report cards sent home to parents each term. Over the last two decades, these kinds of results have lost ground to external measures: standardized tests that allow for the easy ranking and comparison of students across disparate settings. Increasingly, these have become the markers of quality, the measures by which we assess progress, and the outcome that teachers are teaching for, that students are working toward, and that parents expect. But is this really why we send our children to school? Is this truly the goal of education to which we collectively aspire?
Commenting on education reform in a back-to-school issue of the New York Times Magazine, historian Diane Ravitch stated, “The single biggest problem in education is that no one agrees on why we educate. Faced with this lack of consensus, policy makers define good education as higher test scores” (“How to Remake Education,” 2009). Although the definitions of policymakers surely matter, they are not the final arbiters in this debate. Policy is ultimately shaped by societal, organizational, parental, and student-held definitions of “good” or “great” or any adjective we use to define exceptional quality. These definitions establish the broader context in which schools operate. It is these conversations about quality that give rise to the standards that shape the lives of teachers and students and that define the outcome to which all efforts must be aligned. We must change the way we talk about education. As Elliot Eisner (2003) has said, “As long as schools treat test scores as the major proxies for student achievement and educational quality, we will have a hard time refocusing our attention on what really matters in education” (p. 9).
Ultimately, our definition of “a great school” or “quality education” matters because it will define what we give time to and what becomes a priority in the day-to-day life of the classroom. It will shape our expectations of what schools can contribute to our lives and to our society. In short, our definition of what makes a quality education shapes our aspirations as parents, educators, and as a society at large. So, yes, it matters how we talk about schooling and its purpose. It matters how the society talks to its politicians, how policymakers talk to the media, how principals talk to teachers, how teachers talk to students, and how parents talk to their children. It matters because our talk shapes our focus, and our focus directs our energies, which will shape our actions.
Thinking Differently About Outcomes
To help us think about what makes a quality education and about the purpose of schooling in our society, try this simple thought experiment. When I speak with groups around the world, be they made up of parents, teachers, or administrators, I often begin by posing a question: What do you want the children you teach to be like as adults? Although I use the word “teach,” I mean this in the broadest sense of educating, so that it applies to parents and administrators as well as teachers. When speaking to parents, I emphasize that I want them to think about all the students at the school, not just their own children. This ensures that they consider outcomes as a member of society who has a much broader stake in the outcomes of education. Take a moment now and consider how you would respond to this question. What do you want the children we are teaching in our schools to be like as adults?
Frequently, I have people engage with this question by using the Chalk Talk routine (Ritchhart, Church, & Morrison, 2011). In this routine, individuals share their thoughts silently by recording them on large sheets of chart paper. As individuals share ideas, they read and respond to the written ideas of others by making comments, raising questions, asking for elaboration, making connections between comments, and so on. At the end of ten minutes, we have a very rich image of the kind of student we, the collective members of this particular group, want to graduate from our schools. We are hoping for someone who is curious, engaged, able to persevere, empathetic, willing to take risks and try new things, a go getter, able to problem-solve, creative, passionate about something, a listener, open-minded, healthy, committed to the community, respectful, analytical, inquisitive, a lifelong learner, an avid reader, a critical consumer, helpful, compassionate, able to take a global view, willing to learn from his or her mistakes, collaborative, imaginative, enthusiastic, adaptable, able to ask good questions, able to connect, well rounded, a critical thinker…And the list goes on with much elaboration, explanation, and assorted arrows connecting the various qualities.
What is interesting about the lists and charts created by these disparate groups all over the world is how similar they are. It matters little whether the group is from a suburban district of Detroit, an all-boys' school in Melbourne, a gathering of teachers from international schools in Europe, a group of parents in Hong Kong, a consortium of charter schools, or an urban high school in New York City. The same sets of qualities tend to appear over and over again. There is often an emphasis on attributes that drive learning: curiosity, inquisitiveness, questioning. And those that facilitate innovation: creativity, problem solving, risk taking, imagination, and inquisitiveness. There are the skills needed to work and get along with others: collaboration, empathy, good listening, helpfulness. And those that support the ability to deal with complexity: analysis, making connections, critical thinking. And usually there are those that situate us collectively in the world: as a global citizen, a member of a community, someone aware of his or her impact on the environment, able to communicate.
You'll notice that there are few traditional academic skills mentioned. Does that mean they aren't important? Of course not. It's just that they do not adequately define the kind of students we collectively hope to send into the world. Nor do they define the kind of employee whom businesses are looking to hire in the twenty-first century. In a survey of four hundred businesses across the United States conducted by a consortium of human resource, education, and corporate entities (Conference Board, Partnership for 21st Century Skills, Corporate Voices for Working Families, & Society for Human Resource Management, 2006), employers were asked to rank the skills they were looking for in potential applicants, working from a list that included both academic and applied skills. Applied skills such as professionalism, work ethic, collaboration, communication, ethics, social responsibility, critical thinking, and problem solving topped the list over more traditional academic skills. Only when it came to the hiring of recent high school students did a single traditional academic subject, reading comprehension, make the top five (it was ranked fifth) in terms of its importance. This list from employers mirrors the qualities that Tony Wagner (2008) heard mentioned in his interviews with business leaders. Wagner distilled these into what he calls seven survival skills: critical thinking and problem solving, collaboration, agility and adaptability, initiative and entrepreneurialism, communication skills, the ability to analyze information, and curiosity and imagination.
It could be argued that businesses assume a high level of basic skills and knowledge as a given and are thus only identifying these applied skills as the icing on the cake. Perhaps, though in the aforementioned survey, this appears not to be the case. Prospective employers recognized deficiencies in academic skills, yet still ranked applied skills as both being more important and even more lacking in applicants than was academic preparedness. One crossover category topped the list in terms of deficiency. Writing in English was identified as deficient among 72 percent of applicants, and its applied skill corollary, written communication, as deficient among 80.9 percent of applicants. After that, the skills, both applied and academic, listed as most deficient were (in order): leadership, professionalism, critical thinking and problem solving, foreign languages, self-direction, creativity, mathematics, and oral communication. All of these skills were identified as deficient in more than 50 percent of applicants. Perhaps the biggest takeaway is that applied skills are not considered an add-on, but rather an integral part of workplace preparedness.
The goal of cultivating a lifelong skill set that propels innovation and invention is championed internationally as well. In a 2011 study of the educational practices of the top-performing countries as measured by the Programme for International Student Assessment, Marc Tucker (2011) reported that “one cannot help but be struck by the attention that is being given to achieving clarity and consensus on the goals for education in those countries” (p. 5). His group, the National Center on Education and the Economy, found a concern, particularly among Asian countries, with the development of cognitive skills as well as noncognitive skills that facilitated both global competitiveness and personal fulfillment. This sentiment is captured in remarks made in 2002 by Singapore's minister of education, Tharman Shanmugaratnam, in which he described as a top priority the need for Singaporean students to develop “a willingness to keep learning, and an ability to experiment, innovate, and take risks” (Borja, 2004, p. 30). Likewise, China's Central Committee stated that education in the country must begin to “emphasize sowing students' creativity and practical abilities over instilling an ability to achieve certain test scores and recite rote knowledge” (Zhao, 2006).
The qualities I consistently hear as important to teachers and parents, like those emerging from the world of work, are being called for by other sources as well. In 2002, in the book Intellectual Character, I reviewed the call for habits of mind, intellectual passions, and thinking dispositions being championed from various circles and found agreement around six broad characteristics: curiosity, open-mindedness, being strategic, having a healthy skepticism, being a truth seeker, and being metacognitive. The learner profile of the International Baccalaureate promotes students as inquirers, thinkers, communicators, and risk takers, and as being open-minded, reflective, well balanced, caring, principled, and knowledgeable. Likewise, the Building Learning Power initiative (Claxton, Chambers, Powell, & Lucas, 2011) seeks to develop a set of some twenty learning capacities around reflectiveness, resourcefulness, reciprocity/collaboration, and resilience that are quite similar to many of those already mentioned. Philosophers recognize these traits as encompassing a set of intellectual virtues. Once again, the more traditional academic skills that make up the standardized tests, define our graduation requirements, and serve as gatekeepers for university entrance don't appear explicitly on these lists.
Thus a new vision of what a quality education is and what it should offer arises from the data. Although a host of different vocabulary is used and the traits parsed slightly differently, what emerges is a rich portrait of the student as an engaged and active thinker able to communicate, innovate, collaborate, and problem-solve. What we see as most important to develop is not a discrete collection of knowledge but rather a set of broad characteristics that motivate learning and lead to the generation of useable knowledge. Some might say this is the profile of a twenty-first-century learner (Trilling & Fadel, 2009); others might see it as what it means to be a well-rounded citizen (Arnstine, 1995; Meier, 2003); still others might incorporate this definition as part of global competency (Boix-Mansilla & Jackson, 2011). I choose to see this portrait of a student as the vision of what a quality education affords. This is what we must be teaching for and trying to achieve for every student. The big questions then are: How do we get there—how do we realize this vision? How are our schools doing currently in producing this vision of students as thinkers? What are the forces we must marshal and master to truly transform our schools? These are the questions I take up in this book.
Teaching as Enculturation
The qualities found in the various lists I've mentioned—reflective, imaginative, curious, creative, and so on—are often classified as dispositions. A disposition is an enduring characteristic or trait of a person that serves to motivate behavior. When we say a person is curious, a particular dispositional attribute, it is because we see a pattern of behavior—such as questioning, exploring, probing, and so on—emanating from that person over time and across circumstances that relates to that particular disposition. Our dispositions define who we are as people, as thinkers, as learners. In previous writings, I've argued that the dispositions that define us as thinkers make up our intellectual character (Ritchhart, 2002).
We might think about these dispositions not only in terms of the outcomes of a quality education but also, to borrow a phrase from Ted Sizer, as the residuals of education—that is to say, what is left over after all the things practiced and memorized for tests are long forgotten. What stays with us long after we have left the classroom? Speaking at the Save Our Schools rally in Washington DC on July 30, 2011, Matt Damon highlighted the importance of these residuals, saying, “As I look at my life today, the things I value most about myself—my imagination, my love of acting, my passion for writing, my love of learning, my curiosity—all come from how I was parented and taught. And none of these qualities that I've just mentioned—none of these qualities that I prize so deeply, that have brought me so much joy, that have brought me so much professional success—none of these qualities that make me who I am…can be tested.”
The key aspect of these dispositions, even though they are manifest in the exhibition of specific skills and actions, is that they cannot be directly taught or directly tested. Think about it. It would be absurd to teach a unit on curiosity or risk taking or collaboration and then to give a multiple-choice test to assess students' development. Sure, students might learn “about” the disposition, but they would be unlikely to develop the disposition itself. Rather, these qualities, these dispositions, have to be developed over time. They must be nurtured across a variety of circumstances so that they become ingrained and are likely to emerge when the situation calls for them. Dispositions must be enculturated—that is, learned through immersion in a culture.
One of Russian psychologist Lev Vygotsky's most famous quotes is, “Children grow into the intellectual life of those around them” (1978, p. 88). This statement beautifully captures what enculturation means. It means surrounding the child with the kind of intellectual life, mental activity, and processes of learning to which we want them to grow accustomed. It suggests that learning to learn is an apprenticeship in which we don't so much learn from others as we learn with others in the midst of authentic activities. If we take Vygotsky's quote to heart, then we must take a hard look at our homes, schools, and classrooms and ask ourselves about the kind of intellectual life with which we are surrounding our children. What kinds of models do they see? What kinds of opportunities do they experience? What kinds of thinking are being valued, privileged, and promoted on a day-to-day basis?
Culture as the Enactment of a Story
Parents play an important role in building character, both intellectual and moral, and enculturating dispositions in their children. Parents are the first and most important models for children. A parent's values and dispositions are regularly on display, and his or her behaviors are the ones a child will first imitate. At the same time, when it comes to the dispositions related to thinking and learning, schools play a privileged role in society. Schools are designed as places of learning and so send important messages about what learning is, how it happens, and what kinds of learning are of value. Each and every day, year in and year out, students are being told a story of learning. Enculturation is a process of gradually internalizing the messages and values, the story being told, that we repeatedly experience through interaction with the external, social environment. This internalization takes time as we identify the messages and values that are consistent and recurring in our environment.
This notion of culture as a story we tell is a metaphor that I have been employing in my work with schools and organizations for a number of years. It was first presented to me in the book Ishmael. In the novel, author Daniel Quinn invites readers to be a part of dialogue between a skilled teacher and a skeptical but willing student around the very nature of the role of humans on the planet. The fact that the teacher, Ishmael, is a gorilla eager to pass on his acquired wisdom about the human race through telepathy adds a bit of a twist to things. Early on, Ishmael lays out some definitions that will be key to the dialogue, in particular that of “culture.” He defines culture as “a group of people enacting a story” and says that to enact a story “is to live so as to make the story a reality.” For the purposes of the novel, the story being enacted concerns the relationship between man, the world, and the gods. Drawing on this metaphor, I define the culture of schools as a group of people enacting a story. The story concerns the relationship between teachers, students, and the act of learning. Everyone is a player in this story, acting in a way that reinforces the story and makes it reality.
The idea that culture can be transmitted through storytelling has long been recognized. Likewise, the idea that a culture sends messages about what is valued and worthwhile through its use of traditions, behaviors, symbolic conduct, and other means is also generally well understood. Carolyn Taylor (2005), writing for a business audience, takes this idea a step further, saying that “culture management is about message management. If you can find, and change, enough of the sources of these messages, you will change the culture” (p. 7). Clearly, the role of messages in revealing and shaping culture is important. However, it is the self-reinforcing, continual construction of culture through the dynamic enactment of both individual and collective values that I find so powerful. This perspective on the power of the story in the making can help us understand the symbiotic role every participant plays in creating culture, as well as the privileged role leaders play.
