As to the methods, there may be a million and then some, but principles are few.
The {person} who grasps principles can successfully select {their} own methods.
The {person} who tries methods, ignoring principles, is sure to have trouble.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
As a community, we really have to repeatedly ask the question: "What should we be doing?"
David Perkins writes that, "The smart school finds it's foundation in a
rich and evolving set of principles about human thinking and learning."
This is, I would argue, what staff development is all about. . .and staff development isn't a day, it is a way of being.
Yet, I think Perkins challenges us to find/make the time to form and reform our "theory of the world" (to connect the Frank Smith text) with regards to how people learn.
I think he feels this way because how teachers teach, I would argue, is a by-product of the principles they hold regarding how people learn.
Two questions to reflect on:
1.) How congruent is what I do in the classroom with what I believe?
2.) Are the beliefs I hold regarding teaching and learning based on more than anecdotal experience and my autobiography as a learner?
If you are interested in thinking more about this, please read the short blog post: Research on Teaching Offers No Blueprints, Only Maps
One of the primary goals of January 6th was to ensure that a particular principle was a part of the community knowledge of NHS: The new we know is connected to the old we knew.
David Ausubel puts it this way: The single most important factor influencing learning is what the learner already knows. Ascertain this and teach him accordingly.
The challenge for us is to determine how to move this principle, if we believe it to be true, from words on a page (or screen) into the lived experiences of our students.
If you don't believe this principle is true, then "What should we be doing?"
 |
| http://www.conferencesthatwork.com/index.php/tag/john-seeley-brown/ |
John Seely Brown uses the term explicit knowledge to encapsulate what we know we should be doing (the "know what").
How we go about doing what we should be doing is labeled tacit knowledge.
The work of a "smart school" is to continuously add to and reflect upon the collective and individual tacit knowledge of the community. . .which should be built upon and informed by solid explicit knowledge.
Recognize that tacit knowledge is constructed situationally and often refined socially.
This is the knowledge we form and reform with each other through our conversations and stories as we teach and learn together. In the words of Richard Elmore, "we learn the work by doing the work."
This is part of the "why" behind the social organizations that make up the larger organization we call Northbrook High School (whether formalized relationships based on teaching assignment or informal relationships based on whatever, Raider Circles, the Teachers New to Campus Cohort, coaching, book studies and any other staff development opportunities where we connect with someone else).
We often need to pause in order to reflect on this knowledge however.
Absent of reflection, our thinking can become very narrow and both self-evidential (what I am doing is good because I am doing it and I say it is good) and self-referential (Besides, there are people doing the same things I am or even less than I am).
Explicit knowledge can be gained many ways: reading, writing, watching, listening, reflecting, questioning, discussing.
Let's consider reading:
Regardless of the accuracy of the "seven years to expertise" factoid, gains in expertise (which is in part connected to the depth and breadth of a person's explicit knowledge) are made when a commitment is made to increasing this type of knowledge.
Please don't read this as a suggestion for how you should spend one hour of your already full day.
Again, the question to us all is: "What should we be doing?"
A question only we can answer for ourselves.
