Creating a philosophy for education

I have finished teaching a semester of Professional Studies for pre-service teachers where the culminating performance was to write a beginning philosophy of education. I marked over 50 essays and was incredibly impressed and humbled by the collective wisdom, vision and creativity of these people who have barely dipped their toes in the water of teaching.

Many of my students committed to a path of being and becoming 'awake teachers', teaching 'who they are' with integrity, and engaging in reflective practice.

In discussing their beginning philosophy it seemed that my students tended towards taking one of three approaches. It occurred to me that each approach was a piece of the puzzle and that as educators these key three aspects could help inform us and keep our philosophy and our practice alive. It is interesting that these approaches emerged from the task and were not dictated by it.

What sort of teacher do I want to be?

A number of students pulled together a range of different teaching and learning strategies. They painted a picture of the environment they wanted to create, the relationships they want to have with the students, the experiences they would like the students to have and their teacher identity that they would like to develop.

I believe that imagining ourselves into our classrooms is a very important aspect in working out our philosophy – it uses our intuition and sense of identity to attract to us what we believe is good, true and beautiful. It is a great starting point for going deeper and looking for foundational values and what we think is the purpose of education.

Key values and ideals

Some students took a key value, like respect and dignity as the core of their teaching philosophy. They teased out the deeper meaning and potentials of these values and imagined a classroom where these values infused their own teaching presence/identity and the environment of the students. Exploring just one of these key values could be a lifetime’s work – to ask what does it mean to truly embody such a value as deeply and richly as possible.

There are many educational authors who have won fame through focussing on one thing and through that developing rich and complex philosophies that speak to many dimensions of teaching. (Eg. Nel Noddings using the idea of “care”.) Articulating a core value (or some values) and keeping them fore fronted means as we design activities or work on relationships we can ask “What does it mean if I bring in a conscious awareness of respect and dignity here?”

I tend to ask myself “What is good, true, beautiful and whole here?”

What is the purpose of education?

Some students went to the very heart of what education is for and looked for a philosophy that said something about humanity, society and education. They moved outside of the classroom into wanting to understand the bigger picture of education and its role. Students who wrote from such a perspective were able to create a coherent rationale of what they might be becoming an educator for. This question is a very important one to ask ourselves as it sets a vision. So why are you an educator? Some students were coming with a clear vision of transforming society, developing humanity etc.

Locus of awareness

When asking what our philosophy of education is, we can focus on ourselves and our identity, our classrooms, the school system, society, a sense of an evolving world… our locus of awareness at any stage can narrow or broaden. It is useful to be aware of where we are locating ourselves and to realise where else we can look and have the choice to do that.

The teachers we value

One specific part of the assignment was asking students to reflect on their past teachers who were significant to them in some way (negative or positive) and through reflecting on this to pull out key aspects that they might think are important for their own teacher selves.

Teachers that students valued listened to them, saw them, supported and encouraged them, spent extra time with them, shared a passion with them, were human and real, allowed them freedom if they needed it, gave something to them that sparked an interest, made them feel valued, enabled them to make mistakes and feel comfortable with that. Teachers they hated diminished them, used throw away comments, put them up for ridicule, misunderstood them, told them that they would never be good at XXXX.

So while many of students discussed teaching strategies of their teachers, an overwhelming conclusion was that strategies that their good teachers used are all over the spectrum – it is not the strategy that makes the teacher – the teacher makes the strategy. What students valued was not technique as much as identity – the quality of their teacher and in particular the quality of relationship that their teacher had with them.

So what is the essence of a good teacher that needs to be bottled? Quality of relationships?

So how do we keep alive our thinking about what it is we value in education? How do we consciously embody our vision? How important is it to read something inspiring, talk inspiring dialogue with a collegial community, and to record those moments with our students who have inspired us?


PHOTO: CC Pink Sherbet

Telling a new story of the Essential Learnings through paradigm lenses

I have been in mapping mode lately. It happens to me in cycles... but I am beginning to pay attention to my need to systemise because often it creates a pressure cooker for surprising insights to occur.

My big emergent insight at the moment is that we need to tell a new story about the Tasmanian Essential Learnings (the K-10 curriculum in Tasmania which was dismantled two years ago). Over the last two years many Tasmanians have heard that:

ELS = failure

But that is not the way that is seen nationally, overseas or even locally. I feel that the ELS holds hard-won "collective wisdom" about visionary change in education for the 21stC. Every person who took part in the journey - educational leaders, teachers, parents, business people, students, grandparents, community groups - each have gained important learnings. All different, all which might give insight into something that could be of great service to the rest of the world. The global challenges which informed aspects of the ELS are still with us.

How might the ELS be re-framed today? Could we re-frame the metaphors we use about what we value - from being "leaders" or the "best" of something in the world - to "What can we contribute to the world?"

Can Tasmanians have something to contribute to the world through telling our stories of this epic learning journey? Perhaps we need a time to reflect over the sudden dismantling of the ELS, a time to heal, and then a time to tell. What could we learn from each other if we were invited to give our unique perspectives, to use perhaps different lenses to tell our stories and then do some "appreciative inquiry"? What have we learnt, who have we become, what do we now value, what are emerging intuitions, interesting positives, where are our metaphors now, and how might we vision the next step? How can we crochet new conversations and what might they create?

What might enable such conversations - virtual or face-to-face? Who might want to listen?

Why might our collective experiences be significant? Can they be generalisable to other countries who are looking for new educational visions and transformation processes?

Looking at generic paradigms

Spiral Dynamics suggests that there are generic paradigms in which societies move through. We can map key patterns of society - key underpinning values, ways of thinking and ways of being. People might tune into different paradigms whether at work, play or with family. There is an evolutionary movement of the paradigms with entry points (letting go of the old and practicing new things), mature stage (combining learnings from previous paradigms with new ways of thinking and practice) and exit points (where disillusionment happens.)

Perhaps our education reforms can be mapped on such a paradigm map. Based on my own experiences I have made a possible map which might tell part of the story for the evolution of teaching of science - from blue to orange to green to yellow. This is "my" story of our journey which may resonate with others and may not.

Each colour represents a way of thinking and being represented by different aspects of society:

The key metaphor for Blue is the traditional librarian - the holder and keeper of knowledge - the worlds' collective wisdom - which is structured in ways so we can access it and make sense of it. But how do we cope with increasing knowledge?

Orange is about being part of an entrepreneurial and technological society - initiative, making thinking and processes visible (meta-cognition), problem solvers, investigators, empowered to live in a complex world. We have habits of mind for successful people but do we need qualities of being for soulful people?

Green brings together criticality, caring and community - looking at ways of building human capacity and contribution in an emancipated postmodern society. But in its anxiousness to be inclusive it can often marginalise the more traditional ways of knowing, being and learning.

Yellow tries to find what is valuable in all, and to find ways of enabling conversations between disconnected voices.

Perhaps the ELS curriculum represents a "mature" expression of the green paradigm for educational transformation. The journey and "lived experience" of those who participated in the implementation of the ELS are as important as the artifacts of that experience - the curriculum documents. How might we be capturing those experiences for others to incorporate into their own journeys? Can we have a sense of where our individual journeys and tensions sit when we use a model such as this? Were we trying to move too quickly between the different paradigm spaces?

And is this mapping of the ELS onto a paradigm model like this too simplistic? Absolutely! However, in trying to name it and see the patterns enables me to "let go" of many of my agendas and perhaps look back with greater perspective. Thus enabling me to wonder in new ways. Is it useful for you?

So come and play the Snakes and Ladders game with me...

1. Start at the bottom and develop hard-won knowledge
2. Choose to be on the leading edge OR wait to see how things are going before deciding to join
3. Choose whether you stop for a while and integrate, or push on
4. See who you are bringing with you and who you might be alienating
5. Become aware of how cultural paradigms shape you. Be aware of how your own journey is a symptom of society - its needs, dreams, concerns - and everyone is an important part of the system's message
6. If you have fallen behind, beware of jumping too far ahead without some of the mediating experiences which can help you master essential new skills, ways of thinking or being
7. Master the whole so you can move wherever you want.
8. If you fall down a snake - don't panic - it happens to everyone. Look for others who might help you re-frame your experiences so you can use your hard-won wisdom.
9. Be part of continuing conversations
   

The new ELS story = we can contribute our collective wisdom to the world????

Photo: Margaret Wertheim - Institute For Figuring hyperbolic crochet corals and anemones

Thinking about the teaching cage

I guess lately I have been feeling very unsettled in my teaching of the Professional Studies course for pre-service teachers. I am concerned I might have gotten into habit patterns that are largely shaped by the teaching cage I am in. What is my normal way of teaching? What is the cage? In what way are they interacting to produce perhaps something different to what I am used to, and is this OK, or do I need to find a way to liberate myself? Why do I feel I am losing a part of myself?

This is a key dilemma for most of us teachers who have a sense of our values and philosophy of education and find that there is a mismatch between them and the teaching environment they are operating in. So what might it mean to clarify my own values and those underpinning the teaching environment - the implicit "curriculum metaphors", the syllabus constraints, the assessment metaphors and regimens.

Lock-step culture

One big thing I notice is that I am now engaged in "lock-step" teaching. Each week the students have a lecture on a topic which brings a philosophic lens to the ideas of teaching, followed by a tute whose aim is to help students explore those issues a bit more deeply - so it is set on a pre-schedule with not a lot of movement for emergent topics of exploration.

Versus authentic learning experiences

Normally I would prefer to teach using rich, authentic, meaningful, collaborative, multi-layered, multi-tasking, multi-potential projects where students are producing things for the real world and receiving feedback from the world. Learning is emergent and while I might have in mind different experiences I want to cover, I wait until it comes up as a real need before designing class activities to explore the issues. That way students are eager and ready to learn and can apply it straight away to real contexts, get feedback and then modify what they do and how they think about it.

It is a collaborative iterative process where I am tuning into their needs and development processes as well as their responses to what I am providing. I train them to be highly meta-cognitive - with much debriefing and reflecting on what they have experienced and learned. The students are engaged in self-evaluations against the course criteria and reflect on how their thinking and being has changed. This is based on curriculum metaphors "curriculum as experience" and "curriculum as currere" - learning through real experiences and then reflecting on self in context with past, present and future. I help to "lead out" what is there already and help them vision into who they might become. So I am getting feedback constantly about how I might be aligning with their present needs, their learning journey and self-vision.

Losing a key "sense"

This is perhaps in comparison to my current tutes - which are about preparing students for something in the future using a curriculum metaphor "curriculum as set tasks". So while my students seem to be enjoying the tutes and seem to have the opportunity to go deeper in exploring the meaning of the weekly topic this has not yet been tested in the real world. So they are not sure yet what meaning it has for them, and so I can't yet gain this feedback of whether I am on track in helping them be real teachers, or helping in their development towards that aim. I am realising that a key "sense" that I have been relying on is not there for me. A dimension of my usual "I-thou" relationship with my students is missing - my current pre-service students have a certain invisibility to me.

No wonder I feel I have lost a part of me! The relational one. This is not to say I am not beginning to develop relationships with my students - I certainly have, but that my ability to understand them in the same way I have understood my year 11/12 students in the role of an integral teacher is just not there.

I realise how much I need many layers of feedback from my students. While my current students (pre-service teachers) have done a first assignment - a piece on why reflection might be important to them as a teacher - I realise that this doesn't help me enough to get inside my students. I read one paper where someone actually did some heartfelt reflection -some wondering - about something he had read from Parker Palmer. I thought "thankyou, you have given me an insight into you".

Yet the assignment criteria was based on objective standards such as "shows a clarity of insight about the importance of reflection". The very wording of the assignment puts students into an "objective space" of evaluating reflection. How do I know whether reflection is truly useful or important to these students or whether they are saying what the teacher wants to hear? A door has been shut for me in coming to know them.

Yes, what I most valued out of all the papers I read was the ability of this one student to give me a true insight into himself and his thinking/reflecting processes - how he was coming to know - and his embodiment of the reflective process. Can you imagine that as a key assessment criterion?

The teacher gives the student permission to use whatever form they need to give the teacher insight about themselves; their thinking, their meaning making, their needs, their processes, their values - choosing to embody it in ways suitable to them. They offer the teacher this insight to help build the "I-thou" relationship where each can take on agreed roles. Perhaps the teacher dances between coach, mentor, critical friend, collaborator, nurturer, gardener, alchemist, liberator. The teacher then understands what the student is grasping towards and what the student has actually embodied.

What roles would the student like to take on in such a relationship?

What am I now? The conductor who orchestrates experiences. Perhaps I need to come down from the stage and discuss with the students how we can create learning environments which develop the "I-thou" relationships better.

Reflection on my reflection

It is interesting when I first sat down to write this blog I thought perhaps I should be moving into more project-based teaching - I was wondering how could I fit some project-based learning into my tutes and what it might look like. But actually being engaged in a process of "writing as inquiry" - with the aim to try to come to understand the reasons behind things - has actually helped me find a more fundamental aspect to what I value.

Does this realisation perhaps liberate me, as I hoped? Perhaps now I can find other ways to articulate my deep values through the assessment, the tute action and my ongoing relationships with my students... perhaps I can be in the cage and feel OK, or by bringing these ideas into the cage, the cage begins to morph into something else...

And perhaps I am being unfair to the cage - seeing it as a lot more confining than it actually is. I might see the lock-step nature and the setting of specific assessment tasks as belonging to the curriculum metaphor of "curriculum as set tasks" when in fact there are lot richer educational metaphors underpinning the course. Perhaps a challenge is helping these become more visible and articulated coherently into the assessment paradigm?

Picture: cc Tansan

Challenging moments

I had my second tutorial for my first group of pre-service teachers (Tute 3) in Professional Studies today which I think was quite challenging for all of us. I layered it - entwining affective and effective agendas into maybe a far too rich torte - with perhaps too much bitterness and not enough cream.

The key focus was exploring (through discussing it and living it) "Why is reflection important in developing teacher identity?" Critical reflection is about challenging our assumptions. For the first part of our discussion we challenged what we thought we knew learning was - what it looked, like, sounded like, felt like, and what learning moments could be. It seemed to generate rich insights. But really, I would have to say, while some of us might have had some of our ideas shook up, we all felt pretty safe in doing so (though there were some heated moments of debate).

Then we had a wake-up activity provided by one student. Following this I asked everyone to form small groups and just to say:

"What I noticed about how I felt, what I was thinking as I did this activity..."

This seemed very hard for my group - everyone wanted to move out of the phenomena of the experience into judging or analysing it. It seemed other groups did too.

Then we formed discussion groups to explore the readings. The extra dimension was that each person took on a role outside their comfort zone - each reflecting aspects of the roles teachers take in the classroom:

• facilitator - to give a clear vision and purpose, guide the discussion, and weave in the different threads
• time-keeper/task-orientation - to make judgments on when to rein in discussion or let it continue - based on value of emergence versus need to meet a set agenda
• recorder/historian of learning moments - to capture the groups key learning moments as signposts of their journey and to reflect back at appropriate times to help them clarify or tease out meaning
• socialiser/group needs - concerned with ensuring everyone's needs are met, no-one dominates, all given a turn, and to manage any inappropriate behaviours
• witness of self - to notice what is happening - how they are reacting, and to be the person that reminds them to breathe when situations get sticky
• researcher - this is the person who doesn't make assumptions from body language or responses of how people are learning - they really try to find out.
  

By being able to put on one role at a time the aim was to build classroom confidence. After 20 minutes I asked the groups to debrief by a TRIBES community circle - one person has the pen and only they can talk while holding it before passing it around the group. They had to say "what I noticed from my role was..." and not to analyse or be judgmental. It helped that we had tried this in relation to the wake-up activity.

Only now do I realise how challenging this debriefing process was, and how different it was to challenging an idea that we might hold (though some people's self-identity can be deeply intertwined with the ideas they have).

Each group was confronted with having to listen to someone else's perspective about themselves and how the group operated (some seemingly good and some not so good), with some people picking up on really interesting aspects that no-one had considered. In terms of group dynamics some people found out that they dominated, that discussion was often between several people, and that some, while interesting, were leading the group off track too often.

So what is it like to hear something (that usually no-one ever tells you) which actually might challenge how you think about yourself? Is this a challenge to our own identity? How easy is it to slip into defensive mode? What does it mean for us in developing a professional capacity to be open to feedback?

I felt that the insights the groups made about the content learning as well as their learning about the debriefing was so deep and valuable. (But now I wonder if I acknowledged this enough. I certainly didn't acknowledge the fact that students were really putting themselves on the line... because it just didn't occur to me until I had a chance to reflect about it.)

To finish the session I invited comment back on my own lesson structure, some of which seemed a little negative. After talking this over with a teacher colleague I now realise the importance of asking for feedback which might be positive, negative, or interesting. When we get into a critical voice we tend to focus on what is problematic rather than all those things that should be celebrated!

I left the class feeling a bit all over the place, unsettled, energy spiky and not quite there. I was certainly not in a state of resolution. I came away wondering if I should have closed it better, helped create a sense of buoyancy like last time, or whether it was OK to leave things hanging. Especially since one of our insights about learning was about creating conditions for students to move acrosss Vygotsky's proximity gap - from curiosity, to uncomfortablity to insight.... and giving time for people to make the connections for themselves, rather than the teacher trying to tie everything up. But not making the gap too big!

Was the learning gap too big? How did everyone else feel?

Critical Reflection

On one hand I am valuing stimulating classroom experiences to promote the challenge of assumptions, yet on the other hand, at the heart of me, I am a caring teacher. I hadn't thought through the consequences of my experiments on my students - that my methods might move from challenging ideas to challenging self. I hadn't wondered if this was in the students' best interests. Is that lack of foresight or am I ethically irresponsible?

In my original planning of the lesson I had a strong intuitive need to follow the discussion with a creative activity. I didn't have time for this and I wonder whether this in fact was really important and I should have gone with my gut. Coincidentally I just received an email from an international colleague which looks at the relationship between locked-into assumptions, vulnerability and creativity. Is giving people a creative outlet extremely important after such sessions - another way of knowing and being, a form of expressing something that is yet to be seen or understood, and only in the expressing is it formed? Does it provide a celebration of the midwifery process which perhaps comes before the actual rite of passage into enlightenment?

One of my students questioned why teachers need to critically reflect - surely it becomes very tiresome after awhile. The critical practice we were engaged with in this session was very tiring. It definitely needs balance. Brookfield suggests we use the lenses of colleague teachers, autobiography, student feedback and literature sources in a process of critical reflectivity. Yes, but I would like to add more - creativity, contemplation, and asking what is whole, true, good and beautiful in what we do.

One student said she felt she got to know me this lesson. We had a moment where she was lampooning the "witness" idea: "I am breathing, Sue, I am breathing." And I was quite playful back. When I am so in my head about the agendas of the class I forget to laugh... so one of the roles we need is the laughing teacher!

I wonder what learnings everyone in the class has gained from this, and whether they will apply critical reflection or other forms of gaining insight? Perhaps they are laughing about it, in which case they have achieved teacher-mastery level 4.2.

Picture CC: Daquella manera

Developing a community of practice - part 2

In this post I describe my tute for my second group of pre-service teachers in the Professional Studies unit. It follows on from the last post where I reflected on my tuturial for my first group.

Last post I said the first tute seemed to confirm my sense of vocation for teaching teachers; the second made me seriously doubt it. I left feeling I had a lot of cheek standing up in front of prospective teachers and believing that who I was and what I knew was in anyway aligned to what they wanted and needed - which was to get out into prac with real students and real schools. I felt humbled.

Okay, so that was my typical angsty emotional response that Brookfield says we teachers can get into. Can critical reflection really stop the cycle of self-blame and help us into a a more useful perspective?

Some critical reflection

The whole experience brought back memories of my "difficult" maths students who had been so disempowered all through their schooling that they took on behaviours that continued to sabotage their learning. When I invited them to have a voice, debrief about past injustices and be part of negotiating the processes and content for their own learning I opened a floodgate. Suddenly I was the recipient of pent up anger and resentment. And once that was out of the way, we could move on and develop real relationships and learn how to help each other tune onto learning.

So when I gave my second group of pre-service teachers an opportunity to "really" explore what sort of community practice they wanted a whole lot of stuff came out about their whole course:

• a sense of disempowerment,
• a concern that the census date (which locks you into paying fees for the course) was before the pracs - so students could not test whether teaching was for them,
• concern that they were just overwhlemed by content after content with no space to digest,
  
• concern that simple basic needs such as sufficient break to eat lunch, walk around etc was not factored into their timetables.

My topic is based on the notion "we teach who we are." When I stand up within a classroom in a building I am more than this me, who is teaching. I am part of the systemic whole; the policies, the buildings, the timetable, the lack of access to water. I am complicit in it all. And while I might stand up and try to model a critical constructivist teaching philosophy, the environment that I am in teaches something different. It stands for something different - it teaches who it is - which is perhaps not the modelling we want our pre-service teachers to take with them into schools.

When I asked the course co-ordinator whether the students could have access to filtered water (the water in the building is problematic) she said that they had asked the university previously and were refused, because the uni management wanted students to go down to the ref in the union buildings to get access to food and water - so encouraging centrality of student mixing. Hello? Isn't access to water a basic human right?

So really what we are talking here about is making visible the set of values that are guiding educational decisions. Brookfield suggestes we need to challenge the assumptions of such values. The value of student mixing might be a good one, but we need to also ask, "what might be diminished if we whole heartedly privilege this view?" Perhaps each value comes with an opposite. Our role as teachers is to see the dilemmas, and then see the greater landscape. so rather just staying in complicit holding patterns we can begin to challenge those greater factors which conspire to detract from learning.

Reflection on critical reflection

Moving into a critical reflection stance has left me militant, and full of flem. I want to rebel, make waves, stand up for the rights of others, treat issues at their source.

Calm down, calm down. Is there another way? What is whole, good and beautiful in what we do and how can we build on this?

Parker Parmer says we need to take responsibility in owning all of ourselves - the shadow as well as the light, the fears as well as our gifts. How does a whole organization do this?

I am left with a feeling of asking, what is me, what isn't me? What can I change, what do we need to change? I am into teaching primarily because I want to transform the world, evolve consciousness, help heal society. I know that means a commitment to my own transformative journey and a commitment to engaging with many reflective lenses that can help challenge me and move me into new perspectives and insights. How do I invite others to join me, because I need partners in helping to create social transformation.

First step, a water cooler in the the education building.

Image Creative Commons: Robillard

Developing a community of practice

I have just had my first tutorial sessions with two classes of first year pre-service teachers in the B.Teach program. Our unit is about developing a professional identity and developing critical reflective practice. One of the first readings, from Parker Palmer suggests that "we teach who we are" and we need to be prepared to be vulnerable and to develop our inner life. "Teaching is the intersection between the public and the personal life." We need to own all of who we are, including our fears, so we can be authentic in the classroom.

In this post I reflect on the first tute. This seemed to go exceptionally well; ending with a sense of high yet supportive energy; a sense of commitment to being "awake learners" and many of the students thanking me and saying how they valued my own humilty. I probably wouldn't have bothered deconstructing this too much if I hadn't experienced the second tute which I talk about in the next post. I went home after the first tute feeling that to teach teachers felt like my true vocation. After the second, I felt extremely humbled and doubting.

Description of the Incident (with some explanations of my reasons, and emerging questions)

A "learning objective" of the first lesson?
To create the beginning of an evolving community of practice...

My aim in creating a classroom culture in my tutes is not just a place where we can talk about the ideas from the lectures and readings, but where we can try them on, and be able to put on different teacher identities and see how they are fitting. How can I invite a group of people, isolated, wondering if they had made the right choices in doing this course, overwhelmed by the volume of "readings" they have just purchased to create a space which supports honesty, vulnerability, risk taking?

In all my classes I know that investment in developing community at the beginning enables deep and emergent learnings as we proceed. How do we develop community without doing the "Ho hum, not another get to know you game." How can the ways we come to know each other be purposeful, linking to the learning topic, and which might establish routines and orientations towards the space I want to create?

What happened?

It was very interesting. I went in very early and set up the class in a large circle with a board which had the "signposts" for the lesson and left. When I came in before the lesson many students were already there sitting around the circle. I started with a Bell Routine. This is an activity that students expect to do when they come in without teacher guidance which orients them to the lesson. It enables them to get settled, allows for late people, without on-time students having to wait around for the teacher to start. This particular activity was a questionnaire which asked what inspired them to teach, what gifts they had to offer, and what their fears were. Also they had to put on a name label. I went around the room with my attendence sheet and was able to greet each student by name and check them off.

I wonder what difference just that beginning had made to these students?

After doing a little inspirational speech (as one does) I suggested that to get know each other we could do in two ways. One is to get a sense of the whole, and another to get to know individuals. So we all stood in a perfect circle where we could see each other, no hiding, and I asked everyone to say their name one after the other around the circle. It was like a soundscape of the names of the whole class. I then asked for favorite colour and then an emotion that we were feeling. The "check-in" was very interesting as some people were feeling "tense", "jittery", but most were positive, open.

Did the circle activity itself create fear and uncomfortability? How would I know?

Then I said "who are we?". I did an exercise I had experienced from John Gruber who asks those in the group, who have this one thing in common (e.g. who got a parking easily), to step forward into the circle and to look around. My other questions included who has had a previous career, had some teaching experience, has a science or arts background, is a parent, likes essays, plays a musical instrument, is aiming for primary or secondary teaching. People seemed to take time and really look. I felt as though we were all getting a sense of those in the same boat as us.

So now, rather than only the teacher owning the overall perspective of the class. We all shared it.

I wonder if people felt that who they were, what experiences they had, and their outside lives were being acknowledged, and welcomed. Did they feel less like an student-object and more seen as a whole-person?

Then I asked the students to move around to find a new partner to discuss briefly a relevent question to the topic which I posed. I also aked them to try on a role - "What does it mean to greet someone with your personal persona, versus your public one? Actually try it out with a new person you meet. "

Everyone seemed confused about what I meant but I encouraged them to have a go and see what happened. What emerged was one of those wonderful insights that enabled us later on to get inside the words of what we mean by respecting diverse learners in the classroom. Perhaps we can't actually move into a personal self with someone until you get to know them. It is something that comes from relationship. So if we are committed to respecting diversity we need to be committed to getting to know the other.

I think Parker Palmer, who believes in the heart of education would have been very proud! It was our first experiment with identity and what a profound insight we were left with.

Did everyone get it though? And is it a universal insight? Was it just my "teaching moment" rather than everyone's "learning moment"?

After the pair sharing we got back in the circle and did an 'emotion' check-in which was much more positive, yet two people stood out - one was still "tense" and another "hungry". Immediately someone passed him a packet of food. Later he came and saw me and told me how much this spontaneaous act made him feel very much "at home". The lady who was tense explained to us all that she normally was, and it would take a while, and not to worry. Again, it seemed that rather than me owning the responsibility to ensure and fix my students wellbeing it had become a responsibility that we all shared.

Later, I put students into groups to discuss what sort of classroom community they wanted using the headings of operation issues, learning issues, classroom culture issues, conflict resolution. Each group selected something from their discussion to propose to the whole class. Some suggestions included, time to digest and talk with each other about the previous lecture and readings, a mixture of whole group, small group, a mixture of styles of learning. One girl was very keen that we ensure we have some movement every lesson, like this one and I told them about my journalism class on 8:30 am Monday mornings where students volunteered to do a "wake-up" activity. The day we had red cordial we were all hyped up! She immediately volunteered to run one for the class the follwing session.

Another key proposal was having a classroom culture where they could take risks and be vulnerable - they felt they were among friends who could support their journey. I guess if I was coming from a metaphor of curriculum as learning objectives culture I would be pretty pleased. A key aim of mine was actually embraced by the students.

I wonder if some of the suggestions wouldn't have been made without me creating a vision and an experience of the possibilities. Classroom agreements can very much be words and not "live" in the minds and hearts of the participants.

The critical reflection (see link)

As I bring a more critical reflective lens on this I wonder about the disempowerment we create in traditional classroom structures - not just in terms of giving people a voice, or some control, but in everyone being able to fully express their humanity.

I wonder about whether it is enough to want to be a caring, patient, friendly, understanding teacher - as many of the students said they did. Perhaps we have to ensure that in doing so we are not taking away opportunities for others to do so as well.

It is interesting that when one of the students handed the "hungry" student the food, I thought to myself (how thoughtless am I not to bring in my usual start-up minties) and said to the class that this is what I normally do. Do I need to be seen as the all-seeing, all-solving, all-caring human being?

Brookfield suggests that teachers who make mistakes often don't mind because by revealing their vulnerability they give permission for their students to show their vulnerability. Yet students can just see such mistake-ridden teachers as incompetent and they can lose their authority (a word which would take another post to unpack). I wonder if there is another dimension of this - providing openness for others to step in. So perhaps the "perfect lesson" is not about what we cover and do with efficient ease, but provides spaces for surprises, and those spaces invite others to enter in some way.

So we are back to the perennial dilemmas of teaching -

• content versus space,
• structure versus freedom,
• currciulum as learning objectives versus curriculum as experience

And in all of this what about the students in the class that I didn't get to hear? Am I just basing my feelings for what happened on the vocal view of the few. I guess I better get to know all my students and find out!

What is a community of practice?

Here are some ideas of what we might like a community of practice to be like. It is based on the work I am doing with university lecturers who are examining new ways to be leaders of professional learning.

"Supporting each other to be that change"

A community of practice connects us to others who enrich our thinking and being.

A community of practice draws on processes we know for building successful relationships and community.

A community of practice is a place which values exploring, taking risks and moving out of comfort zones, rather than just achieving practical outcomes. As we do so the tensions and contradictions that exist become more visible. We value the dilemmas as opportunities to dig deeper into the truth behind things. We value the support to try on new roles, new lenses and see how they feel.

A community of practice is a place which is open, enabling diversity, playfulness and honesty. It allows us to speak from the heart and to be personal. It awakens our deep humanity. In this place we learn to listen well as a way of valuing another. We learn to give people space to process. We learn to tune into the moment.

A community of practice is a place where we can be vulnerable. It is place where we can open ourselves to experiences that can challenge who we think we are. It is a place where we can share our issues, our doubts and our fears. It is a place where we know we are supported as we engage in a process of self-reflection, letting go, emergence and transformation.

A community of practice is a place where we offer our stories for deeper exploration of meaning. It is a place where we are developing a shared language that enables us to name and tease out the complexity of issues in new and insightful ways. It is a place which celebrates the journey we are on together yet honours the individual journeys and the individual steps.

A community of practice is a place where we value difference. We honour the unique experiences and perspectives each person brings, inviting each to share their wisdom and resources. We find ourselves saying “and… “, not “but…”.

A community of practice is a place which nurtures and renews. It builds on who we are, what we believe and what we do. It models the environment we want to create and allows us to practice being who we aspire to be. It can be a physical place where we meet. It can be the place in our own hearts that we have for the other. It is a place where we enjoy the ability to contribute to a greater whole.

A community of practice provides a sense of communion. It creates cohesiveness. It enables a coming to know another though being with them and sharing their stories. It is a place where we are at home with ourselves. It is a place where we glimpse our own gifts through seeing and receiving the gifts of others.

What do you think? What might you add, change? What do your communities of practice look like?

What might a community of practice look like which evolves?

Developing a "critical numeracy" equivalent to the 4 Resource model of Critical Literacy

I have been working on a project which is looking at developing "critical numeracy" across the curriculum. One aspect has been working with teachers in an Action Research project which has explored the issues of creating critical numerate thinking classrooms (of which there have been many).

The other aspect is updating (and re-visioning) the website Numeracy in the News which provides good articles for students and teachers to bring critical thinking. The newspaper article provides a context for maths ideas and terminology which are often used in confusing, misleading or controversial ways. They are a way of engaging students in critical thinking or debate and deeper thinking of both the numeracy ideas and the context itself.

But developing "critical thinking" in numeracy is problematic....

The notion of "critical thinking" can have different meanings and intents based on whether one is bringing a postmodern consciousness versus a modernist consciousness. The Four Resource model (developed by Luke and Freebody) develops an approach to Critical Literacy which clearly comes from a postmodernist perspective. Both science and maths teaching cultures seem heavily situated in a modernist culture. For example, Conceptual Challenge Theory, used as constructivist practice in science teaching, asks students "Is your concept intelligible, plausible and useful?" in order to convert them from their "misconceptions" to the "right" conception. So underlying this "critical thinking" process is an assumption that:

• there are "truths" and "right" conceptions,
• it is based on a limited notion of scientific inquiry (primarily seen as an empirical lens) without bringing in any sense of critique of the science lens,
• the teacher owns the process of leading students through.

A postmodern/integral approach to it would value a metaphor of curriculum as conversation - where everyone, including the teacher would be treating the subject as something to inquire into, and understandings can be enriched by using different lenses. The teacher would also make visible the critical thinking strategies. So rather than scaffolded worksheets where the teacher might have in mind a larger vision of the thinking process and from that write directed, linear questions whose origins are invisible to the students, they would be helping students also see key thinking strategies and help empower them in using these.

Now most of you are thinking "Hey, that is not rocket science." But what I have found in this project working with teachers is that making the big underpinning thinking strategies visible is not simple - mainly because of an unfamiliarity of using such generic thinking strategies, most of which seem irrelevant to the business of coming to know a maths idea. Maths teachers often become trapped in quite procedural ways of knowing maths and it is hard to break out of that box. So teachers might be happy to ask students "Is it true?" but find it hard to get into the more "critical theory" based questions - "Are there different meanings? What are the value systems here? What are the purposes? Who might be silenced? How does it position me? What am I going to believe? What decisions are likely to come from this?"

But should these type of quesitons be part of critical numeracy? Why do we want to have critical numeracy anyway? Perhaps to help students develop discernment - so they can make balanced decisions about social, environmental , political or health issues.... So critical numeracy becomes one lens that students can apply, along with ethical, scientific, socio-cultural, spiritual lenses. So is it OK for critical numeracy to just ask questions "What does it mean? Is it true?" or should it ask more? And if it asks more, can it ask them in such a way that it is easily accessed for people who have been encultured in a modernist discipline area?

And can the model itself act as a transformational tool for teachers in helping them to emerge from the modernist box?

So my trick has been to create a numeracy equivalent to the 4 Resource model for Critical Literacy which is being used in our schools. I wonder whether this can provide a bridge between disciplines? I have integrated ideas from Conceptual Challenge Theory and the Harvard Project Zero Visible Thinking project.

However, it is too easy to fall in love with a model that you have invented. I want to now apply holistic, postmodern and integral lenses to it. And it is very clear that this model privileges the "mental" ways of knowing. How does it integrate heart, mind and soul to develop not just reasoned discernment, but wise discernment?

What are your thoughts?

A conversation with a Grade 6 boy about anger

This has been a conversation that has been on my mind for a while, and I guess by writing about it, I will have the chance over time to reflect about its meaning.

It was my third day as an "art teacher" in a primary school - both new contexts for me. And I had seized the (very beautiful spring) day and decided to can my planned activity and do some "plein air" painting on the river foreshore. This was now the afternoon group and they were settling down, finding rocks to sit on, and solving the problem of the wind blowing away their paper.

But one boy, Mark, could not settle down. His back was to the glorious view. As I walked around helping everyone to get started, and meeting the demands for this or that, I would go back to Mark and make a suggestion that could orient him to the task. The third time, when I had settled enough to actually look at him, I realised that something was up. Ding dong, Sue, what took you so long!

"Something's up?" I asked, "This is not your normal self, is it?" He hummed and hahed, and then gradually the story came out. "I got really angry at lunch time, I yelled at some boys and I chased them around the oval." Mark was such a quiet and considerate boy that this really surprised me. I dug deeper, asking what had caused it. Yes the boys had said something unforgivable but what Mark was most concerned about was what he had done in response. "Are you feeling bad because you don't like who you are when you did that?" I asked. He nodded, relieved. "That's it, I don't like who I am when I am angry."

We were quietly talking, but there were other students who seemed to be quietly listening in. Usually they were very chatty. Someone else says "I get angry too, and I don't feel good about it." I nod and look back at Mark. "Do you get angry at other times and what do you do about it?" He tells me that things make him angry and when this happens he bangs his head on the table to try to make it stop. And when people upset him, he watches violent films and sees people getting shot up, imagines that is the person who hurt him, and then he begins to feel better.

The previous week I had blindfolded the students and took them outside, getting them to imagine the colour of the wind, the smells and the sounds etc, and to sit quietly and just see what images would emerge in their mind's eye. Mark had told me he saw eyes and drew a picture of an almost devil character with "evil" glowing red eyes. I now asked him what that picture was about. He said, "I think it was me. I don't like that person."

It reminded me of my husband when he was at primary school and I told Mark the story. That Roger had thrown a plate at his brother in anger and it smashed against the wall. It so frightened him that he had decided never to feel or express anger again. Mark and the others started talking. Was it really possible to stop feeling anger? We discussed if anger can be a good thing - gets things done, or things changed. What happens if you suppress it? What different strategies might people use to manage it well? "We need a process where at the end we resolve it so we can like ourselves again," I said.


I thought about it, and asked Mark whether he would like to draw a picture that could express his anger and if so what he would put in it. He said he would have a sword and he would be trying to kill his opponent who would be all black. "What sort of sword," I asked, "what sort of movies do you watch." He said he loved Star Wars. So I suggested he use a light sabre. "What colour will it be?" As he drew the picture I said to him, "You know, that light sabre could be more than just a tool for killing - it could emit a whole lot of light and perhaps it could help both you and your oppenent to be better people, to heal the situation." Mark changed from his dark chalks and started drawing in swirling colours of light wrapping himself and his opponent.

Later as we walked back to school, Mark said to me, "You know Sue that actually worked. When I started my picture I was angry and hated myself. Afterwards I actually liked myself again. I liked sending bright colours to my opponent and imagining them helping him to be a better person as well."

I guess there are a number of interesting facets to this story:

How important is it for me as a teacher to create situations which give students space to have such conversations and explorations? How much does my own ability to be "present" in the moment enable me to tune into what is needed?

To what extent are students of this age developing a sense of what "integrity" means to them? Are they creating an inner barometer that helps them find a sense of what is "home" - the quality of being that they aspire to have - the "highest thought"? How often is this a topic for conversation? How can we help students to name this, and "be at home" here?

Perhaps this is a combination of emotional literacy and spiritual literacy. Emotional literacy enables us to name our state with honesty; it gives us the tools to talk about our emotions and to understand the dynamics of relationships. Spiritual literacy helps us aspire to what is deeply human, living the "highest thought", experiencing compassion for self and others, enabling forgiveness and transformation.

It is conversations like this that remind me that I am not just teaching about things, or providing skills or tool-kits - I am a teacher of human beings, helping them (and myself) to find our deep humanity.

Exploring dialogue – part 1

One of the research projects that I am working on is looking at ways to improve online dialogue in a learning “community” of potential teachers or facilitators of adult learning. They are all distance learners, engaging with their facilitator and each other through email, forums and WebCT.

What struck me when I read the interview transcripts about how they engaged with the online forums were their very different perspectives on the value of them and their own role. For example, one had a preoccupation with saying the right thing but would wait so long in trying to ensure she would say things well that she found that most other posts had covered what she wanted to say. Another was more interested in coming to know the others through their personal stories, rather than reading the academic postings – her interest was in building friendships and connections. One was impatient with “chit-chat” and posted because it was part of the assessment – not because of any intrinsic value – “what does it do for me!” One person described how they enjoyed seeing the way the conversation was going and looked again and again, particularly after just posting themselves. One said that when doing the essay he would go back and read the more academic posts and see how it might help him.

Hmmm, I thought – interesting – perhaps reflecting a range of learning styles. Can learning styles be an interpretative lens that shapes our expectations and state of preparedness for learning and engaging with others?

Towards the end I came across one respondent who said something quite different.

“As I read the postings I ask myself what I might write that can contribute to the whole.”

I wondered then whether he was the first person who actually saw the online discussion as something more than a utility for himself. Is it only possible to be truly in “community” when we see ourselves as part of a whole?

When we bring an intent to “contribute to the whole” we no longer have to express ourselves “completely” (being right, covering every angle, repeating things other’s might have said to show we know it too). Rather, we are tuning into what the group needs to grow in understanding – whether it is providing resonant thoughts that enrich current insights, helping others to tease out their thinking, throwing in alternative perspectives and ways of knowing, seeking out evidence, discerning patterns and eliciting essences, model-making, visioning and imagining implications of ideas, reflecting on the way the dialogue might be shaped by our own lenses and assumptions...etc. Dialogue becomes less a debate, or one-upmanship, and more an exploration.

David Bohm suggests a method for dialogue which is agenda-less – in that you get together with the purpose to explore something richly and deeply, rather than to solve something or share information. Participants become conscious of their ways of thinking as they engage in the conversation, and through this witnessing of self find these conversations move from the surface into deep investigation of underpinning assumptions, and habitual and cultural lenses that shape the meaning we make.

How can we be more aware of how we "think" and "be" in our everyday dialogues?

For more of my thinking on dialogue see the chapter in my thesis - The dialogical classroom

Being in a state to see beauty

Yesterday, I went to the Hobart International Buskers' Festival ready to be entertained. There was an aerial performer - Theaker von Ziarno - who shinnied up a length of sheeting, muscles rippling in her back - and then it was pure magic. I found myself catching myself at one stage when I moved from being entertained (by the clever and difficult poses) into tuning into and riding the wave of beauty and aesthetic forms. Time slowed and colours became more vivid. Each fluttering of the sheets in the wind created new nuances of aesthetic. I was mesmerized by the changing form in the lines of her body, by the negative spaces, and the interaction between her and the trees and sky behind.

I no longer was there to be entertained, I had become a student of beauty and it had awoken something in my soul. I am not sure what the people next to me could see.

One of the educational projects I am working on at the moment is helping a university lecturer birth and write a book on "Gratitude in Education". Her thesis is that many students and teachers do not bring a state of preparedness to their learning experiences - rather it is a state of complaint. She has been exploring how gratitude, as the opposite of complaint, can assist us to be prepared for learning.

It is not about having to feel gratitude when it is impossible to do so, but recognising that a preferred state of being is one where we feel aligned - there is an inner integrity. It is a lot easier to feel grateful when in this state - so "gratitude" becomes a lighthouse letting us know how far we have moved from that inner state of connectedness - our highest thought. She sees "gratitude practice" requiring a high order of self-reflectivity - of being able to recognise and name the state you are in and being aware of how you can shift your state - what you need to do to enter into a state of preparedness.

So now I am reflecting on how my preparedness to view the busking show put me into certain expectations - to be entertained - and this limited how I saw, interpreted and valued the performer. Yet something in me clicked and shifted of itself into a state where I could actually see beauty. In doing so I entered a state of connection and attunement - one where I felt profoundly grateful for being alive. How much of this shift was due to me (and my own history of spiritual practice) and how much did the act itself act as that switch? How can I deliberately bring these ideas in what I do with my students... helping them to be turned on and to turn themselves on to see things from different spaces and different states?

Is this part of emotional and spiritual literacy?

At the end of her performance Theaker asked us that if we could not give money to at least give thanks and a smile. She talked about developing a giving community culture where we feel comfortable about expressing our thanks and we seek to acknowledge in another something that we have benefited from.

Thank you Theaker for switching me onto a state of preparedness to see beauty!