Learning Places

A Field Guide for Improving the Context of Schooling

Michael Fullan, Clif St. Germain

• Publisher: Corwin
• Year: 2006
• Print ISBN: 9781412942331, 9781412942324
• eBook ISBN: 9781452237572
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

"This timely book is exactly what modern schools need, blending Fullan?s theoretical genius about change with practical strategies that can work in any school. Readers will discover that it is practical, easy to use, and empowering for educators, with lots of room for personal choices at the school level."
-Lyn Sharratt, Superintendent of Curriculum and Instructional Services, York Region District School Board, North Toronto, ON, Canada

"This book is an easy read and provides a well developed idea of framing the school context for student achievement. The author provides excellent resources, worksheets, templates, walk-through and reflection ideas, and additional support materials."
-Rosemarie Young, Past President, National Association of Elementary School Principals

Encourage sustainable reform practices that foster development for the entire school community!

Need an inspiring approach to school change? Need staying power for school improvement initiatives? Organized to make learning contagious throughout the school, this user-friendly guide helps create a culture of learning that promotes the simultaneous development of students, teachers, and parents—addressing specific ways to maximize study groups, student data, classroom walk-throughs, and more. The interactive self-assessment protocols focus on:

• Achieving a sense of purpose
• Facilitating program coherence
• Invigorating classroom teaching
• Supporting the professional development of teachers
• Developing wider circles of leadership

Issuing a call to action for all educational communities, this easy-to-use manual offers a visionary yet grounded approach to revitalize educators and reenergize their efforts for meaningful, lasting reform.

CHAPTER SIX:SHARING IDEAS ABOUT IMPROVING CLASSROOM TEACHING

ESSENTIAL QUESTION:
How can we guarantee that teachers search out, experiment with, guarantee and share ideas and resources for improving classroom teaching?

BIG IDEA — PROFESSIONAL RIGOR AND A PASSION FOR TEACHING ARE CONTAGIOUS.

In this Field Guide we have emphasized that personal collaboration and a focused sense of purpose amplify a school’s influence on student learning. We have also suggested that by acting together to improve the contexts of the school at large, teachers, principals, parents, and students foster greater cohesion and shared commitment. Applying this cohesion and commitment to improve classroom teaching is the topic of Chapters 6 through 10.

As recent research confirms schools rarely improve one classroom at a time. Schools and classrooms improve collectively. Providing resources that simultaneously produce teacher and student development is yet another goal of this Field Guide.

An education that does not begin by evoking initiative and end by encouraging it must be wrong.

— Alfred North Whitehead

Today, we know what good classroom teaching looks like. School effectiveness research in the 1970s and 1980s added to our understanding of the differences between effective and ineffective classrooms. Since then, educators have continued to test, refine, and publish these findings for use by classroom teachers. Among the most noteworthy of these publications is Research You Can Use to Improve Results (1999) by Kathleen Cotton. This compendium of effective schooling research provides a broad and integrated picture of schooling practices that can be used to stimulate discussions of instructional issues and guide school improvement initiatives.

MINDSHIFT:
Active participation in the collective development of other teachers is a critical competency of modern teaching.

MINDFUL TEACHING

Mindful Teaching is a framework for helping teachers incorporate knowledge about optimum conditions for learning into the day-to-day contexts of classrooms. Mindful Teaching is not a formula for teaching. Teaching is a growing living thing that evolves through years of searching and experimentation. Mindful Teaching is a set of core ideas that teachers can use to develop a personal philosophy for teaching that works best for their students. In this sense it is a road map with plenty of room for alternate routes.

Personal participation is the universal principle of knowing.

— Michael Polanyi

Chapters 6 through 10 further expand the defining characteristics of Mindful Teaching as follows:

FOUR PHASES OF MINDFUL TEACHING

1. READINESS

• Establish a reason/rationale for learning
• Connect to existing levels of student understanding
• Guide student curiosity and use exploratory discussion to build mutual respect
• Clarify misconceptions
• Explain expectations and schedules for new learning
• Provide a “road map” for new learning using visual advance organizers

2. DELIVERY

• Identify key concepts
• Systematically direct student attention to similarities and differences
• Define, explain, exchange, model, and relate important ideas
• Probe with questions and provide feedback
• Impose formal structure on material to be learned
• Guide student categorization/organization of ideas for future use

3. PERFORMANCE

• Demonstrate appropriate use and applications
• Guide student practice, challenge and construct applications of ideas
• Provide ongoing assessments, corrective feedback, and encouragement
• Engage students in experimentation, problem solving, and solution-finding activities
• Require and support student creation of learning products
• Build on student success and manage limitations
• Organize flexible learning groups

4.TRANSFER

• Facilitate multiple expressions/representations of subject matter learned
• Generate new questions and applications of ideas learned
• Guide student reflection and learning
• Help students consolidate and integrate new learning
• Move students to insightful thinking and writing
• Invite students to reflect on changes in their thinking as a result of new learning

GETTING STARTED

GETTING STARTED

What classroom practices make the biggest difference in student learning?

GETTING STARTED

What can teachers do to help each other teach more mindfully?

MAKING SENSE

PROFESSIONAL TEACHING COMMUNITY

is a teaching faculty that is organized around core elements of:

• Shared understanding and common values
  
• Collective inquiry
  
• Collaborative planning
  
• Action-oriented problem solving
  
• Shared responsibility
  
• Shared success

The law of nature is, Do the thing, and you shall have the power…

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

TAKING ACTION

Authors Gerald Nadler and William Chandon have developed a Smart Questions Approach (SQA) to problem solving and creative solution finding that is particularly suited to getting people to openly share ideas and take action.

Nadler and Chandon describe SQA as a process that blends people, purposes, solutions, and actions. What follows is an activity designed to use the SQA process to initiate inquiry and collaboration aimed at improving classroom teaching.

PROBLEM STATEMENT:

How can our school reduce teacher isolation and guarantee that teachers have opportunities to exchange ideas and resources on a daily basis?

DIRECTIONS:

1. Invite a group of teachers, an administrator, and a few interested parents to explore options for increasing teacher inquiry and collaboration into “best practic...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Author to Reader
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• About the Authors
• SHAPING SCHOOLWIDE CONTEXTS
• IMPROVING CLASSROOM TEACHING
• SUSTAINING PASSION AND COMMITMENT
• Index