Now that summer is fast approaching (and since I'm long overdue for a blog post), I've been thinking about what sorts of professional development I'l be doing over the next few months. Last summer, I spent a lot of time at conferences, and while it was a fantastically productive period of time, this summer I'm looking forward to doing more reading and reflection on the past year of experimentation.
Making Thinking Visible
In particular, I'm interested in exploring ideas on innovation and cognitive science, and to that end, I've compiled a list of books that have caught my attention in the past year (cf. some notes here on a few I've already read). I'm hoping that others in the PLN will be interested in reading and discussing some of these ideas. At the moment, I've got my eye on Shirky's Cognitive Surplus and Ritchhart, Church, and Morrison's Making Thinking Visible, but I'm interested in all of them. If any of the books or ideas look interesting, upvote any of them in the comments section at the bottom of the book list document.
There are also a few books I've recently read that I'd love to discuss in some way, including Hurst's The Purpose Economy (cf. his blog) and Pentland's Social Physics (cf. his blog). I'm open to suggestions on others of value, and I welcome comments on them. And if anyone interested in book discussions will be at ISTE this summer, perhaps we can put together a time and place for conversation in person. Feel free to circulate the list among faculty, and cheers to a productive summer!
Malcolm Gladwell's new book David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants discusses perceived advantages and disadvantages and how appearances may not always be what the seem. The book has been received with some justifiable criticism (e.g. Christopher Chabris' "The Trouble with Malcolm Gladwell"), but I've still found it interesting and thought-provocative for its potential applications in education, as we're on the cusp of some radical and profound changes.
Basically, Gladwell argues that "being an underdog can change people in ways that we often fail to appreciate: it can open doors and create opportunities and educate and enlighten and make possible what might otherwise have seemed unthinkable" (6). He then examines a number of cases in various contexts, where the "underdog," based on the lack of clear advantages, has actually outperformed or beaten the supposed favorite, starting with the famous battle of David vs. Goliath.
At the #oesis Symposium in Boston this past week (cf. my conference notes), I attended an interesting session on design thinking (DT) by Matthew Cavellier and Hannah Sobol from Shattuck-St. Mary's School, since I've been very interested in the cognitive processes that underlie creativity and innovation. From Wikipedia, DT "is generally considered the ability to combine empathy for the context of a problem, creativity in the generation of insights and solutions, and rationality to analyze and fit solutions to the context," and it has become very popular in certain industries and business over the past half decade. I've been drawn to DT, in that it seems to offer a healthy analytical methodology to approach some of the problems we're facing in changing the way we approach education (cf. the DT Wiki above for more info on the process).
With this in mind, I'm curious to re-examine some of our own long-held assumptions about relative strengths and weaknesses in our schools, especially within the context of independent-school culture, using the principles of DT. In particular, I fear that some of our problems may be suffering from a lack of clear definition, which is one of the foundations of the DT process. Daniel Kahneman has shown that we tend to substitute an easier "heuristic" question for the target question without noticing (Thinking, Fast and Slow 97), and I see this process of substitution happening all too often, which is why certain problems get recycled over and over again. With an inability to clearly frame our problems with the right questions, we can neither understand them nor work toward effective solutions to them.
A few problems immediately come to mind that are worthy of further thought:
As Gladwell discusses (cf. Ch. 3), we often preach that smaller classes are better, especially within independent schools, where class sizes of 12 are not abnormal. But is this really always the case? It's true that smaller classes are easier to manage from the perspective of the teacher, but are they really better places for students to learn within the technological age? To my mind, the collaboration and diversity that we've been so busy promoting only benefits from larger classes. Given that traditional lecture methods are less effective in large classes, though, we necessarily need to transform how we teach. How do we transform our teaching methods considering what's best for our students?
We often think that, for a number of reasons, schools with more money are better off. Money can buy access to a variety of tech tools and devices, but it's much easier and quicker to put a tool in the hands of a teacher or a student than it is to train them to use it, overlooking the training. The problem, then, is time, which is our most valuable resource. As Cathy Davidson writes in Now You See It, "Time is the new currency—and many young people will gladly trade money to get more time" (223). Rather than looking for money to throw at problems, how can we give our teachers more time for collaboration and exploration, instead of asking them to do these sorts of things on their own time?
I heard the idea of "independent-school culture" used often at #oesis last week. Schools, and especially independent schools, take great pride in the culture promoted to students, parents, and staff, and this inherited culture is seen as a great advantage and justification for a school's given goals. But in my experience, culture in the sense of "tradition" can often stagnate innovation, when we believe that we have to keep doing things they way they were done in the past. The idea that we want students experience education in the same ways that we did just can't be maintained any longer; it won't help students to thrive in a world that's become very different from the one that produced this tradition. If culture is more than simply "tradition," what is it and why is it so important for us to cling to it? And how can we promote a growth mindset within our communities, while maintaining our culture?
I'm excited to have conversations about using DT to help us frame questions more accurately and rethink our "disadvantages" to create the new opportunities in which Gladwell believes. What other problems do we need to solve, as we continue to incorporate technology into curricula and transform pedagogy? What disadvantages exist that can actually help us to become better in the long run? If there is interest in exploring any these ideas in greater depth, I'd love to host a Twitter chat on them.
At ISTE this past June, I picked up Steven Johnson's Where Good Ideas Come From(reading notes here)and, after his fantastic keynote address, looked forward to reading it. After just finishing it, the book didn't disappoint, leaving me with quite a bit to think about on the verge of beginning a new academic year.
Using parallels from evolutionary biology, Johnson discusses how innovation happens and great ideas are formed, dispelling the myth of the "eureka moment" in the formation of ideas. He outlines 7 patterns that they typically fall into, and I'll outline a few of the patterns that I intend to focus on in the coming academic year. Johnson's TED talk on the topic gives a great introduction to his ideas, if unable to read the book.
Stuart Kauffman's concept of the adjacent possible, which he used to describe all of the combinatory possibilities of the molecular soup of early Earth, plays a prominent role in Johnson's arguments. The adjacent possible presents us with a "map of all the ways in which the present can reinvent itself" (31), and new combinations serve to expand the adjacent possible. Using this idea, Johnson argues that "[g]ood ideas are not conjured out of thin air; they are built out of a collection of existing parts, the composition of which expands (and, occasionally, contracts) over time" (35).
Johnson stresses that "to make your mind more innovative, you have to place it inside environments that share the same network signature: networks of ideas or people that mimic the neural networks of a mind exploring the boundaries of the adjacent possible" (47). He calls this a liquid network, where ideas can freely flow from one node to another to build upon each other, and it's precisely this kind of environment that allows us to explore the adjacent possible. Importantly, "the individuals get smarter because they're connected to the network" (58) and the diversity that it brings to our thinking.
The "long zoom" that allows to
identify patterns within ideas (20)
Good ideas don't simply happen; rather, they must be cultivated over time, which Johnson names the slow hunch (81). As was the case with some of the most revolutionary ideas in our intellectual history (e.g. Darwin's theory of evolution), it's most often the case that a good idea comes into form as little more than a hunch. These hunches, in order to grow into something more, must interact with other hunches through the liquid network to open up the adjacent possible.
Finally, Johnson shows that error is an inherent part of innovation. According to the British economist William Stanley Jevons, "[i]n all probability the errors of the great mind exceed in number those of the less vigorous one" (137). That is to say, most brilliant ideas are founded upon failed efforts. Fear of failure is so pervasive in the edusphere today, though, that it's become a serious hindrance to creativity and the construction of liquid networks. Contrary to what many of us in academia were trained to believe, it's ok to fail, when working on a new idea.
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"Chance favors the connected mind." (174)
The experiences I had at InstCon, ISTE, and GTACHI were so profound that I'm still having difficulty putting them into material form. The networks that have grown on account of these PD opportunities have already paid dividends for my own thinking about how I want to change my teaching and how I want to approach PD in the future. So after a productive summer of professional development, it's now more clear to me than ever that we need to emphasize the construction of environments that facilitate good ideas by building more and larger "liquid networks".
A 17th-century commonplace book
It was practice in Europe in the Enlightenment Era to keep a "commonplace book" (cf. Johnson 84) with notes, quotations, and other ideas that allowed for reflection, which is critical for nurturing the slow hunch. Today, though, we're also able to share our reflections to a wider audience (i.e., our PLN, or Personal Learning Network) than ever, thanks to Twitter, blogs, and other social media tools. It's important to us that, within our liquid networks, we emphasize both reflection and sharing with regularity, while dispelling as much fear of failure as we can.
Despite our collective emphasis on using technology, we must also understand that "the most productive tool for generating good ideas remains a circle of humans at a table, talking shop," as Johnson reminds us (61). That's why face-to-face conversations of the sort that happen at EdCamps and #CoffeeCUE meetings are so valuable. Twitter, etc. are amazing tools, but I'm now ready to create a stronger face-to-face network on campus.
As we know all too well, however, there simply isn't enough time for us to do everything that our jobs require of us, while adding enough reflection time onto the pile of administrative tasks. For us to even have the chance to build a stronger liquid network, we need to rethink how we handle some of our administrative duties by exploring the adjacent possible within the educational structure.
The ideas of "20% time" and passion-based learning have grown very popular of late, as they indeed should, but I haven't yet seen many discussions about giving teachers and administrators similar blocked time devoted to reflection. For instance, why not create an occasional "unconference" forum for interested faculty to gather during the workday (not on our own time!) to talk about what's on our mind and share some of the ideas that we've been thinking through (e.g. readings, project ideas, PD experiences, etc.). Shouldn't this our standard model for faculty meetings, rather than the usual "sit and get"? If we had this kind of regular opportunity built into our schedule, perhaps we could encourage more creative thinking and 20% time work from faculty, in addition to students.
How else can we construct liquid networks within our schools? I greatly enjoyed reading this book and look forward to future discussions about how we can build a stronger liquid network. Feel free to share ideas either below or on Twitter on how we can build stronger liquid networks.
Thanks to its recent BMCR review, I recently got word of English and Irby's new Latin reader, A Little Latin Reader (Oxford) and received my copy a few days ago. I don't intend to fully review the book here, but I'll offer a few brief thoughts on it. The reader is designed to give students an early introduction to real Latin (in opposition to "textbook" Latin) and is organized topically by points of grammar, e.g. the dative case, the perfect tense, indirect statements, cum-clauses, etc. Each grammatical topic heading contains a few short passages with a brief self-contained vocabulary, giving the reader over 200 passages in total. The authors have designed the book to be a versatile tool in accompanying grammar instruction, and in this respect, I think it's an excellent resource.
As Pollio notes in his BMCR review, the choice of passages and fullness in commentary could always be debated, and while I would have preferred to see more Imperial prose, I'm very happy with the selection. In particular, I'm especially happy that the authors have included a number of epigraphical texts that are worth reading. In fact, non-literary texts are receiving more attention than ever at the intermediate level, as is also the case with LaFleur's excellent Scribblers, Sculptors, and Scribes, and I hope that the trend continues.
It's certainly true that the minimalist commentary accompanying each text is little more than a plain vocabulary and as such won't help students with points of grammar, language, and style. But while this fact will prevent the reader from becoming a primary textbook, it will also allow teachers to tailor the discussion to their own interests and force students to analyze the texts themselves. A quick browse through the selections reveals an abundance of "nonstandard" forms that are ripe for all sorts of discussions, e.g. anc (34.4 and 38.1), cīves (43.1), deicō (15.1), līberum (27.3), negāstī (33.3), praetereis (45.2), sexs (34.3), etc., in addition to the usual points of literary interest. In all of my classes I'm going to use the book exactly as the authors suggested, namely, as a springboard both for further discussion on selected topics and for sight-reading. At $15.95 it's a bargain.
Mark Walker's Latin translation of The Hobbit is available for pre-order (available September 13). My students have enjoyed the bits of the Latin Harry Potter series we've read in class, and I'm now eager to have a look at Hobbitus Ille. With the release of the new Hobbit movie this December, I'm expecting that there should be a good deal of interest in the book.
