A couple of years ago, I joined the world of social media by creating Facebook and Twitter accounts for my role as Executive Director of ANCS with the thinking being that I could use these platforms to share about happenings at our school to a wider audience. I’ve certainly used these accounts for that purpose, but I’ve also discovered, somewhat surprisingly, that I have a mild addiction to Twitter, not really because of what I am posting but because of who I am following and what I often stumble across on it. Twitter regularly provides me with ideas or articles I might never have otherwise considered or encountered.
Such a moment occurred the other day when this article–“The Perils of ‘Growth Mindset’ Education”–appeared in my feed. The piece focuses on the concept of “mindset”, an idea grounded in theory that has become increasingly talked about in education circles the past few years. I found some of what the article’s author had to say provocative and on target, and some of his arguments maybe a bit too much. But a few sentences that really resonated with me were these:
By now, the growth mindset has approached the status of a cultural meme. The premise is repeated with uncritical enthusiasm by educators and a growing number of parents, managers, and journalists — to the point that one half expects supporters to start referring to their smartphones as “effortphones.”
Whether one believes in mindset theory or not, you surely would admit that a large number of people who work with and for schools these days talk about it without really understanding what “mindset” is all about. It’s not unlike the way many talk about “differentiated instruction”, “project-based learning”, or “professional learning communities”, to name some of the current phrases you’re bound to hear if you spend 10 minutes in a teachers’ lounge or faculty meeting at most schools in America.
The problem, for one, is that these words and concepts have been so oft-repeated that they are now considered to be widely understood and accepted among educators, when, for many, the “uncritical enthusiasm” means that these ideas and practices are usually devoid of any real meaning for them (and especially for parents who especially don’t get this jargon).
So it’s important to me that ANCS be a place where we delve deeper into what it means, for example, to use “project-based learning”: What does project-based learning actually look like? How do you design appropriate projects? Are there times when project-based learning might not be the best approach for a certain skill? We’ve got to really discuss and answer these questions before we can do anything we call “project-based learning”.
What troubles me even more, though, than the tendency to talk superficially and “uncritically” about popular educational practices is when schools that do so then move to adopt those practices believing they do actually know what they mean and are confused or angered when they do not result in any meaningful change in student outcomes. An example of this is the use of advisory programs in middle schools. Lots of middle schools talk about the need to support students’ “social-emotional” development and about making sure each student has an adult he or she is known well by at school. And lots of middle schools have turned to using advisory programs to get at these needs. I’ve worked or visited some middle schools where the advisory program, according to teachers or the principal, “hasn’t worked.” In nearly all cases, that’s because there’s not been any shared understanding among the teachers serving as advisors about what “working” would look like or what the structures necessary to support “working” would be. Most of those places slapped some time into the schedule rather arbitrarily, named that time “advisory”, and assumed teachers would figure out what to do with it.
In other schools in which I’ve worked (including ANCS), the advisory program has a very clearly-articulated purpose, is organized to support that purpose, and teachers are given time and training for serving as an advisor commensurate with the level of importance advisory has to the mission of the school. Not surprisingly, it’s at these schools where advisories generate the greatest effect on students and where the program adapts and changes based on student and teacher needs, as it should in any learning organization.
So why is it that what seems to be self evident—that educational theories and practices, if not carefully understood and examined by teachers before being used by teachers in ways they’ve collaboratively designed to fit their context—so often gets blown by in the rush to “implement” or “deliver” the latest school improvement idea, only to result in frustration when it doesn’t work as hoped? I’m sure there’s some great organizational change research or sociological study on the question out there. Probably on Twitter.