This week in my studies with the Digital Education Leadership program at Seattle Pacific University, I am continuing to explore ISTE Coaching Standards 1 and 2 by investigating what effective student learning looks like. Just as norms are an essential part of a peer coaching relationship, so too is a shared vision for what effective 21st-century education looks like. This shared vision creates a starting place for any collaborative work.
As Les states, “Communication and collaboration skills are vital to helping coaches build a relationship with peers, based on respect and trust, and assist peers to develop answers to the issues they face as they work to improve teaching and learning for their students. Effective coaches use these sets of skills and trust as a springboard to encourage their learning partners to take risks and adopt innovative teaching and learning practices. ”
As we begin thinking about the 21st-Century skills that teachers must interweave into their curriculum, I believe that one of the most important is communication. This communication piece led me to my question for this post. Precisely, how can we communicate to educators that quality professional development can come from your professional learning network? When I imagined this conversation with a potential person I am coaching I wondered if they might not appreciate a line like this. Perhaps this educator would not like that I used a “buzz” phrase like PLN or that I asked them to break out of their comfort zone. As it states in Designing Classroom Environments, “Teachers must be enabled and encouraged to establish a community of learners among themselves (Lave and Wegner, 1991). These communities can build a sense of comfort with questioning rather than knowing the answer and can develop a model of creating new ideas that build on the contributions of individual members. They can engender a sense of the excitement of learning that is then transferred to the classroom, conferring a sense of ownership of new ideas as they apply to theory and practice.” This is why I decided to take a deep dive into Stone & Heen’s book Thanks for the Feedback: the Science and art of Receiving Feedback Well.
Within the book the authors explain how giving and receiving feedback is a skill and even goes as far as to say it is an art form. I will admit that at times in my life when I have received critical feedback without any positive elements it was tough to recover and become motivated to work afterward. I had a couple of particularly harsh interactions with an AP Literature teacher in high school and with one of my bosses when I first became a teacher. It is just happenstance that these were both women whom I admired and obviously wanted positive reinforcement but instead received some feedback that led me down unproductive paths. As the authors wisely explain “we swim in an ocean of feedback. Each year in the United States alone, every schoolchild will be handed back as many 300 assignments, papers, and tests. Millions of kids will be assessed as they try out for a team or audition to be cast in a school play. Almost 2 million teenagers will receive SAT scores and face college verdicts think and thin” (pg 2). And as the end goal within this process is to always keep those teens or students in mind I want to look at specific element within the “Learning Design Matrix” (Learning Design Matrix.doc) “receive real-world feedback on their work from an audience or subject-matter expert from outside the school.” Then to take that feedback and “Reflect on, revise and improve their work while engaged in learning”. These two elements of receiving feedback, taking it, processing it, and then making productive changes is indeed a learned skill.
Applying this feedback loop to Adult learners who can then pass it along to our students of the future.
Stone and Heen go one to say, “it doesn’t matter how much authority or power a feedback giver has; the receivers are in control of what they do and don’t let in, how they make sense of what they’re hearing, and whether they choose to change” (pg. 4). Now that I have changed careers and moved into the EdTech sphere and received a new title that probably did not exist in the same capacity twenty years ago I can say the review process is essential. Keeping an open two-way communication between a whole team is a constant necessity, from morning stand-ups, sprint meetings, project managing, and weekly check-ins. It is important to give constructive feedback to peers on their work and receive feedback in the same manner. It must push the project forward, and if something you are excited about gets push to next quarter or next year, you have to think about the company as a whole. I say all this because as an educator I felt much more self-propelled. My day-to-day was consumed by what and how I wanted to proceed through the material. I was able to read the room, and I knew my students the best to gauge where to go next. Teachers are all very skilled project and program managers, and I wish they were perceived more so in the professional world. Needlesstosay I mean to explain this because when I entered my new world of EdTech the number of stakeholders in “my” projects grew. The ownership of plans and projects is shared and constantly refined as more minds are consulted. Therefore, I would state that for peer coaching, teaching, learning, and 21st-century skills this feedback loop is instrumental to teach. And as Stone and Heen wrap up their argument of the necessity for feedback they explain “Indeed, research on happiness identifies ongoing learning and growth as a core ingredient of satisfaction in life” (pg. 4). Meaning that humans crave the continual learning process, but the only way to get better at something is through practice. If we are trying to motivate students and teachers, we must make it clear that we are not trying to hurt anyone’s feelings or put anyone down. As peer coaches and teachers we see this all as practice to help encourage the user to gain experience and eventually become proficient at a particular skill.
Resources:
Foltos, L. (2013). Peer Coaching: Unlocking the Power of Collaboration. Thousand Oaks: Corwin.
National Research Council. 2000. How People Learn: Brain, Mind, Experience, and School: Expanded Edition. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. https://doi.org/10.17226/9853.
Stone, D., & Heen, S. (2015). Thanks for the feedback: the science and art of receiving feedback well. London: Portfolio Penguin. doi:https://play.google.com/books/reader?id=bWw2AAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&output=reader&hl=en&pg=GBS.PT21
