Ritual & Community: Does it really matter whether I stop and salute the flag?

Last Friday when I arrived on campus to start another day of work, I saw something a typical ritual on our campus play out and it left me with some questions.  Each morning at about 7:30 a.m. a group of 3 - 4 ROTC students raise a large American flag outside BYU's central administration building.  I would imagine that this happens on a number of other campuses each morning as well.  What might make BYU's flag-raising unique is that while the flag is raised the outdoor campus sound system (the same system that I'm assuming would be used to alert campus in the event of some wide-spread emergency) plays the U.S. national anthem.  At some point this evolved into a ritual of sorts in which anyone walking on campus at that time stops, pauses, and places their hand over their heart as the anthem is played.  On Friday morning I arrived at the same time this was all happening, so I stepped outside of my car and paused until the anthem had concluded.  

No one really wants to be on campus at 7:30 in the morning on a Friday in January, so there weren't more than a handful of others milling about on campus while this was happening.  Virtually everyone that I could see was doing the same thing I was doing (i.e. standing w/ hand over heart and watching the ritual play out).  However, I noticed that one student for one reason or another continued walking to whatever destination he had that morning.  It was interesting to watch how others reacted to this and, subsequently, how he responded to their glances and (in some cases) frowns.  This left me wondering whether or not it mattered that he didn't adhere to the social norm and participate in this simple ritual.  

Since coming to work in higher education I have come to appreciate the value that a strong community can add to a collection of learners.  So, my initial reaction is that participation in communal processes or events is important.  However, the question that I was left with was whether ritual really builds community and what impact participation in campus rituals has on learning.  As I thought about this concept over the weekend I had a memory of my high school experience and a particular campus ritual that as far as I can tell never positively impacted the sense of community at the school (and that may have even been detrimental to it).  

I attended one of Utah's athletic powerhouse high-schools where football was king.  Other than a stellar year at outside linebacker on my 3rd grade flag football team, I never played much football but I was never bothered by the focus that seemed to be placed on the success of Skyline High School's football program.   One thing that I did, however, find a little odd during my time there was how upset senior football players would become when another student (usually an unsuspecting sophomore) walked on "the seal."  The "seal" was our school seal and had been painted or laid in tile (I can't really remember which) on the floor of one of the hallways in the building that housed the main gym and auditorium.  At some point I would imagine that the seal may have represented a core set of values espoused by the high school and avoiding stepping on the seal was a physical act that communicated respect for those ideals.  But, by the time I entered Skyline any substantive meaning the seal held had been forgotten and the ritual had been reinterpreted to represent respect for football, problematic because the latter is not a value shared by the community at large (particularly given Skyline's poor track record on the football field in recent years).  

So, where does ritual fit in education?  For it to work it seems like a couple of key things need to happen:

1.  Members of the community need to have some understanding of what the ritual represents or what sorts of meaning are attached to it.

2.  The ideals embodied in the ritual should be held by the vast majority of community members.

3.  Campus leaders should make periodic references to the ritual and remind community members of its meaning.

4.  Efforts should be made to help new members of the community learn about the ritual, its meaning, and how to participate.

This is rough thinking on my part and I'm still not sure if I agree with the thoughts I've articulated here.  I'm interested in hearing about what others think.  What role does ritual play in education?  What does an effective ritual look like?  And, what does it mean when a member of the community chooses not to participate (like the student who didn't stop for the flag in my first story above)?

  

Can good teaching be measured?

In a great New York Times article on healthcare reform David Leonhardt describes the way in which Intermountain Health Care (IHC) helps increase quality and cut costs.  Among this list of best practices is the way in which IHC gathers data on the way in which physicians do their work.  Some data describes physician behaviors and other is focused on patient outcomes.  This data is reviewed and analyzed rigorously and then used to help physicians improve their practice.

A few hours after reading this article I attended a graduate-level "assessment of learning outcomes" course in BYU's Instructional Psychology & Technology department where the topic of discussion was No Child Left Behind and other federal enactments aimed at increasing the quality of education in the U.S.  There was a fairly strong sentiment among those in the room that student achievement should not be as large a factor in determining teacher effectiveness as it currently is.  

These two experiences (my reading and class discussion) left me wondering what assessment of teaching should and could look like.  It has always been interesting to me that educators want their craft to be viewed as a "viable profession," or a "respected field," but also want accountability to look much different for them than it would for say a car salesman or a doctor.  Why is it that we would fire a doctor for letting patients die, but we have a problem with applying the same logic to educators?  Please don't misconstrue this as an endorsement of NCLB.  I'm just saying that student achievement has to be part of the conversation (I also recognize that the conversation must also include discussion of what aspects of student performance should and should not be measured) and that when a particular educator's students consistently underperform (or overperform for that matter), we should make an effort to find out why.  This is what I see IHC doing in their hospitals and clinics and those of us that care about education could learn some lessons from them.

1.  Classrooms need to be structed in a way that allows for the collection of meaningful data.  By data I don't just mean test scores.  We've done that for a long time and, apparently, it isn't making a tremendous difference.  What I'm calling for are technology-supported classrooms that allow us to examine what teachers and students do while they are learning and trying to learn.  Good online learning environments like the Open High School of Utah (see also the recent SL Tribune article) are structured to gather data on student performance and what practices lead to effective learning.  It will be difficult and complex, but we need to find a way to do the same thing in traditional classrooms.  This data can then be used to help educate teachers about what they do well and where they can improve.  Observations are important, but organizations like IHC have found that objective data improves quality.  

2. "Chief quality officers" for schools/districts.  Although most school and district administrators care about the quality of teaching, the reality is that the bulk of their time and effort is taken up by other administrative duties.  What if there were a quality officer for every school as well as a similar individual for a district whose responsibility it was to ensure that data was collected on teacher performance?  These individuals could identify high performing teachers in their local area (which may or may not be those whose students score the highest on standardized tests) and then work to find out what it is that makes them successful (much like what IHC does with their physicians).  They would also be responsible for helping, not punishing, underperforming educators to revise their practices.

3.  Identification of "teaching protocols" that have been demonstrated to lead to positive outcomes.  Because they gather and analyze data so well, IHC knows what dosage of medication generally works best for a heart patient as they return home or what steps should be taken in the insertion of an IV in order to minimize the risk of infection.  Of course, there are times when physicians should and do stray from these "defaults," but more often than not the checklist they are provided with is close to exactly what a patient needs and will benefit from.  Gary Daynes' recent post on educational checklists convinced me that it wouldn't be unreasonable to develop similar checklists or standard processes for particular parts of the educational system.  This, of course, is dependent on our ability to gather data and link particular processes to positive learning outcomes for students (see #1 above).  And, like IHC, schools and districts could continue to collect data so that the checklists can be revised and refined as new information becomes available.  

As I write this I am realizing that I'm echoing a refrain that I've made on this blog before--schools need to be learning organizations that change and adapt over time.  We expect this of students. . .why don't we follow suit?