A Ph. D. is not enough

One of the most interesting (and often painful) things I have repeatedly observed in my work over the last five years are transitions in administrative leadership at my institution and the way in which these changes are managed.  Yesterday, I was in a meeting where one of these changes was announced and, to put it mildly, it was like watching a train wreck.  In defense of the administrator delivering the news, I think he meant well and was truly doing his best to be tactful.  But, nonetheless, his social and administrative ineptitude were on display for all to see.  Consequently, an already emotionally charged situation was made worse.  This administrator is, from what I can tell, a brilliant researcher and scholar in his field (Pharmacology); however, like most faculty members, his formal training has done little to prepare him for those responsibilities which take him out of his lab.

While faculty members' responsibilities obviously vary both within and between campuses, it isn't uncommon for them to spend some percentage of their time engaged work falling outside their disciplinary area of expertise.  So, on a tour of a typical campus we would be likely to see sociologists and biologists administering departments and colleges, physicists and engineers advising students, and a lot of non-teachers teaching students.  To be fair, I know great administrators and excellent teachers with Ph. D.'s in things other than management and education; however, they are the exception.  Instead, most have wonderful intentions and want desperately to be good teachers or chairs, but struggle along because of the lack of any real preparation or training.  What's worse, there is a dangerous sub-population who suffer from a common psychological condition that condemns them to repeated faux pas and debacles like the one I saw yesterday.

The thought of an academic advisor teaching a law class or an "administrative" employee teaching teaching introductory biology are, obviously laughable, so its a bit ironic that we don't see problems in transfers in the other direction.  There has long been an assumption that an earned doctorate (in any field) qualifies an individual to do just about any other kind of work on a campus, whether it is directing an Honors college, overseeing first-year programming, or advising students about general course registration.  There may have been a time, before college campuses became the complex animal they are now, when this may have been true.  And, at a small college where resources and personnel are limited, utility infielders who teach, advise, administer, and research will always be a necessity.  However, as college campuses become increasingly complex, there will become a greater need for the professionalization of roles which, historically, have been viewed as just another part of the professorial duty.  At the very least, we cannot afford to continue to assume that a Ph. D. in Pharmacology, in and of itself, prepares anyone to navigate administrative landmines and advise students (about anything but pharmacology), and  teach (virtually anything at all).

Risk, rules, & the need for practical wisdom

We frequently participate in activities that, although necessary and often beneficial, entail risks.  Doctors and hospitals can treat illnesses and help us recover from terrible accidents, but unpleasant or even terrible things can and occasionally do happen in hospitals or medical clinics (e.g. the wrong drug is administered, an unnecessary and very expensive procedure is carried out, or surgeons remove a patients kidney when all they needed was a knee repair).  We invest our money with the help of banks and bankers, but they may mismanage and lose our hard-earned cash.  We send our children to schools where they can learn to function effectively in society and develop a passion for learning, but schools have the potential to become uninspiring places where teachers fail to facilitate learning.  So, what are we to do?

In a TED talk posted earlier this week, professor Barry Schwartz argues that our common response in situations where we want to minimize risk is to (1) make rules aimed at helping people know how to do the right thing (e.g. guidelines or standards for teachers to follow) and/or (2) to incentivize what we believe to be the right types of behavior (e.g. rewards for doctors who save hospitals money or teachers whose students have high test scores).  While Schwartz doesn't advocate for complete elimination of rules or incentives and recognizes that they have value in certain situations, he points out they aren't enough when it comes to finding solutions for complex problems and managing risk.  He calls for a renewed focus on helping individuals and institutions to develop "practical wisdom" (which is pretty close to Artistotle's concept of phronesis).  In other words, preparing people to figure out how to do the right thing when they find themselves in real interactions with unique people in specific circumstances.  

As I was thinking about Schwartz's ideas I recalled a comment that Derek Bitter made in response to a blog posting on what beneficial risk in the classroom might look like:  

I don't think I could walk into a classroom and follow these steps, or any others, and have them work for me and the class, unless there is something more fundamental present within me as a teacher. I have ideas on what this might be, but can't really narrow it down or even specify it. 

Derek's point is well taken.  We can't boil risk-taking in learning down to a set of rules, strategies, or activities that come to be viewed as surefire ways of improving learning.  It seems that what Derek might be calling for here is  Schwartz's concept of practical wisdom.  The success of risk-taking in the classroom depends, in part, upon a wise teacher who knows when and how to bring risk into the learning process.  So, if we want people (particularly teachers) to take risks in learning (or in any other setting where calculated risk could pay off), we have got to help them develop the wisdom to know when to take risks, how to do it without putting themselves (or others) in unreasonable danger, and how to skillfully navigate risky situations so that good things happen.  This is one of the things that seems to be missing in most teacher preparation programs (where the focus is largely on rules and strategies) and governmental programs (large collections of rules & incentives).  Yes, individual teachers may develop wisdom through their own experiences, but the institutions concerned with education (universities, governments, schools) seem to do very little in the way of promoting or encouraging the application of wisdom in the classroom.  

Instead, we largely treat the teaching and learning process as one governed by rules and incentives.  I wonder if this might be because we naively believe that by falling back on rules, policies, and explicitly stated pratices and processes, we minimize the risk that people won't learn.  Indeed, it is "risky" to structure systems where practitioners--be it teachers, doctors, bankers, etc.--are allowed to be "wise" because there is always the chance that they won't.  But, by failing to include the development of wisdom (and the freedom to use it) in conversations about reform will ultimately prove problematic and limit improvements in our institutions.

What schools could learn from cab companies

I spent the first year of my professional career as a teacher.  At the risk of sounding arrogant, I thought I was pretty good--I had good rapport with students, I tried to align my teaching with learning objectives, and I believed that I applied good pedagogical practices in my classroom.  It's probably pretty easy to spot the problem in this assessment--they are all my own personal perceptions of my ability and performance, and very subject to bias and inaccuracy.  This has bothered me lately and I've wondered how good a teacher I really was during that year.  As I look back on those experiences, two really important things seem to have been missing:  feedback and focused effort to learn from mistakes.  

While I tried to regularly evaluate my own teaching, like most of us I probably overestimated my abilities and was likely unaware of many of the mistakes I was making.  On a few occasions (three, that I can remember) I was observed by another teacher and then given some basic feedback at the end of the class session.  It's fair to assume that both my own evaluations and those of others might have had some slight improvement on my teaching.  But, in retrospect, I don't think I was much better in June when the school year ended than I was on the first day of school in September.  In fact, I probably developed some bad habits, got too comfortable with the role, and stopped doing some of the little things that make a big difference in one's teaching ability.  In short, I may have even been worse.  

At the same time I was having these depressing thoughts, I was reading Traffic, by Tom Vanderbilt.  The book uses driving patterns and habits as a context for exploring human behavior.  He tells a fascinating story about how cab companies and limo services have helped improve their drivers' performance using a technology called DriveCam.  DriveCam installs cameras on the rearview mirrors of cars that continusously buffer images (like TiVo) of what is happening both inside and outside the car.  Sensors monitor various measurable forces and when a "trigger" is detected (sharp turn of the steering wheel, significant decrease/increase in speed, etc.), the camera records ten seconds of footage both before and after the trigger.  This footage is then sent to a database and may be reviewed with the driver in an attempt to correct mistakes and improve safety.  Although it probably ruffles some feathers of drivers who feel like their privacy is being invaded, the bottom line is that transportation companies have a lot to lose when their drivers don't drive well.  What's more, this is great learning.  Drivers can view actual footage of their driving, spot mistakes and fix them, and focus on small elements of the driving performance that seem to make a big difference in achieving good outcomes, namely safety (this isn't unlinke the way elite athletes use taped performances to improve).

This left me wondering why something similar couldn't happen in classrooms, particularly those classrooms led by novice teachers.  We spend millions of dollars to equip classrooms with new technologies that are touted to improve student learning and increase engagement.  And, while ipods and laptops can help, the core factor influencing student learning still seems to be the teacher.  It seems fair to ask why technology can't be used to imrove core teacher practices that would have far-reaching impact upon student learning.  There is some work being done in this area (see the work of Peter Rich and this pilot project at the University of Central Florida), but it  seems to be on the periphery.  

What would happen if there were cameras installed in classrooms that could capture real footage of teacher performance.  Are there "triggers" that we would want to focus on?  What would they be?  Something like this would seem to fill a gap in current teacher development practices.  Teachers would have the opportunity to really see themselves teaching (as opposed to their perception of their teaching or someone else's interpretation), use mistakes to improve, and focus on critical parts of their performance that have been shown to lead to significant improvements in student learning.  

Deep Practice for Teachers or. . . what we can learn from "Big Brown"

I've been thinking a great deal about how to train people to do things as of late.  And, as a teaching drop-out (I left public education after only a year of teaching), my thoughts have turned to my own teacher preparation experiences and how well they equipped me to be in a real classroom. 

 In the middle of all of this musing I came across a November 2007 Fortune magazine article  ("The Making of a UPS Driver"), that describes how UPS has adapted its training programs to address the problems of declining performance and high turnover among new drivers (which, by the way, is a job that is much more physically demanding and technical than I ever realized).  These two problems seemed very similar to those facing education and I wondered what we might be able to learn from UPS.  

The most interesting part of the article was the description of the UPS training center in Landover, Maryland.  Everything about the center seems to have been designed with learning and deep practice in mind.  I wonder how different our campus buildings would look if this were the case, particularly those classrooms where teacher education courses are taught.  The UPS training center is equipped with full-size "truck classrooms," mini-neighborhoods, and a driving course.  This all makes sense because aspiring drivers can practice being UPS drivers in the very same conditions that they'll be working in when they leave the training center and are delivering my Christmas presents and your office supplies.  Additionally, UPS gathers as much data about driver performance in these simulations as possible and then uses that data (e.g. videotape footage of truck exits, force sensor readings to measure impact on joints, etc.) to show learners how well they are doing and where they can improve.  They also put new drivers through simulations where they are forced to adapt to challenges and problems that they are almost certain to encounter (my favorite part of the article might been the description of the "fall simulator").

So, what can we learn from UPS that could be applied to training teachers?  First, where we train them is important.  A random building assigned by the campus scheduling office won't do.  We need rooms that have been designed as "teaching labs" that look like the classrooms where our teachers will teach, and that facilitate data gathering on teacher performance (in house video equipment comes to mind immediately, but someone more creative than me could think of what else this might mean).  Additionally, we need to think through the "trouble spots" that teachers are going to encounter (an angry parent, belligerent students, a faculty meeting gone awry, etc.), build these sorts of simulations or role-plays into the instruction, and then provide lots of opportunities for practice and feedback.

What I'm describing here is more than a semester of student teaching.  Although a nice capstone (potentially), more often than not it looks a little like throwing a child in the deep end without a life jacket and then checking on them every three weeks or so and providing a one page written evaluation of how well they kept their head above water.  What I'm suggesting are deep practice experiences that closely simulate real teaching and that provide near-instant feedback about how the teacher has performed, so that they can improve on the spot.  Data or feedback that help learners see how they are performing and make comparisons to expert performances and also see their own progression would be incredibly valuable (see Andy Gibbon's discussion of "contrast" and "trace" in this very interesting paper).   

Given the growing pressure to improve the educational system and ever loudening cries for better teachers, some kind of change is going to be necessary.  Something like a teaching lab would be an interesting thing to explore.  Additionally, as a concluding aside, universities might structure their faculty support centers (on my campus, the Faculty Center and Center for Teaching and Learning) in a way that these opportunities for deep practice are provided to faculty members.  

If you want something else to read along the lines of deep practice and training, check out this article from Play magazine on a backwoods Russian tennis academy that has produced more top players than nearly anywhere else in the world.