As teachers we understandably believe that it is the ‘teaching’ that causes learning. But this is too egocentric a formulation. As I said in my previous post, the learner’s attempts to learn causes all learning. The teaching is a stimulus; the attempted learning (or lack of it) is the response. No matter what the teacher says or does, the learner has to engage with and process the ‘teaching’ if learning is to happen.
From this viewpoint, the teacher is merely one resource for learning, no different from a book, a peer, an experience, or an experimental result. It is the learner who decides to try to learn (or not) from what happens. And the learner will only wish to learn and be able to learn if the conditions of learning have been optimized to make sustained engagement and understanding possible.
Put in terms of a phrase that many now use, in and out of education, such a viewpoint reflects design thinking. We think like a designer, not like a teacher, when we say: the teacher is just one element in the design. The choice of task, pedagogy, groupings, flow of work, resources, furniture, light, noise level, role of people and text – all of these design elements are arguably as important as the teacher.
I know this sounds a bit unromantic. It must sound dry to all of us – me included – who entered teaching to ‘lay on hands’ in the phrase used by health-care workers and religious leaders. But genuine improvement in student learning depends upon such decentering, just as we had to give up the geocentric theory to advance our success in understanding the universe.
The learning is the center of our world, not the teaching. And until we see that we are in the business of designing and causing learning instead of merely in the business of teaching, we will fail to cause optimal learning. We will fail to reach beyond the already-motivated, bright, and dutiful learners who trust adults and delay gratification very well.
What all good designs have in common. I often refer to Eric Mazur’s Peer Instruction model at Harvard in Physics, Socratic Seminar, a 4th grade reading block with choice reading and varied tasks, Varsity Soccer, and video games to underscore the importance of such a de-personalized view of our real job. In all these cases, there is less teaching yet more learning than in traditional teacher-centric classes. How? Because great care has been given to thinking through the goal of the learning and the conditions that have to be in place if optimal engagement and active learning, in a group of diverse students, is to occur.
What are those conditions, in a nutshell? I would highlight the following:
- Thought-provoking intellectual challenges (inquiries, questions, problems)
- The challenge has been designed to optimize self-sustaining and productive work by learners, related to a clear and intellectually worthy goal
- The learners have become reasonably competent in classroom routines that foster productive goal-focused work
- The challenge cannot be accomplished by a worksheet, checklist or recipe. It requires strategic use of knowledge and skill, creative problem-solving, and critical thinking; and the eliciting of multiple perspectives on how to address the challenge and gauge progress.
- There is an unambiguous product or performance goal (even if there is ambiguity about how to achieve the goal), supported by clear criteria and standards, thus permitting ongoing student self-assessment and self-adjustment.
- There is enough feedback within the challenge (and resources) that the work can be maximally self-sustaining and productive.
- The teacher is therefore freed up to coach for a significant amount of time, permitting personalized feedback and guidance (as well as just-in-time mini-lessons). This coaching role also permits the teacher to determine what is and isn’t working in the challenge, and thus enables the teacher to quickly change gears if the desired learning is not occurring or the process is not working.
The key ideas here are self-sustaining, challenging and productive work, where learners themselves become and feel more competent in transferring their learning with ever-increasing autonomy.
In other words, it is a poor design for learning that puts all the burden of teaching and processing on the teacher. Then, the teacher can neither coach nor understand what is going on in the minds of learners. Worse, endless teaching, no matter how expert, soon becomes passive and without much meaning to learners who must wait days, sometimes weeks, to get meaningful chances to interact with the content, to try out their ideas on others, and to get the feedback they need.
PS: I should note that some of my thinking about this issue was prompted by reading an article by Rachel Lotan in Educational Leadership on “group worthy” learning tasks from 2003, via a fine book on group work in mathematics written by Ilana Horn. Here is my slightly-edited version of the Lotan-Horn criteria for group worthy work:
Group-worthy tasks –
- Focus on central concepts or big ideas that require active meaning-making
- The challenge itself has ambiguity or limited scaffold and prompting so that student meaning-making and different inferences about the task and how to address it will emerge.
- Are best accomplished by ensuring that multiple perspectives are found tried out in addressing the task. This not only rewards creative and non-formulaic thought but undercuts the likelihood that one strong student can do all the key work.
- Provide multiple ways of being competent in the task work and the task process
- Can only be done well by a group, but are designed to foster both individual and group autonomy. (The teacher’s role as teacher and direction-giver should be minimized to near zero).
- Demand both individual and group accountability
- Have clear evaluation criteria
(Horn also notes and develops the idea I already mentioned above that previously-established group norms and group process protocols need to be in place for optimal learning. In addition to her good suggestions, see our book on Essential Questions for additional ideas about processes and protocols in an inquiry-focused classroom.)
Lotan, Rachel (2003) Educational Leadership 60, 6 pp. 72 – 75
Horn, Ilana Seidel Strength in Numbers: Collaborative Learning in Secondary Mathematics (2012), NCTM
37 Responses
Thanks for the shout out. Obviously your ideas are foundational: design of learning environments is a much better image of teaching than simply presentation of ideas. For math teachers especially, it is a challenge to imagine problem-based learning as adequately teaching since we often get pressed to “cover curriculum” instead of truly teaching.
design of learning environments > design of learning EXPERIENCES.
Yes- love this. Wish it were our reality.
“The challenge cannot be accomplished by a worksheet, checklist or recipe. It requires strategic use of knowledge and skill, creative problem-solving, and critical thinking; and the eliciting of multiple perspectives on how to address the challenge and gauge progress.”
Why can’t the latter be incorporated into a worksheet?
To me, worksheet is a simple flow of unambiguous work. For it to involve judgment and adjustment, it would have to be a more sophisticated flowchart.
Yes, of course,…..art!
Indeed – could have added that as another example.
I think it all boils down to the teacher’s main jobs are to motivate and set up a situation that stimulates learning (and making sure the various resources are available to do that). Students will move heaven and earth if they want to learn something – look at video games!
You know know I love UbD, but I would even put the job of motivational teacher ahead of a “model lesson” that looks amazing on paper. Look at the best coaches. Do they know the X’s and O’s better than the other coaches? The best coaches motivate and get their players to want to do better and do anything to win. They get the players to think, to perform, and they get their players to overachieve. Do we as teachers have an atmosphere, in our class, where students will do almost anything to learn?
I just watched a Larry Bird video. He used to tell his coaches to give him the ball and tell everyone else to get out of the way. Would we do that in our class (if we were the coach), or would we plow ahead with scripted lessons (X’s and O’s)?
I am with you in one sense: no design is foolproof. The challenge in teaching is always about lightning quick adjustments based on what is and isn’t working (as well as spotting truly teachable moments as opposed to interesting but unfocused tangents). I always say in UbD workshops that we must PLAN!…to adjust. Hence, my recent post on ‘white space’ in the plan.
However, in another way I disagree with the ‘motivational teacher’ viewpoint. I think this is holding us back. Most teachers are not capable of being John Wooden. And I think there are way too many dreadful lessons that, even in the hands of a skilled ‘teacher’, don’t cause much learning because the work is so dreary and low-level. I have seen countless HS history and math teachers who fall into this category. And we saw dozens of lovely people teaching horrible lessons to kids in Toledo over the course of a year.
Motivation is necessary, not sufficient. Nor was it the secret to Wooden’s success, either.
Yeah, but is a horrible lesson someone “just following the X’s and O’s” with no adaptation? I also think that it doesn’t take a superstar teacher to motivate students. How many times do teachers teach lessons that they themselves think are horrible? I’ll bet it happens way too often. Do teachers find something in that lesson that makes students (or themselves) go, “Wow! I did not know that about ________. Isn’t it cool that _______ does ________?”
I know you have seen teachers who could teach almost anything. Are they superstars or do they just go about teaching differently? Do those teachers know more than others, or do they just instill that desire to discover and learn? I personally love to learn along with my students. I try to find something interesting and we go crazy learning.
I hate to say it, but many times these bad lessons are from teachers who are unprepared and who frankly do not care. Saying you care is not the same as actually caring. How did the teachers make it interesting? How did they find things that would motivate the students? What is the hook for the students? Many times these lessons are just cut-and-paste lesson plans. What’s that saying, “No plan survives contact with the enemy.” or something like that? Not that the students are enemies, but plans are just plans. They are only as good as the people using them. We have to adapt them to our styles, as well as the students’ styles. We have to “own our plan” and make it something we believe in – if not change it until you do love it.
Also, I am assuming a certain level of competence from a teacher/coach. If the teacher/coach is clueless, that is a big obstacle to overcome. Great discussion!
Gary: the other problem with “motivation” is that people have different ideas of effective motivation techniques. I see coaches across the field from me screaming at their athletes because they don’t know what else to do to change how the team is playing. On the other hand teachers might throw out candy, stickers, or other motivational goodies.
Picking tasks, texts, environments etc… that can be uniformly implemented are more likely to spur greater engagement/learning.
I “teach/lecture” infrequently at best, but I still find the need to stand in front of my class from time to time. When I do it is usually to deliver a “sermon” or “passion talk.” I guess you would call those “TED talks.” I think it’s important, from time to time, to model for students how one can/should talk or present an engaging idea for an extended period of time.
Every teacher I have talked to has a favorite professor who held them in the palms of their hands during such talks. I can vividly remember both facts, lessons, and engagement techniques from those “lectures.” I love this article and will share it with others, but we need to also remember there is a time for you to pace like a tiger in front of your class- just do it with passion and focus.
Last comment (maybe) While this post is liberating, to say the least, I think where we all get in trouble is when we try fixing or changing “the choice of task, pedagogy, groupings, flow of work, resources, furniture, light, noise level, role of people and text.”
I think we are all too aware that what we bring to the class is just ONE element and instead of focusing on what we CAN change we start dreaming about, acting on, or protesting against the things we can’t change: but that are equally important to learning.
I agree. I think that teacher that just totally loves what she/he is doing is so infectious and contagious. How can you not love seeing someone who really loves what he/she is doing? How can you not want to get involved as a student or observer?
Look at kids and video games. Does it matter how loud anything is, the temperature, chores, etc.? What about sports? Do kids stop playing soccer when it gets loud, wet, too long, hot, or cold? Some of those kids you have to drag off the field, not build fences to keep them there. They love what they are doing so they fight to stay. What’s going to make a student fight to stay in a classroom, or at least stick around for the lesson?
I think you miss my point. of course people persist in all sorts of conditions (think third world). But that’s not the issue. As a designer, I try to optimize the setting. Just think of the obvious example of moving chairs into a circle versus rows to support discussion. Audio in school is often terrible, makign it harder for marginal students. Many elem teachers now use a mic around their neck as a result to be heard. We’re talking thoughtful consideration of all aspects of the design, not whether not people can learn anywhere (many can and do but I don’t worry about them).
I have seen many teachers who are not ‘passionate’ do amazingly wonderful things. The best history teacher i have ever seen talks in a near monotone.
I see your point about designing lessons that work. I just think that all of that has to be formed around the style that works best for the teacher. I still disagree about the passionate part. Great teachers have many different styles. I have seen teachers who could captivate interest by just sitting and discussing. I’ve seen other teachers who bounce all over the room. I have seen super organized great teachers and teachers who couldn’t find their desks. What works works – now you use planning and tools to maximize your strengths. I also think we may be using passionately differently. Would you say that that the history teacher wasn’t really into history, or would you say that that person wasn’t very animated? Monotone vs variable speech is different than how much you care about your topic. I’m using passionate as someone who really loves doing what they are doing. I’m not using it in a way that shows vigorous/loud speeches, debates, or whatever – think fire and brimstone. I’ve seen a science teacher catch his arm on fire and just look and say, “Hmmmmm…”.Not very animated but I know he cared.
However, I think we may be agreeing more than we think. I am a huge planner and am always looking at ways to make lessons better: maybe using technology, maybe going outside, maybe by arrangement, by props, and maybe by movement. That’s why I think UbD is so helpful as it helps you start by finding the “big idea” – keeps people like me from rambling and going on too many discovery tangents.
Great discussion once again Dr. Wiggins. Thanks!
I think you’re right – I was referring to method of delivery, not passion for the subject. Mark W has that passion even though he sounds like a down eastern Mainer speaking in brief phrases and a monotone.
Great post, Grant. Designing learning experiences that inspire engagement is at the heart of the work. Thanks for the inspiration.
Thank you for the recognition, Dr. Wiggins.
I would love to send you a draft of the chapter (with examples of groupworthy tasks) I just completed for a new edition of Designing groupwork: Strategies for heterogeneous classrooms.
Please do, Rachel! gwiggins AT authentic education.org
I thought your article was great – concise, practical, grounded in the research. And it is timely for us as we design a middle school curriculum using UbD for a client in an urban district.
There are huge movements across the US to imbue design as a pedagogical technique as well as to teach students the design-thinking process. This process (and you’ll find numerous versions of it, but I’ll go with the one often attributed to the design firm IDEO and also found in somewhat altered form in the “Design Educators Toolkit” from the d.school at Stanford because both versions are based upon a “human centered model”. That is, all design that follows these processes (and all good design, I’d hold) begins in Empathy–a concern for the user and the user’s needs. Grant has that same concern up front in his interpretation of good teaching as having the needs of the user (the learners) at the fore. All else emanates from there.
Edutopia has a huge section on Design in the Classroom. The Industrial Designers Society of America, The Cooper–Hewitt National Museum of Design, The National Association of Arts Educators and, at a more grassroots level, Design-ed.org are all involved in bringing the design process to the classroom.
I’ve used design based methods in my classroom for over a decade, diving deeper into the methods and rationale over the past 5 years, but there are others who have far more experience than I do. In 1998 Merdith Davis, et. al.’s Design As A Catalyst For Learning brought the method into the light, but for the most part it was buried under NCLB. In the meantime, Daniel Pink’s seminal culling of cultural forces at play in the pre-recession years A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule The Future basically is a paean to design and its attendant habits of mind.
The movement is picking up steam with input and influence from English educators (where design is/was/is again part of the mandatory curriculum) as well as groups like designlearning.us, design-ed.org, design-based high schools like Philadelphia’s CHAD, the da Vinci Schools, The Buck Institute and its project-based learning, High-tech High, the Nueva school…the list is long and growing.
I thank Grant for his interpretation as it brings to the fore the opportunity for us to use a very human (and human centered) method to educate teachers and improve learning for all our students.
As a follow up, it does not escape me that the word “design” is closely associated with the author of this blog. However, there is a difference between “designing” something and employing a heuristic like design thinking. As Mr. Wiggins uses the term “Design Thinking”, I’d urge everyone to take a look and do some research on it. Little in my short 20 years of teaching compares for student engagement, collaboration, creative thinking, critical thinking, and communication.
To this engaging discussion, I would add that perhaps it is sincerity that trumps passion. Students respond to sincerity – both that in evidence for optimal learning conditions and that in evidence for the learning content. Sincerity resonates in classrooms, twinkles from eyes, seats itself in discussion circles and sings from lavaliere microphones and motivates in compelling tasks.
Grant: An encouraging and confirming post, thank you. Your thoughts remind me of a quote I have posted in my office to remind me of the primary mission: “Highly effective teachers tend to reflect a strong trust in students. They usually believe that students want to learn, and they assume, until proven otherwise, they can” (Ken Bain, “What the Best College Teachers Do”, 2004). The greatest pleasure I receive from teaching is getting to witness those revelations and connections that happen in the classroom (or at least soon thereafter when a student returns to share their experiences and how they’ve been able to apply what they’ve learned). Ironically, it’s not as much because I had something to do with it, but more because I feel like I was on the journey with them, together.
When I pull myself away, and allow myself to genuinely care about designing a learning environment that is conducive to disarming student’s apprehensions about the process, I become more passionate about giving them the time to explore concepts on their own and amongst themselves as peers. I truly slip into a coaching role that is very rewarding. It is then that I feel more free to allow my own professional experiences to surface into models, illustrations, and simulations that help students make valuable connections.
I’m also learning that students are not the enemy (as many teachers battle with bitterness against the very students they were once passionate about…largely connected to the haziness of purpose that I believe you allude to in your post). The real enemy to learning is the barriers and filters that both intrinsically emerge (often in stealth) in the learning environment and extrinsically appear from a diversity of demographics, personality, and culture brought by students.
Again, thank you for helping me think about what I love to think about!!!
r/
Jason Kinney
I’m completely with you on this comment, Jason. Most people get bitter out of unclear goals that gets translated into inadequate means, leaving kids confused or unhappy, and thus allowing only the smart and well-motivated to do well. I think Ken’s quote is correct – that is the working assumption. My corollary: if the kid is present and the kid doesn’t improve over time, then it is very likely not the kid’s fault. (Even pets improve over time, which is why Dewey said that every prospective teacher should have to train an animal to understand how unwitting errors in practice undo teaching/learning).
Nothing gets my goat more than teachers who think that kids don’t want to learn and are just looking to slide by. Thanks for your thoughtful comment.
All of what has been said here makes perfect sense- that the learning environment must be designed in the right way and that the teacher is just one of many factors that engender learning, along with all of the others.
What I can’t overcome is my own experiences of teachers who have inspired my own life and learning. It wasn’t the design of their lessons or assessment strategies as much as it was the sheer force of their personality and care about what they were doing. Consistent, positive, life-enriching interactions with a committed teacher overwhelms curriculum, environmental and pedagogical shortcomings– and provides the foundation for long-term success for students. The educational age we are in– I’ll call it the “age of science and accountability”– will never be able to measure this type of impact.
Thanks for the post.
For sure, we who are educators have often had such experiences. But I think that’s confirmation bias. Most people don’t go into teaching; most people do not love academic learning for its own sake. I think the average person has a different attitude about schooling, learning, and teaching – as revealed by our student surveys in which the quality of the learning experience, not the teacher, was the highest rated choice as to why a class was great or poor. I may blog on that result as follow-up.
I would definitely be interested in that follow-up blog. I’m trying to think about how anybody– especially a student– could separate the learning experience FROM the teacher’s influence over that experience to the point where he could cast judgement on it. I’d also like to see studies asking students about their experiences farther down the road, when the specific memories of classroom experiences fade and the only thing left over is a mental impression of the human being who shaped their positive experience. Does anybody know of such studies? I think that would be fascinating to look at
Great stuff…
Check it out – the latest post
Great thoughts! I would add to this… and do we want the student to credit the teacher for being responsible for their learning success. Shouldn’t it be the other way around? A student should perceive themselves as successful due to their own actions that facilitated learning.
That would also be consistent with the Dweck research and other locus of control studies.
Many have stated this about a beloved teacher- that they were inspired beyond measure and that their career choice was due to this wonderful teacher. Turn it around though- would you have been successful if it not were for this teacher? This one teacher was the difference for you – you would have dropped out and become a drug dealer if it weren’t simply for this one person? There are some who have role models that take a child under his or her wing and help them steer in the right direction – and that can result in being saved. But that isn’t teaching (in educational ways- certainly teaching in other ways). That is being an adult who mentors a child. Certainly, we should set up situations where we have mentors for troubled children and choices for them. But we should not depend on finding these angels to fill our classrooms. And I bet you would have been successful despite having that one teacher. I can see with my kids that one teacher can make a year special. They can learn a lot from a good teacher. But even a teacher they perceive as bad can be very good at teaching and they learn a lot. Sometimes they have a teacher they like a lot and I don’t think they are learning a lot but they love them. Let’s get away from this notion of teaching being hallowed grounds where only the most angelic and passionate person who was born to teach should do this job. And lets focus on driving the demand for good, solid teachers who are highly skilled by making teaching more attractive.
Agreed. We need a million teachers; most will not be ‘inspirational’ angels, as you put it. That only reinforces the need for a clearer conception of the requirements in hiring, supervision, evaluation – and ensuring a first-rate curriculum that they work with. Hattie’s research supports all this, too.
I like it. It emphasizes the role of the learner as a significant factor in learning. I think for too long we’ve focused so heavily on the teacher and their role that the students became a non-variable.
The logical response to this when it comes to teacher evaluation and effectiveness, not only in what we think makes a great teacher/designer of learning but also acknowledges that when students don’t learn, it’s not always the teacher’s fault. I think the rhetoric of today in both the public but also in dialog within schools is that with a great teacher, all kids can and will learn. Not only does that suggest that a teacher determines a learners success but is highly arrogant in thinking about the role of the teacher.
We have to accept that sometimes kids fail and sometimes, no matter how great a designer we are, sometimes kids will not learn what we want them to. Many teachers are getting a message that says all kids can learn and if they don’t, it’s your fault. I think people fear if they acknowledge this, that somehow teachers will quit trying to be better. For too long we’ve seen education as a simple input/output profession. We seem hesitant to acknowledge learning is messy and sometimes complicated and while we want to continue to improve and design the best opportunities for learning, sometimes we fail. And that’s nothing to be ashamed of and indeed it should be expected.
I love the guidelines of a “group worthy” task. I am going to cite them in an observation follow up of a group activity I implemented. I think that the project itself was strong on all of the points except for the last one. Clear evaluation criteria. I am also conflicted because my favorite characteristic “The challenge itself has ambiguity or limited scaffold and prompting so that student meaning-making and different inferences about the task and how to address it will emerge.” seems to contrast the principle of having clear evaluation criteria.
How does a teacher reconcile these two?
Yours is a common and important question. (See my earlier blog entry on teaching creativity). There is no contradiction IF the criteria relate to outcomes and impact, not process and content. Think soccer and jazz: there are clear criteria for ‘winning soccer’ and ‘cool’ jazz. But they are not prescriptive. Think humor: a joke has to be funny. Think short story: it has to be engaging and insightful. My favorite criterion to student writers: I don’t care what you write but it cannot be boring to your peers or to me.
I have written a lot about this in various writings. I’ll compile a list of references soon.
Reblogged this on e-Odyssey and commented:
Now that I’m feeling more confident with the ‘big picture’ of future or 21st Century learning themes, I’m aware of the need to move to considering programme-unit-lesson design. Posing challenges or ‘ungoogleable’ questions appeals to me, and this reading might help me with my exploration. Steve Mouldey’s application of this reading also has considerable food for thought: http://stevemouldey.wordpress.com/2013/11/07/designing-and-causing-learning/