Two photos today, but of the same thing. One of my roles is as an Across School Leader for our kāhui ako of 12 schools. As we come to the end of the year, the teams I work with will be reflecting on the impact they have had in 2022. To help those conversations along I have reinvented snakes and ladders. Firstly, since we don't have snakes in New Zealand I changed it to eels. Secondly, on each open space there is a question to prompt deeper reflection about the focus of each team's inquiries this year. When you land on the space, you will need to answer the question you have landed on.
"It's been a little while since I've blogged regularly so to get back in the habit, I thought I would share one photo every day for the remainder of the school year to capture some of my learning, reflections, and creations for 2022. Each photo is accompanied by a short caption. The idea is to keep it short, simple, and reflective. I would love for people to join me - if you do, make sure you include #edphoto22 on whatever platform you share it (Twitter, Mastodon, Facebook, Instagram, wherever...)."
Where has your professional inquiry taken you this year? Our whole school focus on culturally responsive pedagogy has led me on a wild ride...
We kicked off our Spiral of Inquiry this year with the intention of having a culturally responsive and sustaining focus. As part of my new learning, I read Culture Speaks (a book EVERY New Zealand educator should read). The sections below really stood out for me:
"They control you, and it is really annoying. They have to be the boss. I don’t know, but if I don’t like the teachers I can’t learn. They just like, pick on you, it just makes you not want to work. So you don’t work. You do that on purpose. Or you do that because you don’t know how to do the work anyway." (Kindle Locations 438-441)
"These students raised the issue of not being able to sit by, or associate with their Māori mates. One student saw this as an attempt by teachers to separate groups of resistance, to ‘neutralise’ Māori students." (Kindle Locations 466-468)
"They think we will gang up on them if we are all sitting together, so they make us sit by ourselves because then they think that will control us easier. That will shut us up. Well, that’s what I think." (Kindle Locations 476-477)
"I don’t want to be a ‘dole bludger’. But … the problem is some classes are really boring, and some teachers give me such a hard time. ... He went on to tell us that he had given up working in most classes. ’Cause there was no point. They don’t like me, and I don’t like them." (Kindle Locations 670-671)
"That’s a substantial number of our students. Not only Māori students but certainly Māori students ... the first thing you notice is the lack of equipment when they turn up in the form room and accompanying that, often, a great big chip on the shoulder." (Kindle Locations 3110-3112)
If your schooling experience was one where you felt that teachers were trying to "control" you and "neutralise" you all the time, like the students in the exerts above showed, how likely are you to feel a sense of empowerment? If you were told continuously when and if you can use the bathroom, what you should or should not be doing, and what you can and can not wear, how autonomous are you likely to feel? It is no secret that schools attempt to control the students, their behaviour, etc. It would be chaos otherwise, wouldn't it?
Our 'control' of students is of course not just confined to the logistics of schools. We also control their assessment and what they learn. By setting the due dates, choosing the standards, deciding on the learning objectives are and prioritising what I know to be the 'most important knowledge' that students must learn, I am again making some attempt at control. Our senior students are often experiencing the effects of being chased by the 'content monster', where we just have to "get through" the content that they have had little to no influence on. In senior science, there are so few standards that students hardly get a choice about what standards they have to do. The content in standards has usually been predetermined too, and not by the students...
Essentially the curriculum itself is also a form of control, it controls what learning we value and prioritise in our schools. And further, there is a range of scholars who argue that the curriculum is Eurocentric in many ways, and as a result, contributes to the colonising and control of Māori people in a harmful way.
"However, in many cases, the education system has negatively affected te reo Māori indirectly through aspects of Eurocentric education. These include assimilation, cultural invasion, cultural subordination, language domination, hegemony, the curriculum, class structures, racism, meritocracy, intelligence testing, and negative teacher expectations." (The impact of colonisation on te reo Māori: A critical review of the State education system)
As I read more, thought more, observed more, I had a hunch... What if the disengagement that we see from so many of our Māori students, is not disengagement at all? What if it is disempowerment? I remember reading about a student in Culture Speaks that said "If I don’t like the teachers I can’t learn. They just like, pick on you, it just makes you not want to work. So you don’t work. You do that on purpose." These three sentences have continued to haunt me as I increasingly began to think about how the actions of a disempowered and an empowered student might differ.
An empowered individual might know that they should, could and can focus on learning in spite of the teacher. An empowered person might find other ways to do the learning. They might even seek help from a trusted adult to help them if they feel that they are being picked on unfairly. A disempowered person, in contrast, might feel that they have little choice or influence about their situation. They may be unlikely to seek help, ask questions, challenges injustice and demand more and better. If my hunch is correct, then I am dealing with an entirely different kettle of fish than I first thought. Rather than seeking to engage students, I would be trying to empower them. It would mean that all the fun lessons in the world, upskilling on my assessment for learning practices, or building up my Universal Design for Learning arsenal is all unlikely to make enough of a difference. Perhaps it means that I would need to seek ways to dismantle the power structures that keep exerting control on the most disempowered of our young people? Maybe it means that I would need to challenge embedded cultural narratives? Or does it mean that I would need to fight against the systemic ways that we seek to control students?
I got stuck in traffic a few weeks ago. I decided that I would use the time productively by dictating a blog post to my phone (thanks to Richard Wells for the voice dictation inspiration!). This post has been distilling in my head for some time and seemed a fitting post at this time of the year where we often have a moment to reflect on our practice.
When the subject of Teaching as Inquiry or Spirals of Inquiry is discussed in schools, one of the phrases that I have heard numerous teachers say over the past few years is "I inquire all the time, I just don't write it down". Sometimes this sounds like "I reflect about my practice all the time, I just don't write it down." Well, today I would like to go out on a limb, put on my devil's advocate horns, and say... I think that is nonsense, baloney and rubbish. I better explain...
There are two reasons for this, the first is the nature of memory. The way I memories work, is that every single time we access a memory, we modify it slightly. The more times we have recalled a memory, the we have manipulated it and changed its shape. If you don’t believe me, take a look at the video below from Dr Julia Shore.
Dr Shaw's research into memory showed that people who had never been involved with a violent crime, could be 'memory hacked' to believe that they committed one. Alarmingly, the memory hacking experiments was so effective, that the research had to be shut down early. While Julia's work is targeted at criminal psychology, this is very relevant for all of us who have a "but I inquire all the time, I just don't write it down approach". The reality is, that unless we write things down, we are like to bend and flex our memories to suit us. And, every time you recall a memory, you bend, shape and flex it even more. So while you thought you were inquiring into your practice, what we might really doing, is modifying your memory to suit our purpose. And every time I remember it, I convince myself just a little more. In other words, the retrospective recording of your inquiry just before your appraisal meeting is not great for critically reflecting on your practice...
The second bit of research worth paying attention to is the work of Nobel Prize winner Daniel Kahneman and his book, Thinking Fast and Slow. One of the key ideas that Kahneman talks about is cognitive bias. Through great examples in his book, he shows us just how biased we are without realising. Have a go at some of these problems that illustrate our biases if your don't believe me! What this means is that if we are "inquiring all the time but not writing it down" and not formally collecting data, and attempting to analyse it objectively, it is very likely that we might in fact be feeding into the cognitive biases embedded in our thinking.
I’ve been reading Ann Milne's book, Colouring in the White Spaces. What really stands out from this book, is the generational prejudice and bias in our system that we don’t even notice. We are biased and prejudiced in ways that we are not even capable of identifying. The same is true for biases about women, race and more.
Consider for example the following,
"In 2003, Columbia Business School professor Frank Flynn and New York University professor Cameron Anderson ran an experiment to test perceptions of men and women in the workplace. They started with a Harvard Business School case study about a real-life entrepreneur named Heidi Roizen. The case described how Roizen became a successful venture capitalist by using her “outgoing personality … and vast personal and professional network [that] included many of the most powerful business leaders in the technology sector.” Flynn and Anderson assigned half of the students to read Heidi’s story and gave the other half the same story with just one difference—they changed the name “Heidi” to “Howard.” Professors Flynn and Anderson then polled the students about their impressions of Heidi or Howard. The students rated Heidi and Howard as equally competent, which made sense since “their” accomplishments were completely identical. Yet while students respected both Heidi and Howard, Howard came across as a more appealing colleague. Heidi, on the other hand, was seen as selfish and not “the type of person you would want to hire or work for.” The same data with a single difference—gender—created vastly different impressions." Exert fromSandberg, Sheryl. Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead (Kindle Locations 723-728). Ebury Publishing. Kindle Edition.
Ultimately, if we are really committed to make a positive change, it is necessary that we become aware of our biases. For many generations now, we know our education system has not served our Māori and Pasifika students well. We know that not as many girls stay in the STEM subjects. Whether we like it or not, some of this is as a result of our biases, and unless we are able to identify, critique and address them, change is very unlikely. Fortunately, Teaching as Inquiry and Spirals of Inquiry models help us to do just this. By forming a hunch and seeking ways to test our hunches, it allows us to challenge our assumptions. However... when we adopt an "I inquire all the time, I just don't write it down" attitude, we are in fact at risk of continuing to be subject to our biases, particularly given how our memories are modified every time we recall them. Additionally, perhaps when we write things down, when we deeply challenge our assumptions and beliefs about the world, the need to change ourselves comes to the forefront. Once we realise our bias, we have to do something about it. But making genuine change requires an investment of physical and emotional energy. Often making change is really uncomfortable. So perhaps when we can't be bothered to write things down, to do the work required to make change, what we are really saying is that we are not prepared to make change.
So here are my questions for you. How well did you record your inquiry? Did you do so regularly? Did you collect data in such a way that you could challenge your own assumptions? Just how committed were you to making change? Or will 2018 be the year where you inquire all the time and write it down?
