FIELD REPORT

In this field report, professional development design is rethought using the d. School’s Design Thinking Protocol. The process includes five stages: (a) empathize, (b) define, (c) ideate, (d) prototype and (e) test (d. school, 2010).

Teacher Agency through Strengths-Based Professional Development

Della Palacios

July 2017

University of Colorado Denver

Professional development planning for Title 1 schools is primarily based upon need. Planning design initiates with a deficit. In this field report, professional development design is rethought using Stanford’s d. School’s Design Thinking Protocol. The process includes five stages: (a) empathize, (b) define, (c) ideate, (d) prototype and (e) test (d. school, 2010). See Table 1. Along with Design Thinking, Appreciative Inquiry will also serve as a foundation for transforming the experience.

Table 1

Design Thinking Process (d. School, 2010)

Empathize

In 1994, I read Savage Inequalities and it changed my entire career trajectory (Kozol, 1991). After changing majors at Bradley University from business to elementary education and philosophy, I made the decision that I wanted to work in a Title 1 school. Since that time, most of my work has focused on Title 1 schools. Reform efforts have been underway since I began working. Because all reform efforts aim to fix what is wrong with the system, all professional development I have witnessed does the same. It aims to fix what is wrong with the system.

I have empathized with teachers my whole career, watching highly skilled, professional men and women become discouraged, burn out and lose sight of the reason they went into the field. There is so much potential within teachers in Title 1 schools waiting to be uncovered or rediscovered.

Define

While it is difficult to pinpoint when our system became entrenched in a deficit mindset, I will offer the publication of A Nation at Risk as being a major catalyst. In 1983, National Commission on Excellence in Education published the report under the leadership of President Reagan. The report painted a dire picture of education in the United States. Just under twenty years later, No Child Left Behind (NCLB), reauthorized the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) in 2001, and continued painting a grim picture of schools. It legislated accountability so that when a school did not meet Adequate Yearly Progress for three years, it was to be closed and turned around, which could include being turned into a Charter School (No Child Left Behind, 2001).

The Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) was signed in 2015 and its regulations replaced No Child Left Behind. However, it is important to note that ESSA does come with the same essentialist priorities, calling for College and Career Ready Standards (U.S. Department of Education, 2015). Due to legislation, there is increasing top-down pressure for schools to improve. Improvement is measured through testing. The testing is used to evaluate student performance, teacher performance, school performance, district performance and state performance (Schul, 2011). Deficit thinking (Garcia & Guerra, 2004) is rampant with administration and teachers, as everyone is looking to blame.

Ideate

Calvert (2016) says, “The heart of the matter is this: For many teachers, professional development has long been an empty exercise in compliance, one that falls short of its objectives and rarely improves professional practice” (p.2). He goes on to suggest that teacher agency is what is missing in professional development. Teachers need the opportunity to drive their own professional learning and contribute to the development of other teachers in the building. Honoring teacher agency is an opportunity for schools to reimagine the way professional development is typically done (Calvert, 2016). “Research shows that being attentive to personal and positive aspects of work is more effective with respect to performance than focusing on the prevention of negative aspects such as stress and burnout” (Schaufeli & Van Rhenen, 2006 as cited in Zwart, Korthagen, & Attema-Noordewier, 2014, p. 580).

Transformative Professional Learning Opportunity

Currently, deficit-thinking is the driver of reform in most Title 1 Schools. Instead of letting the needs drive development in a school, Appreciative Inquiry could transform a school through the strengths that lie within it. Cooperrider, D.L., & Whitney, D. (1999) originally came up with five principles of Appreciative Inquiry: Constructionist, Simultaneity, Anticipatory, Poetic, and Positive.

The Constructionist Principle:
- Words Create Worlds
- Reality, as we know it, is a subjective vs. objective state and is socially created through language and conversations.
The Simultaneity Principle:
- Inquiry Creates Change:
- Inquiry is an intervention.
- The moment we ask a question, we begin to create a change. “The questions we ask are fateful.”
The Poetic Principle:
- We Can Choose What We Study
- Teams and organizations, like open books, are endless sources of study and learning. What we choose to study makes a difference. It describes – even creates – the world as we know it.
The Anticipatory Principle:
- Image Inspires Action
- Human systems move in the direction of their images of the future. The more positive and hopeful the image of the future, the more positive the present-day action.
The Positive Principle:
- Positive Questions Lead to Positive Change
- Momentum for [small or] large-scale change requires large amounts of positive affect and social bonding. This momentum is best generated through positive questions that amplify the positive core (The Center for Appreciative Inquiry, 2016).

My Role

I am a practitioner who yearns to see transformational change. I have devoted myself as an educator to serving students and teachers in, primarily, Title 1 schools. In my current position, Gifted and Talented Teacher on Special Assignment, I can create and deliver professional learning opportunities. I also work closely with Title 1 schools to identify our underrepresented gifted population.

This plan is one that I will bring to leaders working in professional learning. I would like to collaborate, revise and redesign this series with others for the good of our students. Ultimately, this could be the seed of an idea leading to my doctoral research project. It feels like the beginning of a powerful professional development experience that I would like to collaboratively develop with others.

Prototype

In this phase, I am designing the professional learning experience for a Title 1 school. It is a prototype because it is flexible and open to revision. The prototype series is also only partially complete. This is intentional because I envision completing this series collaboratively with other professionals.

Planned Intervention and Rationale

The purpose of this professional development series is to, first, serve as a model for transforming professional development in Title1 schools. The transformation will be from planning professional development based on needs to planning professional development based on strengths, reaffirming teachers as professionals in the field. By focusing on strengths, the goals are to foster collaboration and teacher agency. The series is blended with face-to-face professional development, independent reflection and flipped lessons. Every bit of the planning is a model of engaging collaborative strategies, technology integration and reflection activities that teachers can then turn around and use with their students in the classroom.

Wiggins' and McTighe's (2011) Backwards Design model was adopted and simplified by SD 27J. The expectation is all lesson planning be done using G.E.L.: Goals, Evidence and Learning Experiences, so I use this design framework when writing professional development. There are three goals for the series: (a) Transform professional development from a deficit to strengths-based focus, (b) Cultivate teacher agency and (c) Collaborate to actualize the Tenets of the Thinking classroom. The Thinking Classroom Tenets, also known as future-ready skills are:

Students doing the thinking and owning the learning
Students understanding relevance to encourage real-life application
Students making connections
Students interacting with learning and engaged in the learning process
Teachers providing authentic practice to engage the learners in thinking
Teachers including time for thinking and reflecting
Intentional planning of learning experiences
Inclusion of activities that offer sense making and problem solving
Questioning and discussions that spur critical thinking
A safe environment that encourages and embraces risk taking (SD 27J, n.d.).

The evidence of learning will be through teacher learning blogs and final learning exhibitions. Colorado’s Teaching Quality Standards will be the assessment tool used by teachers and evaluators of the learning (CDE, n.d.). Finally, there will be many learning experiences. Teachers will participate in independent reflection, digital lessons, and flipped lessons, providing an overall blended experience with technology. The first lesson will establish purpose and will center around John Hattie’s TEDx Talk (2013). Teachers will set up a Blogger account and blog throughout the learning experience creating a portfolio of learning. This will be the individual reflection woven throughout the series. Teachers will also experience a digital lesson about Flow and a flipped lesson on appreciative inquiry.

Strengths-Based Professional Development Series

Each of the learning experiences described below will be detailed in lesson plan format with the needed digital tools on the website that I am constructing as the Tech Stretch accompaniment.

Establish The Why

The first learning experience in the series is to establish what Simon Sinek would call The Why, or the purpose of the entire professional learning series (2009). John Hattie is known for his meta-analysis of the research in the field. His TEDx Talk, “Why are so many of our teachers and schools so successful?” breaks down the research on what makes an impact and what does not make much impact. “The power of passion and the teachers’ collective expertise” is what Hattie found as the commonalities of what does make an impact (2013, 13:25).

In this first face-to-face professional development, the goal will be to establish teacher agency and the role of collaboration in student learning. The evidence of the learning will be through the discussion and in the exit tickets. Teachers will begin by discussing the question “Why are so many of our teachers and schools so successful?” before watching the TEDx Talk by John Hattie https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rzwJXUieD0U (2013). They will record their ideas on a chart paper in small groups. Next, teachers will watch the video while recording thoughts, questions and connections. Finally, the teachers will engage in a Conver-Stations discussion, described in the lesson plan (Gonzalez, 2017). To assess the impact of the day, teachers will write on an exit ticket the answer to two questions: (a) Did your answer change to the original question? and (b) If you answered yes, what do you now think the answer is to “Why are so many of our teachers and schools so successful?” (Hattie, 2013).

Professional Learning Blog

The next activity will be to establish a professional learning blog. There is an expectation that teachers set a learning goal and document that learning. Traditionally, teachers have journaled about their professional growth in a Google Document. Instead of journaling in a Google Document, teachers will create their own learning blogs. The blogs will be set up to be viewed privately by the teacher and his/her administrator, but he/she may choose to make it public at any time based on the district’s guidelines. The goals are assessed using Colorado’s Teaching Quality Standards (CDE, n.d.). Teachers will independently set up their blogs using a video tutorial on the website being created for the tech stretch. The video tutorial explaining how to set up a blog on Blogger will be a part of the technology support.

What is Flow?

The next lesson will look at Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s idea of Flow. This will be a collaborative lesson accessed asynchronously. Teachers will engage in the TED-Ed Lesson on Flow. They will answer questions and engage in discussion with colleagues about the topic through the TED-Ed Lesson platform. The purpose of this lesson is to understand what Flow is and how finding their Flow can optimize their classroom.

Appreciative Inquiry

The lesson on Appreciative Inquiry will be flipped. Teachers will watch a video on appreciative inquiry, read an article and come to the face-to-face development ready to discuss the first Thinking Classroom Tenet, “Students doing the thinking and owning the learning.” Teachers will work in grade level teams or individually to find an article, video or blog demonstrating the first tenet. Teachers will then engage in a jigsaw activity explaining what they learned from the resource. All resources will be documented on the blog.

Technology Integration

Technology integration is blended throughout this learning experience. It is blended for transformational and practical purposes. Sometimes, the two even overlap. The technology integration is to provide new learning experiences for teachers to deepen professional understanding, enable reflection and catalyze collaboration.

The entire professional learning plan will be available on a website. This will provide availability and access for use. Digital tools, discussion forums and lessons will also be found on this site. On the website, all lessons will be found. The lessons can also be used as agendas for the professional development. The blended learning experiences found on this website will include:

A website documenting the professional development series
An infographic overview of the series
A face-to-face lesson on John Hattie’s TEDx Talk
A video tutorial for setting up a blog using blogger
An asynchronous, collaborative TED-Ed Lesson on Flow
A Flipped Lesson on Appreciative Inquiry
More to come

Concluding Thoughts

The testing of this series will happen next year or the year after that once the design is completed. I will revisit this field report once I have been able to further develop this professional development series. The impact of the series will be found in three places: the professional growth blogs done by the teachers, the teachers’ self-assessment of standard acquisition and their final learning exhibition display.

My next step will be to bring the idea and the plan to our professional learning team. From there, I hope to brainstorm, further develop and implement this idea. I will also be talking with my mentor, Dr. Connie Fulmar, about the idea and the possibility of pursuing it as a doctoral research project. In anticipation that this could happen, I will begin focusing on this topic as I choose articles to read and analyze in our research methods courses.

It is my greatest hope to collaboratively and positively impact the world of teaching and learning. My professional mission is to enable each student to defy expectations. At this point in my career, I see great potential to touch the lives of many more students through their teachers.

References

Calvert, L. (2016). Moving from compliance to agency: What teachers need to make professional learning work. Oxford, OH: Learning Forward and NCTAF. Retrieved from: https://nctaf.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/NCTAF-Learning-Forward_Moving-from-Compliance-to-Agency_What-Teachers-Need-to-Make-Professional-Learning-Work.pdf

CDE. (n.d.) A common vision of great teaching, Colorado teaching quality standards. Colorado Department of Education. Retrieved from: https://www.cde.state.co.us/educatoreffectiveness/teacherqualitystandardsreferenceguide

Center for Appreciative Inquiry (2016). Principles of Appreciative Inquiry. Retrieved from: https://www.centerforappreciativeinquiry.net/more-on-ai/principles-of-appreciative-inquiry/

Cooperrider, D.L., & Whitney, D. (1999). A positive revolution in change: Appreciative Inquiry. Taos, NM: Corporation for Positive Change.

d. school (2010). An introduction to design thinking process guide. Palo Alto, CA: Hasso Plattner Institute of Design at Stanford. Retrieved from: https://dschool-old.stanford.edu/sandbox/groups/designresources/wiki/36873/attachments/74b3d/ModeGuideBOOTCAMP2010L.pdf?sessionID=573efa71aea50503341224491c862e32f5edc0a9

Garcia, S. B. & Guerra, P. L. (2004). Deconstructing deficit thinking: Working with educators to create for equitable learning environments. Education and Urban Society, 36, 2.

Gonzalez, J. (2017). The big list of class discussion strategies. Cult of Pedagogy. Retrieved from: https://www.cultofpedagogy.com/speaking-listening-techniques/

Hattie, J. (2013). Why are so many of our teachers and schools so successful? Retrieved from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rzwJXUieD0U

Kozol, J. (1991). Savage inequalities: children in America’s schools. New York, NY. Crown Pub.

IDEO (2012). Design thinking for educators. IDEO LLC. Retrieved from: http://www.designthinkingforeducators.com/

National Commission on Excellence in Education. (1983). A nation at risk. Retrieved from: https://www2.ed.gov/pubs/NatAtRisk/risk.html

No Child Left Behind Act (2001). P.L. 107-110, 20 U.S.C. § 6319.

Schul, J. (2011). Unintended consequences: Fundamental flaws that plague the No Child Left Behind Act authors. Ohio Northern University. Retrieved from https://nau.edu/uploadedFiles/Academic/COE/About/Projects/Unintended%20Consequences.pdf

SD 27J (n.d.). The tenets of the thinking classroom. School District 27J. Retrieved from: https://www.sd27j.org/Page/1233

Sinek, S. (2009). How great leaders inspire action. TED Talk. Retrieved from: https://www.ted.com/talks/simon_sinek_how_great_leaders_inspire_action

U.S. Department of Education. (2012). The federal role in education. Retrieved from: http://www2.ed.gov/about/overview/fed/role.html

U.S. Department of Education. (2015). Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA). Retrieved from: http://www.ed.gov/essa?src=rn

Wiggins, G., & McTighe, J. (2011). The Understanding by Design guide to creating high-quality units. Alexandria, VA: ASCD.

Zwart, R. C., Korthagen, F. A., & Attema-Noordewier, S. (2014). A strength-based approach to teacher professional development. Professional Development in Education, 41 (3), 579-596. doi:10.1080/19415257.2014.919341