Professional+Conversations+to+Promote+Teacher+Learning

Talking about Teaching: Professional Conversations to Promote Teacher Learning

Charlotte Danielson Charlotte_Danielson@hotmail.com @http://www.danielsongroup.org/

When it comes to teacher evaluation, they don’t really want anything from you. Their role is passive. If we are serious about conversations to promote learning we need to learn how to have those conversations to learn how to maximize that.

“Your organization functions and grows through conversations. The quality of those conversations determines how smart your organization is.” David Perkins on Conversation

Contributors to Professional Learning • An environment of trust • Self-assessment • Reflection on practice • Professional conversation • A community of professional inquiry

It’s part of every teacher’s obligation to be engaged in a need to teach better. No matter how good a lesson is it can always be better.

Reflection on Trust Consider your professional (and personal) relationships. What behavior contributes to a sense of trust? What makes you feel safe in the relationship?

• Consistency • Maintaining confidentiality • Professional competence • Admitting mistakes • Protecting vulnerability

Opportunities for Professional Conversation • Formal reflective conversations, following an observation, associated with performance appraisal with an evaluator (a variation; a conversation with a mentor, in “preparation” for a formal observation) o Give the teacher your notes for accuracy o Compare notes between teacher and observer according to frameworks- standards based, evidence based • Coaching conversations, with mentors, peer coaches, or administrators. (Cognitive coaching) • Informal professional conversations, following an un-announced, “drop-in” observation o Drop-in, now what? Compare 30 min. to 30 sec. observation. From the standpoint of accuracy, one is as good as the other. How frame the conversation? Who sets the agenda?

Conversation Skills • These are used in all types of conversations • Establish report • Active listening • Linguistic skills o Paraphrasing o Probing o Clarifying • Inviting thinking (tell me some ideas you have, tell what made you decide to go that route) • Probing silence

Limitations of Feedback We should eliminate feedback in these types of conversations, with experienced teachers anyway. • If we regard teaching as a cognitive activity then these conversations about teaching have to be about cognition. They have to be about the thinking. • Feedback as normally offered feels judgmental, even condescending, patronizing • Meaningful conversations about teaching are centered on asking questions and solving problems, rather than on feedback. They convey professional respect.

Reflection Consider the issue of feedback in professional conversations: to what extent do you agree that reliance on feedback undermines professional respect?

TIP: Teachers place questions in the envelopes outside the door of the classroom for administrators to look for.

Feedback when given at the request of a teacher is highly respectful.

When teachers are asking for feedback they are asking for validation. Just because it’s good, doesn’t mean it is as good as can be. When you ask questions, it is still feedback if it is an honest question. A question isn’t honest when it feels like there is a right answer.

Power and Leadership • Teachers and administrators in schools hold unequal amounts of power • In performance appraisal, the “buck” stops with the admin, but even conversations associated with performance appraal can emphasize self-assessment and reflection on practice • School a professional organizations, can and should create other models of the exercise of power and leadership.

…the traditional hierarchy of the school is upset. It changes from a fixed form, with superintendents and principals at the top and teachers and students at the bottom, to one that is in flux. The only constant is that neither superintendents and principals nor teachers and students are at the apex; that position is reserved for the ideas….” Thomas S

The “Big Idea,” Grounded in Research • The nature of learning o It is done by the learner o Involves active intellectual engagement • The nature of student motivation: o The nature of student motivation: o The need for human connection o The drive for competence and mastery o The need for autonomy and choice o Students’ intellectual curiosity • The “entity” of human intelligence o Dweck • On end of continuum, way on how we regard intelligence. Schools view it as a fixed entity. You’re born with so much, or intelligence is a trait that everyone can get more of through hard work, application, etc. Smart is something that you can actually become. Students who hold the view of malleable intelligence, end up being more resilient, perseverant, more successfully between transitions from elementary to middle school. Implication on how teachers and adults respond to student work. Praise them in the terms of what strategies that used.