Lately, I have had a number of conversations with colleagues about the value of consistent messaging for teaching and learning. These conversations evolved from discussion about our awareness of the language moves we make with our learners. We had been talking about a common language for learning. The feeling was that if we were consistent with our language choices across disciplines and years of education, our students might be more able to transfer learning from one context to the next. Oddly, perhaps, this got me thinking about McDonald’s. Specifically, what might schools learn from a global fast-food chain like McDonald’s?
Walk into any McDonald’s, anywhere in the world, and you know where you are and what to expect. For the homesick traveller, the consistency of McDonald’s’ design aesthetic is comforting. You know how this is going to work, you understand what to do, and you know what you are likely to get. McDonald’s requires minimal cognitive load on the customer’s behalf.
Compare this to the daily experience of our average student, especially a student who moves from class to class and teacher to teacher during their day. They experience school as a series of mostly disconnected blocks of time, often across a variety of learning spaces. With each ringing of the bell, they move from one learning environment to another, and as they do, they must shift gears and adapt to fresh expectations and norms. Some things, such as school values, stay the same. Many things change or are experienced in ways sufficiently different as to require translation and reinterpretation. In one class, they are expected to construct their written responses using the TEEL (topic sentence, elaboration, evidence, link) paragraph structure; in the next it is PEEL (point, evidence, explanation, link). One class requires hands raised for oral responses; the next deploys a ‘No Hands’ policy. Their maths teacher demands equations are written with lead pencil only; their computer science teacher wants colour coding of algorithms. And then, just as we get the hang of all this, we advance one year and everything changes again.
Our current model requires our students to navigate this varied and shifting landscape. Their teachers are often unaware of how the lack of consistency is experienced or the challenges that it brings. Some teachers and school administrators have tried to remedy this reality by inviting teachers to follow a student for a day. The experience can be confronting on many levels. Spend a day living as a student, and one of the first things you notice is how much of the day is spent sitting and passively listening. The second is how jarring the transitions are and how much of a cognitive reset each ringing of the bell requires.
What if we borrowed from McDonald’s? What if the challenge of constantly adjusting to a new learning environment was removed from our students?
Doing this would require the development of a school-wide learning design and language. It would require for many schools a dramatic increase in the level of communication that occurs between teachers across year groups and faculties. We would need to share our practices and purposes and, with an understanding of this, synthesise a whole school language of learning. Such an agreed language would encompass not only the vocabulary we use but the whole complex of messaging systems that our learners experience from the design of our classrooms to the routines we deploy.
Such a proposal is likely to be unpopular with many educators. Such thinking impacts on our personal agency as creative professionals. It potentially erodes individuality and replaces it with collectivism. Emotion and culture are linked, and change of culture frequently invokes an emotional response. “A person’s sense of identity is partly determined by his or her values, which can mesh or clash with organisational values” (Smollan & Sayers 2009 p439) Smollan & Sayers found that when cultural change is sought in a school, and it is not viewed as fitting with one’s values, or it calls those values into question emotional responses such as fear, anger or sadness are common. Change in the name of consistency is seen by many to dilute opportunities for self-expression and professional freedom rather than a genuine effort to enable learning across disciplines and time. To extend on our comparison between school and McDonalds, would a chef be excited to flip burgers?
With the likely concerns of teachers and the challenges confronting learners left to navigate a shifting landscape, is there a way forward? Change is always challenging, and any change to culture is doubly so. Smollan and Sayers indicate the importance of understanding the socially constructed nature of identity and the potentially negative impact that change can have on this for individuals, ‘that change ‘dislodges’ identity and leads to anxiety and grieving’ (Smollan & Sayers. 2009 p439) and that this can result in resistance to change.
Research on change management point to certain conditions which might support the introduction of new methods and ideas. With a compelling vision in mind and an inspiring launch behind us, as Kotter & Cohen would advocate, leadership might shift from an inspirational model to what Perkins (2003) describes as an ‘inquiry-centered leadership’ style. In this model, the group’s leadership acts as a facilitator for developing the group’s collective knowledge processing. In such a model, challenges are discovered by the group collectively, and solutions allowed to emerge from within rather than top-down. Such an approach can be empowering and support teacher agency. Given the current pace of change within education, it can be easy for teachers to see change as something that is constantly inflicted upon them. By shifting the locus of control away from external forces such as a new language and culture of learning becomes possible, one where change is a response to opportunities identified by the teacher.
Research by Gibson-Langford and Laycock (2006) shows ‘that teachers like to learn together through informal knowledge creation and sharing opportunities characterised by critical dialogue, frequent feedback, critical reflection and appreciative behaviours’. This emergent inquiry approach is elaborated on by Burnes, who adds that ‘It also sees change as a process of learning and not just a method of changing organisational structures and practices’ (Burnes. 1996 p13) - Such an approach to change and particularly to the introduction of a new curriculum is more likely to allow teachers to see how it will fit with their existing beliefs about education and how it might benefit their learners. Providing an environment characterised by dialogue and learning aimed at developing understandings of the curriculum and then using this to guide individuals and small teams towards embracing its affordances in their own way can maintain agency and autonomy.
The change models outlined above might offer a practical solution to the dilemma of moving towards a more consistent language for learning within our schools. If the consistency evolves from the language moves and pedagogies already favoured by teachers, then they are more likely to be embraced. The result might be an experience of school that is less jarring for students.
By Nigel Coutts
Burnes, Bernard (2010) Call for Papers: Why Does Change Fail and What Can We Do About It?, Journal of Change Management, 10 (2), pp. 241 — 242
Gibson-Langford, L. & Laycock, D. (2007) So they can fly . . . building a community of inquirers Accessed online 8.10.2016 https://pypchat.wikispaces.com/file/view/So+They+Can+Fly+-+Building+a+Community+of+Learners+copy.pdf
Kotter, J & Cohen, D. (2002). The heart of change: Real-life stories of how people change their organisations. Boston, Mass: Harvard Business School Press, pp. 1–14
Perkins, D. (2003). King Arthur’s round table (1st ed.). New York: Wiley.
Smollan, R & Sayers, J. (2009) Organizational Culture, Change and Emotions: A Qualitative Study, Journal of Change Management, 9:4, 435-457