Sentiments On Common Sense

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I don’t often get a chance to quote Arnold Schwarzenegger but I will today. This from an edweek.org article:

“How can kids compete in the global economy when the information the schools feed them is stale and is outdated and is old?

Then, while minding my own business at home on a lovely Saturday in Shanghai, one of the teachers at our school sent me this link to an article stating that 1:1 programs are only as good as their teachers. The article titled, “One to One computing programs only as effective as their teacher” by Meris Stansbury states that:

Not surprisingly, the researchers say the most important factor of all is the teaching practices of instructors—suggesting school laptop programs are only as effective as the teachers who apply them.

Let’s apply some common sense here:

1.  Students need up to date resources.  Not “stale” or “outdated” ones.
2.  Students need effective teachers with effective teaching practices.

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Again, not surprisingly The authors of the Texas study conclude:

“Respondents at higher implementing schools reported that committed leaders, thorough planning, teacher buy-in, preliminary professional development for teachers, and a commitment to the transformation of student learning were keys to their successful implementation” of the state’s Technology Immersion Project.

Let’s add another layer of common sense:

1.  Students need up to date resources.  Not “stale” or “outdated” ones.
2.  Students need effective teachers with effective teaching practices.
3. COMMITTED LEADERS!

Another educator listed in the same article states:

“In our 1-to-1 program … we put a big emphasis on project-based learning; otherwise, the laptop is no more than an expensive notepad. … Research needs to show the effects of this different style of teaching in terms of student engagement, motivation, and so-called 21st-century skills. The subject matters themselves don’t have as much room for improvement,”

Ok…once again,some common sense here:

1.  Students need up to date resources.  Not “stale” or “outdated” ones.
2.  Students need effective teachers with effective teaching practices.
3. COMMITTED LEADERS!
4.  STUDENT CENTERED learning approaches.

Then they state in the article:

Given the importance of teachers in the success of school laptop initiatives, it’s no surprise that “teacher preparation through [ongoing professional development] was important for successful implementation,” write Bebell and O’Dwyer. “As 1-to-1 programs become more popular, the quality and depth of preparation that teachers receive for implementation will become a central predictor of program success.”

They go on to say:

“Buying laptops is the easiest part of the process, but too often school districts neglect such fundamental items as providing initial and ongoing professional development for the teachers and providing sufficient tech support,” Thompson said. “Taking a true TCO [total cost of ownership] approach would avoid many of the mistakes, as schools often do not have a good grasp of the real costs of starting and continuing a 1-to-1 program. And part of the TCO approach should be setting measurable program objectives and then doing formative and summative program evaluations, whose results are made known to everyone to provide a feedback loop in the continuous planning and re-planning that characterizes successful programs.”

I probably will have to stop here but… some more common sense:

1.  Students need up to date resources.  Not “stale” or “outdated” ones.
2.  Students need effective teachers with effective teaching practices.
3. COMMITTED LEADERS!
4.  STUDENT CENTERED learning approaches.
5. ONGOING Professional Development!

Schools moving to a 1:1 program needs to read this article. It is a great summary of issues. I believe I have only scratched the surface.

In closing, I draw your attention to a quote from Tammy Stephens, CEO of the Stephens Group LLC, a private investment firm, is working on a dissertation that focuses on the evolution of transformational communication patterns in 1-to-1 computing environments. She has been evaluating a 1-to-1 program in the Milwaukee Public Schools for the past three years.

According to Stephens, changing teaching practices to incorporate 21st-century skills with laptops “is definitely an evolution, and it takes time for teacher practices to evolve.”

Technorati Tags: 1:1, PD, Professional Development, resources, teachers, k-12, leadership, eschoolnews,

Having worked in two schools in the past 9 years that are behind significant firewalls run by the government, I feel I have enough experience to write this blog post…. at least from the educational leadership side of the conversation.  In surveying the countries around the world that filter and block the internet, Saudia Arabia and my current location here in Shanghai are near the top.  In Saudi it was a bit easier to operate as we were able to get some satellite systems put in place to speed our upload and download speeds, and provide our students with access to the information systems that were blocked. A well placed dish behind the A/C systems allowed us just the right amount of access for our little school. There is a different access issue in my current country.  But, no matter where you are and what the mission and vision of your school is, there is ways to give your students access to Web 2.0 tools that are now present on the read/write web.  Now that g0-0g-le has left the country of my residence, I am getting more and more questions about how we run our student services.

To me it is like playing on the beach with all of that sand, or in your own sandbox. The sandbox, while a bit confined, allows you to build castles, dig holes and feel the grit in your hands just like you do at the beach. That sand is just like that at the beach and people on the outside of the box can reach in and touch the sand too, but whatever is inside that sandbox cannot be blocked by those problematic firewalls. When I have spoken to my community about dealing with the firewall and access issues, I always say, “We are just going to build our own virtual web 2.0 sandbox and give our kids access to similar tools, and access to a global audience.

Thus we have done or are in the process of doing the the following:

• Student email: We established our own domain name which allows us to monitor, administer and maintain a email webpresence. The key is the domain name which, if monitored carefully will not be a problem for the firewall.
• A blog installation at a local level.  We currently use WordPressMU and have found great success with the installation. Our school built this from the beginning and now has hundreds of students and teachers blogging as a part of the educational process.
• Web publishing space for teachers and students will soon be the norm. As a Mac school, the students and teachers will begin using iWeb to create their own sites.  It is easy, fast and allows for a global audience.
• In place of Flickr and YouTube we have established our own installation to serve and share our own videos and photos. This customize installation was based on some opensource software.  The key here is having strong technical support.
• Moodle- by serving this installation on-site with strong technical and educational support has helped launch many classroom programs toward a blended learning environment.
• Social networking alternatives such as Elgg can provide schools with that all important methodology that engage students in an online social environment.
• Up next—our own wiki installation.  There a many alternatives out there, but this is something that you will likely want to spend somemoney on to make work well.
• Locally hosted academic databases are the norm, not the exception. This gives the student access to online data but without the challenge of slow or filtered access.
• Locally hosted student information systems and parent communications systems, we use PowerSchool, but there are many alternatives. With the exception of our school’s webpage, everything is hosted locally so we don’t deal with the issues of access and internet reliability. If there is a problem, generally we have only ourselves to blame.
• Calendar servers and internal email systems with more than ample storage. Again, strong technical support is important, but even more important is a vision based committment to providing resources to the professionals in the school.
• Off-site backup and mirroring setup. This seems so natural and important, but interestingly enough this sort of setup is not considered essential.

The key to the list above is targeted staff development with an adopted set of tools. With a variety of tools like you see above, it is about choices, continual support and technical expertise. Living in a firewalled country is a challenge, but I also feel like our students are getting a great educational experience that allows them to learn the skills of web use and practice digital citizenship in our sandbox of tools without the intervention of a government entity.

Technorati Tags: shanghai, Saudi Arabia, internet access, web 2.0, digital literacy, student learning

Photos courtesy of http://www.flickr.com/photos/55934520@N00/32962238 and http://www.flickr.com/photos/55934520@N00/33546752

This entry has been cross posted to LeaderTalk.

As I work this academic year in rolling out a 1:1 program, I have thought long and hard about the next steps after the initial “out of the box” experience has worn off and the machines find their place in the daily lives of the students and their teachers.  Now in month 6 of the implementation, I am faced with some decision making about the next steps to drive home the initial success of our program.  Success, in this case, is a feel of “normalcy” around the school with technology.  The networks is working well. Service centers are up and running.  Teachers expect things to work most of the time and indeed, I think they do.  They are also meeting the daily challenge of using the machines in activities and units daily.  Technology standards are being met more readily.  Students are expecting to use their machines for projects, research, lessons in all subject areas.  Again… the normalcy of the implementation is beginning to set in.

Most recently though I  have struggled just a bit with the integration of the walk through protocols we have established at our school and the clear, consistent identification of quality technology use by teachers and students.  I believe that many administrators and supervisors are still struggling with clarity around the NETS-S and NETS-T and the identification of specific examples where and when the standards are being implemented in classrooms.  To the neophyte technology user, any technology use must be good technology use. We all know this is wrong!

I will be rolling out for my leadership team this next week the ISTE Classroom Observation Tool (ICOT). We will have them share specific examples of the “look-for” clues are to determine appropriate, strong and progressive use of technology in our classrooms.  We will do side-by-side walkthroughs to develop our common understandings around the use of this very useful framework.  It should be noted that the ICOT tool online is currently out of date as ISTE has not updated it for the updated NETS-T but that is an easy trade off for the other parts of the tool, and I (heaven forbid) even PRINTED it out for them to look at, pull apart and examine the sheer genius that is this observation tool.

The tool asks the observer to evaluate:

• the physical layout of the room
• student groupings
• the role the teacher is playing
• learning activities that are being used
• the essentiality of technology to the activity or lesson
• the specific technology tools being used by the teacher
• the specific technology tools being used by the students
• The NETS-Teachers being addressed (see attached)
• Total time for technology use during the walkthrough and…

A Three Minute Chart is provided to track technology:

• Use by Students (For learning or not?)
• Use by Teacher (for learning or not?)

I believe this framework has tremendous potential to help educational leaders as we learn to train our eye to the key components of technology use in our classrooms and make it possible for us to more effectively lead technology integration at our school.  In the course of classroom observations school leaders make hundreds, if not thousands of professional judgments every week.  This tool guides the user to structure those judgments more precisely and I also believe that over time the administrators will be able to use this information to make technology expectations more ubiquitous in our organization and judgments based on data gathered over time.

The fact is that we are at the point next academic year where the communication of expectations for teachers in the use of technology is going to be more important that the actual implementation and training of the use of technology tools.  It is obvious that we have got to ramp up our expectations (with continued, persistent, consistent and insistent professional development support) or we will plateau and that could sound the death knell for our 1:1 program.  Value added results are expected and if we don’t deliver the program is done.

As part of the increase in expectations, I am hoping that next year we can do an all out ICOT observation month to gather school wide data for technology use in our classrooms.  This will indeed bring forward the power of the NETS-A, and show the school the importance of implementation attention for systematic improvement, visionary leadership and a focus on professional practice.

Technorati Tags: tech plan, implementation, PD, proD, professional development, 1:1, technology

In my last post, I noted that I’d been saving this bookmark in my computer for quite a while.  Sean Nash from the blog nashworld wrote in July about the “Four Pillars of Technology Integration.” I wrote last week about our experiences with our Challenge Based Learning workshops that we were hosting in the month of September.  Today, I would like to explore the ideas that Sean has written about focusing on “Unfiltered, Ubiquitous Access”.

Sean spends a lot of time and lines writing about the requirements of the law in his state. The US has a lot of people telling each other what kids should and could see in their school networks, all the while the little darlings are going home and REALLY wanting to explore those sites because there are adults who have told them NOT to go there. Sigh… same story now as it was in the old days when boys would cruise the magazine racks for the occasional adult reading material so easily in their reach and so easily accessible.  Same holds true today.  But… that is not what I want to reflect on here.   Instead I would like to write about Sean’s comments around the ubiquity of the tools that may or may not be blocked in his district. The fact is that we all have a goal in our technology implementations that Sean describes so well.  He states:

Soon after access is all around you, it doesn’t even feel like “technology,” it just feels like the way things are done.  This is a good thing, for when technology becomes invisible, we can finally focus on the value added from new uses of these tools.  The world is moving quickly toward wireless access in all corners.

In my schools, we are now operating on a new wireless network and finding that it has freed us up in so many new ways.  Truthfully, the power of this tool alone is worth the price of educational admission at most schools, where roaming bands of learners find that access is found in any corner of the campus. We worked to ensure that the access is fully realized in the fields, cafeterias, student lounges and playgrounds with the realization that we need to have access where the students are located and stop worrying so much about locating the students in a lab or classroom.  By developing that freedom of space, you also free up the time of your community to learn and grow in any space and at any time.

Ultimately though it does come down to getting the machines in the hands of the students.  Sean writes:

If your school isn’t at a 1:1 ratio of students to laptop computers… and the students don’t take them home with them night by night, all year long… then you don’t yet have an ideal learning environment for 2009 in my opinion.

If you are a regular reader of my blog then you know how I feel.  Frankly speaking, I believe I have staked a lot of my career on the belief that a learner needs the tools of thought, voice, action and deed.  For a construction worker a shovel may be the tool of his trade, or another it may be a ruler, level or even his voice. For a learner, the tool of information access, information creation and information processing is currently a laptop computer. I cannot even imagine getting my work done without it.  I also have to ask how a student can get through school without the tool that virtually every adult uses day in and day out. Computers, whether on a desk or in a bag, are here to stay and getting more and more accessible each and every day.

In our CBL workshops we spend some time talking about the effects that the computers in each student’s hands will have on the working relationship that teachers and students develop over time.  The fact is that by giving students access like a laptop will certain democratize and “flatten” the social structure of a classroom. All of a sudden the teacher is not the ONLY resource to student for knowledge and in fact, the knowledge held in the head of an instructor may be “dated” or even wrong.  This, of course, moves all conversations to classroom management.  Frankly speaking I have been struggling finding resources for teachers on classroom management that will make them feel empowered and more comfortable.  Some of the more sage instructors will tell me (and their colleagues) that “good classroom management is good classroom management, laptops or not”. 
While I want to believe that is mostly true, I do think there will be some “figuring out” how to make it all work.  Thanks to my friend Blair Peterson, I was sent to the Friday Institute for Educational Innovations which is coordinating a study of 1:1 classrooms in North Carolina.  I found some great resources there and a great NING that is growing up and taking shape.  Take a look!

Laptop Friendly photo courtesy of http://www.flickr.com/photos/81374383@N00/521630871
Technorati Tags: FIEI, Friday Institute of Educational Innovations, 1:1, Unfiltered Access, Ubiquitious Access

I’ve been saving this bookmark in my computer for quite a while.  Sean Nash from the blog “Nashworld” wrote July about the “Four Pillars of Technology Integration.” and has created a very nice graphic to go along with the post (noting there that he spent too much time on the graphic).  I on the other hand will use it here (to the left) with FULL attribution!  Thanks Sean! Please check out the post!

What I want to write about today though is his initial insights into technological transformation. We worked through some training with our teachers over the past two weeks focusing on what we tried to represent as Challenge Based Learning to our teaching community.  The idea, sprouting from input from Apple Distinguished Educators who are part of our teaching staff, grew into a two day experience for all teachers in the classrooms which will be part of our 1:1 laptop implementation this year.  All in all, the workshops are going well, and have show to have teachers experience what I expected.   Some teachers to be struggled with technology. Some teachers found initial, early and dynamic success. Some teachers rebelled against the idea of the computers taking over their classrooms (and thus their lives). Other embraced the ideas shared and discussed and will be successful right away.  I also continue to believe that success will find us in our classrooms around this program due to our classroom teacher’s drive to use all the tools that are in their reach and the students love of the digital environment that they live in right now.  I believe our school has made some strong, agressive and noteworthy steps to get from what Mr. Nash states as “behind the curve” of technological transformation and instead get out in front of the crowd to distinguish our program from those that have come before us.

What initally connected to me in his post has nothing to do with the specifics of the Four Pillars of Technology integration, but instead it was his statement about the filters one applies as we consider as we retool schools along the lines of technological transformation.  Sean states:

If there is no way to see any of the individual trees in a forest, you are likely going to be forced to start your mission with a whole-forest view to begin with.  This is not a bad thing.

He then outlines two important thoughts:

1) You don’t need a flashlight.  It’s not that dark in there anymore.  Trust that there are others who have proceeded down this path before you, and they have learned many important lessons.  Collaborate.  Learn from their successes and failures.  Do not go it alone.  Resist the temptation to slap a digital device in the hands of each student and call it success.  Have a plan.

2) Rarely do we get to make decisions with the clarity that a little distance provides.  Take your time (but hurry).  Ask yourself: what can we do with these new tools available today that we couldn’t do before?  If we could remake our curriculum any way we wanted, how would we do it?  Think transformation of the way teaching and learning is done in your district, as opposed to integration into it as it exists.

This is just the message I wanted to have the teachers EXPERIENCE in the workshops we have been providing. That’s right… EXPERIENCE.  If we spend time taling at the issue (which we also did a very, very small amount of in the two days together), we miss our own point.  Frankly, I am a strong believer in the common sense approach that says that you can tell people things like this over and over, but as I learned in “Influencer” if you show and demonstrate, rather than tell will garner fuller more expansive results in our efforts.

Thus our results show (after reviewing the progress and the exit survey results) that we did a decent job of addressing the following goals:

1. To provide teachers with the opportunity to become more aware of the power of the laptop computers the students will have full access to through this program.
2. To provide teachers an opportunity to engage in a collaborative and collegial learning experience in the same way the students may engage in our classrooms.
3. To provide the teachers in the 1:1 classrooms time to examine the challenges of classroom management in a technology rich environment and develop thoughtful strategies on how to address these concerns.
4. To provide teachers an understanding of the logistical processes involved in getting technical help, additional resources and integration support at Shanghai American School.

Did we feel like we needed to give out teachers a flashlight like Sean mentions?  No, we did not.  Some, admittedly stumbled around in the dark a bit, but for the most part we met the needs of the groups (which were large and diverse).  We encouraged teachers to “Collaborate.” Some– no most– “Learn(ed) from their successes and failures. Teachers in our school learned that they “Do not (have to)go it alone”. No, we did not “slap a digital device in the hands of each student and call it success.”

Thanks Sean for the inspirational post that helped my reflections. I will reflect more on the remaining part of the post later.

I have written before about my belief that staff development needs to be addressed as a long term effort, and not something that can be taken on as a short term effort to solve a particular problem.

Let’s face facts!  Common Sense tells us that to really learn to do something well, guided practice with a trained expert will result in success far more times than a single “sit and get” lecture of a visit to our local or regional conference. It is how our BRAINS work!

Sure, there are exceptions out there, but teachers who do apply knowledge garnered at a single sit down session are either 1) unusual, 2) probably educational risk takers or 3) a little bit nuts.  Perhaps some of us are a combo of the three, but I won’t write about that today!

Today when I opened my email, I found the digital version of ISTE’s Learning and Leading magazine. In it is an article called “Getting to the Heart of Technology Integration and focuses on the Instructional Technology Resource Teacher Program in the State of Virginia. The article is written by Teresa Coffman, associate professor at the University of Mary Washington.  From what I read of Professor Coffman’s writings, these folks are close to getting it right.  The State Department of Education in Virginia mandates that the 134 school districts in the state employ tech teams built around two key positions.

Those positions are:

1. An ITRT, who is responsible for training teachers to use technoloyg and software effectively, as well as helping teachers integrate that technology into their curricula.
2. A technology support staff persons who is responsible for managing the school’s information network.

From what I read, in the Virginia model the program relies on the collaboration of the classroom teacher and the ITRT.  Wow! The state is mandating that the ITRT and the classroom teachers communicate and strategize the implementation of the technology tools and provide direct support in the classroom environment.

The ITRT staffer has a wide vareity of responsibilities, but some include:

• Modeling instructional strategies for teachers
• Providing direct training and professional development
• Researching technology-based instructional strategies
• Evaluating software and hardware
• Meeting with administrators and content supervisors at the school or district level to coordinate services
• Serve on building and district leadership teams
• Creating and implementing a plan for communication on progress and activities to school faculty and admininstration.
• Maintaining records where and when appropriate to document progress

So… What’s Missing?
Where is the administrator support?  Why is it that the administrators are left off the list? Why does the state not recognize the importance of administrative leadership in the implementation of technology. Nothing will do more to raise the bar at a school level than to hold the administrators responsible for (at the minimum) the NETS-A.  To be fair accountability applied to any member of our learning communities without support of those members, is like taxation without representation.

Let’s just simply add one bullet point:

• Provide direct training, support and professional development to building and district level administration on the building of their digital leadership skills which focuses on the use of technology tools for administrative work and on the evaluation of the use of technology in the classroom programs.

I think that without that step, the $500 million dollars dedicated to this effort will fall well short of the effectiveness that the designers have hoped for in the long term.  The implementation of this program is merely focused on and dependent upon the ITRT position.  The good news here is that Virginia has at least recognized this as a key component.

The article states that:

Of the recommendations that researchers made for the ITRT program’s continued success, perhaps the most compelling was the idea that administrators should become more involved in the program so that they can recognize effective technology use and support their teachers’ integration efforts.

The author goes on to state that:

A Technology Resource Teacher Coaching Academy…. echoed this sentiment. It found variable levels of administrative involvement in the county. Some ITRTs indicated that their administrators provide ample support adn encouragement, and this was both necessary and beneficial.

Necessary and beneficial- yes, I could not agree more. It is in many ways like the air we breath.  It is not only necessary but also beneficial.  Without administrative support, technology integration efforts, no matter how well financed and resourced will struggle and suffer.

An analysis of the program (written in 2007) can be found at this link: http://www.doe.virginia.gov/VDOE/Technology/OET/info_brief_itrt.pdf

Leading and Learning, ISTE, ITRT, Technology Integration Specialists, Administration, Digital Leadership

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I would like to follow up on my post yesterday. I have been doing a lot of thinking how technology builds a new classroom environment.  I use the word “new” very carefully here, in that we have been using tech in classrooms now for quite a while.  Heck… I used computers in my classroom way back in ’87.  That would be a healthy 22 years ago now.   Nonetheless, tech does move the classroom environment toward a more democratic approach with the direction of learning coming from both the adult and the child (or teacher and student).

Silvia Tolisano at the Langwitches blog wrote a great post on the 29th called “Take the Technology out of the Equation”. This post is worth a read if you have not had a chance to work through her thoughts and the links. It is a well written post that goes to the heart of my beliefs and the point of my “micro”-rant from yesterday.  Her wordle from the post is to the upper left of this post.

In the post she asks a series of questions about learning.

They are:

• How do we teach students how to learn?
• How do we motivate and engage learners?
• How do we create a climate where learning is valued, not test scores or a covered text book?

Yesterday I stated that if we as educators are constantly stuck in the learning skills we will never “…be able to drill down deep in our conversations about higher level thinking, collaboration, problem solving and content creation”.

Let’s think hard here.  It really is common sense. To get past the reasons and excuses and the lack of skills by both the teachers and the students (recognizing both as learners) we as school leaders must focus our organizations on learning and the learning process.  I have said in the past and probably will do again and again, that we are denying our students great learning experiences if we remove the technology component from the learning equation. I believe that technology could be the greatest learning tool ever invented, and it really does flatten the instructional process by involving all members of the learning community in the process.  By gaining the engagment of the learner, we also gain their trust and their passion for learning.

Silvia said it best when when she states:

Maybe we need to be talking about something no one can deny as a priority in our schools: STUDENT LEARNING. Maybe we if we talk on that common ground,  there will be less resistance, more collaboration and communication on how to achieve that.

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student learning, Langwitches, collaboration, communications, 21st Century skills

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Sigh….

Through my Diigo in Education group link I received a notice of a blog entry titled “Top 10 Tech Skills Your Teen Needs Now”.

Wow… that sounds like a great link to put in front of my community to focus them on some of the skills our school will be developing next year.  This will be great. With great glee I clicked the link and the number one thing list is: KEYBOARDING.

My common sense tells me that yes, keyboarding is important. I think back to my 8th grade year and my horrible experience in typing (manual typewriters and dull boredum of aaasssdddfffjjjkkklll;;; over and over again) where I earned some very bad grades!  I think to the hours that I have spent with elementary school kids teaching them “good” typing habits.  Was it time poorly spent. My answer is no, but my point is that KEYBOARDING is not a tech skill. It is a life skill.

After a quick search on the very same site I found this article which defines literacy (I read tech skills here) as:

• Using digital technology, communication tools and/or networks appropriately to access, manage, integrate, evaluate, and create information in order to function in a knowledge economy
• Using technology as a tool to research, organize, evaluate and communicate information, and the possession of a fundamental understanding of the ethical/legal issues surrounding the access and use of information

One would argue that keyboarding is a part of this list above, but frankly, without beginning the conversation at the most macro level, we will forever be stuck in the logistics of keyboarding instruction and morass that focuses on the skills of operating common applications.  Never will we be able to drill down deep in our conversations about higher level thinking, collaboration, problem solving and content creation.  If we continue to focus on the whys and hows of social networking and computer maintenance, then we will never be able to concentrate on using the machine as a ubiquitous tool.  You teach students only that using a database is about maintaining password security and using web searches to find and secure information then our kids never will understand the use of the deep web of informaiton that lies beneath a Google search, and will forever be doomed to simple information analysis.

No offense to the author, but I believe she has missed the point.  Basic skills are good, but focus these skills on deep, meaningful and pertinent application in content study will create stronger more flexible, capable thinkers.

Image from Flickrstorm CC http://www.flickr.com/photos/21814877@N00/3363073562

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This just in from my twitter network! Thanks @courosa

Among the Inept, Researchers Discover, Ignorance Is Bliss- From NYTimes.com

There are many incompetent people in the world. Dr. David A. Dunning is haunted by the fear he might be one of them.

Dr. Dunning, a professor of psychology at Cornell, worries about this because, according to his research, most incompetent people do not know that they are incompetent.

On the contrary. People who do things badly, Dr. Dunning has found in studies conducted with a graduate student, Justin Kruger, are usually supremely confident of their abilities — more confident, in fact, than people who do things well.

Note the last paragraph there…. inept people are MORE confident in their ability than competant people!  I am sure you know the type. They work hard. They create, learn and amaze all the people around them, and seem to be driven for perfection and high quality work. Then you talk to them. Compliment them and they crumble into little balls of mushy peas!  I find it quite annoying that people like this don’t seem to be able to take a compliment. Then Erica Goode of the NYTimes, in writing a summary of this interesting study put it into perspective for me.

Unlike their unskilled counterparts, the most able subjects in the study, Dr. Kruger and Dr. Dunning found, were likely to underestimate their own competence. The researchers attributed this to the fact that, in the absence of information about how others were doing, highly competent subjects assumed that others were performing as well as they were — a phenomenon psychologists term the “false consensus effect.”

When high scoring subjects were asked to “grade” the grammar tests of their peers, however, they quickly revised their evaluations of their own performance. In contrast, the self-assessments of those who scored badly themselves were unaffected by the experience of grading others; some subjects even further inflated their estimates of their own abilities.

The problem I see in my line of work is that the competant, amazing people I work with are unable find the comparisons available to them.  In the study, the good Dr. Dunning did note that reality eventually prevails though.  He, in fact, hits me right between the eyes with this quote.

In some cases, Dr. Dunning pointed out, an awareness of one’s own inability is inevitable: “In a golf game, when your ball is heading into the woods, you know you’re incompetent,” he said.

Ouch.  That one is a little to real for me. (smile)

What it comes down to though is honest feedback. Whether that be from a Titleist or a supervisor.  There is no way of getting better unless someone points out where improvement is needed. In my business that needs to be done carefully and with diplomacy and consistency.  If a person doesn’t hear it the first time, it is up to me to continue to try and try again.

The kids in the classrooms depend on it.

Mushy Peas photo from Flickrstorm http://www.flickr.com/photos/38263679@N00/766423918

Titleist photo from Flickrstorm http://static.flickr.com/150/363537202_64a18e1ace.jpg

evaluation, feedback, compentency, inept, Cornell, Psychology, Dr. David A. Dunning

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I wrote on Friday for Leadertalk and here about my experiences with Thought Leadership and My Personal Professional Development.  I have received some great comments, one of which I followed the link to this gentleman’s blog.  Don Cowert notes at the top of his blogspot blog that,

I have been in Elementary Education for over ten years. In that time I have been a teacher of many grades and a Principal of Daniel D. Waterman Elementary School and Hope Highlands Elementary in Cranston, Rhode Island. In these 10+ years I have had thousands of conversations with teachers and parents about children and how they learn. I feel like I have helped a lot of people in this short time period. I decided to create this Blog as a forum for these kinds of conversations.

I want to draw your attention to Don’s post on “How We Learn- William Glasser”. His posting about his thoughts and experiences opens the door for some wonderful dialouge on an important educational leadership issue in our schools. His post begins with Glasser’s percentage listing on how we learn-

How We Learn
10% of what we READ
20% of what we HEAR
30% of what we SEE
50% of what we SEE and HEAR
70% of what is DISCUSSED with OTHERS
80% of what is EXPERIENCED PERSONALLY
95% of what we TEACH TO SOMEONE ELSE
~William Glasser – http://principalcowart.blogspot.com

I encourage you to give Don’s blog a read and have it join your list of educational leaders blogs you might be reading.

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