[00:01] SPEAKER_00:
Welcome to Principal Center Radio, bringing you the best in professional practice.
[00:06] Announcer:
Here's your host, director of the Principal Center and champion of high-performance instructional leadership, Justin Bader. Welcome, everyone, to Principal Center Radio.
[00:14] SPEAKER_01:
I'm your host, Justin Bader, and I'm honored to be joined today by Charlotte Danielson. Ms. Danielson is the creator of the Danielson Framework for Teaching, which is the basis for teacher professional growth and evaluation systems in more than 20 states. A former economist and a graduate of Cornell, Oxford, and Rutgers, Ms. Danielson has taught at all levels from kindergarten through university and is today an internationally recognized expert in the area of teacher effectiveness, specializing in the design of teacher evaluation systems that both ensure teacher quality and promote professional learning.
[00:48] Announcer:
And now, our feature presentation.
[00:50] SPEAKER_01:
Ms. Danielson, welcome to Principal Center Radio.
[00:52] SPEAKER_00:
Thank you.
[00:52] SPEAKER_01:
So we're here today to talk about the new edition of your book, the second edition of Talk About Teaching, Leading Professional Conversations. I wonder if you could give us some insight into why you wrote this book. What need did you see within our profession that prompted Talk About Teaching?
[01:09] SPEAKER_02:
Well, I think there's actually research on this subject, but a lot of anecdotal evidence that conversation is a primary sort of vehicle for learning for everybody, actually, certainly for teachers. And that engaging in conversation is not a skill anybody's born with. There are things to learn about it. And the context surrounding professional conversations is important. That is, is it part of an evaluation? Is it part of an exploration of practice?
[01:45]
Is it between colleagues? Is it between supervisors and teachers? There's a lot to think through in terms of the context and the structure of a conversation if our goal, and I think it mostly is, if our goal is for the process to be as valuable to teachers as it can be.
[02:04] SPEAKER_01:
Rick Dufour is fond of saying that there's a difference between collaboration and coblaboration, that we might know how to talk to each other in one way on one level, but not necessarily have conversations that move professional practice forward. I agree with that. Now, you say in the book that teacher learning is intellectual work. And I think this is something that we often miss as administrators. And Principal Center Radio has an audience of people who are in that administrator world at that kind of administrative level who maybe supervise teachers or provide support for people who supervise teachers or are involved in professional development. And often we seem to not really take seriously the idea of teaching and teacher learning as intellectual work.
[02:50]
I wonder if you could say a little bit more about what that intellectual work means to you and what some of the implications of that fact are, that teacher learning is intellectual work.
[02:59] SPEAKER_02:
Well, let's start with the premise that teaching is intellectual work, that teachers make literally hundreds—I mean, people have counted this, actually— hundreds of decisions a day, and often under what you'd have to call unfavorable circumstances, like often in a hurry, for example, or with incomplete information. They don't know if there are three kids absent today that there might not be more kids absent tomorrow, or something of that nature. So teaching, and that's just the beginning of it. I mean, teachers have to decide between this approach or that approach, and which would be most successful based on my students, what I know about my students. And then they often have to also make decisions sort of on the fly while they're teaching. Something's not going well and they realize that and so have to make an adjustment.
[03:53]
And this goes on all day long. And it's one of the reasons that teaching is stressful. Now, the other thing we should say about teacher learning is that is that, of course, all learning is intellectual work. I mean, it's cognitive work. You're thinking it. I don't think that it's possible to dispute that.
[04:20]
But the other thing to say is that as good as some teachers are, no lesson is ever perfect. I mean, that's sort of true by definition. Because teaching is so challenging and there are so many things to be thinking about all at the same time, that any lesson could be improved and all teaching can be improved. And that's not saying there's a deficiency or somebody, you know, isn't a professional educator. No, it's the nature of the work that could always be done better. And so I see the role of anybody in a leadership position in schools, whether it's teacher leaders or administrators or supervisors or coaches or mentors or anyone, to...
[05:05]
be contributed to a culture of professional inquiry in which adult learning, teacher learning, as well as student learning, obviously, but teacher learning is part of the mission. And that requires a culture for learning, and it involves practices that will promote learning. And I would go so far as to say that most of what we do and call it teacher evaluation No matter if we pay lip service to the notion that the reason we do teacher evaluation is to strengthen teaching, the procedures we mostly use tend to shut learning down. That is top-down, judgmental, sort of diagnostic, like here's what I saw, here's something you should do differently, here are some resources, almost a medical model.
[06:00]
diagnosis and prescription. I don't think that's actually very productive for learning. And so I think it's one reason that teachers don't particularly engage with the process.
[06:10] SPEAKER_01:
Well, let's talk about that some more because I'm sure to a few teachers out there, your name is almost a bad word because the system that they're evaluated under is named after you but is not necessarily consistent with what you're talking about here. And I remember hearing you say in person in presentations that I've heard you give that that if you have a punitive and negative system, adding the Danielson framework to it is not necessarily going to fix that single-handedly. What are some of the premises that you think we need to base our professional growth and evaluation systems on? Because we do have a legacy of kind of, you know, judgment and punishment, honestly, when, you know, typically our evaluation systems have been satisfactory or unsatisfactory.
[07:01]
There are rewards and consequences for, you know, for better or worse evaluations. How would you reframe that? How do you ask people who are adopting your system to frame that, you know, that set of decisions that they're making when they're designing a new evaluation system to optimize for professional growth?
[07:18] SPEAKER_02:
First of all, let's just be really clear about a couple of points. In my view, schools and school districts have an absolute obligation to ensure good teaching. That is, there has to be a system for quality assurance. I would never argue that anything goes and that we don't need that. That simply isn't true. We do.
[07:44]
That is, any superintendent... or commissioner of education in the state, or indeed any principal, needs to be able to say to his or her public at any moment that everybody who teaches here is good, and here's how we know we have a system, and here's what the system is. Here's how we ensure quality. Now, we have to define quality, and people have used my framework to do that, and I welcome that so long as the way they do it doesn't undermine the very goal they're trying to achieve, which is to help teaching be better.
[08:17]
But no, so let's just be really clear that I do not intend ever to suggest that we can fudge on the issue of quality assurance. We can't. As we're public institutions, we take public money. The public has a right to expect good teaching. I think that's pretty straightforward. What we have to do, though, is do that in such a way that it actually does promote learning.
[08:44]
And in my view, the... assume that the important decision that gets made in a school district and that falls under teacher evaluation is what we could call the tenure decision or the continuing contract decision. That is, when teachers are set to move from probationary to continuing contract status, that's an important step, very important professional step for both the teacher, obviously, and for the school and for the district. And because teachers Once that decision's been made, most teachers have an assurance of ongoing employment, and they're really part of the four-minute team.
[09:25]
So you need to be sure as an administrator you're getting the right people on the bus, and you need to be clear about that. But once you've made that decision and you've got your team, then the entire emphasis, in my view, should be around professional learning. And you should then structure whatever you have to do for evaluation for periodic checks as you do those, but you put most of your HR emphasis on professional growth. And then, so then we have to think, well, what promotes that? And in my experience and in my reading of the research, it's around conversation. It's analysis of student work.
[10:08]
It's examining practice and alternative practices. and lesson study and PLCs and various structural opportunities for teachers to engage with their colleagues and with their supervisors, but in a learning mode, not an evaluative mode.
[10:29] SPEAKER_01:
I'm glad to hear you say that, and I wonder if I have this right. I think back to the conversations in evaluation conferences that I had with the best teachers that I've ever worked with. As a supervisor, I remember sitting down and saying, hey, look, you and I both know you are going to be evaluated in a satisfactory way here. That is not the issue, so let's focus 100% on growth. Let's not even worry about whether we're going to hit every bullet point in our evaluation form. That's my job.
[10:59]
I'll write, you know, what I need to write. But, you know, every confidence is there that you're satisfactory. So let's focus on growth. Is that the way to handle the rest of the evaluation process? I mean, is it okay once we have satisfied our, you know, our own curiosity, you know, as to whether we are, you know, continuing to employ someone who's doing a good job? Is it okay to just set that aside and say, okay, now let's focus on growth?
[11:27] SPEAKER_02:
I would. I call that the presumption of competence. You're presuming, presumption of competence, that you're making a presumption, and you're saying it out loud, and I see no reason not to say it out loud, that we both know you're, I mean, I don't quite know how to say this so it doesn't sound so condescending, but you're certainly good enough. You know, we have a standard for that. And I don't know what, you know, I mean, people might disagree about what that is. Most people, when they use my framework, put the good enough at somewhere like proficient level.
[12:04]
Although, let's keep something in mind here, that when teachers have a new assignment, shift grade levels, for example, or are teaching a new course at the secondary level, it doesn't start off good. I mean, we ought to be honest about that. Many teachers will sort of revert, if you want to think of it that way, to a basic level performance because they're essentially a new teacher. at that level, and they're doing everything for the first time, and so sometimes, just like with a new teacher, sometimes it's a little rough and a little inconsistent, and it takes usually a couple months for somebody to get their feet under them in a new assignment. And so you... Or another scenario is that if you're doing an observation of a lesson that the teacher's never taught before...
[12:52]
but would really like to use the observation as an opportunity for conversation about it and how it could have been strengthened, they're not going to do something new or take a risk, basically, if they're being judged in a high-stakes way. But if they're being observed and they know that it's safe, just like in Component 2A for students, people need to be safe. in order to learn, but fear shuts people down. And so your suggestion of taking that judgmental stance off the table, or I call it, you know, an acceptance of competence, a presumption of competence, yes, I think what that does is it opens it up and it removes the fear. I think that's very important to do.
[13:45]
So it's about setting up the culture in the school for learning. and that involves safety for everyone, for the teacher, certainly for the kids, but for the teacher and in the teacher's relationship with a supervisor. Now, that's why it's easier, though, for teachers to learn from each other or from mentors and coaches who don't have supervisory responsibilities because they're not afraid of judgment because judgment is not involved. So I think we have to apply those principles to what we do in more formal observations if we're obliged to do those.
[14:24] SPEAKER_01:
I'm hearing two issues in what you're talking about there that we do tend to learn better from our peers when there's not that fear, there's not that evaluative aspect to the relationship. But as I read the first couple of chapters of the book, I was struck by the importance of the expertise issue as well. And the second chapter is about power and leadership in schools in Talk About Teaching. How do you see those two issues of expertise and power becoming relevant for the instructional leadership work that administrators do with teachers?
[14:59] SPEAKER_02:
Well, let's start with expertise.
[15:03]
It is a true statement that many teachers are more expert in what they teach than than the principals who normally supervise them. I mean, I think that's just true. And so if we're interested in using any kind of a process to help teachers improve their expertise, and I'm thinking both content and content pedagogical expertise here. That is, what are some of the new developments in how to teach science, for example? So, yes, they're going to learn that more. They're going to learn more from colleagues or from other procedures, going to meetings or, you know, it depends on what they teach and what expertise is available in the building or in the district that they can tap into.
[15:56]
But there is an issue around expertise, and unless a supervisor is, in fact, expert in the subject or the level that as many kindergartens teachers and first grade teachers know more about early childhood learning and development than their principals who might have been, you know, a middle school social studies teacher or something, just doesn't have that background. There's a lot to know about early learning. And so, yeah, expertise is an issue and so it seems to me, now, so let's get to the power and leadership question. We should also never forget that that the buck does stop with the principal at the school level. And there's tremendous positional authority that resides with the principal. And everybody knows it, which is one reason it's hard not to be fearful, right, for a teacher.
[16:53]
It also, though, means that even when a principal doesn't know much about something and doesn't have the relevant expertise but wants to make a suggestion anyway... it might or might not be a good one, to be frank. I mean, let's be honest, right? And so these things are intertwined.
[17:12]
Now, one of the points I make in the book that I borrowed from Kamsa Jivani, which I think is so powerful, is that it's, if you think of a pyramid of power, it seems to me that a more productive way to think about it is that it's not so much that the principle has power, although that's true, but if we can think of it instead that the ideas have power, and the principle's job is to help everybody articulate the ideas. Like, what are the ideas around student learning, around what's important to learn, about how we can best, you know, to improve what we know about teaching. Those ideas, now principals have the positional authority to make some of those things happen.
[18:05]
They can arrange a schedule so teachers have opportunities to work with each other, even if what they learn when they work with each other is not coming directly from the principal. It's coming from a structure, let's say a lesson study structure, structure that the principal has organized because he or she has the power to do that.
[18:25] SPEAKER_01:
Yeah, well, let's talk about those big ideas. And I think this seems to me to relate to the idea of culture, the idea of vision, the idea of values, and Keegan and Leahy's idea of how the way we talk shapes the way we work. And you have chapter three is about those big ideas. Could you say more about what big ideas mean and how they shape professional conversations?
[18:50] SPEAKER_02:
Well, sure. I mean, the important one, I think, well, in this era of Common Core or other high-level standards, one of the big ideas has to do with what's important for kids to learn. And we're having, everybody's having to do some rethink on that. and to update their thinking. I welcome it, by the way, this conversation. I think some of it's gotten pretty badly sidetracked by fear, it seems to me.
[19:18]
But the basic conversation is a good one. That is, the future is going to demand graduates of our schools who think well, who can analyze, problem solve. If we bear in mind that most people In school today, we can't possibly predict, especially if they're young right now, we can't possibly predict in a specific way what they're going to need to know for their careers. Who would be so brave as to try that? What we know is that they're going to have to be good at learning new things. I mean, any of us who've ever came of age before the computer revolution, I've spent my entire adult life try and catch up with stuff that my children...
[20:08]
I learned it from them, actually. And we all have this experience. But the point is a more general one, that we cannot say with any kind of certainty right now what our kids who are in our schools now are going to have to learn and know in order to be successful in their lives and careers. And so one of the biggest gifts we can give them is the ability to learn and to be hungry to learn and so on and so on. So...
[20:33]
So I think that's pretty uncomfortable, not controversial. That's one of the big ideas. Another big idea has to do with how students learn. And this is a big idea that I have incorporated very deeply and very explicitly in my framework. And that is, and anybody who has raised kids knows this, or even observed young children in a non-school setting. you know that children are intellectually active and physically active, of course, too.
[21:08]
But intellectually active, they are naturally extremely curious. And in fact, it drives you nuts when they're about three years old and they keep saying, why, why, why? And you say, well, just because that's how it is. You finally sort of give up. But they're very curious. And somehow, I've never known an intellectually lazy four-year-old.
[21:29]
I've known a lot of intellectually lazy 14-year-olds. And what causes this? I mean, now, probably a lot of things, but one of the things that kids do between 4 and 14 is go to school. And I would hate to think that we in schools have helped shut down that natural curiosity. I mean, that would be a terrible indictment. So I think we ought to look at that.
[21:55]
And so one of the things we know about kids learning in their natural habitat, if you like to put it that way, is that they are active in it. And the way we do it in our workshops is that learning is done by the learner through an active intellectual process. And so I think our challenge in schools is to figure out ways, given that we know what it is we want kids to learn, And we know this about kids and their learning. We need to devise sort of methods, activities, tasks, experiences in school so that we'll engage kids in learning what we want them to learn. That is, you know, my framework is a framework for teaching, and of course it's important what teachers do. They organize, they arrange the environment.
[22:48]
But when I walk into a classroom... to sort of see what's happening. Of course I pay attention to the teacher, but I really pay attention to the students. What are they doing?
[22:57]
What's the nature of what they're being asked to do? And is it intellectually challenging? Is it cognitively demanding? Or are they doing something sort of mindless? Or are they doing something that seems, you know, worthless to them? Or that they really know already?
[23:16]
I mean, we're into a worksheet culture. that is not, doesn't shy with how most young children, or any children, operate. So that's the second big idea about how kids learn. The third one has to do with motivation.
[23:36] SPEAKER_01:
Everything you just said seems to me to apply perfectly to the teacher-supervisor relationship. If you take student-teacher and teacher-supervisor, I mean, every single thing you said applies.
[23:47] SPEAKER_02:
No question about it. When I said learning is done by the learner, that's about students and children, and it's also about adults. Which is why, if your supervisory relationship between a principal and a teacher... is all about, if I'm the principal, I'm telling you what you should have done differently.
[24:09] SPEAKER_01:
Who's doing the work?
[24:10] SPEAKER_02:
Who's doing the work? Exactly. In many observation evaluation systems, the principal does all the work. And so we actually shouldn't be surprised when teachers don't learn anything from it. Why should they? They don't learn anything.
[24:28]
But they also, if they're also in an environment where they don't feel safe doing something, then of course there's going to be no learning. So I just think we have to change the paradigm a lot. And we can go on about the big ideas, but those are the main ones.
[24:46] SPEAKER_01:
Would you be okay with concluding with talking a little bit about some of the kind of the how-to part in the latter portion of the book about skills and having different types of informal conversations and finding time? What do you think is best for people to hear from the latter part of the book once they understand some of those framing ideas?
[25:06] SPEAKER_02:
Well, there's no question about it that time is the most valuable resource. we have or don't have enough of. That is, it's the most precious resource for both teachers and administrators and our school leaders. And so finding time for conversation both between supervisor and teacher or among teachers is, in my view, the biggest challenge. The other thing to add, though, is that the time, sometimes people manage to find the time but don't use it very well. And so teachers meet on a Thursday afternoon, say grade level team meetings or something, and just sort of talk about the weekend coming up or something.
[25:52]
That is, it has to be very structured. And facilitated conversation among teachers is more productive than just random free-for-all. So there's a real imperative, I think, for everybody in the school, not just school leaders, to learn how to conduct the conversations. and at what stage to inject some expertise into the conversation.
[26:15] SPEAKER_01:
Right, and I think that's why we see the popularity and the power of things like professional learning communities and the structure that they provide. And I wanted to ask what your thoughts on this are for administrators. I think we often feel as administrators that people come to us and talk and talk and talk and talk and talk, and sometimes it's not really geared toward any particular mutual benefit or toward any kind of necessary outcome. Sometimes we have these conversations And we feel like they're not going anywhere professionally. We feel like they're not enhancing people's cognition and they're not enhancing people's practice. And we have these ways of, you know, sometimes people just kind of want us to be their therapist.
[26:54]
But I think also sometimes we get into kind of normal workplace conversational patterns, you know, water cooler type patterns, you know. you know, how are you doing today? Don't work too hard, you know, that, that really kind of conflict with, with our aims in terms of, of improvement. Do you have any advice for, for those informal conversations that we tend to get in, into as administrators that, you know, maybe are a rapport building opportunity on one level? You know, can they also be professional conversations, even if they're just quick and in the hallway? How do we, how do we kind of
[27:28] SPEAKER_02:
I'm not sure a five-minute conversation really has much potential for being really productive, just because you want to dig into things. But I think the big idea there is for conversations of whatever length to be focused on solving problems of practice. That is, if I drop in on a classroom, if I drop in even for 10 minutes, I can have an interesting conversation with a teacher later. In fact, I was visiting the school once, and I wanted to go, you know, get a sense of the school and the kinds of students the teachers were working with and the kinds of friends they had. So I just dropped in on a bunch of classes and spent about half a day doing that and got back to talk to the principal, and he wanted to know who his good teachers were.
[28:20]
And I found... That was not what I was focused on, and I didn't want to have that conversation with them. Because when I was in those classrooms, I wasn't thinking about where they were on my rubric. I wanted, in the follow-up conversations with the teachers, I just wanted to ask them some questions.
[28:38]
Like, okay, so tell me about those three kids in the back. Or what did you do yesterday that led to this? Or what are you going to try and do tomorrow to follow up on the kids' learning today? And...
[28:54]
But the three kids in the back, that is, if there were some kids who really seemed to not be engaged, I was interested in the teacher's perspective on that, and the conversation might very well have, and often does, evolve into solving a problem, some sort of a problem that the teacher is having. And those conversations are almost always productive. First of all, they're a problem. And by the way, that same notion of problem-based experiences is probably a factor for students as well. You know, like you have a jar of beans and hold it up. How many beans do you think are in this jar?
[29:33]
And so kids devise different methods of estimating how many beans are in the jar. That's engaging even though it's completely irrelevant to anything. It's quite engaging because it's intellectually puzzling and challenging and it sort of tickles the brain. And those sorts of, that kind of engagement in solving problems Even a small problem is much more engaging to anybody as a learner, to students or adults, than me telling you anything.
[30:04] SPEAKER_01:
Yeah. And I think we enjoy those conversations more as administrators because we want to get to the point, we want to solve problems, we want to help people, we want to be supportive. And those are some of the better conversations, especially among, you know, what can be accomplished in a quick conversation. That's a great outcome. But I appreciate, again, the connections between adult learning and student learning that, you know, some of the same big ideas.
[30:25] SPEAKER_02:
Oh, yeah. It's the same. It's the same. I mean, adults are just bigger children and they have, but many of them, most of the learning principles apply. I think I just don't see a difference.
[30:38] SPEAKER_01:
Can I ask, uh, kind of a, to go in a different direction. Um, one thing I've, I've always noticed and, and wondered about your framework is that relative to, to other frameworks for evaluation in particular, uh, the framework for teaching is not very, uh, not very heavy in its emphasis on particular techniques or particular strategies. And I'm struck by the degree to which it's focused on, you know, the conditions, the outcomes that are achieved by the practice that's taking place. Could you talk to us a little bit about why that is and why, you know, compared to say Marzano's framework, which is very technique heavy, you know, are you using this technique? Are you using that technique? Why did you go in a different direction with your framework?
[31:25] SPEAKER_02:
Well, there are a lot of ways to be good and lots of techniques. Now, I do think that teachers need a repertoire of techniques. I do not dispute that for a moment. I just don't think that a framework for teaching is the place to put those techniques. That is, your goal is for students to be engaged in intellectual work. There are lots of ways to accomplish that.
[31:49]
I don't know. I've never talked to Bob Lozano, whom I know fairly well. I haven't ever asked him this question. What are the big ideas that undergird your instructional model? And I'm not sure what he'd say. I've tried to be very explicit about that and also acknowledge that there are many paths to those aims, the aims of student intellectual engagement.
[32:17]
in important learning. I mean, that's a pretty tall order, and it's important and it's big. But, and people, there's lots of ways to do that. I would not, I wouldn't pretend to prescribe certain techniques. First of all, you know, somebody will discover a better one. And then, I mean, it's got a very limited shelf life, in my opinion, if you go down that road.
[32:41]
But also, I think, By focusing on the nature of the classroom you're hoping to have in your school, the nature of the classrooms and the nature of the learning, then it puts the conversations on a different plane. Now, you can always sort of suggest that somebody look into some different techniques, or you may, as a school leader, know that another teacher uses a technique that looks to you like might really help this teacher solve this particular problem. and so put them in touch with each other. But I would never want to be prescriptive about techniques. I just don't think it's appropriate.
[33:21] SPEAKER_01:
Well, I think we're very obsessed these days, and maybe to some extent rightly so, but I think we're very obsessed these days in education with effect size. Is that something you're hearing a lot about?
[33:31] SPEAKER_02:
Well, probably give me your definition of it as a statistical concept.
[33:36] SPEAKER_01:
Sure. There have been lots of meta-analyses conducted about the effectiveness of particular strategies, particular techniques, particular practices. And often our understanding of exactly what that technique is may differ from the way it was operationalized in the study. It may differ from the way it was implemented in the schools that were studied. But I don't know. I just hear a lot these days about effect size and a lot of interest among school leaders in that.
[34:02]
implementing the strategies, the techniques that have the larger effect sizes and trying to de-emphasize or move away from those that have been found to have lower effect sizes. And I was interested in your comment that we're trying to think here on kind of a different level, and I wonder if that's maybe why effect size and those specific strategies are not something that you talk about so much.
[34:24] SPEAKER_02:
I'm not sure if I would quite agree with that. I mean, what's not to like about focusing on on things that work and not focusing on things that don't work. You know, who would... I'm not going to say we shouldn't do that.
[34:38]
Of course we could. One of the challenges, though, that I think inherent in even having that conversation is what do you use as indicators of working? And if your outcomes are purely in terms of some standardized test, for example, is the test measuring the important goal for student learning? I think it forces us into those conversations. If we care about, say, student writing as notorious or not lending itself to that kind of analysis. But let's not beat around the bush on this.
[35:20]
I mean, it's important for teachers to be able to demonstrate that they have an impact on student learning. The question is always the same one. What counts as evidence? And how can you attribute it to an individual teacher? And in my view, we don't have good methods for that yet. But that isn't to say we shouldn't be working on it.
[35:40]
And I can think of lots of... In my view, the closer to the ground those conversations are, the better. So if I'm going to be in a conversation with my principal about how well my kids... How much kind of impact I'm having...
[35:58]
on my students, let's look at some writing samples from September and May. And those are conversations we should be having. We absolutely should be having. So I would urge people when they're seduced by something that has this big effect size to ask really critical questions about how those effect sizes were measured and were they measuring the important stuff. Because some of the most important outcomes we have for students don't lend themselves to a bubble test. If we want kids to be thinking in a critical and creative way, that's pretty hard to do on a bubble test.
[36:44]
And so I worry that the more we get seduced into little techniques that we can raise our test scores on, we may be putting our eggs into a basket that is contributing to a mindless sort of schooling. So I think that could be really critical in our analysis and our reading of that research. That's not to say that if there's good research and it's measuring white college student outcomes that we shouldn't listen to it. Of course we should. Of course we should. But don't just adopt it uncritically without asking the harder questions.
[37:24] SPEAKER_01:
And I think one of the harder questions that we do need to ask ourselves is, what does that practice actually look like? And to return to your earlier idea of teacher cognition and decision-making, sometimes using a technique is not just a matter of invoking it, but of actually focusing on it and getting better at it. And the fidelity of implementation, I think, can vary dramatically. And of course, You know, just because the meta-analysis shows a particular effect size doesn't mean we're going to achieve that effect size just because we invoke that strategy. We actually have to get good at it.
[37:59] SPEAKER_02:
And there's interesting research, as I'm sure you're aware, on what it takes to do something new well, like hours of practice. And sometimes, you know, like something relatively simple, like using wait time, for example, in questionings. Well, that turns out to be a non-trivial skill to learn how to do. And because it all of a sudden means that, you know, you can't really predict what's going to happen. You use wait time and you know, the research says it, and you know it if you've ever done it as a teacher, that the kids will start saying sort of unpredictable things. And for some teachers, that's a little scary.
[38:46]
So... You know, I think we just have to take all the risks. But pay attention to that research.
[38:54]
But then think about the implications of it. And as you point out, don't trivialize the role of practice and becoming familiar and doing it, you know. I don't know what people, there's a rule of thumb about how long it takes to learn a new skill. It's long. It's long. No question about it.
[39:11] SPEAKER_01:
Well, I know we're running short on time, so I wanted to ask one final question, if I could. And usually this is more of a hypothetical question. I ask a lot of my guests, if you could have your way and have school administrators do one particular thing. And that's not as much of a hypothetical question for you.
[39:29] SPEAKER_00:
No.
[39:29] SPEAKER_01:
because you've shaped so many of these systems that we're working within. But, you know, if you could have some more direct fiat power, what would you like to see all school administrators doing relative to the message that you have in your book, Talk About Teaching? What can we do that would make the biggest difference as one kind of takeaway?
[39:48] SPEAKER_02:
Well, if I could wave a wand and ask, require everybody to do one thing, it would be for principals to require that their teachers... observe a colleague teach twice a year. I mean, I'm making up the number. Whatever it is.
[40:06]
Just go visit another classroom, another teacher's classroom. And by the way, you'd have to send up, you'd have to say, you find the time and let me know and I'll take your class for one hour or one period. And the purpose of these observations would not be to give the visited teacher feedback or anything. It would be to learn from them. see how they do things. So the observer is the learner.
[40:34]
And then to engage in a conversation. And then to do a little reflection on that. What were some things you saw in that classroom that you think you could use or modify and use? And what are some things that you saw that teacher do, even if the teacher did them well, but that you are pretty sure would just not work in your classroom, and why not? And have a conversation about that. And I've I did try to actually sell this idea once to a high school faculty.
[41:00]
I don't think I was successful. It's a hard sell because teachers are naturally nervous to have anybody visit their classroom, but it's part of creating a culture for learning, for adult learning, and a culture of inequality. I think that's the biggest challenge that principals have in moving practice forward. is to create, and having teachers observe one another is one way to have that culture. It's one expression of the culture. And there are of course many other things, but I think it's a single thing, and I've talked to people who have done this and they just love it.
[41:42]
They say it's hard, the first time it's hard, and after that it's fabulous.
[41:47] SPEAKER_01:
I think especially when there's that invitation to just go and listen for your own benefit, see what you can pick up and have a conversation about it, not to provide feedback to the person you're visiting, not to get into that kind of mindset, but really for your own learning benefit. You know, if we compare that to our typical evaluation practice where the principal is doing all the work, the teacher is doing basically nothing that they care about. They're basically just enduring the process. You know, this seems so much simpler and so much more impactful. So the book is Talk About Teaching, Leading Professional Conversations, second edition. Ms. Danielson, thank you so much for joining me for Principal Center Radio.
[42:27] SPEAKER_02:
You're welcome.
[42:28] SPEAKER_00:
Good luck to everybody. And now, Justin Bader on high-performance instructional leadership.
[42:35] SPEAKER_01:
So high-performance instructional leaders, what did you take away from my conversation with Charlotte Danielson about her book, Talk About Teaching, Leading Professional Conversations? I hope you took seriously her advice there at the end of our interview that we need to let teachers get into each other's classrooms just for their own learning, not to coach each other, not to provide feedback to each other, but just to listen and to have a conversation and to learn from each other. And I think that can be such a powerful form of professional development if we let it happen, more powerful than our typical practice. But the other thing that really stands out to me is this distinction between just feedback where we talk with the teacher and we tell them what they should do differently or maybe we try to get them to say it but it's still us telling them what they should do differently in kind of a feedback sandwich or kind of a coaching model.
[43:26]
What Ms. Danielson is talking about in her book is leading professional conversations, not fixing people's lessons, not telling people what they did wrong, but actually striving to raise the level of cognition and the quality of decision-making that's going into those lessons. And that's where we get the transfer. That's where we get the long-term benefits beyond just kind of a postmortem of a lesson that's not going to be repeated for a year. When we can help teachers improve the quality of their thinking and their future decision-making throughout the entire year, that's where we start to see an impact as instructional leaders. And it's important to remember that we're not the only people who can have that impact.
[44:05]
Our instructional coaches perhaps are in the best position to have that impact, but teachers working together in PLCs can have that impact on each other. So I want to give my strongest endorsement for Ms. Danielson's book, Talk About Teaching, Leading Professional Conversations. Get that book, read especially the first couple of chapters where she lays out the foundation and the philosophy behind this approach. And if you're looking for an evaluation framework, I can say without reservation that her system is the best. And it does not solve all of the problems around evaluating teachers and building culture, but it is absolutely the best foundation and the best framework.
[44:47]
You still have some work to do in terms of creating a climate where evaluation is taken seriously because teacher quality is a serious issue. but the system is geared toward, after ensuring quality, structured toward providing growth opportunities for our teachers. So you can check that out at danielssongroup.org if you're interested in learning more about Ms. Danielson's Framework for Teaching. I've been following along with her work since the late 90s, and the Framework for Teaching is now in at least its third revision, and it really is a high-quality document.
[45:20]
And in our app repertoire. We designed that app to be used for classroom walkthroughs, formal observations, any time where you're in the classroom and need to take notes, need to provide written feedback, need to say something, communicate, start a conversation with the teacher, whatever your needs are there. One thing I really want to encourage you to do is have that Danielson framework pulled up so that you can use that language in the writing that you're doing, whether that's feedback, whether that's documentation, whatever purpose you have for that writing, use that language from the Danielson framework. And the way we've actually designed the repertoire app is that it will actually save frameworks that you've put in before. So if you have pasted in something from the Danielson framework or written your own feedback that uses that same language, the repertoire app will remember that and suggest it to you.
[46:15]
So you can use it in a different way. You can modify it slightly for the circumstance, but you're not having to keep it all in your head. So I hope that improves the quality of your writing when you're working to support teachers in their growth and when you're doing evaluations. And you can learn more about that at principalcenter.com. And currently, the Repertoire app is part of the High Performance Instructional Leadership Network.
[46:37]
You can learn more about that professional development program at principalcenter.com slash leadership.
[46:44] Announcer:
Thanks for listening to Principal Center Radio. For more great episodes, subscribe on our website at principalcenter.com slash radio.
