and on building professional and organizational capacities for enhanced learning. Laura engages with schools and school districts, designing and conducting workshops on learning-focused instruction, literacy development, and strategies to support beginning teachers. She facilitates organizational adaptivity and learning through training and development in data-driven dialogue, group development, action research, and learning-focused collaborations.
Laura is the author and coauthor of numerous publications related to organizational and professional development, learning-focused schools, and literacy development. Her selected publications include Groups at Work: Strategies and Structures for Professional Learning, More Than 50 Ways to Learner-Centered Literacy (second edition), Data-Driven Dialogue: A Facilitator’s Guide to Collaborative Inquiry, Making Mentoring Work: An ASCD Action Tool, Mentoring Matters: A Practical Guide to Learning-Focused Relationships (second edition), and Pathways to Understanding: Patterns and Practices in the Learning-Focused Classroom (third edition).
Laura has been a featured speaker at international, national, and state conferences since 1984. She has shared her expertise with thousands of educators throughout North America, as well as Central America, Asia, Australia, and New Zealand. To learn more about Laura’s work, visit www.miravia.com or follow @lelipton on Twitter.
BRUCE WELLMAN is codirector of MiraVia. He consults with school systems, professional groups, and organizations throughout North America, and he presents on the patterns and practices of learning-focused classrooms, learning-focused conversations, effective presentation skills, and facilitation and development of collaborative groups.
Bruce is an award-winning writer whose work has been honored by the Education Writers Association and Learning Forward. He is the author and coauthor of numerous publications related to organizational and professional development, mentoring, quality teaching, and improving professional cultures.
His selected publications include Groups at Work: Strategies and Structures for Professional Learning, Data-Driven Dialogue: A Facilitator’s Guide to Collaborative Inquiry, Learning-Focused Mentoring: A Professional Development Resource Kit, Mentoring Matters: A Practical Guide to Learning-Focused Relationships, Pathways to Understanding: Patterns and Practices in the Learning-Focused Classroom, The Adaptive School: A Sourcebook for Developing Collaborative Groups, and How to Make Presentations That Teach and Transform.
Bruce has served as a classroom teacher, curriculum coordinator, and staff developer in Oberlin, Ohio, and Concord, Massachusetts, public schools. He holds a bachelor’s degree from Antioch College and a master’s of education from Lesley College. To learn more about Bruce’s work, visit www.miravia.com or follow @brucewellman on Twitter.
To book Laura or Bruce for professional development, contact [email protected].
Introduction
It is 3:15 p.m., and several members of the fourth-grade team at Gardenview Elementary are late, as usual, for the scheduled 3:00 p.m. meeting. They eventually straggle in, some with the materials for exploration, some without. Those without their class rubrics need to go back to their classrooms to retrieve them. After a few greetings and a few grumbles, the conversation gets started.
This week’s facilitator suggests the members look at the student results for word choice based on the rubric they constructed for expository writing.
“My class was all over the place in this skill set, how about yours?”
“My kids didn’t do very well. I think we should create word walls in every classroom to build vocabulary.”
“Before we do that, I think we should create some common vocabulary lesson plans.”
“Yeah, but we should include word walls in them.”
“And then we could give another assignment to see if the results are the same.”
“Why do we need to teach exactly the same way? I’d like to do more integrated vocabulary building, and we’re not all teaching the same social studies or science units.”
The facilitator struggles for the group’s attention and says, “Wait, before we start fixing, we should look at all the rubrics.”
But at that point, the clock strikes 4:00, and the meeting adjourns.
This group, like many struggling groups, is limited by its lack of structure, shared goals, and skill with collaborative analysis of data. Such teams flounder because they try to operate without protocols and because they lack the communication skills for managing sensitive conversations about student learning and current teaching practices. Often they are trapped by a narrow definition of data as test, state, or provincial scores, and as a result, the types of data they examine constrain rich, collaborative conversations and important discoveries about student growth. These data are too far from the local classroom and individual learners to stimulate powerful conversations about practice. Unfortunately, the pressure to produce growth—growth as measured by these scores in particular—drives the team to limit its collaborative conversations to these high-stakes data sources. Pressured groups then focus on targeted interventions and test-taking skills to move a few students from one level of proficiency to the next, not on developing deep changes that produce rich learning for all.
The Promises and Problems of Collaborative Cultures
As in the opening scenario, school teams confront three common dilemmas in their work with data. These dilemmas present technical, personal, and social challenges for individual group members and for the group as a whole: (1) committee without community, (2) time without tools, and (3) data without deliberation.
Committee Without Community
Being in the room doesn’t mean individuals necessarily identify as members of the group or think of themselves as interlocking parts of the whole. Professional identity as a solo practitioner conflicts with a sense of collective responsibility for student learning and a commitment to collaborative exploration of data, options, and actions. Student results as a shared responsibility and instructional repertoire as a common toolkit are radical notions for teachers who view their primary workplace as the classroom and not the school.
Group members avoid tough-to-talk-about topics when they lack the relational skills to manage the mental and emotional demands of improving student learning. Moving from my students and my work to our students and our work requires clear purpose, safe structures, and compelling data that present vivid images of the effects of teachers’ work. This shift from individual perspective to collective perspective is the heart of collaborative inquiry as teacher teams search for the patterns and practices that produce learning success for all students.
Moving from my students and my work to our students and our work requires clear purpose, safe structures, and compelling data that present vivid images of the effects of teachers’ work.
Time Without Tools
Structural change is not cultural change. Simply altering the schedule to provide time to meet does not create conditions for learning or increase enthusiasm for the demands of collaborative engagement. Protected time without productive use builds resentment
