Repositioning Educational Leadership: Leading from an Inquiry Stance

A book that piqued my interest in the principalship was Improving Schools from Within: Teachers, Parents, and Principals Can Make the Difference by Roland Barth (Jossey-Bass, 1990). During one of my first years as a teacher, I found it while browsing through our professional library. At the time I only knew I should probably go for my masters but I was unsure about any focus.

After reading Barth’s classic resource, I knew what I wanted to study. He shared his own personal journey as a principal, the ups and downs, before conveying his belief that empowered schools have all they need to continuously grow as a community of learners. Barth’s frank and authentic descriptions of the principalship are something I don’t often read about in today’s literature on school leadership.

Repositioning Educational Leadership: Practitioners Leading from an Inquiry Stance (Teachers College Press, 2018) carries Barth’s torch and follows a similar journey. The editors – James Lytle, Susan Lytle, Michael Johanek, and Kathy Rho – have collected a series of narratives from doctoral students at the University of Pennsylvania, Graduate School of Education. They are research summaries that describe the real problems of practice for these leadership students within their context at the time.

Among the eleven memorable experiences, I want to briefly highlight one narrative that hit home for me as a principal.

“Language and Third Spaces” by Ann Dealy

A principal in Ossining, New York explores the possibilities of implementing a more culturally-relevant curriculum into her increasingly diverse elementary school. What she discovers is that when leaders try to make instructional changes, they also have to consider the school culture and community in the process.

Professional development shifted from looking for answers from outside of the school to studying our students as learners and collaborating on changes in practice to better support teaching and learning (38).

Dealy also learned through her inquiry that, by upgrading a curriculum to be more culturally responsive, other groups may inadvertently experience somewhat similar feelings of being underrepresented.

It became clear that in the effort to open up curricula, we can also inadvertently close out those whose prior dominance we may have been countering (41).

This research helped reveal for Dealy and her partners that the process of organizational change is most effective as a team effort. Not taking into consideration others’ perspectives will likely lead to limited results.

The implementation of best-researched models of equitable practice is a start – but it is not enough. My leadership learnings include the necessity for collective inquiry to affect systemic change (45).

After reading Dealy’s narrative, I reflected on my own experiences when I have not included the broader school community in decision making on behalf of our students. Almost always when I have engaged with others regarding our schools’ needs, the direction we took was positive. The narratives shared in Repositioning Educational Leadership provided necessary perspectives for me as I considered my own context. It also brought me back to the original goal of getting into the principalship: to affect change from within and with many.

Note: A copy of Repositioning Educational Leadership was provided for me at no cost to read and respond to for this post.

Action Research: Professional Learning from Within

By becoming question-askers and problem-solvers, students and teachers work together to construct curriculum from their context and lived experiences.

– Nancy Fitchman Dana

Over 20 teachers recently celebrated their learning as part of their work with an action research course. They presented their findings to over 50 colleagues, friends, and family members at a local convention center. I was really impressed with how teachers saw data as a critical part of their research. Organizing and analyzing student assessment results was viewed as a necessary part of their practice, instead of simply a district expectation.

Equally impressive was how some of the teachers shared data that suggested their interventions did not have an impact on student learning. One teacher, who explored student-driven learning in her middle school, shared survey results that revealed little growth in her students’ dispositions toward school. What the teacher found out was she had not provided her students the necessary amount of ownership during class.

Another teacher did find some positive results from her research on the benefits of reflection during readers workshop. Students wrote in response journals and engaged in authentic literature circles to unpack their thinking about their books they were reading. At the end of the school year, the teacher was starting to observe her students leading their own literature conversations with enthusiasm. This teacher is excited about having some of these same students in 2016-2017, as she is looping up. “I am really looking forward to seeing how these kids grow within the next year.”

A third teacher shared her findings regarding how teaching students how to speak and listen will increase their comprehension of reading and their love for literacy. One of her data points – student surveys – was not favorable toward this intervention. Yet her other two pieces of data (anecdotal evidence, volume of reading) showed positive gains. Therefore, she made a professional judgment that her students did grow as readers and thinkers. This teacher is also reflecting on the usefulness of this survey for next year.

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In these three examples, I couldn’t help but notice some unique outcomes of this action research course:

• Teachers were proudly sharing their failures.

With the first teacher who focused on student-driven learning, she developed a greater understanding about her practice than probably possible in a more traditional professional learning experience. She learned what not to do. This teacher is stripping away less effective methods in favor of something better. And the reason she is able to do this is because she had a true professional learning community that allowed her to take risks and celebrate her discoveries.

• Teachers didn’t want the learning to end.

This goes beyond the teacher who expressed her excitement in looping with her current students next year. Several participants in this action research course have asked if they could take it again. The main reason: They felt like they just found the question they really wanted to explore. It took them most of the school year to find it.

• Teachers became more assessment literate.

The term “triangulation” was never referenced with the teacher who focused on conversations to building reading comprehension and engagement. Yet that is what she did, when she felt one set of data was not corroborating with the other results and her own professional judgment. Almost all of the staff who participated in action research had 3-5 data points to help make an informed conclusion about the impact of their instruction.

I also learned a few things about myself as an administrator:

• It is not the professional development I offer for staff that makes the biggest difference – it is the conditions I create that allow teachers to explore their interests and take risks as innovative practitioners.
• My role often is to the side of the professionals instead of in front of them, even learning with them when possible. For example, we brought in two professors from UW-Madison to lead this course. The best decision I made was recognizing that I was not the expert, and I needed to seek out those who were.
• Principals have to be so careful about providing feedback, as we often haven’t built up enough trust, we can make false assumptions about what we are observing, and/or we do not allow teachers to discover better practices on their own terms.

In a world of standards and SMART goals, it is frowned upon when teachers don’t meet the mark regarding student outcomes. The assumption in these situations is that the teacher failed to provide effective instruction. However, the fault in this logic is that learning is not always a linear process. We work with people, dynamic and unpredictable beings who need a more personalized approach for real learning. Facilitating and engaging in action research has helped me realize this.

Action Research and the Art of Knowing Our Students #NCTE15

What happens when student data doesn’t agree with what you think you know, especially about a student’s reading skills and dispositions?

It’s a situation that happens often in schools. We get quantitative results back from a reading screener that doesn’t seem to jive with what we see every day in classrooms. For example, a student shows high ability in reading, yet continues to stick with those easy readers and resists challenging himself or herself with more complex literature. Or the flip: A student has trouble passing that next benchmark, but is able to comprehend a book above his or her reading level range.

Here’s the thing: The test tests what it tests. The assessment is not to blame. In fact, blame should be out of the equation when having professional conversations about how to best respond to students who are not experiencing a level of success as expected. The solution is not in the assessment itself, but in differentiating the types of assessments we are using, questioning the types of data we are collecting, and organizing and analyzing the various data points to make sense of what’s actually happening with our students’ learning lives.

Differentiating the Assessments

It’s interesting how reading, a discipline far removed from the world of mathematics, is constantly quantified when attempting to assess readers’ abilities. Words correct per minute, how many comprehension questions answered correctly, and number of pages read are most often referenced when analyzing and discussing student progress. This data is not bad to have, but if it is all we have, then we paint an incomplete picture of our students as readers.

Think about yourself as a reader. What motivates you to read? I doubt you give yourself a quiz or count the number of words you read correctly on a page after completing a book. Lifelong readers are active assessors of their own reading. They use data, but not the type of data that we normally associate with the term. For example, readers will often rate books once they have finished them on Amazon and Goodreads. They also add a short review about the book on these online forums. The audience that technology provides for readers’ responses is a strong motivator. No one requires these independent readers to rate and review these books, but they do it anyway.

There is little reason why these authentic assessments cannot occur in today’s classrooms. One tool for students to rate and review books is Biblionasium (www.biblionasium.com). It’s like Goodreads for kids. Students can keep track of what they’ve read, what they want to read, and find books recommended by other young readers. It’s a safe and fun reading community for kids.

Yes, this is data. That data isn’t always a number still seems like a shocker for too many educators. To help, teacher practitioners should ask smart questions about the information coming at them to make better sense of where their students are at in their learning journeys.

Questioning the Data

Data such as reading lists and reading community interactions can be very informative, so long as we are reading the information in the right way.

Asking questions related to our practice can help guide our inquiries. For example, are students self-selecting books on their own more readily over time? Also, are they relying more on peers and less on the teacher in their book selection? In addition, are the books being read increasing in complexity throughout the year? All of these qualitative measures of reading disposition can directly relate to quantitative reading achievement scores, informing the teacher with a more comprehensive look at their literacy lives.

Organizing and Analyzing the Data

Students filling out reading motivation surveys via Google Forms and Chromebooks

I recently had our K-5 teachers administer reading motivation surveys with all of our students. The results have been illuminating for me, as I have entered them into spreadsheets.

Our plan is to position this qualitative data side-by-side with our fall screener data. The goal is to find patterns and trends as we compare and contrast these different data points, often called “triangulation” (Landrigan and Mulligan, 2013). Actually, the goal is not triangulation, but responding to the data and making instructional adjustments during the school year. This makes these assessments truly formative and for learning.

Is the time and energy worth it?

I hope so – I spent the better part of an afternoon at school today entering students’ responses to questions such as “What kind of reader are you?”, “How do you feel about reading with others?”, and “Do you like to read when you have free time?” (Marinek et al, 2015). The information collecting and organizing has been informative in itself. While it takes time, by transcribing students’ responses, I am learning so much about their reading lives. I hope that through this process of differentiating, questioning, and organizing and analyzing student reading data, both quantitative and qualitative, we will know our students better and become better teachers for our efforts.

References

Landrigan, C. & Mullligan, T. (2013). Assessment in Perspective: Focusing on the Reader Behind the Numbers. Portsmouth, NH: Stenhouse.

Marinak, B. A., Malloy, J. B., Gambrell L. B., & Mazzoni, S. A. (July/August, 2015). Me and My Reading Profile: A Tool for Assessing Early Reading Motivation. The Reading Teacher, (69)1, 51-62.

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Attending the NCTE Annual Convention in Minneapolis this year? Join Karen Terlecky, Clare Landrigan, Tammy Mulligan and me as we share our experiences and specific strategies in conducting action research in today’s classrooms. See the following flyer for more information.

Three Ways to Use Evernote in Action Research

We are very familiar with Evernote in our school. Our staff collects, organizes and shares out student work in the form of digital portfolios with this application via iPads. Parents can see their son’s or daughter’s progress as it is happening. Our portfolio night in April has now become a Showcase Night. Evernote’s ability to easily capture images, audio, and text makes it a necessary tool for ongoing assessment, student reflection, and responsive instruction.

But what about our own learning as professionals? Can the data and artifacts we collect help us become even more reflective about our practice? These are some of the questions we are trying to answer, in lieu of Wisconsin’s new Educator Effectiveness Plan. While teachers’ Student Learning Objectives will be measured by local and state quantitative assessments, the Professional Practice Goal is based more on qualitative data.

I was introduced to the book The Reflective Educator’s Guide to Classroom Research: Learning to Teach and Teaching to Learn Through Practitioner Inquiry, 2nd Edition (Corwin, 2009) by Nancy Fitchman Dana and Diane Yendol-Hoppey from the Connected Coaching course I took last summer with Lani Ritter Hall. The authors provide a clear template of how teachers can become students of their own practice. They include several reasons for action research, such as being a powerful tool for professional development and expanding the knowledge of teaching in important ways.

In addition, Dana and Yendol-Hoppey see action research as an important vehicle for raising teachers’ voices in education reform. “While both the process-product and qualitative research paradigms have generated valuable insights into the teaching and learning process, they have not included the voices of the people closest to the children – classroom teachers” (3).

To measure one’s own practice and make improvements, several pieces of artifacts are needed to reflect on the day-to-day instruction. The authors offer several strategies for capturing our own instruction and student learning. The first strategy, Field Notes, involves scripting dialogue and conversations, recording questions the students and/or teacher asks, or noting what students are doing at particular time intervals.

Where Evernote Comes In

For scripting dialogue and conversations, I would use a Moleskine Evernote notebook. The advantage is, once you have scripted what you hear, you can scan in your notes into a specific Evernote notebook. Your handwriting is then readable if searching for specific terms. These notebooks can be assigned to a student, or to a subquestion from a teacher’s main wondering in their action research.

The second idea from the authors when taking field notes is to have some sticky notes on your lanyard with a pen. If you want to capture student learning while teaching and don’t have a notebook around, write down what happened on the note. Evernote and Post-It have teamed up to create scannable stickies. When using an iPad or iPhone, there is an option to take a picture of a Post-It Note within Evernote. Just like the Moleskine notebooks, what you write becomes readable and searchable.

A final strategy for field notes is recording audio of students having a conversation and/or of yourself teaching.

The authors recommend that whoever is being recorded is comfortable with the process. When this was written, iPads were not in the picture. That is why this tool, along with Evernote, can be so powerful. Students are very comfortable with these devices. Plus, the microphones are hidden.

For a more comprehensive field note, a peer observer could record audio of student conversations, while he/she also scripted specific parts of the dialogue, such as coding the level of questions asked by each learner.

How do you see technology such as Evernote augmenting action research in the classroom? Please share in the comments.

Note: All notes derive from the aforementioned resource and were written in a Moleskine Evernote notebook. All doodles are from yours truly.