301 – Assigment 3.2

Assignment 3.2 – Please post your assignment to the discussion board, naming your post “assignment 3.2” (15 pts.)

Joyce and Showers’ research is discussed in chapter three, regarding their findings discussing the critical elements of effective training and how that has an impact on student achievement. Based on this brief discussion and your experiences, discuss the following:

• What are some of the most common roadblocks you have seen to getting educators to change how they educate?
• What are some of the practices you have experienced or witnessed that can help educators move beyond these roadblocks?
• As an educator yourself, rank the five elements (from which you find most important to least important) that Joyce and Showers have indicated are needed. Indicate why you have ranked them as you did.
• If you had to select only three elements as THE MOST important, which three would you choose and why?

What are some of the most common roadblocks you have seen to getting educators to change how they educate?

This is a complicated question. As I think about this question, I have to ask myself, who are the “educators” in this scenario. I get the opportunity to work with educators on many levels from classroom teachers to school administrators, from district level technology integration specialists to regional and statewide technology trainers. The influence I have in their professional development ranges from presentations to direct coaching and everywhere in between. For this assignment, I will discuss my interactions with typical classroom teachers.

The number one roadblock in getting classroom teachers to change is attitude or TTWWADI (That’s The Way We’ve Always Done It). There are many classroom teachers who do not embrace new technologies or 21^st century learning at all. We are in a huge paradigm shift in the way we need to teach and some don’t yet see where they fit into that shift. Classroom teachers, as wells as the other groups I deal with, are also affected by administrators who ultimately decide when to give their teachers the time to participate in effective technology professional development, and providing funding for effective 21^st century professional development.

Here is a great video I use in some of my workshops depicting how hard it is for some teachers to change.

http://homepage.mac.com/lesleyu/iMovieTheater.html

What are some of the practices you have experienced or witnessed that can help educators move beyond these roadblocks?

One of the best ways I have found for teachers to embrace teaching in a technology rich environment is using a process I found in the program “Building 21^st Century Schools.” Using this program I pose the teachers with a challenge, usually some form of “How can you use technology to enhance learning and engage students using [insert 21st century skill such as "collaboration" here]?” At that point, they write some initial thoughts.  Then I have them review resources previously gathered that would help them expand their initial thinking. This is usually in the form of websites, articles, videos, audio or other material. I then have them write down their revised thinking after reviewing the material in reference to the challenge. After they have completed their revised thinking, they break into groups and discuss (group discussion) the challenge as a whole. It is during this time I have them write down two goals they have in terms of the challenge.

This process has worked SO well in the past that I try to incorporate it more and more into what I do on a daily basis. I am not sure WHY it works but I have a feeling it has to do mostly with them having control over where they want to go with what they have been challenged with. They get to decide their course of action and they get to do it with the comfort of their peers. The key to the process is having a good focused challenge question and having resources that are relevant and trustworthy. After that, just facilitating to make sure they are staying on track and are doing what they are supposed to do makes this a simple but yet extremely effective tool to remove challenging roadblocks.

As an educator yourself, rank the five elements (from which you find most important to least important) that Joyce and Showers have indicated are needed. Indicate why you have ranked them as you did.

5) Theory – Depending on your audience, this may scale a little differently. Generally, this will be important in the whole scheme of things but least important in this list. I see several people may rely on the theory and feel that is most important in deciding what skills it is they need to drive home. One of the reasons I feel Marzano’s (2001) work is so popular in K12 education is his background theory and research. Although this is important data, the real crux is how the teacher implements the strategies and if they are used and when they are used.

4) Demonstration – I have seen this debated several ways. Lots of teachers I work with like to have a couple of examples of how a particular technology might work for them. This gets the wheels turning and they can then run with the ideas and integrate into their own setting. I have also heard several people use the example of an art teacher saying to their class, “Today we are going to be working on drawing a tree. Here is what you do. Blah blah blah. And here is my example.” Then showing the class their work, albeit with years of background experience, it is intimidating and ruins any chance of allowing individual creativity. The trees always end up looking like the teacher’s! There needs to be a good balance of giving possible ideas and allowing for individual creativity.

3) Practice – Hands on practice! Do it in a safe environment. This is what I call “playing in the sandbox.” They need a safe, trusting place to make mistakes.

2) Feedback – In the sandbox, they need feedback. This is a simple concept but very sensitive also. Again, a trusting environment is needed and clear definitions of expectations outlined before a learner can objectively receive good feedback. According to Marzano (2001) in Classroom Instruction that Works (p. 96-97) feedback should be corrective in nature, should be timely, should be specific to a criterion and lastly, is also effective using peers.

1) Coaching – The most important factor of coaching is that this is an on-site, on-going process of real world design. It is getting real world coaching in the field from the experts or peers also working through the process. This is evident in any sporting event. Coaches coach the athletes as the plays happen and the other athletes will pipe in with cheers of joy or correction, whichever is needed. In front of the audience this has a great impact in the learning process and on the scoreboard!

The only downside I see to coaching is the time and resources it takes to effectively accomplish this step. It takes real experts taking real time to work through issues and reassess the learning. It is hard and time consuming and you need a facilitator who is dynamic and trustworthy to pull this off.

If you had to select only three elements as THE MOST important, which three would you choose and why?

I have two answers to this question. The first is what I currently model as most important. That is demonstration, practice and feedback. This is what most of my workshops entail. The reason I using these three most is time and resources. I only get so much time with them and to touch as many people as we do, this is the only way we can effectively give them the training. Money and time aside, coaching would be the first added to the list and then theory.

The next answer is that they all work together so trying to pick any three from the five is unfair to the process.