People for Education ConferenceToronto, Ontario

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People for Education Conference Toronto,
Ontario November 7, 2009 The Fourth Way The
Inspiring Future for Educational
Change With Professor Dennis Shirley Lynch
School of Education Boston College
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An Overview

• Three Historical Ways of Change
• Three Current Paths of Distraction
• Can We Envision a Better Way Forward?

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Major Overarching Question
What is Your Vision for Your Schools?
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The First Way
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The Second Way
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The Third Way

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The Third Way
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Three Paths of Distraction

• The Path of Autocracy
• The Path of Technocracy
• The Path of Effervescence

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The Strengths of Each Way
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entailed its own weaknesses
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Turn and Talk
Are our schools distracted from their true moral
purposes? If so, what could my role be in finding
a better way ahead?
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Is There Another Way?

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Six Pillars of Purpose and Partnership

• An inspiring and inclusive vision
• Public engagement
• No achievement without investment
• Corporate educational responsibility
• Students as partners in change
• Mindful learning and teaching

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Three Principles of Professionalism

• High-quality teachers
• Powerful professionalism
• Lively learning communities

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Four Catalysts of Coherence

• Sustainable leadership
• Integrating networks
• Responsibility before accountability
• Differentiation and diversity

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Fourth Way Public Engagement

• Continual communication at all levels
• Childrens learning at the center
• Adults as learnersincluding the study and use of
  research
• Active trust

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• Tools from Community Organizing
• One-on-ones
• Home visits
• House meetings
• Research actions
• Accountability sessions
• Evaluation all organizing is reorganizing
• Youth organizing

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Thank You!

• www.dennisshirley.net
• www.mindfulteacher.com
• shirleyd_at_bc.edu

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Open-mindedness
The first and most important synergy is a
commitment to open-mindedness. Research shows
that learners in all kinds of situations quickly
fall prey to ingrained habitual modes of acting
that prevent them from being open to new kinds of
information that call for new responses.
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Caring
The second synergy of mindful teaching relates
to a disposition of caring, or even loving, at
the heart of teaching. Education without a
disposition of caring at the center inevitably
will produce a reaction of skepticism and
justifiable resistance among learners.
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Stopping
In an institutional setting in which innovative
overload has become a routine form of everyday
life, the third synergy of mindful teaching is
simply stopping. While formal meditation is
optimal, busy teachers cannot always do this, so
it is important to recall that meditation can be
very informal and can occur in the midst of
teaching activities with the right frame of mind.
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Professionalism
Of course, it is all very well and good to be
open-minded, loving, and to stop and think as
educators. But what good does this avail students
if one doesnt know the subject matter one is
teaching and makes no effort to keep abreast of
recent research findings or reforms in ones
profession? We cannot emphasize sufficiently the
fourth synergy of mindful teaching, which is
professional expertise.
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Authentic Alignment
Educators hear endless amounts today about the
need to align their instruction with standards
and curriculum frameworks. Teachers need to ask
themselves if their teaching approaches are
aligned with their own understanding of teaching
as a profession, and when dissonance occurs, they
need opportunities to reframe their activities.
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Integrative and Harmonizing
A sixth synergy of mindful teaching is that it
is integrative and harmonizing. Expert teachers
incorporate new practices into their repertoire
without entirely abandoning previous strategies.
Mindful teaching skillfully blends the old and
the new, leading to a broad and diverse
instructional repertoire that can be personalized
for individual learners.
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Collective Responsibility
The seventh synergy of mindful teaching is
collective responsibility. Teachers have a
special role to play as those civic professionals
who are entrusted with the education of the
young. The transformation of accountability
systems into more learning-enhancing kinds of
assessment and transparency must be part of a
broader change strategy for the years to come.
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Third Way to Fourth Way Professionalism
From Performance-driven quality Bought-off
unions Data-driven teams Presentism
To Mission and conditions-driven
quality Unions as change partners Evidence-infor
med communities Mindfulness
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Third Way to Fourth Way Systems
From Accountability first Testing
census Imposed targets Individual leadership
development Dispersed networks
To Responsibility first Testing by
samples Shared targets Systemic and sustainable
leadership Area-based collaboration
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• The Four Horizons of Hope
• The top performing country
• Successful networks
• The engaged community
• The turned-around district

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The Interregnum The Unholy Trinity

• Conservatism
• Learning
• Impoverished School
• Privatism Presentism

Dan Lortie, Schoolteacher A Sociological Study
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Raising Achievement, Transforming Learning

• A network of over 300 underachieving secondary
  schools helping schools
• An invitational process to three annual cohorts
• A no-strings-attached stipend of 9,000
• Expert analysis of school achievement data
• Mentor schools and consultant heads
• Data-informed reflection and decision-making
• A menu of short-, medium-, and long-term
  strategies
• The persistence of presentism

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The Alberta Initiative for School Improvement

• A network of district projects to infuse
  innovation into schools throughout the province
• 3-year grant funding cycles
• 2 of annual provincial education that has served
  over 90 of the districts in the province
• Districts networked through regional and
  provincial conferences
• Expert analysis of quantitative and qualitative
  data
• Site-based teacher observation and development
  protocols
• An on-line AISI Clearinghouse

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• The Seven Synergies of Mindful Teaching
• Open-mindedness
• Caring
• Stopping
• Professional expertise
• Authentic alignment
• Integration and harmonization
• Collective responsibility

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Third to Fourth Way Purposes
From Detailed Deliverology Bureaucracy,
markets and professionalism Competitive
standards Parent choice Community service
delivery Customized learning Students as
targets Public confidence
To Steering and development Professionalism
and democracy Inspiring and inclusive
vision Public engagement Community
Development Mindful teaching and
learning Student Voice Active trust
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The Current Conjuncture

• Policy epidemic in a global skills race
• Policy borrowing in the quest for excellence
• Testing, standards, and accountability as levers
• Training school staff on how to gather and study
  data and how to improve results through
  Professional Learning Communities
• Drilling down with precision and speed to attack
  hitherto intractable areas of underperformance
• Identifying and disseminating excellence through
  change networks

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Some Things for the Public to Worry About

• Reform fatigue due to innovation overload
• Repetitive change syndrome
• The decline of the local
• Data-driven to distraction drowning in data
• Gaming the system as professional habitus

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Fourth Way Public Engagement

• Continual communication at all levels
• Childrens learning at the center
• Adults as learnersincluding the study and use of
  research
• Active trust