Change The Conversation–It’s Not About The Thinking

It’s Not About The Thinking

by Terry Heick

It’s not the thinking behind an idea that should bother us, but rather the effect of the idea.

#edtech. Content-based academic standards. PLCs. Use of data. Mandates to be research-based in our behavior. Mobile learning. Differentiation. Social media in the classroom.

None of these ideas are good or bad in and of themselves. They’re just ideas. They’re value neutral, inert in isolation. We only charge them–obscuring their truth–when we internalize them–think of them using our unique schema, imagine them in circumstances familiar to us, or otherwise contextualize them comfortably to avoid cognitive dissonance. Who wants to feel like they have an incomplete understanding of something?

At this point, though, the idea has lost its original shape. It’s misshapen–the same difference between a real dog and one a clown twists up in brown and white balloons.

By internalizing an idea, we also attach emotions to them–hopeful optimism, head-shaking skepticism. Or indifference. For example, I love the idea of mobile learning, so I attach positive feelings to it that can lead me to cognitive distortions downstream, where I oversimplify it’s function, or catastrophize our continued misunderstanding of its potential in education. I champion it, but the “it” is an individual idea. The it + context is different. This is chemistry.

Thinking of it as pattern: Idea–>Integration–>Effect. The idea is useful as a matter of vision or artistry. As an academic or intellectual exercise. As a matter of playful dialogue or good old-fashioned bench racing. The integration is a matter of design and engineering (designer and engineer being two minds of a teacher). Ideas, integrations, and effects all matter.

It’s all recursive, sometimes skipping a stage, sometimes refusing to budge. Maybe then, instead of a linear Idea–>Integration–>Effect, we might think instead of something more like a triangle:

Idea

Integration                             Effect

Changing Our Thinking

And instead of “Is this a good idea?”, we might ask other questions:

What is “it”? What are its parts?

What’s it doing?

How is it working?

What is this costing us?

What are its effects–and not narrow effects in pursuit of a single goal, but rather macro effects on a thing in its native place?

In education, these might be redressed as:

What has standardizing content into a narrow range of content areas done to learning?

How has a gamified system of education worked for children as they seek to become whole human beings capable of good work, compassion for the people around them, and nuanced digital and physical citizenship?

How has education retreating into a tangle of policy and jargon impacted the capacity of families and communities to be served by their own learning?

How do teachers respond when called to be “research-based”? Does that encourage them to pour over peer-reviewed journals of emerging pedagogies to only bring in “proven” methodology into their classroom? Or does it send them to Google to search for “research-based instructional strategies,” where they find the same 6-8 examples that are tossed limp and lifeless into their next lesson plan because that’s what they were told to do?

Let’s broaden our view. Let’s pretend for a moment that we will eventually be able to design a system of teaching and learning where every single student will be able to master every single academic standard their local government has set out for them. What is the effect of this system? What does it “do” to children? When they graduate from this hypothetical system, will they have a strong sense of self-knowledge, wisdom, place, and familial legacy? Of critical thinking, work, and love? If not, is that okay?

A flipped classroom is good, yes? 1:1? Maker education? The 3D printer in the library? So what is it doing? What are its effects? The idea is always neutral. A “good idea” is marketing based on emotion and appearance. How is it been implemented, and more critically, what are its effects? Technology. Workshop-based PD. Snark on twitter. That grouping strategy you were planning on using tomorrow.

And be careful of the metrics or evidence you’re looking for. That new questioning strategy may have 65% more engagement from student, but may have stymied the students from wrestling with the question on their own. Same with teacher self-directed PD, 3-minute hallway switches, or labeling a school as “good” or “bad.”

Saying something is a “good idea” can only be accepted if we move directly into a conversation about integration, and then on effect. “What are its effects?” is a complex question that deserves our thinking and most careful genius. But one even more worthy of our collective affection might be, “What is it doing to our children as they seek to become more human–to grow intellectually, creatively, and in wisdom and love?”

We might then crane our necks further downstream that we are accustomed to, so that we might see what we–and they–are moving towards together.

It’s Not About The Thinking; adapted image attribution flickr user tulanepublicrelations

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