Let’s talk about American Football.  For those of you still reading, let’s focus on what the professionals call “The Quarterback Problem”.

How would you choose an NFL quarterback?  They’re the most pivotal player on the field and it really pays to get the selection right.  Not only do quarterbacks earn up to $10 million a year but they can also make or break a season for an entire team.  With so many jobs and so much money on the line, developing a surefire way of determining success is vital.  

Guess what?  There isn’t a surefire way.  Dan Shonka (awesome name) has vast experience in the field, works very hard and analyses statistics and DVDs of players.  His job with an NFL team relies upon him making good decisions about which quarterbacks to choose.  A lot of money is on the line.  People’s careers.  People’s livelihoods.  If there was a surefire way of choosing a quarterback, someone with Dan’s experience would have worked it out.  

He can’t do it.

IQ tests don’t work.  Video analysis doesn’t work.  Analysing college level performance doesn’t work.  You cannot predict performance in this case.  The only way that you can tell if someone is going to be a good NFL quarterback is to let them have a go at being an NFL quarterback.

The same is true for teaching.  The only way to work out if someone is going to be a good teacher is to let them have a go at teaching.  This problem is even more dire than the quarterback problem: There’s no such thing as “college level teaching” before you get to “NFL level teaching”.  Teachers can arrive at their first job without having taught before.  Practicum (a supervised simulation) is a good start, but it’s not the same thing as being a teacher responsible for a class.  

There have been some attempts to bridge the gap, and they’re welcome because they address the issue.  Lifting the quality of initial teacher education is always a good idea.  I’d ask Mr Pyne how he plans to implement the recommendations made to him.  For example:

“Higher education providers select the best candidates into teaching using sophisticated approaches that ensure initial teacher education students possess the required academic skills and personal characteristics to become a successful teacher”.  

Sounds promising right?  “Sophisticated approaches”?  Everyone can agree with that.  The problem, however is that there’s no evidence that having a teaching degree, passing a test or looking good in a qualitative survey on “personal characteristics” affects your capacity to be a good teacher.  None.  Nil.  Nada.

Depressing, huh?  Despair not; some of the recommendations of the TEMAG report are actually pretty sensible.  They are focused on rigour.  They target ineffective tertiary practice and the lack of coordination between schools and universities.  More power to them.  I’d disagree with the focus on entry criteria and say that raising the bar for entry into the profession is a fool’s errand and will be a textbook case of managerialism.

Choosing teachers will always be always be too hard to reduce to quantifiables.  Some have suggested you have to try out four people to find one good teacher.  This is simply because the job is unquantifiable.  I hope this makes you appreciate the good teachers in your life even more.  In the mean time, I suppose we can hope that Pyne will fix the problems in pre-service teacher education.

Does Teaching Kill Creativity?

What do you want from your school?  If your school was a restaurant, would it be Aria, or would it be McDonald's?

My wife and I are fans of Aria.  The degustation menu is an experience like no other.  A group of passionate people, led by a visionary, have worked very hard to create something truly mind-blowing.

At Aria, freedom to innovate results in a sublime experience.  At McDonald’s standardisation rules.

If Matt Moran was a teacher, I suspect that he’d have left the profession long ago.  Standardisation dulls creativity.  It feels safe, but it kills initiative.  Programs that attempt to raise standards simply add paperwork.  The requirements are mind-numbing.  Do you want a teacher with a numb mind?

In Alan Moore’s 2011 book, No Straight Lines, he describes the outcome of this way of thinking on education.

“Government edicts describe in several educational courses not just the scope of the learning but the minute-by-minute, blow-by-blow instructions as to exactly how lessons are to be run.  If anyone is good at their job, are they going to want to work like that?”

If you stood behind Matt Moran, telling him how to cook, he would be pretty cranky (he’s a big guy, so I wouldn't try it).  If you do it to teachers, they become discouraged and move their creative efforts elsewhere.  Matt Moran, Jamie Oliver, Gordon Ramsay are all excellent cooks.  Their excellence is derived from their individuality and creativity.  Would you tell them how to cook?  Would you tell them to comply to a bewildering set of criteria that have little to do with their day to day work and have been shown to have no substantive benefit to the desired outcome?

Let teachers teach.  Provide them with resources and get out of their way.  Train them meaningfully and give opportunity to improve if there are problems.  

Incidentally, in preparation for this post, I typed “Why teachers” into Google.  Before I could type “quit”, Google suggested the word “drink”.

The Listening Deficit

I'm being lectured as I write this. The content of the lecture is how we can relate to our students in an authentic way. The speaker is relating to me in an archaic way and he seems unaware of the irony. He’s not a bad guy; I actually admire him as a teacher and as a peer-educator. There’s just something wrong about the way teachers present material to each other in a formal setting.  Professional development has always meant lots of talking. There’s ample evidence to suggest this has never worked.

   

When I listen, I am at my most helpful. When I speak, my content is linear and my aim narrow. There’s a very high chance of minimal impact. Why do we favour the one over the other? There is a great emphasis on groups and talking, open plan offices and brainstorming. None of it works.  Where is the emphasis on listening and being quiet?    

Let’s take an example from a recent encounter. A colleague was talking and I was listening. She was expressing frustration at how long it took to find key phrases in online text. Because I was quiet, I was able to suggest ctrl-F as a solution. Because this was her story and not mine, I was able to provide input that had more meaning for her than it did for me. By the way, ctrl-F might not be as well-used as you might think.

Perhaps the issue is narrative. Given a chance to present to colleagues, we tend to construct a narrative to share. Sometimes these are interesting. Mostly they lack impact and are soon forgotten. Either way, in a room with 100 people, there are 100 narratives. Why is the presenters’ narrative the most salient, useful or worthy of sharing?  

Should we abandon the presentation idea for professional development?  What else would you do on those days? Personally, I’d abandon both the presentation and the day. Professional development that works requires a different approach. It requires money, time, planning and thought. Filling a day with presentations is cheaper, takes less time, requires minimal planning and short-term thinking.  

As usual, the easy option has become the orthodoxy.

My goal is work out a way of selling "listening". It's going to be tough, because the medium might be at odds with the message. Any ideas?