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.

I have all the answers.

You know Sisyphus as the guy condemned to push a boulder up a hill for all eternity. Just as he gets it to the top, it rolls back down the hill. He returns to the bottom and starts again.  He does this forever.  

Insanity is repeating the same thing over and over and expecting different results.  I can't claim to have coined that gem.  Neither can Einstein or Rita Mae Brown, for that matter.  

I think about the USA and their military solutions.  I think about Australian politicians squandering the diminishing returns of voter trust on hollow rhetoric.  I think about my two-year-old son's tantrums.  Of these three examples, I expect that my son will grow out of his self-defeating behaviour very soon.

This all brings us rather neatly to the topic of peer coaching.  Peer coaching is very simple.  It's about perspective.  The challenges that you face might not be of any substance.  The way you're doing things might be the issue.  The solutions you've come up with might actually be the biggest problem.  A peer coach can think for you (we come up with solutions for others far easier than for ourselves), be objective for you (our regular colleagues often reinforce our limitations) and hold you accountable (it becomes real if you say it out loud and someone else is listening).

Why was Sisyphus pushing that rock?  He was being punished.  For hubris.  The one thing sure to get in the way of effective peer coaching is hubris.  We already have the answers.  Often before we know the questions.

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?