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Posts Tagged ‘curriculum’

The importance of being “gritty”

April 24, 2011 Leave a comment

schematic view of Curriculum in/out of school,...

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am collecting data now in 3 different areas to support my research into the effects of using Participatory Action Research to conduct curriculum design that focuses on the experiences of faculty and students to drive the selection of topics, and the content of lessons that are satisfying to them, as opposed to the traditional method of awaiting fro policy guidance from Dept of the Army and then conducting pilots programs.

i am examining the effects in 3 dimensions:
1. comparing the PAR generated curriculum to traditional curriculum as measured on degrees of satisfaction in quant and qual surveys of students and faculty

2. comparing the cognitive maps produced by analyzing the policy pronouncements and white papers from DA, and the aggregate of collected faculty and student comments about what “ought” to be covered in the curriculum to identify areas of overlap and underlap

3. the effect of the PAR process on my own teaching practice by examining my learning journal notes, blog entries, email exchanges with trusted others

my challenge is the variety of mixed methods and protocols, and will ultimately involve an attempt at integration of insights from 3 varied perspectives

am just grinding it out, chunk by chunk

Dr Anders Ericcson’s life work offers insights into the importance of “grit” on getting things done: it appears to be much more important than natural talent or brilliance

This post is part of my effort to keep generating the psychic energy it takes to take the last few steps of a long journey, by committing in public to completing the task of my dissertation.

Ihate finishing things: i am much more prone to start something new to keep the inspiring energy of entreprenuerial activity going

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May 30, 2010 1 comment

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Buddhists have a name for the quality of inquisitiveness that we associate with very young children and kittens: they call it child-mind.

It is a state of consciousness that is highly sought after by long-term practitioners of the meditative arts. It is a state of mind that represents curiosity, inquisitiveness and a natural desire for knowledge. The mind in the state can be thought of as “sticky”. Ideas and concepts answer the sticky mind and stay there for us to reflect upon and put together in interesting ways.

There is a lot of concern in the literature, especially those dealing with high school and undergraduate college curriculum about how to motivate students to become more interested in the lessons of hand.

This is a more general problem however with any topic which is not of immediate interest to the student.

A lot of student disinterest in the class I believe, however, can be attributed to the industrial age approach to education, which treat students as replaceable parts and education is a series of FAQs and standardize concepts that need to be imprinted into the brain in order to create DOS file, obedient workers. Is it any wonder that children resist this kind of indoctrination, because it offends their sense of individuality, uniqueness and joy of life.

By the time our students have grown up to be adult learners, there is a vast literature that is required to address the issue of how to create the conditions in which they will be supportive of learning. By young adulthood, we have managed to turn people from the naturally inquisitive learners of their youth into the dull and defensive automatons who resist all opportunities to learn in the same way that they have learned to resist marketing and advertising of products that they sense they don’t really need.

As teachers, we have an obligation to appeal to their natural inquisitiveness by creating the conditions in which they can find once more their innate desire to learn. We must appeal to that inner child and his or her natural curiosity by making it clear that the lesson truly is concerned with something of value, that is worthy of being known on it’s own and not necessarily to serve the purposes of others.

We must remember ourselves as teachers how to connect to the joy of learning that intrigued us as children. There’s always time for the student to figure out later how it may be applied or not in their life, but that is an effort that should be following the initial phase of learning for the sheer sake of learning.

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Making learning fun

May 25, 2010 6 comments

schematic view of Curriculum in/out of school,...
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In a lot of educational writing, it’s taken as a given that creating an atmosphere of fun in the classroom must inevitably lead to learning. It’s fair to ask what is the relationship between fun and learning, however from an evidential perspective.

This analysis leads you to develop a working definition of fun and what it looks like in the classroom so that we can say if we have more or less of it. This definition and quantification allows us to analyze the relationship between fun and learning as measured by quantitative assessments.

Reread those words and see if you can find any fun in them. Is there anything about that attitude that would make you want to attend the class from someone who thought in that way.

This is not to discount the importance of an objectivist approach to education and looking critically at the outcomes of your educational efforts.

I believe we can proceed with the assumption that people are social animals and that the atmosphere in which they find themselves in the classroom, particularly if this was not a matter of choice but one of policy, can go a long way towards improving the quality of their learning.

Our hypothesis is that of fun atmosphere will improve the probability that they generate the internal desire to learn which most people would agree is the basis for a lifelong love of learning that will sustain them once they leave our classroom area

Making things fun  requires you to look at curriculum and the educational space through the eyes of your students and their preferred learning styles. We need variety, experiential learning, connection to the important matters of our times, alignment of the class lessons with the interests of our students to more fully engage their attention.

All of these things lead to fun in the classroom. Perhaps the most important contributor, though, is the personal attitude towards the class as expressed by the teacher and model than his or her behavior. If it’s not fun for the teacher, it it makes it that much harder for it to be fun for the students. If the teacher truly loves the math, then the math class will be fun and we’ll get through it with enjoyment and improve learning.

So, don’t neglect the outcomes-based evaluations of education, but don’t forget that where people and that we need to be engaged in courage and enthusiastic about our time in the classroom too.

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Creating a positive environment in the classroom

May 25, 2010 5 comments

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A positive classroom environment comes from the interaction of faculty and students in the curriculum. Here are some tips that can help you maintain the positive energy that is so helpful for creating an effective learning climate.

Model the positive enthusiasm as a teacher that you hope your students will demonstrate when they come to your class. You’ve got to lead the way when it comes to establishing a positive energy. You’ve got to communicate your excitement in the topic and the feeling that this is the best place that we can be for the next two hours.

Keep in mind the connection of this particular class to be positive goal at the end of the course or the semester or the school year were the degree program. We’ve got to see how each of these lessons contributes to the greater whole. In that way we can tap into the positive energy associated with the ultimate goal.

We’ve got to remember that we are social animals involved in a collaborative learning process in the classroom. As such, we’ve got to acknowledge our human need for connection and authenticity. Try starting each class with a check in in which everyone has an opportunity to share those pieces of their lives outside the classroom that they find important. It helps us appreciate who they are and it brings a rich human dimension to the classroom environment that will pay off and everything else that we do.

Similarly, we want to end each class with a check out to give everyone a chance to acknowledge what it is that was most meaningful for them or perhaps even their biggest unanswered questions.

Another technique is to solicit those biggest unanswered questions at the end of our class in order for you to do some follow-up research that you will get back to them in writing  within 48 hours. In this way there is a sense of a continuing adventure into knowledge associated with your class that makes them want to come back for more.

Finally,nmake sure you are encouraging rich participation of the students. You can do this by asking them to do some outside reading and bring in one new fact or resource not contained in the syllabus in order to introduce an element of surprise to our discussions. It’s amazing how valuable these outside contributions can be.

Good luck and keep up the flow!

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A system that relies on individual initiative

May 18, 2010 4 comments

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I’m working in Army curriculum development, and I’m always amazed at how much the system relies on the initiative and knowledge of individuals working on their own to discover what the right answer is for the good of the Army

The pace of changes is greater now than I have ever seen it in the last eight years developing curriculum, and it’s getting to the point where I don’t know that we can even keep up with the rate of change any more using old assumptions.

The students, not the faculty, at Command and General Staff College are the real experts in complexity and uncertainty, if anyone can be said to be one.

This should change the way we teach and design lessons in the role that the faculty play in the classroom, but there’s a great deal of resistance from both students and faculties to embrace the uncertainty that our doctrinal manuals say we need to do

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Reflecting on surveys for organizational feedback

May 15, 2010 5 comments

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Discuss the usefulness and limitations of survey feedback. What are the key issues/problems the OD practitioner has to be aware of while feeding back data?

Usefulness of survey feedback (when it is effective) (Cummings & Worley, 2009, pp141-2):

  • Motivation to work with the data: organization members have to believe in the purpose and efficacy of the feedback system, We are finding it extremely important for the surveyed population to get feedback on HOW the data is being used
  • Structure for the meeting: Because of the challenges and possibilities of interpreting data and connecting it to action plans, there needs to be a thoughtful and satisfying means of examining discussing, interpreting and then acting on the data, in a process that satisfied all the tiers in the organization
  • Appropriate attendance : people affected by the interpretation of the data should be represented in the meeting: This can validate the assessment of the data and the legitimacy of the action steps decided upon
  • Appropriate power: feedback process must have the authority to get the data needed for action, but also the authority to act as suggested by a fair reading of the data
  • Process help: Because the sense-making of the feedback process stakeholders is a political process with connections to the deepest values of the organization, it is necessary that the process be above board and managed/led properly.  Social & political justice is an important part of legitimizing the decisions that come out of the feedback process. We don’t have to agree with every decision but we must be satisfied by the process that got us to the decision.

These elements are timely as we are conducting a process action team project for the college’s feedback system this month.

Limitations of survey feedback (Cummings & Worley, 2009, pp 147).

  • Ambiguity of purpose: If the purpose of the feedback process is not clear, then it stands to reason that the design of the experiment, the survey questions, the interpretation and the focus of action steps. Having an explicit plan that is clearly understood upfront seems non-negotiable before we proceed any further along the feedback path.
  • Distrust: it seems to me that distrust could come from either purposeful or accidental  circumstances. We might distrust the leaders’  true purpose or the skill of the practitioner in achieving the technical standards of designing and administering the survey properly. Either source of the distrust will clearly sabotage the ultimate actions that derive from the feedback.
  • Unacceptable topics: Culture, tradition, values, leadership-imposed constraints, or perhaps even an agreement among stakeholders to hold certain areas off limits may give us only par5tial insights. These off limits areas may not be critical to the system, but in complex social organizations it may prevent us from achieving a holistic and satisfying understanding. My experience has been that the off-limits areas really degrade the usefulness of the survey.
  • Organizational disturbance: we know from science that the act of measuring alters the system in some way so we must take into account how, so we must make trade-off decisions about how much to measure and how often, and in a manner that minimizes the cost of querying.

Key Issues/problems: It seems to me that whether your survey data and feedback processes are useful or problematic depends on how your system  “scores” on the 9 qualities of the survey data identified in Cummings & Worley,( 2009, pp139-141). I think that the organizational members perceptions of these  are as important as the technical merits of the survey/experimental design.

  • Relevant: do the data connect with the area under study?
  • Understandable :  are the stakeholders satisfied with the clarity?
  • Descriptive : do the data give us meaningful and identifiable characteristics
  • Verifiable: are the data reliable and repeatable?
  • Timely: can we get the data quickly and within a timeframe that they remain valid?
  • Limited: is the scope is narrow enough to allow focus and analysis?
  • Significant: are we working on important issues concerning core processes and values?
  • Comparative: do the data allow us to make meaningful distinctions? And infer cause and effect so that we can take actions?
  • Unfinalized : do the data lead us towards significant action? Or dlo they leave us at a dead end?

(Cummings & Worley, 2009).

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Reflecting on wicked force management problems (Army)

May 5, 2010 4 comments

My take on the problem with force management is that it has been treated as a complicated problem, suitable for central planning (PPBES) and not as a complex problem, rife with social & political context, in a dynamic state where the variables change parameters far faster than the planned decision cycles. Consequently, we never get what we planned for, it’s always too costly and the steady-state never is.

My suggestion that FM be treated with design, as a complex problem, would engage with fundamental questions of the purpose of the Army and process by which it is designed, fielded and sustained. I’d argue against an Archimedean perspective because that’s what has led us to the cumbersome, over-planned, under-executing Byzantine bureaucracy we have in place. The owner/operators (ie operational career field “end-users”) have generally stayed outside of the process and have let the “experts” run this system.  I argue for them to be part of the FM process, and thus believe design-thinking is needed in order to get the Army you want.

I consider it to be complex, and not just complicated, because of the multiple actors, time frames, values, purposes that combine to resemble March’s “garbage can decision making model” w

A rather longish discussion of how social, political and “unplanned” FM can be is here: http://usacac.army.mil/blog/blogs/dlro/archive/2008/11/24/a-reflection-on-army-force-structure-decision-making-from-1995-1996-passing-on-the-bct-based-army.aspx

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Complexity in process consulting: a good thing?

April 22, 2010 4 comments

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A colleague used the word “simplistic” in describing the 10 principles of process consulting offered by Ed Schein.

I interpreted his use of the word simplistic in describing shines 10 principles as a negative thing. There’s a part of me that remembers the 10 Commandments are simplistic too.

In my studies of complexity and chaos theory there is a belief among practitioners that to successfully adapt to or manage complexity requires an equivalent degree of complexity in the manager or leader or organization’s processes themselves. There is rarely if ever evidence offered to support this contention, but it seems to be intuitive. It is the very intuitive attractiveness of that idea that causes me to be skeptical and wonder what the evidence really shows about the need to be complex in order to manage complexity.

The other side of the argument is that a combination of very simple rules in a dynamic environment can cause very complex results, and so I’m not sure that complexity needs complexity to be managed.

If you believe the 10 principles are overly simplistic where would you add some additional nuance to his general advice?

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Planning considerations for “insider” consultants

April 22, 2010 4 comments

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as an inside consultant with considerable knowledge of the status quo, what kinds of procedures or checklists or attitudes do you think are necessary to ensure that we are taking a fresh look at a well-known situation to find root causes?

How dangerous is it for the organization to have OD consultants as insiders? What’s the risk to the purity of the process and how can we mitigate that risk without sacrificing the obvious advantages of having people on staff who already have a deep understanding of the organization’s culture and context?

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Information technology: integrating IT into Strategic planning

April 11, 2010 2 comments

Is There Group Wisdom for Strategic Planning?
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Your information technology department MUST be part of your strategic planning process for our value can be created and multiplied2 reasons:

1. they have possibilities and enablers that may suggest new ways that your value can be created,d explanded, multplied, leveraged

2. if they don’t know where you are going and why, and how you are evolving, they will always be trying to integrate a static model of the organizations processes. In other ways you will be integrating where you were, not where you are going; IT will then be an anchor and not an accelerator

You need IT

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