The Productive Struggle

Our Current Reality: The Frustrating Learning Cycle

“Just tell me what you want.” 

Does that sound familiar with our teacher evaluation process?  When learning something new, everyone cycles through a variety of stages.  You are living this reality with TEDS and the Teacher Effectiveness Rubric.  You look it over, think you understand it, and then become confused by one or more of the indicators and start doubting your understanding.  Eventually, something makes sense or you find a “handle” to grab onto, and the cycle starts again.

No doubt you will feel better after finishing a full year of TEDS.  Hindsight is often a more comfortable vantage point.  From there you will be able to see the big picture.  In the meantime, eventually and inevitably, you will go through times when you reach your limit, throw up your hands, and say, “Just show me what you want.” 

Our goal is to provide you with the information you need and the tools you can use to complete this process, but we are still in the learning cycle with you.  Together we will get this thing figured out, but the first time through includes lots of new learning for all of us.

In the meantime, let’s acknowledge the reality: It is part of human nature to become frustrated during the learning process.  The unknown is stressful, and we don’t much like being beginners.

Spoiler Alert: In the coming weeks and months, you may find yourself frustrated with Domains 1 and 3 and with the Finalization Process.

For Students: The Productive Struggle and Modeling

Since it is human nature to become frustrated during the learning cycle, it is probably good to remember that students are humans (of sort) as well.  They also become frustrated with the unknown in the learning process.  Most high school students don’t like being beginners any more than we do.  Without question, there is a time for what has been called the “productive struggle.”  (I really like this term and think it is something we need to talk about.  The Common Core will force some of this discussion.) 

Just as there is a time and place for the productive struggle, there is also a time and place for clarification.  This is where modeling comes in, especially when dealing with difficult concepts, a thinking strategy, or with almost any kind of writing.  (A good way to think about writing is this: Writing is thinking put down on paper.)

One of the only ways I know to teach thinking skills is through modeling.  Effective Modeling is very different than telling.  Effective modeling takes careful planning and includes a “think-aloud” so students can “hear” the thinking involved.  The two steps to Effective Modeling are listed below.  In this example I am using the teaching of a thinking strategy:

• Show It: The first step is likely familiar to all of you.  It is looking at the learning from the student’s perspective, breaking it down into parts, and showing students the thinking strategy.  It is easy to forget what it is like to be a beginner, so thinking like a student is essential as you show them the target strategy.
• The Think-Aloud: The next step is to share the actual thought process.  This is metacognition or thinking about the thinking.  In this step, the teacher lets the students “hear” the thinking going on with the use of the new strategy.  It might start like this: “If I am a student and I run into this kind of issue, I know I have to do some specialized thinking.  The conversation in my mind would sound something like this….”  From here, the teacher uses first person, speaking from the student’s point of view.  The goal is to say out loud the internal monologue, the thinking going on inside the mind.  The teacher walks students through the important steps, the critical questions, and the problem-solving techniques needed to be successful and learn the material.  “First, I know I have to….  Since I know that…I ask myself….”

Modeling is the way to teach higher order thinking skills to students, but there are many, many variations.  For example, exemplar papers are actually models of thinking written down, students can be taught to model effectively to each other, and you can find video clips of experts in your field modeling their thinking to solve problems, complete tasks, or analyze information.  (Ted Talks and Kahn Academy come to mind immediately as possible resources for effective modeling.)

Balancing Act

In the coming weeks and months, we are going to try as best we can to show you what is needed to complete the TER.  We will try to give you the tools to help you through the process.  The difficulty is that we don’t have as much time together as we would like, and more importantly, we are all beginners in this process.  In other words, teachers and administrators are learning TEDS together.  We are learning how to model right along with you.  I have no doubt we will figure it all out, and this time next year will feel very different.  We remain, however, in the “productive struggle.”

While we continue to fight this good fight with TEDS, take what you are experiencing as a learner and see if it has application in your classrooms.  Where is productive struggle appropriate, and where can you provide both steps of the modeling process to help clarify the thinking students need to successfully accomplish tasks and reach learning targets?  Experiment with taking on the student’s perspective and using a think-aloud to deepen student understanding.  Teach students how our brains work and the importance of metacognition.  Teach them how to think about their own thinking.

When students are given the “thinking” tools, they will learn more and perform at higher levels.

Keep fighting the good fight, HSE.  Continue the beautiful struggle.

Phil

From Kay Merseth, a senior fellow with Carnegie working on a project named “Advancing Teaching”:

The focus of productive struggle is on the learning goals embedded in the problem or situation—it is not about guessing what the teacher wants to hear or about finding a particular answer.  It is about the process of thinking, making sense, and persevering in the face of not knowing exactly how to proceed or whether a particular approach will work.  Exploring, investigating one or multiple approaches, and articulating a chain of reasoning behind the approaches also characterizes productive struggle.