Why Ask Why?

If you have little kids or you teach little kids, you have answered tens of millions “Why?” questions.  Often I get frustrated around the 4th or 5th question.  But let me tell you, these little ones are geniuses and we should learn from them.

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Little kids are programmed to explore and understand the world around them.  If something doesn’t make sense, they need to ask, “Why do we do it this way?”  And then they need to continue to ask that question until the answer connects with something else they know.  It’s brilliant.  So why do we stop doing this as we get older?  Adults are the simple answer.  At some point we convey to children that asking that “Why?” question frustrates those around you.  And we could not be doing a greater disservice to our next generation.

This tiny question leads to greater understanding of the world around us.  It makes connections from the unknown to the known, it challenges the status quo, it explore possibilities, and it forces us to evaluate preconceived understandings and biases.  That’s a lot of power for one little word.

It’s that last part that I like to focus on in education.  Challenging preconceived understandings and biases can open up a world of understanding for students.  Webster's Dictionary defines Metacognition in three ways:

1. higher-order thinking that enables understanding, analysis, and control of one’s cognitive processes, especially when engaged in learning.
2. thinking about one's own mental processes
3. awareness and understanding one's thinking and cognitive processes;thinking about thinking

When we encourage our students to ask “Why?” as it applies to their own thinking, the connection between academic knowledge, world understanding, and internal motivation goes deeper.   Elliot Aronson’s work on Cognitive Dissonance theorizes, “Creating and resolving cognitive dissonance can have a powerful impact on students' motivation for learning.”

Designing lessons and learning opportunities with this in mind is crucial for our next generation of students.  I know that in my classroom I was often tempted to cut the reflection part of a lesson because of time or in the interest of covering more material.  I was doing a major disservice to my students.  Simply “covering” material does not help to deepen understanding.  Committing time to reflection, and not just at the end of the lesson or unit, is the most important component of your lesson plan.  Ask your students, “Why did you do it this way?”  And then ask them, “Why?” again.  And maybe again.  And then watch their thinking deepen.

I have two little ones at home.  Instead of reading all the articles out there about how to stop kids from asking a million questions, I’m going to embrace the ones that talk about loving this stage.  I tend to agree that it is not that kids lose interest in the world around them or that their intrinsic motivation dies out naturally.  I think that the adults in their world discourage them from exploration.  Let’s work together to stop that cycle.

The 4C's: Critical Thinking

If you have been reading published articles on education and the workforce, you might have noticed a common thread.  Everyone seems to agree that our students need to develop critical thinking skills and strategies.  Schools are promoting critical thinking and are trying to find ways to teach it, but the workforce says that the employees they are hiring do not demonstrate the ability to think critically.  So where is the gap?  I believe that one of the biggest challenges is in defining it.  We, the larger community, haven’t come up with a general consensus of what critical thinking is, what it looks like when we see it, or how to measure it in a way that promotes growth.

Dictionary.com defines it as:

“the mental process of actively and skillfully conceptualizing, applying, analyzing, synthesizing, and evaluating information to reach an answer or conclusion”

EdLeader21, drawing from the P21 definition, defines it with behaviors:

Critical thinkers:

• Collect, assess and analyze relevant information.
• Reason effectively.
• Use systems thinking.
• Make sound judgments and decisions.
• Identify, define and solve authentic problems and essential questions.
• Reflect critically on learning experiences, processes and solutions.

The Critical Thinking Community uses this definition:  

“Critical thinking is that mode of thinking — about any subject, content, or problem — in which the thinker improves the quality of his or her thinking by skillfully analyzing, assessing, and reconstructing it.”

So why are we having such a difficult time wrapping our teaching/learning around this seemingly central and obvious concept?  

I believe it is because of the way we experienced school, both as learners and as teachers, for a majority of our lives.  Our experiences engrained a process where the teacher learns the material, the teacher prepares the material, and the student experiences the materials presented.  The reward for this process, grades, is determined by how well the student repeats back the material they were supposed to have learned.  

Take this example.  Let’s say I needed to go from my house to the grocery store.  I punch the destination into my GPS and I get all the step-by-step directions delivered to me.  On my way I find out that there has been an accident on the main road of the route..  I have a choice to make.  Do I wait on the side of the road until my obstacle is cleared so that I can take the prescribed path?  Or do I turn and try my luck on a different route?  I make a turn and my GPS recalculates and I safely reach my destination.  Now, I might be a couple of minutes later than my original destination time and I didn’t use the fastest route.  According to our traditional school method, I would be docked points for not following the directions.  My answer didn’t match the answer key.

So one classroom strategy might be the Google Maps approach to lesson design.  You could provide the learner 3 different options, all of which take them from their starting point and get them to their destination.  This give the student choice and allows them to see that there is not just one path.  It’s a step in the right direction and gives the teacher some control over learning paths.  We might even take another step and ask the student to reflect on why he or she chose the path they did.  Reflecting on thinking!

But this still misses some key elements from the definitions above.  Students are still, mostly, given a prescribed pathway from beginning to end.  It leaves no room for innovative problem solving, and little room to make decisions along the path.  And it is these decisions, and then reflecting on the outcome of those decisions, that gets to the heart of critical thinking.  

The problem is that this process is messy and it is not linear and it cannot be controlled on a calendar.  So this makes me think that teaching critical thinking skills doesn’t necessarily start in the classroom.  But rather, it starts in our profession.  This problem demands that all of us examine how we design schools, classrooms, curricula, and lessons to identify  how we are allowing our students the chance to think critically.  We must learn for ourselves how to think differently about education.  We must be critical thinkers and ask ourselves why we do things the way we do.  And then we can begin the task of refining the process of growth in this area.

My Pursuit of Knowledge

I will admit that I was a super geek when it came to back-to-school season.  Specifically, shopping for the supplies and getting ready for the first day of school.  I loved this stuff then and I continue to have a little obsession with office supplies.  The thrill of fresh notebooks, the excitement over choosing exactly the right pen, the seemingly-limitless possibilities of backpacks.  I would plan and organize and label everything.  My pencil case was well stocked and every subject had a notebook.

Fast forward to my junior year of high school, when I decided I wanted to become a teacher.  I loved accounting and finance and management strategies, so Business Education was the only logical choice to me.  I didn't even entertain the idea of a degree in Business Administration, because I had no real interest in working in an office.  I was fascinated by the act of learning concepts and putting pieces together to make sense of something.

Jumping forward again about ** years, I had finally got into what I thought was my dream job.  I was teaching Business and Marketing at a large high school in North Dakota.  From the outside looking in, it was exactly what I had been working toward.  But after just a year or two, I became restless.  I wasn't feeling the excitement over planning and reinventing my classroom.  I was feeling the pull toward research in exciting teaching methods, in curriculum redesign, in technology integration.  I felt that we were at a turning point in education and I didn't think I was in a position to have enough knowledge, experience, or influence to shape it.

That is when I found my true passion.  I took a position where it was my job to research and share innovative ideas around technology integration.  With this position was a requirement to learn about other subject areas, different building cultures, district policies, standards alignment, and core technology.  I felt like I was coming home.

Looking back, my excitement over school supplies had very little to do with the actual paper in the notebook and ink in the pens.  It had everything to do with the potential of a new school year.  It all signaled that more learning was about to begin.  That empty notebook would be filled to the brim with new knowledge and that backpack would enable me to take my learning with me wherever I chose to travel.

My teachers had done the job promised in the school’s mission statement.  They had created a life-long learner.  In the NESC Report, Opportunities, Challenges and Capacities for Choice, they define life-long learning as "....All purposeful learning activity, whether formal or informal, undertaken on an ongoing basis with the aim of improving knowledge, skills and competence" (p.170).  I think there are two keys in this definition.  The first is the phrase undertaken on an ongoing basis and the second is that it is both formal and informal.  

It is my hope that all of us in the education field internalize and model this concept to our students.  They need to see us as learners and as teachers.  They need to understand that we learn in so many ways, formally and informally, inside the classroom and out.  They need to hear that we learn and seek to understand so many different concepts, not just those most often discussed in the classroom.  They need to be taught the value in learning about things we do not yet understand, even if (or especially if) it might not be on a test.  The need for all citizens to be learners and critical thinkers is vitally important in this information-rich era.  

So my challenge to you is to do something today that fills your knowledge cup.  Go buy a new notebook and fill it with stuff.  Get yourself a really good pen and start journaling your thoughts.  Reach out to someone with an expertise that interests you and ask questions.  Start your Twitter PLN. Whatever you do, do it now and don't stop learning.

For more reading on why I consider myself a geek and not a nerd, visit this blog post by geektyrant.  

Defining Innovation

Innovation is one of those buzz words floating around right now.  "We should be innovative!" "We need innovative ideas!" "Our kids should be innovators!"  But what does this word mean?

In his book, The Innovator's Mindset, George Couros states that "...innovation is a way of thinking that creates something new AND better."

For many, innovation is synonymous with change.  Changing routines or methods can be innovative because it requires a conscious deviation from the status quo.  This change can be mandated from our superiors or by law, but it can also be the result of an internal need to fix something that isn't going quite right.  Whatever the catalyst, change is the first step in innovation.

Doing something for the sake of change has sometimes given education initiatives a bad rap.  When we look at change (innovation or initiative), it is important to identify how this new thing will give us a better outcome.  So what happens when we try it and we don't get the spectacular results we were anticipating?  For most of us, it means the outcome wasn't worth the change so we revert back to the status quo.  I think this is where the breakdown happens.  So far, this isn't innovation.  It was just change.

The next step must be reflection on the process used to create the change.  It is important to remember why the change was implemented in the first place.  There was something that wasn't quite right and somebody was looking for a way to make it better.  It may not be better yet, but that doesn't mean that we haven't taken the first step toward true innovation.  Taking risks and learning from mistakes are crucial to true innovation.

Without this process, we are simply left with what we have always had and a series of failed experiments in our wake.  And when we talk about this in the education context, our wake includes students who deserve better.  They deserve a system that continually strives to do better, be better, and make change that results in better learning experiences in the classroom.  We don't get that by trying and then giving up, or worse, never trying at all.

So, what is the value in attempting to innovate our practices?  By challenging the status quo, you enrich your understanding of why things are they way they are.  It might turn out that you have a new or renewed appreciation for the process or product.  But if you try, and reflect, you will be better prepared to innovate in the future.