Shanker Blog

What Do Schools Fostering A Teacher “Growth Mindset” Look Like?

Our guest authors today are Stefanie Reinhorn, Susan Moore Johnson, and Nicole Simon. Reinhorn is an independent consultant working with school systems on Instructional Rounds and school improvement.  Johnson is the Jerome T Murphy Research Professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education.  Simon is a director in the Office of K-16 Initiatives at the City University of New York. The authors are researchers at The Project on the Next Generation of Teachers at Harvard Graduate School of Education. This piece is adapted from the authors’ chapter in Teaching in Context: The Social Side of Education Reform edited by Esther Quintero (Harvard Education Press, 2017).

Carol Dweck’s theories about motivation and development have become mainstream in schools since her book, Mindset, was published in 2006.  It is common to hear administrators, teachers, parents, and even students talk about helping young learners adopt a “growth mindset” --expecting and embracing the idea of developing knowledge and skills over time, rather than assuming individuals are born with fixed abilities.  Yet, school leaders and teachers scarcely talk about how to adopt a growth mindset for themselves—one that assumes that educators, not only the students they teach, can improve with support and practice. Many teachers find it hard to imagine working in a school with a professional culture designed to cultivate their development, rather than one in which their effectiveness is judged and addressed with rewards and sanctions.  However, these schools do exist.

In our research (see here, here and here*), we selected and studied six high-performing, high-poverty urban schools so that we could understand how these schools were beating the odds. Specifically, we wondered what they did to attract and develop teachers, and how teachers experienced working there. These schools, all located in one Massachusetts city, included: one traditional district school; two district turnaround schools; two state charter schools; and one charter-sponsored restart school. Based on interviews with 142 teachers and administrators, we concluded that all six schools fostered and supported a “growth mindset” for their educators.

The Social Side Of Capability: Improving Educational Performance By Attending To Teachers’ And School Leaders’ Interactions About Instruction

Our guest authors today are Matthew Shirrell, James P. Spillane, Megan Hopkins, and Tracy Sweet. Shirrell is an Assistant Professor of Educational Leadership and Administration in the Graduate School of Education and Human Development at George Washington University. Spillane is the Spencer T. and Ann W. Olin Professor in Learning and Organizational Change at the School of Education and Social Policy at Northwestern University. Hopkins is Assistant Professor of Education Studies at the University of California, San Diego. Sweet is an Assistant Professor in the Measurement, Statistics and Evaluation program in the Department of Human Development and Quantitative Methodology at the University of Maryland. This piece is adapted from the authors’ chapter in Teaching in Context: The Social Side of Education Reform edited by Esther Quintero (Harvard Education Press, 2017).

The last two decades have witnessed numerous educational reforms focused on measuring the performance of teachers and school leaders. Although these reforms have produced a number of important insights, efforts to measure teacher and school leader performance have often overlooked the fact that performance is not simply an individual matter, but also a social one. Theory and research dating back to the last century suggest that individuals use their social relationships to access resources that can improve their capability and, in turn, their performance. Scholars refer to such real or potential resources accessed through relationships as “social capital,” and research in schools has demonstrated the importance of this social capital to a variety of key school processes and outcomes, such as instructional improvement and student performance.

We know that social relationships are the necessary building blocks of this social capital; we also know that social relationships within schools (as in other settings) don’t arise simply by chance. Over the last decade, we have studied the factors that predict social relationships both within and between schools by examining interactions about instruction among school and school system staff. As suggested by social capital theory, such interactions are important because they facilitate access to social resources such as advice and information. Thus, understanding the predictors of these interactions can help us determine what it might take to build social capital in our schools and school systems. In this post, we briefly highlight two major insights from our work; for more details, see our chapter in Teaching in Context.

For A More Just And Prosperous America

Our guest author today is Michael Maccoby, an expert in leadership. His most recent books are The Leaders We Need, And What Makes Us Follow and Strategic Intelligence. He is a member of the boards of the National Coalition on Health Care and the Albert Shanker Institute.

It can be argued that President Donald Trump’s marketing skills accounted for a large part of his electoral success. He fashioned an ideology embracing right-wing values and a vision that connected with his supporters’ anger, fear, resentment and hope. In contrast to Trump’s message, which was weak on facts and policies but strong on emotional appeal, Hillary Clinton’s was strong on facts and policies, but weak on vision and emotional appeal. Although she ended up with the larger popular vote, Clinton failed to connect with key voters in the Midwestern states that gave Trump his electoral college victory.

Recent polls report 31 percent of voters identify themselves as Democrats, 24 percent as Republicans, and 42 percent as Independents. By appealing to Independents as well as Democratic voters in this year’s congressional election, Democrats might be able to take a large step toward bringing this country closer together.  Given the recent negative messages of the Republican Party, Independents could be especially likely to vote for Democrats who offer an inspiring vision and compelling ideology based on the best of American values and who present their policies in a framework of progressive adaptation to a changing world, emphasizing human values as well as economic growth.

Three Questions Underlying The Debate About School Choice And Segregation

The question of school choice and segregation has been a common recurring theme in education policy over the past 5-10 years (most recently in response to this Associated Press story).

Critics claim that school choice, specifically charter schools and private school vouchers, exacerbate segregation by income and especially race and ethnicity, primarily because more motivated parents with greater resources will exercise choice. Choice supporters, on the other hand, counter-argue that regular public schools are highly segregated due to the lack of choice (i.e., due to school assignment based on residence), and that school choice, which severs that tie, might lead to greater integration.

Given the proliferation of charter schools (and, to a lesser extent, vouchers) over the past 20 years, this is clearly an important debate. Yet the issue of choice and segregation entails three major underlying empirical questions that are sometimes blurred. It may be useful to discuss them briefly.

Happy Holidays From The Shanker Institute

Promoting Productive Collaboration Through Inquiry: The Limits Of Policy Mandates

Our guest author today is Robert Shand, the Novice G. Fawcett Postdoctoral Researcher in Educational Studies at The Ohio State University. His research focuses on the economics of education, teacher collaboration and professional development, and how teachers and school leaders make decisions based on data and research to improve student outcomes.

In some ways, it is hard to dispute the traditional view that K-12 teaching is a professionally solitary activity. At the end of the day, most instruction still occurs with a single teacher standing in front of a classroom. When I tell folks that I study teacher collaboration for a living, some are puzzled – other than team teaching, what would teachers even collaborate about? Some former colleagues from my time as a middle and high school teacher even bristle at the growing demands by administrators that they collaborate. These former colleagues no doubt envision pointless meetings, contrived team-based scenarios, and freeloading colleagues trying to offload their work onto others.

Despite these negative preconceptions, there is growing evidence that meaningful work with colleagues can enhance teacher productivity, effectiveness, and professional growth, and even increase job satisfaction. Teachers can share ideas and instructional strategies, divide the work of developing curriculum, learn from colleagues, and analyze data and evidence to solve instructional problems and help meet diverse student needs. The evidence for the potential benefits of collaboration is so compelling, and collaborative work in education is becoming so pervasive, that the Every Student Succeeds Act legally redefines professional development to include “collaborative” as part of the definition.

Quality Teaching Needs Quality Support

Our guest authors today are Ulana Ainsworth, a special education teacher at Curtis Guild Elementary School in Boston, MA and Jodie Olivo, a fifth grade teacher at Nathanael Greene Elementary School in Pawtucket, RI.

Among the most underserved populations in education are teachers themselves. Until now, most applications of technology in the schools have focused on students. Student access is critical, but leaving out the most critical person in the room –the teacher –is a huge mistake. Working with the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) and other education leaders, IBM committed to changing that this fall with the launch of Teacher Advisor With Watson, a totally free online tool that uses IBM’s innovative artificial intelligence technology. IBM’s Teacher Advisor enables teachers to deepen their knowledge of key math concepts, access high-quality vetted math lessons and acclaimed teaching strategies, along with annotated video all integrated together, giving teachers the unique ability to tailor those lessons to meet their individual classroom needs.

IBM technologists worked directly with teachers and other education experts over a two-year period to develop this new tool. TeacherAdvisor.org will help strengthen teachers’ ability to instruct students with varying degrees of preparation in elementary school math – the gateway to learning more complex concepts. The technology has been trained by some of the nation’s leading math experts. And with more training and teacher more use by teachers, Teacher Advisor will continue to learn and improve.

A Closer Look At Our Report On Public And Private School Segregation In DC

Last week, we released our research brief on segregation by race and ethnicity in the District of Columbia. The analysis is unique insofar as it includes regular public schools, charter schools, and private schools, thus providing a comprehensive look at segregation in our nation’s capital.

Private schools serve only about 17 percent of D.C.’s students, but almost 60 percent of its white students. This means that any analysis of segregation in D.C. that excludes private schools may be missing a pretty big part of the picture. Our brief includes estimates of segregation, using different types of measures, within the private and public sectors (including D.C.’s large charter school sector). Unsurprisingly, we find high levels of segregation in both sectors, using multiple race and ethnicity comparisons. Yet, while segregation in both sectors is extensive, it is not substantially higher in one or the other.

But one of our most interesting findings, which we’d like to discuss here, is that between 25-40 percent of total citywide segregation is actually found between the public and private sectors. This is not a particularly intuitive finding to interpret, so a quick explanation may be useful.

The Importance Of Civil Society And Civic Education: The Bulgarian Example

Our guest author today is Tatiana Vaksberg, one of the founders of the 1989-90 Bulgarian students movement and an award-winning investigative journalist based in Sofia, Bulgaria, concentrating on issues of human rights and transitional governance. This post was adapted from her remarks to the ASI’s recent Crisis of Democracy conference.

My country is one of those places in Eastern Europe that said “no” to communism 28 years ago in an attempt to build a new and democratic society. Back in 1989, I was among the young students in Bulgaria that formed the first free student organization in 40 years. We struggled for a new constitution that would allow a multiparty system, freedom and respect for human rights.

In 1991, I started working for Bulgarian television’s central news desk. I have worked in the field of journalism ever since, which obviously changed my perspective. I started reporting on the way the new constitutional provisions were implemented and on the way other people continued to struggle. But what has never left my mind was the importance of one repetitive and persistent question which is common to many Bulgarians today: have we achieved what we struggled for?

The quick answer is “yes.” In 28 years, we achieved almost all of the main goals that we had in the beginning of the 1990s: Bulgaria is now a NATO and European Union (EU) member and all of its citizens’ rights and freedoms are constitutionally guaranteed. Even if Bulgaria is the poorest country in the EU —with an average monthly salary of only 420 dollars — the country has the fourth highest GDP growth rate in the EU. Technically, we live in a democracy with a poor but growing economy. Like Germany, we have elected for a third time the same conservative government, which could be seen as a sign of political stability. Nevertheless, something is terribly wrong with our achievement. The more we look democratized and stable, the worse are our achievements in the field of constructing a true civil society and true democracy.

I want to speak about this discrepancy.

Democracy Under Siege

Our guest author today, Mac Maharaj, is a former African National Congress (ANC) leader, friend and prison mate of Nelson Mandela’s, who smuggled the first draft of Mandela’s autobiography, Long Walk to Freedom, out of Robben Island. Over the past 50 years, he has been an anti-apartheid activist, political prisoner, exile, underground commander, negotiator, bank director, professor and a cabinet minister in South Africa's first democratic government. This post was adapted from his remarks to the ASI’s recent Crisis of Democracy conference.

I come from the generation that negotiated South Africa’s transition from race rule to a constitutional democracy that has been acclaimed throughout the world. We put together a constitution founded on an entrenched Bill of Rights, with a separation of powers, bolstered by a set of independent institutions. Having entrenched freedoms, such as that of expression, the media and assembly, and having secured the protection of the individual from arbitrary arrest, we believed that we had established a system that would enable the mediation of conflicts of interest that are immanent in society—evading the civil strife that degenerates into violence and preventing any group from having to go to war.

But our democracy is only a little over two decades old, and there are already growing concerns that our system has not delivered and is under threat.