Theory of mind/change

Theory of mind describes the way that one person understands another.  We begin to recognize that all the thoughts, feelings, intentions and other mental states I experience, you experience, whatever or not I can ever understand them in the same way you do.  Just as I have reasons, however vaguely I comprehend them, for what I do, so do you.  Whether we locate this process of mutual recognition in the brain (mirror neurons), or in culture (socialization), or existentially and ontologically, theory of mind complements empathy.

"Theory of change" is a looser term, describing the practices an institution or group of individuals go through to develop, implement and evaluate action-oriented transformation.  Success can result in a grounded model of what works to bring about an updated, better or improved state of affairs.  The approach gets written and subsequently publicized.  It becomes a must-follow technique and is soon adopted wholesale, regardless of the context.  On a bigger picture, "theory of change" means the large-scale project of developing and spreading these iterative models of transformation.  Put differently: change is necessary, change can happen, and change can be managed, directed and effective towards pre-conceived outcomes.

What do these two ideas have in common?  Why discuss them together?  Because education reform needs more theory of mind and less theory of change.

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I like to think of empathy, the heart of theory of mind in action, as both process and disposition rather than a state of being or an outcome.  By this definition, we must actively and continually position take with another person, trying to understand their experience from within their ways of knowing.  Max van Manen depicted this as trying to make thoughtful sense of the meaning the other's experience has for the other as well as for our view.  We need to seek out to the fullest extent how contexts and conditions and norms shape thought and meaning.  That we try is crucial; we are slated to fail, because an undeniable gulf exists between what I experience and what you do.  R. D. Laing puts this well:

"I cannot experience your experience. You cannot experience my experience ... I do not experience your experience. But I experience you as experiencing. I experience myself as experienced by you. And I experience you as experiencing yourself as experienced by me. And so on."

And so on.  Or, we strive to understand another and the willingness to do so, despite failing, marks our humanity.  We are disposed to try, always in novel ways.  With and through empathy, I change.  But change comes without prior theory or expectation.  I do not know how I will change.  At some fundamental level, who I am alters in ways non-predicated or foreseeable.  It makes sense that some refrain from seeing another fully, experiencing the gulf between self and other as a challenge, a lack, a sign of our own incomprehensible understanding of ourselves.  We risk when we empathize, for we make the sense of ourselves as full experienced and conceived vulnerable.

All this means that a theory of mind pulls us more intimately into our own experience; the more we recognize the fullness of others, the more transitional and incomplete we find ourselves.  What results from that awareness is education.

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Educational reform (the whole bag of iterative examples of addressing needed change in schooling, too many to list) posits this idea that something better can be conceived and achieved.  It makes theory of change an outcome-oriented concept, rather than a process of reaching understanding, or inquiring into the conditions of and elements of experience in schooling.  It puts the ends (a better school) in front of the means (what is experienced and school and what are its outcomes?); we know where to go before we know what why we are going.  Put another way, when theory of change ignores theory of mind, understanding is not possible, and meaning is inscribed by above, politically and ideologically and from hegemony.

That imposition matters if we are to view schooling as partaking in the formation of the whole person.  When the process by which we nurture and, well, educate successions of citizens and fellowmen and women models a top-down administration of experience, we teach students that one need not work at empathy, or on themselves.  Rather, just climb to a position of authority and dictate from on high the meanings you demand that others adopt. Outcome-based education reform (as opposed to, but not different from, outcome-based education theory and practice; the medium is the message) can therefore strangle empathy, and render human relationships into instrument object-use relationships.  The other is for me a vehicle for my own self-interest.  Mutual recognition becomes Hobbesian and narcissistic; empathy erodes.

With loss of the possibility of empathy, the self grows complacent and settled.  The openness needed for life-long learner - Socratic wisdom - vanishes; we are finished and oriented against and opposed to the world. What results from that kind of self is not education, however much we make it into what schooling does.

Faith and silence

I sent this letter off today.


J____,

I have been reading All things shining and thought it has much to say about your recent Ed theory piece and our previous start-up conversation on silence.  It makes a rather strong point that meaning, or faith in any sort of content, derives not from agency.  Rather, it comes through the ways we each are attuned to the possible.  When that attunement finds too high a register in our own willfulness, we alienate ourselves from the possibility of disclosure in the world.  Put another way, faith as a function of self-chosen belief is a form of false consciousness.  Rather than a dwelling of existential freedom, faith becomes flight from a more radical and difficult freedom, the freedom to be what is possible.  Less Fromm and more Bultmann, who wrote that "true freedom is freedom from oneself."

Cultivating silence, or what we called 'silent being,' I think, recognizes the loss that accompanies outcome-based action.  Even at its most pragmatic and necessary, goal-directed living and learning risk meaningfulness in action for meaningful of action.  It would be the height of irresponsibility for us moderns to construct a social institution not dedicated to effective, efficient pay-offs; we must be purposeful, directed and effervescent in pursuit.  The contradiction is most apparent when teachers discuss motivating students.  "Relevant" and "meaningful" get used without a deeper commitment to how things are valued.  We end up working hard to convince students to either value something that will happen as a result of undergoing this things call education (or schooling or learning or, whatever) or to recognize in their school work something that they already value.  Neither contend the students with what is worth valuing nor with how the emerge of value (meaningfulness) is part and parcel of a modern, occlude process of faith.

Silence, then, is less curricular than dispositional, while faith is less muscular (as Simone Weil has called faulty forms of prayer) than it is open.

Roll that around in your South Texas dirt and get back to me.

Take care,

Neil

a double shot of Rhee

WSJ gave two separate spaces to Michelle Rhee and her new Students-First organization.  The first was a more or less simple account of her new organization.  The second was an opinion piece she authored describing the why and the how of her organization.

Why, then, did the paper include quotes from Ms. Rhee in its 'news' article if it concurrently gave her space on its 'opinion' section?

The article offers some details of her agenda, and a few bites of criticism from the leading teacher's unions about her politics, not the quality of her ideas.  Her opinion, though, gives the reader much to consider on these ideas.

For example, there is this:
"However, we do believe that the fiscal crisis, and the latest embarrassing rankings of U.S. students by the Program for International Student Assessment compared to their international peers (of 65 countries, American 15-year-olds were 17th in reading, 23rd in science, and 31st in math), can focus the nation on the need for change."
First, the financial crisis is threatening the quality of public schooling; it is not a savior.  Rather that providing opportunity for schools to show how they can do less with more, the economy has forced schools to eliminate programs like music, art and PE, raise class size to 40+ students in critical content areas; and further spiral social cohesion as one of a community's main support structure (the school) faces continued harsh reductions in force and staff.  Leveraging the crisis to push through reform plays on the currency of fear and dread the current economy has spurred.  Fear and trembling does not foster rational, thoughtful approaches to any policy, much less on one that is already a cause of psychological trauma for a community.  Instead, it encourages demagogues to push through ideology.  Bad form.

Second, the US scores on PISA are 'embarrassing,' and meaningless.  Google away on PISA and you can find countless stories on the limited nature of these rankings.  I particularly like this comment from Richard Posner:
"The 2009 PISA test scores reveal that in American schools in which only a small percentage (no more than 10 percent) of the students receive free lunches or reduced-cost lunches, which are benefits provided to students from poor families, the PISA reading test scores are the highest in the world. But in the many American schools in which 75 percent or more of the students are from poor families, the scores are the second lowest among the 34 countries of the OECD; and the OECD includes such countries as Mexico, Turkey, Portugal, and Slovakia."
In other words, address poverty to improve our PISA scores.

Ms. Rhee then lays out the planks of Students-First.
"Treating teachers like professionals. Compensation, staffing decisions and professional development should be based on teachers' effectiveness, not on their seniority. That means urging states and districts to implement a strong performance pay system for the best teachers, while discontinuing tenure as job protection for ineffective teachers. This will ensure that the money spent on teacher salaries goes to the hard-working professionals who are improving student achievement every day.
The budget crisis inevitably requires layoffs of school staff. Teacher-layoff policies are a good example of how recognizing quality over seniority translates into responsible decision-making during difficult economic times. Currently, layoff decisions are based on seniority, which means the last person hired is the first person fired. However, research, such as a recent study by Dan Goldhaber at the University of Washington, shows that when teacher layoffs are determined by seniority it hurts students and teachers."
Performance pay does not work.  It also misconstrues what teachers do.  Yes, teachers want their students to succeed academically.  But the effort of teaching is not rewarded by higher test scores.  Value-added measures operate on the provence of testing, which leads to narrow curricula and goal setting at the lowest level of cognitive and emotional outcomes.  While there is definitely a lot of work needed in removing poor teachers, the value of seniority and experience on staff can outweigh the pure numbers-focus approach of firing the lowest scoring teachers.

Next.
"Empowering parents and families with real choices and real information. Parents, especially those who live in lower-income neighborhoods, have limited educational options for their children. StudentsFirst believes that states and school districts must remove the barriers that limit the number of available seats in high-quality schools. This includes allowing the best charter schools to grow and serve more students. It also means giving poor families access to publicly funded scholarships to attend private schools. All children deserve the chance to get a great education; no family should be forced to send kids to a school they know is failing.  StudentsFirst also urges legislation to equip parents and communities with the tools they need to effectively organize and lead reform efforts when their public-school system fails them. California's "parent trigger" law, for example, forces the restructuring of a poor performing school when more than 50% of the parents whose children attend it sign a petition."
The 'trigger law' is an intriguing idea, implemented correctly and emergent from the parents (not organization pushing agenda that manipulate parents).  Charter schools, however, perform no better and often worse than traditional publics.  And using public money to pay for private school amounts to no more than a tax cut for the wealthy, or it opens the gates of for-profit schooling to prey on parents who lack full understanding of the school system, or suck up a quick buck and fold, leaving parents worse off.  How tightly would Ms. Rhee like these schools regulated?

Finally.
"Ensure accountability for every dollar and every child. Due to the financial downturn in the states, it is critically important to ensure that every dollar spent on public education has a positive impact on student learning. Unfortunately, billions of dollars today are wasted on things such as paying for advanced degrees for teachers that have no measurable impact on student achievement.
States will continue to find it difficult to solve budget deficits if they continue to ignore problems surrounding the current structure of their benefits and pensions for teachers and administrators. For example, states and districts must shift new employees from defined-benefit pension programs to portable, defined-contribution plans where employees can contribute a proportionate amount to their own retirement savings. This will help ensure that states aren't draining their budgets with pension payouts."
This section is an attack of schools of education and the pension system for teachers.  On the later question, remember that teachers most likely never pay into social security.  Their pensions were collectively bargained, effectively, with voter-accountable politicians.  Still, it is difficult to argue about moving future retirement policies into defined-contribution plans.  As for schools of education, learning matters.  It is right to question the quality of teacher education programs and to weed out certification and Masters factories.  Quality, though, is, well, qualitative, not numerical.  It must be experienced, not propagandized or synthesized. We should continue to insist that teachers privilege continual learning.  Asking them pursue a rigorous, thoughtful Masters program is both a great model for their students (hey! I'm learning always) and a way to ground teachers in the intellectual pursuit which is the core of the educational process: dare to know.

The WSJ does not realize it has decided whether to focus on its journalistic enterprise or its advocacy.  On the other hand, I bet it has.