Why It Matters

For teachers to be able to create a classroom culture in which students think, inquire, collaborate, discuss, take risks, and learn from mistakes, teachers need to experience such learning for themselves. The way teachers get treated as learners by their ministries of education, state-level education departments, district-level administrators, and school principals, will get mirrored in their classrooms. If teachers are controlled and dictated to, they will control and dictate to their students. By the same token, if teachers are encouraged to innovate, collaborate, and inquire, they will promote these same processes in their classrooms.

We know that when teachers have the opportunity to actively engage in meaningful discussion, planning, and practice, their teaching and student outcomes improve (1). In a randomized, controlled study conducted in schools serving low-achieving students, teachers in the treatment group engaged in active professional learning in which they were immersed in the types of learning activities and environments they would then create for their students. The impact on student outcomes was impressive. Students in the classrooms of teachers in the treatment group performed a full year ahead of those in the control group’s classes on state tests (2). 
 
A culture of thinking is a community that supports teachers’ growth. Teachers need to “feel safe to be vulnerable, to admit failings or mistakes and to trust that their colleagues are giving feedback in order for them to improve” (3). When teachers are part of a culture of thinking, they are more likely to engage in rich conversations about learning, including the discussion of problems, strategies, and solutions. Learning then becomes an “ongoing, collective responsibility rather than an individual one” (4). This kind of authentic collaboration (see Exhibit 1) has a positive effect on student achievement (5, 6). Through collaboration, teachers are better able to reflect on their teaching practice, allowing them to assess if what they are doing works or if changes are needed (7). In a collaborative culture, morale improves and teachers report higher job satisfaction, which contributes to increased gains in student achievement.  However, meaningful and sustained collaboration among teachers is too rarely found in schools (8, 9). Without time and opportunities to collaborate, discussions centered around student learning cannot occur. This inevitably leads to less teacher learning and a decline in the quality of instruction (10, 11, 12).

Risk-taking is necessary to drive innovation (13) and create a new story of learning in schools. To build a classroom culture that encourages student risk-taking, teachers need to demonstrate their own willingness to try new things. However, teachers tend to be risk-averse for various reasons, including the fear of being ostracized and the fear of public failure (13). Therefore, a supportive school culture that embraces inquiry and innovation is important in supporting teachers to feel safe enough to take risks. When teachers explore and experiment with new ideas that may not always work, students observe how their teachers react and adapt. This helps students learn the value of failure, to understand that learning is a lifelong process, and that mistakes are a natural part of that process (14, 15). 

While school leaders need to be at the forefront of creating a culture of thinking in schools and break with old models of professional learning, teachers themselves must take an active role by respecting their colleagues, being open to new ideas, and approaching the act of teaching as inquirers. When both leaders and teachers see the creation of a culture of thinking as a mutual goal for themselves, then the adults in the school can grow, innovate, question, take risks, reflect, examine, inquire, learn from, and learn with one another (see Exhibit 2). Teachers are then able to create those same conditions for the students in their classrooms.

What It Looks and Sounds Like

Of course, there is no one way that a culture of thinking developed for teachers at a school will look and sound. There is ample room for individuals to put their own creative stamp on things. The list below is a sampling of ideas that might be useful to advance your practice.

Deprivatizing Teaching

• Make formal and informal observation in each other’s classrooms a common occurrence. 

• Use structures and protocols to facilitate teachers’ observation and discussion.  For example, use the Snapshot Observation Protocol to foster personal reflections based on classroom observation.

• Engage in lesson study or Learning Labs to build a sense of collaborative planning, collective ownership, and communal problem solving.

• Use Pineapple Charts or #ObserveMe signs to encourage teachers to open up their classrooms and invite colleagues in for informal observations.

• Create a space in the school where teachers can share ideas, pose questions, etc. and not feel like they will be evaluated. This could also be an online space or in the staff room.

Shifting the Conversation

• Focus more on exploratory and inquiry conversations that dig into the questions, mysteries, and challenges of teaching and learning.  Honor the questions more than the quick answers (see Exhibit 3).

• Ground conversations in evidence instead of anecdote. Get in the habit of creating and sharing documentation.

• Use thinking routines and protocols to facilitate conversations and discussion among teachers.

• Become great listeners as an entire faculty and develop skill at giving feedback. 

• Set norms for collaboration so that people will feel respected, valued, and listened to.

Prioritizing Time for Teacher Learning

• Make sure most staff meetings are about learning and not logistics. This will ensure that they are more authentic and engaging.  When information does need to be delivered, consider using emails or Loom videos instead. 

• Schedule adequate time for teachers to engage in ongoing inquiry, in-depth discussion, and meaningful engagement on at least a bi-weekly basis. Such groups are most effective with they engage teachers across departments and grade levels.  Protect that time (16).

• Ensure that learning is ongoing, sustained, and cumulative rather than episodic and disconnected.  Make sure there will be something to show for all the time spent.  How will teachers share their learning and learn from one another?

• Don’t confuse “working groups” or committees with “learning groups.”  The former is out to complete a job or task, to implement something.  The latter seeks to develop understanding of a question, problem, or issue through investigation, action, and reflection.

Involving Teachers in Their Own Learning

• Allow teachers to be co-designers of their own learning.  Where and how can their questions, problems, and issues drive the learning?  When can teachers make meaningful choices in the learning process?

• Seek suggestions from teachers on a regular basis. 

• Involve teachers in setting agendas.

• Create conditions for teacher leadership (see Exhibit 4)

Encouraging Innovation and Risk-Taking

• Focus on mutual growth and improvement, rather than perfection.

• School leaders must model how they are also trying new things, making mistakes, and learning along the way.

• Use the language of prototyping rather than implementing. A prototype is a first attempt carried out for the purpose of gathering feedback and learning from one’s efforts. Implementation implies that something is to be fully realized.

• Celebrate failure as a learning moment. Regularly engage teachers in conversation about productive failures or First Attempts In Learning: What is something new that you tried this week, and what did you learn from that first attempt? How will you use that learning to reshape or modify your next attempt?

Reflecting on Your Leadership

• How am I, and the leadership team as a whole, modeling what it means to be a risk-taker, innovator, learner? Do we reflect on our mistakes and new learnings openly? Do we solicit feedback to facilitate our growth?

• Where, when, and how are teachers currently observing their colleagues? How much is structured and how much is informal? How might these opportunities be enhanced and supported further?

• What does collaboration look like at this school? Is it deep, meaningful, and generative? Or, is it cursory and mostly focused on work alignment?

• What are the current opportunities for teachers to drive, shape, and direct their professional learning? Do teachers make meaningful choices in their professional learning? Where and how can we provide more?

• What are the norms, either informal or formal, that we have for our group interactions, discussions, and collaborations? If formally stated, are we holding ourselves accountable to these norms? If informal, what is working and what isn’t? How might we benefit from formally articulating and discussing our norms?

• Leaders control a lot of teachers’ time through meetings and sessions. On what are you spending teachers’ time? Is this time generative and focused on student learning?

Reflecting on Your Teaching

• How am I tapping into the expertise of my colleagues to improve my practice? Where and when do I seek out feedback, use colleagues as a sounding board, or observe others I want to learn from?

• When was the last time I took what I consider to be a real instructional risk in a desire to innovate, try something new, and disrupt the status quo? What did I learn from that? What supports do I need to have in order for that happen more often and to feel comfortable in doing so?

• How often am I reflecting on my own practice to better understand the effects of my teaching and needs of my students? What structures have I found that help push my reflection deeper? What other structures (routines or protocols) might I try?

• What kind of “teacher dialog” do I bring to the various groups in which I participate? How would I characterize our collective conversations in these groups? What can we do to better support each other in moving to more exploratory and inquiry conversations? (See Exhibit 3)

• How am I growing as a professional this year? What am I getting smarter about through my own actions and efforts this year? We want our students to achieve a year’s growth in a school year. Am I achieving a year’s growth as a teacher in a year’s time?

• How am I making use of documentation? How do I use it for my own reflection to better understand my students’ learning? Where and when do I share documentation from my classrooms with colleagues in an effort to really understand students’ thinking and development of their understanding?

Using Quick Data to Inform Your Efforts

Construct a survey (download this template to create a survey that fits your school) to find out what kinds of professional learning opportunities (both informal and formal) teachers view as valuable, what they take away from each, how each might be improved, which have the most impact on teaching, and which impact the culture of thinking being created for teachers.

Connection to the 8 Cultural Forces

Opportunities. The kinds of opportunities that we create for teacher learning are key in creating a culture of thinking for teachers. We need to ensure that we create opportunities for reflection, for sustained and ongoing inquiry into practice, for collaboration with colleagues within and across grade levels and departments, for observation, and for teacher voice and choice.

Time. We need to give adequate and sustained time for teacher learning. This often means rethinking our use of time and getting creative. What meetings are necessary? How do we rein in the work agenda so it doesn’t impinge on time for learning?

Routines. Just as students benefit from structures to guide and direct their thinking and discussion, so do teachers. Using protocols can ensure that everyone has a voice and that important elements are addressed and discussed. Protocols help us learn how to interact in a respectful and focused way that benefits everyone’s learning.

Modeling. The word “principal” means main or lead. In schools the principal is the main or lead teacher and learner. Their behavior and actions matter. All school leaders need to be models of risk-taking, reflection, acceptance, questioning, and inquiry. They need to model the thinking and behaviors they want to see in teachers. One way that leaders model is through symbolic conduct, that is, the message being sent through one’s behavior. For instance, a leader who is not present at professional learning sessions sends the message that such sessions are not very important.

Interactions. A key component of rich professional learning is collaboration and interactions with our colleagues. As such it is often useful to start by setting norms for interactions so that people feel they are in a respectful learning space. Learning to listen in a generative way is an important component of this respect. We need our colleagues to challenge us, question us, support us, and reflect with us. Teaching can feel isolating, so we need to deprivatize teaching in order to ensure that we are learning with and from our colleagues.

Language. Using absolute language (is, should) may sound authoritative, but it shuts down exploration and inquiry. Using conditional language (might, could be) allows conversation to stay open and avoid early closure until the issue has been explored. We are accustomed to the language of “professional development,” but what does the word “development” suggest? Do anyone really want to be “developed?” Perhaps a more useful phrase, that many countries use already, is professional learning.

Expectations. School leaders need to communicate expectations that teaching and learning are complex endeavors, and thus continual growth and learning as a teacher is the expectation. Too often ministries of education, state-level departments, district administrators, and schools communicate an expectation of compliance and mastery with top down directives. This often causes teachers to be risk-averse and eschew innovation or novel approaches. Instead, they play it safe.

Environment. The physical environment of a learning space communicates what kind of learning happens there. Is the room set up for collaboration or for paying attention to a single speaker? Where and how is the documentation of teacher learning preserved and displayed?

Mindset #1: Creating a culture of thinking for teachers.