Methodology Options

This week I have been contemplating options for the study. It is a complex process and I am going to meet with Dr. Brookhart to hash out some of my thinking. I would be interested in some of your thoughts. Here are 2 options I am thinking about:

Option A. Take the data folder system I have designed into several classrooms. Using Bandura's or Stiggin's self efficacy survey I would pre-assess and post-assess the students and teachers. I could gather data by the end of January- analyze and write conclusions by May. I would choose to study classrooms with specific interests in mind:
Leader-in-Me network (A.B. Combs)
Baldrige Model Schools (I.S.S.)
Urban (D.P.S. or NEISD)

Option B. Take the self-efficacy survey to schools in the Leader-in-Me network and find out the impact of this system on mental models.

I will be thinking about this for the next 2 weeks- I have a dissertation design panel meeting me on June 11th at 2pm.

The LEADER in ME Model

Can THE LEADER in ME impact schools in such a way as to impact mental models?
Notes from the book:

"By teaching the skills of self-discipline, self-reliance, and self confidence, the teachers are fostering the opportunity to learn life skills... my children are being educated to open the door to their future rather than waiting for the door to open."

Jennifer Collins a parent at a Leader in Me school

"Everyday I get to see empowered five- and six-year-olds truly caring about our school's learning environment."

Maggie Lozano, Kindergarten Teacher at Stuard Elementary

"We concluded that students who go through the 7 Habits will be planners, they will take responsibility for their own learning..."

Jeanne Paynem Professional Development Coordinator, Decatur City Schools

The intent of this program as Stephen Covey puts it is to,

"teach them (children) how to lead their individual lives and how to succeed in the twenty-first century."

An old proverb reads with the same emphasis on the next generation: "My son, if you accept my words
and store them up within you,
2 turning your ear to wisdom
and applying your heart to understanding,
3 and if you call out for insight
and cry aloud for understanding,
4 and if you look for it as for silver
and search for it as for hidden treasure,
5 then you will understand …
and find knowledge.

We may have to rally our students to confidently attack their own individual gaps in order to close our achievement gap. Each child has a choice to make about their future- and we might have some tools that can help them.

Bandura

Stiggins directed me to some research by Usher and Pajares. I have been reading,

Sources of Self-Efficacy in School: Critical Review of the Literature and Future Directions.

Now- here are some interesting points made in this research:

"Students who are confident in their academic capabilities monitor their work time more effectively, are more efficient problem solvers, and show more persistence than do equally able peers with low self efficacy. They also work harder, evaluate their progress more frequently, and engage in more self-regulatory strategies that promote success in school."

Albert Bandura first introduced the construct of self-efficacy in 1977. Coincidentally that was the year I repeated 3rd grade...

In this report the recommendations for future research include, "How to foster and nurture a student's budding self belief."

Do this dissertation could be a grounded theory. We can examine the effects of a couple of systems (The Leader in Me & Baldrige) on the mental models (self-efficacy) of students.

Baldrige helps students reflect and create action plans. They also progress monitor. The Leader in Me teaches students about their locus of control, about beginning with the end in mind, and about prioritizing.

The Prezi Tool & a Conversation with Stiggins!

My friend Alfredo showed me a program called Prezi (free and online). I am still learning how to use it but have been working on the conceptual model of a school- click the word school to see it.

I also have been reading the work of Rick Stiggins. Currently he is working with the Assessment Training Institute. He writes about involving students in assessment (Including having them record their performance). Today I spoke with him on the phone and he was kind enough to share some research with me!

Glasser Climbs In

During my first steps into the teaching profession I had a wise principal named Judy Wells. She led the staff through some training by William Glasser. I was even certified in the Basics of Reality Therapy under her leadership. Today something nagged at me to look back into the books I read back then... here is what I found:

From CONTROL THEORY 1984
Chapter 1: Everything We Think, Do, and Feel is Generated by What Happens Inside of Us.This is really like Covey's first Habit- "What moves you to act is inside, not outside, of yourself. Nothing we do is caused by what happens outside of us." I also see shades of Senge's "Personal Mastery" in this chapter.

Chapter 3: The Pictures in Our Heads
This reminds me of what Senge calls "Mental Models". "We begin to create what is best described as a picture album in our heads... a personal picture album... I like to use the word pictures rather than the technically correct term, perceptions... it is not the same as memory... when we change important pictures, we change our lives... it is not easy to change our own pictures... we have to replace it with another- this can be done through negotiation and compromise."
I wonder if this negotiation is similar to reflection & analysis. If so then we could look at the work in Baldrige as a way to impact our personal picture albums (or mental models).

Stiggins and Wiggins Weigh in

I have spent hours reading up on a couple of researchers. Rick Stiggins wrote; Using student involved classroom assessment to close achievement gaps. Which outlines some practices that close the gap- one of them being goal setting and meaningful involvement by students.
I also am reading lots about the Tripod Project- Ronald Ferguson and his team write about the conditions learning organizations need in order to motivate students to succeed. They write about student goal setting!
Grant Wiggins wrote Understanding by Design and this work addresses the idea called Locus of control (the extent to which individuals believe that they can control events that affect them).
My literature foundation is filling up... Senge, Covey, Ferguson, Stiggins, Fletcher, Baldrige, and more.

How Covey Fits In

If you have read the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People then you know Covey is writing about leadership. He studied over 200 years of literature on successful leadership to come up with these 7 Habits. The first three are grouped into what he calls the PERSONAL VICTORY- (or Self Mastery).

Habit 1: Be Proactive
Habit 2: Begin with the End in Mind
Habit 3: Put First Things First

When someone has worked these habits into their lives they move from dependent thinking to independent thinking. All of this ties into Senge's work in the book, The Fifth Discipline. He writes about seeing organizations as complex systems. In these systems there are 5 disciplines that needs attention. Two of them are PERSONAL MASTERY and mental models.

Discipline 1: Personal Mastery
Dicipline 2: Mental Models

"Personal mastery is a discipline of continually clarifying and deepening our personal vision, of focusing our energies, of developing patience, and of seeing reality objectively." (p. 7)

2) "Mental models are deeply ingrained assumptions, generalizations, or even pictures of images that influence how we understand the world and how we take action." (p. 8)

So if I am writing about how tools can shift mental models then it seems the work of Senge and Covey are going to be helpful in thinking about this.

PERSONAL MASTERY (Senge) = PERSONAL VICTORY (Covey)

One Possibility

Title: "How Do Quality Tools Color the Mental Models within an Urban Learning Organization?"

Possible Research: Locate schools in urban settings that have used quality tools. Survey students. Compare results with students in schools that do not use quality tools.

Key Questions: Is there a survey that measures mental models? Where do I find a school that wholeheartedly believes in using quality tools?

Science of Social Networking

In class yesterday I was able to share my new thinking about organizations. I wrote about this in the previous post. I am beginning to picture the learning organization as an organism. The Quality Tools are like medicine. I will need to study for how this medicine impacts students, teachers, and parents.

I learned about social cognition yesterday. http://www.edpsycinteractive.org/topics/soccog/soccog.html It describes how an individual's thinking is influenced by their context and the social network around them. I will be learning more about this for the dissertation.

In addition I ran across an organization that actually puts the thoughts I have been having into a graphical form. http://connectiveassociates.com/articles/picture_of_productivity.html
Here is a quote from their page: As sophisticated as these tools are mathematically, their visual impact is often even more powerful. Showing a group a network map of their relationships almost always produces a big “aha” moment. Individuals suddenly see how they are part of a whole system and shift perspective from “me” to “us.”

This is called SNA- social network analysis. I want to learn more about this now too.

My Growing Conceptual Framework

Right now I am leaning forward... my pulse has quickened... I am exploding with thought and joy. Here are some of the latest things I have been thinking about- they pertain to the research like a scientist who studies sea life or a doctor studying the behavior patterns of cells or vaccines.

I used to watch Jacques Cousteau reruns on T.V. Fascinated by the life in the ocean. I always wondered how they could swim up on things and not scare them away. When I was a boy I was going to be a marine biologist- or a zookeeper because of influences like that. Perhaps I can still pursue part of this childhood dream. Perhaps there are lots of similarities between a marine biologist and a doctor of education. Instead of swimming in a complex ecosystem called the ocean with incredible wildlife we doctors will swim in a complex edusystem called a learning organization. When we approach these "schools" we can scientifically begin to observe them- to learn about how they breath and move. I picture swimming up on a district and seeing the organisms from far off as a marine biologist might approach a bed of Sea Aneemone.
found on wikipedia The 49th plate from Ernst Haeckel's Kunstformen der Natur, 1904, showing various sea anemones classified as Actiniae

My mental model of a school looks like the inside of the brain- at the synapse level. the organism called school has a core- a network of relationships that include informal and formal leadership. These are invisible. When you walk into a building they are there and you can feel them more than see them. They can be fragile- they can be toxic- they can be strong- they can be healthy.

They are mental models- thousands of messages transfer back and forth every day about what is valued, important, hated, etc.

Each teacher "cell" in this organism is bonded to all the students they work with. This forms an outer covering or shell of the learning organization. When things are good and students are blossoming into all they can be a school organism looks amazing as you swim up to it. Not all of these organisms are the same shape or size. They have lots of different looks because each is unique. It is like discovering a new species each time you swim up to this anemone bed. However their outer shell colors all seem to follow a pattern. When students are able to blossom these organisms- no matter how uniquely shaped- all turn a beautiful blue. When students are hurting academically, they all turn red.

I can define what "blossom" means in many ways: student performance on state exams, student independence, or student passion for learning. In any case, I think the color of the outer shell is dependent on what is going on in the invisible network of mental models below the surface. Are there high expectations? Is there an enthusiasm and a passion for learning that is contagious? What does the core truly believe about the learners around them? These messages are transmitted whether they are verbalized or not in the way we look at children- in the structures and activities we create for them. When we believe they are the next generation of leaders and that they are capable of meeting our challenges... we then can see the colors of our shell change as students blossom.

What does this have to do with our potential dissertation? Is this too abstract? It has everything to do with this dissertation because maybe when we swim up to a bed of learning organizations we will be able to identify the schools that use quality tools by their color. Maybe the mental model network under the surface is similar in these organizations. It is like the biologist identifying the common genetic codes in a species. Could we describe schools that use quality tools as a family? Maybe the title of this dissertation should be, "How Do Quality Tools Color the Mental Models within an Urban Learning Organization?"