Learning Styles and Outcomes
by Steve Horton, board and management services consultant

Dr. Tesia Marshik, associate professor of psychology at the University of Wisconsin La Crosse, makes some very intriguing points about the way we learn. I recently watched a video of Marshik speaking to a group of educators. She challenged their notions about individual learning styles.

I have always subscribed to the idea that we all learn in different ways, but Marshik gives a very compelling argument that the learning styles educators are trying to identify in our students really don’t exist. Her point is that we learn by seeing, hearing and doing. We process information, make value judgements about what we learn and then put it to use. Learning excites us when we are personally motivated and invested. What is most relevant and exciting to me may not be to you, and that is alright.

Attempting to identify learning styles, as we typically relate them to the classroom and our students, is missing the point, Marshik asserts. Kinesthetic, visual and auditory are pathways to learning, but how we use them depends more on the subject matter than our individual learning preferences. It has everything to do with the meaning and value we attach to a given subject, idea or concept.

As an example, she cites a 1973 study, Perception in Chess, by William G. Chase and Herbert A. Simon of Carnegie-Mellon University. They and others have tested chess masters versus novice players.

In every case, the masters were very proficient at studying a chess board and recreating the game’s piece placement from memory. Novice players struggled with the task. However, the masters were no better than the novices at recreating random boards with no relation to an actual chess game.

When players placed game pieces randomly, chess masters had no cognitive advantage. One test subject interviewed, after the exercise, player who took part in the study talked about offensive and defensive strategies, and how he was able to use them to visualize the board. Interestingly, the two pieces he misplaced were ultimately inconsequential to his strategy.

The ability for us to utilize multiple strategies and learning styles is crucial to mastering a skill or internalizing a given subject area. The best teachers understand this.

When teachers are given freedom and able to find that “key” to unlocking knowledge for each student, education is a magical thing. That is the work reward for teachers and school administrators, but allowing that to happen for all students means leaving the confines of the traditional classroom.

Marshik says this is a big deal. In the ongoing efforts to align with standards and ensure children do well on standardized tests and work toward a passing grade on a report card, we run the serious risk of labeling students and inhibiting their growth and opportunities by focusing on what they •aren’t• doing well. Unfortunately, it is an unintended consequence of the many accountability measures our schools deal with.

How do school leadership teams navigate through all of the mandates, changes in expectations and prescriptive legislation? One approach is to focus on outcomes, like engaged students who are excited about school and staff members who feel like they are connecting with their students and making a difference in their lives. It is a vision of success.

With your stakeholders’ involvement, this is not just a pipe dream. If your destination is well-established, the means to get there becomes much clearer. The standards, tests and ongoing legislation do not have to be the focus. October’s American School Board Journal (http://links.ohioschoolboards.org/38708) showcases several schools that are finding innovative ways outside of the traditional classroom to reach diverse and disadvantaged student populations with great success. Finding out how they are doing it and setting a vision for your own district is a crucial first step.

Community Engagement
by Jeffrey L. Stec, esq., executive director, Citizens for Civic Renewal

Most community engagement processes will get the right basic answer. If you do enough surveys and focus groups, you will learn what kind of district or educational culture your community wants for its students. But the difference that makes the difference is a qualitative one: the creativity of the details, the unity of stakeholders and the depth of their commitment to making “the plan” a reality.

These qualities are built through the consistent implementation of the following principles of engagement:

  • Only whole systems can sustain change.  Engaging all stakeholders in the planning process – board, administration, building staff, community members, parents and students – will lead to:
    • better decisions because all points of view will be included;
    • broader support for those decisions because people support what they co-create.
  • Connection before content. Good change processes begin with and always integrate trust-building dialog: not pleasant icebreakers but intimate dialog about peoples’ hopes and fears for the process and the district’s future. This doesn’t need to slow down the process, but trust grows more quickly when intimate dialog is consciously integrated into meeting design, which leads to:
    • better listening;
    • greater creativity;
    • deeper participation and support for the process.
  • People support what they co-create. Selling an answer, such as seeking feedback, leads to stakeholder pushback. But when stakeholders feel like they are an integral part of the information-gathering, brainstorming and decision-making process, they are much more likely to:
    • participate fully in the process;
    • support the final result (even if they don’t get their way, because they understand the competing points of view and trade-offs of those decisions);
    • act to implement those results.

In the end, good engagement builds relationships and communities that get stuff done. Why? Because stuff only gets done if people feel like they are in it together. Like handshake-deals in business, no contract — or plan — holds people together without deep, underlying relationships and trust.

So, while every community has diverse perspectives and rival agendas, an engagement program connects and reconciles these differences so they feel like a community working together on a goal greater than any individual.

In other words, how you develop the answers to your stated goals is equally as important as the answers themselves. Only through a highly interactive process that engages stakeholders throughout the process will you develop the collective relational capacity — trust, creativity and commitment — to make good on your plans.

What follows are some basic principles around which a good engagement program operates. Leadership cocreates the program. Just a few reluctant leaders can undermine an entire process. To develop passionate support for the process — and develop a final structure that fits your district’s situation — the process must begin by engaging key leaders, such as school board members, the executive team, and principals, parents and community members, in the following ways:

  • anonymous interviews of key leaders;
  • one or two facilitated conversations with a mixed group of these leaders.

In addition to refining the engagement process and goals, a key aspect of this part of the process is to ask each leader to identify, discuss and make requests of the process that will meet both the district’s needs as well as their own needs, thus, giving them a personal reason to support the process.

Community stewards guide the program. Stewards are stakeholder representatives who do not make decisions for the community, but as a group, reflect the full diversity of the community/stakeholders. If the stewards team has the right members, anyone in the community will be able to find a steward who “sees things from my point of view.” This helps the community at large “feel heard,” even though they only are engaged through open public meetings.

The stewards team is the most critical part of the process structure. Not only will it make all content recommendations to the board/superintendent, but also it will ensure the process properly engages the community. The stewards’ team will:  

  • Mmake broad, strategic decisions about how the process unfolds, including general meeting format and topics to be discussed;
  • create a community matrix to identify how to efficiently engage community stakeholders;
  • champion the process and recruit participants, especially among their constituent bases;
  • reflect on how the process is progressing and make necessary adjustments (e.g. “Do we need another parent meeting to touch all of our demographic sectors?”).

Given their role, stewards should be seen as respected leaders within their sphere of influence so that people take notice of their participation, lending the process credibility because of the stewards’ participation.

Go to them. Citizens for Civic Renewal (CCR) strongly suggests that the public meetings for any engagement process be hosted by stakeholders. While the district will host the core and stewards team meetings, as well as up to a third of public meetings, the bulk of meetings, which we call conversations, should be hosted by one or more individual stakeholders “on their turf.” In other words, parents would host meetings in their own homes, the chamber of commerce at their office and teachers in their homes or school.

Stewards would be the initial hosts, as they should be people of standing who can get many people to attend. Stewards will then recruit other hosts as necessary for each step of the process (see below). Applying this principle has several benefits:

  • people feel honored to be hosts;
  • more people show up because the host recruits attendees;
  • attendees generally feel safe and comfortable in these environments and offer better feedback and analysis;
  • in the end, this kind of intimate participation means better support for the process.

Facilitate interactive meetings. This is the heart of good engagement, where people get connected, build trust and feel like they are valuable contributors to the process. Without great meeting design and facilitation, no process will ever inspire stakeholders or build community support.

CCR accomplishes by asking people to answer core questions in small groups of five people or less. These conversations take up two-thirds of any given meeting. In this way, everyone gets a chance to speak and be heard.

Statehouse hot topics: Bullying and suspension
by Jennifer Hogue, director of legislative services

Legislators are turning their attention to other issues now that the state budget has passed and summer recess has ended. Bullying and suspension are among the topics receiving attention. Three new bills were introduced in late September, each seeking to address bullying in a different way. Following is a synopsis of each bill.

Senate Bill (SB) 196
Sen. Sandra Williams (D-Cleveland) sponsors SB 196, which would create the offense of aggravated bullying and makes it a third-degree misdemeanor. Under the bill, a K-12 student would be guilty of aggravated bullying if the student does either of the following:

  • knowingly causes serious emotional harm to another student of his or her school;
  • knowingly causes another student of a public primary or secondary school to believe that the offender will cause serious emotional harm or serious physical harm to the student, the student’s property, the student’s unborn child or a member of the student’s immediate family.

The Senate Judiciary Committee has held just one hearing on SB 196.

SB 197
Sen. Williams also sponsors SB 197, which includes the same provisions in SB 196. In addition to creating the offense of aggravated bullying, the bill requires district anti-bullying policies to include a tiered disciplinary procedure with the following series of consequences:

  • first violation — warning;
  • second violation — peer mediation. Districts must set up a diverse peer mediation team;
  • third violation — parent meeting;
  • fourth violation — in-school suspension;
  • fifth violation — out-of-school suspension;
  • sixth violation — referral for prosecution.

SB 197 is pending in the Senate Education Committee. It has not received a hearing.

House Bill (HB) 360
HB 360, introduced by Rep. Dave Greenspan (R-Westlake), takes yet an additional approach to discipline for bullying offenses. The bill would require a board of education to file notice with the municipal court anytime a student is suspended or expelled for bullying. The court, the student, the student’s family and the school would need to develop a community service plan within three days of the notice. This plan is to include specific goals and timelines for community service to be completed during the student’s suspension or expulsion.

The bill also would require board policy to include disciplinary procedures for all students except those in grades K-3 or students with developmental disabilities. For a first offense, a student would receive up to a 10-day suspension. For the second offense in the same calendar year, the student would be expelled for up to 182 days.

During the suspension or expulsion, a district would be required to:

  • allow the student to complete any missed schoolwork (the district may offer tutoring or academic support);
  • allow the student to take any required state assessments in the student’s regular school setting;
  • provide counseling for the student if the student’s parent gives permission;
  • prohibit the student participation in extracurricular activities;
  • offer counseling to the victim.

A student would be able to return to the classroom following the suspension or expulsion if he or she completed all missed schoolwork and counseling. The bill would allow for the superintendent to permit a student to return if sufficient progress has been made on schoolwork. However, there would be no exception for the counseling requirement. HB 360 has not yet been referred to a committee.

In addition to these bills, Sen. Peggy Lehner (R-Kettering) also is working on legislation to limit the use of suspension and expulsion for students in grades K-3.

While it is too early to tell what will result from these bills, we certainly know there will be no shortage of discussion in the coming months. We will continue to keep you updated on the progress of this legislation through OSBA’s weekly Facts in a Flash.

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