Questioning for Life: Mash-on

This blog post is likely my final entry, at least in terms of coursework in the MAET program at Michigan State University. When I started this journey, I was hoping to learn about how to use technology to create compelling and meaningful educational experiences for students. Like all students, part of me was really hoping for a lot of answers. I am reminded of a guitar player friend of mine who once had a lesson with jazz legend Joe Pass. The iconic jazz guitarist began the lesson by saying, “Look here kid, if you’re lookin’ for answers, you’re in the wrong place. I got way more questions than answers.” At at the end of this MAET experience, I too have more questions than answers. In fact, if there is one thing that I have learned it is that questions are the main drivers in creating quality educational experiences, not answers.

This was most evident in the Wicked Problem Project assignment. As a group, we took on one of the questions that has challenged me in education, “How can we close the achievement gap?” One of the biggest things that I learned during that process was to slow down and not take things for granted. To really have breakthroughs we needed to not fixate on the conventional solutions that were already hanging out in the dark recesses of our minds. Instead, we needed to keep asking why questions to get to true areas of potential innovation. This takes curiosity: if you are not willing to examine what you think you already know, you won’t find anything new. It also requires passion: you need to be able to go deeply into a subject, try something, fail, and try something new without losing your focus.

Solving wicked problems requires novel solutions. And given the number of variables involved and the competing interests, it feels like most teaching problems of practice are wicked problems. Therefore, in order to solve these problems we are going to have to think differently. I am reminded of a passage from one of my favorite children’s books, Top Secret by John Reynolds Gardiner. In it, a boy is stuck on a problem for his school science project, his grandfather gives him sage advice:

“But I’ve tried, Grandpop. I’ve tried putting the pieces together. I just can’t seem to see the picture.”

“Have you tried thinking crazy?”

“Crazy?”

…

“Learn to think crazy, Allen. Let your mind go. Don’t be afraid to think of silly things, stupid things, things so ridiculous that you burst out laughing at the mere thought of them.” (Gardiner, 1999, p. 33)

One of my favorite tools for “thinking crazy” is the TPACK Mashup. We first encountered it in cooking with TPACK. I have been so taken with the practice that I actually designed an app to make TPACK-mashing easier. You can see a demonstration below and download the app here.

One way that I used this was when doing work for my Teaching and Learning Mathematical Problem Solving course. In one assignment, we were asked to use four different strategies to compare 6/9 and ⅝. The first few are obvious: fraction bars, finding common denominators. For me, music was an obvious choice, but even that wasn’t particularly exciting. I tried to find a way to hear and see the fractions, so I programmed each fraction as a beat and then recorded them in Audacity. Then, by looking at the soundwaves, you could really see the difference.

And this is an important note about the role of passion and curiosity in pursuing these solutions. The first answer is rarely great, but it already sounds like “the answer” to us. It takes passion and curiosity to stick with a problem long enough to get rid of the obvious solutions. I was really struck by the four reasons Berger (2014) cited for why people avoid fundamental questioning:

• It feels counterproductive
• It never feels like the right time for questioning
• Asking the right question is difficult
• We may fear finding there is no good answer to important questions

This is all especially relevant to teaching. Where the numerous variables, trade-offs, and competing interests make it nearly impossible to arrive at best solutions. And the time available to teachers to think and problem solve is so limited. Problems in education are wicked problems, there is little consensus on best solutions and where there is there is always a hesitancy to enact them as it is feared that moving one gear out of place in this massive machine will send the whole thing crashing down.

But this course has really made me commit to asking these questions. And sitting with them. And trying best bad solutions. Because it is the way we move forward. And it is the way we improve education. And, although my reserves occasionally get depleted, I have the curiosity and passion to carry on.

Resources

Berger, W. (2014). A more beautiful question: the power of inquiry to spark breakthrough ideas. New York: Bloomsbury.

Gardner, J. R., & Simont, M. (1999). Top secret. Place of publication not identified: Sagebrush Bound.

Kjorness, C (2018, February 22) TPACK Masher Demonstration, retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aCigh12T-Vs

Kjorness, C (2018, February 10a) Comparing Fractions: 6/9 and 5/8, retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aCigh12T-Vs

Trying to Bridge the Achievement Gap

It has been a challenging and wonderful experience working with my three colleagues, Erin, Courtney, and Jaymie, trying to find a solution to the wicked problem of the achievement gap. Here is our a video that describes the problem, our journey, and our proposed solution.

Taking It to the Streets

Our wicked problem group is deep into our work solving the wicked problem of the achievement gap. We have established a clear, shared definition of the achievement gap. And we have looked at the many variables at work and the numerous solutions that have been tried in the past. We each made infographics to share our overview of the wicked problem and commented on one another’s work in hope of better understanding each other’s insights and perceptions.

Early in the week, we met and put together a set of “why” questions. In A More Beautiful Question, Warren Berger (2014) says that “why” questions are questions of “seeing and understanding” (p. 75). After spending some time generating these thinking and understanding questions we started determining some possible areas of attack for our wicked problem. But instead of just jumping in and come up with solutions, we put together a survey to distribute to teachers in our professional networks. Why? Because we might be missing something. We might be assuming things that aren’t true. We want our solution to be useful to the end-user. We want it to help them attack this problem in a way that is comfortable and useful for them. Most importantly, we don’t want to come up with a solution that has no basis in what the end-user (in this case the teacher) would actually use. So we put together a survey and are asking for feedback from anyone who teaches in a K-12 setting. We hope to use the data from this survey to craft a more responsive and relevant solution to the wicked problem of the achievement gap.

You can take the survey here:

While we know that wicked problems tend to be immune to perfect solutions, we know that with enough feedback from teachers and enough asking of big questions we will be able to put forward our “best bad solution”.

Resources

Berger, W. (2014). A more beautiful question: the power of inquiry to spark breakthrough ideas. New York: Bloomsbury.

 

Trying to Get a Handle on the Achievement Gap

In spite of numerous efforts to ensure educational equality, some groups of students achieve at a lower-levels than others. The first challenge in looking at the achievement gap, is narrowing down exactly what we mean by achievement gap. There are, in fact, a number of different achievement gaps. Students of color, students with disabilities, students from non-English speaking households, and students from low-income families demonstrate achievement gaps when compared with affluent white students. Additionally, disparities can be seen between male and female students throughout the average student’s academic career. There are a number of potential variables that could be the cause of the various gaps: underfunding of school districts, culturally non-responsive curriculums, lack of pre-school education, and home factors to name a few. All of this takes place against a shifting background of demographic changes and policy revisions at the federal, state, and local level.The achievement gap is truly a wicked problem.

This week I have been working hard with my colleagues to get our heads around this big, gangly issue. Throughout this process, it has been very hard to hold back judgment and ask open questions. I have an instinct to quickly analyze the problem and start brainstorming solutions. It actually takes a great deal of discipline to stay in the stage of asking ‘why’ questions. For me the greatest challenge of design thinking has been applying a beginner’s mindset to a field in which I have experience. When you see something every day, it can be hard to see it from a new perspective. I made this infographic to try to take a broad view of my understanding of the problems currently. In the last section, I ask the four questions my colleagues and I will be using as we go forward trying to solve this wicked problem.