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Aspiring junior executives dream of climbing the ladder to gain more authority. Then they can make things happen and create the change that they believe in. Senior executives, on the other hand, are often frustrated by how little power they actually have.

The problem is that, while authority can compel action, it does little to inspire belief. It's not enough to get people to do what you want, they also have to want what you want - or any change is bound to be short lived.

That's why change management efforts commonly fail. All too often, they are designed to carry out initiatives that come from the top. When you get right down to it, that's really the just same thing as telling people to do what you want, albeit in slightly more artful way. To make change really happen, it doesn't need to be managed, but empowered. That's the difference between authority and leadership.

In the 1850's, Ignaz Semmelweis was the head physician at the obstetric ward of a small hospital in Pest, Hungary. Having done extensive research into how sanitary conditions could limit infections, he instituted a strict regime of hand washing and virtually eliminated the childbed fever that was endemic at the time.

In 2005, John Antioco was the eminently successful CEO of Blockbuster, the 800-pound gorilla of the video rental industry. Yet, despite the firm's dominance, he saw a mortal threat coming in the form of online streaming video and nimble competitors like Netflix. He initiated an aggressive program to cancel late fees and invest in an online platform.

Things ended poorly for both men. Semmelweis was castigated by the medical community and died in an insane asylum, ironically of an infection he contracted while under medical care. Antioco was fired by his company's board and his successor reversed his reforms. Blockbuster filed for bankruptcy in 2010.

While today the insights of Semmelweis and Antioco seem obvious, they did not at the time. In the former case, it was believed that illness was caused by an imbalance of humors and in the latter, the threat of online video seemed too distant to justify forsaking short-term profits. Even given their positions of authority, neither was able to overcome the majority view.

We tend to overestimate the power of influence. It always seems that if we had a little bit more authority or had more data to back us up or were able to make our case more forcefully, we could drive our ideas forward. Yet Semmelweis and Antioco had not only authority, but also had the facts on their side and were willing to risk their careers. They failed nonetheless.

In the 1950's, the eminent psychologist Solomon Asch performed a series of famous experiments that help explain why. He showed the chart below to a group of people and asked which line on the right matched the line on the left.

It seems like a fairly simple task and it should be, but Asch, renowned for his ingenuity, added a twist. All of the people in the room, except one, were confederates who gave the wrong answer. By the time he got to the last person who was the true subject, almost everyone who participated conformed to the majority view, even though it was obviously wrong.

While we like to think of ourselves as independent and freethinking, the truth is that we are greatly affected by the views of those around us. If you are in an office where people watch silly cat videos, you'll find yourself doing the same and laughing along. Yet often you'll find that they're not nearly as funny when viewed in different company.

Yet conformity is never absolute. Even in Asch's experiments, there were some who held out, much like Semmelweis and Antioco. We all have our points of conviction on which we are unlikely to be swayed, other areas in which we need more convincing and still others that we really don't care enough about to form much of an opinion at all.

That essentially is what the threshold model of collective behavior predicts: Ideas take hold in small local majorities; many stop there and never go any further, but some saturate those local clusters and move on to more reluctant groups through weak ties. Eventually, a cascading effect ensues.

The best-known example of the threshold model at work is the diffusion of innovations model developed by Everett Rogers, in which a small group of innovators gets hold of an idea and indoctrinates a somewhat more reluctant group of early adopters to form local majorities. The reticent denizens of those clusters find themselves outnumbered and begin to conform, just as in Asch's study. Before long, the new converts find themselves passing the idea on to other social groups they belong to. The process continues until the idea has grown far beyond its original niche. Eventually, even the most skeptical laggards join in.

Now we can see the failure of Semmelweis and Antioco - and the folly of so many aspiring executives - for what it is. Rather than seeking to lead a passionate band of willing innovators and build a movement, they leaned on their authority to create wholesale change by forcing the unconvinced against their will. Instead of painstakingly building local majorities, they attempted to compel entire populations.

Control is an illusion and always has been an illusion. It is a Hobbesian paradox that we cannot enforce change unless change has already occurred. Higher status-or even a persuasive presentation full of facts-is of limited utility. The lunatics run the asylum, the best we can do as leaders is empower them to run it right.

And that's why change always requires leadership rather than authority. Respectable people always prefer incumbency to disruption. Only misfits are threatened by the status quo. So if you want to create real change, it is not power and influence that you need, but those who seek to overthrow them.

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To Create Change, Leadership Is More Important Than Authority

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Aspiring junior executives dream of climbing the ladder to gain more authority. Then they can make things happen and create the change that they believe in. Senior executives, on the other hand, are often frustrated by how little power they actually have. The problem is that, while authority can compel action, it does little to inspire belief.

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Earlier this year, the Rhode Island-based Highlander Institute and the Clayton Christensen Institute teamed up to bring together a conference on blended and personalized learning in Providence, R.I. The goal of the event was to focus on the practical elements of blended and personalized learning by surfacing the tactics that practitioners were deploying in the trenches. More than 100 teachers and leaders from around the country were invited to share their approaches to piloting and scaling blended learning in classrooms and schools, which we summarized in our latest report, " From the frontlines: Takeaways from the 2016 Blended and Personalized Learning Conference," out this week.

Although our many presenters hailed from a variety of geographies and contexts, one refrain echoed loudly throughout the Providence Convention Center: implementing blended and personalized learning is about managing change. Innovators stressed that without effective change management, the best technology tools and the most elegant personalized learning models will come up short. Here are six change management strategies that practitioners stressed as vital to driving new models of learning across traditional systems:
1. Embrace not knowing
One tension in managing change across a classroom or an entire district is making the unknown an opportunity rather than a threat. This framing depends on leaders who are willing to make the unknown safe. As Amanda Murphy, a Highlander Institute Fuse Rhode Island Fellow from Westerly Public Schools, put it, managing change across a system is about "supporting the eager, but non-expert." In part, this requires giving people room to express concerns. "We had faculty volunteers who were interested but didn't have expertise," she said. "They talked about why they were nervous, and this helped people understand that there were many others in the same boat. It set the tone that it's okay not to know. And now they're asking for help."
2. Co-design
All too often, new approaches to instruction are designed in isolation from the teachers who will be implementing those approaches. Participants stressed that limiting the number of seats around a blended and personalized learning design table, in turn, limits the level of teacher buy-in to new classroom models. "Leaders have ideas for teachers, but it doesn't work top-down," said Julia Rafal-Baer of Chiefs for Change, a nonprofit network of state and district education leaders. "Teachers need to be part of the strategic conversation." Leaders noted that the more teachers are involved in the design process upfront, the more likely they will be to persist and adapt when challenges to implementation inevitably arise.
3. Cultivate early adopters
Many initiatives that participants discussed came from a few early innovators trying new approaches within their systems. Early adopters of blended and personalized can also provide a powerful antidote to top-down directives. For example, Donna Vallese, a former principal at Nowell Leadership Academy, a public charter school in Rhode Island, said she never told teachers they had to use certain tools like Google Classroom. "Instead, it was seeded with early adopters," she said. "It spread organically from the ground up, and then everyone was doing it."
4. Open doors
Classrooms can be infamously siloed environments where teachers operate in isolation. Participants noted that for educators pursuing innovative classroom models, breaking down those silos was critical. Tracey Nangle, a teacher in North Smithfield School District in Rhode Island, said that an open-door policy at her middle school helped to shift schoolwide attitudes and culture in favor of collaborative learning. "Teachers are given release time to work as teams and observe classrooms together. It builds respect between colleagues and exposes all of the great work that is happening," Nangle said.
5. Rethink roles
As schools manage change across their instructional models, the traditional roles that adults play may shift. David Richards of Fraser Public Schools described how his districts' move to competency-based learning prompted a rethinking not just of teachers' roles, but also of roles across the schools and ecosystem. "We looked at the positions we had and then abandoned them for the positions we needed," he said. Similarly, Eric Tucker of Brooklyn Lab Charter School in New York recommended using personalized learning models to move teachers away from the one-size-fits-all role they've traditionally played. "Embrace that educators have different skills and strengths," he said.
6. Make time
Practitioners looking to adopt blended and personalized learning practices stressed that the learning curve is steep and time scarce. Yet, some school leaders are finding creative ways to give teachers and themselves more time for year-round professional growth and for adapting to new tools and techniques. For example, Scott Frauenheim shared how Distinctive Schools created an unprecedented chunk of time for peer-to-peer learning during the school day by working with a scheduling expert to update where time gets allocated each day. "We found 105 minutes of planning and collaboration time by minimizing transitions between classes. This time is helping to prevent burnout and helping teachers learn to let go of what they've always done," he said.

Read the full report: " From the frontlines: Takeaways from the 2016 Blended and Personalized Learning Conference."

Take action: Are you a teacher or leader spearheading blended and personalized learning in your school system? Join us for next year's conference in Providence! Click here to learn more.

The article originally appeared on eCampus News.

For more, see:

Julia is the director of education research at the Clayton Christensen Institute. Her work aims to educate policymakers and community leaders on the power of disruptive innovation in the K-12 and higher education spheres. Be sure to check out her book, "Who You Know: Unlocking Innovations That Expand Students' Networks" https://amzn.to/2RIqwOk.

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6 tips from personalized learning innovators leading change - Christensen Institute

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Earlier this year, the Rhode Island-based Highlander Institute and the Clayton Christensen Institute teamed up to bring together a conference on blended and personalized learning in Providence, R.I. The goal of the event was to focus on the practical elements of blended and personalized learning by surfacing the tactics that practitioners were deploying in the [...]

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Embracing Failure: Building a Growth Mindset Through the Arts

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Teach your students the recipe for success: taking risks, making mistakes, and integrating critical feedback. New Mexico School for the Arts GRADES 9 - 12 | SANTA FE, NM Explore more resources from this school: https://www.edutopia.org/school/new-mexico-school-arts

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Every Tuesday SmartBrief on EdTech runs Tech Tips, a column featuring practical advice from school technologists and tech-using educators. This month, we are running a roundup of the top tips from the year. Below are ideas for adopting project-based learning, introducing coding to students and using Google Sheets, Docs and add-ons in your classroom. 3 steps to creating interactive timelines
Interactive timelines can be effective teaching tools, writes Gail Desler, a technology-integration specialist for the Elk Grove Unified School District in California. In this blog post, Desler shares three steps to creating a timeline using Google Sheets.
Tool lets teachers organize assignments through Google Drive
Diane Main, of the Harker School in San Jose, Calif., details how to use Doctopus, a Google add-on, to help manage, organize and grade student projects through Google Drive. The add-on also lets students edit work, she notes in this blog post.
Tips to use Google Docs for grading
Teachers can create grading shortcuts using Google Documents, suggests Catlin Tucker, an author, international trainer, education-technology speaker and Google Certified Teacher. In this blog post, she shares a guide to using shortcuts and offers a few of her own favorites.
Teacher makes the case for project-based learning
Teachers should adopt project-based learning to improve learning and engagement among students, writes Nick Provenzano, an English teacher and technology curriculum specialist at Grosse Point Public Schools in Michigan. In this blog post, he describes a project in which students were given autonomy to identify a problem and use technology to solve it.
3 games to help teach coding
Games can provide new ways to introduce students to coding, principal Kami Thordarson writes in this blog post. She describes three such games, including Google's Made with Code, which features characters from Pixar's "Inside Out.

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Tech Tips is a content collaboration between SmartBrief Education and GreyED Solutions. Have a tech tip to share? Contact us at techtips@greyedsolutions.com
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Like this article? Sign up for SmartBrief on EdTech to get news like this in your inbox, or check out all of SmartBrief's education newsletters, covering career and technical education, educational leadership, math education and more.

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Every Tuesday SmartBrief on EdTech runs Tech Tips, a column featuring practical advice from school technologists and tech-using educators. This month, we are running a roundup of the top tips from the year. Below are ideas for adopting project-based learning, introducing coding to students and using Google Sheets, Docs and add-ons in your classroom.

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Eduardo Briceno, CEO, Mindset Works

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The Power of belief -- mindset and success | Eduardo Briceno | TEDxManhattanBeach

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Teaching Wellbeing: Helping Students Tackle Social Issues

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Learn how School 21 explores topics like culture, diversity, and responsibility using drama techniques, group discussions, and controversial statements. School 21 GRADES PK - 13 | STRATFORD, LONDON, U.K. Explore more resources from this school: https://www.edutopia.org/school/school-21

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We are living in uncertain times, but here's something to lift the spirits: About half the schools in the District now have a garden.

The gardens are neither luxuries nor insignificant. To young, formative minds, these green spaces represent an introduction to the delicate and vital dance between nature and the city in a century when the two must come together in harmony as never before.

I stopped by Leckie Elementary School in Southwest Washington on a recent, blustery Saturday to watch an army of volunteers (including former Redskins players), teachers, students and nonprofit organizers put the finishing touches on a new school garden that will connect grade-schoolers to nature. It's sweet to think that a 6-year-old planting a bean seed next spring might well be showing her great-grandchildren how to do the same at the turn of the next century. The Leckie garden's elements include outdoor classroom spaces, a vegetable garden in raised beds, a grove of birch trees, a meadow garden, perennial beds and that essential marker of a working garden: the shed.

Among the participants was Joe Ludes, an instructional coach with the garden's coordinating nonprofit, Real School Gardens, whose job is to train teachers at Leckie and other schools in the city in how to use the space as an outdoor classroom. (The construction was sponsored by the Washington Redskins Charitable Foundation.)

Some lessons are obvious, such as the biology of growing a radish from seed. But the garden offers insights that go far beyond the brass tacks of cultivation. Geology, hydrology, poetry, music, ecology, cooking and microbiology all find a home in this arena we call a garden, as well as dozens of other subjects beyond most people's imagination.

Jeanne McCarty, chief executive of Real School Gardens, tells the story of a teacher whose students couldn't grasp the concept of the Earth's rotation until she held a class outdoors, put up a string and let them watch its shifting shadow.

The District has become a beacon to other cities in large part because of a 2010 city law, the Healthy Schools Act, which established a school garden program. In 2011, 82 of 233 public and public charter schools had gardens. By 2016, the number had grown to 127, said Sam Ullery, the system's school garden specialist.

[The legacy of Michelle Obama's White House Kitchen Garden]

What the players in this movement have learned is that gardens don't look after themselves and that all the passion of one player at a school to install and maintain a garden is not enough. "Say you have one parent who takes it on and then leaves; it falls apart," Ludes said. After a garden is built at a partner school, Ludes provides training and instruction to as many as 24 teachers over a two-year period.

The obstacles to and the success of a garden often are wrapped up in the dynamics that play out in every school: the support and budget priorities of the principal, the outlooks of the teachers, and the external support that a garden gets.

Schools across the country - and this is a national movement - have found all manner of ways to bring that outside help into the school garden, with master gardeners, garden clubs, PTA members, college interns and others. In the summer months, when the children are gone for the most part and the garden is at its most fruitful and needy, it can morph into a neighborhood community garden.

Ullery's office awards grants that pay for a garden coordinator, but "we require that schools partner with an outside organization for support."

One of them is DC Greens, which provides school garden coordinators with training, curriculum support and connections to others. Garden coordinators "were working in isolation, and we brought them together," said Sarah Holway, who co-founded the organization after she tried, as a teacher, to get a garden going at Bancroft Elementary School and realized "there was nothing out there to support that position."

Sometimes the garden coordinators have to focus not on the students but on the teachers. "If they're having trouble engaging the staff, we tell them, 'Forget about the kids and start focusing on the staff, and get them to feel the magic of the garden,' " Holway said.

[The shifting landscape of school gardens, and nonprofits]

Richard Louv, the San Diego-based author of " Last Child in the Woods " and other books about connecting kids to nature, said when he spoke to teachers a decade ago the reception was cool. "Here's this guy asking them to do one more thing," he said. "Over the years, teachers have become among the best audiences. I think they have come to the point where they're so fed up with the testing they need a release, too."

But teachers also see that many students' minds come alive in the garden in a way they don't in the classroom. The environment itself is transforming. "There's something about being outside in a natural setting that seems to stimulate the senses," Louv said.

[Why young minds need nature]

What is becoming clear is that in schools with gardens, the students do better. Many studies are bearing this out. In a newly published University of Maryland study of D.C. school gardens, researchers tracked significant differences in fifth-grade test results between students with gardens and those without. In reading, for example, 61 percent of students in garden schools tested as proficient or advanced, compared with 38 percent in schools without gardens. For math, the difference was 56 percent compared with 36 percent, and for science, 47 percent against 21 percent.

The lesson, perhaps, is that school gardens are a boon to learning, that the movement is now mainstream but not universal, and that they need a web of support within schools and the community to flourish. But gardens are ephemeral and will decline quickly if neglected. It would be a great loss if that were to happen.

For many of these children, nature, once discovered, will seep into their lives in ways that can and cannot be quantified. One falls back to the observation of that 19th-century aesthete and nature lover John Ruskin, who pointed out that "there is no wealth but life."

More from Lifestyle:

If the garden is due for a rock revival, gravel would be the way to go

We know you love your leaf blower, but it's ruining the neighborhood

After 14 years of waiting, work begins on the National China Garden

The curtain falls on Ireland's most famous private garden

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As school gardens spread, so do the teaching moments

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We are living in uncertain times, but here's something to lift the spirits: About half the schools in the District now have a garden. The gardens are neither luxuries nor insignificant. To young, formative minds, these green spaces represent an introduction to the delicate and vital dance between nature and the city in a century when the two must come together in harmony as never before.

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With teachers at Roosevelt High sensing students' anxiety had reached a crisis level, they rearranged the school's schedule to add a 20-minute break every day, and weekly lessons on mindfulness. Other local schools are also doing more to foster students' emotional health.

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For much of last Thursday morning, Caroline Maher's head was filled with anxiety - about the long essay due in her English class, the work for her two advanced placement classes, her after-school practice to prepare for an upcoming dance-team performance. In school and after school - with homework, youth-group meetings and a weekend job - nearly every minute of the 16-year-old's time is scheduled.

But for 20 minutes each day at Roosevelt High - part of a break the school instituted for all students this fall - she has time to breathe. With her feet on the floor and hands in her lap shortly after her U.S. history class ended, she took three deep breaths and a long slow exhale out.

One last deep breath in, U.S. history teacher Karen Grace said, as the 20 minutes got under way. "Now let's learn something new."

Started by teachers who'd grown alarmed at the rising stress level among their students, this daily break - known as "Rider Time," after the school's Roughrider mascot - is aimed at helping students slow down, at least for a few minutes.

Last year, teachers said, the stress and anxiety at the school had reached a crisis level.

Roosevelt has always been an academically competitive school, with many students planning on going to four-year colleges. But last year, the stress had hit a new high.

Grace said she personally walked more panicked students to the teen health center than in any of her previous 15 years as a teacher. The number of students with attention-deficit disorder continued to rise. And in two years, two students committed suicide, which hit the school community hard.

Student anxiety was so thick, it seemed to drip from the walls, said Michael Magidman, a Roosevelt social studies teacher. The school's staff, he said, felt compelled to do something.

"There were events that pushed enough people over the edge to say 'we need to shake ourselves out of the apathy of routine, we need to do something here,' because our students are too overloaded and stressed out," he said.

So a team of teachers, counselors and school nurses met to figure out what. They quickly settled on carving out a 20-minute period in the school day - accomplished by shortening each class to 50 minutes instead of 55. And because they now make any announcements during Rider Time (and don't hold Rider Time on assembly days), they say the amount of instructional time isn't reduced by much, if at all.

"We find ourselves always functioning on this low-level panic, and I think we are seeing that more and more," Grace said. "Life continues to speed up, and kids don't have the life experience and tools to figure out what to do with that."

Erin Bailey, one of the school's academic intervention specialists, said students face tougher academics than in the past, and take more advanced classes in their effort to get into college.

"There's just a lack of free time to be themselves," she said. "And with the internet, you always feel like you have to be connected to something. You're always missing something."

Most days of the week, students can use the 20 minutes of Rider Time as they choose - to relax on their own, check on grades or catch up on school work. But on Thursdays, teachers in every class lead a lesson on mindfulness, a practice loosely defined as being present and aware of one's thoughts, feelings and sensations - and the impact each has.

Other Seattle-area schools also are incorporating mindfulness and stress management into the school day, part of a push to focus on students' emotional well-being, rather than just academic success.

At Seattle's Thurgood Marshall Elementary, for example, first-grade students do mindfulness exercises twice a week. Tillicum Middle School in Bellevue added mindfulness lessons to its health classes. Also in Seattle, Ballard High offers drop-in sessions, and students at Nathan Hale High formed a stress-management club, where students can hang out in a dimly lighted room with classical music playing in the background. They can nap or even color, which helps them take their minds off schoolwork, said senior Stella Ramos, who started the club.

"Everyone de-stresses in different ways," said Ramos, 17.

But Roosevelt is the first school in Seattle to pilot a yearlong program with weekly mindfulness lessons built into the daily schedule, said Ann Hollar, a mindfulness instructor who wrote the curriculum.

National statistics back up teachers' and students' concerns about stress. Suicide, for example, is the second-leading cause of death among people aged 15-34, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. A CDC report released last month showed that kids ages 10-14 were more likely to die by suicide than in a car accident.

Hollar also attributes the interest in mindfulness as a response to the era of high-stakes testing. After a period that focused so much on test scores, she said, more schools are realizing they can't neglect students' emotional health.

"If you're not present, then you're not open to learning," she said.

The mindfulness lessons aren't in any way religious, said Richard Berger, a professor emeritus in the University of Washington Medical School who has taught mindfulness courses in several Seattle and Edmonds schools.

"It's not worship in any sense of the word," he said. "It's really just kids getting to know themselves better, including how their brain works."

At Roosevelt, teachers Grace and Magidman use mindfulness exercises regularly, not just during Rider Time. Before a test, for example, Grace has students write what they are worried about, and then crumble up the paper and put it in a trash can. That helps the students visualize their worries in a different way, she said.

Last Thursday during Rider Time, Maher and her classmates in Grace's Advanced Placement U.S. History class put away their textbooks and copies of the Emancipation Proclamation, then opened their mindfulness journals. The week before, the lesson focused on kindness, so Grace asked if anyone had done any random acts of kindness. One student said she'd sent a letter to a friend, another called her grandmother to ask about family history.

One student took out his phone and kept his eyes open during the breathing exercises, but most of the class participated fully.

They ended with a moment of silence, with their feet on the floor, hands in laps, eyes closed. One student, her backpack packed with binders and books, counted her breaths in a whisper.

Already, teachers and students say, Roosevelt is calmer. Teachers report seeing fewer students speed-walking down the halls with frantic looks on their faces. Students say the overall pace feels slower. And after Rider Time, Maher and a few other students had time to linger in Grace's classroom rather than rush off to their next course.

Next year, the school's schedule may be changing, so teachers aren't sure whether Rider Time can continue. But they hope the focus on emotional health will stay.

"I think it's changed the tone of how we get through the day," Grace said. "It's still fast-paced, but it's sane and reasonable."

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Schools create moments of calm for stressed-out students

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With teachers at Roosevelt High sensing students' anxiety had reached a crisis level, they rearranged the school's schedule to add a 20-minute break every day, and weekly lessons on mindfulness. Other local schools are also doing more to foster students' emotional health.

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Educators are rethinking the purposes, forms, and nature of assessment. Beyond testing mastery of traditional content knowledge-an essential task, but not nearly sufficient-educators are designing assessment for learning as an integral part of the learning process.

Learn More

Elementary students and their teacher reflect on getting feedback from experts, in support of growing as a learner.

Recently a group of elementary students from Henry County Schools, a school district near Atlanta, engaged "community experts" in a round of feedback conversations while working on an authentic task. The driving question for the task centered around students proving which rocks and soil would best support life on Mars, and they spoke with local community members. They wanted to have the opportunity to present to adult experts before finalizing their presentations.

Student Reflections

These are some of the students' thoughts on how feedback is helping them in their learning experiences.
How does feedback help you learn better?
I think feedback is important because you can learn about what your mistake was and you can retry it.

We can learn different things by having the experts talk to us. Not knowing them, they could give us feedback because it wouldn't be harmful. They wouldn't be so worried about hurting our feelings and they would tell us the truth.

Feedback helps us for the next round. If you didn't have anything that you did wrong, then you wouldn't know what to do next time. You would do the same thing next time.

When you give feedback to someone else it helps you prepare for yourself. When you give that person feedback, you can try to not do that yourself.
Who do you like getting feedback from?
I think it would be fine if we got feedback from someone we don't know because we don't really know them and they don't really know us, so the feedback would help us to understand if they understood us.

Experts because experts know a lot about what you are learning, so it's good to get feedback from them.

Experts because they know a lot about the work. They know more than our teachers and people in the class. I would like to be complimented by them.

Teacher Reflections

The students' teacher also spent some time reflecting on the role of feedback loops in her classroom. She shares the moves she has to make in order for feedback to be seen as an ongoing conversation in the classroom.
How does feedback help students reflect on their mastery of the standards?
Mastery of a standard often requires students to master multiple elements within that standard. Without feedback, students often struggle to identify which elements they have mastered and which elements they are still struggling with. A student will continue to struggle unless they can identify where specifically they have gaps. Once the student is aware of their strengths and weaknesses they can reflect and set a course of action. The student is empowered to own their data and make choices based on that data. This student empowerment allows the student and teacher to work in collaboration to target areas of weakness and ultimately master the standard.
How has the classroom environment changed as a result of feedback loops?
I completely changed the way I structured my time with students. We created individual conference time each day. This time was completely student-driven. Students could sign-up to receive feedback on their work at the beginning and end of the day. Similarly, each content area I taught had ten minutes for small group sign-up sessions. During this time, students could bring their work and receive feedback and support. This time was both teacher- and student-driven. I also incorporated self-assessment and critical friend opportunities frequently in our whole group instruction time. Feedback became a centerpiece of how we structured our day. The kids loved it. They felt empowered to drive their learning experience. One student said to me, "I love that we can get help each day if we need it!"
How do we encourage students to authentically engage in conversations with others about the quality of their work?
Feedback, reflection, and revision need to be a visible part of the learning process. As teachers we must model this process and highlight it in our students. By making this feedback loop a part of the learning process, we are communicating to our kids that feedback is the key to growth. Feedback becomes a routine part of the learning process. In addition, we must create a class culture that celebrates the voices of our students. Students must know that their ideas and opinions matter. We must validate student feedback and provide a framework for students to communicate their ideas. By doing this, we create a community of learners that can successfully give and receive feedback from peers.

The goal of feedback loops is to engage students in meaningful reflection leading to mastery of learning. But as demonstrated through this example, engaging in feedback loops can't be an accidental occurrence in the classroom. Time must be allotted, students must be coached, and authentic audiences must be invited into the learning. Teachers who want to make feedback an integral part of their learning environment must rethink the role of conversation and collaboration during daily learning to allow students to use feedback effectively.

Melissa Thomas

Teacher Development Coordinator, Henry County Schools

Melissa Thomas is a teacher development coordinator for Henry County Schools, a public school district in Georgia, near Atlanta.

Read More About Reimagining Assessment

See More

5 Non-Negotiables in Assessment for Learning

The Assessment for Learning Project is trying to improve assessment's reputation

Building Writing Skills, Fostering Agency: The National Writing Project's Student Using Sources Tool

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Feedback Loops Lead the Way to Mastery | NGLC

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Educators are rethinking the purposes, forms, and nature of assessment. Beyond testing mastery of traditional content knowledge-an essential task, but not nearly sufficient-educators are designing assessment for learning as an integral part of the learning process. Learn More Elementary students and their teacher reflect on getting feedback from experts, in support of growing as a learner.

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What's the difference between teacher-centered and student-centered classrooms?

In a traditional, teacher-centered classroom, teachers ask questions and students answer. Teachers choose what students will be working on and when and deliver direct instruction, often to the class as a whole. Conversely, in a student-centered classroom the teacher works with students and has the resources and supports that they need to take risks and follow their students' lead. In a literacy lesson, for example, a teacher may work with a small group of students whose assessments show they need support in the same skill area, while other students work through learning stations with tasks designed to strengthen their learning. It's not one size fits all. Learning is personalized, recognizing that students engage in different ways and in different places. Students benefit from individually-paced, targeted learning tasks that start from where the student is, formatively assess existing skills and knowledge and address the student's needs and interests.

"Most of my kids know pretty much where they stand," said Marie Roy, a kindergarten teacher at Henry L. Cottrell Elementary School in RSU 2 in Monmouth, Maine. "If you ask them what they are working on in literacy they can say, 'I'm doing syllables right now,' or 'I don't need to do my letters anymore because I know them already.' They know exactly what to expect, and where they need to be, and where they need to get their materials from so they are able to move through their targets at a pretty independent pace."

What's the role of technology?

Technology doesn't replace teaching. Rather, it is a powerful tool for project-based learning, interdisciplinary learning, formative assessments and reviewing student data. Technology can deepen the education experience for learners and teachers in a personalized setting - but only when it is used thoughtfully and intentionally. Simply having access to a device is not personalizing learning. Teachers are the guides that shape educational experiences for their students, helping them engage with learning tools that will enrich and support deeper learning, including different types of technology. Teachers can also use technology platforms to support data-driven learning like never before, personalizing learning to students' interests, passions, strengths and needs. By using formative assessments, a teacher can determine a learner's strengths and areas for growth, allowing for the development of a learning plan that utilizes technology-based curriculum as a support in the child's growth.

What does classroom management look like in a student-centered classroom?

The idea of students choosing how they learn, how they show you what they've learned, working independently or grouping and regrouping throughout the day, might sound like a teacher's worst nightmare. But it's actually the opposite - the student who feels trusted and has ownership over their learning is a more focused and productive student who understands why they're learning what they're learning and can make connections with what matters to them. Learners also have ample opportunities to practice those critical social and emotional skills that will serve them well in the future when they can recognize their own role in enriching the learning environment. Teachers are still responsible for the class, but when students build a community together, deciding on classroom rules and similar procedures, they hold themselves and each other accountable.

In an elementary classroom, students may decide as a class what's an appropriate way to handle classroom materials such as markers or scissors, whereas with older learners they may decide on how long they have to revise an assignment. These rules still exist - but they are decided upon and enforced by the community, building student agency and ownership.

"I really wanted to be in charge of my classroom," said Hillary Weiser, a kindergarten teacher at Navin Elementary School in the Marysville Exempted Village School District in Marysville, Ohio. "But I've learned to let the kids take charge of their own learning. I have no discipline issues this year, and I don't think it's anything I've done. This classroom is theirs. They take ownership of what happens here."

How will teachers personalize lesson plans for every student?

Personalizing learning doesn't mean writing 30 different lesson plans for 30 students, but rather cultivating in your students an understanding of themselves as learners and turning over some of that work to the student themselves. Transparency is also key in a competency-based classroom - if students are aware of their learning targets and what they need to do to demonstrate mastery, learning isn't a mystery. Students co-construct with their teacher what learning targets they need to accomplish and how they can show evidence of their learning. In a science class, for example, a teacher may share out at the beginning of the unit the learning targets that each student will need to meet, and work with each student to design the assessment that allows them to demonstrate mastery - whether that's writing a paper, delivering a presentation, taking a test or something else. Students get excited about their learning, move on to the next lesson only when they are ready and no one feels bad about where they are.

How will teachers support every student's individual needs?

To truly personalize learning, teachers must have the support and freedom they need to understand and support each child holistically. Whether it's a unique family situation, a different culture, poverty or trauma, teachers must have the flexibility to meet their students' needs in creative ways. Personal learner profiles offer students the opportunity to think about the environments and supports that will help them learn best, and a classroom culture that encourages growth mindset allows them to refine these ideas throughout the year. When personalizing learning, there is a necessary cultural and systemic shift throughout a learning community that brings inequitable practices to light and empowers teachers to take action. This may require tough, but necessary, conversations about how to serve each child well.

"We offered afterschool sessions for those learners who needed additional help, and were naturally frustrated when the students we knew we needed the support didn't show up," said Abbie Forbus, director of teaching and learning with KnowledgeWorks and formerly director of culture at Lindsay Unified School District in Lindsay, California. "But when we asked students, we were surprised to learn that because so many of their parents were migrant workers who had to go and work in the fields after school, these students needed to get home to care for siblings. Afterschool sessions were never going to work for them, so we needed to find a way to work extra time into the school day. If we'd stopped and asked our learners first what they needed, we'd have been able to work together to find the best solution from the start."

How will assessments work? How will teachers determine whether or not a student has demonstrated mastery?

While end-of-year summative assessments are still a reality for schools, teachers in a personalized learning environment must be comfortable with frequent, embedded student assessments that are closely aligned to instruction so that results can quickly translate into supports for students. These embedded assessments also naturalize the process, and rather than running the risk of them seeming punitive, assessments become a regular touchpoint for both teachers and students to get a pulse on what they know, and what they don't know yet. After an assessment, students can also chart their own growth and set their own learning goal, determining what they will do to reach their goal and what they need their teacher to do. They own their learning.

"I get to focus on what kids really know, and what they don't know, and what I can do to get them there," said Brooke Young, a math teacher at Marysville Early College High School in the Marysville Exempted School District in Marysville, Ohio. She described a recent project her students undertook to demonstrate their understanding of quadratic functions, where rather than just take a test, her students chose to pursue a video project. Young recognized her students' passion for video production and IT, and though she didn't have the expertise herself, she provided the structure necessary for her students to plug their learning into something that was meaningful for them and still gave the opportunity to show what they'd learned. "I told them, 'I'm going to take a risk with you.' We dove in together," Young said.

How does personalized learning change the nature of the professional development teachers receive?

Rethinking annual professional development to explicitly support a teacher's confidence and the development of strategies for personalizing learning is critical. Most educators haven't been trained in personalizing learning, but are excited at the prospect of having more freedom to meet their students where they are. The growth mindset and comfort with failure as a part of the learning process is something that teachers must cultivate in their interactions with students, and it's made possible by feeling that same support from district leaders and administrators. Teachers need to feel that they are trusted, that if they try something new and it doesn't work out quite like they thought it might, they can revisit and adjust. They're not afraid of failure, because it's part of the learning process - for teachers and for their students.

"Personalized learning is such a big, nebulous concept. You say it and people have their own idea about what it is," said Lauren McCauley, formerly the assistant director of the department of personalized learning in Charleston County School District, now with the South Carolina Department of Education. "You can't just go to a conference, attend one session and say you know how to personalize learning. It's a pedagogical shift. Most every district has a professional development budget, and it's time to prioritize those funds to support that mindset shift."

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The Role of the Teacher in a Personalized, Competency-Based Classroom

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In a traditional, teacher-centered classroom, teachers ask questions and students answer. Teachers choose what students will be working on and when and deliver direct instruction, often to the class as a whole. Conversely, in a student-centered classroom the teacher works with students and has the resources and supports that they need to take risks and follow their students' lead.

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Students Discover the Power of Gratitude on a Community | Class Act

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4 Foundational Innovation Strategies

With these thoughts in mind, here are four ways to strategically infuse the basics with innovation.

1. Utilize your specialist teachers.

When Ross was an elementary school assistant principal in a district with a highly-regarded career and technical education (CTE) program, two of its instructors gave him a tour of their high school facilities. Throughout that visit, the teachers shared their educational philosophies and how they facilitated student learning. Some of these tenets included:

Allowing students to engage in productive struggle to uncover a deeper understanding of engineering principles

An emphasis on the iterative process

Assessment and grading not based solely on final products

Clearly, there was a contrast between learning in the CTE program and in a typical classroom. Ross asked these teachers, "Have you been given a formal opportunity to talk about your philosophies with other teachers at your school? Would students benefit if these philosophies were applied across all their classes?" The answers to these questions, not surprisingly, were "no" and then "yes!"

In Where Good Ideas Come From, Steven Johnson discusses the coffeehouse model of creativity and how "many of history's greatest innovators managed to build a cross-disciplinary coffeehouse environment within their own private work routines." The same idea can be applied to education, as something can be learned from anyone regardless of official job title. For example, we'd love to see specialists (such as CTE, art, and music teachers) present to regular education teachers on the philosophies that drive the teaching and learning in their classrooms. Then we'd offer them structured time to collaborate on merging these approaches with what's already taking place.

2. Embed innovative practices into the curriculum.

Every day brings chances for students to innovate. But in our experience, the schools' forward-thinking change agents simply cross their fingers and hope the innovation happens (maybe through some form of professional development). Yet we can and should be more intentional about promoting innovation in our districts and schools with everything in our power.

Curriculum rewrites present us with unique opportunities to embed innovative practices that also represent our priorities as educators. While these additions may not guarantee that everything will be executed precisely as we envision, they're a step in the right direction.

Next year, Ross' district will rewrite its elementary science curriculum. It could be advantageous to include innovative practices such as Genius Hour, design thinking, robotics, and coding. These methods could be merged with other science topics or subject areas, and/or 30-40 minutes a week could be allocated to students immersing themselves in at least one of them. Of course, professional development would probably be necessary, and teachers might be able to participate on a volunteer basis.

A few years ago, Wissahickon School District in Ambler, Pennsylvania took a similar approach. According to former administrator A.J. Juliani:

Innovation often happens in organic fashion. At Wissahickon, we shared Genius Hour at our Best Practices Fair, and five other teachers jumped on board. The next year, momentum carried it into the new ELA curriculum. Now every ninth grader experiences Genius Hour, and teachers get to improve facilitating this type of learning every year.

3. Empower students to lead their own (and others') learning.

Tony has referred to himself as Cantiague Elementary School's lead learner ever since he saw Joe Mazza tweeting about the term and started researching its significance. He repeatedly encountered statements from thinkers like Michael Fullan and Robert Marzano stressing the importance of a principal becoming an instructional leader focused on staff, student, and community learning. As Tony researched, he realized that he already was a lead learner (one of many in his school community) because he modeled the importance of learning through his own daily actions while supporting and facilitating the learning of those around him.

He focused on empowering students through conversations with staff about how minor tweaks in daily instruction might give children opportunities to facilitate their own learning and shape the trajectory of their educational experiences. One adjustment involved teachers giving students choices in their reading and in their writing workshop. Whether through picking books that excited them (regardless of level) or researching an area about which they were passionate for a writing unit, the children were leading their own learning.

In addition to these language arts modifications, students have led lessons as a result of their Genius Hour research or science experiments that they've tried. As a result, Tony's school has seen a shift from a culture of teaching to a culture of learning.

4. Engage families and students differently and build transparency.

Many schools in this country function as fortresses in which everything that happens inside is the educators' business while everything that happens outside is the families' business. Unfortunately, there's never a bridge connecting these two worlds because many schools do very little to meaningfully engage families. This fortress mentality isn't in the best interest of students or the educational community. In their 2002 report titled A New Wave of Evidence (PDF), Mapp and Henderson wrote:

When schools engage families in ways that are linked to improving learning, students make greater gains. When schools build partnerships with families that respond to their concerns and honor their contributions, they are successful in sustaining connections that are aimed at improving student achievement.

The bottom line is that engaging families is a must, not an option. We can no longer rely solely on connecting with the families who happen to show up at PTA meetings. We must go beyond in our efforts to flatten our school walls, build transparency, and engage all families. We can accomplish these goals by letting children share their powerful educational experiences. For example, consider implementing a Social Media Intern or Tweeter of the Week program in your school (idea courtesy of Missy Emler). You could also create a Snapchatter or Instagrammer of the Week. Regardless of platform, what matters is children sharing timely and dynamic stories with the community. Schools have incredible stories, and children can be the best storytellers, so empower them to shape your school's narrative.

A Right, Not a Privilege

Withholding innovation from students who are learning the basics is equivalent to saying, "You're not ready for the privilege of learning in an exciting, authentic way."

It's not a matter of if we can make the two coexist, but how we can find a way to synchronously expose our students to both in order to create the districts, schools, and classrooms in which we'd want our very own children to learn.

How does your school embrace innovation without sacrificing the foundations of teaching and learning?

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Infusing the Basics With the Spirit of Innovation | Edutopia

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With these thoughts in mind, here are four ways to strategically infuse the basics with innovation. 1. Utilize your specialist teachers. When Ross was an elementary school assistant principal in a district with a highly-regarded career and technical education (CTE) program, two of its instructors gave him a tour of their high school facilities.

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Reimagining Classrooms: Teachers as Learners and Students as Leaders | Kayla Delzer | TEDxFargo

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Whether your role is as an administrator, teacher, parent, or student leader, if you're reading this, you are probably interested in helping other school community stakeholders understand the power of technology in a teaching and learning environment. A common mantra I'm hearing from digital learning coaches and innovative administrators is that they feel the progress toward using technology tools in their schools has plateaued. Many teachers have made great strides, but many more are still tentative with technology.

Just as it is a best practice for educators to model with math and reading and writing for students, it is also a best practice for all tech-savvy stakeholders to model for the tech-tentative.

Administrators: Model risk-taking with edtech for faculty

District and school administrators can start small to demonstrate the willingness to try new tactics and harness the power of technology. Start simple by sending out surveys with Google Forms or Survey Monkey, or interactive video lessons with PlayPosit or EdPuzzle, before meetings and professional learning opportunities. Then, share the resulting data and respond to the concerns of participants so that the meeting can continue positively and productively.

Or, go farther by using technology tools live during these professional learning times. For example, create a live word cloud with AnswerGarden or Poll Everywhere in response to a school-wide question to help focus the discussion. Ask faculty to share links and descriptions from their favorite resources with Padlet.

As teachers see how these tools helped facilitate their own professional experiences, they will see how they could be used with their own students.

Teachers: Model appropriate etiquette with edtech for students

When I work with teachers, one obstacle they say is in the way of them letting students use mobile devices every day in their classrooms is the distraction factor. With a classroom full of students who each have their own screen, how can even the most skilled experienced educator manage to teach content and responsible behavior simultaneously?

Well, not surprisingly, it starts with modeling-and some adults aren't exactly setting the right kind of example. Research has shown that some children feel as though they are competing with devices for adults' attention and that caregivers respond harshly to children who try to interrupt their attention to their devices. Teachers can help by talking with students about how they behave when using technology in class-they will turn off all notifications, will only use devices to help demonstrate and teach the students in the room, will not respond to emails during class-and ask students how they intend to behave when using their devices. Classroom contracts aren't a new concept, and when used well can help everyone hold one another accountable as a community. In a classroom community where each member is responsible, the teacher alone does not bear the burden of being the only manager.

Parents and educators: Model positive social media usage for children

Given the way social media was used by adults to converse and debate during the recent election, it can be challenging to tell our middle and high schoolers that they should follow the examples set by those adults. Instead of ignoring the problem or trying to convince kids to stay off social media, educators can shape the conversation this way:

1. Acknowledge that some adults use social media poorly and ask your students/children if they've seen examples and talk about those examples.

2. Empower your students/children. They can help make the internet a better place by making accurate and positive posts and by reminding other users to do the same. (I sometimes drop a link to a relevant Snopes page if someone I know posts inaccurate information and politely let them know they might want to check it out.)

3. Remind your students/children that are the policymakers, educators, business people, and parents of the future. They can start creating the future they want to exist right now. Show examples of other teen users who are already taking positive action so they know it is possible and are inspired to do something themselves.

And here's a useful note: Always follow the district social media policies, but consider starting a department or team Instagram account and use this as an opportunity to model for students. St. Bernard School in Connecticut goes even further and lets a new student take over the Instagram account each week. Give the students a chance to do some positive modeling, too!

Students: Model how to use technologies in new and creative ways

When designing lessons and projects, teachers can give every student a chance to model by incorporating student choice. Are they analyzing data or using math to solve real world problems? Invite them to choose either an infographic (with infogr.am or Piktochart or Canva) or to create an explainer video (with Explain Everything or Educreations) to show their conclusions based on their work. Are they connecting literature or history to the present day? Provide students with choices like storyboarding, acting in, and then creating a movie (with iMovie or WeVideo) or authoring their own book (with Book Creator or Papyrus) so they have original products to share.

Take it one step further and invite students to come up with their own ways to share their learning. Does a student want to use musical.ly to perform a current song from the perspective of a book character? What about creating a mock Snapchat story to show a day in the life of a scientist? When your students come up with these ideas, let them model creative uses of edtech and then share them with their peers and teachers.

A school community can push past that plateau and continue to make progress when all stakeholders are able to model for and teach one another.

Kerry Gallagher (@KerryHawk02) is a Digital Learning Specialist at a 1:1 iPad school serving 1500 students grades 6-12. She is also the Director of K-12 Education for ConnectSafely.org, and an EdSurge columnist.

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Has Your School Reached an Edtech Plateau? Here's the Key to Moving the Needle - EdSurge News

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Whether your role is as an administrator, teacher, parent, or student leader, if you're reading this, you are probably interested in helping other school community stakeholders understand the power of technology in a teaching and learning environment.

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"When you are looking at a long-term trajectory that's when the culture really becomes much more important," Good said -- especially in certain fields of study, like math and science, where stereotype threat exists and traditional classroom structures favor a laddered approach to learning that screens out the unworthy and is inherently sending fixed mindset messages.
APPLYING GROWTH MINDSET

A recent Education Week Research Center survey of 600 K-12 teachers nationwide found that over three-quarters of respondents felt "familiar" or "very familiar" with growth mindset as a concept, and nearly all reported feeling it had a positive potential for teaching and learning. A large portion of respondents also connected growth mindset with a range of positive outcomes and behaviors, but only 20 percent felt strongly that they themselves were good at cultivating a growth mindset in their students. Still fewer had confidence in their colleagues and administrators.

The gap between awareness of growth mindset as a good thing to incorporate into the classroom and the confidence to actually do so, especially in specific courses, may be why Carol Dweck and others are warning that growth mindset has been misinterpreted, sometimes to ill effect.

"People are much more likely to fall back on negative stereotypes with a naive understanding [of growth mindset]," Good said. She described a study one of her graduate students recently completed that tested teachers' perspectives on student success. The graduate student gave one group of teachers an article to read that could be described as a "pop culture" understanding of growth mindset. The other group read a paper explaining that the most important way to increase student learning is for teachers to be reflective on their own pedagogical practices. Then that group reflected on new approaches they might try to help a struggling student.

Teachers who received only a broad brush understanding of growth mindset were less likely to reflect on their practice and more likely to shift blame back onto the struggling student for not having a growth mindset. Author, and critic of many traditional education practices like grades and standardized testing, Alfie Kohn, has also written about this danger.

Often teachers take away two messages from growth mindset articles or trainings: Effort is important and mistakes should be celebrated. But when applied simplistically, both these takeaways can be damaging. For example, for a student who is trying hard, but not achieving success, being told to try harder could be demoralizing. And celebrating mistakes without taking time to reflect on new strategies to try again doesn't lead to the same learning gains.

Confusion about growth mindset and traditional structure of many classrooms are particularly apparent in math class, and to some extent science as well. As a former mathematician turned social psychologist with a deep interest in helping marginalized groups succeed and feel welcome in science, technology, engineering and math fields, Good has some specific ideas about how growth mindset could be incorporated into the fabric of math class.

CULTURE
The first big obstacle is embedded in American culture. Somehow it has become acceptable to brag about not being "a math person." Good says that has to stop, especially when that type of math anxiety is coming from teachers and parents. "It's almost like an infection model where the class fixates on that anxiety and is infected as well," Good said.

PROBLEMS WITH ERRORS
One concrete mathematical teaching strategy that inherently promotes a growth mindset is to present students with worked-out problems that have errors. Students follow the thinking in the problem, identify the mistakes and rework them. "Embedded in that worked example is a lovely opportunity to talk about growth mindset and mistakes and process," Good said.

THINK LIKE A MATHEMATICIAN
School math has become almost entirely about demonstrating how to solve a problem, rather than actually engaging in the kind of problem-solving that is at the heart of what professional mathematicians do. In other subject areas teachers encourage students to "think like historians" or to become writers. In those disciplines students create their own variations on expert texts and are encouraged to become practitioners. Not so in math. Good said the discussion around math should be about pushing through challenge, the same way real mathematicians do every day.

RETHINK ASSESSMENTS
One of the biggest ways math teachers can embed a growth mindset into the structure and environment of class is to change the role of assessment. Rather than taking tests whose scores accumulate into a final grade, students should get credit for returning to problems they didn't get right, recognizing their mistakes and reworking the problems. Growth over the course of the year should be rewarded. Students shouldn't be penalized in their final grade for doing poorly at the beginning of the year if they worked hard to learn the material over time. Assessments send very clear mindset messages that are far more powerful than anything a teacher says about growth mindset.

"Yes, we have to give assessments," Good said, "Yes, we have to give grades. But when teachers say this grade doesn't mark you or indicate what you are capable of in the long term, it shifts the whole meaning of the assessment for students," Good said.

She favors a mastery approach that allows students to go back, relearn concepts that they got wrong and earn points for that work, in part because it ensures students actually learn the material before moving on, but also because it is important for teaching a growth mindset. It shows the teacher has high expectations, but believes the students can succeed and will provide support as they work to understand.

"This is where assessment can drive learning, but only if you go back and look at what you did and learn from it," Good said.

HELPFUL FEEDBACK
Feedback is one of the most effective ways to help a student grow, but teachers must be mindful that students will always receive critical feedback through the lens of their stereotype threat. Human brains are also wired to pay more attention to negative inputs than positive ones. When teachers couch feedback with assurances that they will continue to hold the student to high standards and that they know he can get there, it helps protect him from the stereotype.

On the flip side, teachers who have fixed mindsets themselves are more likely to give comforting feedback meant to make the student feel better. Comments like, "It's OK, let's look at where you do have strengths," are meant well, but communicate a fixed mindset to the student. "Things we do for students to boost their self-esteem actually have these ironic effects of making students feel you don't believe in them," Good said.

RETHINK ADVANCEMENT
Good sees the current practice of looking at math learning as a ladder with progressively more difficult rungs as a detrimental approach. It encourages teachers to act as gatekeepers to higher- level classes, funneling the "smart" kids into advanced courses and keeping out those who struggle. That in turn communicates low expectations and a fixed mindset about students' abilities. Good said there should be multiple entry points, as opposed to a linear progression.

PREPARE EVERYONE
Growth mindsets are often discussed in relationship to kids who struggle, but the concept is just as relevant to kids who breeze through the material. Telling those kids they are smart is not setting them up for success later when they do struggle. For Good, that struggle didn't come until graduate school, but she distinctly remembers feeling "not smart anymore" because she was struggling. Math teachers need to give high achievers opportunities to struggle and persevere early and often so the experience is not foreign to them.

Embedded in all of this growth mindset work is a general culture shift around how math is taught and who can excel at it. It's no surprise that teachers are struggling to integrate growth mindset into their teaching practice because every child is different. When it comes to perceptions of intelligence, belonging and whether a teacher cares, many factors come into play. Most teachers were educated in math classrooms with fixed mindset messages, as were most parents, so shifting the culture of classrooms and schools is work that takes time and incremental changes. But when teachers commit to that work, the shift is possible.

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How to Integrate Growth Mindset Messages Into Every Part of Math Class | KQED

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Concrete ideas for math teachers looking to incorporate growth mindset into their classrooms.

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How Making Music Made Math Cool in this Classroom | Class Act

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The idea of growth vs. fixed mindsets is one that has gained traction in modern debates around how to meet the needs of students. Most herald the idea of the growth mindset as being the proper way to frame educational conversations. The idea is simple: Basic abilities in everyone can be developed through dedication and hard work. The growth mindset chips away at the idea of learning as finite or intelligence as naturally-given or not.

In many cases, though, the commonly-accepted idea that growth mindset is the way to go is not lining up with the practice of approaching every student as an equally-qualified learner. In other words, said Dr. Carol Dweck, the Lewis and Virginia Eaton Professor of Psychology at Stanford University and author of the concept of growth mindset, "educators' walk is not matching their talk."

One issue is confronting individual biases and preconceived notions about various groups that get projected onto students, despite teachers' best efforts. Regardless of the consensus that teachers should approach each students as a blank slate of potential, they often bring baggage into the classroom, which impacts their engagement with students.

"Every single person comes into social spaces with biases

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"E very single person comes into social spaces with biases, and they're birthed out of stories that you've heard, experiences you may have had and, especially in a media-saturated society, perceptions of other are sort of imbibed and ascribed to us by stories in the media," said Dr. Chris Emdin, associate professor in the Department of Mathematics, Science and Technology at Teachers College, Columbia University.

" Most teachers are trained to say that they don't see race. They wear that on their sleeve as something that they're proud of," Emdin said. "When you're trained to give that response, you start to believe that, and when you're enacting these biases, you don't see that as the problem."

Bias extends beyond race

Emdin, who is also the author of the recently-released book, " For White Folks Who Teach in the Hood and the Rest of Y'all Too: Reality Pedagogy and Urban Education ," said that even as a black man who lives in an urban environment, he finds himself grappling with biases against those who look like him.

Teachers who say they don't see race or don't have racial biases that play out in the classroom "are definitely lying," he said. "If I'm a person who lives in this body and I have that fear [of someone walking behind him in urban areas] because of the things I've been fed in the media, you certainly have that fear."

However, the baggage educators bring to classrooms is not always so black and white. Dweck suggested considering the following: "When you're in a classroom and you see a student that's not paying attention to your lesson or ideas, do you think badly about them? When you see a student who's picking up things quickly, do you think 'oh, that's a smart student'?"

Emdin pointed to gender differences that might lead to more lenient grading for female versus male students: girls, who often raise their hands more to participate in class discussions and are often more docile than their rambunctious male counterparts, get higher grades on tests. " The association of this behavior of docility as a beneficial academic behavior is problematic," he said. "That's something that's gender-specific."

Speaking at a recent Education Week Event called " Leaders to Learn From ," Dweck said it's also important to consider "the messages the student is getting from the environment." Is there a failure mindset, is the environment one in which a lot of praise is prevalent? Is the overall culture of the school one that encourages learning and puts the children as authors of that learning, or is it one in which the students are already presented with a deficit narrative that says they are less capable, less intelligent, less valuable to society?

"We used to say kids didn't have the ability, now we're saying they don't have the [right] mindset."

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"We used to say kids didn't have the ability, now we're saying they don't have the [right] mindset," Dweck said, warning of the pitfalls of overemphasizing the idea of growth mindset. "I think it's protective, it's saying 'it's not my fault the kids aren't learning. They've had bad teaching in the past, they come from a certain background.'"

" It's not that they lack the mindset or they lack the grit or they lack the resilience, it's that the way that's expressed in the classroom is flawed," said Emdin.

"If you do not view a student as having the ability to be academically successful, they will not be able to realize their potential. If you view a student through a deficit lens, they will never fully be actualized," he continued. "You put a cap on what they can do before they even get the opportunity to show you" what they can do, he said. "I think that's the most dangerous thing, when you see somebody as less than they are, when you put a cap on their potential. ... Once you do that enough, you put a cap on their psyche. They start believing that they're not valuable, they believe that they're deficient. and that's the most" detrimental thing to their ability to learn.

Growth mindset definitions, application may vary

Dweck encouraged educators and administrators to ask themselves, "What is the larger culture that allows teachers and students to feel safe, to feel that we're out for your development, we're not here to sort you into who can succeed and who can't?"

" I always say this - doing better work as educators comes with first being able to do a deep excavation of self," Emdin said. "Before any teacher goes to teach into urban America, they need to be able to ask themselves some very specific questions," like why did i choose to work here, what were my experiences with other people of this background before I got into this environment, what is my relationship with the content being taught.

Dweck said she's also found that even when educators are getting it right and leaving biases at the door, the growth mindset was not automatically passed along to the student. "Only when the teachers were teaching for understanding and were giving kids feedback in a way that grew their understanding - and were giving them a chance to revise their work to demonstrate their changed understanding - that's when they were passing on their growth mindset," she said.

"Let them author their own [definition] of a growth mindset," said Dweck. "Make them feel ownership."

"Let them author their own [definition] of a growth mindset," said Dweck. "Make them feel ownership."

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Also helpful, she suggested, is linking the idea of growth mindset to the student's larger life goals. "They don't want to grow their brains to do well on achievement tests. That's not their goal," she said. "And yet every child has within them a larger contribution" he or she wants to make to society. Key, Dweck said, is asking students what contributions they want to make to the bigger society and linking that contribution to the principles of learning in the classroom.

"It's not a panacea, but it does empower kids and help them learn," she said.

Emdin said it is also key to encourage a classroom environment that empowers students to respectfully challenge teachers, to educate the teachers on their own cultures and aspects of their own humanity and promotes a healthy emotional space that allows students to be their true selves.

" Engage in conversations with young people about the class, so they can tell you how they feel about your instruction. You give them an opportunity to be able to tell you about [themselves] and to be able to check you when you may be misperceiving [them]," he said.

It is imperative, he said, for educators to see students "as they see themselves."

"Imagine if those same teachers saw their students as smart and caring and loving."

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Many teachers, particularly those choosing to teach in urban or other difficult districts, "see themselves as heroes," he said. They see themselves as being good, smart, caring about people. They believe they make a conscious decision to teach in those environments because of their own love for humanity and desire to serve.

"Imagine if those same teachers saw their students as smart and caring and loving. It changes the narrative" and alters the way teachers approach their students.

Dweck said peers are also huge environmental influences and are instrumental in helping students develop a growth mindset. "When it's a culture of development, the peers band together and do things," Dweck said. "They really band together around learning; I haven't heard that they band together so much around standardized testing."

"In our society there's often a stigma about asking for help. But we need to teach kids - and teachers - to ask for help, not right away, after they've tried a few things, not just asking for the answer, but asking for input that will help them know where to go next."
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Promoting growth mindset means checking biases at the door, experts say

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The idea of growth vs. fixed mindsets is one that has gained traction in modern debates around how to meet the needs of students. Most herald the idea of the growth mindset as being the proper way to frame educational conversations. The idea is simple: Basic abilities in everyone can be developed through dedication and hard work.