Cultures of thinking in action: 10 mindsets to transform our teaching and students' learning ron rit
Cultures of Thinking in Action: 10 Mindsets to Transform Our Teaching and Students' Learning Ron
Ritchhart
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Action Research: Using Strategic Inquiry to Improve Teaching and Learning 1st Edition, (Ebook PDF)
Additional Praise for Cultures of Thinking in Action
“Cultures of Thinking in Action is a wonderful book. Unlike too many books for teachers, Ron Ritchhart invites, inspires, and supports educators to think, to examine the why of teaching instead of imposing on them a set of good practices.”
—Yong Zhao, Ph.D., Foundation Distinguished Professor, School of Education, University of Kansas and Professor in Educational Leadership Melbourne Graduate School of Education
“Ritchhart’s newest book gets to the heart of one of society’s most pernicious problems—how to meaningfully improve education—by helping teachers and administrators understand the social and cultural ‘why’s’ behind the procedural ‘how’s’ of pedagogical practice. Cultures of Thinking in Action is essential reading for anyone genuinely interested in building schools that effectively support children’s learning.”
—Mary Helen Immordino-Yang, Director, Center for Affective Neuroscience, Development, Learning and Education and Professor of Education, Psychology & Neuroscience, University of Southern California
“No one has thought more about how to teach for good thinking than Ron Ritchhart. Drawing on decades of experience and multiple bodies of research, Cultures of Thinking in Action offers wisdom, guidance, and inspiration for any teacher grappling with the ‘why’ and ‘how’ of classroom teaching.”
—Jason Baehr, Author of Deep in Thought: A Practical Guide to Intellectual Virtues, co-founder of Intellectual Virtues Academy of Long Beach
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To my father, who has always been my biggest supporter and who steadfastly reads all my books, not because he will necessarily use the ideas, but because he loves me.
Figure 10.1 Four practices of making thinking visible
Figure 10.2 Looking for learning
Figure 10.3 Amplify-Modify-Remove-Create
Figure E.1 Design Cycle for exploring culture of thinking in action mindsets
xvi List of Figures
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Thisbook has been years in the making. Although some of the ideas explored here were present at the very beginning of the cultures of thinking project in 2005, they have since grown, developed, transformed, expanded, and taken on new resonance over the years through my ongoing work with schools and teachers around the world. In these settings, I have had numerous informal conversations in which new ideas have been sparked and my thinking spurred. Sometimes it was a question a participant asked at a workshop; other times it was an issue a teacher was having that they wanted to explore, or a coaching conversation with a school principal. These moments have consistently fueled my curiosity, deepened my understanding, sometimes challenged me, and always enriched my thinking. These conversations have encouraged me to identify and explore the mindsets foundational to the creation of a culture of thinking. Without those conversations, as incidental, ad hoc, and fleeting as they might have been, this book would not have happened. We develop our ideas through dialogue within a community, not in isolation. So, to all those who have engaged with me in conversation around the joys and challenges of building a culture of thinking, I thank you.
In taking these ideas from merely floating around in my head or in conversation to an actual framework, I am greatly indebted to the generous support of the Melville Hankins Family Foundation, which has nurtured my research for many years. Its funding supported a team of researchers
The Melville Hankins Family Foundation funding has also facilitated a multiyear collaboration with Mandela International Magnet School (MIMS) in Santa Fe, New Mexico. In this setting, we have been able to explore these mindsets as they were just taking shape in my head and through our research. Most recently the Cultures of Thinking Fellows project (more on this in Mindset 1 and the Epilogue) has provided the forum for teachers’ inquiries into how these mindsets can transform teaching and learning. I want to thank our pilot group of CoT Fellows for their willingness to jump into this uncharted space. With much appreciation to Nevada Benton, Dory Daniel, Erin Gaddis, Randy Grillo, John Hise, Virginia Hofferber, Lydia Hogan, Kristine Kamrath, Janssen King, Rachel Langone, Scott Larson, Susanna Mireles-Mankus, William Neuwirth, Ashlee Pagoda, Sairey Pickering, Matthew Rapaport, Christina Romero, Ahlum Scarola, and Terri Scullin.
For over 25 years, I have stood on the shoulders of giants at Project Zero at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, learning from my mentors David Perkins and Howard Gardner. I’m grateful for their guidance and generosity. I have also had the good fortune to work alongside inspirational colleagues Tina Blythe, Mara Krechevsky, and Ben Mardell. Their research in schools continues to inspire me. Throughout this book, I have drawn on examples from their work on the use of protocols, professional learning communities, documentation, play, and making learning visible. I know you will be as inspired by their work as I am.
A special partner in dialogue whom I wish to thank is my longtime friend, colleague, and coauthor on two other books, Mark Church. This book would not have been possible without him and is certainly much better because of his involvement. No matter where in the world either of us were, I could always count on Mark to respond to a text, phone call, or email query if I had an idea I needed to talk through. He was, and continues to be, there with good questions, useful insights, and just the right amount of push back and humor to keep me in check. Growing these ideas with such a talented thought partner has been a true blessing. As an early reader of this manuscript, he offered invaluable feedback and editorial assistance that substantively shaped my writing. Joining Mark in offering great editorial assistance and suggestions were my dear colleagues Connie Weber and Julie Landvogt. Having this incredible triad of professional educators and deep readers who were steeped
Acknowledgments at Project Zero at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. This team spent years digging into the research behind each mindset, looking at case studies, and clarifying what each mindset might mean to students and teachers. A special thanks to the team of Christine Beltran, Natasha BlitzJones, Yudith Dian, Hazel Peh, Emily Piper-Vallillo, Catherine Mcconnell, Carolyn Ho, Ursula August, liana Gutierrez, Elyse Postlewaite, Richard Mannoia, and Sean Glazebrook for their dedication in this exploration. Our team was led with great skill by Terri Turner. Terri’s curiosity about the world, about children, and about learning motivated and inspired us. Her willingness to ask questions, to puzzle, and look at ideas from new perspectives encouraged our exploration. In addition, her organizational skills, good humor, and sense of community held us together as a team.
in the ideas of cultures of thinking to read and respond to my writing has been crucial in making this book what it is. Thank you for letting me know when I was hitting the right notes, when things were missing, when more clarity was needed, and when I should have used effect instead of affect.
Finally, I wish to thank all the teachers who have invited me into their classrooms and shared their teaching with me. Sometimes, I have been able to be physically present; other times, I observed via video, and still on other occasions I was invited into classrooms through our correspondence or the sharing of student work. Their generosity allowed me to write the case studies in each chapter that embody each mindset. Thanks to Susan Osgood, Trevor MacKenzie, Jeff Watson, Kristen Kullberg, Thalia Ormsby, Ravi Grewal, Heather Woodcock, Mean Gretzinger, Kate Mills, Mike Medvinksy, Adam Hellebuyck, Anna Ramirez, Doug McGlathery, and Cameron Paterson.
Finally, I must thank my husband for giving me the space, and at times distance, I needed to immerse myself in writing and put my thoughts into words. I know it’s not always easy living with a writer, so thank you for your patience and encouragement. I couldn’t do what I do without you.
Acknowledgments
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Ron Ritchhart is a world-renowned educator, researcher, and author. For over 25 years, Ron served as a Senior Research Associate and Principal Investigator at Project Zero at the Harvard Graduate School of Education where his research focused on understanding how to develop, nurture, and sustain cultures of thinking for both students and teachers. A strong theme of learning from best practice runs throughout all of Ron’s research and writing. Consequently, he spends extensive time in schools and classrooms. Ron’s ability to seamlessly merge theory, research, practice, and application together in a highly accessible and engaging manner has made him a bestselling author of numerous books, including Intellectual Character, Making Thinking Visible, Creating Cultures of Thinking, and The Power of Making Thinking Visible. After leaving Harvard in 2021, Ron has continued his classroom and school-based research and writing to further the ideas of visible thinking and the creation of schools and classrooms as cultures of thinking. Ron is a sought-after speaker for his ability to connect with and engage fellow educators in powerful, big-picture ideas, while simultaneously providing useful insights into and practical ideas for advancing the complex world of teaching and learning. This is no doubt, in part, due to Ron’s diverse experience as a teacher, which includes teaching elementary school, art, secondary mathematics, undergraduates, and graduate students. Upon Ron’s Harvard retirement from the Harvard Graduate School of Education, Howard Gardner commented, “Of all of us at Harvard Project Zero, you have had the most influence on what teachers around the world do in their classrooms and how to talk and think about it.”
INTRODUCTION
It’s not common for an author to introduce his new book with an apology, but perhaps one is in order on this occasion—for at least some readers. Given the title, Cultures of Thinking in Action, you may have picked up this book excited to learn how to “do” cultures of thinking. Perhaps you thought, “Finally, a practical how-to guide that spells it all out step-by-step!” Or maybe you were thinking, “Great, a resource book I can hand teachers to work through how to implement cultures of thinking.” To be sure, this book is meant as a resource for all those eager to cultivate a culture of thinking in their schools and classrooms. You will also find that it offers many practical ideas, tools, and resources. However, first and foremost, it is about the “why?” of our teaching. Thus, it is a book meant to spark self-examination and collective reflection with both oneself and with colleagues. My goal is not merely to offer up a new collection of ideas, but to stir reflection that will spark transformation. Who are you as a teacher? What do you believe about teaching and learning? How do those beliefs reflect your stance toward teaching and play out in your classroom? How do these beliefs inform and propel your actions?
It is in those moments when we look critically at our practices and challenge our assumptions that we make the leap from informational learning, focused on learning about something, to transformational learning, the learning that allows us to challenge the status quo and embrace the
complexity of the enterprise of teaching and learning (Mezirow 2000). For decades, policy makers, innovators, and administrators have often located professional learning in a set of practices. These folks often assume that if one changes teaching practices, revamps the curriculum, trains teachers in new instructional methods, then schools have been transformed. However, decades of failed efforts and unsustainable reforms have shown that this isn’t the case. True transformation resides not at the surface level, the “what?” of teaching or even at the implementation or the “how?” No. True transformation resides in plumbing the depths of the “why?” of our teaching. What are we teaching for? What do we believe and hold true about teaching and learning?
In his writings and popular TED Talk, “How great leaders inspire action,” Simon Sinek (2009) explains the relationship between the what, the how, and the why through a diagram he calls the Golden Circle (see Figure I.1). It is common, and perhaps even intuitive, for businesses, leaders, and even teachers to start with the outside of the circle, the practical, the “what” and then perhaps spend time thinking about the “how?” After all, the “what” is so tangible. It’s clear to everyone what the group does, makes, or delivers. This can be put on a spreadsheet, shelf, or test. The “what” can easily be translated into a measurable “SMARTT” (specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, targeted, and time-framed) goal or “KPI” (key performance indicator). It also is easy for leaders to manage, track, and oversee.
However, Sinek explains that truly great companies and leaders operate from the inside out. They begin with the “why?’ This grounds them in a vision that directs and guides both their current and future work. It provides a sense of mission, purpose, and inspiration. As Sinek explains, Apple
WHAT?
We do, sell, produce, or create WHY? Our driving purpose, cause, or belief HOW? How we go about the process
Figure I.1 The Golden Circle.
By focusing on the “why?” I am not just transporting a popular idea from the business world to schools. There has been a long line of research on the importance of teachers’ beliefs, values, and sense of purpose (Calderhead 1996; Thompson 1992). Alan Schoenfeld, professor at UC Berkeley and past president of the American Educational Research Association, conducted a multiyear line of research focused on the beliefs of teachers as central to understanding what does and does not happen in the classroom. His research focused on developing cognitive models that explain and predict teacher behavior (Schoenfeld 2010, #938). When all is going as intended in the classroom, teachers rely on their plans or experience to deliver a lesson—but things rarely go to plan. Students ask questions, make unexpected observations, get confused, have misconceptions, and so on. In these instances, teachers must make decisions. They are no longer merely implementers. Teachers make decisions based on their beliefs and values combined with their repertoire of teaching practices and knowledge of the curriculum. Although the “why?” doesn’t act in isolation, it is at the core of the decision-making process. And, of course, conflicts arise. What happens when one’s beliefs don’t align with one’s pedagogical knowledge and skill? These can either represent moments of conflict, angst, and regression or great opportunities for growth and self-discovery.
As part of a study of effective pedagogy conducted by the South Australian government, researchers found that teachers’ beliefs and the way they understood their role as teachers were a better predictor of their teaching actions and general pedagogical repertoire than were their age, gender, or years of experience (Atkin 2019, #2155). Furthermore, teachers’ epistemic awareness—that is, their awareness of how they understand the enterprise of teaching and the assumptions they are making about their teaching practice and students’ learning—was found to be an important factor in promoting teacher growth and change (Atkin 2019, #1866). Teachers who were more epistemically aware tended to reflect on both their practice and their assumptions. As a result, they tended to question and probe their beliefs and embrace the complexity of teaching: transformative learning. Such occasions provided them with the opportunity for growth and self-discovery. In contrast, teachers who were less self-aware tended to view teaching as being more about content coverage and control. Although these teachers did reflect upon their practice, they did not question their underlying assumptions about teaching and learning. Thus, they tended to view teaching practices as either working or not working and were more likely to abandon new practices that didn’t fit well into their existing repertoire or weren’t immediately effective for them.
Through her years of helping schools and teachers foster inquiry learning, my good friend and colleague Kath Murdoch has witnessed the importance of teacher beliefs firsthand. She points out,
Introduction xxvii as a company doesn’t just make computers (the what); they believe in challenging the status quo, in thinking differently by making beautifully designed products that are simple to use (the why) (Sinek 2009, #947). It is not the “what” that drives their success, extreme customer loyalty, and long lines outside their stores when new products are introduced, but the “why.”
“Our beliefs shape our practice. How we perceive our role as teachers has a profound influence on the language we use with students, the way we organize for learning, the design of learning tasks and what we look and listen for as we assess” (Murdoch 2022, p.47). Kath argues that while it is possible to mimic the practices of any particular approach, in her case inquiry learning, such actions tend to be just going through the motions and lack the dynamism that inspires students’ learning. She says this approach “simply wallpapers over existing beliefs that are at odds with inquiry, those underlying beliefs will find all sorts of ways to manifest and even unconsciously undermine or sabotage the practice itself” (p. 47).
Others have written about the core beliefs and values people hold as representing their stance, thus connoting a physical as well as intellectual orienting. Cochran-Smith and Lytle use stance as a deliberate metaphor in order to “carry allusions to the physical placing of the body as well as to intellectual activities and perspectives over time. In this sense the metaphor is intended to capture the ways we stand, the ways we see, and the lenses we see through” (Cochran-Smith 1999, pp. 288–289). Mehta and Fine (2019) use the term to capture the way the teachers they studied for their book, In Search of Deeper Learning, viewed constructs key to teaching: the nature of learning, the role of failure, and the ability of their students. For instance, those effective at teaching for deeper learning viewed students as capable creators, failure as critical for learning, and the process of learning as a rich and engaging enterprise. Mehta and Fine also noted that one’s stance is contextual. A teacher may engage her advanced students in deeper learning precisely because she saw them as capable creators, but then revert to traditional teaching practices with her lower track students.
My colleague Mark Church has been exploring the importance of a leader’s stance in nurturing their school’s progress toward a culture of thinking. In our discussions, the two of us have come to see leadership stance as being rooted in one’s deeply held beliefs and values about how things work, what matters most, and the nature of the enterprise of leadership itself. A leader’s stance will determine how they frame problems, see opportunities, and direct their energies. A leader’s stance is what motivates and enlivens any set of practices, or conversely robs them of the oxygen needed to develop. The development of one’s leadership stance, as with the stance of teachers, is an organic process, growing out of participation in multiple opportunities for conversation, practice, and reflection.
Recently, the term mindset has found a prominent place in education. The term is perhaps most familiar to educators from Carol Dweck’s work on the way people view intelligence: as growing or fixed (Dweck 2006). Others have taken the term to suggest that our succeess at anything depends on how one views the enterprise: Inquiry Mindset, Innovator’s Mindset, Ultimate Maker Mindset, Creator Mindset, Super Achiever Mindset, Successful Mindset, The Richest Mindset, Alpha Mindset,
