Educator Competencies
Just some guy's thoughts on education
- by Taras Ferencevych
Empowerment of students should be the ultimate goal of any educational process. This empowerment should come from two sources: first, the euphoria a student experiences from overcoming challenges and second, and more important, from knowing they have what it takes to overcome future challenges. Self-education or “self-authorship” results from the educator’s ability to enable students to recognize solutions in their own reality and transfer those to future circumstances. To create a situation conducive to self-authorship the educational process should provide the students opportunity for self-assessment, creating their own linkages, and decision making with real consequences. For the purpose of this paper I have decided to address the role of the educator and the elements I believe to be most relevant to being a “good” developmental process. In an attempt to narrow my focus I ultimately identified five competencies educators need in order to achieve the ultimate goal of education “empowerment”: assessment, alignment, experience creating, reflection and fostering intrinsic responsibility.
Educator Competencies
The process of assessment begins with the first or “initial” interaction with a student and, to a certain extent, never ends. “Initial interaction”, for the purpose of this paper, is defined as the first instant a teacher encounters information about a student, be it from another person, a report or first meeting. At that instant, teacher should immediately start collecting information about the student and arranging it in a manner conducive to creating goals and empowering the student. The idea of educators assessing students is by no means novel, Dewey writes about the role of the educator in assessment as follows:
“The educator is responsible for a knowledge of individuals and for a knowledge of subject-matter that will enable activities to be selected which lend themselves to social organization, an organization in which all individuals have an opportunity to contribute something, and in which the activities in which all participate are the chief carriers of control.”
“The way is, first, for the teacher to be intelligently aware of the capacities, needs, and past experiences of those under instruction”(Dewey, 1938)
Addressing assessment as only part of the initial interaction stage of educational process would be incomplete. Assessment becomes a barometer of the educational process, continuously collecting information, gauging progress, making appropriate adjustments to the course of an educational process and staying alert to take advantage of “teachable moments”.
“Understanding and identifying these patterns of leverage opportunities and recognizing the potential for tipping points within multiple efforts will become basic skills of the accomplished adventure practitioner in the future” (Prouty, 1998).
To aid in assessment and alertness educators should be curious, mobile, neutral and hypothesizing. The possession of these four elements impels an educator to remain open to student needs as they pertain to progressing toward empowerment. To build on assessment, and further enhance it, the idea of alignment is added.
Alignment relies almost entirely on the previous step of assessment for its efficacy. Alignment in education should be driven by the immediate goal of acquiring knowledge and the ultimate goal of student empowerment. Drawing on the idea that in a non-linear world which is thoroughly interconnected where aligned efforts are more likely to produce a “tipping point” or breakthrough (Prouty, 1998), educational efforts should pursue a “perfect” alignment of all their efforts toward the ultimate goal of empowerment. The importance of alignment is underscored by Alfred North Whitehead when he talks about what is needed to make an educational experience a success: “...its successful accomplishment depends on a delicate adjustment of many variable factors. The reason is that we are dealing with human minds, and not with dead matter.” (Whitehead, in Cahn, 1997). Non-linearity of educational processes, with its constant tangents, life events, social and personality pressures and numerous other variables, oftentimes makes alignment a very difficult task. To aid in navigating this reality of constant flux, the educator needs to continually reassess the educational process, allowing for subtle changes to promote alignment. The success of an educator to manage all the above nuances will be reflected in the creation of the most appropriate educational experience.
In the planning or creating of an experience as an effective part of an educational process, the educator needs to include two critical components: dissonance and resonance. The idea of dissonant experiences is by no means recent; it has been employed for some time in various settings. When outlining the role of a teacher in his book Experience and Education, John Dewey became a proponent of the use of dissonant experiences as educational tools:
“It is his [her] business to arrange for the kind of experience which, while they do not repel the student, but rather engage his activities, are nevertheless, more than immediately enjoyable since they promote having desirable future experiences” (Dewey, 1938).
Dewey recognized that by creating experiences which caused discomfort students’ senses would be heightened in search of solutions. Central to using dissonance in creating educational experiences is the educator’s ability to manage discomfort to ensure a student’s physical and emotional safety. As discussed in the section about alignment, this management requires an ongoing assessment of student needs.
In planning or creating an interaction to act as a catalyst for education the importance of the transfer of learning should not be overlooked. To aid in the transfer of learning an educator should look to create a resonant experience. For the purposes of this paper a resonant experience is defined as an experience with continuing or echoing results. These continuing results can be achieved through a variety of methods (e.g. reflection, future experiences). Creating resonance during educational experiences requires that educators “...create learning environments or situations that impel students into action through the perception of real consequences beyond grades or disciplinary action.” (Sakofs, 1996) Perhaps the most effective way of doing this is by making them feel needed.
Reflection is a significant part of the educational process and should not be overlooked. It is important for educators to realize the many advanced skills to be practiced as part of an effective reflection. It is no longer enough for reflection to consist solely of a “pluses & minuses” at the conclusion of an experience. Reflection should be a proactive process providing students with insights and learning to be applied to future experiences. In recent years research done on reflection has yielded an entire array of facilitation techniques enhancing reflection and greatly increasing its potency. Of the multitude of techniques, two in particular should be utilized by educators, due to their comprehensibility and potential effectiveness.
The first technique important to consider is “frontloading”. Frontloading might be a little hard for some to grasp because it involves action prior to an experience, challenging the long held belief that reflection can only occur following an experience. In its most basic form frontloading involves a brief discussion prior to an experience seeking to align the experience with the predetermined goals of the educational process and provide a richer reflection on the experience. The premise of frontloading is grounded in the idea that “practicing things that work generally leads to more productive behavior than practicing things that don’t work”. Ideally, frontloading will provide students a few key issues with which to focus their experience without overwhelming them and detracting from the experience.
The next technique to consider in talking about reflection is the concept of reframing (Watzlawick, Weakland, Fisch, 1974). Reframing involves creating a new or alternative understanding of an experience for a student. By providing these alternative views reframing seeks to give students a surrogate meaning for the outcomes of the experience that can be generalized to create new and more utile approaches to overcoming future challenges.
Various applications have shown an individual’s motivation to succeed is greatly increased when they feel a real sense of consequence and responsibility for the outcome of the process. This motivation can be achieved in various ways. Probably the most effective way of fostering this “intrinsic responsibility” in an individual participating in an educational process is by including them in its creation and facilitation. Dewey warns “...there is no defect in traditional education greater than its failure to secure the active co-operation of the pupil in construction of the purposes involved in his studying.”(Dewey, 1938) This inclusion, if appropriate, can occur from the very start of an educator/student interaction. One way to increase a student’s investment in an educational process is by giving them choices throughout. These choices can range from the simple (deciding on field trip destinations) to the more advanced and abstract (co-creating class structures and grading). An educator must be careful to allow these opportunities for student choice only when appropriate.
“...they should encourage students to assume active and direct responsibility for their own education and be involved enough to ensure the students’ physical and emotional safety, monitor and guide the group, and assure the academic and philosophical integrity of lessons” (Sakofs, 1996).
The appropriateness should be based on the educator’s assessment, the student’s progress and readiness, and the likelihood that the outcome will continue to be aligned with the ultimate goal of the educational process. Lastly, by communicating to the student a sense of “partnership” in the educational process, the educator provides the student a real or perceived sense of responsibility that will increase motivation and hopefully empower the student.
A big potential challenge to implementing empowerment driven education is the duration and continuity it requires. Nel Noddings in her book The Challenge to Care in Schools, comments that without sufficient time of interaction between teacher and student it becomes very difficult to foster more than a superficial caring relationship with students (Noddings, 1992, Chapter 5.) Because empowerment driven education requires meaningful relationships with students it is also heavily dependant on interactions between students and teachers which transcend the, “one hour a day for a year”, structure of mainstream education.
Although seemingly simplistic the five educator competencies outlined above require training which is currently not emphasized in higher education programs. This paper is by no means intended to provide a “formula” or “technique” for becoming a master educator. What it attempts to do is encourage educators to become more engaged with their students. Most importantly this paper wants to encourage educators to proceed with compassion and a desire to engage their students in helping them discover their own greatness!
References
Aronson, E. (1991). How to change behavior. In R.C. Curtis & G. Stricker (Eds.), How people change in and outside of therapy (pp. 101-111). NY: Plenum Press.
Dewey, J (1938). Experience and Education. NY: Simon & Schuster.
Flavin, M. (1996). Kurt Hahn’s Schools & Legacy (pp. 153-154). Wilmington, DE: The Middle Atlantic Press, Inc.
Noddings, N. (1992). The Challenge to Care in Schools. New York, NY: Teachers College Press.
Prouty, D. (1998). The tipping point and the adventure advantage. Ziplines. 12-18.
Sakofs, M. (1996). Theory into practice: The pedagogy of experience. In
M. Sakofs & G.P. Armstrong (Eds.), Into the classroom: The Outward Bound approach to teaching and learning (pp. 19-28). Dubuque, IA: Kendal-Hunt Publishing, Inc.
Sakofs, M. (1996). Integrating Outward Bound into traditional school settings. In M. Sakofs & G.P. Armstrong (Eds.), Into the classroom: The Outward Bound approach to teaching and learning (pp. 29-42). Dubuque, IA: Kendal-Hunt Publishing, Inc.5
