Why Pursue a Doctoral Degree? You Might Be Changed By It!

I think it is fairly obvious that I haven't posted anything here in some time. Some have probably thought I dropped off this earth, and there are perhaps those, because of my sometimes irritatingly political posts, who hoped that such had happened. The truth is, so much of my time is consumed with working on my dissertation that blogging has taken backseat. The constant reading, writing, and journaling takes just about every spare moment I have, and when there is a moment I am not working in my role as principal of a small high school, and working on this infernal degree, I am sometimes too tired to even look at a computer screen. In spite of all these travails though, I would gladly engage in this pursuit of a doctoral degree and would encourage others to do so too. Here's why.

This scholarly endeavor has changed me in dramatic ways. I don't look at education, my job, or even leadership in the same way any more. I now find myself entangled with the Postmodernists, Poststructuralists, and Deconstructionists. Now, I won't subject anyone to any attempt to explain those terms. If you're an English teacher, you probably encountered these schools of thought (if that is what they are) in your literary criticism classes as I did. To be honest, I didn't pay much attention to them then. But what's different for me now, is that here toward the latter years of my career as an educator, the likes of Foucault, Derrida, and Deleuze once again haunt both my work, my thoughts, and even my writing. They have unsettled everything I once believed to be "education science."

Once again, I won't subject you to a biography or description of the contributions of these individuals to literary or cultural studies; I simply say that these Postmodernists-Poststructuralists-Deconstructionists have  disturbed me as a practicing educator and educational leader. How can that be? Through them, I've learned that I don't really know as much as I thought I did, and many of those things I took for granted as "truth" are not the truth. Even my daily actions and thoughts about what it means to be an "effective educator" is not as simple as it once was. The intellectual challenge that these thinkers have wrought has made me more inquisitive, and even more skeptical it that was possible, of this thing we call education and all the "science" in which we wrap it.

In effect, I've actually come home, because in these thinkers, I've found the permission and means to continue to be skeptical, which I've always been when it comes to those promising "educational elixirs" and promises of quick cures. It's as if I've been given free reign to question and examine relentlessly all these things about education that we take for granted and take as a given. As the intellectual leader of my school, I have come to understand that "experts" in education are sometimes better at selling their wares than actually improving our field, but that is another blog post altogether.

All these years I've talked about leadership practices, teaching practices, and practices of engaging in using technology. Now, due to my explorations and doctoral readings and studies, I walk around each day on my job with each of these enclosed in quotation marks. In fact, every time I hear another educator or education consultant use the word "research-based," I see the quotation marks there too. Why is that? It is because these postmodernists-poststructuralists-deconstructionists have disturbed what I took for granted as the boundaries of our field of education. My dissertation experience has fostered a new habit of mind that demands that I be both inquisitive and question relentlessly.

Some would see no practical value in being this way. I disagree. This "ethos of critique" I live in now has freed me to think even more outside the box than ever. If we want to innovate and be creative, we have to suspend the rules and think in ways that are out of bounds. Besides, who was it that got to decide what is "out-of-bounds?" There's a long list of individuals whose thought was initially out-of-bounds. Now, I am not so Trump-like to say that "only I can solve the problems of education," but I enjoy thinking beyond the boundaries now more than ever.

So, what has this dissertation journey done for me so far? It is teaching me to think "out-of-bounds" and not worry whether some other educator-referee is going to call me on it. After all, who made them referee?

Micro-Credentialing: Potential New Professional Development System or Fad?

Last evening, while participating in an #NCED Chat, I encountered a new idea for professional development called “micro-credentialing.” To be honest, I had seen the term, but had paid little attention to it until this Twitter chat. I think perhaps my understanding of “Micro-credentialing” was a bit mistaken at first, because I thought it was simply a system of using “badges” to reward teachers for the various kinds of training they do, very similar to what the boyscouts do. From my own experience and reading, such a carrot and sticks approach to professional learning set all kinds of alarm bells to ringing. But after reading about it a bit more, it looks to me more like a new system to deliver “professional development” to teachers.

According to my understanding now, the so-called “merit-badges” are incidental to the practice of trying to find ways to “certify” the skills which teachers have obtained, and they are not carrots to be dangled in front of educators to get them to engage in personal professional development. My understanding of “micro-credentialing” is that it is simply a system of delivering educator skill training in a more personalized manner. I think any attempts to modify professional learning in a more personal manner is laudable, since so many times, the sit-and-get trainings too often do not address personal needs. Despite the promise of “Micro-credentialing,” its ability to cross over into sustainable practice, there are some larger questions that have to be answered and problems that will need to be addressed.

First of all, credentials of any kind have to “mean something” to the practicing community, or have “value." To mean something those skills credentialed have to have value in the profession. For example, simply having a merit badge that indicates you’ve mastered a teacher skill like “wait-time” or “Grit and Reseillance,” as I found in one micro-credentialing system, must have some kind of acknowledgement from the profession that it is meaningful. If a teacher has earned a “badge” then the profession must look upon it as important and something to valued. It is this hurdle that might prove most difficult to any micro-credentialing system. Somehow, those distributing the credentials have to convince the profession and all those within it, that those credentials are valuable and really do mean something, and it is going to take more than quoting research to make that happen. The teaching profession is a social entity with its own rules for determining what has value and what has not, and which discourse is accepted and which is not. Just declaring that a badge has meaning by decree because it is backed up by research isn’t necessarily going to make it meaningful or give it value. This can be especially problematic because most educational research can be contradictory about the values of some of these skills. For example, one study may support the importance of that skill, and another study may lessen its importance. So much of what is declared effective in education is often subject to contradiction at times, so simply trying to validate micro-credentials with research isn’t always necessarily going to work. In the end, for this new way of delivering professional development to have value and meaning, the profession, not state level or federal government levels are going to determine its validity.

Secondly, if “micro-credentialing” gets too cozy with for-profit business, it could take on the same mistrust that education professional often still have for “for-profit” learning in general. My online reading about the micro-credentialing area seems to be tied to possible business ventures.There are centainly concerns about this. Business ventures in micro-credentialing would only succeed if as many people as possible earn the credentials, which means, it is not in their interest to prevent individuals from obtaining the micro-credentials, even if they haven’t quite met demonstration requirements. If they make the process too rigorous, profits will be smaller, making the whole enterprise not sustainable from an economic perspective. Because of this intense need for profit, these micro-credentialing business ventures could potentially become a “Micro-credentialing mills,” where payment equals badge. If that happens, the educational professional community will hardly see these credentials as being valuable and meaningful. In my estimation, because of this, the success of “micro-credentialing” will rely on colleges and universities leading the way, with practicing professionals being part of the process of development, introduction, and implementation.

Finally, for these “micro-credentials” to have credibility, careful attention will need to be focused on the credentialing process itself. For example, if obtaining the micro-credential involves demonstration artifacts, these artifacts must be complex enough to capture the skill being credentialed, and they must be perceived not as just a “hurdle to jump” or “check-box” to check. They must be authentic. They must be representative of the skill learned. But the reverse side is that developing the artifact must certainly be attainable with all of the other demands that teachers and educators have. The problem with most current professional learning, if demonstrations are required as a part of the process, they are perceived as hoops to jump through to obtain the credit. Once the credit is obtained, the learner never applies that learning again. Giving micro-credentials can give those who obtain them the false sense that I have learned that skill entirely. Most educator skills are much more complex, so that even if one understands it in one context, they may not be able to apply in other instances.

Micro-credentialing does offer an interesting system of providing individualized professional learning for educators. Unless its implementation considers these pitfalls and many others that befall educational programming, it could also be just another gimmick and fad. In the end, it is perhaps those who earn the micro-credential who will determine the fate of this idea. Those who have the credentials must genuinely be able to demonstrate those skills consistently in the live environment of the classroom. For example because I once learned how to tie four kinds of rope knots, does not mean that I can do it indefinitely, and in the midst of a raging storm. Credentials only mean something when they impact practice daily.

Time for School Leaders to See Teaching as 21st Century Profession, Not Assembly-Line Work

School leaders and policymakers have a serious misperception about the role and job of teaching that undermines teaching as a profession and perpetuates the view that the role of teaching is akin to being an assembly-line worker. It is no wonder American politicians, policymakers and corporate reformers have bought wholeheartedly into the idea of value-added teacher evaluations. When you hold a deep-seated view that a teacher’s job is simply to “add value” in the form of knowledge as students roll through the classroom assembly line, then the perception is that the “physical act of imparting knowledge"---or teaching in this view---is just about being physically in front of students and nothing else.

Americans have long held the belief that teachers aren't doing their jobs unless they are in front of kids. Planning periods and professional development as well as tasks like grading papers are never calculated into the teacher workday, and that demonstrates fully that the American education system stubbornly holds on to a dated and ancient view of both what exactly is the act of teaching. In short, we just can’t give up the view that teachers should only be paid for the actual time they are in front of kids. We then expect them to spend hours in the afternoon-evenings and on weekends grading papers, lesson planning and attending to their professional development.

It’s time for school administrators and policymakers to remember that good teaching starts with all those things teachers do outside of the classroom too. It’s too bad we can’t let go of this factory model view of teachers and start to discuss some real 21st century solutions that will allow teachers to increase their professional capacity by restructuring both the time and amount of time teachers spend in front of students. After all, are our teachers babysitters for parents while they work, or are they professionals who are actually engaged in one of the noblest of professions?

In his book, Finnish Lessons: What Can the World Learn from Educational Change in Finland, Pasi Sahlberg writes:

“In lower-secondary schools, on average, Finnish teachers teach about 600 hours annually (i.e., 800 lessons of 45 minutes each). This corresponds to four teaching lessons daily. According to the OECD, in the United States the average annual total teaching time in lower-secondary grades is 1,080 hours, which, in turn, equals six or more daily lessons or other forms of instruction of 50 minutes each.”

In other words, the Finnish education system sees teaching much more broadly than we in America do.  They see those activities---professional development, tutoring, grading student work, providing remediation---as much a part of “teaching” as being in front of the classroom. For years, American education has expected teachers to do these things on their own time, even with paltry efforts to provide planning period time during the school day.

If we wanted to do one thing that would have the greatest impact on teaching and student learning, perhaps we need to more broadly define “teaching” as the Finns do. For example, we might:

• Consider teacher planning times as sacred and not fill them up with mundane and mandated meetings. Allow teachers to use that time for planning, grading, and even re-mediating students.
• Rethink our views of “teaching” to include all the things effective teachers do---planning, creating new learning activities, grading/providing feedback, tutoring, professional development. We really do need to stop thinking of teachers as only doing their job when they’re in front of kids.
• Hold professional development during the regular workday rather than expect teachers to sit in the afternoons after spending all day teaching. I still remember how scattered and tired my mind was at the end of the day was after facing multiple classrooms full of students. Professional development need to be melded to the act of teaching. It should be included as part of the workday.
• Look at how we can restructure our school days to allow for more time to do all the things required to be a good teacher instead of expecting that teachers do these things on their time, at home or after school. It’s no wonder teachers burn out and tire of the profession. How many other professions are expected to work without pay? We need to create schedules that allow teachers to devote time to all the tasks of teaching.

We Americans, especially school leaders, politicians, and policymakers have a mistaken perception of what should be included in the act of “teaching” when it comes to how we structure compensation and what teachers do day-to-day. We like to boast about 21st century schooling and teaching, while at the same time we hold on stubbornly to a 20th century perception of the teaching profession. Maybe it’s time we let that go. We need to redefine teaching broadly in how we manage our schools and include time for teachers to do all that teachers do in their school day.

ASCD Launches First-Ever Pinterest Contest: Expand Your Professional Library for Free

For those who are avid readers wanting to expand their professional library for free, here's an opportunity of interest.

ASCD has launched their first ever Pin to Win Contest with Pinterest. Winners can win 10 ASCD books by creating a wishlist of books called "My Dream ASCD Library" pinboard in Pinterest. The contest runs now throw October 10. This is an excellent opportunity for educators to get copies of books from their favorite ASCD authors for free.   For more information check out the graphic below.