Creating Epiphanies: The Role of Intentional Design in Professional Learning
An ah-ha moment. We all know what that feels like. The light bulb turning on suddenly illuminates your paradigm of the world so that you can now see clearly. “Ah-ha moment” was added to the dictionary in 2012 courtesy of Oprah Winfrey who defines the moment for Merriam Webster as “A moment of sudden inspiration, insight, recognition or comprehension.” According to the Oxford Dictionary definition, an ah-ha moment is “ a moment where you suddenly understand something, realize something important, have a good idea, or find the answer to a problem.” After such a moment the world is different and you can feel like your conceptualization moved in leaps and bounds. Wouldn’t it be nice if we all could order up such a moment when there was something which we were struggling to figure out? If we could open our eyes to a new way of understanding if we knew we needed one? As teachers, wouldn’t it be nice if we knew how to curate such moments on demand for our students? What might the effect be if we could create this for many teacher-leaders around the country? Unfortunately, one cannot order up an ah-ha moment for themselves. These are serendipitous, or perhaps, if we leave less to the idea of luck or fate, depend on some well-ordered series of events: they synthesize from previous understandings and experiences. They are inevitably products of an external impetus– not internal.
Over the years, I have wondered what IS the Knowles’ “secret sauce,” how DO they seem to offer each teacher exactly what they need at the right time (or that which they do not know they need)?
I have been lucky enough during my career in education to have been measurably pushed forward by several such ah-ha moments. The most significant of these reliably arose from my participation with the Knowles Teacher Initiative. In 2011, I was awarded a five-year Knowles Teaching Fellowship, which involves impactful, collaborative professional learning programming delivered with what I have come to think of as a “secret sauce”… an ingredient that (among other things) managed to hasten these “ah-ha” moments that have made such a difference in my thinking. Over the years, I have wondered what IS the Knowles’ “secret sauce,” how DO they seem to offer each teacher exactly what they need at the right time (or that which they do not know they need)?
One of the core strands of the Knowles curriculum is developing teachers into leaders. However, to lead, one must first lead oneself. Arkansas and Manville (2019) define knowing yourself as “the bedrock of leading yourself, understanding who you are and what you stand for, what you’re good and not so good at, and how the world sees you” (p. 182). As I’ve collaborated with staff to plan professional learning, I’ve recognized that in order to set the stage for these Ah-ha moments, Knowles offers structures in the form of well-timed frameworks for knowing oneself, and how one is situated and positioned within the context of their system. It is not so simple as offering a framework for use. The timing of these tools is essential. From the Fellows’ lens, they are offered seemingly at the perfect moment– when they are just what one needs. From the staff’s lens, it is not necessarily about the tool itself, but about the priming. To echo Arkansas and Manville, positioning Fellows as teacher leaders working outwardly in their system(s) requires, first, internal development and understanding. Sometimes years of work, of baby steps, of learning about Fellows, of planning contribute to deciding when to offer such a framework (after the groundwork is set), as well as which framework would be appropriate given where a Fellow is at a certain time.
So what does “well-timed” mean? What “secret sauce” allows these ah-ha moments to come to life? First, Knowles staff know the Fellows– and have spent years getting to know them. We are purposeful about creating the space in which the framework will be introduced (the where, how, what, when). A framework is not usable in isolation. It is less about the decision of when a framework is ready for the Fellows, but how we can support Fellows in being ready for the application of the framework. We seek to introduce frameworks that are scalable and that meet Fellows where they are. Additionally, the frameworks have been honed over decades of Knowles’ work. In year five of the Fellowship, we use the the Activities System Framework (ASF), a framework product of “Activity Theory,”(AT) which
“…considers an entire work/activity system (including teams, organizations, etc.) beyond just one actor or user. It accounts for environment, history of the person, culture, role of the artifact, motivations, and complexity of real-life activity. One of the strengths of AT is that it bridges the gap between the individual subject and the social reality—it studies both through the mediating activity” (“Activity Theory” 2023)
Using the Activities System Framework (ASF)
In their final year of the Fellowship, Fellows are asked to plan and execute a teacher-leadership-action toward a more positive outcome of their system. To first understand their system, and then premeditate what this appropriate action might be, Fellows inquire into their systems and analyze data in inquiry groups using the ASF. Through several iterations, Fellows are taught how to understand the interconnected nature of the “nodes” in their system and premeditate how a particular change to one node might inevitably affect the outcome produced by the system in a particular way.
The first year I introduced the ASF to Fellows, it fell flat. Of course it did. Stepping into my role as a new staff member, I couldn’t know Fellows well personally or much about where they were on their individual teacher-leadership journeys. I also did not understand that deep knowledge of where Fellows were at was such an integral component of the “secret sauce.” Fellows’ confusion regarding how and why to use the tool ensued and then continued throughout the year, never to recover. Our end-of-year survey data did not reveal that Fellows found the framework a salient input toward their leadership development; in fact, it was hardly mentioned as one of the leverage points which propelled their learning forward.
The ASF did not land well with the first group of Fellows, but with my second cohort, it was totally different. They “got” it, they understood how it might be used, and they were excited to apply it. What was different between the two instances was not the timing (the ASF was introduced at the exact same moment in the Fellowship experience), but rather the groundwork which went into the development of the Fellows themselves. Intentional changes had been made to the programming leading up to the introduction of the ASF. Similar to my own experience, the Fellows first needed to be introduced to, and practice with, applying a systems lens to their context(s). We spent months practicing this before moving on to understanding other, external, contexts as systems, and attempting to identify what might be components of the system. Fellows were first introduced to the full ASF application through stories (which are evocative) then through data (which is convincing). They engaged with hypothetical practice in groups, individually with reflection, and always with the support of experts who had used the framework before. Finally, they were asked to apply it to their own system(s). Phew– it was a lot of ASF practice. And it worked! We had primed Fellows such that, upon receipt of the framework, they were excited. “Finally! Something to organize all the thoughts I have been cobbling together!”. The key to its success was holding back on the framework revelation until learners were seeking to create their own such structures of understanding, and then, only then, providing the tool.
Our data revealed that the success that staff perceived was valid. Nearly all Fellows viewed the ASF as a useful tool. Additionally, further analysis of the data revealed that all but one Fellow named one of the ASF activities as important to their development as a teacher-leader. Fellows who expanded on this shared poignant comments regarding using the ASF. Across the board, their responses were positive: The ASF…
- “helped to illuminate the importance of context in this process, and particularly, how many moving pieces exist in a system”
- “I feel too close to my system to see it very clearly, so having a practiced external tool for analyzing it led to new insights into strengths and weaknesses and relationships within the system and led to a clarification of my inquiry question and next steps”;
- “I’m thinking differently about TL (teacher leadership), I think for now it’s about really deepening my understanding of how to understand a system (using the ASF)”
- “I’ve been enjoying using the ASF and have found it helpful to understanding my system”;
- “Using the ASF to analyze a story helped to illuminate the importance of context in this process, and particularly, how many moving pieces exist in a system.”
… Among many others. Fellows certainly found the tool powerful.
This journey illuminates a broader principle about timeliness: the success of any professional learning initiative hinges on intentional design, understanding the participants’ readiness, and providing the necessary scaffolding. These ideas are nothing new. But I’ve found that deciding what well-timed is for a framework is an art. It is an art– I cannot describe it any other way. The pivotal shift in Fellows’ perception and engagement with the ASF was not a matter of mere timing or intrinsic value, but a result of countless intentional, data-driven, programmatic adjustments that were developed over five years. At every step, staff gathered and analyzed data on progress which allowed them to intimately understand where Fellows were in their leadership journeys (often more deeply than the Fellows themselves). The power of utilizing such practices in professional learning design cannot be understated– it is through this iterative process that Knowles is able to provide Fellows with that which they did not know they needed and that which feels like a perfect fit.
References
Jabareen, Y. (2009). Building a Conceptual Framework: Philosophy, Definitions, and Procedure. International Journal of Qualitative Methods, 8(4), 49-62. https://doi.org/10.1177/160940690900800406
Wikipedia contributors. (2023, November 9). Activity theory. In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 22:42, December 28, 2023, from https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Activity_theory&oldid=1184324951
https://www.oprahdaily.com/life/a29090436/aha-moment-meaning/