GoodWork at Work in India: Part I

by Elizabeth Kim

My name is Elizabeth Kim and I have been working with the Good Work team doing research for the Collaboration project as well as the Family Dinner Project. As a Master’s student at the Harvard Graduate School of Education in Learning and Teaching program, my interests include investigating how to expand teachers’ pedagogical knowledge and what instructional practices are most effective in prompting genuine and meaningful student learning.

Lynn and Wendy recently posted about what the GoodWork project has been doing in India and the great enthusiasm of the teachers that welcomed them. But the danger of such long-spanning professional development programs is that the lessons learned by teachers will not come to fruition by the students. As a challenge to continue promoting good work in their communities, we asked teachers to voluntarily incorporate what they had learned into their classrooms. An overwhelming number of teachers responded and sent us drafts of their lesson summaries – the variations of implementation were truly astounding. This post is the beginning of a series that will be dedicated to highlighting the efforts of teachers in India and the global impact of GoodWork.

Many of the teachers who responded to our challenge reproduced and expanded the training they had received in their lessons. Ritesh Sharma of the Appejay School, for example, sought to introduce the values of good work through a brainstorming session in which students thoughtfully articulated their ideas about good work. There was also a story composition element to the lesson, in which students relayed a personal anecdote of an ethical dilemma they faced. Finally, Ritesh used the value sort cards to help students realize their beliefs and opinions about work. By using tools such as the value cards and questionnaires, Ritesh was able to inculcate an awareness of some of the core concepts of good work:  in addition to the three “E’s”, concepts such as responsibility, and alignment.

One student’s ethical dilemma:

While Ritesh utilized existing GoodWork materials, some teachers ventured to expand the concept. One teacher at TSRS Aravali School, Chavi Behl, recognized how challenging it is to evaluate such a subjective measure as good work. Appropriately titling her lesson “Measuring the ‘Immeasurable’,” she constructed a method of calculating a “GoodWork Index.” By using a Likert scale from 1-10 on students’ levels of excellence, ethics, and engagement, Chavi asked student peers and other teachers to evaluate each individual. With the three scores, she formulated this equation for the Goodwork index:

GWI = Variance

        Mean

Chavi offers a starting point for enabling a comparative measure for good work, and her comment well illuminates her belief in the importance of this index: “What cannot be measured cannot be managed.” In addition to providing a useful index, the teacher also adds a fourth “e” to the GoodWork composition – enjoyment. By experiencing engagement, ethics, and excellence, students consequently experience enjoyment, and this positive attitude fuels further engagement, ethics, and excellence, in a bidirectional loop.  Chavi’s innovative and thoughtful contributions are deeply appreciated and exemplify the various ways GoodWork is being interpreted and transformed around the world.

Next in our series, we will discuss how we can involve different stakeholders of the school in spurring good work in our communities. If you would like access to the full presentations these teacher’s created to detail their work, please let us know!

Narrative Three: An Ethical Dilemma

by Marian Brown

Today’s discussion focused the class’s attention on a debate about “Silence Isn’t Always Golden,” a narrative from the GW Toolkit. To give a little background, Emma is a recent high school graduate who is deciding between attending two prestigious Ivy League schools. It is clear that she is a hard worker, and has a strict ethical code when it comes to her scientific work. However, Emma’s code of conduct is much less clear when it comes to her relationships with her friends.  With Emma’s knowledge, her friends have hacked into the school’s computer system. Not only does she look the other way, but when confronted by a teacher about her friend’s poor choices, Emma lies and says that she knows nothing about the parties responsible for this breach of security.

The dilemma is heightened for Emma because she has conflicting standards between her code of ethics at the lab, and her ethics in dealing with her friends. She clearly wants to keep her friends out of trouble – does this make her unethical?

After reading Emma’s case the students at Arlington got into a contentious, but healthy, debate over how they would have handled a similar situation. Cheryl started the discussion by asking students if it was Emma’s responsibility to keep her classmates from hacking into the computer system. Alexa responded by saying, “It’s generally something you don’t want to encourage”. Sara responded with empathy towards Emma, saying, “She is over-committed. She gives what she can but she can’t possibly do it all”. Then Molly contextualized Emma’s dilemma in relationship to her own, “This is a more extreme example of what most of us high schoolers face, we all have lots of commitments we are trying to balance between. It’s really hard to find that balance, but if you don’t pick one or the other than you just end up giving half an effort to both.”

Molly’s comment was a turning point in the discussion as the focus was now on the pressures that the students in the class experience in their everyday lives. These pressures were explicitly linked to expectations of “fulfilling one’s potential”.  As the students describe it, these expectations are imposed upon them by teachers, parents, and friends. At this point, the discussion ball was rolling, and at a fast pace as students shared and commiserated with one another about the pressures of growing up in this current generation and specifically, at Arlington HS. They have recently been experiencing vandalism at the school: students have been punching holes in the walls, causing substantial damage to the school’s property. Cheryl believed that certain students in the class have friends or acquaintances that were involved in these acts of vandalism, so she turned the attention to focus on that dilemma. Cheryl made sure not to ask the kids to disclose information towards this incident, but she did ask the students to question their place in this learning community. Who are they accountable to? Who makes the rules that govern this community? What happens when someone goes against those norms, and when is it our responsibility to make those instances visible?

Obviously, there are no easy or clear answers to these questions. However, what was so special about today’s discussion is that every student was engaged and weighed in with an opinion, and everyone’s perspective was valued. Cheryl left the students with a final question to ponder, “Is there a time limit on honesty?”

As the students walked out the door to their various next classes, it was clear that they were still considering their roles in protecting and serving the community here at Arlington. Sometimes the best thing an educator can do for his or her students is to create a safe space to discuss the difficult topics that arise in their lives. Today, Cheryl took a very difficult dilemma, made it immediately relevant, and handled the discussion with poise and inquisition. I can’t wait to see how the conversation will continue to unfold next week.

Value Sort Continued

by Marian Brown

At the end of the last class, and our last blog narrative, the students were departing Cheryl’s room with an assignment in hand. Their homework for the week was to take the value sort and ask an adult they admired to fill it out, the exact same exercise they had been asked to do in class. The students were already buzzing with excitement and were discussing the value sort when the period began.

Prior to this week’s session the students had completed the assignment and put it in Cheryl’s box so that she could compile the answers for comparison across the students and their interviewees. Before sharing the results of the two value sorts, Cheryl asked the students which values they believed they chose most frequently. One student, Sarah, commented, “I believe that the values of honesty and integrity will be at the top as they are values that we discuss often at Arlington.” Another student, Liza, gave a varying view, “I think fame and money will be ranked highly amongst us because as young adults the only person we are really responsible for is ourselves, and so it’s ok for us to be more selfish.” A third student, Steve, shared another perspective, “I believe that hard work is important to all of us and will be reflected in our answers.”

Chatter broke out amongst the students as Cheryl displayed the overhead of tally marks illustrating the students’ most highly picked values. The values picked as the most important were honesty, rewarding and supportive relationships, independence and quality. The least important were fame, success, spirituality, wealth and material well-being. Cheryl asked the students how these values related to their good work. Ann, a generally reserved student spoke up, “All of these values affect how we approach our work. If we didn’t value these things then we wouldn’t be doing as high quality of work. A lot of how we came to understand these values comes from our mentors.”

Cheryl built on Ann’s comment about mentors by asking the students who they valued as mentors. Students echoed the importance of parents, grandparents, teachers, siblings, and coaches. Not surprisingly, these were many of the people the students shared the value sort with. Cheryl then displayed the values most frequently picked by the mentors interviewed. The top three values picked were honesty, integrity, and quality. The students were surprised to see so much overlap there was between their mentors and their own answers. Cheryl looked at Ann, and gave her a knowing smirk as Ann’s comment had some validity; there was a strong correlation between mentor and student values in this sampling. The correlation between mentor and student values, as seen in this classroom, points to the idea that our values are indeed influenced and decided by those we admire and look up to. This beckons the question of how important affective mentorship is in one’s development and in one’s understanding of values. How can we as educators create and sustain healthy mentorships where positive values can be instilled?

Teaching Note: Creating Safe Environments:

Cheryl always supports the students in sharing their opinions and refrains from passing judgment on their answers. She simply acknowledges their comments, creating an environment of acceptance and safety. This building of environment is key while discussing difficult and personal issues as and opinions as things like the value sort do. It allows for all opinions to be heard.

Compromised Work

by Conor McCauley

Earlier this fall, my professor, Dr. Joan Miller, assigned my class a brief reflective essay to write about one of the readings we had covered in our seminar values course, “Good Work: A Focus on Excellence, Ethics, Engagement and the Development of Five Minds for the Future.”  I chose to reflect on Dr. Howard Gardner’s 2005 article entitled “Compromised Work,” because I felt it readily applied to my area of study and I have always felt that examples of what not to do can be just as powerful as guidance toward desired behavior (in this case, GoodWork).  We were asked to think critically about the reading we selected, apply it to ourselves and address issues it raised for us as learners and developing professionals.  My thoughts are as follows.

Howard Gardner’s 2005 article “Compromised Work” raises many issues pertinent to the business domain (and management in particular) through its illumination of behavior that is contrary to the concept of good work.  The article begins with an explanation of the idea of compromised work; that is, work that is “not necessarily illegal but that compromises the ethical integrity of its domain or profession.”  Gardner explains that it is important to examine cases of compromised work if only to learn from the consequences of misalignment and a lack of mentors in different professional environments.

All three cases of compromised work Gardner details resulted in serious or destructive consequences.  However, the management of the three institutions involved (The New York Times, Hill and Barlow, and Enron) was partially or completely to blame for the compromised work that took place within each.  In each case, management either failed to act ethically, did not respond appropriately to environmental or market factors, or was directly responsible for the compromised work through their tolerance or their creation of a culture in which it was expected.  Instead of acting as mentors for their employees, they feigned alignment in their organizations when there was none.  It is absolutely imperative that I, as a future manager, take the lessons of these cases to heart.  In essence, I must set the pursuit of good work above all else, despite what pressures I may come to face, or I will suffer dire consequences.

Too often managers in all fields of business succumb to real or perceived pressures and compromise the work of their institutions to achieve certain bottom-line goals, whether they are financial or otherwise.  I have seen this first hand in even my most recent place of employment, a prestigious hotel.  Multiple managers there let blatant (albeit minor) violations of departmental standards slide for no other reason than to maintain the status quo and the current culture of “good enough.”  They cited “bigger fish to fry” as their reason for ignoring these issues, such as unsatisfactory employee appearance or abuse of the break system, as long as no serious problems resulted from them.  Although their intentions may not have been malicious or apathetic, quality and honesty standards suffered as a result of management only addressing problems they deemed as truly important to the hotel (or in other words, those problems that directly impeded guest service and interaction).

These compromised standards applied most often to the line employees in my department, for whose supervision I was responsible. Managerial tolerance of compromised work fostered the idea among many employees that just showing up and doing what was required was sufficient work.  An intrinsic desire to excel and pursue good work was rare, as most individuals were concerned simply with performing their duties only as well as they needed to.  Compromised work from management also allowed other employees to get away with compromised, and often low-quality, work themselves. They were allowed to remain at the hotel as long as they did not cause any serious problems with guests or coworkers largely because management wanted to avoid the hassle of trying to remove them.  Although I could step in at times and make my case for different parties to take a better approach to their work or their attitudes, my level of authority did not allow me to circumvent the actions and decisions (or in this case, inaction and indecision) of senior management.  The line employees I supervised would only listen to my suggestions if they genuinely wanted to or if it made sense to them.  As in most cases, the decision to actively pursue good work remained with the individual. Gardner acknowledged that isolated cases of compromised work are unavoidable, and the business environment at the hotel was no exception.  To let these repeated violations go unattended, however, is to create a culture where compromised work becomes the norm.

Professional development means that I must develop to be a professional, that I must pursue my career to the absolute best of my ability and ensure my work is excellent, engaging, and ethical.  Maintaining the integrity of my domain means that I must pass the mirror tests each day, and if preventing compromised work entails even simple, unpleasant tasks like more rigid enforcement of standards, that is what I must do.  Two of the most important aspects of management involve being an effective leader and learning to adapt without damaging the integrity or stability of the institution.  GoodWork in the business domain, by definition, would require me to do both as well.

Good Work and the Global Financial Crises

by Susanna Katsman

Susanna took Howard Gardner’s course “GoodWork in Education: When Excellence, Engagement, and Ethics Meet during the Fall 2011 semester. This memo was in response to the generative question: What opportunities and challenges does globalization have on the three “E’s” of good work?

Similar to earlier significant advances in sharing information, such as written language and printed press, globalization holds potential for humanity to take a leap forward.  However, the speed of globalization and its wide reach present some challenges. Each of the three “E’s” of good work – excellence, engagement and ethics – are affected by globalization.

Globalization aids the pursuit of excellence by providing ample instantaneous means of sharing expertise, experiences, and instructions.  Professional standards for excellence are easily disseminated the world over.  At the same time, increased competition motivates some companies to saturate the market with inferior quality products and services, resulting in limited access to superior products and services. In extreme cases, the consumers are scammed into purchasing products and services of compromised quality.

Globalization greatly supports engagement by providing unprecedented opportunities for collaboration.  Today, it is easier than ever to connect with others in the field, participate in professional associations and access a wealth of information on topics of interest.  However, the increasing amount of communication that takes place remotely can be de-motivating to those who thrive on personal interactions with colleagues and customers.  One needs a unique set of skills and competencies in order to succeed in the rapidly expanding and fluid environment.  In Globalization: Culture and education in the new millennium M. Suarez – Orozco and D.B. Qin – Hilliard state: “The skills needed for analyzing and mobilizing to solve problems from multiple perspectives will require individuals who are cognitively flexible, culturally sophisticated, and able to work collaboratively in groups made up of diverse individuals”.  In the same article, Howard Gardner further illustrates: “Trends in our increasingly globalized society have brought interdisciplinary concerns to the fore.  Issues like poverty reduction, anti-terrorism, privacy, prevention of disease, energy conservation, ecological balance – and the list could be expanded at will – all require input from and syntheses of various forms of disciplinary knowledge and methods.”  It seems to me that the number of persons achieving this level of cognitive function and interpersonal savvy will be quite limited; first by access to education that can prepare for those new ways of problem defining and solving, and second by nature, in that few possess an aptitude for thinking and operating in such evolved ways.  Many of those called upon to exercise these sophisticated skills will be unable or unprepared to do so.  Consequently, they will be ineffective and their engagement, along with engagement of those working alongside of them, will diminish.

Globalization poses extraordinary challenges in the area of ethics.  Even coming from different cultures, it is relatively easy to arrive at a common understanding of what constitutes excellence in a particular field.  While what makes work meaningful differs greatly from person to person, engagement with one’s profession is unmistakable in feeling and universally recognizable in external manifestation.  What makes work socially (globally?) responsible is much harder to bridge in a multi-cultural setting.  In the words of  M. Suarez – Orozco and D.B. Qin – Hilliard in Globalization: Culture and education in the new millennium “While many observers see globalization as positive, promoting economic developments and intercultural exchanges, there are also corrosive developments, such as globalization’s threat to century-long traditions, religious identities, authority structures, values and worldviews.” Earlier in the semester, our class discussed behavior that the American educational system defines as plagiarism and cheating, and how certain other cultures consider the same behavior collaboration.  Views on what constitutes acceptable conduct, respectful communication, appropriate recognition and fair disciplinary process are just as disparate in a global setting.  Different interpretations of freedom of choice, equality and justice add layers of complexity to an already complex nature of ethics at work.  The concept of cultural sensitivity is taken to a whole new level in global context.  Globalization presently poses much greater challenges than opportunities for ethics than it does for excellence and engagement.

Excellence, engagement and especially ethics have been shaped by countless opportunities and challenges over the course of many centuries.  Globalization rapidly increases the pace of workplace change and influences the nature of the opportunities and challenges. The transformation of the three “E’s” in the coming decades is certain to be fascinating