Doing Good Research on Good Research in Academics

A guest post by Wout Scholten MSc., Junior researcher at Tilburg University and Rathenau Institute

The Good Project has partnered in The Netherlands with the Good Work Hub (Goed Werk Hub), an extension of the Professional Honor Foundation, which seeks to promote Good Work ideas and reflective practices in Dutch professional life. In the first of two blogs, Wout Scholten describes the motivations behind and challenges associated with a currently ongoing research project investigating how professionals achieve Good Work in academia, a topic that is explored through targeted focus groups with workers in higher education. This post discusses the project from the researcher’s perspective. A second forthcoming blog will present key findings uncovered from the project.

For a long time in The Netherlands, the fields of research and higher education seemed to be perfectly functioning systems. In the last few years, this has changed due to a growing resentment for imposed rules, limitations on professional autonomy, and growing worries about the quality of academic work. Hence, we have embarked on a new research project on Good Work in The Netherlands asking two questions: How do academic professionals think about good work in their own discipline, and what are the main obstacles that academics encounter to achieving good work?

As researchers, we have also encountered our own reflective questions: what does it mean for us to do good work when carrying out this research, and what are the main challenges we face to living up to our own standards of good work? Thus far, we have encountered three challenges that, in our view, are specific to the fields of research and higher education: 1) a constantly changing social reality that affects participants; 2) the congested schedules of academic professionals; and 3) the critical attitude of the participants.

Constant flux

The field of research and higher education is in flux in The Netherlands. Expressions of discontent and protest against national policies, the current academic culture, and efficiency-oriented university management have increased tremendously in the last few years. This discontent has evolved into a fundamental and widespread cry from an increasingly large group of students and academics. Concepts like ‘the commodification of science’ and ‘publish or perish’ attitudes have recently been recognized nationally as important matters of debate. In February 2015, a group of student activists even occupied a building at the University of Amsterdam in protests that have lasted for over a month.

Policy makers have taken note of the unrest. Reactions from leadership include a revision of the Standard Evaluation Protocol that governs assessment of the research conducted at Dutch universities (productivity is no longer a separate evaluation criterion). The San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA) was also signed by the Association of Universities in the Netherlands, which lays out recommendations for improvement of “the ways in which the output of scientific research is evaluated.”

These calls for change and resultant actions have reached their climax in the middle of our research, and during conversations with participants, we notice them taking time to reflect on recent events. We hope to make sense of the fundamental flux in Dutch higher education helping others think about what it means to do good work.

The overactive academic

Via our focus groups, we also want to get a picture of the daily experiences of academic professionals. Unfortunately, we have noticed that it is very challenging to gather a group of senior academics from the same discipline on the same day around the same table. Despite recognition of the importance of our study, the congested agendas of the senior academic professionals prove to be a large hurdle to overcome. Most academics have so many competing responsibilities that they cannot substantially contribute to something they recognize as significant.

A typical decline to our invitation is a response such as, “I think this is an extraordinarily good initiative because the academic notion of good work is increasingly measured by management by successes in the struggle for funding, which eventually leads to a decline in good work because of high pressure. However, because of timing, I won’t be able to attend a focus group.”

A real challenge is therefore how we can involve academics in our research in a substantial way in light of time constrictions. This also means that there is a possible bias in the participants that eventually attend a focus meeting: participants are either so concerned about the quality of their work that they made an effort to contribute to our research, or they simply have enough time to participate. We believe that these two potential biases will cancel each other out.

Constant peer review

Academic professionals are used to judging the work of others, and, as one would expect in an academic environment, our focus group participants have been critical towards our study and our methods.

The criticism we encounter from participants is met with mixed emotions. On the one hand, feedback from participants amounts to a continuous peer review of our research, which has improved our methods. It has been inspiring to see the permanence of academic willfulness and the continual striving for good work. For example, during one session with a group of philosophers, the first 30 minutes of the focus session were spent on an analysis of our methods. This resulted in a rich discussion about what counts as good work in the discipline of philosophy and how one should approach the topic. On the other hand, the moderator of the focus group discussions has generally had a difficult time staying on track, even though our protocol is already loosely formulated. We felt we encountered another serious challenge to studying senior academic professionals: how do we overcome participants’ critical attitudes toward procedures and methods and facilitate an in-depth discussion on good work in academia?

Working toward good conclusions

Our research is still in progress. We continue to try to show participants that reflecting on good work is important, especially in the changing landscape of higher education, and that we as researchers also reflect on good work. We want participants to feel that the focus groups are valuable and that they can tell their story, and we hope that our data will give us a better understanding of the three challenges we have mentioned.

Please look forward to a forthcoming contribution to the Good Blog in which we share the outcomes of our research and elaborate on the notion of good work and the main obstacles to its achievement.

Reflections on “Good” Teaching

by Victoria Nichols

As reluctant as I am to admit it, I enrolled at the Boston University School of Education (SED) approximately seven months ago with, at least in part, the naïve Freedom Writers, Dead Poets Society ideation of what makes a “good” teacher. I had fallen trap to the “natural-born teacher” fallacy which Elizabeth Green (2014) so brilliantly summarizes in Building a Better Teacher (p. 6). Unconsciously I had equated manic energy, hilarity, sacrifice, and other aspects of personality with “good” teaching, but those are not essential characteristics. A brief survey of some of my high school friends uncovered something incredibly revealing. When asked “Who was the best teacher you ever had?” many responded with a question of their own: “Do you mean best or favorite?” And that, I believe, is a truly important distinction. The most energetic, the most memorable, the most loved teachers are not always going to be the “best” teachers.  

So what does make a teacher “good?” It is an incredibly nuanced question. At the heart of the issue is that fact that the majority of the stakeholders in education define the term “good” differently. For some, the “goodness” of a teacher is directly proportional to students’ achievement on standardized, high-stakes testing. For others, a “good” teacher is one that “gets” students into the best colleges and universities. For others still, a “good” teacher broadens a student’s horizons, challenging him to become a valuable member of society. But then the question becomes, how do you measure something so nebulous? What individual factors, what criteria, when added up, total a “good” teacher?

I think it is important to take a moment to note that in addition to these definitions of “good” being disparate amongst US stakeholders, this idea of “good” differs from country to country as well. How a culture defines the “goodness” of a teacher depends greatly on that culture’s norms and values surrounding education. As Pasi Sahlberg points out in the article What if Finland’s great teachers taught in U.S. schools?, “In Finland, half of surveyed teachers responded that they would consider leaving their job if their performance [were] determined by their student’s standardized test results” (Strauss, May 2013). This is in stark contrast to the US, where in some areas, 50% of a teacher’s evaluation is based on Value-Added Measures (Jones, Slide 15, October 2014).

Thus, at the heart of the “good” teacher debate in the United States is the question of our culture’s reliance on standardized testing. Given my background with Howard Gardner’s Multiple Intelligences Theory, it may be somewhat unsurprising that I am fiercely weary of standardized testing, especially the ability of these measures to accurately portray a student’s “intelligence.” Consequently, I do not think using Value-Added Measures truthfully determines a teacher’s “goodness.” My definition of a “good” teacher is not one who is able to churn out students capable of acing high-stakes testing. While this is no small feat, and not an achievement that should be ignored given our culture’s perception of academic success, I believe that a “good” teacher is something else, something more.

In my pursuit to find the handful of criteria which I believe comprise a “good” teacher, I decided to peruse the Danielson Framework for Teaching. Overall I found the Framework incredibly extensive, and I definitely agreed with several of the components, but nonetheless I felt that some aspects of effective teaching were still missing. After much deliberation, I drafted my own Framework for “Good” Teaching: 1) Thorough knowledge of content and pedagogy, 2) Passion for content and pedagogy, 3) Dedication to differentiation, 4) Excels at crafting dynamic, engaging, and energizing lessons, and 5) Willingness to continually develop, learn, and adapt as both content and pedagogy continually evolve. While I readily admit this is not a complete list, I believe that if an educator adheres to these criteria, they would be viewed as “good.” In fact, I have seen this in practice. 

But before providing an example of a “good” teacher, I want to explain my criteria. It was not until enrolling at SED that I began to truly realize the monumental importance of a strong education and background in both content-matter and pedagogy. I cannot even begin to comprehend how an educator enters the classroom without a background in Lesson Design, or Adolescent Development, or Teaching Text. I strongly believe that, much like Finland’s system, it should be mandated that every future educator should graduate from a Masters-level teacher education program. Were that the case, so many more teachers would have a thorough knowledge of content and pedagogy, a strengthened ability to craft thoughtful lesson plans, an understanding of differentiation, and a flexibility to evolve as an educator. In other words, were everyone to have to graduate from such a program, so many more teachers would meet the criteria I detail above and would be given the foundation necessary for effective teaching.

I would also like to note that, because of my background working with the Good Project, differentiation has been of particular importance to me. The Good Project defines work as “good” when it is excellent, engaging, and ethical. I believe that, in turn, differentiation embodies these “Three Es,” as this practice challenges teachers to teach more purposefully and more thoroughly, with a clear focus on the success of every student. Utilizing differentiation as a guiding principle, I have found myself completely engrossed in crafting some of my most thoughtful lesson plans. But what about the ethics of differentiation, of teaching in general? How can I devote my time to be maximally effective for the widest range of students? That’s a difficult question, but an important one. As a student teacher, I am still practicing this skill, but I have observed a common trend in the master teachers I have observed so far: they are continually adapting their teaching to better respond to each student’s individual skill set. That was particularly true of my 10th-grade English teacher, Mr. Robinson.

Mr. Robinson met most, if not all, of my criteria. Most striking, however, was his true dedication to differentiation. One teaching strategy he employed that I hope to emulate in my own teaching was, each semester, instructing students to read one book of their choice and to write a brief paper in response. This brilliant move allowed students to choose readings that would challenge and interest them on an individual level. Above and beyond that teaching strategy, however, Mr. Robinson also identified my personal frustration of not being challenged. Noticing my apathy, Mr. Robinson gave me a suggested college reading list. He instructed me to read as many books as I wanted and informed me that he would grade any additional response papers accordingly. Holding me to a higher standard, he graded me as a college professor would, forcing me to grow exponentially.

Thus, I truly believe that Mr. Robinson was such an effective teacher because of his adherence to my five aforementioned criteria. Mr. Robinson wasn’t an especially lively or energetic teacher, nor did he have us continually bent over with laughter; these fickle aspects of personality were not what made him a “good” teacher. Instead, I consider Mr. Robinson a good teacher because of his knowledge, his passion, his strong lesson plans, and his differentiation strategies. Unfortunately, these criteria better adhere to the education culture in somewhere such as Finland, than they do here in the United States. Which, in turn, raises a striking question: How can I strive to uphold my Framework for “Good” Teaching when my criteria do not align with the educational culture to which I belong?

References

Danielson, C. (2014). The Framework. The Danielson Group. Retrieved from                                             http://danielsongroup.org/

Greene, E. (2014). Building a Better Teacher. New York, NY: Basic Books.

Jones, N. (2014). Teacher Evaluation Research.

Strauss, V. (2013). What if Finland’s great teachers taught in U.S. schools. The Washington Post.

Retrieved from http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2013/05/15/what-if-finlands-great-teachers-taught-in-u-s-schools-not-what-you-think/

Retooling India’s Rural Schools Using Good Work and Social Enterprise

A guest post by by Sandeep Deshmukh, Hemendra Kothari Foundation

by Sandeep Deshmukh, Hemendra Kothari Foundation

I have been working for the last twenty-seven years in India’s sector, consciously adhering to ethical practices and excellence. I joined the Hemendra Kothari Foundation to work on rural development education and through it, found an arena for Good Work.  I got attracted to the Good Work Project when I heard first about it from Professor Gardner when he was visiting Mumbai in 2011. In his public interface he dealt at length with the principles of multiple intelligences, and how each intelligence can be mobilized to contribute to good work. He also drew richly on the Gandhian school of thought and practice to illustrate his point. His speech and subsequent interaction helped me connect with the work of the Good Work Project.

Since then I have explored Good Work Project material to further the goals of my Foundation and myself. We have been pursuing the three core values of ethics, excellence and engagement since day one of the Foundation’s inception. Today we can speak about a silent yet robust national platform for education centered on the values of ethics, excellence and engagement.

Still, there are tensions that exist in our work that we hope to ease through our interventions. The forefathers of India’s education policy envisioned schools as the vehicles of knowledge and skills that would transform rural India into a modern society. However, with 80% of the nearly 1.3 million schools in India being located in rural areas, one generally sees a dilution of quality with expansion of school base in the country. The farther one moves away from the greater urban areas, the more questions are raised pertaining to accountability, ethical values, professional standards of teachers and support staff, standards of institutional performance and effectiveness of delivery mechanisms.

Our twin foundations, the Hemendra Kothari Foundation and Wildlife Conversation Trust, are working on the issue of ensuring quality schooling to the rural public. We have identified key result areas which require direct interventions. Anticipating changes in the key result areas such as teaching systems; access to knowledge resources; school centered management; and professionalization of work force, we are trying to create baskets of direct interventions that would strengthen the network of educational resources around a socially and economically deprived child. These interventions are evolved by us in convergence with our non-profit partners. Partners like Indian Institute of Education, Eklavya, Aide Et Action, Pratham, Samavesh, Gramin Shiksha Kendra have remained outside the ambit of government yet impacted the school system positively at different points of time through work at practice, policy and curricular levels.Here, we will look at some of the most critical issues we are trying to address and our social enterprise solutions we are testing for these – from utilizing technology to provide teachers with professional networks and supports, to challenging the status quo on what makes an excellent teacher.

1. Inadequate number of teachers: Often one finds less than the required number of teachers in government schools in distant rural districts. Teacher absenteeism or shortages may stem from a lack of responsibility towards the particular school or community. Schools always carry the risk of closure if the teacher does not turn up frequently. In order to address this issue, we need to find individuals from the community who are willing to take responsibility for its citizens’ educations. The creation of two types of support cadres by our foundation with rural communities alleviates the disadvantages resulting from teacher shortage. At the village level, a non-formal education center is manned by a community youth who is trained as a teaching volunteer. The direct support to the school goes through a cadre called Extension Resource Teachers (ERT). These are professionals who live in the vicinity of the villages under support and give planned, dedicated teaching time, community mobilization, teacher support and a government liaison in each village under their cover.

2. Additional professional development: Government teachers on average receive twelve days of training in a year across districts of India. These trainings are generally known to be lacking focus, preparedness of faculty and critical duration. This lackadaisical approach to training can impact the teacher quality. Thus, we extend another fifteen days of subject training, teaching methods, lesson planning, and school management on top of government training. Systematic observation of children, under the guidance of better prepared teachers and for an average period of six months, shows progress on reading, writing, listening, and math. A need-based continuous training support to teacher pays good dividends and has implications for the level of excellence for teaching throughout the entire country.

3. Digital dashboard for teachers: We believe that like every other person, a teacher will go through different stages of job satisfaction. She will come to a stage when she start seeking answers to questions on subject matter and knowledge transaction. Given the existing government support system’s constraints, it is necessary to consider alternatives. A dashboard contains classroom analytics facilitating continuous assessment of children – mandatory for a government school – that was created by our partners Aide Et Action and Vtabeans Pvt. Ltd. The dashboard is also regularly populated with lesson plans by voluntary groups of government teachers. All initial reports indicate that the dashboard is a dependable reflection and reference board for teachers. The dashboard fills up the empty space for peers by single teacher schools in remote forest areas.

A multitude of other important problems pertaining to learning ecosystem are being addressed by our group, such as developing official policy for inclusive education and constructive engagement with teacher unions.  We supported groups of 355 government schools in remote forest areas during the previous year. In the current year, we are extending support to 540 schools. The latest drive by our twin Foundations is to facilitate establishment of six centers of education excellence in different regions of India. We will keep looking to the Good Work community often with issues and updates.

Civil Servants’ Craftsmanship: a Good Work Toolkit Approach

by Wiljan Hendrikx & Hans Wilmink

What does the craftsmanship of Dutch civil servants entail, and what does it take to support it?

Faced with this challenging question, a Dutch Ministry’s HR department in The Hague called the Dutch Professional Honor Foundation for help. Armed with a Good Work Toolkit-based approach, 4 groups with a total of 28 participating civil servants took up this challenge with their peers in 4 sessions per group. The 16 meetings were organized between October 2013 and January 2014. Together they formed a ‘developmental trajectory’ aimed at exploring civil servants’ Excellence, Ethics and Engagement, and strengthening their capacity to recognize, think about, discuss and act upon dilemmas faced in daily working life.

In 2 of the 4 groups there was debate about the approach used at the start of their first session. Participants were uncertain about what to make of the project, and their questions centered in particular around the intentions of the ministry:

“To explore and define for yourself what the core of your role entails? Is this really what the ministry expects us to do? Do we really get the discretion to think about these issues and discuss them independently?” they questioned. Moreover, a tone of uncertainty also resonated through their questions; civil servants had to ask themselves: are we capable and reliable workers or are we independent professionals?

Despite these initial doubts and hesitations, practically all participants pushed through. During the project, the tide turned and participants started to actively engage in the debates about Excellence, Ethics and Engagement within their own work, eagerly sharing their own stories. By the end of the project, a delegation of participants even volunteered to exchange thoughts with the ministry’s management on how to continue working with Good Work ideas and notions.

We can report several interesting findings based on the group discussions. First of all, we came across a number of core motives that civil servants – at least of this particular department – seem to share, causing them to be really engaged with civil service. First, our participants shared a strong desire to serve their minister, regardless of his/her ‘political color’. “Serving your minister” was seen as an honorable duty in and of itself. Second, they expressed a strong wish to put their expertise to (good) use. Being able to show what you can do and being appreciated for doing so within as well as outside of the organization is rewarding. Values like” being objective” and “independence” were often mentioned in this context – having the discretion to think for yourself independently of dominant trends. Third, our participants all felt personally involved in the policy domain of their ministry and the ‘common good’ it strives to serve.

Moreover, the group sessions allowed us to identify several dilemmas and tensions civil servants encounter in their work. First, there is a strong tension – sometimes even conflict – between civil service and political management. The bifurcated point of view of a professional civil servant and of a member of a political party often lead to vastly different solutions to a problem or situation; the latter attaching much more value to political feasibility and desirability. Second, we can discern a tension between civil service and society. A problem orsituation can be perceived in a completely different way from a technical/professional viewpoint than from a societal one, creating imbalances in the societal support base. A final tension we came across is between political management and society. Not only politicians, but also civil servants need to have a keen eye for societal interests and sensitivities. It is not directly up to the civil servant to neutralize the tension, but it is seen as his duty to signal and explicate these in order to communicate them to their political management, even when they are politically unwelcome.

Using Good Work concepts of Excellence, Ethics and Engagement to explore and discuss civil servants’ craftsmanship really opened discussions that would not have otherwise been possible. A narrative-based approach combined with small discussion exercises turned out to be a good starting point for debate. The greatest challenge for our participants was the use of the Good Work Toolkit’s narratives. Despite the undisputed quality of these stories, the civil servants did not recognize themselves enough in these stories, nor did they associate them with their own experiences. Our important lesson: focus on narratives from the profession itself right away and use these to collect participants’ own – similar – stories as soon as possible. As a consequence, we have developed our own toolkit, particularly aimed at civil servants (see Gerard van Nunen’s blog).

During a final collective session, after the end of the project, 14 participants volunteered to assist the ministry in its efforts to make Good Work for civil servants commonplace. This is an initial, promising sign that we have had some impact. We look forward to maintaining and improving civil servants’ craftsmanship through regular discussion and reflection among peers, based on our shared narratives.

Learning about Good at Project Zero Classroom

By Paromita De

From July 21st-25th, 2014 the Harvard Graduate School of Education hosted Project Zero Classroom (PZC), an institute for educators to delve into Project Zero concepts and see how they can better understand and meet their students’ needs as learners. Plenary sessions and mini-courses during the institute focused on topics such as creativity, comprehension, causal thinking, global understanding, and ethics. Sessions led by Good Project researchers allowed educators to examine ways in which issues of “doing good” arise in professional and personal realms.

Three mini-courses during PZC were taught by Good Project researchers. “The Good Project: Ideas and Tools for a Good Life”, led by Lynn Barendsen and Wendy Fischman, gave participants an overview of different Good Project initiatives and themes through interactive exercises and discussions. For example, findings on the importance of quality time from the Good Project’s Quality study were illustrated through an activity where participants observed alignments or misalignments between their personal values and the amount of time they spent on different activities during the week (such as work, commuting, spending time with family, etc.). A second mini-course, “Teaching ‘Good Work’ in the Classroom: An Introduction to the Toolkit”, was led by Shernaz Minwalla of the University Liggett School in Michigan and allowed participants to examine what Good Work means to them. Through this session, participants discussed what Good Work might look like in different vocations, explored their values, and deliberated on sample dilemmas from the Good Work Toolkit. Carrie James and Katie Davis led a mini-course titled “Cultivating Digital Citizenship – Strategies for Approaching Dilemmas of Privacy and Identity Online”, during which participants reflected on digital ethical fault lines – ethical issues that arise in the use of digital media – such as “privacy” and “identity”.

Two plenary sessions led by Good Project researchers discussed the influence of digital media on youth. Carrie James’ plenary looked at how dialogue occurs in digital spaces – such as commenting on social media – and digital dialogue can be channeled to develop our social and civic voices. Howard Gardner and Katie Davis’ plenary featured findings from their books The App Generation and a recent Good Project study on creativity and how it has been influenced by changes in technology. Project Zero Classroom gave the Good Project an opportunity to connect with educators and share ideas for making “good” a priority in the work they do with students.