 Hi, my name is Tracy Takahoma-Spinoza and this is a video on teachers' fundamental attitudes. What are these core beliefs that teachers have that actually influence student learning outcomes? Beliefs about how they think people learn, beliefs about the ways people learn. And we'll do this within the context of teachers' new professional development. And I'll explain that in just a second. And also within the context of these 21st century skills. What are the skills that we already have that we can help transmit or pass on to our students and what are the ones that we need to work on ourselves. Then we'll do a kind of a deep dive into these 15 fundamental attitudes. And then I'll leave you with a little bit of homework if you'd like to take that on to extend your learning experience. And I look forward to working with you face to face and really talking about these things in more depth when we're together. So what is this new teachers' professional development scheme? It's based off of the OECD recommendations that teachers need to have a bit more information about the general learning sciences, about things that include things from the brain, for example, and our understanding of how technology works. But we'd like to combine this mind-brain education perspective with information that comes from John Hattie's work on what really influences student learning outcomes. What are the things that have the greatest effect size in changing student learning outcomes? And we'll do this within this format of a new professional development scheme. We have one of these strange jobs in which, you know, a teacher is a teacher is a teacher and we don't ever advance. You can be fresh out of university and you have the same status, basically, as somebody who might have been around for 40 years. So we'd like to reformat this and thinking kind of in a constructivist way. You know, how do we approach learning with our kids, right? You have to have some core fundamental information at the beginning, but then you should get better and go deeper into that same knowledge. But you should also be able to learn new things as you become more professional. So part of the professionalization of teaching in the future will have these layers of knowledge that we continue to go deeper in. It's not that everybody needs the same things. Different people need different things at different stages of their professional development. And that's what we'd like to help you guys do by identifying personally what it is that you need to work on as an individual. And one of the ways we do this is we look at, you know, what is the ultimate goal of education? If we talk about these core 21st century skills that we look for in our students, you know, we hope that we are developing creative and critical thinkers and people who know how to use tools and technology independently and who know how to interact with people who are different from them and who act autonomously, who have empathy for other people and who are independent in their learning and who embrace complexity and to understand how to approach learning on a transdisciplinary plane. All of these things, you know, come out of the literature and we've been hearing them for almost two decades now, right? But the key element here when we talk about teacher training is that you can't get apples from a pear tree. So we really have to be models of all of these different elements. And I often ask teachers to sort of look at this list here and to think to themselves what is it that they personally need to work on? The average teacher in the world right now is about 40 years old which means that a lot of teachers, for example, are kind of scared of the technology element of it or some have difficulty sort of grasping this idea of the complexity that's around them. And so I ask you to sort of think about this for yourself. What is it that you, if you had to choose one of these elements that you'd like to say, okay, I need to work on this a bit because we have to be honest with ourselves and reflect a little bit. What are the pieces of this puzzle that we need to fill in first before we can be models for our students and doing that? So think about that for a second and be brutally honest with yourself in coming up with these things that you'd like to focus on in your own professional development. When we're together, we're going to work on this handout that basically says, you know, I am already a great 21st century teacher because I do certain things. But, you know, I could be even better if I could do some other things. So we're going to ask you to have a look at this cumulative list of 21st century skills and to come up with the things that you would like to personally work on. This has to do with this long-term look as ourselves as teachers. You know, we expect that, you know, people will begin their lives knowing some things about teaching and knowing some things about their content area knowledge and knowing some things about themselves and about their learners. But this is something that grows and develops over the course of becoming a great teacher, reaching mastery as a teacher eventually. And the really interesting thing about this whole process is that nobody's really going to be at the same place at the same time. Even if you have colleagues that you've sort of been growing with over the past couple of years, you'll find that some of you guys have, you know, taken the initiative to do some investigation in certain areas of learning or in teaching or in different types of methodology. So different people are going to be at different places, even if they've been teachers for the same amount of time. So have a look and think about this on a more personal level. Where are you at and what are the things that you want to work on? This sort of helps us get to this kind of a sweet spot for change, things that, you know, we as individuals need that make us excited to do things like professional development instead of thinking, oh, what a drag, you know, I have to go and listen to this generic presentation that, you know, sort of hitting right in the middle and hitting nobody because it's really just trying to hit everybody. We know when you try to please all the people all the time, you basically don't end up attending to almost anybody's needs. So we'd like to make this a bit more personal for you. The main focus we want to have today has to do with fundamental teacher attitudes. Through the recommendation that was made by the OECD to its 34 member countries, including the United States, was that during initial teacher preparation, we have to really plant the seeds of the right type of teacher attitudes. And this is really important because if we look at this within the structure of backward design from Wiggins and McTye's work. So this is just, you know, setting up our objectives at the end of the day. What is it that I hope to achieve? Then how am I going to evaluate that? You know, what am I going to accept as indicators or evidence that I've made progress towards that objective? And then, you know, what do I do? So this is just how we think about educational planning at a macro level, you know, as a school or department supervisor, but also really down to what do I do on a daily basis in my classroom? But if we think about this in terms of teacher's professional development, it's pretty much the same, you know. At the end of the day, what is my objective? Am I out to be the greatest teacher around? Or, you know, what is my objective here? And then how am I going to know if I'm reaching that objective? And then what do I do to actually achieve that? And the reason we put this in the context of backward design is because setting the objectives is a lot harder than you might think. But there's a way to do it that can be less stressful on all of us. And that is if we consider objectives, and we also call these educational competencies, right, they are nothing more than the combination of knowledge and skills and attitudes that we hope to learn ourselves or that we hope to impart with our students. And so at one level, you know, you have knowledge and that just means, you know, dates, facts, figures, theories, concepts, names, things that are more or less memoristic. These are things that you can find on Google really easily, okay? But then at another level, you're looking at the skills. And these are things that are important to know and be able to do or to have to use that knowledge. And this is the application of the knowledge. These are things that we learn as teachers as strategies or methodologies or activities in our own practice, right? This is usable knowledge. But really at the core of all learning is what we remember long after the class is done or the PD experience is done. And these are the big ideas. These are the things that stick with you way after the class ends. So at one end, you have the superficial knowledge and at another end, you really have the core, the heart of what it is that we're out to teach and learn. We ask you to think of backward design as thinking of, okay, when I set my objective then, what are the knowledge level things I'm trying to get after? What are the skills I'm after? And what are the attitudinal things that I'm after? And we ask teachers to break this down when they plan their classes, but we also do this when we do professional development. Mainly because, you know, what's worth knowing, this Google-able stuff is kind of easy to teach, right? And it's also really easy to measure. You can use, you know, multiple choice tests just to know the dates or facts or names of things. Before I want to teach a teacher in a professional development, you know, how would I make a rubric or whatever? Just that knowledge is pretty easy. It's a little bit harder to do, but it's relatively easy. If somebody already knows the knowledge, it's really easy then to actually apply it. So if you understand the concept of a rubric, for example, it's really easy to learn how to make one. Okay? But what's really much harder and takes almost, you know, it can take your entire professional life is to develop or cultivate the right attitudes towards your learning and understanding. And this is true at a teacher level and it's also true at a student level. So when we talk about fundamental teacher attitudes, so we say, you know, well, the recommendation is that, you know, this is something that's really, the seed is planted early on in teachers' professional development. But what it really means is that throughout a teacher's development, you're constantly reinforcing the correct attitudes towards our job. And the main reason is that attitudes are very, very ingrained in our own practice. We come to our profession. We come to our classrooms with really already set attitudes about things. And the reason that we like to introduce attitudes early on and throughout professional development is because it's really easy to teach you a certain kind of teaching methodology. And it's easy to teach you how to do certain activities in class. That's light. What's really hard is to get teachers to embrace the correct attitudes. And one of the main reasons this is so important is that the enemy of correct teacher attitudes are unidentified prejudices that we all have. In John Hattie's work, which is so fascinating, he's found that teacher attitudes really change student learning outcomes. But the scary element to this is that many times teacher attitudes are invisible to the teacher themselves. We don't even see it or think about it because they're so ingrained in who we are as a person that we haven't taken the time to really reflect on those attitudes. And one of the ways that this links back to the mind-brain education element of this is that we think or we believe certain things about how people learn. As teachers, we go into our profession presuming intelligence is cultivated in X-way or people learn in Y-manner. We have these beliefs that are not necessarily checked with evidence, but things that we've felt or thought about all our lives. So it's really, really hard to change those things. So for example, we think to ourselves, oh gosh, if only the parents were more responsible or if only the parents had passed on better genes or if only the children were better behaved or if only I had better resources in my classroom or if only the kids had better nutritional practices or if only my classes were smaller or the kids played less video games or on and on, then I'd be a great teacher. And this is pretty powerful because you hear this in the hallways all the time. Teachers have a lot of prejudgments about the things that keep them from being great teachers and these things have to come to the surface and really be thought about because if we don't reflect on them, we can't then adopt the correct teacher attitudes that do enhance student learning outcomes. In my review of the literature, most especially in John Hattie's work, I culled from his massive research 15 core teacher attitudes. And these things seem to stand out as what can be considered roadblocks to great teaching. So let's look at these one by one. And I'd just like you to think, do you completely disagree with this point? That would be a one on this scale or do you completely agree with this point? That would be a four on this scale. I'd like you to go through these and think about them and pretty much from the gut answer, but then from your head, think about it a little bit more. Why do you believe that? Or why do you disagree with that? Or why do you agree with this point? Okay, so think about that a little bit as we go through these. The first point is that one plus one is three. And yes, my dad was a math teacher and the best lesson I ever learned from him is this idea of collaboration. When we work together, we learn better and we all contribute to individual and collective growth. Do you agree with that statement, with that attitude, or do you disagree with that? Put that on a scale of one to four, please. Second, related to autonomy and one of the key goals that we have in 21st century skills is to help students develop their own autonomy. So a teacher's not paid to answer any more questions. A teacher's job is to get students to find and answer their own questions. What do you think of that one? Next, we're out to develop a culture of evaluation. How many of you like to be evaluated? You know, I'd love to be evaluated because when I was growing up in Berkeley, California in the 60s, anytime anybody evaluated me, it was to help me. So we had a culture of evaluation that was very different from the way the way that some schools culture is right now. Some schools really fear evaluation. What do you think about this attitude? You know that evaluation is a form of teaching. It's not meant to punish or to establish ranking or to prejudge. Evaluation is just a teaching tool. Do you agree with that or disagree with that? Next, we want to develop this value for differentiation and to value inclusion in our teaching. So the question is, you know, since we know that just about anything you do in a classroom, including just having a kid sit there for the school year, he's going to learn something. This means that our job is now to determine what helps most of the kids, most of the time, maximize their potential. Not just choose, you know, the latest and greatest methodology or activity that seems to be the flavor of the month, but actually to differentiate, to tailor, to give each kid what they need in order to find success in your classroom. One, two, three, four. We also hope that our schools are helping kids learn how to learn throughout their lives. So this means that the objective of modern education is to form lifelong lovers of learning, not just to pass my class or to pass an exam. It's to help cultivate core skills that people will be able to use both in and outside your classroom for the rest of their lives. Do you agree with that? Be a model. As we said before, you can't get apples from a pear tree. So I have to be a model of behavior I wish to achieve in my class. So do I agree with that? If we have as a goal and objective of education in the 21st century, all of those great skills, you know, to be intellectually humble and intellectually curious and that we know how to work with people who are different from ourselves and that we embrace technology. If we're trying to form kids who look like that at the end of their schooling experience, then we ourselves have to have all of those skills. What do you think about that? Do you agree with that? Disagree with that? Next, we really seek to develop human potential. So differences in learning outcomes that are based on socio-economic status are related to access to learning resources. They're related to conditions of nutrition, whether or not a kid is naturally stimulated, you know, talked to as a child. But they are not based on race. Do you agree with the fundamental attitude that while there may be differences in student potential based on conditions of poverty, they're not based on race, which ends up being a vicious circle because of conditions of poverty, certain groups end up having poor conditions, which means they do end up lower on academic scales. But if you control for poverty, there is no racial factor there. So it has nothing to do with race. It has more to do with conditions of socio-economic status. Also related to developing human potential is the understanding that the brain needs to learn. The brain cannot not learn. It's its reasons for existence. It's basically evolution in human survival. Your brain has to learn. So this means that everybody in my class can and will learn, you know, but probably not at the same pace. And this has to do with prior experiences. Whether or not they have been read to as children, for example, will speed up their ability to do other types of academic work. So we know that everybody can and will learn, but there's probably going to be differences in how fast they're able to achieve mastery in certain topics in my class. Finally, related to human development and potential is the concept of fixed versus growth mindsets. The belief that intelligence is fluid. It's not fixed. The biggest question we have in education and in educational psychology is whether or not you are who you are based on the genes that you inherited from your parents or from the environment you grew up in. Now, while there's no set answer to that, we know that it's definitely a combination and it's probably nature via nurture, not nature versus nurture. So you inherit things and yes, you can potentiate them based on what happens in your environment. So both things are true, but this gets to the point of whether or not you believe that people can grow, they can learn. Because based on Carol Druck's work, we know that people with a fixed mindset, they basically believe that their genes are destiny. They were born with whatever and that's it. They're not going to be able to do more than that. Whereas people with a growth mindset who believe that intelligence is fluid, believe that hard work can help them reach their potential. What do you think about that? One, two, three, four. Finally, there's these elements of a teacher's general responsibility. So we know that the human spectrum of intelligence is really broad. You have these typical kind of bell curve things and you've got the outliers here and the sides here and we tend to teach in the middle. This is asking you to think about this that in a typical classroom, there's going to be about five to six percent of your students are going to have some kind of learning challenge. Some will have dyslexia or dyscalculia or problems with the tension or Aspergers and another five to six percent of them are going to have some form of giftedness. And so do you accept that you are responsible for all those kids? It's not just oops, I'm going to identify them and then send them out for extra help. Do you buy into the idea that a modern teacher's job is to know how to work with those students integrated into the classroom? The evidence shows that sending them out is actually going to reduce their potential because they're missing out on class time, contextual learning, exchanges with their peers and age appropriate language. So we know there's negatives to that. So do you accept that you're responsible for all those students? One, two, three, four. List that on your paper please. Also related to teacher's responsibility is owning up, upping our game, understanding that the human brain is our organ. That's our professional organ of existence, all learning passes through this extremely complex organ. Perhaps maybe the most complicated organism in the universe. That means that the teaching learning dynamic cannot be this simplistic right brain, left brain, cartoony thing. We have to sort of buy into the idea that it is complicated and it's amazing and we teachers have to know a bit more about the brain. We have to know and understand and accept. Learning is kind of complicated and so the whole idea of teaching for dummies just is not something to buy into. This whole teaching learning dynamic is a lot more complicated and that is part of our job. And I have to say parenthetically, one of the reasons that as a profession teaching is not necessarily as respected as medicine for example is because we do tend to want these easy answers and instead of celebrating the complexity of the brain we look for these really quick and simple answers and I'd like to challenge you to say that you know I have the right attitude about this. I embrace the complexity of the brain and I know that I have to know a little bit more about it to be able to do my job well to understand how teaching and learning really works. My students heads. In continuing with this parallel between medicine and education do you accept that the first rule of education is the same as medicine before anything else do no harm. Now in medicine this means that you know your job is to protect you know the sacredness of life and the rest of that but within the teaching context this also means you know in a really practical level not to do things in the classroom that could potentially do harm. There's a lot of things that do harm in the classroom particularly for example neuro myths you know believing that people have learning styles does harm believing that boys and girls brains are different does harm believing that some kids are right-brained and some kids are left-brained those things do harm in education. Telling kids that they use you know they have only 10% of their brain and whoops they've used it all up or whatever does harm. These things limit the potential of individual students. It also does harm in education when we sort of halfway understand a methodology or an activity and we apply it you know those things do harm. So do we accept that we have that same first rule as medicine do no harm. Finally these last points have to do with valuing the important and impacting role that teachers have in students lives. Do you accept that in terms of student learning outcomes what happens within you know academic context that the teacher not the family has more influence. So we know that while the home is vital for good nutrition and it's responsible for levels of toxic stress and childhood teachers have a greater influence over student learning and academic achievement than families do. What do you think of that? It's a very very big shift. Again this does come from John Hattie's research. Do you buy into that? Do you accept that you have a very powerful role even more powerful than a kid's own parents when it comes down to believing that they can learn and their student learning outcomes within school context? Do you also believe that students reach the level of expectations that teachers place on them? This means that in a mixed ability class you know you have to be aiming high. Some teachers say well no I'm going to I'm going to shoot low at the lowest common denominator. I'm going to hit them in the middle I'm going to get get most of the students. Whereas the research shows that having high expectations actually pulls everybody up. What do you think about that? Do you agree with that? Do you have high expectations of all your students? And finally do you accept and believe that you are the decisive factor in the classroom? Going back again to this idea of mind-burning education there is a very interesting subdivision of neuroscience it's called social contagion. How is it that what individuals do in a classroom can change the dynamics, can change the mood in the classroom? How is it that a teacher can manage how others feel in the classroom? Can you be contagious in your feelings? You agree with that? One, two, three, four. Okay. Okay, these are the 15 key teacher attitudes that we're going to discuss further with you when we visit face to face and I'm really looking forward to seeing the ones that you honestly want clarification on because a key element as we said before is buying into these key attitudes. If you don't have the right attitudes it doesn't matter how many different activities or methodologies or strategies I teach you for your classroom you'll be better you'll be a good teacher but you will never be great so to be a great teacher you have to have buy into some of these bigger ideas so let's talk about them and let's really see the evidence so that you can at least at a rational level begin to you know fight with that inner feeling you have about what it is you need to change about your own attitudes. I'll just leave you with this beautiful poem by Jinot that reads I've come to a frightening conclusion I am the decisive element in the classroom it's my personal approach that creates the climate it's my daily mood that makes the weather as a teacher I possess a tremendous power to make a child's life miserable or joyous I can be a tool of torture or an instrument of inspiration I can humiliate or humor hurt or heal in all situations it's my response that decides whether crisis will be escalated or de-escalated and a child humanized or dehumanized think about that a bit and we'll talk about that even more when we when we see each other to round out your reflection I would like to ask you to write six sentences three things that you might have heard in this video that impacted you that was interesting very different something I didn't know before two things that are so interesting that you're going to share them with somebody else or you might keep research them and one thing that you will change about your personal or professional practice based on the information today and if you have any questions don't hesitate to write me please also explore the other resources that we have available on the website and other videos that might guide you if you are interested in taking on the challenge of the homework you'll also find on the web pages videos about 50 practical applications of mind-brain education science which explain information that comes from John Hattie's work on what influences student learning outcomes but select the ones that teachers have direct control over the things that teachers can do in their classrooms and gives a bit of an explanation on the neuroscience and the psychology behind why they actually work in education if you're willing to take that on that's great that continually reinforce your practice but immediately for today what I want you to do is reflect a little bit about those key attitudes because that is really at the heart at the core of great teaching thank you very much and I look forward to seeing you soon