Growth and Resilience: Bringing Systems Thinking Into Teaching and Learning

Purpose & objective

"People cannot understand what they cannot see." Thomas Kuhn

Take this metaphor as an example:
Our classrooms are gardens.
The students are plants that want to grow.
And teachers are the gardeners.

Challenge Addressed: (This is a generalization, there are people changing this! I am one of them!)
I want to fundamentally change how education works.

All to often, students are treated like a mono-crop, a product to be produced in a stressful high-risk environments. Think about how often you hear "Welcome to Class 101- this semester I will teach you..." Let's change that to: "Welcome to Class 101- I am so excited to see how you grow!"

The results of traditional education models are excellent at compliance training where students to perform for grades. Where are grades after they graduate?

That has to change as new generations inherent a society and world that will demand adaptation via life-long learning, and will require massively resilient and creative humans. So let's refocus our courses to produce these kinds of experiences. (Franklin)

Technology Interventions:
Teachers will gain a series of new relationships with tools that may be well known: collaborative whiteboards (I use Miro), blogs (I use Adobe Spark), surveys (Microsoft Forms), and a 24/7 dedicated channel for both real time and a-chronological interactions (I selected Discord)

Model Overview: (Sorry- this metaphor is doing a lot of work)
In this metaphor, our students can be considered ‘complex adaptive systems’ growing within a specific context. Students are constantly adapting to survive, grow, and hopefully thrive in our classrooms.

Every plant needs light, nutrients, and water to grow. The massive output of the teacher’s energy is the metaphorical light- it manifests as the attention our students need. The nutrients are the course content, including challenges, techniques, and concepts. That content needs to be synthesized by the students, just as plants take nutrients into their systems. The water, in this metaphor, is the iterative cycle of information exchange. As gardeners, we want to see our plants thrive! As teachers, thriving means our students encounter, synthesize, contextualize, critically consider and creatively utilize our course content (regardless of the subject matter).

Lesson Plan:
I will show a miro page and specifically focus on a course calendar. I'll demonstrate how the following flow of information is created to keep in mind systems thinking and energy management. Specifically laying out Grow Establish, Grow (Complicate Knowledge through scaffolding and iteration), and Maintain/Repair days. Lastly I'll show the audience how Innovation days happen around the same time as traditional midpoint of semesters and the final.

Evidence for Success:
I will share anecdotal evidence in the form of student feedback surveys.

Outline

This is my first ISTE proposal. I will tailor the time and interaction to the context of the talk.

Here are the major beats of my talk:

Introduction
-Topic overview
-Statement about the history and research of this research
-Introduce the main influences (Franklin, Dweck, Pink, Csikszentmihalyi, and West)

Part 1
-Garden Metaphor
-Connect metaphor to teaching and learning with growth mindsets (Dweck)
-Establish the need for change
-Introduce Systems Thinking and Energy (West) and directly connect to growth mindsets within teaching and learning
-Introduce the energetic phases of growth, maintain/repair, and innovation and how they to classroom flow
-Introduce Miro, and the calendar
-show how the model gets simply laid out on the calendar

Part 2
-Introduce the how some ISTE standards are baked into the evaluation mechanisms of the course
-Elaborate on the light, water, and nutrients metaphor and how it translates to teaching and learning
-Introduce how I harness intrinsic motivations (Csikszentmihalyi, and Pink) and revised tasks to include Autonomy, Mastery, and Purpose
-Share the how tasks and challenges get conveyed via Hyperdocks which sit on the calendar in Miro.

Part 3
-Introduce Adobe Spark and the expectations of each post students makes
-Demonstrate how students influence, support, and celebrate each other
-Share an example rubric, and share some examples of student feedback
-Connect all of the students working together to gardens growing

Conclusion
-Reiterate the idea of systems thinking in teaching and learning
-Give audience members permission to change their course structures

Supporting research

The Real World of Technology
Ursula Franklin
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1291973
-Encouraged the movement from product based education models to growth-based education models

Mindset: The New Psychology of Success
Carol Dweck
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/40745
-Growth Mindsets within Teaching and Learning

Drive: The surprising truth about what motivates us
Daniel Pink
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6452796
-Introduced the concepts of Motivation, Autonomy, Mastery, and Purpose

Good Business: Leadership, Flow, and the Making of Meaning
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/583484
-Introduced specifics on how active enjoyment and passive pleasures come together to create Intrinsic Motivation

Scale: The Universal Laws of Growth, Innovation, Sustainability, and the Pace of Life in Organisms, Cities, Economies, and Companies
Geoffrey West
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/31670196
-This book shared the primary concepts of Systems Thinking; specifically where systems expend their energy

Oh- I am an amateur gardener; so that influences me as well.