Читать книгу Leading Modern Learning - Jay McTighe - Страница 12

CHAPTER 1

Creating a Futures-Oriented Vision and Mission

How do we develop a powerful and informed view of the future to drive our vision for modern learning?

A clear, compelling, and shared vision of what a district or school would like to achieve for its students in the future should anchor any plan for revitalizing schools. However, the word vision has widely differing interpretations. Educators use it to characterize everything from a simple, isolated idea to an almost mystical inspiration for a whole new reality. Our conception of a vision lies somewhere in between. We are not talking about vision as merely a statement but rather as a guiding process. We develop a vision to sharpen our focus on the future and garner the commitment necessary for broad and meaningful change.

Do not confine your children to your own learning, since they were born in another time.

—Chinese Proverb

But aren’t all visions directed toward the future? In a word, no. As we noted in the introduction, we believe that an impediment to deep and lasting reform of education systems stems from educators’ inability to envision a compelling future of a truly modern learning environment. Too often, school visions and the strategies educators develop to meet them are concerned with fixing the present as opposed to embracing the future. If our aspirations do not spring from the understandings gained through an informed inquiry into the future, our students are likely to be constrained to an education rooted in the past.

A truly futures-oriented vision gets us to the future more directly. If real change is going to happen within our schools, we believe that we need to leapfrog the present and get right to the future. Consider how China leapfrogged from a primitive telecommunications infrastructure straight to mobile phones (The Economist, 2016). If China had plodded along the path of constructing traditional telephone landlines, this transformation would have taken decades. It is time for schools to consider meaningful leaps rather than tentatively tiptoeing forward.

To that end, this chapter focuses on how you or your core leadership group can develop a knowledge base and a future-focused orientation, engage in a community-based inquiry into the future, and consolidate that inquiry into an informed vision. From there, you will learn how communication plays a key role in these processes and begin to understand how you move from vision to mission. We wrap up by examining how you will come to define the operational outcomes you seek.

Developing a Knowledge Base and a Future-Focused Orientation

A knowledge base—one based on shared knowledge, understandings, and insights into the future our students will inhabit—is the necessary starting point for informing your school’s or district’s view of the future. It allows an education community to engage in a positive and knowledgeable dialogue about the future and the concomitant educational preparation for it. We cannot rest on existing perceptions, simple generalizations, preconceptions, or our own past experiences with education. A solid knowledge base, one built on expected trends and drivers of change in the future, will help the community gain the understanding and develop the foresight to drive the change it seeks.

Here, we are in luck. Volumes have been written about the future and, in particular, about the future of teaching and learning. Popular books abound on the subject, both in mainstream publishing and within the field of education. Indeed, education experts have added much to this discourse since the release of the first edition of this book. Several organizations engage in futures-oriented research, and their work adds great value to our understanding of how the future may evolve and emerge. (See appendix A, page 187.) One such organization is KnowledgeWorks, which is best known for developing seminal documents such as the Map of Future Forces Affecting Education (2006), 2020 Forecast: Creating the Future of Learning (2008), Forecast 4.0—The Future of Learning: Education in the Era of Partners in Code (2015), and Forecast 5.0—The Future of Learning: Navigating the Future of Learning (2018).

KnowledgeWorks (2018) explores five drivers of change.

1. Automating choices (such as the rise of artificial intelligence and personalized learning opportunities)

2. Civic superpowers (such as redefining civic engagement)

3. Accelerating brains (such as technology and changing cognitive abilities)

4. Toxic narratives (such as effects of negative environments on wellbeing)

5. Remaking geographies (such as volatility in times of rapid globalization and migration)

The report explores the various ways in which these drivers interact with three key players: (1) educators and students, (2) educational systems and structures for teaching and learning, and (3) various societal factors. It suggests possibilities for what modern learning could look like and poses a set of what if? provocations; for example:

What effects might artificial intelligence and automated systems have on learning and life? How might technology-enabled civic engagement reshape educational governance and decision making? How might educational accountability expand to support a broader perspective on learner development and well-being?

Building a deep knowledge base offers you a rich opportunity to engage different elements of your educational community in a futures-focused dialogue. Involvement of various school constituents is key, and having a plan to engage members of your community appropriately and inclusively is an important part of building a shared and informed understanding of the forces that will shape the future and your educational responses to them. You cannot predict the future, but you can engage with it to better understand what might emerge to affect your students and their schooling.

In addition to reading and discussing futures publications such as the KnowledgeWorks reports, you might enlist a speaker for a professional development day or an evening meeting for parents. Or, you could initiate a study group or book club with teachers. Viewing a series of thought-provoking, futures-oriented TED Talks is also a stimulating way to engage staff and parents in the process. Additionally, be sure to involve students, as they are generally keen to talk about their future.

Through deep, rich, and collaborative engagement, we can inform the hearts and minds of our communities with an eye to the future. This knowledge base is the foundation of your why? for school transformation, and you should not assume that all involved stakeholders will understand it. Without a foundation to help articulate the Why change? question and outline the drivers of change most pertinent to students’ lives, you may end up with a less powerful premise than you will need to move the work forward. In the next section, we outline a simple process for engaging your community in this important collaborative learning.

Notes From the Field

In our work with schools and districts, we note that there is often an impatience to get on with it. In the rush to identify things to implement, educators often don’t take the time to learn and to derive focus and meaning from that learning. If we asked a teacher why he or she didn’t just give all students the big ideas and understandings of the course on day one and save everyone a lot of time, that teacher would likely say something like this: “Learners need to arrive at understandings. They will never really learn if they don’t make meaning first.” That statement is correct. So, why would adult learners be any different?

Consider this cautionary note: it is important to develop a knowledge base before continuing to the next step of actually generating a vision for modern learning. Without a knowledge base, we cannot develop an informed view of the future and take appropriate actions in response to it. In the absence of solid information, community input is likely to be all over the map and impossible to forge into a unifying vision. You are likely to end up with a wide variety of personal perceptions (some informed, some not), assertions based on false assumptions and misunderstandings, and contradictory points of view that are not drawn from evidence or research. Assumption and personal preference without real knowledge or understanding will result in an unstable foundation incapable of supporting the vision of modern learning you seek.

Engaging in a Community-Based Inquiry Into the Future

A key part of our change leadership strategy involves engaging the school community in a collaborative exploration of potential futures based on a solid knowledge base. The goal of this exploration is to answer the questions: Why change? and Change to what? Visions constructed without this common rationale and foundation are often aspirational statements with little clarity, open to multiple interpretations, and full of “motherhood” statements. We believe that a vision and mission should be well-founded in a knowledge base and drive school strategy and actions.

The perspectives and interpretations from various stakeholders across the broader community enrich the collective visioning that emerges. It is our experience that leaders or leadership groups should implement a structure for fruitful engagement with the research and thought surrounding the future to maximize the effort of such an inquiry. We find it helpful to distribute the exploratory work by establishing subgroups that can delve deeply into specific areas of drivers of future change. These subgroups should include representation from various stakeholder groups and undertake the focused work that the whole community cannot. Groups of fifteen to twenty provide enough variety of perspective to engage in important discussions and collaborative learning. Groups of this size also help to parcel out various source material to ensure engagement with a wide range of research and thought. We have also worked with larger groups using this process, but logistics and facilitation can become overly complicated.

We also recommend providing a small set of informative starter resources to help the subgroups get started; however, it is also important to allow these groups to move beyond these starters if they so desire. Provocative TED Talks and materials from various think-tank organizations (such as KnowledgeWorks) are good places to begin. Your initial goal is to open eyes and challenge assumptions while helping people to understand that tomorrow will not look like yesterday (or even today). It’s important not to limit groups to a precooked set of resources, such as a limited number of advocacy materials that support one perspective or potential approach, for which you have already drawn your conclusions. At the same time, you don’t want to overwhelm people by having them start their research from scratch.

One practical technique for engaging groups in considering trends and drivers of change and imagining future possibilities is through the use of polarities and magic squares. We explore these in the next two sections.

Polarities

Polarities present a continuum displaying two endpoints reflecting different trends suggesting possible scenarios. For example, forces influencing 21st century schooling could push education to become more standardized on the one hand or highly personalized on the other. Other influences, like technology in conjunction with standardization, could cause learning to derive from a single source (such as all teachers in a school using the same standardized online curriculum) or from multiple sources (such as those teachers using a variety of open source courseware, online tutorials, mentors, internships, and independent projects). See figure 1.1 for two examples of polarities.

Figure 1.1: Two polarities.

By inquiring into various factors and trends, you can develop polarities that can help your community teams explore the numerous ways in which the future of education could unfold. Identifying these polarities is an important part of moving from developing a knowledge base to envisioning and designing a preferred future. Table 1.1 (page 14) presents potential polarities and accompanying questions.

Magic Squares

To see how the polarities and their accompanying questions in table 1.1 relate to one another and suggest potential futures, you can use a four-quadrant chart (sometimes called a magic square but more properly known as a Cartesian plane). By plotting two sets of polarities with accompanying questions, groups can workshop a variety of potential future scenarios. We have found these charts stimulate thinking and prompt rich conversations about the possible futures each quadrant suggests. Using the polarities we referenced in figure 1.1—standardized versus personalized and single sourced versus multisourced—we’ve created a sample magic square in figure 1.2 (page 15).

Using this chart, we now have four potential futures to explore with many shades between them. Quadrant A represents a potential future where education is standardized and has diversified the sources and suppliers of learning; quadrant D represents a potential future where learning is highly personalized, but the sources and suppliers of learning are not as diverse; and so on.

After graphing the polarities, compare the potential futures and have the group pick those it most prefers from each chart by discussing the following questions: Where are we currently? What would each potential future look like? What are the benefits and drawbacks of each? Where do we want to be? Figure 1.3 (page 15) represents the questions and challenges associated with the potential future that each quadrant of figure 1.2 suggests.

In a typical group workshop, mix four to twelve sets of polarities to create two to six four-quadrant charts. The ensuing discussion then results in the articulation of preferred futures from all the potential ones.

Table 1.1: Polarities and Sample Questions

Polarities	Sample Questions
Local versus global	Will learning focus on local or national contexts or adopt a global perspective?
Public sector versus corporate sector	Is the public school model going to remain the same, or will the private sector become more involved and influential?
Career readiness versus college readiness	Should students be prepared for work or for institutions of higher education?
Career oriented versus citizenship oriented	Is learning geared toward college and career orientation or toward citizenship and satisfying, productive lives?
Specialized versus generalized	Should students gain deep knowledge in a few specialized areas or learn across a broader spectrum?
Short-term accountability versus long-term goals	Should we focus on short-term accountability measures or on long-term goals that may be more difficult to assess?
Disciplinary knowledge versus transdisciplinary skills	Do we educate for acquisition of knowledge and skills within traditional disciplines, or do we develop transdisciplinary 21st century skills?
Employees versus employers	Do we want to develop students destined to be employees or employers?
Individual versus collaborative	Is success, in our context, an individual or collaborative endeavor?
Face to face versus distance	In the future, will students learn through face-to-face interactions or through online or distance-learning opportunities?
Diploma versus accumulated evidence of proficiency	Will student learning be authenticated through common graduation requirements (such as Carnegie Units) or through more personalized evidence of performance and accomplishment (such as digital portfolios and badges)?
Stability versus innovation	Are we a district, school, or department that values stability and structure, or do we value innovation and risk?
Connected versus independent	Are we a district, school, or department that sees itself as part of a connected network or as an independent entity?

Figure 1.2: Magic square chart.

Figure 1.3: Questions and challenges by quadrant

Once the group graphs and discusses various potential futures, you can consolidate and summarize the work as follows.

• Collect and collate the descriptions of all the different future points the quadrants describe. Together, they form a rich description of preferred futures from varied perspectives.

• Schedule time for the group to reflect on its work and package it for communication to others. Generally, it is best to transfer the completed charts into a digital format, such as a simple set of PowerPoint slides, and collate the descriptions of preferred futures to bring them together in a single document.

When you synthesize the descriptions of multiple preferred futures (each in the context of different mixtures of polarities), the result is a powerful vision for the future your community desires.

Next Steps

Once you have tasked the research and inquiry appropriately across representative groups, you must consolidate their resulting insights and deductions. You can accomplish this work of summarizing and agreeing on the core, essential elements of the research in two ways. One option is to set up an online system (such as a website where groups can post their results) that offers an efficient alternative to trying to coordinate schedules to bring groups together physically. Even a simple Google Doc (https://google.com/docs/about) can suffice for this purpose. Alternately, you can use facilitated workshops to structure each group’s dialogue and discussion to arrive at its members’ shared understandings about the future.

Regardless of the format, generative dialogue and community exploration can be an important part of opening your thinking to new possibilities and opportunities for an educational future. Community engagement in this collaborative inquiry will yield shared understandings and commitments that will be necessary to support and sustain the effort, especially during the challenges of planning and implementing the processes that will follow.

Consolidating a Community-Based and Informed View of the Future

Once the important work of engaging in a community-based, future-focused inquiry is complete, you must further consolidate the responses into shared and concise understandings about the future and the implications for learning and education. You will have created the raw material for this consolidation from some of the previous knowledge-building and generative tasks, such as working with the magic squares described in the previous section. It is best to do this as a two- to three-hour workshop so that your core leadership group can consider all the learning and insights from the subgroups. Figure 1.4 offers a protocol for facilitating a consolidation workshop.

Figure 1.4: Protocol for a consolidation workshop.

The results of this process, when massaged and streamlined, will represent not only a core definition of modern learning in your context but a community agreement that addresses both the Why change? question and the essence of a Change to what? vision. A simple technique for achieving clarity and consolidation involves the use of an if—then prompt: “If this is true, then the implications for learning are …” We’ve paraphrased this approach in figure 1.5. In other words, if our collective research and understanding that A, B, and C are true about the future for our students, then our focus should be on X, Y, and Z. Note that these statements are not one to one. Multiple If observations can combine into a single Then statement.

Figure 1.5: Sample output of developing an informed view of the future.

Because these are not assumptions (they are based in research and current thinking about the future), your leadership group should properly support and reference (cite) the insights and understandings derived from the inquiry process. One of the goals of this process is to emerge with a clear set of shared understandings and parameters for deciding on your highest learning needs and goals. This is the basis on which all future work will proceed. We very deliberately differentiate this visioning and goal-setting phase from deciding on the details of how we might achieve these goals. Too often, we have seen schools and districts rush to develop action plans for implementation before they have truly and clearly established the goals and principles (the vision) for such a selection. The result is often a set of potentially disruptive and disjointed programmatic implementations ungrounded in and unaccountable to clear articulations of the whys and whats.

Clarity and brevity are key elements of this stage. You do not need reams of documents to capture the essence of what you have learned and understood through this inquiry process. What you do need is a solid and succinct basis for shared understanding. One practical and valuable output from this process is to generate a Portrait of a Graduate, “a collective vision that articulates the community’s aspirations for all students” (Battelle for Kids, n.d.). The following are two examples from a public-school district and an independent school, respectively. The first is from the Catalina Foothills school district in Tucson, Arizona (Catalina Foothills School District, n.d.):

The Catalina Foothills School District (CFSD) is committed to building knowledge and skills that prepare students for college and career pathways. In addition to mastering essential academic content, CFSD is also focused on building a set of proficiencies that we believe students must learn in order to apply and transfer knowledge to problems or situations in the classroom and beyond the PreK–12 educational setting.

The site goes on to name specific deep learning proficiencies that include: citizenship, creativity and innovation, critical thinking and problem solving, communication, collaboration, and systems thinking (Catalina Foothills School District, n.d.).

The second such Portrait of a Graduate is from the Alexandria Country Day School in Alexandria, Virginia (Alexandria Country Day School, n.d.):

We seek to ensure that at the conclusion of their eighth grade year ACDS graduates are:

Independent Learners: The ACDS Graduate actively engages in the acquisition of academic, athletic, and artistic skills. He or she seeks opportunities to learn and exhibits the abilities, knowledge, confidence, and creativity to complete a given task independently….

Effective Communicators: The ACDS Graduate effectively exchanges ideas, experiences, and knowledge confidently and appropriately in person and using a variety of media….

Community Minded: The ACDS Graduate demonstrates an awareness of his or her impact on the community, values diversity, and has the skills to understand, cooperate, and empathize with others. The ACDS Graduate exhibits moral courage and takes an active role in the betterment of the greater community….

Balanced: The ACDS Graduate demonstrates a healthy understanding of the work/life balance, attends to his or her physical and mental health, and is willing to take prudent risks in pursuit of his or her goals.

Having a portrait like these enables you to communicate something more concrete that illustrates the type of student you want to collectively create. It is accessible and compelling to the broader community while establishing a focal point for directing ensuing decisions and actions.

If you’d like to learn more, EdLeader21 is a leading organization promoting the cultivation of 21st century skills and the new basics of modern education (Kay & Greenhill, 2013). The organization hosts an excellent website that offers many examples of graduate profiles along with a detailed protocol that districts and schools can use to engage stakeholders in developing their own Portrait of a Graduate (https://portraitofagraduate.org).

Communicating Futures Research With Key Stakeholders

You need to clearly communicate the understandings and implications of your futures research, along with the resulting Portrait of a Graduate, to the parents, students, community connections, and educators within the broader community. A variety of communication channels exist, including print and online newsletters, articles in local papers, district and school-based websites, social media like Facebook and Twitter, and informational videos posted on YouTube. We also recommend offering in-person sessions, such as information meetings, workshops, and informal coffees where people can actively explore and discuss. You cannot simply tell people that your leadership group’s interpretations are true; you need to help them to arrive at similar conclusions and understand your responses to those conclusions. The importance of building a collective understanding is crucial to gaining the support necessary for the acceptance of subsequent work and the challenges of change. Failure to plan and execute an effective communication plan can hinder subsequent efforts that arise from your desire to do better for your students.

Notes From the Field

The process of transforming a learning community toward meaningful modern learning is a long one, comparable to a relay race. It is not a race, per se, but it is a long and complex process that needs proper staging. To build the proper conditions for success at the next stage, effective change leaders must recognize that various stages of the race require various participants to be involved. The validity of this process is earned through the trust that it is both representative of the community and focused on what is best for our students (not the adults or the organization). Accordingly, community involvement and voice are essential. The word we must echo through everything.

Moving From Vision to Mission

When you have a vision, the next question to ask is: “How do we concretize our vision for modern learning into an actionable mission?”

By acting on the ideas presented in this chapter, you have collaboratively developed an informed, futures-oriented vision for your educational organization. You may also have imagined or created other components, such as a Portrait of a Graduate, to support communication and understanding. In this next stage, you move to transform your vision into a clearly articulated and actionable mission to guide the work at any level—district, school, or department.

A vision is aspirational; it is a projection of what a district, school, or department wants to become. Think of the mission as the organization’s core business; that is, what it is committed to achieving for its clients—the students it serves. An educational mission should thus serve to operationalize your vision in terms of the main outcomes of student learning based on the school’s vision of its desired future.

Unfortunately, schools do not always properly craft their mission statements. Some missions reflect a mixture of vague catchphrases and jargon. Consider the following examples.

• The XYZ School District believes that all students can learn and strives to help all learners reach their full potential.

• We will fully prepare our graduates for college or a career.

• In the ABC School’s social studies department, we nurture future citizens to be ready to succeed in a rapidly changing world.

Mission statements such as these are ambiguous and trite. They lack the specificity necessary to guide actions. They leave us asking: “What does it mean for students to reach their full potential?” “What does it mean to be fully prepared for college or a career?” “What exactly would we expect a future citizen to do?” “What learning outcomes will make it more likely that students will be able to succeed in a rapidly changing world?”

Another common characteristic of poorly constructed mission statements is a focus on what the educational institution or program will provide for its students rather than on student accomplishments. The following are examples.

• The QRS School District is committed to providing a warm and nurturing environment in partnership with parents to support all our learners.

• The TYG International School offers the rigorous International Baccalaureate Program along with a wide range of electives to prepare students for future success.

• All faculty in the mathematics department at NOP Prep have advanced degrees and many years of teaching experience.

Such descriptions may sound appealing, but notice that being warm, nurturing, and rigorous are descriptions of means, not ends. They state what the district, school, or department will offer rather than specifying the long-term learning outcomes for students. Indeed, we find that organizations often confuse the environment, program, teachers’ credentials, and facilities—all means for achieving a goal—with the goal itself.

So, how do you move from a vision of what you believe is most important for your students to achieve to an articulation of a mission that truly guides your actions? Our recommendation is straightforward: an educational mission statement should expressly state the desired outcomes in terms of student learning. More specifically, we contend that the outcomes for a modern education should have several distinguishing characteristics.

• They are long-term in nature; for example, they specify exit outcomes to be developed over time in school.

• They are performance based and involve transfer; for example, they specify what learners will be able to do with their learning when confronted with new situations.

• They call for autonomous performance; for example, they establish independent performance by the learner without coaching or prompting as the goal.

• They reflect the most important outcomes of schooling for a modern era; for example, they need to represent the learning priorities identified in the portrait of the graduate or other such statements.

Some mission-related educational outcomes fall within traditional subject areas (disciplinary), while others cut across disciplines (transdisciplinary). In general, we expect to find disciplinary outcomes rooted in the mission statements of subject-based departments (for example, in mathematics or visual art), while district- and school-level missions typically identify transdisciplinary outcomes, such as 21st century skills and dispositions. Here are a few examples of such mission statements for a district or school as well some as for discipline areas.

The mission of GHI School is to develop learners who are independently able to:

Function as self-directed learners

Apply critical thinking and ethical judgment when analyzing issues and taking actions

Effectively communicate ideas for a variety of purposes and audiences using varied media

The mission of the mathematics department is to develop learners who are independently able to:

Effectively use strategies and sound mathematical reasoning to tackle never-seen-before problems involving real-world and theoretical challenges

Develop and critique arguments based on mathematical or statistical claims and evidence

The mission of the history department is to develop learners who are independently able to:

Use knowledge of patterns in history to better understand the present and prepare for the future

Critically appraise historical claims and analyze contemporary issues

Participate as an active and civil citizen in a democratic society

Table 1.2 shows examples of both types of mission-based outcomes.

Table 1.2: Two Types of Mission-Based Outcomes

Disciplinary Outcomes	Transdisciplinary Outcomes
Effective writer	Critical thinker
Mathematical reasoner	Effective collaborator
Creative artist	Self-directed learner

Although we advocate framing the mission of a district, school, or department (or program) in terms of student learning outcomes, there is often a need to define and describe these outcomes, especially those that are transdisciplinary in nature. West Windsor-Plainsboro Township District, a public school district located in northern New Jersey, engaged in a unique and effective process for clarifying its four transdisciplinary outcomes by declaring the following characteristics in its district’s mission: (1) self-directed learner, (2) responsible and involved student and citizen, (3) creative and practical problem solver, (4) and effective team member (M. Wise, personal communication, 2012).

The distric started with an end-of-the-school-year faculty meeting (to plan for the upcoming year) in which teachers were seated in heterogeneous groups of mixed subjects and grade levels (five to six people per group) and asked to brainstorm performance indicators for one of the four transdisciplinary outcomes. Each group recorded its initial list on chart paper and posted the large sheets on the walls of the meeting room. Then, the entire staff participated in a gallery walk to view the lists of other groups and used sticky notes to propose edits to the draft lists. Predictably, the gallery walk generated rich professional conversations among the faculty members.

Following the ninety-minute meeting, a designee typed up the lists and proposed edits for a committee representing various roles (administrators and teachers of various grades and subjects) to synthesize. Later in the summer, a school administrator emailed the draft lists of indicators for the four transdisciplinary outcomes to the staff with an invitation to review the document, propose any final edits, and return their comments by a designated date in August. When the faculty returned for the start of the school year, the committee distributed the final set of staff-generated performance indicators at a meeting, along with the directions for next steps.

Next came the innovative step of the process—each homeroom teacher in the secondary schools engaged his or her students in the same exercise that the faculty undertook! Over four days during the homeroom periods, teachers led their students through the process of considering how a person would demonstrate each of the four transdisciplinary outcomes through their actions and behaviors. Students worked in small groups to brainstorm indicators. They then shared, discussed, and synthesized these. (Teachers did not show students the faculty lists of indicators since one of the goals was to have students think deeply about each outcome and not just repeat indicators from the adults’ lists.) Finally, the committee created a composite list that reflected a synthesis of the ideas and language of both teachers and students. Figure 1.6 (page 30) lists an example of these results based on the transdisciplinary outcome of a self-directed learner.

Figure 1.6: Faculty- and student-generated lists of performance indicators.

The benefits of this process should be evident—all school community members, students, and staff have a clear and agreed-on set of valued outcomes and associated indicators. Even if students are not involved, the process of operationally defining outcomes and identifying performance indicators still brings a mission to life. The resulting lists of indicators serve as targets for teaching and learning, parameters for teachers’ assessments, and guides for students’ self-assessment of their growth in these important capacities. We explore this idea in greater detail in chapters 3 and 4.

Notes From the Field

Mission statements often derive from a collaborative writing session that focuses on how they read and whether they sound powerful. But missions are not mottos; they are the organization’s reason for being, and they clarify how it will set out to achieve those goals.

When writing a mission statement, we suggest avoiding flowery and inert language that evidence cannot observe or support. It is nice to say that your organization wants to “empower all students,” but what does that mean, and how will you know it has achieved success? We encourage the districts and schools we work with to focus on goal clarity within the mission and the supporting frameworks they will use to design and assess whether that learning is taking place.

Two questions that we often ask learning communities to help them avoid the pitfalls of an obscure or vague mission statement are:

1. “What does your mission statement look like?”

2. “How will you know that it is being achieved?”

When a district or school can answer these two questions with specificity, we know it has something it can act on and to which it can hold itself accountable.

Conclusion

In this chapter, we explored ways of engaging a school community in developing an informed view of the future and considering the implications for the modern learning that will prepare students for the opportunities and challenges they will encounter in their lives. We discussed ways of moving from a vision of a graduate to an actionable educational mission designed to achieve both disciplinary and transdisciplinary learning outcomes. We offered practical processes for agreeing on operational definitions and observable indicators of the outcomes we seek.

A compelling vision and mission for modern learning are necessary, but not sufficient. The sobering reality is that most districts and schools are not currently structured to achieve the modern learning outcomes that we have discussed. Existing systems need alignment with these outcomes so our staff and students can achieve them. In the next chapter, we explore two systemic frameworks for working backward from these stated outcomes to design the actions necessary to achieve them.