Sara goes to a great training and gathers lots of really good ideas that she wants to use immediately! She is excited because one idea directly addresses something she has been struggling with for a while. This approach seems perfect! On Monday morning, Sara starts using the new approach. She does it exactly the way it was discussed during training. All goes well for the next couple of days. Then she hits a glitch. They did not discuss this problem in training! Sara tries another way. That doesn’t work either. She KNOWS that the trainer would have the answer if only she had her e-mail address and the nerve to contact her and ask her a question. Instead, she tries a few more times, continues to struggle, wishes someone else had gone to the training with her, and then goes back to her old way of doing it. At least it’s familiar!
It is widely recognized that we adults learn best when we are able to apply what we are learning in the context in which we will use the new information (Wlodkowski, 2003). In order to be an excellent teacher, supervisor, or administrator, one needs to develop a great many skills, each of which develops over time, after a great deal of practice and ongoing feedback and support from others. Chess is a complicated game but it only has 50,000 possible moves—far fewer possibilities than can occur in a single minute in any classroom, staff meeting, or home visit! Yet master chess players invest between 50,000 – 100,000 hours of practice with feedback in order to become expert in the 50,000 chess patterns (Chase & Simon, 1973; Simon & Chase, 1972). Like chess players, early childhood educators need a mindset and intentional system that assure follow-up and ongoing skill building.
Teachers need to practice new teaching techniques in the classroom and modify their approach in response to children’s responses, as well as feedback from colleagues, mentors, or supervisors who can see exactly what the teacher is doing rather than what s/he is trying to do. Supervisors and administrators need ongoing feedback about new supervision approaches and techniques to assure that what they are intending is as effective as it can be. Sara met challenges she did not learn about during her initial training and she needed ongoing input and support in order to incorporate the new ideas into her work.
Fountas et al. (2000) found that teachers need concrete, practical suggestions from change agents in order to make changes. Moffet (2000) clearly showed that innovations were successful only when practitioners received adequate, high-quality assistance when they went back into their classrooms. Indeed, the amount and quality of the follow-up support determined whether an innovation flourished or died after the training was complete. Both SpecialQuest and StoryQUEST found that programs who participated actively in follow-up made substantially more progress than did teams that did not embrace follow-up (Knapp-Philo, 2002; StoryQUEST Final Report, 2004).
Once we accept that new learning needs to be connected to a process of ongoing learning and follow-up, we must then think and plan differently. Training becomes the first step toward incorporating new strategies and techniques into the work. But, three more steps remain. The work of learning to master a new skill is just beginning. The second step is practicing and receiving feedback and support to develop new skills. This is where Sara got lost—she had no follow-up and no way to get feedback or to have her questions answered. The third step involves ongoing thinking and planning about how to continue to improve and refine the new skill. Finally, the fourth step moves to creating new ways to use the strategy or technique. The hallmark of mastering a skill is being able to use it in innovative and unique ways. This is the goal of professional development—to support staff to become highly accomplished and skilled, which takes time, practice, follow-up and feedback, and ongoing effort.
The responsibility for this ongoing learning process is shared by learners and their leaders. Training plans always incorporate follow-up. All learners have a mindset that expects to work on skill development after every training and learning opportunity. Leaders develop a culture of continuous improvement that expects that staff at all levels need and will receive on-going follow-up and support for all new practices and innovations. Systems and budgets support follow-up. The following Japanese proverb is a mantra for organizational learning:
One thousand days to learn; ten thousand days to refine.
REFERENCES
Chase, W. G. & H. A. Simon. 1973. Perceptions in chess. Cognitive Psychology, 4: 33-81.
Fountas et al. (2000)
Knapp-Philo, J. 2002. An exploration of training and change in practice in infant/toddler programs. Unpublished dissertation, University of Connecticut.
Simon, H. A. & W. G. Chase. 1972. On the development of the process. eds. L. B. Resnick & L. E. Klopfer. Information Processing in Children. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.
U.S. Department of Education. StoryQUEST Final Report. 2004. Washington, D.C.
Joanne Knapp-Philo, Ph.D., is the Project Director for the National Head Start Family Literacy Center at the California Institute on Human Services at Sonoma State University. T: 800-849-7810; E: Joanne.Knapp-Philo@csuci.edu
