PILOTed

Jack Chorowsky on Education Publishers and Education

Schools need to increase student learning. Publishers need to sell products. This interview with industry veteran Jack Chorowsky explores the disconnect, and talks about what publishers can do about it.

Jack, what do you do?

I work for a New York investment management firm; we invest largely in public equities across industries. My particular focus is on media, education, and technology. Previously, I worked at Pearson and Kaplan, in general management and product management roles, helping them build out digital products and platforms.

We first met at the IIR Education Industry Investment Forum in March. You were exhibiting some amount of frustration with the presentations of some of the companies.

Yes, people were describing how this product or that product was supposed to drive K12 student performance. But K12 publishers go to market in silos, lacking product integration and a solution oriented view, which should matter if you are focused on results.

For example?

Consider formative assessment. Publishers are focused on their testing content, because it’s what they do. They produce items that have great reliability and validity and are correlated nicely to standards. But ultimately, formative assessment is designed to deliver differentiated instruction. The test makers don’t behave like they understand the problems involved in delivering differentiated instruction.

The test generates a result -- then what? The teacher must figure out how to take those results and actually deliver the right instruction to the right students. That is a very different way of teaching than what they have done before. If we are asking teachers to make this big shift, how are we supporting them? The industry could be doing a lot more.

And how should it be done differently?

I would ask where is their pain, what can you do to alleviate that pain, and then how do you implement most effectively. Publishers are acting like content developers—they are asking what content do we develop, what can we sell—rather than what does the customer need?

I’m not sure that publishers appreciate the importance of integrating formative assessment with robust just-in-time support: the right prescriptive feedback, the right materials for students and teachers, appropriate professional development, all at the moment in time when it’s most needed.

The company that understands this will start breaking down silos to produce a more integrated solution. Professional Development, for example, won’t be treated as a separate product.

Don’t some of the publishers offer that?

They may have the different pieces of the puzzle, but I don’t think they put them together very well in a customer-focused package that helps drive performance in the classroom. One might take the view that differentiated instruction requires a culture change, and that to execute a culture change you need not just the right materials but someone on the ground to help make things happen. For example, in some of the schools that have been most successful in this area you find teachers getting together, comparing notes and brainstorming what to do in their classes. Publishers could ask: how can we promote and support these instructional team activities.  That’s just one idea, but it’s not the way companies are talking about the problem or their solutions.

This sounds more like services rather than products.

Yes, we’re talking about a service component to delivering formative assessment. Maybe you need a services organization. Maybe curriculum, instruction and testing companies offer to put people on the ground if districts buy into their solution at a certain level.

Here’s the problem: the publisher sells a product to the district. Then the district dumps it on their teachers. What resources and assistance do the teachers and the principals have to make it successful? Unless there is a solution to that problem, unless teachers have a way to buy into the differentiated instruction approach, you’re not going to get widespread implementation, and you’re not going to get results.

But, what is the likelihood of having money for those resources?

Districts have money for Professional Development; they pay for PD now. I know this is a finite funding stream, but there must be a way.

How can you do it in a way they can afford?

The services commitment doesn’t have to be so substantial that it breaks the bank. You could imagine a publisher-sponsored master teacher coaching an instructional team once a month. That could be affordable.

Or, maybe they could partner with PD or services firms who do that well already.

One way to phrase this to publishers is to make them see that a services component could facilitate the sale of formative assessment?

Right – we’re talking about a solution sale here.

My world view has been shaped by a consulting project in which I participated years ago; the project looked at schools that were achieving success with differentiated instruction. The study found that the big publishers were not the ones whose formative assessment products generated the best results. Successful implementations tended to be home grown; schools were developing their own tests in-house or were working closely with vendors on custom projects. Why? Because the link between tests and curriculum was tight and right, there was much more buy-in from all concerned, and they were more focused on implementation: on changing the teaching culture, on giving teachers the time, resources, and support to take assessment results and make them actionable.

Publishers need to understand, it is their job to deliver results; they have to know what moves the needle in the classroom. If there is a strong belief that differentiated instruction makes a difference, publishers need to figure out how to make that strategy a success. The data says that where it is well implemented it can be.

You’re saying that curriculum, assessment, PD, and support should all be linked.

Absolutely. Teachers don’t care about product categories. They just have needs and objectives.

It all comes back to customer focus. If you sat down with a product manager for paper towels for P&G, you could ask her a question about how people use paper towels, and she knows everything about what they wipe up, how they are used, how they are bought, etc. If you asked a publisher what they know about how their formative assessment products are used in the classroom, I bet their knowledge of teachers is not nearly as good as P&G’s knowledge of the Bounty customer. Why? It’s not that the data and understandings are not available; it’s because of the mindset.

I don’t know how much P&G spends on market research and related R&D for Bounty, but I’m sure that it’s a sizeable number. Now what happens in educational publishing? In a publisher with thousands of employees, how many are dedicated full-time to understanding how their products are used in the classroom? I bet that number is very small – in the single digits.

The level of investment in this function is simply not commensurate with its importance. You can only help teachers if you really understand them and what’s happening on the ground.

What is going to drive improvement?

If the question is how can the industry drive improvement, I’d say a renewed, more expansive, more creative focus on what works and how education companies can partner with schools to generate results. For example, I’d be looking at successful school reform organizations. KIPP is moving the needle, as are Achievement First and Uncommon Schools. If I were a publisher or a services provider, I’d be wondering whether I could learn something valuable from the experience of these organizations in challenging districts. What are they doing on the ground? Are there take-aways for my publishing program, or my approach to service delivery? Isn’t this worth exploring?

Kaplan is also nipping at the heels of the publishers in a handful of districts. And we are beginning to see an increasing focus on open source content models. Education doesn’t move fast, but anyone who believes they can sit back and continue collecting their checks is going to be surprised over the next 5-10 years.

Lou Gerstner changed IBM from a computer manufacturer into a solution provide. It was a painful process, but now IBM is thriving. If IBM can do it, maybe we'll see similar changes from the educational publishing industry.

Thanks, Jack.

Mindgames

This issue of PILOTed is about how the mind works in mysterious ways.

The first example comes from a 6 minute video on subliminal messages. It is well worth spending the time to look at the video, before reading on. In fact, the other Derren Brown videos are fascinating as well, for example, How to take someone's wallet, just by asking.

As a summary of the subliminal messages video, two advertising executives, on their way to a meeting, were exposed to the entrance to a zoo, various images of angel’s wings and harps, and a picture of a bear. They were then asked to develop an ad campaign, and lo and behold, the campaign incorporated all of the images that they’d seen on the way to the meeting.

It is tremendously powerful. If you can scaffold the right images into a student’s experience, can you better prepare the student to learn? How could this be incorporated into learning materials?

This link came from Stephen Downes’s OLDaily.

The second example is around Amy Sutherland, who originally published a column in the NY Times about how she learned how to train her husband by watching animal trainers. This also came from Stephen Downes’s OLDaily. Successful animal trainers respond to and reward behaviors that they want, and ignore behaviors that they do not want. The theory is that behavior that elicits a response is behavior that gets repeated; even negative feedback can serve to reinforce a behavior. When a subject does something wrong, you apply least reinforcing syndrome (LRS), or show no response. She has expanded these topics in a book, What Shamu Taught me About Life, Love, and Marriage.

Of course, first she had to understand what her husband liked. She also had to understand that she needed something for him to do; you don’t train animals not to do something, you train them to do something else instead. And, she had to understand that you cannot build a new behavior in just one step, she had to figure out what actions meant progress.

Sutherland used to nag her husband. Now she ignores him when he is performing in ways that she disagrees with, and rewards him when he acts in ways that agree with her.

I wonder about the application of this in schools. Obviously, when you are dealing with a classroom of students, there are a whole raft of negative behaviors that a teacher cannot just ignore. But, what about in eLearning? Is there a way that we can better motivate students and provide more positive feedback? Are there ways that eLearning can find positives even in wrong answers?

Could someone mention to my wife that positive feedback is even possible? I’m sorry, what I meant to say is, “thank you dear for all your attempts to communicate with me, even when I’ve been distracted.”

The third example comes from a WNYC Radiolab podcast on deception. This podcast takes about an hour, and there are four parts. The first deals with a snake capable of lying. The second is a story about a person who has defrauded dozens of people, and the experiences of those who know her. The third explains how the brains of pathological liars—those who seem compelled to tell lies—are different from those of the rest of us; they have more highly developed connections or white matter in the pre-frontal cortex regions of their brains.

It’s the fourth segment that is more applicable to education. This segment focuses on the times we deceive ourselves. It seems that people who are better at deceiving themselves are more productive and effective and are happier than those who have a more accurate view of reality. Some swimmers, for example, are able to believe that they are unbeatable every time they race. Even when they start out a season doing the same times as others, the ones who have deceived themselves into the belief that they cannot be beaten end up with faster times.

Can we help student learn to think about themselves and the world in a way that helps them succeed? Perhaps they don’t need to really deceive themselves in order to reach peak performance, perhaps they just have to choose a point of view that spurs them toward success.

One current rage is the book and video, The Secret. The secret to The Secret is the law of attraction: that which we think about, happens. A more scientifically based exposition of this general philosophy can be found in Carol Dweck’s book, The New Psychology of Success. If we can inculcate students with the growth mindset as Dweck terms it, can we help them achieve more?

Can this be embedded in our teaching materials? Can schools deploy it?

Derren Brown creates an entertaining video and shows how one can employ subtle messaging, messaging that isn’t even consciously seen, in order to influence behavior. Amy Sutherland uses animal training techniques, specifically positive reinforcement and least reinforcing syndrome to pattern desired behaviors in her family. Two psychologists are out at a bar one night and come up with a way to test whether people are prone to deceiving themselves, and then other psychologists apply that test to determine that those who are capable of deceiving themselves are also capable of higher levels of achievement and happiness.

Here are three techniques with the capability to change student performance that were not designed with education in mind.

A Vision for Professional Development in Education

The Professional Development – Teaching Connection

At FETC this past week, I had a great discussion about education with Don Hall, CIO of the Muskogee County School District in Columbus Georgia, and Cory Linton, Executive Vice President of School Improvement Network.

We had just attended a focus group on School Improvement Network that was put together by the BLE group. School Improvement Network is a client of ours. Their fastest growing service is PD360, on demand online professional development based on The Video Journal of Education’s 17 years of publishing 8–12 PD videos a year. Don had been a member of the focus group, and the three of us just got into a discussion on our vision of how PD should fit within comprehensive education framework.

Don led our talk, and most of these ideas come from his vision. Don started out describing the following diagram of how good instructional material works with teachers, students, and classrooms.

A teacher looks at a student, and can start at any of three different places. She can look at what he needs to learn, or learning standards. She can start by using specific resources or methods to teach him what she believes he should learn next. Or, she can employ an assessment to find out what he knows, and what he has yet to learn. As an industry, we’re starting to do a good job of integrating those three, assessments are starting to point out what learning standards have and have not been achieved, while also pointing to learning resources that will help the student achieve the next step. Learning resources are being linked to specific learning objectives, with the goal of then fitting in with the way the students will be assessed.

The other side of the issue is to ensure that the teacher has the knowledge and skills to be able to use the standards, resources, and assessments to achieve superior results. Existing development plans and support resources include district wide professional development, coaching, and learning communities.

But the idea of integrating the specific information a teacher needs, at the time she needs it, in the way that she is most receptive to learning, is the next step and is illustrated by the diagram below.

How might this work?

Let’s say a new teacher, who has been schooled in the ideal world of classroom teaching, confronts her first real life hurdle. Wouldn’t it be great if she could pull up a resource that would tell her about different ways to handle the hurdle? And then, what if she could watch an exceptional teacher actually employ one of those solutions in a classroom? And then, if she wanted, learn why that method works?

Historically, the teacher would go ask the teacher next door for advice. But, as Don pointed out, couldn’t this be the continual perpetuation of bad teaching practices?

The ideal situation would be, for all teachers, to have experts available to describe what to do, show how to do it, and explain how to do it, right when they need it most, and tied to the learning standards, instructional resources, and assessments that they use every day. This diagram might look like this:

A teacher would thus be able to obtain the information about the standards each student needed to achieve, what he needed to learn, and would be able to skillfully use the available resources to fashion an appropriate intervention in an effective manner at the right time.

Wouldn’t that be great?

If you want to continue the discussion, Don Hall is at the Muscogee County School district, http://www.mcsdga.net. Cory Linton can talk more about how School Improvement Network is working with publishers, education experts, and school districts, and can be reached via http://www.schoolimprovement.com, or we welcome comments to these articles at http://academicbiz.typepad.com.

12 Ways To Get Your Message Across

Whether you teach, manage, sell, or coach, there are times when you need to get a message across to someone else. I saw a great six and a half minute video by Seth Stevenson, on the twelve “master formats” of presenting information in commercials, that apply equally to any time one as to inform or convince.

The twelve are

1. The demo: showing or explaining the facts or features.
2. Show the need: demonstrate what is currently wrong, and then showing the way to fix the problem.
3. Symbol or analogy: use some metaphor or exaggeration to demonstrate your point.
4. Comparison: compare your point to something that is suboptimal.
5. Exemplary story: weave a tale (true or fictional) to demonstrate your point.
6. Benefit causes story: show some beneficial outcome (which could be an exaggeration), and then demonstrate how your point resulted in that outcome.
7. Tell it: use a testimonial, often an authoritative figure or a trusted friend.
8. Ongoing character: over time, create some character who becomes recognized; this might be a company founder or a fictional character like Smokey the Bear, who was used to instruct on preventing forest fires.
9. Exaggerated graphic: similar to #3, but use of images to drive the point instead of words.
10. Association or bandwagon: describe or show others who are following your point, especially others who your audience might want to emulate.
11. Unique property: highlight something unique about your point or solution, something that can be more easily remembered or that can cause someone to do a double take.
12. Parody: adapt something that is already familiar, like using a Jeopardy game instead of a quiz.

These twelve methods were first cataloged by Donald Gunn, former creative director for Leo Burnett. They were brought to my attention by Stephen Downes’s OLDaily.

Stevenson points out that an interesting activity is to catalog commercials while you watch television, to see which techniques they employ. This will make your recognition sharper in addition to providing some mental exercise as you otherwise veg out watching commercials. You’ll find that some commercials focus on one of these techniques, while others draw on more than one, but this list is all-encompassing.

Stevenson also mentions how the list of twelve can provide a handy inspiration point for presentations, papers, or articles. If you can’t come up with what to say, go over the list and try to visualize how you would present your points in each of the methods. He credits this as a great cure for writer’s block.

Minimally Invasive Education

Let's say you had a group of impoverished kids, living on about $1.00 (US) per day, and barely literate. Could they teach themselves how to operate a computer?

In 1999, Dr. Sugata Mitra placed a computer with a high speed Internet connection in a hole in a slum wall and left it there to be used, unsupervised, by children. What do you think happened?

20,000 school principals had told Dr. Mitra that this type of experiment would yield nothing. Yet, after replicating the experiment in slums throughout India and Cambodia, reaching over 40,000 children by 2004, in 2005, Dr. Mitra received India's highest award for Innovation in Information Technology, the Dewang Mehta Award.

Yes, the children taught themselves how to use a mouse, how to click on a link, how to find web sites:

We were watching on the surveillance camera. We noticed that one child would experiment with the mouse and by trial and error discover that by pressing down on a folder, a new icon would come up. He would then tell his friends of his discovery. They would then try it out. Another one would discover something else and pass on that information, and very soon the whole group knew how it worked. The best part of this experiment was that, despite the fact that the games and links on our computer were all in English, the children figured it out. It took them a little time to grasp the links between the icons and what they could do with it. We then tried out the same experiment in Shivpuri (MP) and Madantusi (UP) to see whether the same premise held for different geographical locations and cultural backgrounds.

We underestimate kids' abilities and desire to learn. We don't necessarily have to break down lesson plans, schedule every minute, assess, and remediate. Sometimes, all we need to do is give them the opportunity to unleash their curiosity.

You can read more about the "Hole in the Wall Experiment" here. To find out the results of the study, click here.

This experiment was initially brought to my attention by the Guy Kawasaki's Signal Without Noise Blog.

Fast Learning and Mirror Neurons

Educators, trainers, and teachers are all looking for that one spark that will speed learning. And, while there is probably no one key element that will universally make everyone learn faster, mirror neurons are the closest we’ve been able to come. In fact, mirror neurons are plastic, they can be made more or less effective through outside influences. This issue of PILOTed is written by Herbert Weisburgh. Herb is a Junior at Babson College, although he’ll be spending next semester in Turkey.

Teaching means nothing without learning. It is a simple truth that every educator, academic or otherwise, has had to deal with. But why should children learn faster? Why do some teaching methods result in learning whereas others lead only to frustration? Some scientists think they have finally arrived at the semblance of an answer.

Children learn languages faster than adults. I was always skeptical about such a counterintuitive concept. If I can understand complex calculus and poetry, far beyond the capacity of most children, how could they be able to develop language proficiency with so much more ease? Shouldn’t the vast quantity of knowledge I have accrued over the years make the acquisition of more that much easier. After all, practice makes perfect. Sure, all the proof points to the fact that children do learn more quickly, but no one seemed to know why, until recently.

The theory goes something like this. Remember that old saying, “monkey see, monkey do;” well, it proved truer than was predicted. When humans (and primates) see or hear an action, to their brain, it is just like they are performing the action themselves. The tiny cells responsible for this remarkable reaction are mirror neurons, aptly named for mirroring observed actions through the chemical pulses they give off. Mirror neurons account for babies’ ability to learn to move, walk, and talk. They also explain why most people respond better to demonstrations than instructions.

A picture is worth a thousand words, so a moving, three dimensional, talking picture must be worth several thousand. In fact, one demonstration can be more powerful than an entire lesson. Try explaining to a child unfamiliar with the cooking process how to beat an egg. It is much easier and faster to just show him. The discovery of mirror neurons and their function may seem simple, but its implications are so vast that mirror neurons are expected to be comparable in impact to genes.

In 1980, Leonardo Fogassi and Vittorio Gallese of the University of Parma made a revolutionary observation. One’s brain reacts the same way watching someone else do something as when he is performing the action himself. This breakthrough discovery was not fully appreciated until 2000, when V.S. Ramachandran introduced the discovery to the forefront of science. Many experiments on primates and humans later, most of the scientific community has recognized the existence and purpose of mirror neurons.

In fact, mirror neurons have been a hot topic for research and discussion in the scientific community. Even more recently, the possible implications of the mirror neuron discovery and subsequent research have been introduced and debated in education. It will certainly affect the way people teach and understand how others learn, but there may be more substantial changes. Field trips may become a more critical teaching tool. The new trend of technology-driven learning may take a dramatic turn, because reading words off a screen is simply not as effective as watching others perform. Literature and other classical studies could become downplayed in favor of a more practical, physical course of study.

Streaming video and podcasts could be the homework assignments of the future. In classroom learning, chalkboards could return to even the most advanced math classroom. Instead of learning about history, students could live it! Everyone knows it is a lot more fun; now, we know it could be more educational too. Television may even become a preferred teaching method. My five-year-old-self is screaming “woo-hoo!” Hell, my twenty-year-old-self is saying that it “beats sleeping through another boring textbook.”

Still not convinced of the power of mirror neurons? I do not blame you. Conduct your own experiment. It is not hard to do. Watch a sad drama film and witness how you have the urge to cry along with the actors. Watch and listen to someone yawn. You will probably have the impulse to do the same, even if you are not at all tired. Next time someone is laughing, focus on them and relax. You will feel the impulse to laugh, even if you have no idea what was funny in the first place.

There was a recent study at the University College of London that tested mirror neurons in dancers, using video clips of ballet and capoeira dancing. It was found that people trained in an activity show more mirror neuron activity when watching that activity than those who have not had similar training. The implications of this study are obvious in athletics and other physical activity, but the same concept could apply to academic pursuits. The effect of mirror neurons is amplified by study.

If I speak Spanish in front of two people, one who has taken a course in the language and one who has not, the expected result would be that the person who has taken Spanish would be more stimulated.

Mirror neurons are not only important for teaching people, they can also improve basic human interaction. There is no evolutionary advantage in having a mirror neuron system, except for the ability to interact. If humans were not social creatures, we would still have digestive and motor systems, but mirror systems only become useful in social beings. In order to take advantage of mirror neurons, therefore, it is necessary to be in a social setting, not by yourself. Mirror neurons explain the appeal of watching sports, because if you know the sport, you are actually living through the game with the athletes themselves, explaining reactions like winces, increased energy levels, excitement, anger, and frustration. In a healthy brain (since there is evidence of problems with the mirror neurons in people with autism, this would obviously not apply), utilizing techniques to maximize mirror neuron stimulation could have a positive impact on social skills.

If you know that the act of laughing in itself has the ability to cheer someone up, it can be a powerful tool. Inversely, a frown and a sulk would have the opposite reaction. As a social being, humans have developed a copycat impulse. Peer pressure can simply be from watching. If one person is eating, others around may get hungry just from watching, because they have the impulse to eat. A good way to encourage behavior is to do.

Education is highly dependent on the proper functioning of mirror neurons. The goal of teaching is to establish and improve the functionality of parts of the brain and skills associated with them. Without mirror neurons, there is no basis on which to build learning. Learning would still be possible, just not as easy.

Another cause for interest is the psychological implications of mirror neurons. Not only is there evidence that empathy is directly linked to the mirror system, basic human interaction, understanding, intuition, social behavior, relationships, and caring may develop from mirror neurons. The study of mirror neurons could be an important link between neurology and psychology.

Observing certain human interactions may be a better way of diagnosing psychological problems, or, there could be cross-diagnoses and treatment, since the two are so intricately linked in mirror neurons.

The psychological implications of mirror neurons would affect education as well. Teachers have been picking out students based on character traits for a long time, but there may be a better way of pinpointing students with specials skills or needs. With more advanced diagnostic tools that are more reliable, special classes could become more prudent. There may be classes for students with particularly developed mirror neuron systems and others for students with weaker mirror responses. Even if the classes remain mixed, it would certainly be beneficial for teachers to know more about their students’ learning habits.

It could be a while until the discovery of mirror neurons has a major impact on day-to-day classroom and other educational activities, but it is one of the main topics of discussion in scientific communities today, especially in psychological and neurological fields. Educational institutions and supporting industries, with the exception of the particularly forward-thinking ones, are probably not going to pay any heed to the discovery or subsequent developments for years to come, but the study of mirror neurons has great promise for positive change. This may be the start of one of the biggest educational movements since the secularization of schools and we’d love to hear comments.

Mutual Learning

The Facts of Mutual Learning

What if there was a way to solve problems with minimal conflict? A way to resolve differences with open discussion so everyone could learn from the experience?

This month’s PILOTed focuses on mutual learning with an interview of Jim Oher, who is a practitioner of Mutual Learning, a practice that is designed to encourage learning, minimize conflict, and promote effective decision making.

Jim has 30 years of practical business experience, both as internal manager and as a consultant.

He has created workplace services for a broad range of clients and has advised leading businesses on human resources issues. He is nationally certified in several disciplines, and is a frequent lecturer at national conferences. Jim is certified to use several leadership development instruments and has been involved in such initiatives for companies throughout the world.

Jim is an author and editor of several books and articles on leadership and management issues and is a member of the Alliance for Strategic Leadership, The Worldwide Associaton of Business coaches, The Institute of Executive Development and the International Coach Federation.

Can you describe what mutual learning is?

Mutual Learning increases the effectiveness of communications. Mutual Learning is mutual involvement: you learn from others; you interact with the other person by inquiring. The idea behind mutual learning is that it is a frame, a way of approaching a situation as it relates to people. Engaging in mutual learning is seeking knowledge, but specifically knowledge that will result in action. The opposite is the unilateral control model, where each individual is trying to control the interaction. The unilateral control approach creates distrust and reduces commitment and learning. But this is what we all often revert to when we feel threatened.

What is mutual learning especially effective for?

Mutual learning allows you to learn, to come to better decisions with other interested parties or stakeholders.

It is useful in every single situation where there is potential conflict. I use it in every interaction and new opportunity. By using it, I better understand what others need from me, they better understand what I need from them, and we all have better access to the information we need to come up with an optimal decision.

Mutual Learning may not be good in certain crisis situations where it is more important to decide fast than to get input from others.

Can you boil it down to a few basic principles?

There are three basic principles: curiosity, transparence, and joint accountability.

1. Curiosity – really being inquisitive, asking yourself, what is the other person thinking, why is he or she thinking that, why is he saying what he is saying, what is he seeing that you don’t see. This means suspending judgment; when you hear another person’s idea it’s easy to say, “that’s wrong” or “that’s irrelevant.” Mutual learning means wanting to know why  the person is saying that, what does he know that you don’t and how could that information teach you something that will help you get what you want.
2. Transparency – saying what you think and feel, not compromising, not camouflaging what you are saying. Let’s say a person says something very aggressive, like “You’re not explaining things correctly. This doesn’t mean  you should say, “you idiot” if you are angry; or “you’re wrong” if you disagree. In mutual learning, transparency is more like, “when you say that I don’t understand what I did or said that provoked you.” You reveal that the statement had an emotional impact, but it still moves the dialog forward.
3. Joint accountability – If you are trying to resolve an issue or take an action that involves an other person or group, each of you has to be accountable. Each person or group is accountable to the other; you have to work together even if you see things differently. According to the model, there is no resolution unless both commit to the decision, unless both are accountable. This doesn’t mean that both parties have to agree with every aspect of a decision. For example, you may have a different approach to a problem that you feel is superior but your boss has the decision making power, your commitment is to help her succeed.

How would I get myself in the right frame of mind to utilize Mutual Learning in a situation?

When you approach a situation where you are interacting with others to solve a problem or accomplish some goal, you would proceed from some basic assumptions:

You have information; others may also have relevant information that may be different or conflicting. So we need to find out what information we each have.

Each of us may see things others do not, because of different information, biases, or background. If we can understand where our differences stem from, maybe we can design a richer solution.

Differences are opportunities for learning. When we differ, there is an opportunity to learn something new from each other. Remember that people are trying to act with integrity given their situation, empathy and compassion quotient.

Then there are core values that are imperative for mutual learning:

• Valid information: you will reveal all relevant information you have on the subject, whether it supports your position or not. Ideally this information is validated by an independent source or by the people concerned.
• Free informed choice: Decisions are not coerced, seek to create an environment for everyone involved so people agree to do things because they have all the information, not because they feel manipulated or coerced. They commit to a resolution because they use their own reasoning and have seen all points of view.
• Internal commitment to the decision: once a decision is made, people will do whatever is necessary to implement the decision
• Compassion: you will temporarily suspend judgment in order to understand other people’s perspectives, rather than protecting yourself or others, which would be unilateral control.

How is it different from other schools of learning, training, or education?

Unilateral control model is predominant in most organizations. When we work with people or groups we have to work to change how people have been conditioned to communicate and make decisions.

Mutual learning would be considered the opposite of unilateral control. In unilateral control, the goal is to get everyone to achieve my goal. The mantra is win don’t lose. The goal of communications is to minimize expressing negative feelings. In unilateral control, my assumption is that I have pure motives and that others only oppose me if they have impure motives or unfounded feelings. Thus, opposition is based on irrationality; the only rational arguments are those that support my position.

Can you describe a few practical results from using mutual learning?

I use mutual learning in my own communicating when coaching, counseling and  teaching. I also instill mutual learning in my clients so they can achieve better results.

One company wanted me to coach an executive who they thought had some issues. They wanted him to fly down to headquarters and talk to people there and find out what others are saying about him before I started working with him.  I could have just said, “That won’t work.” Or I could have said, “They are the client, if that’s what they want to do, I’ll just pick up from there.”

But I suspended judgment, and looked to find what information they had about the situation that I didn’t. I spent some time finding out the reasoning behind the request, what they were looking to accomplish.

They felt it was important for him to know what the situation was, then he would be motivated to change. When we both understood that I knew their reasoning and their end goals, then I could suggest, “shouldn’t I meet with him first, see if we can achieve rapport and understand what the issues are from his stand point? Perhaps he’ll have a better understanding and more tools when we talk about how others perceive him.”

The end result was that the executive did talk to people at headquarters, but he’d been better prepared on how to assess what people were saying and we already had the rapport so that we could work together to improve his capabilities rather than viewing me as someone thrust on him from the “enemy”.

Here is another coaching example. One client works with someone who gives long presentations and turns people off. They had tried to make the person give shorter presentations; they’d had speaking coaches work with him on presentation techniques.

When I worked with him, I asked him what he wanted to accomplish, which was to get through all of the information so that people would fully understand the facts and his reasoning. But after further questions, he volunteered that his end goal was to convince people to take some specific action.

With this as a higher level need, I could suggest that if people were interested they might be easier to be convinced: that two to three pages might keep people’s interest and that it was great to have 30 pages of backup if people asked to see the details. The person said thank you and started giving much more effective presentations. He was open to the suggestion because he understood that I’d been interested in his point of view, that I understood his rationale, and that I was just suggesting alternatives that would help us both.

Let’s say I was working with a group to solve some major problem and we were coming at the problem from different points of view; how could I use mutual learning to come up with a workable solution?

There are 9 strategies.

1. Test assumptions and inferences. We all make assumptions and draw inferences, but usually we aren’t aware of what we are doing. We have to raise our own awareness and question whether our assumptions or inferences have validity and are different from other people’s.
2. Share all relevant information. This means sharing information you have that doesn’t support your position. After all, the goal is not to win, it’s to come up with something that works.
3. Use specific examples and agree on important words. Specific examples might be negative, one of the members of the group may have done something that set the group back; but removing the example from the discussion removes essential information and reduces the chances that the problem can be solved.
4. Explain reasoning and intent. If you do not provide your reasoning, others will create their own explanations for your intent or for how you reached your conclusions.
5. Focus in interests not positions. The statement “we need to hire 34 teachers before the new school year” would be a position. The interest would be the reason behind a) why that is such a strong feeling and b) what are the underlying needs. In this case, the interest would be in complying with a state law for class sizes. In one of my earlier examples, a position is that the executive should go to headquarters and find out what people are saying about him. The interest, though, was to increase that person’s effectiveness because he was a rising star. You can solve an interest, you can only do or not do a position.
6. Combine advocacy and inquiry. Advocacy is you supporting your position. You have thoughts and feelings and you share them, you put them out there. Inquiry is asking for more information, asking for specifics, “what do you see?” Testing is a form of inquiry, to confirm. Combining advocacy with inquiry shifts from a series of monologs to a conversation.
7. Jointly design the approach. Go ahead and advocate your solution. But then inquire about how others see things differently, and jointly craft something to address their interests, information, reasoning, and intent.
8. Discuss undiscussables, which are the feelings and thoughts that emerge from the dialog. These are usually things that people think are important but that people think can only cause defensiveness, like when the group believes that someone is not performing well. They may not bring up the issue. They may be afraid to talk about it, but if they talked about it by bringing up the consequences up front, they can be brought up. “If you see me getting offensive or defensive please let me know.”
9. Use a decision making rule that generates the commitment needed. Generating a decision with consensus, while often taking longer, will more likely yield dividends when it comes time to implement.

Is there a connection between mutual learning and TQM (total quality management)?

It is continual quality improvement. Continual Quality Improvement, Action Learning, and Action Inquiry are other terms for Mutual Learning. Your own individual improvement and that of the organization you work with.

How would someone learn more about mutual learning?

They could email me, Jim Oher, jim@oher.net.  They could also look up Don Schon, William Torbert, Roger Schwarz, or Chris Argyris.

Jim, thank you.

About Mitchell Weisburgh:

Mitchell Weisburgh is Managing Partner of Academic Business Advisors, LLC. He has over 20 years experience running training and education companies. He has written over 100 course manuals on both technical and soft skills. He publishes the PILOTed Online Learning newsletter (http://nl.pilotonlinelearning.com), runs the Westchester Online Learning Consortium, and is on the Board of the Westchester Chapter of the ASTD.

Academic Business Advisors consults in the business of knowledge management. We help organizations profit from learning through design, planning, and distribution.