Putting it Back Together Again: Reframing Education Using a Core Story Approach A Frame... - 2 views
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Traps are often habits of a field or common media practices and, as such, can be difficult to notice and even harder to avoid.
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Traps are eminently plausible ways of framing an issue that, upon investigation, fail to achieve the desired effect, or even turn out to do more harm than good.
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1. The Innovation Trap.
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the idea prevails that innovative reforms can only happen outside of the traditional public school context.
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They do so by painting a stark picture of public schools mired in bureaucracy and stuck in old models of education, and non-public or quasi-public institutions as incubators of reform.
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Communicators should avoid falling into this trap by actively avoiding business and consumerist language like “efficiency.”
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Most importantly, communicators should resist using analogies and comparisons between the public education system and private industry in discussions of reform.
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2. The Crisis Trap.
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the education system as a system in crisis.
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the education system is not providing students with the skills they need for employment.
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Rather than appealing to crisis, communicators should be honest about the scope and scale of the problems facing the education system, but also put forth viable reforms and solutions that can address those problems.
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3. The Revolution Trap.
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revolutionize, “blow up” or reinvent the education system
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Such calls are likely to cue the strongly nostalgic views that make Americans resistant to changing the education system and likely to go “back to the basics” as the preferred solutions
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To avoid this trap, communicators should replace calls for complete transformations, and dramatic statements about reinvention and revolution, with more measured language.
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Communicators can also avoid this trap by recruiting frame elements such as Pragmatism, Ingenuity and Remodeling to establish change as significant, yet feasible.
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4. The Lack of Process Trap.
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Communicators should not fall into the trap of leaving process invisible and focusing only on problem or solutions statements. Instead, they should provide clear explanations of how learning occurs, with Explanatory Metaphors such as Pollination Points, Cooking With Information and others.
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readers looking to the news for an understanding of how children learn are left empty-handed.
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5. The Classroom Bubble Trap.
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In the first type of story, the classroom is sealed in a bubble and separated from external factors
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In the second type of story, administrative and policy aspects of the education system are politically motivated and transpire “downtown,” far removed from the everyday concerns of the classroom.
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Communicators can avoid falling into this trap by connecting policies to instruction and vice versa. For instance, rather than painting a close-up portrait of a vibrant classroom and an inspiring teacher, “widen the lens” to include the professional development, curricular decisions and funding structures that made the effective instruction possible.
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6. The Technology Trap.
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The public, however, has limited understandings of the role that technology can play in improving educational outcomes, and modeling digital resources as “faster, fancier” books reinforces the public’s understanding of passive instruction.
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communicators should take care not to appeal to technology as a value, or assume that members of the public have clear understanding of the ways in which technology can be a part of improving education and learning. Instead, communicators should explain the pedagogical benefits of technology using the Explanatory Metaphors recommended in earlier sections.
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7. The Opening Up Schools Trap.
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Erasing the boundaries between the learning that happens in the school and that which takes place in out-of-school settings violates the public’s dominant Compartmentalized Learning model.
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Instead, communicators should focus conversations of learning space on learning rather than space. For example, the Pollination Points metaphor emphasizes that effective learning requires movement between places, and helps communicators lead with learning to set up considerations of space.
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8. The Flexibility Trap.
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Communicators should be wary of extolling the virtues of flexible, student-centered classroom spaces without careful framing.
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This trap can be avoided by framing different understandings of learning through the use of the metaphors described above before introducing ideas of student-centered learning.
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9. The Motivation Trap.
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Communicators often talk about how education reform proposals should increase student motivation. Communicators should be aware that members of the public view motivation in a very different way than is often intended in these messages. For members of the public, motivation is an internal characteristic that is distinct from social context.
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The metaphors above that highlight the role of context in effective learning — mainly Charging Stations and Pollination Points — can be used to avoid this trap.
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10. The Multiple Assessments Trap.
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simply appealing to “multiple” assessments will trigger the public’s Every Child is Different model, which cues a hyper-individualized understanding of assessment that can lead to disengagement with the issue.
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Also, without dislodging the understanding that assessment “is” summative assessment, calls for “multiple” assessments may inculcate support for adding even more summative assessments to school systems.
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To stay out of this trap, communicators should focus on explaining the essential characteristics of an effective approach to assessment, and why these components are important; the Explanatory Metaphor Dashboard, Windows and Mirrors is helpful in this task.
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11. The Fairness Trap.
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the public understands fairness in highly individualized terms. Standardized tests are fair because they treat everyone the same and allow for competition. Or, they are unfair because “every child is different” and has a different “learning style.”
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To avoid this trap, use the value Human Potential, which pulls forth the public’s belief that all children deserve equal opportunity, but without the unproductive side effects of fairness frames.
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Alternatively, use the value Fairness Across Places to establish fairness at a population level.
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12. The “Achievement Gap” Trap.
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it does not explain to the public why and how disparities exist, nor how addressing education disparities benefits all stakeholders who comprise the system.
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With this gap metaphor, the public interprets inequitable outcomes as the result of individual effort or achievement, and “closing the gap” becomes a threatening proposal that will unfairly benefit “underachievers.”
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To avoid this trap, explain how structural inequities create different contexts, which then contribute to differential outcomes. The Charging Stations Explanatory Metaphor is helpful in this task.
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"In the following section, we identify communication habits that "trap" public thinking in unproductive evaluations and judgments. Traps are eminently plausible ways of framing an issue that, upon investigation, fail to achieve the desired effect, or even turn out to do more harm than good. "
