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NAIS - A Standards-Based Assessment Model Can Help Build More Diverse and Equitable Com... - 0 views

  • For students to take critical feedback constructively, they have to believe that it is possible for them to improve.
  • school’s assessment and feedback philosophy can encourage a sense of belonging as well as promote a culture that embraces all students as capable of growing and improving as thinkers, learners, and doers. To build on the authentic social justice work being done in our schools and to make real progress in our efforts to create inclusive and equitable communities, we must adopt and employ assessment practices that support this work.
  • The Intersection of SBA and Cultural Responsiveness
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  • Hammond argues that teachers are culturally responsive when we help students to be “active participants in tracking their own growth.”
  • Provide actionable feedback
  • Hope is a critical ingredient for positive relationships needed for culturally responsive teaching. SBA, with clearly communicated goals, actionable feedback, and opportunities for reassessment, helps teachers to be “merchants of hope in their role as allies in the learning partnership.”
  • We have chosen efficiency over efficacy; the education system decided to assess what is easy, not what matters. If we want our learners to have the intra- and interpersonal skills to navigate, negotiate, and solve relevant and pressing problems, we must teach, assess, and report on these skills.
  • Educators have the power to immediately change the way they assess to support a culturally responsive model.
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3 Principles to Follow for Competency-Based Education | GOA - 1 views

  • When it comes to competency-based learning (CBL), we must tend to our school cultures as deeply and thoughtfully as we tend to our classrooms.
  • Adopting CBL means more than a shift in pedagogy; it means committing to a mindset and system that prioritize learning over time, skills over content, and relevant, holistic assessment over high-stakes testing.
  • To build this culture, they focus on three essential elements.
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  • 1. Learning is a Positive, Inclusive Experience
  • Students set and pursue individualized learning goals and have in-person and online academic support options.
  • Reassessment is an academic norm.
  • Students pursue their passions.
  • Conflict resolution is built on restorative justice, not traditional disciplinary techniques.
  • 2. Students Lead Learning
  • A common thread: Culture and program should be deeply connected, specifically in how communities support student agency.
  • Every student and adult in the community creates, pursues, and updates a Learning Plan; every student has an advisor; and public exhibitions of learning that involve school and community members are the standard summative assessments.
  • 3. Professional Culture is the Foundation of School Culture
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Educational Leadership:Science in the Spotlight:How Do You Change School Culture? - 0 views

  • Cultural change, although challenging and time-consuming, is not only possible but necessary
  • First, define what you will not change
  • Second, recognize the importance of actions.
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  • Staff members are not seduced by a leader's claim of “collaborative culture” when every meeting is a series of lectures, announcements, and warnings.
  • Third, use the right change tools for your school or district.
  • Fourth, be willing to do the “scut work.”
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American Schools Are Training Kids for a World That Doesn't Exist | WIRED - 0 views

  • Culture labs conduct or invite experiments in art and design to explore contemporary questions that seem hard or even impossible to address in more conventional science and engineering labs.
  • The culture lab is the latest indication that learning is changing in America. It cannot happen too fast.
  • The time is now to support the role of learning in the pursuit of discovery and to embrace the powerful agency of culture.
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What Google Learned From Its Quest to Build the Perfect Team - The New York Times - 1 views

  • many of today’s most valuable firms have come to realize that analyzing and improving individual workers ­— a practice known as ‘‘employee performance optimization’’ — isn’t enough. As commerce becomes increasingly global and complex, the bulk of modern work is more and more team-based.
  • teams are now the fundamental unit of organization.
  • influence not only how people work but also how they work together.
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  • Google’s People Operations department
  • there was nothing showing that a mix of specific personality types or skills or backgrounds made any difference. The ‘who’ part of the equation didn’t seem to matter.’’
  • At Google, we’re good at finding patterns,’’
  • As they struggled to figure out what made a team successful, Rozovsky and her colleagues kept coming across research by psychologists and sociologists that focused on what are known as ‘‘group norms.’’
  • Norms are the traditions, behavioral standards and unwritten rules that govern how we function when we gather
  • Norms can be unspoken or openly acknowledged, but their influence is often profound.
  • looked for instances when team members described a particular behavior as an ‘‘unwritten rule’’ or when they explained certain things as part of the ‘‘team’s culture.’’
  • After looking at over a hundred groups for more than a year, Project Aristotle researchers concluded that understanding and influencing group norms were the keys to improving Google’s teams.
  • The researchers eventually concluded that what distinguished the ‘‘good’’ teams from the dysfunctional groups was how teammates treated one another. The right norms, in other words, could raise a group’s collective intelligence, whereas the wrong norms could hobble a team, even if, individually, all the members were exceptionally bright.
  • As the researchers studied the groups, however, they noticed two behaviors that all the good teams generally shared. First, on the good teams, members spoke in roughly the same proportion, a phenomenon the researchers referred to as ‘‘equality in distribution of conversational turn-taking.’’
  • Second, the good teams all had high ‘‘average social sensitivity’’ — a fancy way of saying they were skilled at intuiting how others felt based on their tone of voice, their expressions and other nonverbal cues.
  • psychological safety — a group culture that the Harvard Business School professor Amy Edmondson defines as a ‘‘shared belief held by members of a team that the team is safe for interpersonal risk-taking.’’
  • Psychological safety is ‘‘a sense of confidence that the team will not embarrass, reject or punish someone for speaking up,’’
  • ‘‘It describes a team climate characterized by interpersonal trust and mutual respect in which people are comfortable being themselves.’’
  • Rozovsky’s study group at Yale was draining because the norms — the fights over leadership, the tendency to critique — put her on guard. Whereas the norms of her case-competition team — enthusiasm for one another’s ideas, joking around and having fun — allowed everyone to feel relaxed and energized.
  • other behaviors that seemed important as well — like making sure teams had clear goals and creating a culture of dependability.
  • it made sense that psychological safety and emotional conversations were related.
  • The behaviors that create psychological safety — conversational turn-taking and empathy — are part of the same unwritten rules we often turn to, as individuals, when we need to establish a bond.
  • If I can’t be open and honest at work, then I’m not really living, am I?’’
  • to be fully present at work, to feel ‘‘psychologically safe,’’ we must know that we can be free enough, sometimes, to share the things that scare us without fear of recriminations. We must be able to talk about what is messy or sad, to have hard conversations with colleagues who are driving us crazy. We can’t be focused just on efficiency.
  • By adopting the data-driven approach of Silicon Valley, Project Aristotle has encouraged emotional conversations and discussions of norms among people who might otherwise be uncomfortable talking about how they feel.
  • In the best teams, members listen to one another and show sensitivity to feelings and needs.
  • ‘Just having data that proves to people that these things are worth paying attention to sometimes is the most important step in getting them to actually pay attention,’’ Rozovsky told me. ‘‘Don’t underestimate the power of giving people a common platform and operating language.’’
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Q: What's the Right Dosage of PBL?        A: Not Once Per Year | Blog | Proje... - 2 views

  • Does adopting PBL mean we should use it all the time and teach everything via projects? If not, then how many projects should teachers do per semester or year?
  • Project Based Teaching Practices are actually just good teaching, period, and many of the practices can be used in the classroom when students are in between projects.
  • “Just make two high-quality projects per year for every student be the goal.” In a K-12 system, that means each student would experience 26 projects at a minimum—which sounds like a lot! But that’s only the start. Perhaps students in middle and high school, at first, would experience two projects per year in one subject area—if, say, only social studies teachers begin to use PBL. But assuming PBL spreads across the school, students would do projects in other subject areas, or do interdisciplinary projects, and eventually experience many more than 26 projects if they stayed in one K-12 PBL-infused system.
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  • But assuming projects are between 3-6 weeks long, I’d like to see a minimum of two projects per year in every K-12 classroom, in all subject areas—so that all students, no matter who they are, can gain the benefits of high quality PBL.
  • Even better, make it one project per quarter—four per year. And while you’re at it, sprinkle in a few mini-projects to help build a PBL culture or tackle a relatively confined topic or task.
  • Why is the PBL dosage important?
  • Students cannot build 21st century success skills if they only get occasional opportunities to practice and internalize them.
  • Students will become more confident, independent learners—even identifying and tackling problems authentic to themselves, their communities, and the wider world.
  • be part of a culture that celebrates risk-taking and innovation.
  • If only a few scattered teachers use PBL in a school or district, or only a few students experience it and thus limit demand, then the system’s basic structures, policies, and culture will remain the same. But if a critical mass is reached, schools and districts will need to rethink the use of time, teacher workloads, community relationships, assessment systems, decision-making processes, and much more. Here’s to reaching the PBL tipping point!
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Creating an innovation culture | McKinsey & Company - 1 views

  • we’re also seeing a renaissance of something decidedly traditional: the corporate R&D department.
  • We all need mechanisms and a culture that encourage the embrace of new technologies, kindle the passion for knowledge, and ease barriers to creativity and serendipitous advances
  • Conventional wisdom holds that organizations die of starvation from a shortage of good ideas and projects. In reality, they are much more likely to die of indigestion. A surfeit of projects with inadequate staffing makes delivering on anything less likely.
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  • Scientists should stick to two projects—having only one can be boring; having three can overextend you.
  • R&D leaders need to hire people who are willing to join multiple projects and to move from one to another as needed. Call them ambidextrous; call them system thinkers. These are people who want to solve problems that matter and that take them from invention to final product
  •  
    HT Christian Talbot
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The Marriage of Formal & Informal Learning - 1 views

  • important that integration of formal and informal learning have champions
  • Web 2.0 technology is a key enabler for this marriage
  • Technological tools and leadership support alone will not be enough to make the marriage of informal and formal learning work. The shared values, beliefs, mental models, habits, and behaviors of the workforce in an organization – its culture is key.
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  • How do people feel about knowledge – is it power to be hoarded, or a gift to be shared?
  • The two key advantages of informal learning are that it happens at the point of need and what is learned is usually applied right away.
  • In the cooperative model, the learning and development group can shift from being the producer of content to being the guide, initiator, facilitator, and coach.
  • Based on alignment with agreed upon organizational and learning goals, the learner takes responsibility for his or her own learning – with the support and guidance of the organization.
  • People who are not used to working in a learning organization culture, where cooperative learning within communities of practice is the norm, need the knowhow and a new mindset regarding learning to cooperatively in the workplace.
  • The positive is that this incidental learning doesn’t take people away from the work. The disadvantage is that when they are so caught up in doing, people often miss an important ingredient for learning: reflection.
  • The combination of structured and incidental learning can give us intentional learning.
  • The key to solidifying this learning is reflection.
  • David Kolb, wrote about a model of experiential learning consisting of the following cycle: action, observation, reflection, concept formation, and back to action.
  • Morgan McCall and George Hollenbeck asked managers to stop once a week and answer just two simple questions, “What did you do last week?” and “What did you learn from it?” They found that this simple process of reflection enabled the managers learn from their experiences and to change the way they managed.
  • integration of formal and informal learning can create a virtuous cycle that leads not only to increased productivity but to the real innovation that is necessary for long term success in a dynamic marketplace.
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How Being Part of a 'House' Within a School Helps Students Gain A Sense of Belonging - 0 views

  • sense of inclusion and engagement in a common enterprise can have academic benefits as well as social-emotional ones
  • each takes responsibility for advising 28 of the house’s students, whom they follow through the end of sophomore year.
  • houses have not just missions, colors, chants and symbols but also hand signs and mottos—each classroom contains four colored containers.
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  • In a paper on the topic,
  • requires a long-term commitment,” Hayes said, as well as whole-school involvement.
  • For a house system to succeed, there has to be something substantive behind it, an underlying ethos being reinforced.
  • “The houses are not just a thing that you do,” Kloczko agreed. “It’s really your whole school culture.”
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Using Design Principles to Build a Culture of Innovation | Edutopia - 1 views

  • two essential design practices: changing your point of view and prototyping
  • To get started with prototyping, come up with the smallest possible experiment to see if you’re on the right track and avoid the tyranny of the rollout.
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4 Ways to Lead and Create a "Culture of Innovation" From Any Position - The Principal o... - 0 views

  • best learning can happen when we are uncomfortable,
  •  Observe, look, challenge, and wonder about the things on the walls and the learning in the school like it was your first day, every day.
  • Impact one other teacher in your school, and you impact probably a minimum of twenty students (that year only).
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  • Building innovative organizations will take all of us working together. This is not about a “top down” or “bottom up” approach as much as it is about “all hands on deck.” And it is possible.
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Stop Trying to "Do It All" - 99U - 1 views

  • Naturally, it’s the same with your work: any given hour, week or year dedicated to one project can’t be used for another.
  • When a friend asks if you’ll jump on board with her new business, or a possible freelance gig arrives by email, you’ll see more clearly what you’re giving up in exchange. Which means that if you do decide to say yes, you’ll be freed from the nagging worry that you ought to be doing something else.
  • Or follow Warren Buffet’s suggestion: list your 25 top career goals, choose the five you value the most, then treat the remaining 20 as your “avoid at all costs” list.
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  • to learn to see everything you choose to do (including, by the way, choosing to procrastinate on making a decision) as a choice not to do a million other things
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How Can Schools Prioritize For The Best Ways Kids Learn? | MindShift | KQED News - 0 views

  • if the changes to education are all in the service of doing the same thing better, they may be missing the point.
  • the current context demands a radically different vision of learning.
  • examples of schools and districts that are asking themselves difficult questions to propel change. The successful ones are letting the answer to the question, “How do kids learn best?” drive everything they do in schools.
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  • education that is student-initiated, interdisciplinary and co-planned by students and teachers together
  • “It’s about doing work that matters,” Richardson said. “It’s about connections. It’s about play. It’s about cultures where kids and teachers are learners.” When schools have a set of beliefs about learning and enact those beliefs through practice, but don’t anchor what they are doing in today’s context, they may be doing something progressive, but also a little irrelevant. Beliefs and contexts without practice leads to ineffective teaching. The sweet spot for a very different type of education system lies in the Venn diagram of all three: beliefs, context and practice.
  • It can be difficult to interrogate longstanding policies and choices, but if districts, schools and individual educators can’t reflect on what’s working and what isn’t, articulate a change, and begin doing it, the education system as a whole will become irrelevant.
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Mastering the Fine Art of Managing People | Inc.com - 0 views

  • Our culture is also an amazing recruitment tool. When we share it with people online, it's like branding from the inside out.
    • Trey Boden
       
      What do you think?
  • I want to know whether candidates are focused on selling themselves or are listening and learning.
  • We try to hire people we'd be happy sitting next to on a plane during a cross-country flight.
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  • strategic
  • tactical
  • keep Method weird
  • For the weird section, we want people to share their passions.
  • come up with their own titles
  • Which of Method's values do you connect with most
  • I estimate that just 60 percent of candidates make it over.
  • "How will you make life better in the park?"
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The Next Big Thing in Design - IDEO Stories - Medium - 0 views

  • bringing human-centered design to education, government, healthcare — the sectors that need it most — requires a few important culture shifts:1. We need to bust out of siloed design practices.2. We need to develop ever-broader capacities, taking an interdisciplinary, deeply collaborative approach.
  • We turn our own questions on ourselves: What if we could help design education that readies today’s kids for the technologically enhanced (and challenged) environment they’ll grow up into? While we’re at it, what if we could then start addressing the very policy that shapes those educational institutions? That kind of moonshot systems thinking requires both agility and scale — it requires networked organizations and creative collectives. It requires designers who never stand still.
  • when individuals with their own aspirations and talents come together to build upon each other’s work and drive toward a greater goal, we can gain traction on much bigger challenges — and find new ways forward.
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Is There a "Future of Work"? - 0 views

  • the speed and scale are going to shock those in education charged with preparing our children for it.
  • Like so many other things that we think of in the future tense, (climate change, surveillance, etc.) the changes in work have already arrived, we just don’t seem to realize it
  • we need to start thinking differently about what it means to be “career ready” (as well as, I suppose, “college ready.”)
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  • Why doesn’t education focus on what humans can do better than the machines and instruments they create?”
  • So, wouldn’t we be better off shifting the emphasis on the work of our teachers away from content and grades and curriculum to mentoring, apprenticeships, making, and discussion?
  • Finally, what role does leadership play in staying abreast of these types of shifts, articulating them to school and community, and in building capacity for those groups to engage in relevant, meaningful conversations around what changes may need to happen?
  • leaders better be building school cultures that learn, constantly.
  •  
    HT @WillRich45
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The Most Famous Nursery Schools in the World - And What They Can Teach Us - 0 views

  • “We have not correctly legitimized a culture of childhood,” says Lella Gandini, a longtime Reggio teacher, “and the consequences are seen in all our social, economic, and political choices and investments.”
  • To counter this, Reggio’s schools are relentlessly child-centered — not to achieve notable results in literacy and numeracy, but to achieve notable qualities of identity formation and to ensure that all children know how to belong to a community.
  • The teachers follow the children, not plans.”
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  • teachers (and there are two in every classroom) are not there to deliver content, but to activate the meaning-making competencies of all children.
  • Context, in other words, matters more than content. And the physical environment, after adults and peers, is the third teacher.
  • what I witnessed was a level of listening, attention, and care that came from an unwavering belief that all children, even the newest among us, are social beings, predisposed, and possessing from birth a readiness to make significant ties with others, to communicate, and to find one’s place in the world of others.
  • Either a school is capable of continually transforming itself in response to children, or the school becomes something that goes around and around, remaining in the same spot.”
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