I started working with Dr. Saccoman on enhancing the problem solving skills of her students nearly two years ago. The student community we began with was and is inspiring. The class was a graduate class, so we had mature people with a demonstrated desire to have an impact on education. We started with a very simple and not too unusual (for college environments) question: "Given your passion for education, what's your "big" question?"
Both Dr. Saccoman and I expected questions that were philosophical in nature, such as: What is education about? What does it mean to be a life-long learner? Why do students learn or not learn as the case may be?
What we got back from the students surprised us.
Universally, the response from the students was framed in a way that indicated to us that these students were thinking tactically, rather than in the big-picture way we had hoped the university environment would create. The questions we received back from the students were extremely "how-to" and application oriented. For example:
How do I get my students to do their homework?
How do I get my students excited about mathematics?
Many of the students were already engaged in teaching opportunities outside the classroom. So maybe the practicality of their questions was to be expected. Unfortunately however, we also know that approximately 50% of new teachers give up and leave the profession within five years. I have met many of Dr. Saccoman's graduate level students. If 50% of her students do not continue in the profession, I would consider that result an unfortunate waste of great human and social potential.
Our current hypothesis is that this tactical thinking leads to frustration and fear by the new teacher, when the "how-tos" they get in the credentialing programs do not work exactly as "advertised" in real world teaching scenarios.
It is our further thinking, that when how-tos do not work as seamlessly as the new teacher envisions, the new teacher wrongly interprets the failure as an indication of their own inability to effectively do the job. This, offers us a possible explanation for the extremely high level of professional attrition for new teachers. In addition, we think (hypothesize) that the new teacher is not prepared to think of the K-12 classroom environment as a place where they themselves learn (as lifelong learners) about learning. You know … back to developing and pondering their own big question(s) again.
Using the questions above as a reference, we thought better questions might have been:
Why don't my students like to do homework?
Why aren't my students excited about mathematics?
Out of nearly 40 students, none formed their big questions this way.
We asked the student-teachers if they thought that they might be more successful developing their own answers if they re-framed their questions as "why" questions, rather than as "how-to" questions. Again, what we received back from the students was surprising. Instead of "yes" and a smooth shift to a discovery-oriented point of view, many of the students grew frustrated with our apparent reluctance to immediately answer their how-to question. Most absolutely did not believe that answers to "why" questions were informative.
What became apparent, after some additional discovery on our part, is that most of the students did not believe that if they knew the "why" of a problem, they almost certainly could find a "how-to" (solve the problem) on their own.
Thus, we began to have some potential insights into "why" an unacceptable 50% of new teachers leave the teaching profession nation-wide after completing their credentialing program. This is no doubt an Educational Leadership Big Question.
