<p> An Interview with Robert J. Garmston: About Change and Stress*</p><p>Robert Garmston is Professor Emeritus, Education Administration, School of Education, at California State University, Sacramento. He is Co-Developer of Cognitive CoachingSM and Co-Director of the Center for Adaptive Schools, an initiative developing collaborative groups within schools intent on strengthening student achievement.</p><p>Dr. Garmston consults internationally and in North America. He and his wife live near Sacramento near their five children and five (bright and cute) grandchildren. [email protected].</p><p>Interviewer: Michael F. Shaughnessy Interviewer: Eastern New Mexico University Interviewer: Portales, New Mexico</p><p>1) Much of your work focuses on change. Why is change so difficult and stressful for us all to deal with? </p><p> For change to be less than prohibitively stressful, the change must be congruent with a person, or a group's deep structure...that is, their sense of identity, their beliefs and values and assumptions about why things are the way they are and what would need to happen to have them better. The distinction between beliefs and values is that one may believe in, say, collaborative interaction as a way to improve schools, but not value it.</p><p> Another way of thinking about this is that when your values are clear, your decisions are easy. Change may still be difficult, but when values have been clarified, one has mobilized and aligned the internal resources for change. So many people find this to be true in their personal and professional decisions. A CEO of an international school recently wrote me about a decision he and his wife had been struggling with. From much soul searching, values became clear and the decision was also clear: leave administration and enter the field of consulting. I suspect this is why true dialogue in schools assists change.</p><p> William Bridges teaches that it is rarely change itself that is stressful; rather it is the psychological responses to change. If one does not recognize and value one's internal life in regard to changes, one is likely to stay stuck psychologically and not be able to move on. He postulates that of three internal zones related to change, the first is the most difficult and important to address. Endings, no matter how positive the new direction, always involve loss. In schools the loss can include loss of comfort with the old ways of doing things, loss of confidence and competence as one imagines the changes required, sometimes loss of status, etc. Everyone experiences these feelings, but if not attended to, they become emotional drags on moving forward. Astute administrators acknowledge this, make the process conscious with staffs, give much time to conversation about the change, and provide metaphoric or symbolic processes to mark the endings. A school in Colorado once held a funeral for the old 9-month calendar when they were changing to a 12-month school. The principal read a eulogy, after which they held a wake for the old calendar.</p><p> Change is also difficult because it requires us to examine why we are doing things now and why we are doing them the way we are. Often, policies, practices have evolved in which once upon a time there was a good reason for them, but we do them now simply because we have always done them that way. To constructively explore change, teachers and administrators need the spirit and tools of inquiry. These include active curiosity about others' thinking and willingness and emotional maturity to suspend points of view or anything else that would interfere with understanding another. In our work with Adaptive Schools, we encourage educators to ask, "Why are we doing this?" and "Why are we doing this this way?"</p><p> We change what shows, not what is broken. Problems exist for a long time before attention is given to resolving them.</p><p>2) How could a "culture of inquiry" be created for teachers and administrators in schools regarding professional development?</p><p> This is a sixty-four dollar question and some factors seem more important than others. Let's start with leadership. Leaders who learn publicly, are continuing inquirers, are confident enough that they can reveal thinking—in-progress—and are genuinely curious. These leaders can be the soul of inquiring cultures.</p><p> It is most likely that these are the leaders who successfully promote an unwavering focus on learning in schools both for students and adults.</p><p></p><p> Leaders develop the capacities for inquiry among staffs. Skills—interpersonal and communication skills —are learned, refined and become norms. Protocols are introduced and practiced that make it safe and productive to inquire with one another. Structures are provided: time, space for groups to meet and talk, and materials of inquiry including electronic devices as well as flip charts and pens.</p><p> Leaders also buffer faculties from pressures and demands that will threaten or diminish teachers' desire and skills to inquire.</p><p> Looking at the literature on Professional Learning Communities and their impact on student achievement, it is clear that cultures of inquiry represent a significant culture change within schools that must be supported in a variety of ways. Systems successful in improving student learning are characterized by:</p><p> o A focus on student learning o Articulated norms and values o Reflective dialogue o Collaborative practices o Deprivatization of teaching</p><p> These communities, to impact student learning, must "engage in structured, sustained and supported instructional discussions that investigate the relationships between instructional practices and student work." (Supovitz, J., and Christman, J.B. (2003) Developing Communities of Instructional Practice: Lessons from Cincinnati and Philadelphia. CPRE Policy Briefs. Graduate School of Education. University of Pennsylvania.)</p><p> Often, when attempts are made to create cultures of inquiry, teachers focus initially on planning special events, arranging schedules, etc. Leadership must support the move toward instructional conversations by:</p><p> o Providing an instructional focus o Providing tools and training in collaborative work o Providing structures and protocols for instructional conversations o Providing time, space, materials o Providing relevant data about student learning o Providing for community conversations that are both horizontal and vertical</p><p>3) How can the opinions of others (external feedback) affect an individual's growth in professional development?</p><p> This a is topic for a book and there are at least three faces to the story. One is that feedback, done appropriately, is beneficial to learning. Two is that self-assessment produces useful results unattainable from feedback by others. Three is that performance evaluation has long been considered a necessary administrative function but has little impact on the improvement of instruction.</p><p> Carol Sanford reports findings from studies at Palmolive, other corporations, and with students. In summary, workers or students who consistently receive external feedback about their performance begin to rely more and more on the opinions of the external person and less on their own perspectives. This is critical, because the foundation of self-directed learning is self-assessment.</p><p> Appropriate feedback includes a relationship to known and observable standards, the provision of data and not judgments. If standards are clear, there is no need for external judging. The judgments are self- evident as the observations are compared to the standards. Furthermore, regarding instruction, when the focus is on student learning, not teacher behaviors, there is greater receptivity and use of the information.</p><p>4) In your article "Group Wise: Create a Culture of Inquiry and Develop Productive Groups" (Spring 2005), you stated that "we do not learn from experience, only from reflecting on experience." How might self-reflection play a role in this "culture of inquiry" for teachers?</p><p>The very premise of professional learning communities is that groups can become self-directed in their learning and have a persistent quest for improvement. Three characteristics define self-directed learners, whether they are individuals or groups. They self-manage, self-monitor and self-modify. Self-managing includes having goals and a plan for attainment. Monitoring requires reflection: What were my intentions (goals)? To what degree were these achieved? What data am I (are we) using to ascertain achievement? What specifically occurred? What might have contributed to what occurred and what was accomplished? What am I learning from the experience? How might I use this learning in future endeavors? And, as a result of this reflection, what will I commit to do? Self-modification is informed by the information from monitoring.</p><p>5) How could self-assessment and self-monitoring questions assist in creating a "culture of inquiry"?</p><p>I think the very description of the processes of self-directed learning provides a beginning answer to this question.</p><p>6) How would you describe a leader who instills the "culture of inquiry"? </p><p>I have described such a leader in response to question number 2. Additionally, inquiry must be a personal value and practice of such a leader. Public modeling remains an incredibly potent form of leadership and a leader cannot "fake" a value like inquiry. Another way to think about this leader is that it is a person who can share authority, has the ability to delegate work to staff and can lead without dominating. Prestine in 1993 identified these attributes as essential for a principal involved in restructuring. I believe they equally apply to the task of reculturing.</p><p>7) What can teachers accomplish in "productive meetings"?</p><p>Several things. One, they can get work done important to the group. Two, they can ascertain what is most important to work on and determine less time- consuming ways to work on the urgent, but not as important. Finally, they can develop themselves as a group with a repertoire of skills at meeting, problem solving and inquiring. This occurs only through systematic reflection. Any group that is too busy to reflect about its work is too busy to improve. </p><p>8) How would you describe the key principles for success in a "productive meeting"?</p><p>I would offer two. First the ability to work within clear distinctions of two ways of talking: dialogue to understand and discussion to decide. Second would be to adopt, practice and monitor five meeting success structures. These involve clarity about principles and tools for: </p><p> Determining the who and how of decision making.  Clarifying what pieces of business should be the work of the group and which might be the group's work but also be the work of other groups.  Adjusting the meeting environment for maximum success of processes at use.  Adhering to meeting standards: one topic at a time, one process at a time, balanced participation, engagement in cognitive conflict and understanding and agreement about meeting roles.</p><p>9) How can previous meetings be used to direct the group in a productive direction? </p><p>Enlightened groups use the principle of failing forward. This applies to the work they produce as well as the way they do their work. To fail forward, groups must have goals, standards and criteria for successful implementation of their decisions. Constant assessment and analysis of these provokes forward movement.</p><p>10) Why is it important for teachers to become "group wise"? What would be the first step for a school to become "group wise"? </p><p>Again, there is a certain amount of redundancy in my response to this question. The why seems self-evident, so they can consistently improve the quality of their decisions and follow through and the processes by which they get there. First steps in becoming "group wise" is to learn about many of the factors named above: dialogue, discussion, meeting success structures. For this to make a difference, the learning needs to be beyond declarative learning and become procedural learning. Additionally, the practice of certain norms (in the Adaptive Schools work we recommend 7 norms found in highly productive groups) and the continuing acquisition of protocols and skills.</p><p>Next a group that becomes "group wise" has a purpose for being, a certain amount of autonomy to decide courses of action and accountability for what they do.</p><p>11) Why do schools need to be "adaptive" nowadays?</p><p>To survive and serve. To be adaptive means to change form in shifting environments, but to do so with clarified identity. What is shifting today? Technological DNA from incoming students, a greater mix of cultures, the numbers of children of poverty increasing, high stakes testing, computer games—often violent, an environment dripping with questionable values—homicide, sex, unquestioned authority, problems solved within 30 minutes with time out for commercials. Some good teachers try to face these changes by working harder doing what they always have done. Others try to make the challenges easier. Others, in grade level teams, departments or whole faculties collectively adapt, changing their instruction to meet the needs of these new students in these new times. </p><p>Adaptivity is not a simple matter of linear thinking to bring about changes. It is complex work in which inquiry, local invention and collaborative practices work to discover the sources of current states, not just the manifestations of problems. 12) What are some of the dangers that you have been facing, and faced with in your work? </p><p>I think a major danger we face, is minimizing the work it takes to develop professional learning communities. If too many systems treat PLC like a set of check lists to accomplish, we are in danger of losing the right to develop and solve local problems at local levels and instead suffer further legislation about what schools should do to serve students. </p><p>______</p><p>*Interview first published on EducationNews.org on September 26, 2005. Published here with the permission of EducationNews.org.</p><p>"Cognitive Coaching Seminars" is a registered trademark and "Cognitive Coaching" is a servicemark owned by The Center for Cognitive CoachingSM, P.O. Box 260860, Highlands Ranch, CO 80163.</p>