In his most recent book, Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us, Daniel Pink argues that we are essentially motivated by three key drivers:
Autonomy: The desire to direct our own lives.
Mastery: The urge to get better at something that matters.
Purpose: The yearning to do what we do in service of something larger and more enduring than ourselves.
I believe that Pink’s definition of these primary motivators is especially true for teachers. Those who teach often enter the profession because of their drive for autonomy and self-direction. They continually seek to get better at what they do, to further their own learning and growth, and to pursue their own mastery while collaborating with colleagues who are equally engaged in becoming better at and improving their craft.
Most teachers are also inspired by a sense of purpose. First and foremost, they are invested in helping their own students seek mastery and reach their promise. But they also find purpose and satisfaction in helping their school community reach its full potential and fulfill its mission. At the same time, they strive to find meaningful conversations with other educators engaged in improving teaching and learning across the nation and globe.
Think Globally, Engage Locally
How can a school create the conditions for teachers to satisfy these three primary drivers? How can it best leverage the talent, thoughtfulness, and passion of its faculty? Amid the lingering economic uncertainty and the need for continued prudent fiscal stewardship, it’s understandable that schools would be cautious about exploring new programmatic directions or launching bold educational initiatives toward these goals. Yet, this should not be an era of hunkering down, lowering our sights, or limiting the imagination and aspirations of our teachers. To the contrary, it’s a time when schools need to explore how they can best sustain the intellectual inquiry and vitality of their faculty — not only in the best interest of the school, but in the best interest of the nation as well.
Within Daniel Pink’s framework of primary motivators — autonomy, mastery, purpose — the Institute for Teaching, Learning, and Instructional Innovation is a way for Punahou to encourage its autonomous, relatively isolated teachers to seek mastery while making their own learning more transparent and available to their teaching colleagues. As they do this, they also contribute to a larger conversation about effective teaching within all schools. In the first part of the 20th century, a number of independent schools were established as lab schools — places where autonomy, mastery, transparency, and purpose were embedded into the academic program and school culture as a way to add to the national dialogue on education. However, in the late 20th century, most independent schools became more isolated and less outward-looking. So it is exciting to see more schools in the early years of the 21st century seeking a deeper connection to the common good and developing interactive professional cultures within and across independent and public schools.
As we created the Institute for Teaching, Learning, and Instructional Innovation, which launched in fall 2010, we have had good models within the educatonal community to help shape and guide our thinking. For example, we have been inspired by our colleagues from other private and public schools that have already framed and launched similar ideas. These initiatives include, among others, The Institute for Educational Innovation at Oakwood School (California); High Tech High in San Diego, California; the Teacher Center at Lawrenceville School (New Jersey); and the Center for Teaching at The Westminster Schools (Georgia). Each of these schools has organized opportunities for teachers to engage other educators in conversations about teaching and learning. We hope that these leading schools and others will consider joining Punahou in forming a national network of regional centers of teaching and learning that can connect more teachers to research, and offer them opportunities to share experiences and learn from one another.
Amid the busy schedules and hectic pace within independent schools, it is important that we create and sustain a culture of continuous adult research, reflection, and ongoing inquiry that explores questions of mutual professional interest. The aim is to become actively engaged in useful educational research and to share knowledge and experience. Our schools must become places for ongoing adult learning and growth where we find ways to make our individual quest for mastery more public and visible to one another. As we become more openly reflective practitioners, our “thought leadership” within independent schools will no doubt become interesting to other educators across the K–12 spectrum, while, we hope, helping to inform state and national educational policy.
Teaching, Learning, and Instructional Innovation
By formally sharing their new learning with colleagues, all Punahou teachers who currently receive professional development funds are expected to become among the first contributors to the Institute for Teaching, Learning, and Instructional Innovation. This group includes approximately 15 to 20 teachers who are either on sabbatical, or who have been awarded curriculum planning grants, or who are working collaboratively with colleagues through a faculty learning fellowship.At the moment, we are still working out the details regarding the process of sharing ideas and insights with colleagues in our own school and with other schools, but we believe that technology will become the primary medium. To this end, within our own community, we are experimenting with blogs and short video formats that feature K–12 teachers sharing and demonstrating examples of insights or ideas about their teaching. In time, we want to make these examples accessible online via YouTube or through the NAIS iTunes U platform.
We imagine that when the institute is fully up to speed, we will be connected to teachers at other schools in Hawai‘i, the nation, and the world to promote a healthy exchange of ideas and to sustain a dynamic network of teachers. For example, the recent Race to the Top federal funding for Hawai‘i public schools includes financial support for programs that cultivate, reward, and leverage conversations of effective teaching and instructional leadership. This shared inquiry with our public school colleagues presents a genuine opportunity for collaborative work between independent and public schools.
We also envision that the institute will host and coordinate visits and residencies from some of the leading thinkers in education. The Hawaiian Islands are the most isolated landmass on Earth. Consequently, Hawai‘i independent schools have been eager to bring the world’s leading thinkers to the islands to work with our schools. Together with other Hawai‘i independent schools, we want to continue to invite compelling researchers, speakers, and authors to learn with us.
We have had several examples in recent months of national thinkers coming to Hawai‘i to engage our teachers. They have included:
• Frank Kros, creator of The Upside Down Organization, who kicked off a Brain Symposium with Hawai‘i teachers;
• Jim Steyer, CEO and founder of Common Sense Media, who engaged teachers and parents about appropriate uses of media for children;
• Chris Dede, from the Harvard Graduate School of Education, who worked with faculty about the next era of instructional technology;
• Michael Horn — co-founder and executive director of education at Innosight Institute, a nonprofit think tank devoted to applying the theories of disruptive innovation to problems in the social sector — who discussed examples of disruptive educational innovations;
• Sir Ken Robinson, an internationally recognized leader in the development of creativity and innovation, who discussed the creative process in schools and helped our students to find their “element”; and
• Tina Seelig, executive director of the Technology Ventures Program at Stanford University, who worked with teachers and students on techniques for innovative problem-solving.
We want to become more intentional about bringing leading thinkers like this to Hawai‘i — thinkers who will challenge and extend our learning and develop a long-term relationship with us as our approaches to education evolve over the coming century.
Our launch of the institute has also included a conversation about becoming a graduate school of inquiry and growth, using our own classrooms as case studies, essentially embedding a laboratory school within our campus. The goal is to more effectively connect the researchers with the practitioners — something that has historically eluded most of America’s graduate schools of education. Along with independent schools that have been established as lab schools (often with graduate schools of education), we are eager to join other independent and public schools that are developing similar relationships with schools of education. This is one area in which independent schools can clearly contribute to the national dialogue on best practices and quality innovation in education. To this end, we are vitally interested in joining with other partner independent and public schools around the country and the world to examine the possibility of offering a Certificate of Mastery for teachers through the institute.
Ultimately, we envision creating a global forum for teachers to become collaborators, researchers, authors, reflective practitioners, instructional leaders, and teachers of teachers.
Currently, we offer innovation funds to Punahou faculty members to supplement this year’s professional development budget within identified areas of inquiry. Those areas include:
• Effective and appropriate uses of instructional technology to improve teaching and learning;
• Educating for a sustainable future;
• Educating for a global perspective;
• Educating for social responsibility;
• Applying the most compelling research on the brain and learning theory to our classrooms; and
• Deepening scholarly inquiry within subject areas and disciplines, and helping students to see the connections between subjects and disciplines.
These topics of shared inquiry and research at Punahou mirror the interests and conversations within many independent schools nationally. Thus, it makes good sense that as we do this work locally, that we also find ways to become more interconnected in our common inquiry.
Autonomy, mastery, purpose. These motivators for teachers are now being integrated through our faculty professional development strategy. The overall concept and template have been established for the Institute for Teaching, Learning, and Instructional Innovation. However, much of the intellectual content and inspiration for it to happen will continue to reside within the school’s faculty and their colleagues around the country.
In his book The Courage to Teach, Parker Palmer reminds us that, if we want to create and sustain communities of discourse about teaching and learning, we need bold instructional leadership that will call people to that vision.
Punahou School joins other colleagues and schools in calling our network of independent schools to a deeper and more connected conversation with one another about effective teaching, learning, and instructional innovation.