Mindfulness in Teaching: a Fad?

Recently, I read a thought-provoking post by Donald Clark claiming that mindfulness in education is a fad.  I tend to agree with him, but not for the reasons he gives.

A fad is some activity that becomes really popular for a while, then fades from view.  Have you ever looked back at your participation in a fad and thought, "How could I ever have thought that was cool? What was I thinking?"  I know I have!

1964: Cool glasses, Kathy!

Fads happen in business, too.  Over the decades I spent in corporate-land, I saw them come and go. Somebody at a high level sat next to somebody in business class and the next thing you know, "we're all going to do things differently now". Long ago, for example, we all received training in something called PQMI, a way to manage processes so as to improve quality.   Once we were trained, we were expected to do things the new way, documenting this in paperwork.  What really happened was that those that bought in tried to make it work while many others who didn't buy in just jiggled the paperwork and did things the way they always did.  It happened again a few years later with ISO certification.

The ideas themselves are sound and have been used successfully around the world. What is faddish is when something that requires a fundamental change in thinking is reduced to a training program and then imposed onto people who are already busy and who may or may not buy into it. Training alone does not cause new ways of thinking. In the business examples I mentioned, a tight implementation schedule sent the message that the most important thing was getting the certification. Many of my coworkers rushed around trying to make paperwork look good so we would not "fail" various audits. Little support had been given to the development of a culture that views audit findings (especially from internal audits) as valuable -- even desirable -- pointers to areas for improvement.  In the Wikipedia entry for ISO (see "criticisms"), Roger Frost of ISO is quoted as saying, "If you just want the certificate on the wall, chances are you will create a paper system that doesn't have much to do with the way you actually run your business." (Top-down leadership isn't very good at culture change, really. Another kind of leadership may be more effective.)

The origin of mindfulness is Buddhism, an umbrella term for a wide variety of religious denominations around the world.  It is only one aspect of Buddhist practice, and is more important in some denominations than others. In the 1970s, Jon Kabat-Zinn determined that mindfulness might be useful in helping his patients deal with pain and stress.  He developed an eight-week program (Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction, or MBSR) to introduce it in secularized form to patients in pain.  A number of techniques, including a particular kind of meditation, are taught. While the program is quite structured, the people who attend are adults who are there by choice, often because a doctor has recommended it.

 Research has apparently shown MBSR to be effective (I have not reviewed the papers at the link). The program has become a standard offering at hospitals around the world.  A similar program (mindfulness-based cognitive therapy, MBCT) is also now used for helping with depression and other mental health issues.  Programs such as these use some of the techniques associated with developing mindfulness.  But they themselves are not mindfulness practice.  Some do offer their "graduates" continuing support from people with much experience and training in mindfulness practice and some graduates do go on to make mindfulness a part of their lives.

But now we see programs marketed to schools as tidy packages that can be  included as part of an educational curriculum for the purpose of delivering specific outcomes (example here).   Here's a quote from Mindful Teaching and Teaching Mindfulness by Deborah Schoeberlin (a book recommended at the example link):

Peer support is important -- for teachers and for students -- and teaching mindfulness is easier, and arguably more effective, in schools and school districts where everyone participates.  Getting everyone involved in a schoolwide program that incorporates research-based methodologies requires strong  administrative support -- but schools are also more likely to approve large-scale, demonstrated methodologies.  Once adopted, such programs have the greatest potential to impact the overall school culture as well as individual classroom climate.

Note the top-down perspective.  Adopt the program package first and culture change will follow.  In some cases where the environment is already amenable, maybe it will be just fine.  I suspect, though, that many other cases will go the way of the business examples above.  And "mindfulness" will be branded a passing fad ...

By the way, I think mindfulness practice DOES have a place in education.  If you happen to already have a personal practice, then it will be there in the classroom with you because it's a way of life.  I could see a school supporting a teacher's voluntary attendance in mindfulness training as a kind of professional development, and I could see the school supporting trained teachers by giving them time to meet with each other, allowing them to attend follow-up seminars, and listening to their ideas.  (See a book called The Mindful Teacher by Elizabeth MacDonald and Dennis Shirley for what looks like an example of complexity leadership related to mindfulness.  I haven't read it in a few years, need to read it again myself!)

But in the absence of such support, there is no need to teach mindfulness, just be it and support it in others as it may arise. Eight or nine years ago, I attended a talk by a Buddhist nun who said, "It's a poor lifeguard who can't swim."  That has stuck with me ever since. May I continue to practice my swimming skills for the benefit of the learners in my classes.

Note: edited to add a note that I accidentally deleted!

When Adaptive Isn't

I've been very interested in the concept of adaptive leadership lately.  If one views language learning as an ongoing, dynamic, nonlinear process, then this model could be useful in language teaching.  (Scroll down this blog post by Ben Ramalingam to see a table comparing this kind of leadership to the traditional form.)

But in conversations with other teachers, I can't seem to get very far in discussing adaptive leadership.  I even get the sense that some are actively pushing the subject away!  That surprises me, because my impression is that most of the teachers I've worked with feel the same way I do: that we're struggling to do a dynamic job within a linear framework.

Recently, though, a lightbulb flashed on. I noticed that a lot of teachers dislike something called adaptive learning.  I would have guessed that this described flexible learners, or maybe the way a small experience at the right time and place can stimulate an avalanche of growth in a ready mind.  But no.  It refers to a variety of educational software systems that, according to the Wikipedia entry, "develop new knowledge to guide the student down paths to correct answers."  It's the software that adapts; all that students need to do is show up and, sooner or later, produce correct answers. Sounds to me like an automated form of PPP. ("Present, Practice, Produce" -- it's useful for concrete solutions to static problems, such as studying for a vocabulary test. It's not useful as an overall model for language learning).

Adaptive learning and other similar terms -- adaptive education system and adaptive hypermedia, for example -- do NOT have anything to do with learning as a complex adaptive system but rather the opposite: someone (not the learner) loads the system with information to be imparted and the software "reads" the learner's actions and performance to infer interests and needs.  It then tailors the the method of delivery accordingly. The learner may not even be aware that this is happening.  The product of such a system is "information successfully conveyed" and the customer is the one who wants the information delivered, not the person receiving it.

thanks to Dennis Skley

Personally, I'm going to avoid the use of the word "adaptive" going forward and refer to complexity theory or complexity leadership.  Maybe I'll be able to get the attention of other teachers ... which is critical to the kind of leadership I'm talking about!

Slow Learning

After (admittedly only a little) exploration, it seems to me that unplugged teaching is a form of adaptive leadership. (See word cloud for other recent posts.) Exploring a bit more over the last day, I've discovered "complexity leadership" which poses a way to introduce and support adaptive leadership in an organization. The teachers (in the case of ELT) promote emergence while more traditional leaders do administrative stuff and another type of leadership supports the interface between these two (if I understand my skimming, that is). Very interesting! Here's the PDF by Uhl-Bien, Marion, McKelvey. Some quotes from the introductory material:

"Complexity science suggests a different paradigm for leadership—one that frames leadership as a complex interactive dynamic from which adaptive outcomes (e.g., learning, innovation, and adaptability) emerge."

"Adaptive challenges are not amenable to authoritative fiat or standard operating procedures, but rather require exploration, new discoveries, and adjustments."

"Leadership, however it is defined, only exists in, and is a function of, interaction."

Creatively re-used stuff (and me). Magic Gardens, Philadelphia

And, in a slightly-related discovery, here's an interesting article by Atul Gawande from the New Yorker. It proposes that some good ideas propagate into common use more slowly than others:

"[many important but stalled ideas] attack problems that are big but, to most people, invisible; and making them work can be tedious, if not outright painful. The global destruction wrought by a warming climate, the health damage from our over-sugared modern diet, the economic and social disaster of our trillion dollars in unpaid student debt—these things worsen imperceptibly every day."

In the case of language learning, a learner's situation doesn't worsen, but unplugged teaching may not be readily adopted or supported because a learner's improvement changes imperceptibly every day. Traditional teaching produces something that's easier to measure (it's not necessarily language learning, though!).

Gawande comes to a familiar conclusion:

"Every change requires effort, and the decision to make that effort is a social process."

He's involved in testing this idea via a project in north India where mentors work with nurses on a personal basis to encourage the taking of a simple step to improve newborn survival rates. This isn't a complexity issue. The problem and its solution are clear. But it's interesting that it still seems to need a social solution because its effects are invisible to the people who need to practice it.

Adaptive Leadership

I've been thinking a lot about "adaptive leadership" lately.  It's an idea from Harvard professor Ronald Heifetz. ( my earlier post)

To review: many people habitually take the obvious approach to leadership:

from lumaxart

But sometimes another approach may be more appropriate:

from lumaxart

In the article that inspired my earlier post, it was proposed that the first perspective is most useful for technical problems where an expert can lead others to a relatively static "right answer".   The other perspective is more helpful in complex situations such as dealing with poverty or climate change where "the people are the problem and the people are the solution".  Researchers such as Larsen-Freeman argue that language develops and is learned in a dynamic and personalized way (a complex adaptive system).  This suggests that the second form of leadership may be more useful in a language classroom.  It follows (to me, anyway) that the problems of teachers who are working with language learners of different ages, backgrounds, abilities, and needs are also complex.  Agencies such as mine could benefit from more of this second type of leadership when supporting their teachers.

In a recent meeting with my ESL team, I mentioned this idea (in far fewer words, ha ha!). Someone commented, "Yes, but that's too idealistic for the real world."  I've been chewing on that thought for some time now! Seems to me that the other teacher was not saying we shouldn't have ideals, but that we're locked in to a "real world" where our leaders rely overwhelmingly on the classic leadership approach and press us to do the same with our lesson plans, testing, and so forth.

That's a valid (and somewhat depressing) point!  But I have to say: if the people are the problem and the people are the solution ... that's us.  We don't need to look for a "right answer"  from our management (that's viewing the problem through the classic leadership lens).  We ourselves can use this method as appropriate in our classrooms and when working with each other and we can press back on our managers to the extent that it's practically possible.  If that's not very much, well OK, then some of us will move on when the opportunity arises.

When I look back over the hundreds of learners who have come through my classes, I realize that the very best of them had this attitude.  They supported the teacher and their classmates because facilitating our lessons was how they were going to get their own needs met.  I remember one learner who was always alert to the needs of the lower level learners in the class and who kept me sensitized to them (and helped them herself).  That, of course, kept them from falling too far behind which was to her benefit.  Another learner went to a community meeting regarding the Haitian community and then translated the English handouts into Haitian Creole for his classmates.  That translation experience was a meaningful writing exercise for him.  Another learner occasionally pushes back on me in class, challenging me to give examples when I make an unsubstantiated claim.  I thanked him after class once for keeping me on my toes and he asked me to let him know if he ever goes too far.

This second kind of leadership can be enacted by anyone.  It's only "too idealistic" if we're thinking in terms of the first kind of leadership (that there is one right answer)!

PS: It has just occurred to me to look for more from Heifetz.  Here's a PDF that looks interesting, I've only skimmed it so far!

The Teacher-Leader

When a patient comes to a surgeon, the surgeon's default setting is to say, 'You've got a problem? I'll take the problem off your shoulders and I'll deliver back to you a solution.' In psychiatry, when a person comes to you with a problem, it's not your job actually to solve their problem. It's your job to develop their capacity to solve their own problem.

These are the words of Ronald Heifetz, a professor of public leadership at Harvard's Kennedy School, as found in this article  by Shankar Vedantam from this morning's broadcast of Morning Edition on NPR.

If language teachers are leaders, which kind of leadership should they offer?

My thinking is both, but mostly the second type.  That is, the "problem" of learning a language is complex and highly personal.  There are sub-problems, such as needing to learn how to pronounce a specific sound or having to pass a particular exam, that may benefit from targeted application of the first kind of leadership.  But the actual job of learning a language is up to the learner. 

Maybe many of the problems facing our public school system today are also in need of the second kind of leadership?

The Master doesn't talk, he acts.

When his work is done,

the people say, "Amazing:

we did it, all by ourselves!"

Tao Te Ching, Chapter 17, as translated by Stephen Mitchell

Frédéric Glorieux