Cognition and Behavior
I have been following Karen Kilbane ever since joining Medium a few months ago. Her theories on cognition and behavior have had a profound impact on me, causing me to re-examine many of my past experiences in the classroom.
According to Karen’s theory, we behave based on our understanding of the current situation. If two people behave differently in the same situation, it’s because they understand that situation differently, not because one person is “better” behaved than the other. How we process and interpret the world determines how we behave. Therefore, if a student is behaving “badly”, instead of trying to correct the behavior, we should focus on understanding the student’s thinking.
Because Karen works with and often writes about students who have “behavior” issues, it’s easy to draw the conclusion that her theories mostly apply to behavior-management and students outside of the norm who see the world “differently”. But that isn’t the case.
I tried to counter the first misconception by writing about a curriculum I designed to help students develop spatial sense. Instead of giving up on a group of students who didn’t see what I saw, I created a microworld where students could safely re-train how they processed spatial information. This changed how they related to geometry content in math class, and how they perceived themselves as learners. A change in cognition led to changes in both behavior and learning.
In this article, I’m now going to try to counter the second misconception: that Karen’s theories mostly apply to students outside of the norm who see the world “differently”.
As founder and Chief Learning Officer of Vertical Learning Labs, I spend most of my time building and writing about learning tools for kids. But as a teacher, I was equally focused on nurturing learning communities in my classroom. If a learning community was flourishing, I noticed two specific behaviors showing up over and over again. First, every student would ask questions and volunteer to solve problems at the whiteboard. Second, every student would happily work with any other student.
Asking for help
If you observed me as a classroom teacher, you would see that I did very little to set up my learning communities. I modeled the behaviors I expected to see in my students, but that was about it. I didn’t say much or apply much corrective action.
Students learn to volunteer and ask questions because they observe the positive outcomes that come from volunteering and asking questions. I believe most of us make rational decisions based on a cost-benefit analysis. In my classroom, the cost of volunteering or asking a question is low. I try to create a safe environment and challenge all students, so all students ask questions and need help—there is no stigma attached.
The benefit side is even more crucial. If you don’t understand something, you will only volunteer or ask questions if you believe that will lead to understanding. But, in vertical learning theory, I argue that understanding on its own is insufficient. If you ask for help and get the help you need, but are forced to ask for help time after time, I believe you grow resentful of that help. We hate being dependent on others, especially for something we think we should be able to do ourselves.
The key to vertical learning is that, when students make the effort to learn something, they see they are growing as independent learners and thinkers at the same time. Applying Karen’s theory: all students ask for help when they predict the costs are low (its safe to do because everyone else is doing it) and the benefits are high (not only will they get the help they need, but they will grow as independent learners and thinkers, and need less help in the future). The key isn’t changing behaviors; it’s changing the situation (or how we perceive the situation) so those behaviors make sense.
Working together
Most of us have been in situations where we’ve had to work with someone who disrupts the group and doesn’t contribute much. We usually try to include them as much as possible, and try to minimize disruptions without shutting them down completely. Does that behavior make sense? Not really. It makes more sense to remove that person from the group entirely.
Now flip the situation around. Imagine you’ve been assigned to work as part of a group, but you are in way over your head and don’t have much to contribute. On top of that, you can tell the others in the group don’t want you there. Does it make sense to continue on, remaining mostly silent and taking on small menial tasks to be helpful? Not really. It makes more sense for you to make yourself useful somewhere else.
In both situations, doing the “right” thing requires doing something that doesn’t make sense, making it an exercise in self-control. We place students in these situations all the time and expect them to behave properly. We are setting them up to fail.
We learn to work well together when working well together is beneficial. This may sound far-fetched, but it’s true: In a classroom where students are learning vertically, valuable contributions can come from anyone. Because of that, there’s a lot of mutual respect. Students make room for others to contribute, and students look for opportunities to contribute themselves. If someone is not being heard, the entire community suffers. Students in my classroom don’t work well together because they are supposed to; they do it because they see and understand the benefits. It doesn’t require self-control.
Professional learning communities
Years ago, I had the privilege to work with Gene Thompson-Grove in a school system where we were trying to establish a professional learning community. She is, by far, the best facilitator I have ever witnessed. A few years later, I learned she had been hired as Director of Professional Development for the Brookline Public Schools. Out of curiosity, I reached out to my contacts in Brookline to see how things were going.
Many of my contacts had been skeptical when Gene started working with them, but she quickly won them over. They saw the work they were doing within their professional learning communities as core to what it means to be a professional educator. But when I asked them if they saw the work as “transformational” for students, they said no. That’s how I knew the work was in trouble.
One of the key principles of a professional learning community is that individual members of the community enforce the shared norms at all times. This means that if the community agrees that all students can learn, but you hear two community members discussing how some students can’t learn in line for the copier, you step in and confront them.
Within the teaching profession, there is a long tradition of deferring to other teachers when it comes to what those other teachers are doing in their classrooms. We don’t intervene. Stepping in and confronting another teacher invites significant personal and professional risk. Unless we have a reason to do it stronger than “it’s the right thing to do”, we won’t do it—and the professional learning community will lack integrity. The only time I’ve seen teachers enforce shared norms outside of a facilitated meeting is when the stakes are high and they see the work as “transformational” for students.
Conclusion
Students volunteer and ask questions when it makes sense; and they don’t when it doesn’t. Teachers stand up for shared norms when it makes sense; and they don’t when it doesn’t. Expecting yourself or someone else to do something that doesn’t really make sense just because you are supposed to is counterproductive and potentially damaging.
Behaviors are based on how we see and understand a situation. To adopt a different behavior, change the underlying situation or our understanding of the situation so the new behavior makes sense in the new context.
