Assessing Unstoppable Learning. Tom Hierck

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       Ponder Box

      Reflect on table 1.1 by answering the following questions.

      • How do we build trust among our colleagues?

      • How do my behaviors and words show others that I am worthy of their trust?

      Trust influences student achievement. It is one of the factors that researchers Megan Tschannen-Moran and Wayne Hoy (2000) have found has greater impact than socioeconomic status as a predictor of future student achievement. Tschannen-Moran and Hoy (2000) state, “Trust is one party’s willingness to be vulnerable to another party based on the confidence that the latter party is benevolent, reliable, competent, honest, and open” (p. 556). Let’s look at each of these five facets: (1) benevolence, (2) reliability, (3) competency, (4) honesty, and (5) openness.

       Benevolence

      Hoy and Tschannen-Moran (2003) describe benevolence as the “confidence that one’s well-being will be protected by the trusted party” (p. 186). In other words, as educators look to add to their successful practice while addressing the needs of a current group of students, does the leader exhibit the caring and compassion required when a difference of opinion on a staff occurs? When schools operate on the notion of presuming positive intention, team members embrace every struggle as an opportunity to provide more information and to bring colleagues along. Rather than condemning a person for asking a question or assuming he or she opposes the work, the team directs its effort at embracing another perspective on the challenges it collectively faces.

       Reliability

      Reliability is “the extent to which one can count on another person or group” (Hoy & Tschannen-Moran, 2003, p. 186). If colleagues feel they can work with each other through the highs and lows of their profession, and if individuals feel support when at their lowest ebb, then a team has established trust. If, instead, individuals feel as if everyone wants to vote them off the island, they become more reticent about engaging in a trusted relationship and pull back on any authentic engagement. They might simply defer to the team leader and become compliant.

       Competency

      Faith in the work ahead begins with faith in the person asking educators to embrace the work. If an individual does not possess the requisite skill to adopt a new practice, whom can he or she turn to? It could be the team or school leader, and it depends on his or her competency, or “the extent to which the trusted party has knowledge and skill” (Hoy & Tschannen-Moran, 2003, p. 186). If the work is also born of the collective commitment a team establishes, it feels much less as if it’s being done to educators and more as if it’s being done by educators and for educators. When leaders view their role as enabling educators, everyone owns the work collectively, leading to greater competency for all involved. This is in stark contrast to models that expect blind faith and compliance from educators.

       Honesty

      Nothing can replace honesty. Honesty does not mean always agreeing and being a ray of sunshine in every situation. It does mean having a willingness to confront realities and to share those openly and honestly with all team members—not just those among whom a strong connection might exist. Hoy and Tschannen-Moran (2003) describe honesty as “the character, integrity, and authenticity of the trusted party” (p. 186). In order to be trusted, the leader must be trustworthy.

       Openness

      Following honesty, openness implies equal treatment of all members of the team. We stress to teachers that they must build positive, caring relationships with every one of their students, even those who challenge them the most. We equally stress to leaders they must build positive, caring relationships with all teachers, even those who challenge them the most. Honesty is a complementary component to openness, which is driven by “the extent to which there is no withholding of information from others” (Hoy & Tschannen-Moran, 2003, p. 186).

      The absence of any of these facets has the ability to derail progress and take away from building the trust necessary for great teams to function. If the only commonality a group of educators share is the school parking lot, the chances of true progress on the issue of assessment occurring will remain fleeting. This is hard work; it is messy work. It requires letting go of some things and embracing other things. All of this is possible with a collaborative team.

Defining Collaboration

      The power of collaboration will not be a foreign concept to readers of this book. It simply makes sense that the power of we is superior to the power of me. As DuFour et al. (2016) write, “It is difficult to overstate the importance of collaborative teams in the improvement process” (p. 12). Despite that notion, collaboration is not always evident in every school or district. Ken Williams and Tom Hierck (2015) note this struggle when describing the dialogue that has occurred in some faculty meetings:

      Heated debates arose on whether collaboration really was possible and a desirable way to achieve the stated goals of a school. Detractors vehemently defended the practice of teaching in isolation—not because of any research that supports it, but because it is easier than collaboration. It’s true: working together is a lot more challenging than working alone. Focusing on what we as teachers can do instead of on what we don’t have requires a collective commitment. (p. 1)

      Collaborative teams use data to reflect on teaching practices, monitor progress, and celebrate successes. They share the progress and the pitfalls and lean on each other to manage both. In a deeply intentional collaborative approach, everything is up for discussion as educators work to find ways to ensure all students attain the desired proficiency—not through lowering the bar but through elevating their teaching. This is not always easy and requires a high level of trust. As Fisher and Frey (2015) note, “The conversations in collaborative team meetings can scrape up against one’s sense of self-efficacy, especially when presenting evidence about a lesson that failed to result in student learning” (p. 164). The absence of collaboration simply means educators don’t have to confront such challenges with anyone but themselves, which often leads them to believe that the solution to these challenges lies in their students (or their students’ parents or the system) needing to change.