10.17.13Naming Tecniques and Moves: Deborah Ball Stumps Me
Every once in a while, someone asks you a really smart question and the honest response is-“I have never thought of that, I wish I had, and I don’t know the answer.” That happened to me yesterday when I had the long anticipated pleasure of spending the day in Ann Arbor, speaking on a panel with Deborah Ball and Betsy Davis of University of Michigan School of Education’s TeachingWorks, and Deborah asked me just such a question.
At dinner after the panel, Deborah asked about naming techniques and sub-techniques of the teaching craft. We both see very emphatically the importance of a shared professional vocabulary to allow teachers to discuss and analyze and process the thousands of decisions we make in the classroom. But Deborah’s question was essentially this: “Some of the names you choose are technical and formal and sound like the technical terms a professionalized field would use to talk about it’s core work.” Think here of the Anonymous Individual Correction or Narrated Wait Time. “But,” Deborah continued, “Other names you use are more casual and light, almost playful.” (She was referring here to the “Dance Moves” such as the “Swivel” and the “Disco Finger” that we describe teachers using to show students that they are watching to seem them follow-through on tasks in the classroom.) “Do you have a theory on that?” She asked. “When and why is it better to be more formal and professionalize the terminology, and when and why is it better to be playful, light, and informal?”
Well, as I said, my answer was pretty much, “I have never thought of that, I wish I had, and I don’t know the answer,” only there was a lot more hemming and hawing as I tried to say that.
On reflection I still don’t know: I am all for professionalizing and making the terms light and playful so we laugh a lot while we do this work and so it’s easy and non-intimidating to practice–“Hey, let’s work on our dance moves!” But I’m also all for the serious power of carefully chosen and clear names and for the importance of having technical terms to describe what we do in a way that confers the respect upon the profession it deserves. This morning, when I asked Rob Richard what he thought, he said: “I wonder if you sometimes use lighter names to talk about the behavioral stuff to make it less serious all the time?” That was also a good question I couldn’t answer. Plus the truth is, I am inconsistent even about how I name behavioral stuff. I also started thinking of where some of the names came from and “Disco Finger,” I recalled, actually came from the teachers who use it… it’s THEIR playful name for it that I overheard, and in that case I borrowed it and expanded on it by adding more moves in a similar playful tone.
So I guess the honest answer is: “I do both; I do them haphazardly and I should probably think about that a little more.”
But of course what I do when there’s a teaching problem I can’t answer is, I ask teachers. So, I’d love to hear your opinion. We all agree–I HOPE–on the power and importance of shared vocabulary. But do the names matter? And does the general tone of the names matter? And if so, which do you choose and why?
Hi Doug,
My initial impression is that some of the techniques get at deeper underlying drivers of student engagement, motivation, and performance than others. In other words, it may be important to distinguish those techniques that are more strongly connected to theories of human behavior, pedagogy, and learning from those that are merely (for example) engagement tricks that teachers can use. Perhaps what Deborah was getting at is that connecting theory/research to practice may allow you and others to see the degrees of power and variations of utility behind each technique. This in turn would help to strengthen the vocabulary. I know that sounds a little pie in the sky (sorry I wrote this quickly), but hoping some of it makes sense.
Thanks, Chris. Really helpful.
So interesting. I wonder if there are equivalent distinctions in other professions. There’s not much of a professional language in journalism, but what does exist is a reflection of the world journalists live in. So “lede” is deliberately mis-spelled, I think, to avoid confusion with the word “lead,” which was important for old printing presses. I can imagine that some of the more playful words for teaching are similarly influenced by the world of schools and children, whereas other terms are more about thinking and so more influenced by psychological terms (“narrated wait time”).
and of course the general nature of theterms may reflect the profession’s sense of its own identity. Journalism perceiving itself as gritty, hard-nosed and–in the era when phrases coined–possessed of some chain-smoking swagger.. this reflected in casual economy maximal terms “stet “lede” etc. Sciences more rarified. Teaching conflicted
Absolutely. And I just realized that the terminology evolves as the profession and its context and sense of self evolves. So back journalists were gritty and more aligned w/ cops than lawyers (“beats”). Whereas today at our newsroom (now named Chalkbeat) we just invented a new term for a part of our work day that reflects our single-subject-matter focus —it’s called “lineleader.”
Hi Doug,
I was able to have lunch with you when you visited U of M and it was lovely to hear some of your thoughts on where you think the teaching profession is headed (and how you’re trying to help).
I wanted to chime in here and add that playfully named techniques serve the practical purpose of appealing to those teachers who are less familiar with theory/research. Maybe, as Rob Richard said, you’re trying to make the terms “less serious,” but it seems that you’re also intuitively speaking to teachers in the field who have less use for the technical names and appreciate your easy-to-remember, catchy names.
It’s important to connect these techniques to the research being done to identify “underlying drivers of student engagement, motivation, performance,” etc. as Chris put it, but that doesn’t mean the names themselves have to directly reflect the connection.
The purpose of these names is to provide teachers a way to talk to each other about their teaching practice. The more convenient and catchy, the more likely teacher are to use the language. This seems like a particularly effective part of the work that you do!
It was a pleasure to meet you and hear your thinking about how teachers can be as effective as possible in the classroom.
It was especially great to hear you talk about how classroom management is a means to an end: rigorous instruction and student learning. I think because your books focus on making these management moves explicit, some people mistakenly think all you care
about is getting kids to sit still and be quiet. That clearly is not true.
I can’t wait to use your idea of “little things with big muscles” in my work with pre-service teachers—to help them see how they can shape their classroom cultures in service of student learning. Looking forward to 2.0!
thanks, stefanie. really enjoyed meeting you and your colleagues in Ann Arbor!
I have a related question, because like you, I don’t have an answer to Dr. Ball’s: “What names/taxonomies are the most sticky, and why
?” I ask this because I see the strategy through a Gladwellian lens, if it’s sticky, it will work, if it’s not, it won’t. And it’s funny, as a practitioner who has used Doug’s taxonomy since 2004…before there was a taxonomy…some of the terms/phrases roll off my tongue “100%” “circle-back” “No-opt-out” “right is right” and others like “Anonymous Individual Correction” or “Narrated Wait Time” rarely do.
could be a coincidence but it seems like the phrases you remember are more on the collquial and less on the professional side. interesting data maybe….
I think it’s mostly brevity, though repetition (practice) saying them also matters. until TLAC was published, I didn’t use a lot of those phrases, but I’ve been using others from your BES presentation back in teh day for almost a decade.