The author: Jim Knight, Research Associate, KU-Center for Research on Learning. This article originally appeared in the April 2000 issue of Stratenotes, a newsletter for SIM Professional Developers.
"Seek first to understand. Before the problem comes up, before you try to evaluate and prescribe, before you try to present your own ideas--seek to understand... If we really, deeply understand each other, we open the door to creative solutions and third alternatives. Our differences are no longer stumbling blocks to communication and progress. Instead, they become the stepping stones to synergy"
(Covey, p 259)
Part one of this paper described how professional developers might improve their workshops by, as Stephen Covey proposes, "seeking first to understand." Interviews, the paper suggested, enable us to understand the activities teachers do and do not prefer to experience during workshops and to understand the content teachers want and need to learn. Through our understanding, interviews enable us to respect and empathize with teachers. This last point, the importance of an empathic connection with teachers before professional development, is perhaps the most important and least understood aspect of "seeking first to understand." In her book Respect, Sarah Lawrence-Lightfoot tells a story from her childhood that captures the meaning and power of such empathic connection between people:
The summer of my eighth birthday, my family was visited by a seventy-year-old black woman, a professor of sociology, an old and dear friend. A woman of warmth and dignity, she always seemed to have secret treasures hidden under her smooth exterior. On this visit, she brought charcoals and a sketch pad. Midafternoon, with the sun high in the sky, she asked me to sit for her...
What I remember most clearly was the wonderful, glowing sensation I got from being attended to so fully. There were no distractions. I was the only one in her gaze. My image filled her eyes, and the sound of the chalk stroking the paper was palpable. The audible senses translated into tactile ones. After the warmth of this human encounter, the artistic product was almost forgettable. I do not recall whether I liked the portrait or not... This fast-working artist whipped the page out of her sketch pad after less than an hour and gave it to me with one admonition: "Always remember you're beautiful," she said firmly. To which I responded--beaming with pleasure and momentary embarrassment--"Now I know I'm somebody!"
In the process of recording the image, the artist had made me feel "seen" in a way that I had never felt seen before, fully attended to, wrapped up in an empathic gaze (Lawrence-Lightfoot, p. 211).
By "seeking first to understand," through interviews, we can make teachers feel "seen" and "fully attended to." Empathy, of course, is a gift that can be given to anyone, but it is a gift that many overwhelmed or pressured teachers receive with a tremendous amount of gratitude.
Interviews begin an empathic relationship with individuals, but that relationship should be continued and built upon during group presentations. This paper describes just how such a connection between people can be established and enriched during group presentations. Specifically, the paper discusses:
Vignettes are short (one to three paragraphs), powerful narratives that summarize a theme repeated by teachers during interviews. They can be powerful Thinking Devices for encouraging dialogue.
Using vignettes
SIM Trainers who have employed vignettes generally use them at the start of workshops as Thinking Devices. They read the vignettes out loud and ask teachers a few Question Recipes, such as "How did you feel as you heard the vignette?" "Is the vignette accurate?" "What else needs to be said about this topic?" Those SIM Trainers who use vignettes report that teachers are quick to comment, and often vignettes produce rich, meaningful conversations about the rewards and challenges of teaching.
The rest of the article provides guidance to help you incorporate vignettes and other results of your interviews into your training sessions and workshops. In developing vignettes, your goal is to create and use three to six vignettes that adequately summarize what was heard during interviews so that the coming workshop can be positioned in the real context of each teacher's professional life. Additionally, you want to show that you have heard each teacher and understand what matters in each person's school and classroom.
Creating vignettes
A few simple procedures can be use to create vignettes. First, go through your interview notes to highlight recurring ideas and identify topics you see as common themes. Then, develop a transcript of teacher statements about each common theme. Each transcript could be a collection of similar teacher comments on one topic from your interview notes, or it could be transcribed selections of comments if you tape-recorded interviews. Pick comments that are lucid, provocative, and naturally expressive. You should eventually have a collection of phrases and statements that discuss a number of aspects of a common theme. After this, edit the transcript into a coherent statement, as if it has been spoken by one voice. Cut out redundancy, and begin and end with powerful images or memorable phrases. Finally, if you want, you can title the vignette. Your goal in writing a vignette is to create a short statement that an entire group will hear and say, "Yes, that's it; you understand our experience!"
On occasion, you may not have time to create vignettes (each vignette takes at least one or two hours to develop), or you may think that the group with which you are working would respond more positively to a direct discussion of themes. When this is the case, you can list each theme on a transparency or flip chart and then elaborate on each theme using notes from your interviews. Typically, interviews uncover that teachers are concerned about district mandates, student diversity, parents' interference, or apathy. They also frequently uncover that teachers love their children, are committed to their own personal growth, and hold a great deal of respect for their colleagues. Since this respect is often unspoken, both themes and vignettes can be used to make powerful, positive statements about the school as a community.
At all times, you need to protect the confidentiality of the materials you are using, so be certain to avoid reporting comments that participants might quickly connect with particular people in the sessions. Use Question Recipes, as you would if you were employing vignettes, to open up dialogue about the information gathered during the interviewing process. Also, be certain to balance negative and positive comments, ending with a positive theme or vignette.
Link themes to the routine or strategy to be covered
When you have completed the group dialogue (whether you use themes or vignettes), sum up the comments on a flip chart or transparency. Then, position the day's activities by showing how the intervention to be discussed addresses some of the concerns that teachers expressed during the interviews and the group dialogue. For example, if you are providing training in the Course Organizer Routine, and a common theme during interviews was that teachers wished parents could be more involved in their students' learning, you could explain how the Course Organizer Routine can be used to enhance communication between teachers and parents.
By interviewing teachers, discussing the common themes of their interviews, and showing how the professional development you are providing responds to those specific teacher concerns, you can create workshops where it is much easier for teachers to see the usefulness of what you are offering; you are authentically living Covey's habit: "Seek first to understand, then be understood." Covey writes that "when you can present your own ideas clearly, specifically, visually, and most importantly contextually--in the context of a deep understanding of [the audiences'] paradigm and concerns--you significantly increase the credibility of your own ideas" (Covey, p.257). By meeting one-to-one with teachers, reporting back interview information during workshops, and then linking the conversation to the material you will be covering, you can increase the credibility of what you have to offer. On some occasions, though, you may be able to do something that is perhaps even more important. By "seeking first to understand," you may, as Sarah Lawrence-Lightfoot suggests, enable teachers to understand that they have been "seen," both by you and their colleagues, in a way that they "have never felt seen before." That might make all the difference to the teachers with whom you are working, and, indeed, to you.
Covey, S. (1989). The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change. New York: Simon & Schuster.
Lawrence-Lightfoot, S. (2000). Respect: An Exploration. Cambridge: Perseus Books.
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