Every teacher brings different strengths and capabilities to work each day. We must value these viewpoints and consider them during the decision-making process. By providing more focused, worthwhile professional experiences for teachers, we can all make sense of best research practices to guide change in our schools.
We rely on long-standing research grounded in the creative process to create individualized, effective professional development experiences. Psychologist and author Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (1990) presents this process in five interconnected and overlapping stages, which inspired our five-phase process: (1) preparation, (2) incubation, (3) insight, (4) evaluation, and (5) elaboration. Summarizing the creative process based on previous work around the development of change, Csikszentmihalyi (1990) provides a better framework for professional learning among educators.
Many professional learning experiences we have observed tend to be lecture based and noncollaborative. Expert educators collaborate in five very different ways during the decision-making process toward change. As we’ve found, this allows us to create different forms of professional learning experiences that help us evolve change—by considering what we know, what we think, what we discover, how we evaluate, and why we build change. We believe this is a much more intentional way of approaching change, and we find that it helps us collaborate more effectively among teachers who might have varying thoughts or opinions about what is best for students.
For the purpose of simplicity, this book shows how effective education teams work through these five interconnected phases of the creative process. The phases first appear as separate events, but eventually all phases begin to interact with one another.
Csikszentmihalyi (1990) outlines the five phases of the creative process:
1. Preparation is becoming immersed in problematic issues that are interesting and arouse curiosity. Preparation is the term that psychologists apply to the first [phase] of the creative process when individuals are starting out and struggling to perfect their craft. Inspiration is what drives the curiosity of both great artists and scientists to persevere through their years of hard work.
2. Incubation refers to the period during which ideas churn around below the threshold of consciousness. After an individual has started working on a solution to a problem or has had an idea leading to a novel approach to an effort, the individual enters the incubation stage. According to research psychologists, this stage can last hours, days, months, or years. When individuals try to solve problems consciously, it becomes a linear process, but when problems are left to incubate or simmer, unexpected combinations occur. And it’s these unexpected combinations that form domain-changing breakthroughs.
3. Insight is the “Aha!” moment when the puzzle starts to come together. The insight stage is also called the eureka experience. Some psychologists call it illumination. It’s the exact moment in time when a problem that an individual has been trying to solve—for days, months, or years—comes together in his or her mind to form a clear resolution. This resolution only emerges after a complex and lengthy process.
4. Evaluation occurs when deciding if the insight is valuable and worth pursuing. During the fourth phase of the creative process, individuals must decide if their insights are novel and make sense. In other words, they must analyze the insights to determine if they’re truly worth pursuing. If the insight continues to excite and motivate the individual to go forward, then the hard work of turning the creation into a reality begins. Some creativity researchers, such as Harvard University’s Teresa M. Amabile (1983), cite motivation as the key factor in the creative process. Regardless of the ingenuity, novelty, or originality of an idea, artwork, or scientific invention, if the creator is unmotivated, the work will never become a reality.
5. Elaboration is translating the insight into its final work and constantly nuancing or revising. Throughout the creativity literature, many who have created products that literally changed their domains or disciplines state the necessity of hard work and revision. Yet at the same time, they also state that it doesn’t seem like work at all but seems more like play. Additionally, the opinions of others, great awards, and fame mean very little in the end. It’s the process of creating that drives them forward toward continuous growth and improvement. (pp. 5–6)
The five phases are crucial to changing mindsets toward an evidence-based grading model—mainly because the change involves not only the way teachers grade students but also the way students and families approach evidence-based grading as part of the learning process of continuous growth. They must be prepared for this shift and understand its purpose and value. Likewise, they will go through a period of wondering if it is working or not—and how. From that point, as we’ve found, many students and families gain greater insight into how to approach learning as a discussion about skills and not points and percentages or grades.
As we work through this discussion, we strive to share the thinking, debate, and reflections of teacher teams that work to make this shift; likewise, we will share how they engage in important conversations with students and families regarding the shift and its value toward building a clearer, more coherent, and more unified understanding of learning growth.
As you read, consider why each phase fosters greater collaboration between teachers, and how it promotes thoughtful, new conversations with students and families about learning. More specifically, we hope to provide you with a pathway to implementing evidence-based grading—a change we think is significant as schools work to address student growth and learning.
The Structure of This Book
This book outlines one curriculum team’s journey to implement evidence-based grading and features a powerful model of professional learning. Team members will navigate challenges, pitfalls, and successes as they engage in each phase of the professional learning process. Along the way, they collaborate, debate ideas, and work to build consensus as they reach toward a new approach to grading grounded in better teaching and learning practices.
In each chapter, we explain a phase, demonstrate change through our team members’ points of view, and identify key strategies to support change during the phase. As you’ll see, each phase fosters powerful discussions about teaching and student learning.
It’s important to note that this is only one way of separating these phases of progression. They are recursive and often overlapping. No one phase is better than another. Professionals always gain insight and go back to prepare, think, or evaluate. Individual educators and teams of educators will move in and among these phases of the creative process—they will revisit, question, react to, and think about them at different times. This allows professionals to reflect, learn, develop new ideas, and build on those ideas.
Chapter 1 examines the preparation phase, comparing evidence-based grading with past grading systems. During this phase, team members are educated about why the shift to evidence-based grading is significant, how and why it is different from past practices, and how it will develop authentic conversations about learning. The team asks questions and begins to grapple with student reflection as a powerful learning experience. Most important, team members will begin to create a shared understanding of what evidence-based grading can do for student achievement in their own subject areas.
Chapters 2 and 3 are about the incubation and insight phases. At these points, the team is really thinking about how to scale learning targets and communicate expectations. The team debates about past grading practices that make sense and question the amount of time the shift might take. The team also wonders about the worth of such a big change, but as insights emerge, the team realizes the value of an evidence-based learning model. Team members are able to see direct relationships