Project Management as an Essential Skill (or - the Fine Art of 'Doing Stuff')

If you offered a course in Common Sense, who would take it? Logically, who would need it?

Obviously Project Management Methodology is far more than common sense. But I believe the study of Project Management would go a long way toward elevating our collective 'Common Sense'.

I'm not a qualified PM Professional. I have taken introductory courses on it and have been intrigued by it ever since. I use the concepts of Project Management, both formally and informally, in much of the work that I do.

This is certainly not the place to outline the whole range of Processes or Process Groups of PM, but let's take, as an illustration, the concept of Risk Management and how it can pertain to common tasks. I recently spoke with a teacher who was exasperated with the difficulties in a number of students not reaching timelines in the course. There is a sense of hopelessness that can permeate discussions when students are far enough behind.

It can be discouraging, certainly, but this situation isn't simply an indication of poor planning - or poor Project Planning. It's an opportunity for Project Management to come to the rescue of the situation and enable forward motion. It's clear that when a skyscraper is being built, a robust Project Management Plan and PM Structure is in place with a formal Project Manager. It would be a rare occurrence for the whole building to be completed without serious Risks predicted, realized and mitigated. So how do they do it?

In the case of the classroom, there are really only 3-1/2 things you can do. Actually 4-1/2 but we can assume one has already been done**. So if you only have 3-1/2 things that you can do, it simplifies the approach and allows for forward motion.
1. Reduce Scope
2. Extend Timeline
3. Extend Resource
3-1/2. Any combination of the above.

That solution set is also the limit of response that can be employed when your skyscraper isn't on schedule.

**This assumes that the teacher and student have already negotiated the establishment of a Critical Path. That process is not likely called Critical Path, and it's criminal how the very powerful PM concept of Critical Path has been co-opted and warped for another purpose in the educational sector.

So this simplifies the discussion. Some would argue Over-Simplifies. I would disagree. The discussion and the option categories are exactly as stated. How you reach the specifics of the option chosen is work to be done, for sure, but the category of options is extremely clear.

Project Management Process Definitions bring considerably more to the table when it comes to 'Doing Stuff'. Project Definition Structures (Integration Management), Scope Management, Time Management, Cost, Quality, HR, Risk, Procurement all have every-day, every-person applications. And most notably, Communication Management is something that is under-articulated in most human activity.

And that's just it - Articulation. Project Management is "The Fine Art of Articulating the Common Sense of Doing Stuff". Or "The Articulation of the Fine Art of the Common Sense of Doing Stuff". Or just "The Fine Art of Doing Stuff". I would prefer to keep the "Articulation" in the definition of the field lest we end up just doing things and assuming that we understand them. OK - how many times did you read this paragraph?

When should this happen? As early as students are working on Projects. So that would probably mean Junior grades or lower. Obviously, the Processes and Process Groups would be reduced to those required for the task at hand and language would be adjusted to be age-appropriate.

A danger of this focus would be that it degenerates into a lesson on Time-Management. Time Management is only 1 of 9 defined Processes of Project Management. There's necessarily far more to 'Doing Stuff' than time management.

All of us - Teachers, Principals, Students, Business Administrators, Homeowners - could and should benefit from the study of Project Management. It's an art that has evolved over centuries of building pyramids, writing symphonies, putting on Broadway Shows, programming MSWord. We may as well stand on the shoulders of giants.

It would be so cool if it were common sense.

Do 'Smart' Kids Really Know How To Learn?

Stemming from thoughts surrounding a conversation that occurred a few weeks ago...

The hypothesis raised was this: "What is the group of students who have the highest frequency of under-achievement?" After some thought, the suggestion put forward was "Students achieving at Level 4".

Rather interesting proposal...

But first some ground-rules.
1. Post title - 'Smart' Kids: Obviously a terrible label to put on anyone. It's far too primitive a classification to use on something as complex and multi-faceted as intelligence. But for the next few paragraphs, let's just assume that I meant students who are in no risk of failing to rise to the Ministry Content Standard at a high Level 3 or Level 4 achievement. Everyone is smart. We're going to allow us to use this narrow definition for now.

2. Under-Achievement: Here's where the meat of the issue is. Under Achievement in the industrial age is evaluated against a common benchmark. 'Sub-standard' is term that may illustrate this idea. But we're in a world of Differentiated Instruction and Board Mission statements with some flavour of "Students Rising to Their Potential", we could consider Under-Achievement being evaluated against the student's potential for learning. (student's, not students').

So the challenge in the hypothesis - ignoring for now the difficulty in ever proving it - is to address students' true learning needs at an individual level. So what does a student achieving at level 2 need? Probably some assistance with learning skills to help them gain strategies to achieve in the content area. What does a student achieving at level 3 need? Work to consolidate their learning and maintain or increase their achievement levels.  What does a student achieving at level 4 need? Challenge opportunities to deepen their understanding.

How it can play out, however, is that the challenge and extension opportunities for students achieving at level 3 and 4 are not robust enough and certainly not as urgent as the needs of the struggling student. Even in an ideal situation where the teacher is motivated to provide those opportunities, there are forces at play that weaken the learning opportunity for the standard-achieving student.

First - time and attention is clearly being focussed on the struggling learner. Again and again we focus on strategies for the At-Risk student and target-to-move students who are struggling to reach standard. We set marker students to evaluate research activity and often these are students with content difficulties. This is to be expected and is good sound practice. Still, challenging all learners is time-consuming.

Second, though - the practice of challenging students at standard has a prickly surface. It is not always easy to require students to go beyond what the other students are doing as criticisms can come from all sides - students being challenged, other students, parents. Add to that the fact that many of the curricular expectations within courses don't explicitly indicate a high enough depth of complexity or difficulty to challenge some of these students. So in order to actually challenge them, you have to work beyond the curriculum. That can mean you're struggling for access to resources and possibly 'working without a net' when it comes to justifying evaluation and instructional activities.

However, referring to my previous post "Self-Regulation as primary mission", if we consider the attainment of skills in regulating learning as important enough for all learners, it's imperative that we challenge all learners to the brink of frustration to grant them the opportunities to learn these skills.

And here's where the danger lies. Without those opportunities to be challenged with difficult things to learn, the opportunities to gain Self-Regulated Learning skills don't have the opportunity to truly develop. Certainly students achieving at Level 4 often have a grasp on strategies for getting through the work, but to truly dive deeply into your own learning and understanding the process, one has to be faced with challenges that forces investigation into one's learning.

A simple example of this is the student who achieves high marks through high school and goes to university, only to find out that they really don't know how to study for exams. Or to prepare a large-scale assignment in an area they don't yet understand and struggle with. It could be said that a student who struggled in high school is better equipped to tackle difficult learning because they've had to do it more and have been in the position of using a wider variety of strategies to drive their learning most successfully. Perhaps they've been given the language to articulate their learning strategies whereas a standard-achieving student hasn't really had to pay attention to that.

So what's to be done?
Lest we simply check the standard-achieving students as 'good-to-go', they need to have truly challenging opportunities. Learning Challenges will provide the opportunity to realize Self-Regulated Learning. The concept of the 'Wicked' problems - generally large-scale rich tasks - should be brought to an individual level and smaller scale to provide those opportunities. Often. Difficult.

It's the only way these students will leave us with the skills to be independent learners.

Self-Regulation as primary mission...

What exactly is Self-Regulation?

As it turns out, it depends on a number of factors.

The most popular or common concept of Self-Regulation does not necessarily agree with the definition we are faced with in the Ontario Educational system. 

I'm not going to try to outline what psychologists use as a definition - that's simply out of my area. What I can do is outline what the ministry indicates as the concept of Self-Regulation with respect to the Learning Skills.

Every report card Grade 1-12 has the learning skills indicated with sample behaviours to clarify the content being evaluated.

Here's the set of sample behaviours for Self-Regulation:

Self-Regulation
 Sets own individual goals and monitors progress towards achieving them.
 Seeks clarification or assistance when needed.
 Assesses and reflects critically on own strengths, needs, and interests.
 Identifies learning opportunities, choices, and strategies to meet personal needs and achieve
goals.
 Perseveres and makes an effort when responding to challenges.

It is evident from this list of sample behaviours that the goal is to have this be a reflection of students' capacity for Self-Regulated Learning. It really does point to Meta-Cognition. If teachers are not familiar with this set of sample behaviours, then they may have a tendency to default over to the more common definitions including arousal states or self-control.

It is here that I am able to clarify the reasoning behind the title of this post. Self-Control is by no means what I'm suggesting as the primary mission of Education. But this particular definition of Self-Regulation - or, rather, Self-Regulated Learning - could be considered of primary importance, if we want to supply the world with life-long learners.

So it seems that the Ministry of Education in Ontario has taken this approach to Self-Regulation and it may not align with other common definitions. In presentations by the ministry regarding the roll-out of Growing Success and Assessment Of/For/As learning, a strongly articulated goal is the need for a 'Common Understanding' of the Growing Success concepts - assessment, report cards, evaluation, instruction.

But with the sample behaviours listed on every report card that lands in parents' hands, it seems evident that the common understanding is troublesome when the most common understanding of Self-Regulation is not in alignment with the report card sample behaviours.

So it's clear that a special effort has to be made to clarify what is meant by Self-Regulation in this context. This effort is required to shift what may be the most 'common' understanding of Self-Regulation to a 'common understanding' of what the Ministry expects it to be.

Exacerbating the problem are two facts that are very troublesome indeed:

• Teachers are not faced with these sample behaviours at any time; They often complete report card work without seeing the full printout of the report card with the sample behaviours in front of them;
• Learning Skills in general, and Self-Regulation in particular are not outlined with specific or general expectations anywhere else but in these sample behaviours on the report card. e.g. A search of the curriculum document for Grade 1-8 Language for the term 'Self Regulation' retrieves no matches.

So where do we stand?

There is a real danger that teachers and administrators can fall into the trap of considering Self-Regulation to be the wrong thing (with respect to the report card that will be signed and handed to parents with Self-Regulation achievement indicated) and proceed to evaluate, assess and instruct this content with the wrong thing in mind.

What do we do?

Very simply: work hard at promoting a 'common understanding' of Self-Regulation. 

Whereas:

1. Teachers are expected to evaluate Learning Skills in general, and Self-Regulation in particular;
2. Evaluation implies instruction;
3. Instruction implies explicit expectations and planning;

It would make sense that there be a clearly articulated and firmly communicated set of expectations in this area - not just an assumption that we have a  'common understanding' of what it contains.

And it's an exciting prospect. If we were to establish a 'curriculum' of sorts identifying the expectations, benchmarks, instructional strategies and assessment practice to really address how students learn about their own learning we can hope to have a lasting positive impact beyond the barriers of curricular content.

Many teachers do this because it's a wise use of their instructional time. Many students are witnessing modelling of these skills through participating in the structured work that teachers put in front of them. better yet, some students are given the opportunity to be a manager or controller of the process. And some are asked to articulate the elements of the process which compels them to buy into the process, or perhaps even take ownership of the process. If they are assessed and judged to be 'literate' in their own learning technique, these students are poised to be successful in facing learning challenges outside of the school and subject area.

So shouldn't it be a course of study unto itself?