John Mikton will join Jeff and myself to talk about this question on the Shifting Our Schools podcast taking place tonight. To start answering this question, I think the obvious starting point is to work with teachers individually to ask them what needs to happen to help them try new ideas in their teaching and learning. I don’t see large workshops or sending folks to conferences as the starting point to help build a culture of risk-taking. Large scale PD efforts can provide models of shifted practices and get folks excited to try new things but it still comes back to each teacher in his/her classroom trying new ideas in their teaching. I think it is helpful to talk to teachers a few weeks after returning from a conference to see how things are going in trying some of the practices they saw at the conference. Many times they haven’t acted on their excitement of learning new approaches due to barriers in their schools.

We know the list of barriers that often affect teachers in many ways not just in not taking risks (i.e., not enough time, too much to cover in the curriculum, assigned tasks that don’t support student learning, parent expectations, etc.). Experience tells me that by talking with individual teachers, finding practices they are confident in using in their classrooms and then asking what they see as interesting in other classrooms or in their professional reading, we as learning specialists (instructional technologists, librarians, learning support, GATE facilitators, curriculum coordinators, etc.) can then help them take small first steps to try new things starting within their area of comfort.

One theme that runs through many of our podcasts about shifting practices and schools is leadership. While learning specialists can make a huge difference in supporting teachers and learning in the classroom, it is our administrators who can really help push the shift by modeling risk-taking by setting a tone for the school that trying new ideas is expected. By communicating to the larger community through a variety of communication avenues (e.g., blogs, email, Twitter, various presentations tools in parent meetings, etc.), the administrator takes risks with new technology while inviting parents to understand and expect risk taking as part of the school culture. Celebration of teachers and students taking risks should be central to the shift in culture. While much of the focus will be on successful risk taking, we cannot forget to highlight the times when the results didn’t quite work out and learning took place. 🙂

If we work with individuals while having the community as a whole assess the nature of our current school culture, we can gather the information needed to create an action plan to build a climate that supports risk-taking. While this process might take some time, if we start right away having our learning specialists work with teachers to share their opinions about barriers and needed actions for support while having our administrators lead by example, we can start helping educators take more risks in their teaching.