Have you ever considered that the first person to share an idea, their knowledge, their opinion, or give input to their Professional Learning Community may create a sequence of events that prevent the PLC from making the strongest most informed decisions possible?
Naturally, we assume that paying close attention to our peers in a PLC and thinking heavily about what they say is key if we are to be an effective PLC. But does it?
Cascade des Tufs - Baume les Messieurs - Jura - France
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James Surowiecki, author of The Wisdom Of Crowds writes of groups, “Information isn’t in the hands of one person. It’s dispersed across many people. So relying on only your private information to make a decision guarantees that it will be less informed than it could be. Can you safely rely on the information of others?”
We need the information of others if our PLCs are to be effective and powerful. The collective decisions of the PLC will impact student achievement, so it is crucial that the decisions made are the best decision possible and based on the most accurate information, data, and knowledge of the PLC members.
But there is an interesting paradox at work here. At issue for many Professional Learning Communities is a phenomena Surowiecki calls an “information cascade.”
“Collective decisions are most likely to be good ones when they’re made by people with diverse opinions reaching independent conclusions, relying primarily on their private information. In cascades none of these things are true. Effectively speaking, a few influential people—either because they happened to go first, or because they have particular skills and fill particular holes in people’s social networks—determine the course of the cascade. In a cascade, people’s decisions are not made independently, but are profoundly influenced—in some cases, even determined—by those around them.”
Who speaks in a PLC matters. Who speaks first in a PLC matters too.
Many Professional Learning Communities succumb to a problem with the information cascade when the fail to get all of the available information from each teacher. “So to supplement their own information, people will look at what others are doing.”
If you start with an incomplete picture of what students are achieving, or what the best teaching strategy needed is, then PLC are bound to end up making a decision that is not a good as it could be because that decision is based on incomplete information.
For example, imagine a PLC has meet to discuss the best teaching strategy for a particular standard. Imagine that the first person to speak is a strong, knowledgeable, capable, and proven teacher. He or she explains what he or she believes to be the best teaching strategy for this particular standard. As this point, instead of sharing their ideas, knowledge, etc, many teachers will agree with this teacher’s idea and comment in favor of it. This, then, impacts the next teachers, who seeing the first two speak in favor of the idea, joins in agreeing with the strategy.
And on it goes, following a sequence of choices based on incomplete information. Because the other teachers do not share their ideas, but sequentially agree to the first, the possible strategies that could have been picked from fall from several to just one.
“The problem starts when people’s decisions are not made all at once but rather in sequence…”
The decision is therefore made on incomplete information, which naturally means it is not the strongest decision it could be.
“The fundamental problem with the information cascade is that after a certain point it becomes rational for people to stop paying attention to their own knowledge—their private information—and to start looking instead at the actions of others and imitate them.”
In the PLC example above, the teachers who speak after the first couple of teachers are simply imitating what has come before them. They choose to agree with the strategy selected instead of presenting their own ideas, possibly excellent ideas.
“But once each individual stops relying on his own knowledge, the cascade stops becoming informative. Everyone thinks that people are making decisions based on what they know, when in fact, people are making decisions based on what they think the people who before them knew.”
So, the first person to present and idea, state their opinion, or give their input, can begin a sequence that takes the PLC to an entirely different place than it would have if everyone had given their private information or knowledge prior to the PLC making their final decision.
“Instead of aggregation all the information individuals have, the way a market or a voting system does, the cascade becomes a sequence of uniformed choices, so that collectively the group ends up making a bad decision…”
Until all members of the PLC have share their private information, knowledge, and ideas then the group is working with an incomplete picture and will make decisions that are not the best they could be.
“The fundamental problem with cascades is that people’s choices are made sequentially, instead of all at once. There are good reasons for this—some people are more cautious than others, some are more willing to experiment…”
A first year teacher is more likely to hold back and go with the rest of the PLC members’ ideas and not speak up. A highly capable teacher may dominate the group decision making as the rest simply defer to him or her. The reasons can vary but the results are the same. Decisions made on incomplete information.
“But roughly speaking, all of the problems that cascades cause are the result of the fact that some people make their decisions before others…One key to successful group decisions is getting people to pay much less attention to what everyone else is saying.”
Now that is a paradox. The idea is to keep people independent until the group has all the information, until the PLC has a complete picture.
One method I have used is to have teachers write their ideas down prior to coming to the PLC meeting. During the meeting I ask that each teacher share the ideas they have written down regardless of what they hear from others. In other words, you can’t change your idea based on what someone has just said. You need to put the idea out there and share it with the group. Only after everyone has shared his or her ideas do we make a decision. Usually pulling aspects of the many ideas shared into a stronger plan or decision than would have existed without everyone’s input.
This has the benefit of keeping PLC members independent in their thinking, respected and valued for their contributions, and affirmed because their thoughts were given the same opportunity of success as any other presented to the PLC.
That is Education Innovation.
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