What is Instructional Intelligence?
Perhaps one of the easiest access routes into it is by relating it to your own personal professional practice.
Whether or not we consciously think about the how, what and why of what we do each day, the business of teaching and learning is one of the most demanding, composite and important professions in the world. It means juggling on a minute by minute basis an array of competing demands and integrating them into a seamless series of events that constitute the image of a competent trainer.
Take a moment to reflect upon how complex and challenging training in the VET sector is. As a trainer, consider all the variables you may have to manage in an hour, let alone a day, week or even a year in your profession:
· Students come from diverse backgrounds defined by their culture, ethnicity, age, learning styles, multiple intelligence profiles, gender, physical and sensory abilities, their past life and educational experiences.
· Some of your learners may have learning disabilities others may display behaviour management problems. Some may not attend class at all or when present not engage with learning or actively disrupt it.
· You are provided with a set of standards or competencies which you have little or no control over, you then have to deliver and assess in a defined timeframe which is often beyond your control.
· You also work within systems, structures and policy frameworks which you have little of no control, but must adhere to.
Now consider what you do to engage students in this environment, what instructional choices do you make to ensure you maximise student learning whilst simultaneously managing the demands of the context?
· What do you do to ensure all students are actively engaged in their work?
· How do you hold students accountable for their own learning?
· How do you ensure students feel safe and non threatened in your learning environment?
· What tactics and strategies do you put in place to minimise disruptive student behaviour?
· Do you have a range of techniques to respond to disruptive or aggressive students?
· How do you motivate students?
· How do you foster trust?
· Do you use a range of instructional tactics and strategies such as graphic organisers, collaborative learning techniques and demonstration to engage students?
· How do you select one tactic or strategy over another?
· Do you have a variety of assessment methods to meet the individual needs of learners?
· How do you integrate the research and theory on multiple intelligences, learning disabilities, learning styles and gender into your practice?
The result of raising all this to a conscious level can be quite overwhelming, but that is exactly what this II program is designed to do. Instead of accepting that what occurs in a leaning environment as an enigma, the program seeks to identify, classify and deconstruct the multidimensional act of training. From this position we then aim to put it all back together like a giant jigsaw puzzle, seeing how each individual piece is constructed and interlocks with others; from this emerges the big picture.
The journey through this conscious skill development can be likened much to what our own students go through as they acquire new skills and knowledge.
We move through:
· Unconscious incompetence - not knowing what we don’t know, to
· Conscious incompetence – being aware of how much we don’t know, to
· Conscious competence - being aware of our actions as we competently perform a task or skill and to finally reach,
· Unconscious competence – completing tasks automatically without having to think about it.
We all operate at different points of this continuum in our practice at various times in our careers, we frequently transit in and out as we learn and adapt to changes as they emerge within our environment.
Is it acceptable for us as professionals to accept that some of us are just ‘good at what we do’, without analysising exactly what it is that we do that makes us successful, skilled and competent trainers? By the same token, if a colleague is experiencing difficulty, are we able to deconstruct and classify their practice to discover exactly where things are going amiss, to be then able to assist them to reconstruct in a more effective manner?
In order to grow and develop professionally Bennett and Rolheiser (2001) argue that conscious skill development is essential:
“Designing learning environments for students is too complex and important for teachers not to be thoughtful (consciously skilled) in their decisions and actions” (p15).
What does a competent instructionally intelligent trainer look like?
II is about the wise integration of multiple instructional processes to create more effective learning environments for students and ourselves. The focus of II is on our instructional competency as practitioners, not just on what we teach but arguably more importantly how we teach.
II as an instructional program, provides a language for practitioners to talk about their instructional methodology so they can share expertise as well as assess and refine their own practice.
Barrie Bennett
Barrie is an associate professor at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE) of the University of Toronto, where he works with both graduate and undergraduate students. His teaching and research focus is instructional intelligence. He is currently working with several school districts in Canada, Australia and the United States on the integration of multiple instructional processes in the design of more powerful learning environments.
Barrie has taught at the elementary, junior high and high school levels. He was also a school district instructional consultant working with both exceptional and at ‘risk teachers’.
He is the co-author of Classroom Management – A Thinking & Caring Approach, Cooperative Learning: Where Heart Meets Mind and Beyond Monet: The Artful Science of Instructional Integration.
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