My Coaches' Couch: Agree to Disagree?

Today I had the interesting opportunity of watching three Japanese teachers argue about a lesson. Although there were occasional smiles and nodding heads, there was also energetic debate. This struck me, especially, since one of the things I’ve noticed during my first week in Japan is how respectful and quiet the culture is (you’re even asked to put your phone on “manners” mode in the subway). But that didn’t stop a healthy disagreement when debriefing a lesson about subtraction.

During the lesson, third-grade students were asked to use the digits 1-4 and come up with the minimum difference in a two-digit subtraction equation. The problem on the board looked like this:

And they had these number cards to use:

The teacher took an inductive approach, having students generate lots of possible equations and then looking at what they noticed. Then they expanded the problem to three digits and had another go.

During the debrief, the heated discussion was whether the strategy should have been more clearly articulated before moving on to the three-digit problem. The coach and one teacher thought so; the teacher who had taught the lesson did not. It reminded me of the many discussions about scaffolding I’ve had with teachers over the years. (I side with the teacher gave students plenty of time to figure out the pattern on their own and with peers, rather than the ones who wanted to be sure everyone understood an algorithm before moving on.)

This question about scaffolding seems to creep up in every content area. How many hints do you give? How much do you model? How explicit does the graphic organizer need to be? Sometimes we feel like Goldilocks, searching for the “just right” solution. And it could be that there is more than one just right.

In the debate amongst Japanese educators, it was interesting to hear one of the teachers say, “Well, maybe that was the right thing for this group of students.” He seemed to concede that, even though he was having a heated debate about the best way to do it, there was actually more than one best way. And the argument stirred up some important justifications for their varied ideas.

I remember how the gray-bearded Russian professor who taught me Vygotsky’s theories would longingly describe the philosophical arguments that occurred among Vygotsky and his peers. “No one here in the U.S. will argue like that with me,” he said. “Not even my wife” (who happened to be another professor in the department).

Although there’s certainly plenty of argument occurring in the U.S., what seems to be lacking is civil discourse. Maybe we could model this in our educational conversations. When we agree to respectfully disagree during team meetings and debrief conversations, our arguments might uncover important insights that will guide instruction.

Our culture doesn’t seem to be too good at this kind of disagreement. What do you think you could do to support healthy instructional discussions that don’t skirt around points of disagreement? How could you create a conversational culture where it’s okay to express a divergent opinion? Change doesn’t happen when everyone agrees with the status quo. Supporting open conversation is important to instructional improvement.