THE THREE APPROACHES TO CHANGE
You can approach change indirectly (by changing the situation to change behavior), through groups (especially in turning them into teams) and/or directly (by addressing students’ mindsets, values and sense of belonging). You also may want to approach change by combining some of these approaches.
Combined Approaches. Most successful change making involves more than one approach. A direct approach is made even more powerful when it is coupled with those events and rituals that are naturally repeated within the school calendar, that is situational approaches. A group approach, such as student peer groups to address bullying, is strengthened by direct teaching. Perhaps the most powerful example of a combined approach is Mary Gordon’s baby-in-the-classroom project.
- The Direct Approach focuses on the students themselves, especially on their mindsets, their values, their social skills and their habits. It takes its most powerful form as social psychological interventions in education, “developed by the current generation of “social psychologists, who are now developing on-line ways of delivering them.
- The Group Approach involves turning negative peer pressure into positive peer pressure and forming teams that can become agents of change themselves. Groups can be extraordinarily powerful in improving academic performance for those student who participate within them, such as study groups. Kurt Lewin, the founding father of social psychology (and to whom this book is dedicated), said it best, “Group dynamics can be the biggest barriers and the biggest motivators for change.”
- The Indirect Approach focuses on improving the places and the times through which energy flows. They go at it through improving the organizational or institutional resources within a school or its surrounding community, particularly by attending to those situations where students gather on a regular basis.
Combined Approaches. Most successful change making involves more than one approach. A direct approach is made even more powerful when it is coupled with those events and rituals that are naturally repeated within the school calendar, that is situational approaches. A group approach, such as student peer groups to address bullying, is strengthened by direct teaching. Perhaps the most powerful example of a combined approach is Mary Gordon’s baby-in-the-classroom project.