Group-Member Capabilities
Developing adaptive and collaborative professional learning communities must be purposeful and explicit. Effective teams do not happen overnight nor does administrative assignment of groups spark the effectiveness desired. It takes hard work from all participants to shift from a group to a team. At an individual level, this begins with developing metacognition of the members. Members must know and execute the balance of individual wants with the group's needs. Art Costa developed a framework for the necessary capabilities of team members in Cognitive Coaching. Costa focuses on the notion that there are two audiences in a given meeting. Garmston and Wellman (2009) describe, "One is external, made up of the other group members. The other is internal, made up of the feelings, pictures, and talk going on inside each individual" (p. 28).
- Four Group-Member Capabilities
- To know one's intentions and choose congruent behaviors
- To set aside unproductive patterns of listening, responding, and inquiring
- To know when to self-assert and when to integrate
- To know and support the group's purposes, topics, processes, and development
- Garmston and Wellman (2009):
- To set aside autobiographical listening, responding, and inquiring
- "Me too!"
- To set aside inquisitive listening, responding, and inquiring
- "Tell me more!"
- To set aside solution listening, responding, and inquiring
- "I know what to do!"
- To set aside autobiographical listening, responding, and inquiring
Balancing Inquiry and Advocacy
7 Norms of Collaboation
Team norming should be the primary focus as groups come together, take on a new focus, or when members move in and out of the group. Norms establish the means to effective communication. While there are more specific norms to each group that the members agree upon, such as arrival time and privacy of meetings, additional norms must focus on the collaborative speaking and listening structures.
Art Costa and Robert Garmston (2002); Senge (1990); Baker, Costa & Shalit (1997) were adapted to form Garmston and Wellman's (2009) team norms for productive communication:
Art Costa and Robert Garmston (2002); Senge (1990); Baker, Costa & Shalit (1997) were adapted to form Garmston and Wellman's (2009) team norms for productive communication:
- Pausing
- "Groups give themselves a powerful gift when they establish this pattern as a norm; pause, paraphrase, and prove for details; pause, paraphrase, and inquire for a wider range of thoughts; and pause, paraphrase, and inquire about feelings" (p.33).
- Paraphrasing
- Acknowledge and clarify content
- Summarize and organize
- Shift to a higher or lower level of abstraction
- Posing Questions
- To specify thinking
- To explore thinking and obtain specificity
- Putting Ideas on the Table
- Ideas are presented and discussed separately from the speaker or originator
- Garmston and Wellman (2009) state, "When ideas are owned by individuals, the other group members tend to interact with the speak-group members tend to interact with the speaker out of their feelings for and relationship to the speaker rather than with the ideas presented" (p. 38).
- Providing Data
- Garmston and Wellman (2009) state, "Data have no meaning on their own. Meaning is a result of human interaction with data. Many schools are data-rich and meaning-poor" (p.;38).
- Data-Driven Dialogue Process
- Activating and Engaging
- Exploring and Discovering
- Organizing and Integrating
- Paying Attention to Self and Others
- Garmston and Wellman (2009) state, "Skilled group members are aware of what they are saying, how they are saying it, and how others are receiving and responding to their ideas" (p. 39).
- Presuming Positive Intentions
- Garmston and Wellman (2009) state, "Assuming that others' intentions are positive encourages honest conversations about important matters. This is an operating stance that group members must take if dialogue and discussion are to flourish" (p. 39).
Types of Paraphrases
Garmston, R. J., & Wellman, B. M. (2009). The adaptive school: A sourcebook for developing collaborative groups (2nd ed.). Norwood, MA: Christopher-Gordon Publishers, Inc.