The Crafted Conversation Week Commencing 14th of October, 2024

Week commencing: 14th of October, 2024

Weekly Crafted Concept

Across both Podcast episodes this week, I was lucky to pull on the expertise of professionals with a coherent and intentional view on professional development. We all embrace change in different ways; but the world we live in is an ever-organic and growing one.

It is hard to fathom that the internet is 30 years old. Amazon is its twin. The iPhone (inconceivable to exist without THE smartphone of choice), 2007. I was Upper Sixth in 2007 and thought I was going to be a professional footballer! Blackberry, anyone?!

So: we need to remain curious if we open ourselves to new possibilities, even if those possibilities directly challenge our current methodologies, practice, even, and worst of all, our construction of identity and professional and cultural capital as a teacher or coach.

Teachers and coaches regularly encounter new knowledge, techniques, and ideas. How they process and integrate this information determines the trajectory of their growth. Accommodation occurs when new knowledge challenges existing paradigms, necessitating change. Accommodation requires an openness to change and a willingness to adapt, and it is crucial in fields where innovation is rapid.

However, the ability to critique and discern priorities is essential to ensure that cognitive overload is not maximised, and all progress is stalled. need to balance adaptation with stability in their core competencies. Assimilation involves incorporating new knowledge into pre-existing frameworks without altering those structures significantly. Critique and subsequent disbandment of ideologies/new practices allows a sifting through what is useful and what is not, preserving mental energy for what truly matters.

A final caution, though, is that our cognitive biases are designed to prioritise the easy solution. In this case, it is the assimilation process by just attaching new ideas to current practice, or their immediate disproval. We seek confirmation bias and loss aversion naturally, and so may be too intimidated by new information without offsetting the discomfort versus its potential for growth.

Curious Craft: Application to The Classroom & The Coach

• Remain open and curious to new methodologies borne out of the research-led, peer-reviewed arena

• Set up communities of practice at work or online to share themes and explore their application

  • Consider becoming a member of a representative body (Chartered College of Teaching or UK Sport) to press your accommodation buttons!

  • Sign up to newsletters and listen to Podcasts - The Crafted Conversation ;)

• Practice thinking:

  • if I chose to design my session in this way, what would the best/worst outcome be?

  • which low-stakes year group/class could I sample that feedback method?

  • what internal research opportunities are there?

  • can you contact the author(s) - they will almost 100% want to talk about the application of their work

The Crafted Conversation

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