James Surowiecki's "Better all the Time" in the 10 November New Yorker explains how in the past 30 years athletic performances have improved markedly because the measurement of performance has improved markedly. The ability to measure performance has, in turn, made it possible for serious athletes to train better--to perfect small skills, to eat correctly, sleep deeply, train wisely, and thus to improve. This improvement has been driven by three things--(1) better technology, (2) the realization that athletic skills are malleable, not fixed, and (3) the emergence of coaches who know how to employ (1) and (2).
Surowiecki then turns to other parts of society that have shown similar improvement--chess, for example, where the the number of grandmasters has exploded, or manufacturing, where "lemons, for the most part, have become a thing of the past."
Finally, Surowiecki argues that struggling sectors of society could be improved by following the tenets of the performance revolution. Not surprisingly, he focuses on education. Surprisingly, he turns his attention to teacher training. He argues that "if American teachers--unlike athletes or manufacturing workings--haven't gotten much better over the past three decades, its largely because their training has, either."
This attention to teacher training surprises me for two reasons. First, Surowiecki accepts the currently vogue-ish claim that "teacher training in the United States has usually been an afterthought." This is simply not true, as anyone who has been involved with a school of education or a school district could tell you.
Second, though, he misses the clear analogy in his article. Teachers are not athletes, teachers are coaches. And as with their peers in athletics, teachers' ability to improve the performance of their charges depends on better technology and a system where the malleability of skill is assumed.
Teachers (high school or college level) have neither of these things. A coach who wishes to improve the performance of her team has access to film, statistical analyses, and the ability to require athletes to repeat their work again and again until it is perfect. Coaches also have motivated charges who love the thing they are being asked to do. Teachers have only the bluntest assessment tools--occasional tests, quizzes, papers, and presentations--and none of the time or equipment necessary to build a powerful window onto student learning.
Imagine, for example, that I want to help students be outstanding historians. I need a way to record what they do when the research, what they think when they write, and how they respond to corrections. I have none of these tools. Instead I have a classroom whose technology is entirely focused on either the teacher (the projector, for example) or the student (computers, for example). I have no meaningful way to replay the activities of students, pointing out their strengths and flaws as they assemble their learning. Instead, I generally pass judgement on a nearly complete product.
If there is a silver lining in this situation, it is that small schools are better equipped than large ones to provide this sort of data coupled with the ability to put it to use. The revolution in coaching relies on a small coach to athlete ratio, one-on-one mentoring, and the opportunity for athletes to put changes into practice. All three of these things are more available in classes with 10 students than 100, and for faculty whose job it is to advance learning, not research.
The question for small schools, then, is how we put in the hands of our teachers the tools they need to mimic the coaches of our elite athletes.
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