We are getting ready for an upcoming district wide Professional Development Day (PD), but it reminded me of the importance of continuous PD throughout the year and its connection to the Red Queen Effect.
“Just at this moment, somehow or other, they began to run. Alice never could quite make out, in thinking it over afterwards, how it was that they began: all she remembers is, that they were running hand in hand, and the Queen went so fast that it was all she could do to keep up with her: and still the Queen kept crying " Faster! Faster! ", but Alice felt she could not go faster, though she had no breath left to say so. The most curious part of the thing was that the trees and other things round them never changed their places at all: however fast they went, they never seemed to pass anything." I wonder if all the things move along with us?" thought poor puzzled Alice. And the Queen seemed to guess her thoughts, for she cried, "Faster! Don't try to talk!" (Carroll, 1872, p. 48)
The Red Queen Effect was developed by biologist Leigh Van Valen (1973) who based his argument on the Red Queen character in Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass. In Carroll’s story, the Red Queen runs hard but never gets anywhere because everything else in the landscape is also moving. As she tells Alice, “It takes all the running you can do to keep in place!” (Carroll, 1872, p. 50). Van Valen used the Red Queen as a metaphor for his evolutionary principle which theorizes regardless of how well a species adapts to its current environment, it must continue evolving to keep up with its competitors and enemies who are also evolving. In short, the Red Queen Effect states: Do nothing and fall behind or run hard to stay where you are. Van Valen’s Red Queen metaphor can also be extended to teaching.
Excellent teachers are constantly evolving their practice. They recognize that as soon as they stop progressing to rest on “good” teaching they fall behind in best practice and their students are then at a disadvantage. This is the Red Queen Effect applied to education. Recognizing the importance of continuous improvement, as specified in the Red Queen Effect, is analogous to recognizing the importance of professional development (PD) with the best form of PD being continuous and job embedded. Unfortunately, ongoing PD opportunities which nurture teachers throughout their career are not easily implemented. As a result, educators must be resilient in order to turn this problem into an opportunity.
Alex Hargreaves and Dennis Shirley, authors of The Fourth Way, specify “two of the key predictors of resilience are a strong sense of purpose and a supportive partnership”(2010, p. 74 ). Additionally, Professional Learning Community (PLC) champion, Rick Dufour, states that a “culture of collaboration” (2005, p.36) is one of the big ideas of a PLC and key for teacher growth. Together, the Red Queen Effect, which provides a strong sense of purpose, and PLCs, which provide a supportive partnership through collaboration, constitute the two key ingredients for resilience needed for teacher growth. PLCs can therefore provide instructional leaders a means to implement the Red Queen Effect. These PLCs, if embedded within the school day, can be utilized to promote effective PD on a daily basis rather than sporadic PD often associated with one-day workshops.
Job embedded professional development gives teachers the time to collaborate and focus more on assessments for learning (formative assessments). It also promotes peer-driven networks focused on student learning which help teachers shift the prime motivator of success from the fear factor of standardized tests to the peer factor of collaboration with a focus on student learning as a measure of success (Hargreaves & Shirley, 2010). Linda Darling-Hammond has supported this idea stating, “Effective professional development is sustained, ongoing, content-focused, and embedded in professional learning communities where teachers work over time on problems of practice with other teachers in their subject area or school” (Darling-Hamond, 2010, p. 266).
PLCs do provide more time for teachers to work together which has the potential to lead to an increase in student learning. However, “For [teachers] to learn from one another, they must readily share information about their success and failures, as medical professionals do, rather than act as rivals in a struggle for survival” (Ravitch, 2010, p. 228). Therefore, if teachers are to be most effective they must not work in competition or in isolation, but instead work together to diagnose why a student is struggling much like doctors diagnose a patient when making rounds. These teachers should also use data to inform instruction rather than drive instruction. Instructional leaders can help teachers focus on student learning as a measure of success through first sharing the philosophy of the Red Queen Effect and then supporting teacher growth via embedded PD within Professional Learning Communities.
The evolution of education must continue and the best place to start is in the classroom with the classroom teacher. Teachers should not only begin their careers competent in their content area but also continue to stay on top of their profession through PD. Over the years, it is not uncommon for individual educators, experiencing relative success, to believe that this overall philosophy does not apply to them because they have reached the pinnacle of teaching. Instructional leaders facing this contradiction must help those individual educators understand the dangers of resting on “good” teaching or run the risk of negatively impacting student learning. As the Red Queen urged Alice in Through the Looking Glass, instructional leaders must urge these teachers to “keep moving” and continue to evolve their pedagogy lest they fall behind. In order to accomplish this goal, teachers need to first recognize the Red Queen Effect is in play and then must be supported by both their colleagues and instructional leaders through continuous job embedded professional development.
References
Carrol, L. 1872. Through the looking glass and what Alice found there. Macmillan, London.
Darling-Hammond, Linda (2010). The Flat World and Education. New York, NY: Teachers College Press.
DuFour, Richard, Eaker, Robert & DuFour, Rebecca (2005). On Common Ground: The Power of Professional Learning Communities. Bloomington, IN: Solution Tree.
Hargreaves, Andy & Shirley, Dennis (2010). The Fourth Way: The Inspiring Future for Educational Change. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.
Ravitch, Diane (2010). The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice are Undermining Education. New York, NY: Basic Books.
Van Valen, L. 1973. A new evolutionary law. Evol. Theory 1: 1-30.
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