Intuition and Professional Learning

Great teachers and principals have an intuitive sense about both good instruction and their students. That's really valuable and important to nurturing and sustaining quality schools. But too often I've worked in schools where people want to rely solely on their intuition, or their experience, to make decisions about school improvement. Ever heard someone say "I've been teaching for 20 years and I know . . . " That's almost always an indicator that the conversation will focus on the individual and collective experience of the staff rather than on research, data and information about best practices.

In mid-January I read this blog post from the Center for Teaching Quality, What Role Do Hunches Play in Professional Learning Communities. It does an excellent job of advocating for deliberate reasoning when making school improvement decisions and challenges the idea of relying on "gut" reactions and hunches.

I hope you find this post helpful in your work as a school leader.