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KATHRYN PARKER BOUDETT: One thing we've learned in our work
is that human beings have a tendency to see patterns, make inferences
and judgments, and draw conclusions quite
quickly from just a little bit of data.
This is an important skill.
It allows us to make thoughtful inferences and predictions.
But it can also lead to bad or misinformed judgments
when we are too quick to draw inferences from a small amount of data.
In our work with schools, we have found that a mental model called
the Ladder of Inference is especially useful in helping
educators resist this tendency and stay focused on the evidence.
The Ladder of Inference was first developed by business theorists Chris
Argyris and popularized by Peter Senge and colleagues in a book
called The Fifth Discipline, the art and practice of the learning organization.
The Ladder of Inference is a metaphor, organized
around how we as humans tend to make patterns
about what we see in the world.
Whenever I perceive something, I first select some data to focus on.
Then, I add some interpretation, draw conclusions, and finally take actions.
The actions I take then influence what kind of data I collect next.
And for that reason, it can be very dangerous to go up
the ladder too quickly.
At Data Wise, we like to use this model to help each other maintain
a relentless focus on evidence.
When we hear somebody add interpretations or draw conclusions
too quickly, we try to use phrases like, that statement is pretty high up
on the ladder.
What evidence are you using?
Or, we're all making a lot of interpretations here.
Let's try to go back down that ladder and talk first about the evidence.
CANDICE: That might be a good instructional suggestion.
But let's stick with, maybe, what we wonder
about what the student was thinking.
MOLLY: I jumped up on the ladder.
KATHRYN PARKER BOUDETT: For example, imagine an administrator
pops into a classroom and notices that there's
lots of students chatting at once, but the teacher is over in the corner
paying attention to just one student.
If the administrator adds the interpretation
that the student is distracting the teacher from his work
and that the other children are taking advantage of the situation
and just fooling around, the administrator
might draw the conclusion that the teacher has classroom management
problems and, then, put a negative note in the teacher's file.
In that example, the administrator jumped from her observation
that multiple students were talking once and that the teacher was only
talking to one student-- both of which were true facts.
But she interpreted that the teacher was distracted
and that the students were off task, not taking the time
to investigate whether other interpretations could
have been equally possible.
For example, maybe the teacher was deliberately giving one-on-one feedback
to each student that day and the rest of the students
were supposed to be engaged in small group discussions.
By using the Ladder of Inference to help you note when you're making inferences,
you can catch yourself every time you treat an interpretation
as though it were a fact.
Because this discipline can be so helpful,
this course will give you lots of practice in starting low on the ladder
and making a conscious choice whenever you want to climb up it.
For each step of the Data Wise course, you'll
have a chance to look at an artifact from a school
and make observations that are grounded in the data.
A very helpful way of sticking to evidence that Data Wise schools use
is a protocol called, I notice, I wonder.
First, we focus on statements about what we notice.
These statements should be as specific and nonjudgmental as possible.
Then, we wonder about what we noticed.
These wonderings start to climb up the ladder
to include interpretations of the data.
But they're framed as questions since we are less certain of them.
Wonderings allow us to ask meaningful questions about the evidence,
while also providing a space to let us acknowledge the inferences
that our minds may be jumping to.
You will then have a chance to see how members of the Data Wise team
collaboratively notice and wonder when making
sense of a wide range of data sources.
This exercise will help you cultivate the E of the ACE habits of mind,
a relentless focus on evidence.
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