What is Holonomy?

July 4, 2013: This morning National Public Radio aired a piece with visitors to the National Mall reading the Declaration of Independence. As I listened, I was reminded of a new word I learned during the Cognitive Coaching Seminar (CCS) - Holonomy. This is the study of the relationships that exist between the part and the whole.

From the Cognitive Coaching Seminars Foundation Training Learning Guide:

Arthur Koestler described the dual tendency of every individual to preserve and assert his or her individuality as a proud and quasi-autonomous whole while functioning as an interdependent part of a larger system. (p. 22)

In 1776, the Continental Congress declared independence from Great Britain. While historically the focus is placed on independence (and rightly so), the Declaration of Independence ends with a pledge of interdependence: "we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor." Too often in our society we see either one (the independence) or the other (the interdependence) and miss the role both play in a successful system.

In mathematics, the ability to see both the part and the whole is important in developing number sense. For example, do you see ten individual beads or one set of ten beads ... or both?

The inability to see the connections between these two perspectives limits a person's mathematical fluency. This is what I immediately thought of when I was introduced to holonomy. 

However, it gets much more complicated when you begin to look at human systems. All you need to do is ask anyone familiar with the history of the United States or the workings of a school. How does a teacher maintain self while fitting into the system? There has even been some discussion related to this regarding the mathtwitterblogosphere. Perhaps we need a Declaration of Interdependence.

Not it!

Am I in the way?

I have completed the first four days of the Cognitive Coaching^SM Seminar (CCS), and I am still in the process of consolidating my understanding. In a previous post, I considered the stagecoach metaphor used in the CCS. Here, I want to address another metaphor - the cognitive coach as a mediator of thinking. From page 33 of the Learning Guide:

the mediator intervenes in such a way as to enhance another person's self-directed learning (Costa & Garmston, 2002).

When this is combined with the Four Support Functions (coaching, consulting, collaborating, and evaluating), it requires the cognitive coach to determine what sort of stance he or she ought to take to facilitate another person's thinking.

When we encounter someone with an issue, our typical response is to try to fix it. That is, we get between the person and the problem. To counter this habit, the default stance taken by a cognitive coach is to step back; this provides the person with the space to own the problem and the cognitive coach a sense of perspective. Then the cognitive coach can more easily support the individual in making choices about the path to take and becoming empowered.

Sometimes, the person with the issue is stuck and unable to see any path forward. Given an explicit request for help, the cognitive coach takes on a different stance - consultant. (This is what most people mean when they think of coaching in education.) The cognitive coach steps into the path and provides whatever leadership he or she has to offer. The support might be a model ("If it were me, here's what I might do.") or a menu ("Here is a list of things others have used in similar situations."). As soon as the person becomes unstuck, the cognitive coach once again takes a step back and returns to a coaching stance.

When two people are working together as equals, then the cognitive coach stands shoulder-to-shoulder with the other person. They face the problem together, with each contributing 100% to the effort of obtaining a solution. This support function might be appropriate when co-teaching a class.

In the final support function, evaluating, the cognitive coach stands out of the way and observes the individual's performance. A shared set of standards are used to monitor the individual's progress toward a solution. If the same person is doing the coaching and the evaluating, then his or her role in every situation must be well-defined. Furthermore, trust must be established if this shifting of roles is going to work.

===

Teachers who have gone through the CCS have told me that awareness of these support functions and the ability to move between them improved their instruction. They stress that thinking like a cognitive coach has helped them to focus on supporting the development of self-directed individuals. Mostly, this entails not standing between the students and their learning.

#TeachingReminder: Get out of the way!

What kind of coach are you?

I began Cognitive Coaching^SM training this week. In order to consolidate my new understandings, I thought I would share with you some of what I have learned. This seminar is comprised of eight, day-long sessions (we have only had two thus far), so I anticipate that this will be a series of posts. In this one I want to focus on what it is like to be a Cognitive Coach.

The seminar started with a simile (one of my favorite ways to begin learning something new): "Cognitive Coaching is like ..." When I first heard this I immediately thought of an athletic coach. I coached basketball, football, and volleyball for several years when I was teaching at Grant Public Schools, so it was natural that I would think of Cognitive Coaching from this perspective. I have even used the athletic coaching analogy in professional development sessions when explaining instructional approaches like differentiation or the gradual release of responsibility.

Unfortunately, athletic coaching is not always seen in a positive light.

Even if you get rid of the abuse, athletic coaching usually entails one person, the coach, telling other people how do to something. I remember saying to my players, "If you can't run this play the way I've drawn it up, then I'll find someone who can." While having everyone on the same page might win games, it is not an effective way to support cognitive development.

The mission of Cognitive Coaching is to produce self-directed persons with the cognitive capacity for high performance both independently and as members of a community.

 Consequently, the simile Cognitive Coaching uses is a stagecoach.

The idea is that the Cognitive Coach conveys whomever is being coached from where they are to where they want to be; this is a key difference from the typical coaching approach because the person being coached chooses the desired destination. The coach simply supports the valued individual's move from here to there.

While Cognitive Coaching is only one of four different support functions, it is the initial stance taken in any interaction with the understanding that the coach can adjust to consultant, collaborator, or evaluator if it becomes necessary. I will discuss the differences between these supports in the next post.