Journey Mapping a Path to Early Literacy in Tennessee
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Title
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Journey Mapping a Path to Early Literacy in Tennessee
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Abstract/Description
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Empathy tends to be undervalued when education reform is afoot. Teachers and students generally feel that change is done to them, rather than something they participate in, even when it comes to the simplest courtesy of being asked for their opinions. As years of frustration over unsuccessful policies in education and elsewhere can attest, top-down mandates are not a promising means of engendering trust and receptivity and, therefore, are not especially effective at driving deep, enduring change.
Yet, seeking input alone isn’t enough. A district superintendent, for example, needs to know the right questions to ask school principals to try to understand what’s behind, say, low-reading levels; principals have to determine why teachers are struggling with some students; and teachers have to know what’s going on with their students — in their heads, in class, and outside of school. A process called journey mapping is increasingly being used by educators to hone in on two fundamental principles of improvement science: seeing the system that’s producing the problematic outcomes, and being user-centered, which means becoming aware of students’ (or teachers’) perspectives and their experiences, feelings, and needs.
“The whole issue in education is if you want to teach someone well, you have to know who you’re teaching,” said Sharon Greenberg, literacy lead for the Tennessee Early Literacy Network, a networked improvement community (NIC) created jointly in 2016 by the Tennessee Department of Education and the Carnegie Foundation. Greenberg wrote the journey map questions, designed the protocols, and organized the analysis — all topics she and her colleagues from Carnegie and Tennessee will be discussing in detail during a session at Carnegie’s 2017 Summit on Improvement in Education.
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[Excerpted from the Carnegie Commons Blog]
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IRE Approach/Concept
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Networked Improvement Community (NIC)
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Empathy
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Language
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en
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Citation
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Baron, K. (2017, February 17). Journey Mapping a Path to Early Literacy in Tennessee. Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. https://www.carnegiefoundation.org/blog/journey-mapping-a-path-to-early-literacy-in-tennessee/
Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching
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