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Professional Designing as One of Key Competencies of Modern Teacher

/an Ability Which Every Teacher Needs to Have/

(this paper has been covered into a chapter of the upcoming book: “Facilitating In-Service Teacher Training for Professional Development”, which is planned to be released in February, 2017

http://www.igi-global.com/book/facilitating-service-teacher-training-professional/164920

click here for a short description of the practical realization of the approach).

Valentin Voroshilov

Boston University, USA

/ click here for a short presentation on this topic /

Abstract

Questions such as “How to determine the professionalism of a teacher?”, and “What forms of a teacher professional development are the most efficient?” have been a subject of many publications. In this chapter, the author focuses on the approach based on a professional designing as a central tool for improvement of professionalism of a teacher. The discussion involves analysis of factors helping teachers to achieve his or her professional goals, such as an ability to model their own practice, analyze students’ motives, describe professional goals and challenges, as well as description of various events helping to strengthen those factors.

Keywords: Professional Development, Professional Designing, Self-Position, Project Idea, Projecter, Project Position, Methodolog, Problematization, Activity Organizing Workshop

INTRODUCTION

This chapter offers a description of a professional designing: what it is, why it is an important competency every educator should have, forms of events which can be organized to help educators with advancing this particular competency. The main goal of the author is to show how a professional designing helps to ignite and maintain a process of transformative development of an individual or an institutional educational practice.

BACKGROUND

This chapter is based on the practical and research work conducted in Russia (Perm Region) by the author (as a member of a research and consulting team) and represents a shortened version of the PhD dissertation of the author. The theoretical foundation of the research can be found in publications of a prominent member of a so-called Moscow Methodological Circle (or, depending on an interpreter, Moscow Metatheoretical Circle) G.P. Shchedrovitsky (1964, 1966, 1971, 1977, 1981), and his colleagues, such as N.G. Alekseev (1992) and followers such as A.P. Zinchenko (2014). Applying ideas of L.S. Vygotsky about knowledge development to social systems G.P. Shchedrovitsky et al. developed one of the strands of the activity theory, with its further application to transformative development of educational systems. One of the centers of active study of how the activity theory can be used to ignite and manage innovations in education was Moscow Institute for Pedagogic Innovations lead by V.I. Slobodchikov (who was the PhD adviser of the author). Many faculty of the Institute, including N.G. Alekseev, V.K. Zaretskij, S.I. Krasnov, R.G. Kamenskij, V.R. Imakaev, and others had been actively involved in organizing and supporting various innovations in schools and districts of Perm Region (Russia).

MAIN FOCUS OF THE CHAPTER

Here, the “professional designing” means intellectual activity resulting in: (a) constructing an image of the ideal/perfect professional situation (whatever it might mean for a given person), and (b) planning activities aimed to transform the present professional situation by making it closer to the ideal one.

In order to transform his or her professional situation, teachers (a) must be willing to change their own practices, and (b) must be able to make the change. This means that professional skills, abilities, competencies of a teacher should include not only specific subject-related skills or teaching-related personal qualities, but also “meta-skills”, allowing to manage processes of idealization (i.e. drawing mental images), reflection, goal-setting, action scheduling, and so on, which are required for transforming a human practice. A combination of such skills forms the ability for designing the own teaching practice. Accordingly, the professionalism of a teacher is to be determined by two integral parameters: the level of his/her specific qualifications (subject-teaching skills and personal qualities), and the level of professional designing skills. Using these parameters one can draw a simple classification showing a set of possible professional positions of a teacher (Table 1):

Table 1. A set of possible professional positions of a teacher

Without going into detailed characteristics of each position, note that “an expert “teacher is a teacher who has a successful experience in solving various problematic teaching-related situations and has an internal motive for continuous professional development (sees his or her specific deficiencies impeding achieving certain professional goals and organizes his or her own activities aiming at overcoming some of the deficiencies and resolving some of the problems he or she faces; this is why an “expert” teacher becomes more than just a teacher, but also to a certain extent a didact, an analytic, a methodologist, a child psychologist, a community organizer, a manager, a mentor, etc. - to the extent that is necessary for overcoming specific obstacles for achieving his or her professional goals).

The principal feature of an “expert” teacher is his or her systematic internal work, which (a) is happening without any external motivation, and (b) consists of a reflective analysis of his or her own teaching practice. This mental work includes (and results in) verbalization and textual and visual representation of the teacher’s views about: (a) him or her as a teacher, (b) students he or she teaches; (c) the taught subject, and (d) teaching methods used to organize learning activities of students. The fundamental result of such work is the construction of a model (i.e. an ideal, conceptual, holistic description) of his or her personal teaching practice. The concrete structure of this model forms a so-called “teaching self-position” of a teacher (it includes description of a professional situation and also a personal judgment of a teacher of his or her professional situation).

It should be emphasized that the ability to idealize (i.e. to draw an abstract representation of something) is a must have ability of an “expert”. Development of such ability is one of the crucial indicators of the professional growth of a modern teacher.

Unlike “an expert” “a specialist” has no internal motive for further professional development (is satisfied by the achieved professional results; the main goal of his or her work is to keep status-quo; if something does not go the way expected by a teacher, the teacher blames others - government, administration, parents, students, scientists, psychologists, etc.). The position of an “adjunct” is common for a college or university level but not common for K12 education and can be ignored.

According to this model, the evaluation of the level of professionalism of a teacher requires two “scales”: the traditional teacher qualification scale, and a scale reflecting ability for a professional designing. In terms of an impact on the ongoing transformation of modern education, abilities and competences “measured” by these scales are not equivalent. It is obvious that the development (qualitative progress) of an education system cannot be associated with the work of “specialists” (“specialists” only ensure stability of a system) or a “beginner” (cannot leave a big impact on a system yet). The progress of educational systems of different levels is only based on the activity of “experts” continuously re-designing their own teaching careers (and by that affecting practices of others who are in contact with “experts”). Perpetual quantitative and qualitative progress in the development of education system is only possible if more and more “beginners” gradually become “experts”. The “beginner”-to-”expert” transition is impossible without self-propelling actions of the “beginner”. Therefore, a professional designing – as a tool for organizing continuous professional growth – (a) has to be seen as one of the key professional competencies of a teacher, and (b) has to become an important part of teacher professional development.

A professional designing is an activity that takes place primarily in the area of personal values and motives, goals and objectives, actions and procedures, problems and possible solutions. When conducting a professional designing, or shortly – when designing, one does not deal with real objects or subjects, but manipulate with the abstract concepts relevant to the one’s professional practice (here and below a person conducting a professional designing is called a designer, or a projecter). Initially only some of the important concepts needed for a comprehensive description of the practice might be present in the mind of the designer, and one of the goals of the process is to broaden the professional vocabulary of the designer (formation of such vocabulary represents the first result of a professional designing).

The first product (but the second result) of a professional designing is the formation of a project idea. In simple terms, a project idea of a designer describes in his or her words “what is wrong with what I do”, and “how will I fix it”. The presence of a project idea does not automatically ensures its future realization, but it indicates the direction of the future actions of the designer; the project idea becomes the basis for the development of a detailed professional project. Ultimately, as the final result and the final product of an individual professional designing, a projecter develops a project – i.e. a textual representation of a current professional situation, certain professional problems, and proposed steps for solving those problems, including criteria and procedures for assessing the progress.

The clearer the teacher’s view of his or her teaching self-position is, the higher is the chance for the project to be realized.

Not every idea, however, represents a project idea.

An idea is a product of a thinking activity of a person.

Thinking activities can be classified using two integral parameters: (a) the nature of mental (ideal, abstract) objects, and (b) the tactic used for manipulating/operating with those objects. The simplest classification is based on using for each parameter only two possible values (Table 2).

Table 2. Types of thinking activities

The value of this classification is that it provides a clear description of a typical dynamic of a designer’s thinking during his or her adaptation and development of a professional designing, which usually goes from an “ordinary” to an “empirical”. The type of thinking can be seen by the kind of terminology used by a designer and the way it is being used. Figuratively speaking, an “ordinary” level of thinking corresponds to the type of speech “I see it - I point at it – I talk about it”, when the designer simply presents naming of things and events, without relating them to each other or ordering them by importance, generality, causality, etc.

“Pseudo-theoretical” thinking manifests itself in an attempt to use scientific, theoretical terms borrowed from literature, but the meaning of which is not fully understood by the person using them (the designer cannot demonstrate how these theoretical terms can be applied for improving his or her professional practice).

A project idea is usually stated at the “ordinary” thinking level, but gradually transforms into a project described at the level of “empirical” thinking. “Theoretical” thinking has to be “downgraded” to the “empirical” level by making clear connections between conceptual views on a teaching practice in general and specific actions of the projecter (if this is not happening, hence the thinking is “Pseudo-theoretical”).

When a designer develops a detailed verbal and visual description of his or her teaching practice (including goals, recourses, typical actions, typical assessment techniques, typical results), and then arranges this description in a systematic way, clarifying a hierarchy (more important – less important, more general – less general), a cause and affect relations, this demonstrates the presence of an ideal, conceptual image of teacher’s teaching self-position – which demonstrates the use of “empirical” thinking. If a teacher does not pursue a career in academia, this level is absolutely sufficient for him or her to become an “expert” practitioner.

A professional designing – as a human activity – is essentially situational; its ultimate goal is to find mechanisms for self-transforming a concrete current professional situation of a projecter.

A projecter never works alone; there is always a set of active or potential collaborators (or competitors). The transformation of a social system will not be effective if its members cannot agree on the goals, on how to share resources, on how to share responsibilities, on who should make what steps, etc. An effective form for coordinating professional goals and actions, based on the implementation of project-aimed activities, is the so-called “activity-organizing workshop” (AOW; known in Russia as “activity-organizing games” invented by the Moscow Methodological Circle lead by late G.P Shchedrovitsky). AOW participants usually represent coworkers from an institution or an institutional entity.

The object of AOW is the relationship between the objective structure of professional activities of the participants and the ideal images representing awareness of persons carrying out those activities about those activities (including professional values and motives). The purpose of AOW is restructuring those images helping participants to align their professional goals and actions. The result of AOW is a set of specific projects of individuals collaborating for achieving a mutually accepted set of goals (those individual projects compose an institutional project realization of which should bring an institution to a qualitatively new level of performance). The mission of AOW is achieved by formation of a team of professionals working together for achieving a common professional goal.

The first stage of AOW ends when the project-developing team realizes the presence of a difference (a) between an actual structure of their professional practices and their own images (descriptions) of the practices, as well as (b) between images different people have about the same elements of their practices. To overcome these differences participants of AOW have to develop (a) a collective mutually accepted description of the current practice (“this is what we do/have now”), and (b) a collective mutually accepted description of the “ideal/perfect” practice (“this is what we want to do/have”). Usually participants discover a disagreement between the two pictures (“real” is not the same as “desired”).

In this case the next phase begins by setting a goal for developing a collective mutually accepted description of the ways for transforming the existing professional practices making them closer to the desired professional practices.

In a humanitarian system the only way one can make an impact on the system is by making a personal impact on another member. Hence, attitudes of participants become crucially important. A participant has to believe in his or her ability to influence those around. The position of a “little man” (“there is nothing I can do”) does not allow engaging in a real project-developing activities. The position of a “doer” (“I can change things”) is critical for the success of at least an individual project. During the course of AOW the presence or the absence of such a position is manifested by the presence of the absence of the attempts a participant makes to take control over the processes taking place at the workshop (does a participant try to influence/manage the processes happening during AOW?).

Some participants might demonstrate a pseudo-professional position (an “imitator”); which usually is revealed via suggestions about what others should do, but not including reflection on what participants could do themselves to improve their personal practice.

Communicating processes ignited during AOW and aimed at unveiling images, views, and opinions of participants about professional activities of themselves and others are complicated and sometimes emotional, which demands the involvement of an experienced moderator (a.c.a. a “methodolog”, or a “methodologist”; the former term is more broadly used in the context of AOW).

Guided by a methodolog, AOW participants become actively engaged into an individual professional designing. As the result of this work, the participants inevitably advance their ability to conduct a professional designing.

A well-organized professional designing always results in improving the designing skills of a designer. For a “beginner” teacher, learning how to conduct a professional designing requires being immersed into a professional designing practice.

However, there is an important difference between conducting a professional designing and learning how to conduct a professional designing. The goal of a professional designing is the final project which (supposedly) will be realized in the future by the designer(s). The goal of learning how to conduct a professional designing is developing or advancing such a competence. The latter requires not only the practicing in designing a project, but also the subsequent reflection on the process of the designing that project.

The principal difficulty of mastering a professional designing competency is the need for a “double-layered” reflection: (a) a reflection of the designer/projecter on his or her professional practice (during the development of an individual professional project), and (b) the subsequent reflection on his or her designing practice.

In order to help a teacher to initiate the process of a professional designing and to guide him or her through this process a methodolog can start from helping a teacher with describing and analyzing his or her own teaching practice (i.e. helping to form his or her professional self-position). Ideally, this work should have some designated a face-to-face time, especially when a conversation, which always includes a discussion of professional motives and values, might become emotional on the part of a teacher.

At first a teacher is presented with a simple model, sufficient for the initial analysis of his or her professional experience (Table 3):

Table 3. External and internal components of professional experience

Professional experience
External layer	Internal layer
Actions, events, official responsibilities.	Motives, intentions, plans, objectives, goals.
Instruments, tools, resources.	Limitations, moral rules.
Products, results, consequences.	Reflection, planning, designing.

Based on this model a teacher begins to describe his or her teaching experience, trying to address every term used in the model (many “beginner” teachers find this type of work to be difficult). For example, a teacher names all his or her actions, which are the most important and meaningful to him or her. Typically, those are actions that had not turned out the way they were intended, or actions, which went very good (lead to the desired result). Actions of the first type (not successful) are important for formulating needed-to-be-solved problems (the foundation of a project idea). Actions of the second type (successful) are important for supporting the professional self-esteem of a teacher and usually form a basis for the accumulative analysis of a professional experience of a teacher.

Secondly, a teacher supplies some material products of his or her teaching practice, which may include:

1. Teaching (didactic) materials for other teachers (how to prepare, perform, and analyze the results of a certain topical lesson);

2. Problem set;

3. Assessing materials;

4. Guidelines;

5. Training programs;

6. Analysis of a textbook;

7. Curriculum;

8. Descriptions of events;

9. Results of observations (description of student actions);

10. Autobiography.

Thirdly, a teacher composes a detailed (but limited by a certain period of time, or a certain group of students, or a certain set of challenges) description of his or her teaching experience, including:

1. Description of the past professional situation, which has to show typical teaching encounters and problematic situations, which propelled the teacher to seek new methods of working with students;

2. Description of an external experience, which presents examples of the theoretical and practical approaches used in the past by others for resolving similar problems and achieving similar objectives;

3. Conceptual view, which states objectives and specifies goals for achieving which a teacher in some way modified his or her actions, as well as the main ideas why those modifications took place;

4. Description of specific actions which had been used to achieve the goals, highlighting the modifications of the teacher’s practice initiated by the problems eventually solved via the use of those actions.

5. Impact analysis, which describes the criteria, which were used for assessing the success of the actions, and the methodology used for evaluating those criteria;

6. Practical materials, i.e. collections of some of the material products listed above.

When examining a personal professional experience all analytical work of a teacher is directed toward the events, actions, problems, results happened in the past. However, the structure of intellectual work done during this analysis, is similar to the structure of work required for an individual professional designing; however, during an individual professional designing the direction of teacher’s thinking should be pointed toward the future.

Another form of the involvement of teachers into a professional designing – but on an institutional level (hence involves a team of participants) – is developing an application for a grant to support transformative changes in the functioning of an institution (a school), or a regain (a district). Such an application must meet certain requirements, in particular, the application must contain:

· The concept of the prospective work (i.e. a project idea), including analysis of the educational situation of the institution, description of specific problems to be solved by the collective work of the members; description of the project goals and objectives, justification of the outlined methods for achieving the goals and objectives;

· A detailed programing of future operation, containing a clear work schedule, time line for achieving specific targets, methods and criteria for evaluation of the expected results;

· A comprehensive support system to ensure the execution of the project, which should provide a description of forms and methods of cooperation with external agents and entities, project management system, training system, consulting support, staffing, budgeting.

If a school needs to develop a long-term program for advancing its efficiency and improving the result of it’s functioning, that program can also have a structure similar to the described above structure of a grant application (Appendix 1 provides an extended description of such a structure).

An important new form of innovative work of teachers, which is based on the use of a professional designing is a reflective pedagogical team (RPT). RPT coordinates work of participants of three types: an experienced teacher (master, “expert”), “beginner” teachers and a methodolog. In RPT in addition to two traditional professional positions a “mentor” and a “mentee” there is added a position of a methodolog (although, the position of the methodolog also can be held by an “expert” teacher trained in a professional designing). The purpose of the reflective pedagogical team is to improve the quality of teaching work of “beginner” teachers through the development, implementation, and result analysis of individual teacher projects. A methodolog has to ensure the effectiveness of communication and coordination between all members of the team.

In this project-oriented professional entity an experienced teacher is the source of a diverse successful teaching experience, and a methodolog is the organizer of a professional designing conducted by every member of the team, as well as of reflective practices of participants about their use of a professional designing (RPT usually meets once a month to discuss the progress made by the members in the realization of their projects).

An individual professional designing, preparing a grant proposal, program writing, a reflective pedagogical team, all these activities have some elements of an activity-organizing workshop (AOW). However, AOW itself offers the most intense experience of a professional designing and represents the most efficient form of a professional development event aimed at advancing the competency of a professional designing. Time-wise there are different forms of AOW, such as:

1. One to three day workshop with the goal of having developed by the participants (usually teachers from the same school) a project idea, which can be used in the future for developing a complete professional project; with the follow-up reflection on the processes happening during the seminar.

2. Set of ten to twelve one-day workshops (usually on a monthly basis during a one year period); the participants usually represent educators from the same district; the goal of the prolonged workshop is to form teams of educators working together toward the realization of the projects developed together as well.

3. One to four week long boot-camp; the participants usually represent educators, administrators, students and even parents from the same district; the goal is to form teams of collaborators working together on the realization of developed together projects.

Depending on the objectives of AOW, different elements from all three forms can be combined together and used during a prolonged period of time.

Because AOW always includes reflective practices conducted by participants and lead by a methodolog and centered on analyzing the processes happening with the participants in their professional life and during the AOW, results of AOW (in terms of the professional development of teachers) include:

1. Expanding a specialized vocabulary used for describing and analyzing their teaching activities;

2. Expanding a conceptual framework and a theoretical vocabulary (gaining an ability to use scientific terms for describing the own professional self-position);

3. Being introduced to new methods of teaching and organizing pedagogic activities;

4. Comparing and allying conceptual apparatus of participants, i.e. forming a shared vocabulary different participant use for describing their professional realm, i.e. developing a common language for describing teaching and teaching-related activities;

5. Analyzing professional positions of participants (“a little man”, “a “doer”, an “imitator”), identifying people willing to actively work for improving functioning of a system (a class, a school, a district);

6. Establishing short-term and long-term objectives and goals for transforming a system (a class, a school, a district);

7. Forming project teams according to the most important directions/areas of transformative work within a system;

8. Determining immediate actions needed to be done to initiate the transformative work;

9. Developing interconnected projects of a various scale (individual, group, institutional, regional projects) bound by the same set of mutually established goals;

10. Developing a plan for transforming (restructuring) support systems/services/agencies;

11. Advancing a professional designing competency.

The last item demonstrates a fundamental difference between traditional forms of teacher professional development and reflective project-oriented methods based on the use of a professional designing.

A professional designing provides a positive affect not only on teachers, but also on managers working in education. Managers have to be a part of a team working on the project the goal of which is positive transformation of an educational system (a team of teachers, a school, a district). Management has to be responsible (in collaboration with other participants) for such activities as:

1. Development of criteria for assessing the quality of a work of an individual teacher (“what does make a teacher “good” or “bad”?);

2. Classification of teachers by the level of their professional qualification and also by their professional potential;

3. Development of short-term and long-term programs aimed at improving pedagogic practices of teachers;

4. Development of criteria for assessing the quality of a school as a whole (“what does make a school “good” or “bad”?);

5. Classification of district schools by the structure and results of their functioning;

6. Assessing the effectiveness of the collaboration between a school and external agents/entities;

7. Development of short-term and long-term programs aimed at advancing the structure and results of a school functioning;

8. Development of criteria for assessing the quality of a school district as a whole;

9. Development of the program for the district as a whole aimed at achieving specific short-term and long-term goals, achievement of which will lead to desired transformations of the district.

The effectiveness of AOW strongly correlates with the experience of a methodolog moderating the event. The first task of a methodolog is to motivate as many participants as possible to be active during AOW (a person who just wants “to hear something new” will be just a ballast on the activities of the others). It is very important for the success of the whole event that participants would be willing to openly discuss their teaching experience (including such personal and usually internal matters as their values, moral limits, beliefs, life expectations, professional aptitudes, goals and actions). This conversation usually leads to an eventual realization of the existence of some gap/disconnect/incoherence between the results and the structure of actual teaching practice and the declared teaching goals and methods. When the existence of this gap is clearly presented to a participant, the so-called “problematic situation” has been reached, and so-called personal “professional problematization” (shortly “problematization”) has been achieved. The absence of “problematization” significantly decreases productive output of AOW, because each individual professional project designed by a participant will result in an actual transformation of a participant’s practice (taking place in the future after AOW) only if the project aims at lessening/shrinking the gap depicted in a “problematic situation” (otherwise a project is a “fake” and a participant is an “imitator”).

Different participants might react differently to the act of “problematization”, which is being revealed when a participant takes one of the following four “project positions”:

1. “Denier” – this position is expressed via denying the existence of a gap (“we just agree or disagree on it”);

2. “Observer” – this position is expressed via accepting the existence of a gap, but holding responsible for its existence anyone but themselves (“I can’t do anything about it”);

3. “Imitator” – this position is expressed via formally accepting the existence of a gap and demonstration designing-like activities (participating in a discussion), but in the end presenting a project not at all related to his or her teaching practice (“faking” a professional designing);

4. “Projecter” – this position is expressed via accepting the existence of a gap and developing a project idea (at least) to be used for the future transformation of his or her teaching practice.

One of the tasks of a methodolog and one of the results of AOW is analyzing “project positions” of participants and presenting this analysis to the officials/organizers arranged AOW (as a part of a full report on the processes and the results of AOW).

There are certain factors motivating participants toward taking a position of a “projecter”:

1. Participants should know and be confident in that the event (i.e. AOW) is not formal (not just for a record) and that its outcome will affect their future work;

2. Participants should know and understand the mechanisms of the event (what, how, and why is happening);

3. Participants should know and feel (on the emotional level) that being present and active is expected and valued by the organizers of the event;

4. Participants should know and feel (on the emotional level) that being personally involved in the processes of the event will help them to solve at least some of their professional pedagogical problems.

The factors above depend on whether participants will see and accept the AOW leaders (moderators, methodologs) as experts, who:

1. Have sufficient capacity to influence/manage all activities during the event;

2. Have clear own objectives for the event seen and acknowledged by participants;

3. Are ready to resolve problems and overcome obstacles in order to make the event to be for everyone as productive as possible;

4. Demonstrate willingness to cooperate with any participant;

5. Help to establish cooperation between any participants willing to cooperate;

6. Have a personal teaching experience (i.e. not outsiders telling what to do, but one of them).

Intensive intellectual analytical work of participants requires organizing round-tables for “brainstorming” in small groups, which results in vocalizing of a set of must-solve problems and generating initial project ideas on how those problems could be solved. This usually requires an involvement of as many methodologs as many small groups are being set.

A typical project-oriented event such as AOW usually includes the following components:

Component 1: Conceptual introduction, which outlines the basic concepts of a professional designing and how it is used in education. The overview should provide the definition of a professional designing and describe major activities in which participants will be involved, the goals and the timeframes of those activities. A short presentation should answer questions: “What is the quality of education and how it can be measured?”, “What is the mission of education in general and what professional goals of each educator should or could be?”, “What is the quality of pedagogic practice and how can it be measured?”, “What is a professional designing?”, “How does a professional designing affect the quality of pedagogic practice?”, “How can pedagogic practice be organized and reorganized?”, What is pedagogical professionalism and what affects its evolution?”.

Component 2: Formulation (verbalization and textual fixation) by participants their own professional objectives and goals, as well as description of teaching-related challenges which they commonly face when dealing with their educational tasks.

Component 3: Broad discussion of the previously formulated goals and challenges. The goal of the discussion is to narrow down the list of problems, keeping only such on developing possible solutions for which a teacher will concentrate the efforts during AOW; proposed solutions of those problems become a project idea for the project a teacher will be realizing after AOW. One of the tasks of a methodolog during this phase is to unveil the presences of some logical disconnect/mismatch between the formulated problems and proposed solutions (this is a common occurrence for the initial stage of the discussion). Usually only after several rounds of discussing and reformulating challenges, problems, goals, and pathways for solving them, a teacher ends up having a structured picture of his or her professional self-position and ways for transforming it.

Component 4: Usually the discussion reviles several sets of similar challenges different participants encounter in their practice. In that case those participants should form several project groups and continue working together.

Component 5: Group work, first stage. At this point in AOW every participant has to make an act of a self-determination what position to take, of a “projecter” or of an “imitator”, i.e. one has to make a personal decision if one really wants to develop a project of personal professional development which one will be realizing in the future, or one just wants to imitate this activity (or even leave the event). Of course an act of a self-determination is hidden to others, it happens in the mind of a participant. However, the behavior a participant exhibits when working in a group usually allows with a high degree of reliability to reconstruct the type of his or her self-determination and to typify his or her project position.

For example, if a participant directs his or her attention toward solving specific problems (e.g. “cannot establish rapport with such and such students”) and achieving specific goals (“being able to establish a personal communication with students and help them verbalize their deep concerns or wishes”), this participant takes a position of a “projecter”. An “imitator” usually focuses on very broad, very general issues (e.g. “low motivation of students'“).

Component 6: Group work, second stage. At this stage, every group prepares a presentation, including: (a) author(s), (b) a brief analysis of the situation (working environment, achievements, goals, challenges, problems/obstacles), (c) proposed solutions (probable actions, timeframe for each type of work, criteria of success, assessment tools, budget), (d) possible setbacks and negative consequences.

Component 7: Plenary meeting, during which every group presents the product of their work, i.e. a team project. All participants are welcome to provide their input on each presentation. Such an input might offer opinions on: (a) how clear is the structure of the project, how close is the structure of the project to the one recommended by moderators, (b) the type of a position each team member takes toward the project (a “doer” vs. a “little man”, a “projecter” vs. an “imitator”), (c) how clear is the logic of the project (are all elements of the project consistent with each other? do problems correlate with goals, goals with proposed steps, steps with necessary recourses, goals with criteria, criteria with assessment methods?). This debate also represents the opportunity to reformulate (in order to make them more concrete and correlated) the challenges addressed in each project, the goals, the problems and pathways for solving them. The primary tactic methodologs use during this stage is a problematization of participants, i.e. constructive criticism of the statements, views, ideas, opinions, propositions, intentions of participants via asking them to prove the relationship between stated goals, identified problems, proposed actions, expected results, and criteria and tools planned to be used for assessing the success of the project.

Component 8: Reflective session, when all participant of AOW including methodologs reflect on their own enactment during AOW (including specific actions, reasons for them, emotional states, internal intellectual work, difficulties and insights), and on personal results of the event for them as individuals and as professionals. Participants should specifically reflect on their ability to conduct a professional designing, how it helped to complete a project, how it changed during AOW.

Each stage of an event should take minimum one hour, so the whole event in its full form should take about one day. A one-day workshop usually is not enough for developing a detailed project, but sufficient for developing the first draft of a project idea. Depending on the scale of an event (which might take from one to several days), participants might repeat the eight-stage process during each day of the event, making projects more clear, more logically structured, cultivating tighter connections between teammates. Sometimes all eight stages might be divided between the days of a workshop, or combined with other possible activities (e.g. a trip to a school).

Primary purposes of moderators/methodologs during AOW are:

1. Helping participants to overcome deficiency in their vocabulary, helping them to overcome difficulties participants met when trying to provide a clear and coherent description of their professional practice;

2. Helping participants to avoid vagueness and excessive generality or multiplicity of objectives and goals;

3. Testing and unveiling a self-position of participants via setting up problematic situations, via constructive criticism, via presenting opposite opinions or setting opinions of different participants on a collision path (a methodolog might pretend that he or she truly disagrees with a participant on the matter, prompting the participant to defend his or her view, idea, or approach – this is why AOW is also being called a “game”).

To guide participants through the process of a professional designing a methodolog directs each participant to perform different project-oriented activities, such as:

1. Description of one specific situation which occurred in the past and which illustrates a particular professional difficulty encountered by a teacher;

2. Description of particular actions – successful as well as not successful – attempted to overcome a specific professional difficulty (a methodolog needs to find in the participant’s past at least one successfully solved problematic situation to confirm participants ability to solve professional problems, and at least one unsolved problematic situation to build on it a project idea);

3. If a participant lists too many objectives and goals a methodolog needs to ask him or her to arrange them by their importance (personally for a teacher), interdependence, and achievement probability.

4. Methodolog should help a teacher to select short-term goals (no more than three) which should be achieved during a specific time period (no longer than a year);

5. If a participant describes actions, which should be performed by someone else, a methodolog needs to redirect the conversation toward actions which a teacher can do.

The simplest time structure of two (three)–day AOW described below (Table 4).

Table 4. The time structure of two (three)–day AOW

Type of activity/ Time Period

Day 1 (or 2 days, depending on the length of part 1)

Part 1: Philosophical and methodological introduction.

Part 2: Plenary discussion, establishing common obstacles and problems, group formation.

Part 3: Initial group work.

Day 2

Part 4: Plenary session, project presentation by groups.

Part 5: Group work, finalizing group projects.

Part 6: Plenary session, discussion of group projects.

Part 7: Plenary session, reflection on the workshop.

Practice shows that for majority of “beginner” teachers common results of a two (three)–day AOW are:

1. Broader common vocabulary used by teachers for describing their teaching practices;

2. Developing project ideas by the majority of participants;

3. Formation of proto-teams (some of the participants find prospective collaborators, such as other teachers who share similar values, challenges, views on current practice);

4. Initial encounter of participants with a professional designing by being immersed in this activity;

5. Initial position analysis (“who is who” in terms of “projecter” – “imitator”)

A five to seven day long AOW leads to formation of teams, developing structurally sufficient projects, a more accurate position analysis, and a significant gain in a professional designing competency of teachers.

Appendix 2 presents a typical curriculum of a two week long AOW, which also includes a large conceptual component.

In any profession involving human interactions there is one group of people interaction with who is crucial (central, the most important) for a professional. For a teacher students taught by a teacher represent this group. The modes and the results of a teacher-student interaction heavily depend on (a) how students perceive a teacher, and (b) how a teacher perceives students.

If students see in a teacher their Teacher (which usually manifests by them saying “this guy is a good teacher”), that means students trust a teacher, believe that for a teacher their success in a classroom and in life in general represents the most important teacher’s professional goal; students also believe that a teacher has knowledge, skills, abilities to help them to succeed in a class and in life in general.

When a teacher looks at his or her students, he or she unintentionally or intentionally classifies them using different parameters, such as age, race, gender, social background, strength of a character, temper, attention span, school background including specific subject skills, psychological factors related to how a student processes information, and others.

However, if a teacher is developing a project describing pathways for teacher’s future professional growth, but in his or her mind he or she convinced that no matter what he or she does students will not be able to learn, realization of this project will not make any affect on students learning outcomes, hence, this project will be a “fake”. In order to avoid this from happening a methodolog needs to reveal teacher’s views on a students’ ability to learn.

For example, a methodolog can ask a teacher to reflect on a presented to him or her classification of students by their “ed-intention” (i.e. learning or educational intention, describing the main reason for a student to attend teacher’s class). The discussion of this classification (its validity, applicability to the teacher’s professional situation) directs a teacher toward building his or her practice around matters, which are most important for students, which make sense for students (Appendix 3).

Finally, what differs a teacher from a mentor is his or her ability to help student mastering a specific subject (basically, a teacher = a mentor + a tutor). A teacher should be capable of performing subject related tasks at a certain level of an expert in the field (e.g. a physic teacher should be able to solve at least algebra based physics problems). However, what differs a teacher from an expert in a field is his or her ability to convincible present to students why study of this subject makes sense for their future life. To be able to convince students of the importance of a subject, a teacher should be able to present his or her own beliefs on:

1. Possible reasons to study this subject (why it might make sense for people to learn it, including the teacher)

2. Scope of knowledge and skills that students will master while learning the subject (what should students know and be able to do after learning it?);

3. Sequencing of the learning process (what should be learned first, what should be learn based on what was learned before);

4. Time frame of the learning (how much time ideally a student should spend on mastering a specific skill?);

5. Fundamental principles of a science on which the subject is based and the history of scientific discoveries in the field;

6. Structure of the subject (basic concepts, logical connections, patterns, typical classes of models, limitations of the models, conditions for applying models for describing concrete situations, algorithms for design models, algorithms for analysis problematic situations and constructing solutions);

7. The most common mental operations and practical activities to be undertaken for the study of the subject (on an individual level);

8. The main forms of learning activities of students during the study (lectures, group work, study trips, etc.);

9. Intellectual and psychological traits that contribute to the study of the subject and that being advance during its study;

10. Set of tasks (problems, assessments) students have to be able successfully perform when mastering the subject;

11. Forms of control measures, assessments, criteria of successful learning and evaluation method.

Due to limitations on the space and the scope of this paper, the author has not included a description of the specific cases of project-oriented activities conducted by the author in the past (himself and as a member of a team). It should be noted, that all precedents demonstrate that when teachers are immersed into a professional designing it positively affects their teaching practice in general and an ability to self-improve their teaching practice in particular. The conclusions on the effectiveness of the project-oriented methods of organizing teacher professional growth were made on the basis of individual interviews, surveys, and reflective feedback from teachers, and observations of teachers’ activities during events and while teaching their students.

FUTURE RESEARCH DIRECTIONS

The most important procedural difference between the described in this chapter project-oriented approach to organizing professional development of in-service teachers and other existing approaches is the position analysis of teachers participating in a professional development event. Teachers, guided by a methodolog, should reach a situation when they have to acknowledge or deny the existence of a gap between their own perception of their own teaching practice and what they (seemingly) actually want and do, and then present their conscious decision on what they plan to do about this gap (make an act of a self-determination when lead into a problematic situation due to a process of problematizaion). Presently there is no sufficient statistical data, which would allow comparing the effect on in-service teachers’ practice the approach represented in this chapter with other approaches to organizing teachers’ professional development.

CONCLUSION

1. Describing pedagogical professionalism of a teacher in terms of subject-related knowledge and skills and teaching-related competencies is not sufficient for analyzing his or her ability to transform his or her professional situation and needs to be expanded via inclusion of an analysis of a teacher’s a professional designing competency. An advance level of a professional designing competency differs an “expert” teacher from teachers holding other professional positions (a “specialist”, a “beginner” teacher).

2. To analyze a teacher’s a professional designing competency one has to address: the conceptual apparatus of a teacher (how a teacher describes his or her own teaching practice), a teacher’s professional self-position (his or her professional motives, challenges, problems, objectives, goals), the project-ideas of a teacher (what pathways does a teacher envision for solving the problems, achieving the goals), methods for professional self-evaluation (teacher’s criteria of successful teaching, techniques and procedures used for assessing his or her own professional success, self-reflective abilities).

3. Development or advancing of a professional designing competency of a teacher requires his or her immersion into an intense practice of a professional designing aimed at development of a project representing his or her future actions intended to transform teacher’s practice following by a subsequent reflection of a teacher on his or her work as a projecter.

4. There are different forms for organizing an immersion of teachers into a professional designing, such as: an individual professional designing guided by a methodolog, a grant-proposal writing, a one-to-three day workshop, a project-oriented boot-camp, a prolonged activity-organizing workshop. The content of these events includes: a philosophical-theoretical analysis of the professional designing paradigm in general and in education in particular, analysis of professional goals and challenges, professional problematization and self-determination of participants toward taking a certain project position, establishing most important professional goals and methods for solving related problems, presenting a project idea, finding prospective collaborators. To analyze the impact of a project-oriented event on teachers’ projective abilities following parameters can be used; the percentage of teachers who where able to: (a) represent a clear description of their teaching situation; (b) state concrete personal educational objectives and goals; (c) formulate an individual project idea; (d) prepare an initial version of an individual or group project; (e) reflect on their own activities during the event.

REFERENCES

Shchedrovitsky, G.P. (1971). Configuration as a method of construction of complex knowledge. Systematics, 8(4) (also at http://www.fondgp.org/gp/biblio/eng/3)

Алексеев, Н.Г. (Ред.). (1992). Использование организационно-деятельностной игры в системе педагогического образования, Пермь, Россия: ППИ. (Alekseev, N.G. (Ed). (1992). Applications of activity organizing workshops in educational systems, Perm, Russia: PPI, only in Russian).

Khristenko, V.B., Reus, A.G., Zinchenko A.P. (2014). Methodological School of Management, London, Great Britain: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc.

Алексеев, Н.Г., Громыко, Ю.В., Злотник, Б.А., (1987). Организационно-деятельностная игра: возможности и облаcти применения, Вестник Высшей Школы, №7, Москва, Россия. (Alekseev, N.G., Gromyko, Yu. V., Zlotnik, B.A., (1987). Activity organizing workshop: capabilities and applications, Vestnik Vysshei Shkoly, #7, Moscow, Russia, only in Russian).

Слободчиков, В.И., (1994). Основания и смысл инновационной деятельности в образовании. В Слободчиков, В.И. (Ред.), Проектирование в образовании: проблемы, поиски, решения. ИПИ РАО, Москва, Россия. (Slobodchikov, V.I., (1994). Foundations and mission of innovations in education. In Slobodchikov, V.I. (Ed.), Professional designing in education: challenges, research, solutions. IPI RAO, Moscow, Russia, only in Russian).

KEY TERMS AND DEFINITIONS

Activity Organizing Workshop (AOW): An event where educators are immersed into a professional designing in order to help participants with restructuring their views on their professional practice, aligning their professional goals and actions, forming teams of collaborators to ensure transformative development of an institution to a qualitatively new level of performance.

Designer: see Projecter.

Ed-intentions: (also called as learning or educational intentions) the main reason for a student to attend a class, a student’s motive to be present in a classroom.

Expert Teacher: a teacher who has a successful experience in solving various problematic teaching-related situations and has an internal motive for continuous professional development.

Methodolog: (sometimes “methodologist”) an organizer of a professional designing conducted by every participant of a professional development event, such as activity organizing workshop (AOW).

Problematic Situation: the result of Problematization; realization by a teacher of the existence of a gap/disconnect/incoherence between the results and the structure of his or her teaching practice and the declared teaching goals and methods.

Problematization: discussion between a methodolog and a teacher of teacher’s professional situation, including his or her professional values, goals, problems, techniques, using constructive criticism of his or her statements, views, ideas, opinions, propositions, intentions, and leading a teacher into a Problematic Situation.

Professional Designing: intellectual activity resulting in: (a) constructing an image of the ideal/perfect professional situation (whatever it might mean for a given person), and (b) planning activities aimed the transformation the actual professional situation making it closer to the ideal one; the material result of a professional designing is a project.

Professional Self-position: a description developed by a teacher of his or her professional situation and also a personal judgment by the teacher of his or her professional situation.

Project: a textual representation of a current professional situation, certain professional challenges and problems, and proposed steps for solving those problems, including criteria and procedures for assessing the progress.

Projecter: a person conducting a professional designing.

Project Idea: a text developed by a designer, which briefly describes in his or her words “what is wrong with what I do”, and “how will I fix it”.

Project Position: one of the four positions (“denier”, “observer”, “imitator”, “projecter”) describing a teacher’s attitude toward a gap between the results and the structure of his or her teaching practice and the declared teaching goals and methods reviled during a problematization process.

Appendix 1

Structure of an Institutional Project Aimed at Transformation of it’s Functioning for Achieving Specific Pedagogic Objectives and Goals.

1. Description of an educational institution.

1.1. Age of the institution.

1.2. Official status of the institution.

1.3. Description of student population.

1.4. Description of the staff – titles, quantity, education, experience, length of holding the current position, including the description of expected changes in the staff roster due to the realization of the project.

1.5. Collaborations with other institutions and organizations.

1.6. Financing and budgeting.

1.7. Description of material conditions (land, environment, building, interior, technologies)

1.8. Challenges, problems, goals.

2. Description of educational practices.

2.1. Results of pedagogical practices of the staff – academic performance (learning outcomes of students), student attendance, student motivations, professional history of graduates (alumni).

2.2. Structure of the analytical system – forms of assessments (quizzes, tests, exams, portfolios, other); length and periodicity of assessments, additional analytical tools (questionnaires, surveys, interviews).

2.3. Positive trends.

2.4. Negative trends.

2.5. Possible reasons for negative trends.

3. The concept of an institutional transformative development.

3.1. Definitions of key concepts and terms of a project (for example, if the main objective of a project is “decreasing cases of misconceptions in physics”, the project needs to provide a definition of such terms as a “misconception” (i.e. an absence of a correct connection between the new knowledge and a current content of a student’s memory) or an “understanding” (i.e. an ability to correctly apply knowledge to resolve a partially novel problematic situation)).

3.2. Description of the main obstacles to be overcome, or the main problem(s) to be solved (for example, “many students do not see any value in taking writing class”), including the description of the indicators pointing out at the existence of this problem (e.g. “a sharp decrease in attendance”).

3.3. Analysis of possible reasons/ causes for a problem to exist (for example, “students lack self-managing skills”).

3.4. Proposed pathways for overcoming the negative trends and obstacles, solving project problems.

3.5. Description of expected results and mechanism for assessing the progress (e.g. “increase in the attendance by 25 %”).

4. Conceptual basis for the success of a project.

4.1. Description of theoretical approaches for solving similar professional problems provided in scholarly papers.

4.2. Precedents of solving similar problems.

5. Project management.

5.1. Description of teams of staff members collaborating within a team project (as a sub-project if the institutional one).

5.2. Group projects (each of which follows the similar structure and includes individual projects of the group members).

5.3. Forms of coordinating team work to ensure collaboration between different teams.

5.4. Description of interactions between the innovative processes (transforming the functioning of an institution) and the established structure of an institution (the realization of a project should not put at risk the existing properly functioning parts of institutional practice).

5.5. Description of possible risks, negative trends and results, which should be prevented or avoided during the realization of a project.

5.6. Documents governing the realization of a project and the description of documents, which will be needed to be developed and approved to ensure efficient management of a project.

APPENDIX 2

Curriculum for AOW: “Methods for Designing Pathways to Transform an Educational System”

Objectives:

1. Presenting to participants a substantial theoretical description of contemporary views on education, its mission and forms, challenges and pathways for transforming educational systems of different levels (including a professional designing as one of the key instruments for initiating and guiding a process of individual and institutional transformative development);

2. Development by participants of individual projects the following realization of which will help them to transform their personal teaching practice;

3. Formation of project teams collaborating on solving similar or interdependent professional problems;

4. Immersion of participants into the process of a professional designing to help them to advance their professional designing competency.

Categories of participants: administrators representing different levels of management, school psychologists, project group leaders, “expert” teachers (master teachers), beginner” teachers.

Duration: 80 hours (2 weeks: 8:00 per day for 5 days a week; Table 5).

Every day of a workshop includes two to four hours of lectures combined with a group work where participants are applying theoretical concepts to analyzing their own teaching practice. Every week ends with a reflective session (a roundtable) designated to an open discussion of the progress participants make toward development of their individual project.

Table 5. Topics and time distribution for a two week long AOW

APPENDIX 3

There are many classification parameters an educator uses to organize his or her perception of students, for example: strong - weak, artistic - logical, active - passive. The specific values assigned to those parameters maybe based on: the learning outcomes of a student, time managing and planning skills of a student, general background of a student (e.g. reading skills), ability to work independently, psychological traits (attention span, memory), on others.

However, for a teacher designing his or her professional project, one of the most helpful classifications is the classification of students by their “ed-intention” (Table 6).

Table 6. Types of ed-intentions of students

Of course, in the realty the same student might be inclined to attending different classes because of different intentions, or combinations of different intentions.

P.S.

This page started as my comment to one of the posts I read on LinkedIn.

The other day, when reading one of LinkedIn's posts I got inspired for a short comment, which I posted, but soon deleted because decided to use it for a larger post. The post I read was dedicated to praising some teaching ideology used by some university professors.

Below is 99.9 % of my original comment (just edited a couple of sentences to make it a little bit clearer).

- - - - - - - -

1. One writes – in MY words (i.e. paraphrasing): “In the past all his lectures were just him talking, and he did not care about if students had any question before attending a lecture, but now he allows students talk to each other and invites them to ask questions before a lecture, so even if he does now what any GOOD (stress on this word) elementary– or middle– or high school teacher has been doing for decades, since he is a university professor, he is a genius!”.

Let’s be clear, the fact that a university professor is trying to improve his way of teaching does not make him a hero; this intention just (finally) makes him a teacher (not by a title, but by core elements of his professional practice, ones which are not related to a scientific research).

The fact that when a university professor is trying to improve his way of teaching the entire world around him starts applauding and praising him is just an indicator of how rare this happens, hence how few of the professors are good at teaching.

2. One writes – in his own words: “This … model … has also proven to be highly effective”.

Let’s be clear, nowadays there is NO statistically significant evidence of ANY educational innovation being an effective teaching instrument. There is no (yet) science of education (no reproducibility , no predictability, no established and universally accepted measuring techniques and instruments); “science” of education is in a stage of a proto-science (like alchemy was a proto-science phase of chemistry - before the periodic table). All so-called “scientific” experiments conducted on university students fall into two categories: 1. Proving that students who put more effort in learning learn more than students who put less effort in learning, and 2. Proving that when a teacher starts tuning up his teaching practice to some of the students interests, students begin giving better feedback.

The rest is politics.

- - - - - - - -

Then I realized that I should have provided the basis for this comment, otherwise it does not sound fair to the author.

For years I was paid good money for assessing quality of education being delivered by individual teachers, schools, and districts, as well as helping officials of different levels with planning and managing actions aimed at transformative development of given educational systems. This work was based on a particular view on what pedagogical practice is (including a particular understanding of what teaching is and how to measure its quality).

Naturally, my comments are based on my view on pedagogical practice. Others might not share the same view, of course, but without knowing it my comments have no logical basis for them (hence there is no basis for a constructive criticism) and might be seen just as emotional gusts (hence would only evoke an emotional respond). Luckily, I have a text, which provides some glimpses of my view on pedagogical practice as a professional practice conducted by humans within a particular field. The text is my draft of a chapter (the chapter proposal was accepted) for an upcoming book “Facilitating In-Service Teacher Training for Professional Development”. It still is in a raw condition. It represents my own translation to English of some parts of my PhD dissertation. If the draft will be accepted (fingers crossed) a professional editor will polish it up, but then I will not be able to openly offer it to public (would be a violation of a copy right agreement). However, until then, here it is (you if are reading this, you have read the chapter draft). Please, feel free to comment!

*******

Some literature on the topic

Khristenko, V.B., Reus, A.G., Zinchenko A.P. (2014). Methodological School of Management, London, Great Britain: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc.

Shchedrovitzky, G.P. (1964), Methodological problems of system research // General Systems. 1966. Vol. XI. (Translation of Г.П. Щедровицкий, Проблемы методологии системного исследования, М, 1964).

Shchedrovitzky, G.P. (1966), Problems in Activity theory, (published in 1997, only in Russian) Теория деятельности и ее проблемы. Г.П. Щедровицкий// Философия. Наука. Методология., М., 1997.

Shchedrovitsky, G.P. (1971), Configuration as a method of construction of complex knowledge. Systematics, 8(4) (also at http://www.fondgp.org/gp/biblio/eng/3)

Shchedrovitsky, G.P. (1975), Problems in the development of planning activity // General Systems. Vol. XXII. 1977. (translation of Г.П. Щедровицкий, Автоматизация проектирования и задачи развития проектировочной деятельности // Разработка и внедрение автоматизированных систем в проектировании (теория и методология). М., 1975).

Shchedrovitsky, G.P. (1975), Intelligence and Communication (published in 2004, only in Russian) Интеллект и коммуникация. 1977 // Г.П. Щедровицкий. Вопросы философии. 2004. № 3.

Shchedrovitsky, G.P. (1979), Problems of managing research: from theoretic-intellectual to active-managerial methodology of analysis (published in 1996, only in Russian) Проблемы организации исследований: от теоретико-мыслительной к оргдеятельностной методологии анализа. Гл. 2 монографии «Постановка проблем и решение задач в условиях коллективной мыследеятельности» // Вопросы методологии. 1996. №3-4.

Shchedrovitsky, G.P. (1979), Complex organization of research as a socio-technical system (only in Russian) Комплексная организация научно-исследовательских работ как социотехническая система // Комплексный подход к научному поиску: проблемы и перспективы (Краткие тезисы к Всесоюзному симпозиуму). Ч. 2. Свердловск, 1979.

Shchedrovitsky, G.P. (1981), Systems Research, II. Methodological Problems. Edited by J.M. Gvishiani. Pergamon Press, 1985 (Translation of Г.П. Щедровицкий, Принципы и общая схема методологической организации системно-структурных исследований и разработок // Системные исследования: Методологические проблемы. Ежегодник. 1981, М).

Shсhedrovitskii, G.P., Kotel’nikov, S.I. (1983), Organisational activity games – a new way of organising and a method for developing collective thinking activity // Soviet Psychology, Vol.26. Summer, 1988. (Translation of Г.П. Щедровицкий, С.И. Котельников Организационно-деятельностная игра как новая форма организации и метод развития коллективной мыследеятельности // "Нововведения в организациях. Труды семинара ВНИИ системных исследований", М, 1983)

Voroshilov, V.V. (1997), On the Necessity of Modeling by a Teacher of His/Her Own Pedagogical Activity // in “Development of Scientific Intercommunications in Eurasia”. - Berezniki, Russia, 1997. - p. 172. (only in Russian).

Voroshilov, V.V. (2000), Managerial and Pedagogical Conditions for advancing teachers’ ability for conducting a professional designing // Ph. D. dissertation, Moscow Academic Institute for Innovations in Education, M, 2000.

Voroshilov, V.V. (2001), Classification of Educational Self-Determination of Students // School Principal, M, 2001 (only in Russian).

Vygotsky, L.S., (1926), Educational Psychology // CRC Press, 1997

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