Dive Brief:

• Three educator-researchers analyzed the strategies of managers in the nation’s best-run organizations to bring back strategies for creating positive cultures and productive environments to classrooms.
• According to eSchool News, three key strategies emerged from the research: empowering teams and avoiding micromanagement, being good coaches, and emphasizing accountability — and researchers have created a playbook for teachers to implement those strategies in their classrooms.
• The seven-move playbook says to teach positive mindsets around agency, creativity and growth; relinquish control in the classroom; encourage peer-to-peer learning; give actionable feedback; build relationships of trust; help students hold themselves accountable; and stay accountable as an educator.

Dive Insight:

Schools can learn a lot from successful businesses, but there are challenges that teachers have in dealing with students that managers do not have in dealing with adults who they can choose to hire and fire at will. Teachers don’t get to choose their students based on fit or curate a culture by selecting people who share it. They have to create a classroom culture with the students they are assigned.

The idea of empowering students to collaborate and learn from each other ties into the push for teachers to become more facilitators of learning than “sage on a stage” types. This requires a shift in classroom management techniques, but it can help prepare students for the independent learning they’ll need to master for college and beyond.