cw 2012 change talk

7/31/2019 Cw 2012 Change Talk

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Habits that Change Talk Challenges: attitudes, models, and institutional situations

Today, I consider how the change talk fostered by C+W positions us as change chasers ininstitutions that want to control (and sometimes avoid) change. How do our habits of change talkimpact how others in our institutions might perceive us?

After a quick gloss of how published C+W discussions talk of change, I use an example from

another field to examine typical roles groups might claim in a technology-enabled institutional

change situation, and then circle back to an issue central to C+W (the hiring of young faculty) in

order to discuss how those of us in C+W might be wise to examine how our habits of talking

about technologies and change might be perceived by institutional others.

SLIDE 1: Overview

Part 1: consider C + W as a field that chases change

Part 2: example from a different field sustaining technology-primed mandated

institutional change

Part 3: impact of suspicious minds on C + W hiring

# 1: In published discussions, C + Ws attitudes toward change is an enthusiasticthumbs up. My perception of this field is that we chase change: we desire it, embrace it, foster it, and

basically just enjoy the positioning of ourselves as change agents or early adopters. Our

colleagues often see us either as the irritants to their established and trusted methods or useful

technicians who can fix their machines (or solve their other computing problems). I dont make

this observation without experiencing it.

Nor do I make the observation without published evidence. From recent articles suchas Computers and Composition, 20/20 that imagine the fields future, including a garden

of bots, to Lisa Gerards articles in 1995 and 2004 that chronicle the issues important to this

conference, to other historical works (Hawisher et al in 1996 and Morans 20th year review of

the Computers and Composition journal), change has been a comfortable concept for this field.

Take one example from Gerards 2006 The evolution of the Computers and Writing

Conference, the second decade. At the end of her analysis which is intended to demonstrate

that Computers and Writing has become an institution (211), she lists the verbs used in

titles of conference talks given between 1994 and 2004. These are intended to reinforce her

opinion that we have gone from the lunatic fringe of our respective English departments to a

visible and less suspect subdiscipline of rhetoric and composition (218). But she also thinks

these verbs express the mix of optimism and shock that I mentioned earlier and the passion,

feistiness, and --mainstream or not--rebelliousness that have characterized this conference from

its inception (222).

slide 2: Gerards verbs


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Addressing, advocating, affecting, aging, aligning, apologizing, arguing, arriving, assess- ing,

assuming, balancing, beating the odds, becoming post-hypertext, bitnetting, blowing out

the walls, blurring, breaking, bridging, building, burning out, canonizing, catching up,challenging, choreographing, collaborating, communicating, composing, coping, colliding,

compelling, complicating, conceiving, conducting, confessing, confronting, connecting,con- tending, conversing, crafting, crashing, creating, crisscrossing, crossing the globe,

cultivating, cybering, dancing, debating, deconstructing, demonstrating, demystifying,

demythologizing, designing, developing, disassembling,discovering, disentangling,

disrupting, dissenting, diverting, dramatizing, drowning, domesticating, electing,emerging, enabling, enhancing, enlarging, e-reading, escaping, evaluating, evolving, examining,

exemplifying,exploring, extending, failing, fighting, flying, fusing, gettingembarrassed, getting marooned, going with the flow, graying, grappling, growing, hatching,having close encounters, hoping, hop- ping, immersing, implementing, implying, infusing,

integrating, interacting, inventing, investi- gating, joining, lagging behind, liberating,linking, listening, loathing, lurking, mainstreaming, making waves, managing, manipulating,

mapping, measuring, meditating, mentoring, mesh- ing, migrating, minding differences, MOOving,

morphing, negotiating, networking, nurturing, opening doors, negotiating, observing,orchestrating, overcoming, performing, perishing, piloting, pixilizing, playing around, pleasuring,

plundering, practicing, processing, promis- ing, promoting, pulling, pulling ahead,publishing with panache, pushing, pushing limits, questioning, rebooting, re-charting, reclaiming,

reconciling, reconstructing, redefining, reflect- ing, reforming, re-imagining, remaining silent,

remembering, resisting, restraining, rethinking, rewiring, riding, risking, roleplaying, RTFL, saying

no, scratching our heads, scrutinizing, searching, setting fires, shape-shifting, sharing,shifting, singing, staking out, standardizing, not standardizing, straddling, streaming, struggling,

subverting, surprising, surviving, sustaining, talking back, taming, testing the waters,

theorizing, thinking, tracing, tracking, training, traipsing, transcending, transgressing,

undoing, un-ghettoizing, unlocking, unplugging, unveil- ing, walking, weaving, whispering,window shopping, worrying. . ..

BUT the earliest publications in the field--Im thinking here of Ellen Nolds Fear and Tremblingor Helen Schwartzs Monsters and Mentors --have been cognizant of institutional resistanceto using computers for the teaching of college writing. A central argument in larger journals


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CE and CCC--portrayed computers as facilitators for writing instruction rather than changeobjects: they wouldnt be used to change the teaching of writing or the writing process itself.This argument shows that original members of the field saw the danger of tying computersto advocating for institutional, disciplinary, or human change. They worked to tamp downthe lunatic fringe talk.

While we may enjoy the chase of change, not all of the people we work for and with arecomfortable with that part of our mission. Consider some of these human and institutionalattitudes entertwined with change talk:slide 3: attitudes toward changes

Kahneman:

our loss aversion usually trumps our desire for gains

as a tribe, we are conservative (holding on to what we have rather than seeking new)

Simon:

we do not optimize; we satisfice

we slowly learn from experience, but cling to our tried-and-true rules

we are not complex, our surroundings are

Christensencompanies think they innovate, but most sustain innovation (at best)

disruptive innovations target new customers

the things most want to accomplish in their lives dont change quickly

1. Change is not intrinsically valued culturally or socially. Daniel Kahnemann argues thatchange often is resisted because one of our dominant biases is loss aversion, or feelinglosses much more powerfully than gains. Loss aversion, Kahneman writes in Thinking Fastand Slow, is a powerful conservative force that favors minimal changes from the status quoin the lives of both institutions and individuals. This conservatism helps keep us stable in ourneighborhood, our marriage, and our job; it is the gravitational force that holds our life together(305). This bias/force makes change a dangerous operation: it might not work or might work

in unexpected ways that threaten what we value. Its not too much of a stretch to say we havea deep-seated bias against change: the tribe has survived doing things this way we know willwork, as we might not survive if we change.

2. Even in areas of expertise, or maybe especially there, change is not thought to bea good. Even though education is entangled with personal growth and disciplinary change,the old way is preserved as long as possible. When Herbert Simon focused on decisions, hefound we rarely seek the best decision; instead we enact the firstacceptable one we stumbleacross, or to use his formal term, we satisfice. Simon saw experience as building up our patternrecognition for the shapes of correct answers, but also found that we clung to our old rulesas long as we could. Of course, as an AI researcher, he wanted the mind to be as simple a

mechanism as possible and the environment to be the source of complexity. His famous antspath example in Sciences of the Artificialwas meant to dramatize the difference: at first theant seemed meandering like a very drunk sailor but then it was revealed that the environment(of driftwood, trash, dunes, etc. on the beach) conspired to complicate the ants path. Simondid believe that with deliberate experience we became experts, but it took a long time and wasmodulated by our propensity to use general heuristics to handle as much of the problem solvingas we could, and only turn to specific domain knowledge when it clearly was needed.

slide 4: how they manage


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Institutions and businesses plan change proactively

They model the change (and its implementation) in order to achieve control (or a mirage of control

Change leaders build elaborate strategies but encourage the troops with talk of small changes

Nudge things along (Thaler and Sunstein)

Start with something small and easy. . . Then use that success to build a climate of change (Chip and

Dan Heath)

3. Institutions try to control change, or at least tidy-it-up.

Stage models of change management abound in organizational studies. Most acknowledge

a debt to the three-stage model Kurt Lewin developed in the late 1940s: unfreezing, change,

and refreezing. And, by the mid 1990s, the stages had multiplied, with John KottersLeading

Change offering an Eight step model. Most stage models for change control the change through

proactive planning, and that their role is to manage or to lead the process of change.

slide 5: lewin stages vs situational change

Lewin Orlikowski + Hofman

UnfreezeChangeRefreeze

Anticipated changeEmerging changeOpportunity-based change

slide 6: orlikowski and hofman model

Wanda Orlikowski and Debra Hofmans model of improvisational change proceeds fromresearch that observed change in technology companies. They use Suchmans Europeanvs. Trukese navigation example to argue that most change management folk want to plan aroute as Europeans would, but actually act in practice like the Trukese: they respond to thechanges that arise as they sail. They identify three kinds of change--anticipated, emergent, andopportunity-basedand admit the anticipated aligns with stage models, while the other two areimprovisations based on responses and conditions experienced after the anticipated begins.Clayton Christensen, who is famous for disruptive innovation, generally concedes that most ofwhat passes for innovation and changein corporations, is sustaining rather than disruptivechange. To be disruptive, a group has to shake up the market structures, and go after groupsnot served, not serve the established customers more ably. Important in all of this, Christensen

observes, people dont change quickly and If an idea for a new growth business is predicatedon customers wanting to do something that hadnt been a priority in the past, it stands littlechance of success (25).True change, it seems, is thought to be difficult to plan, likely to go astray, and often claimed as a biggerinnovation than it is. And the advice change leaders give to their accolytes often reinforces how happythey should be with small change moves.


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handling>

slide 7 institutional change: picture twice, then cut

assess where the constituents (stakeholders) stand in this situation

how much change they have to enact

whether and how they will resist/embrace itroadblocks they see/predict

how technology helps/hurts

#2: An example from high-stakes online portfolio assessment of teacher performancein educationMany states are mandating TPA (Teaching Performance Assessment) both for certificationand continuing assessment of K-12 teachers. While many assessment frameworks have beendeveloped, the California PACT model is widely supported, in part because Pearson has

backed it and developed a national evaluation center: student teachers send a portfolio whichincludes, a written context stmt, 2 video clips of teaching (15 minutes or so), and a reflection.This high stakes assessment, e.g., is mandated by 2015 in Illinois and currently is being pilotedin college teaching programs. Many in Education Schools believe it will profoundly change thelandscape of teacher education, with small and rural Teacher Education Programs struggling tosurvive. They also expect it to tax programs with poor IT support, as this assessment is beingadded at a time when many States also are requiring preservice education programs to reducetheir classes and amount of supervised teaching. This means the normal response of adding aclass to teach videotaping and building a portfolio is not an option.

Institutional participants include:

preservice teaching candidates major requirements teacher education programs clinical supervisors and schools university IT state education department us department of education Pearson

TPA starting point:1. The change is intended to improve education and is mandated from the outside.2. Faculty and Administrators position themselves complexly in relation to new requirements to

certify graduating teachers3. To manage the change in productive ways, people (roles) need to understand both their ownand others positioning vis-a-vis the change.4. For those faculty who want the TPA not only to use video to prove, but also be a lever to

change how video is used in earlier classes (video to improve), the TPA is more welcome than it

is to longtime administrators.

5. A competing outside mandate that limits typical administrative responses is that states also

are pressuring TEP programs to reduce the numbers of required hours


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Picturing a typical landscape helps those who must enact changes where the resistance and theacceptance of change might be centered.If we place the groups in relation to their involvement in change (mandated to champion) andtheir reluctance to make change (abhor to desire), we might better understand how difficult it will

be to fashion a change model that locates enough common ground among participants.The X axis allows the groups to assess their comfort with change [from abhor to desire]The Y axis allows them to complicate that comfort with how the change unfolds -- are they

responding to the change actively/resistently or are they even championing change or

resistence to it?

Quadrant A and C dislike and resist change; they work to minimize change and its effects onthe institution. B and D desire change and champion changes to the institution though mightrespond differently to types of change. Someone who desires change may feel most fulfilled

when they are part of the change (a change agent) in D and someone who does not like changemay feel best about change if it is imposed in A

slide 8

slide 9


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how picturing helps the participants

In this example, all these groups need to work in some harmony or at least a state of detente

in order to achieve an assessment process that portrays the students positively in this new

system. The stakes are high, and in the institution I was studying the students had not used

videotaping of performance earlier in the program. So, they did not use videotaping until they

were student teaching. . . the same time as they were producing a high stakes TPA video.

Fortunately, many in the program perceived two problems 1) successfully videotaping the

teachers and 2) better preparing students to use video to improve their teaching.

# 3: How the example in move 2 can enrich our mentoring of young CW scholarsThe previous example maps institutional terrain that in key ways is similar to landscapes young

CW scholars have to navigate to successfully pass two high stakes assessments--finding a job

and achieving tenure/promotion.

Lets look at this landscape in relation to hiring practices. I have known incredibly talented

candidates in computers and writing who struggle to find a position. Of course job seeking is

always mysterious but at its simplest, employers seek to hire those who can (1) teach their

classes, (2) be low risks for tenure, and (3) become trusted colleagues. In tough economic

times survival is foregrounded, and shared values become more important to hiring. Employers

want to maximize the skill sets of faculty members. But in the area of technologies and

communication, they also may struggle to assess (and later nurture) talent.

slide 10


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GROUP 1: hiring school decision makers (longtime faculty/admins) adverse to change, though good at handling

whatever is mandated from above (outside)

GROUP 2: C + W candidates and their graduate advisors who are proud of the changes they are/have/will make to

the landscape of technology and communication

GROUP 3: hiring school faculty in C+W or related field who want change

CONDITIONS: there is or is not an outside mandate for change

First, most who work longtime in institutions expect change to come from the outside, andif they are decision makers, they hold those positions in part through their abilities controlchange in ways that maintain normal institutional rhythms. When these decision makers hirea person who specializes in technologies and writing, they suspect this hire will bring changeto their institutions So, they may be more receptive to candidates withconservative takes on change than those who seem far out.

Second, most of the C+W candidates have been praised in their graduate work both forinstigating change and for desiring change. So, these candidates are likely to think they needto present themselves as the Pros from Dover . Further, theirrecommenders may proudly focus support letters on their candidates success at enactingchange. Ultimately the candidates paper (and in person) portraits might smack of change talkthat could be misread.Third, if a faculty already is knowledgeable about technologies and communication, prospectivecandidates may know about that person and may imbue that C+W faculty member with moreinfluence over the decision than she/he has. While that person might be a change instigator, theinstitution may want more of the same. . . or it may consider the change agent handled and lookfor someone quite different (and more like others).This landscape is typical, and it does not necessarily bend one way or another: hence myopening statement that all hiring is mysterious.But,it also needs to be recognized that our disciplinary prediliction to discuss change as uniformlypositive may rub institutional others the wrong way. Institutions want change to be minimal andmanaged; innovation to be tidy; and faculty to be resistent or enthusiastic. Often though, if thefaculty champion and desire change too much, the institution responds as Kahneman predictspeoples habits urge us to respond. . . it fears loss more than anticipates gain.

This habit of giving change the conservative evil eye is what we need to expect when we

spin our change talk. Put in terms of mentoring our students who are seeking positions, thisinstitutional landscape suggests that it is incumbent upon us as a field to arm our students

with knowledge about how change talk needs to be modulated so that it will not spook certain

sectors of potential employers. If we dont cautiously deploy our normal change talk, our past

and future as the lunatic fringe will be written on our students identities as thoroughly as it has

been on our own.


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ReferencesChristensen, Clayton M., Johnson, Mark W., & Rigby, Darrell K. (2002). Foundations for growth: How toidentify and build disruptive new businesses. MIT Sloan Management Review, 43 (3): 22-31.Gerard, Lisa. (2006). The evolution of the computers and writing conference, the second decade.Computers and Composition, 23: 211-227.

Gerard, Lisa. (1995). The evolution of the computers and writing conference.Computers andComposition, 12.3: 279-292.Gerard, Lisa. (1993). Computers and composition: Rethinking our values.Computers and Composition,10(2): 23-34.Gruber, Sibylle. (2004). The good, the bad, the complex:Computers and Composition in transition. 21 (1):15-28.Hawisher, Gail E., LeBlanc, Paul, Moran, Charles, & Selfe, Cynthia L. (1996).Computers and theteaching of writing in American higher education, 1979-1994: A history. Norwood, NJ: Ablex.Heath, Chip, and Heath, Dan. (2010). Switch: How to change things when change is hard.New York:

Broadway Books.Hoadley, Ellen, and Lamos, Jennifer. (2012). Change management: An information flow approach.International Journal of Management and Information, 16(1): 83-94.Moran, Charles. (2003). Computers and Composition 1983-2002: What we have oped for. Computersand Composition, 20: 343-358.Kahneman, Daniel. (2011). Thinking fast and slow. New York: Farrar, Straus, & Giroux.Lewin. Kurt. (1952). Group decision and social change. In E. Newcombe and R. Hanley, eds.,Readingsin social psychology. New York: Henry Holt. pp. 459-472.

Moran, Charles. (1993). The winds, and the cost, of change.Computers and Composition, 10(2): 35-44.Nold, Ellen. (1975). Fear and trembling: The humanist approaches the computer.College Compositionand Communication, 26(3): 269-273.Orlikowski, Wanda J., & Hofmon, J. Debra. (1997). An improvisational model for change management:The case of groupware technologies.MIT Sloan Management Review, 38(2): 11-21.Schwartz, Helen J. (1982). Monsters and mentors: Computer applications for humanistic education.College English, 44 (2): 141-152.

Simon, Herbert A. (1996). Sciences of the artificial. 3rd ed. (first ed. 1969). Cambridge, MA: MIT P.

Thaler, Richard H., & Sunstein, Cass R. (2008). Nudge: Improving decisions about health, wealth, andhappiness. New York: Penguin.

Walker, Janice R. et al. (2011). Computers and composition 20/20: A conversation piece, or what somevery smart people have to say about the future. Computers and Composition, 28: 327-346.

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