How to Improve Instruction, Adult SEL, and Equity? Build a Culture of Public Learning

Key Points

• Public Learning offers the opportunity to transform staff meetings from “something to sit through” to a transformational experience that supports staff agency and collaboration.
• Curiosity, collaborative problem-solving, agency, identity, and belonging flourish during Public Learning—SEL competencies that enable educators to make informed, equitable decisions.
• Public Learning is one piece of a multifaceted puzzle to not only keep teachers in the profession but enable them to continuously grow, with transformative SEL competencies as the drivers of equitable change.

For many educators, staff meetings are something to sit through. Grade-level and department meetings are for receiving information. PLC meetings are for deciding what to teach next.

But what if just some of those meetings centered around your learning? What if they honored your need to develop as a social and emotional being with the agency to make decisions that transform outcomes for students? What if they created the conditions for you to study the effectiveness of your instruction while connecting you more deeply with your colleagues?

There is a way for all of this to happen. It is called Public Learning.

What Is Public Learning?

On the surface, Public Learning is a conversation between two or more colleagues. The “Public Learner” shares a curiosity related to student learning and some student work or a video clip of students engaged in a learning task. The “Listeners” offer observations about the data and questions that support the Public Learner to deepen their awareness and identify next steps. A simple protocol guides the flow of the conversation.

On a deeper level, Public Learning is a stance that centers professional collaboration. Public Learning assumes that educators have the agency to create effective change in collaboration with other educators, rather than assuming that to improve instructional practice educators need “sit and get” training, prescriptive data dives, or increased planning time.

The ability to make daily decisions grounded in deeper awareness is where transformational power lies. When meetings afford regular opportunities to reflect on educators’ impact on students’ learning, those educators become better able to question implicit biases and ingrained habits that no longer serve all students. The key to measurable instructional impact is collaboration that supports educators in effectively adapting to meet students’ needs.

What Is the Connection Between Public Learning and Adult SEL?

Public Learning requires sharing uncertainties, challenges, and unpolished, real-time classroom data in order to deepen awareness of blind spots around teaching and learning.

As such, it can bring up strong feelings. Listeners can feel unsure about how to call attention to assumptions or biases without disrupting collegial relationships. However, through modeling, practicing, and reflecting, teams can develop the transformative SEL competencies that make Public Learning not only productive, but connective.

Curiosity, collaborative problem-solving, agency, identity, and belonging flourish during Public Learning. These are the same SEL competencies that enable educators to adapt their instruction and make informed, equitable decisions in their daily practice.

What Is So “Transformative” About Public Learning?

Many systems, even those that explicitly prioritize adult SEL, silo it in the same way it is often siloed for students. This can manifest as a focus on mindfulness strategies, mental health literacy, or community building.

While these activities are valuable, leaders often facilitate them in isolated moments. Public Learning, in contrast, integrates adult SEL with educators’ most essential task: understanding how to make equitable decisions that positively impact student learning.

As such, it is a key driver of collective teacher efficacy, one of the strongest indicators of a team’s ability to transform outcomes for students. By nourishing the SEL competencies that enable educators to effectively evaluate their own practice and make adaptations for greater impact, Public Learning increases educator teams’ effectiveness at reaching their goals.

Isn’t it Hard to Change the Way Educators Collaborate? How Do I Even Start?

Building a culture of Public Learning takes time. Educators must understand the purpose of the activity, see it modeled, and reflect meaningfully on their experience.

One way to get started is for you to model Public Learning yourself. In a “fishbowl,” share one of your own teaching dilemmas and invite a colleague to be your Listener. Try to share some real-time classroom or leadership data and to reflect afterward on an assumption or bias that the conversation illuminated. Then, have your team try it in small groups.

After they practice, pause to share a few specific observations about the SEL competencies you see growing in your team. Invite them to reflect on which competencies felt most alive for them. With regular doses of Public Learning, your team will begin to understand its value and feel excitement for weaving it into the fabric of collaboration.

Why Is This Important Now?

Across the nation, students are experiencing predictive and pervasive inequitable outcomes. Teachers are burning out and leaving the profession. The students in the highest-need schools do not have the best prepared or supported teachers.

While the root causes for these challenges are many, one is the ongoing deprofessionalization of teaching, including a compliance orientation toward adult learning. Meetings that deprive educators of their agency perpetuate patterns that are harmful to educators and students alike.

Practices like Public Learning honor and nourish educators’ SEL while simultaneously developing their capacity to hone their instruction. Meetings shift from passive, compliance-oriented slogs to energizing, curiosity-driven learning experiences that deepen belonging amongst teams.

Public Learning is one piece of a multifaceted puzzle to not only keep teachers in the profession but enable them to continuously grow, with transformative SEL competencies as the drivers of equitable change.

The views in this blog are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of CASEL.

Sarah Sugarman (she/her) is senior director of Lead by Learning, a center of professional learning at Northeastern University in Oakland, CA. Previously, Sarah taught second and third grade in East Oakland and at the Mills College Children’s School. Sarah received her B.A. in Urban Studies from Brown University and her M.A. in Education from Mills College. She recently published a longer piece on Public Learning in the journal Social and Emotional Learning: Research, Practice, and Policy, available here.

Related Posts:

• What About the Adults? A Peek at CASEL’s New Report on Adult SEL Approaches
• “We teach who we are, not just what we know.” What Top Researchers Had to Say About Adult SEL
• What We Learned From Focusing on Adult SEL

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