I have been thinking a lot about Product vs. Process in the education world. I find great joy in helping student transcend their results-orientation, if only for a moment, perhaps because I find it so hard to transcend myself. I do this both consciously and intuitively, through curriculum and instructional design, assessment practices, and modeling. The modeling part feels most essential, and it can be exhausting. It feels very much like counselling sometimes: being attuned to verbal and nonverbal cues to the emotional states of others; confirming and acknowledging those feelings, making space for them; assuring the learner that the way she feels is normal and OK; explaining ways the thinking has been trained into her, and the ways it is counter productive; suggesting and modeling ways to do it differently; celebrating successes; facilitating reflection. When I see my students start to provide this kind of support to their peers, it’s truly magic.

When I am teaching, more and more it feels like therapy. I don’t know if this means I’m doing it wrong, or doing it right. Much of my learning feels therapeutic to me, but I think often I create these conditions within myself.

In reflection, I’ve only had a few process-oriented learning experiences. One was during my graduate education. I had to write a paper… I don’t even remember what the parameters were. I was struggling with debilitating anxiety and took a little European tour with my daughter in the middle of it. As I was researching, I started journaling. Drawings and reflections, on my readings, my process, and the ways they connected with my everyday, and I started to notice results. Every journaling session, I would start with a blind contour self-portrait, and then would write. My anxiety decreased, and I found such intrinsic enjoyment in the process that I was more motivated than I’d ever been. I asked my prof if I could chase this process, without knowing where it was going. It was a scary thing to ask, and I didn’t fully trust his permission, but I did it and found it to be transformative.

In the end, I didn’t land on a tidy product, but the result was opening up a whole new world (through research I wouldn’t have read otherwise, process, and an inside view of creativity and motivation) that turned into my final research project.

I think process-orientation is wrapped up with growth mindset, and is conducive to intrinsic motivation, collaboration, creativity, and all the other life-sustaining things in the education world. We need to learn how to land on the finished product too, but the focus (in life, in education) is already so heavily balanced in that direction, that we could afford to push the pendulum back a little.

Product VS Process