Getting Beyond the "Glitter and Glue"
A couple of years ago, I presented with Educator colleagues in a session at the AZA (Association of Zoos and Aquariums) Annual Meeting. It was titled: “Is Education Really a Priority at AZA Institutions?”
To inform that session, we ran a poll and heard from 312 educators. We learned about everything from staff morale to education's involvement in decision-making and beyond. There were loads of interesting findings.
But the finding that stuck with me was about the ways different stakeholders view the value of education in the organization. We asked educators two things:
- How they, the EDUCATOR, sees their department’s value; and
- How they think LEADERSHIP sees their department’s value.
The results were startling -- and I don’t think unique to zoos and aquariums. While there were areas of agreement, there were some stark points of mismatch.
Educators saw their value centered on their expertise in learning, communicating complex ideas, and actively advancing the mission.
When they had to say how their leadership viewed their work?
- Revenue generators
- Keeping kids occupied
- Heart-warming photo ops
This is the Value Gap. It’s the difference between how Educators understand their value versus the role they feel they are asked to play.
If I were to sum it up, the sentiment is “We’re experts in communication, teaching, and learning centered on the mission of this organization… but in a lot of cases, we are just seen as money-making babysitters.”
It was an educator colleague who named this for me:
They look at Education, and all they see is glitter and glue.
The Glitter and Glue Effect
This is the phenomenon when leadership or stakeholders (internal or external) see the work of Education with a really reductive lens. They see education at a surface level.
Because you work with audiences of lots of ages. And you're creating and emphasizing developmentally appropriate experiences. And you know that active, playful, constructive learning is way more effective than what is culturally perceived as “serious.”
So, from the outside, grown-ups spending their life with desk jobs and spreadsheets look at the educators’ playful, constructivist, energetic work with learners and are like, “Aw, cute.”
PS – Do you look at the gender composition of most education departments and wonder if this has roots in some “pink ghetto,” patriarchal baggage that links all the way back to education writ large – formal and informal? You bet your Barbie it does.
For the Leaders: Reflecting on the Value Gap
For any leaders or non-educators reading and thinking, “That’s not what I think about education!” I believe you! (For Pete’s sake, you’re reading this newsletter. You’re clearly awesome.)
But even if you don't think about education in a Glitter-and-Glue kind of way, take a moment to reflect on the message your education staff receive via the actions and systems in the larger organization. What might be coming through?
As a VTS-trained educator myself, I have to ask:
What does your staff see that would make them say you prioritize their expertise in learning – rather than as money-making photo ops?
For the Educators: Your Expert Blind Spot
If you’re an educator feeling a blind rage about this, I get it. Been there. Got the souvenir mug.
But the truth is, I’ve also noticed that educators are notoriously awful at tooting their own horns. There are some social and cultural reasons for that. But I think there’s also an expert blind spot at play.
For educators, this expertise becomes second nature. And it can be hard to articulate without getting into jargon.
“Our educators are highly skilled and educated in what we do. The majority of us are able to immediately assess our audience and their needs and adapt our programming to that.”
-Informal Educator
Yeah, that’s a super power. The challenge of improvising all of that, on-the-spot, with each new learner that crosses your path is immense. But when it's done well, all of the hard work behind that is invisible to a viewer. It looks effortless, natural, and possibly like we're... having fun with blocks and glitter.
We need better ways to show and describe this process in ways that make it visible and compelling to outside stakeholders, without descending into jargon.
Bridging the Value Gap: Speaking to Leaders so They Can Learn
Educators need to think of our leadership stakeholders in the same way that we look at our learners. Let's not assume they look at our Design a Well-Adapted Monster activity and see its constructivist genius. They might literally see glitter and glue.
Obviously, there's a lot of research backing up the methods you use. But it's ill-advised to rely on a pile of research citations that prove your points. They aren’t bad, but they often aren’t terribly convincing in the abstract. (Unless Hermione Granger is your CEO.)
Instead, we need to look for ways to meet leaders where they are. That means giving them ways to engage with education starting from impacts and attributes they already value, and use that as a way into the how and why. Using our constructivist super-powers, it's perhaps helping stakeholders construct a new mental model of what education is, does, and achieves – starting from why that matters to them. Sound familiar?
There are lots of different ways to do this, but (of course) I think of how evaluation can help. Join me in the example below.
Real World Example:
I always like to think about the role our evaluation work can play to help bridge this Value Gap with educators. (Solving the parallel value gap that exists for evaluation itself, well, that is a challenge for another day.)
To do this, if you are diving into any evaluation, I advise you to think about the study as a vehicle to communicate your value with stakeholders – be they internal or external.
If you’ve worked with me, at some point I asked you two big questions:
“What would you like to understand as a result of this evaluation?”
“Why is that important or helpful to your organization?”
It's an exercise in perspectives. And the answer to the second question may go down a very different path than the first. When educators and designers start talking about the connection of their work to the larger organization or funder priorities, we sometimes see the project in a whole new light.
By framing your evaluation through this lens, it can become a tool to build the bridge with leadership to see the value of what you do in a bigger picture.
And when it comes time to communicate findings with your leaders, you have a sense of what to foreground. Hook them right away with why this helps a bigger picture that they care about. Then, you'll have their attention to add the details about the why and the how (which you know really matter).
What's the most reductive or naive thing you've heard said about your education work? Reply and commiserate with me.