CCG's Approach to Consulting
An Integrated Approach to Teaching and Learning:
CCG conceives of learning as an integrative process where cognitive, cultural, social, and psychological dimensions or components are seen as functioning simultaneously. Although conceptually it is common to separate cognitive and non-cognitive, and social and cultural dimensions, when one is discussing learning, it is more fruitful to consider learning as integrating all of these dimensions.
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An Interdisciplinary Perspective:
CCG is also distinctive in that it believes that it is critical in its work to remain current with recent trends in other academic disciplines. To avoid being in-bred and only communicating with other educators, CCG makes a concerted effort to maintain regular contact with recent trends in scholarship in a wide range of academic disciplines like psychology, sociology, and anthropology so that CCG can integrate into its work recent research and theories from those fields such as hermeneutics, ethnography, case study methods, and narrative. In this way CCG is able to keep abreast of the most recent approaches in academia, which in turn enables CCG to bring a fresh and insightful point of view to how it can develop innovative approaches to the field of teaching and learning and how educational practice can most effectively be evaluated. Although CCG employs quasi-experimental methods when it assesses its programs, CCG also extends its understanding of educational practice by probing more thoroughly into educational practice by using a wide range of qualitative methods of analysis to understand how educational outcomes can be more fully and comprehensively characterized. In this way, CCG is able, for example, to portray what is really happening at the classroom level, to paint a more complete picture through case studies and alternative forms of assessment of how effectively teachers and students are engaging in deeper forms of teaching and learning.
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The Central Role of the Arts in Teaching and Learning:
From the perspective of CCG, the arts can serve as a powerful means to engage students deeply in learning, making schoolwork more enjoyable, and creating authentic meaning in the classroom. Making decisions about color in a painting, listening intently to a fellow student’s jazz performance, collaborating with other students in an improv piece, painting a mural, critiquing a fellow student’s choreography or theater script--all such activities spark stimulation, excitement, and passionate involvement, which fosters the conditions that lead to improved achievement in the arts as well as in other academic content areas. Through the arts of music, dance, the visual arts, and theater, teachers and students can become deeply and personally immersed in critical habits of mind inherent in arts learning as co-constructors of knowledge, as well as deeper levels of authentic meaning, inquiry-based learning, and disciplined deliberative discussions and exchanges that breathe new life, relevance, and excitement into learning. In short, through such artistic transformative endeavors, students can understand the arts in a more profound way by becoming immersed in the thinking of artistic endeavors so that the arts become lived encounters with reality. Visible critical thinking and higher order thinking nurtured by the arts are also transferable to learning in other academic content areas. The Harvard Project Zero’s Artful Thinking project, for example, (Harvard Project Zero, 2023) has demonstrated how such critical habits of mind and visible thinking can advance student achievement through questioning and investigating; observing and describing; reasoning and providing evidence; exploring multiple viewpoints; comparing and connecting; and uncovering complexity. To support the role of the arts in teaching and learning CCG has encouraged its partners to employ artists as co- teachers and artists in residence and establish studios in classrooms so that teachers and students can jointly create a variety of artistic works.
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A Case Study Analysis Process:
CCG incorporates into its dialogue with clients how case studies can be of benefit to educators. For example, a review of case studies can: (1) open up new options and possibilities for understanding how teaching and learning unfolds; (2) provide an opportunity for teachers to regularly collaborate with their colleagues instead of functioning as solo-practitioners, thereby creating a community of learners; and (3) enable teachers to become more aware of and self-reflective about their own emotions and those of their students while teaching and learning.
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CCG incorporates into its dialogue with clients, how case studies can be of benefit to educators. For example, a review of case studies can: (1) open up new options and possibilities for understanding the process of teaching and learning; (2) consider how ideas presented in the case study sessions could be transferred or used in a variety of classroom settings; (3) provide an opportunity for teachers to regularly collaborate with their colleagues instead of functioning as solo-practitioners; (4) create a system of support for teachers as they confront the challenges of teaching; (5) assist in building a community of learners among teachers; and (6) enable teachers to become more aware of and self-reflective about their own emotions and those of their students while teaching and learning.
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Development of a Shared Language:
CCG places special emphasis on how critical it is for participants to have a shared understanding and interpretation of the words, phrases, and sentences used. This mutual unpacking of the meaning of language is central to participants having a common understanding of what they are talking about, particularly since everyone brings different linguistic connotations and histories to a discussion.
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For CCG the interpretation and unpacking the meanings of language also enable teachers to think more expansively about what commonplace words mean. One could, for example, advocate admiring student's work, but what does it really mean to admire that work? Admiration can range from routine robotic praise to a deeper discussion of how a student has arrived at a set of conclusions or a set of outcomes. By talking in detail about a student's work and exploring what it means for a student to solve a problem, one is engaged in dialogue so that a teacher can realize what admiration means for that student and that teacher. For some students, it is entirely possible that praise is dismissed as not being genuine. As a result of extensive deliberation and the weighing of alternative interpretations or explanations or reasoning shared between teacher and student, students can become aware that words of praise have authentic meaning.
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CCG's Theoretical Perspectives:
Underlying CCG’s perspectives on organizational development and teaching and learning are a number of major theoretical underpinnings, drawing upon some of the most recent research and classics in wide variety of academic disciplines. These theoretical points of view include: (1) engaging underserved students in becoming meaningful problem-solving learners invested in their educational futures and career development; (2) viewing teaching and learning as a constructivist process where teachers, students, and families alike create their own knowledge rather than digesting what has been transmitted to them; (3) conducting group problem-solving and critical thinking; (4) understanding and interpreting the underlying academic and personal narratives that have been critical in their personal development; (5) developing a sense of agency and self-reflection to be able to think critically and creatively; (6) building nurturing and empathic relationships that support understanding and deeper levels of meaning and respect for individual differences; (7) developing inclusive, trusting relationships; developing a mastery of the modes of inquiry in academic disciplines modeled on how scholars inquire and think; (8) drawing upon the arts to inspire and introduce students to confront the existential issues of life; and (9) recognizing the interdisciplinary connections, and across core academic disciplines.
