aboutlearning

Two weeks ago, I spent three days with 20 Chicago Public school principals. I learned a lot and I was honored to have been asked to work with them on instructional leadership. I came to a final realization of something I had suspected for some time; that success in the principalship is related to the ability to travel the 4MAT Cycle. I am using actual examples from two of the participants in that seminar. Both have given me permission to relate their survey results.

This 4MAT Instructional Leadership seminar has as its objectives to enhance the ability of principals and assistant principals to embrace diversity in their staffs and students, to leverage best practice and to transform their schools. I am not unaware that is a large order, but nevertheless that is how I have designed those three days.

The principals and assistant principals in my seminar took the Learning Type Measure (LTM) on the first morning and we went over their scores and their learner designations as either Type One, Two, Three or Four Learners. These indicate their preferences as to how they prefer to learn. All of them had a favored type. Several of them had a double style, meaning their had equal scores in two of the four styles.

Type One Learners like to learn in group settings with lots of discussion strategies. The Type Twos prefer lecture and quiet reading. The Type Three Learners need to get their hands on what they are learning to become skilled by doing tasks, and the Type Four Learners need to learn by engaging in real world settings and interacting in real life open-ended situations. We have administered the Learning Type Measure to hundreds of thousands over the past thirty years and our results have been validated repeatedly. The two members of my group that I am reporting on here are a team, a principal and her assistant principal. They both have the same double styles. There are Type Two and Type Three learners, an indication they prefer not only learning theory but also how theory applies. I have found this same double style configuration in physicists who seem to have both the idea preferences of 4MAT’s Quadrant Two coupled with the application of ideas, so characteristic of Quadrant Three on the Cycle. We smiled at how the two of them were so alike when they showed me their results.

Later in the afternoon of the that day, the paricipants took the Leadership Behavior Indicator,(LBI) a survey based on the LTM but written to definne leadership behavior preferences. The LBI also has high validity and reliability scores.  My reason for giving both surveys in this seminar is to have the participants compare their learning preferences with their leading preferences. I knew that the majority of them would discover that as leaders they cannot afford the luxury of only the skills and comforts of their preferred learning style quadrants, but had to “travel the cycle” in order to lead and manage an organization successfully.


The results of the LBI indicate that The Type One Principals are “people people”, their skill with relationships is exceptional. The Type Two Principals are curriculum people, and their skills are in creating outstanding programs for learners. The Type Three Principals are skilled in monitoring and giving feedback, and the Type Four Principals are gifted at moving their organizations to higher levels of excellence, to the innovative, to the cutting edge.

The results of my twosome team of principal and assistant principal was amazing. (Remember they were Type Two-Three Learners, favoring ideas and traditional skills.) The assistant principal found she had stretched well into Quadrant One, signifying her development of relationship, people skills, and the principal found she had also stretched into Quadrant One, but also into Quadrant Four, the innovative, cutting edge place on the 4MAT Cycle. Between the two of them they are indeed “traveling the cycle” as leaders of their school,

Oneness in a school indicates community is cared for. Twoness in a school indicates the curriculum program is of uppermost concern. Threeness in a school indicates monitoring, feedback and attention to competence is a major concern. And Fourness in a school indicates good is never enough, it is excellence that is sought.

Quite a team these two make, quite a team indeed. My congratulations. Chicago Public Schools is lucky to have them.