proactive curriculum

Meaning of the term proactive

Active means "doing something." The prefix pro- means "before." So if you are proactive, you are ready before something happens. The opposite is being reactive, or waiting for things to unfold before responding. Think about winter cold season. A proactive person washes his hands and takes vitamins; a reactive person gets sick and takes cold medicine. Someone once observed: "There are three kinds of people: those who make things happen, those who watch what happens, and those who wonder what happened".... Proactive behavior refers to the first kind of person - those who make things happen. Many scholars believe that everyone has the potential to be the kind of person who makes things happen. That is, everyone can display more or less proactive behavior, depending on their motivation in the situation.

Three examples of proactive behavior include:

• A nurse who, whilst waiting for the doctor to arrive to see a patient, anticipates and prepares the equipment and information that the doctor might need, enabling the doctor to do her job much more effectively and rapidly
• A production operator who has, on his own initiative, come up with a way of cleaning his machines that reduces water wastage.
• A new management consultant who initiated meetings with her colleagues to seek feedback regarding how to improve her future performance. Without waiting to be asked or instructed, the individuals in the above scenarios have used their initiative to change the present situation in light of anticipated future demands and needs.

Defining features of proactivity

Because it is a relatively new field, the precise definition of proactive behavior has been somewhat unclear and even contentious. Nevertheless, in recent times, there appears a consensus appears to be emerging as to the definition of proactive behavior, as suggested in Parker & Collins(2010). Dictionary definitions typically highlight two key elements of proactivity. 

First, they identify an anticipatory element involving acting in advance of a future situation, such as acting in anticipation of future problems, needs, or changes (Miriam Webster Online Dictionary). 

Second, definitions emphasize taking control and causing change, for example: "controlling a situation by causing something to happen rather than waiting to respond to it after it happens” 

Both of these elements - anticipation and taking control - are present in most conceptualizations of general proactive behavior. For example: 

• Crant (2000, p.436) referred to proactive behavior as "taking initiative in improving current circumstances; it involves challenging the status quo rather than passively adapting present conditions". 
• Parker, Williams & Turner (2006, p. 636) defined proactive behavior as "self-initiated and future-oriented action that aims to change and improve the situation or oneself"
• Grant, & Ashford (2008, p. 13) defined proactive behavior as "anticipatory action that employees take to impact themselves and/or their environments". 

As well as anticipation and taking control, definitions of proactive behavior also often highlight its self-starting nature. Thus, Frees and Fay (2001) suggested personal initiative involves going beyond assigned tasks, developing one's own goals, and attempting to solve problems that have not yet occurred. Likewise Grant and Ashford (2007) argued that proactivity can include doing things before being asked, inventing new means, and/or negotiating new ends. Importantly, self-initiation is essential to both taking control and being anticipatory. For example, if one needs to be asked to change something, it is not taking control of the situation. Likewise, if someone is told to do something because of an impending need, then they would not be acting in anticipation, but rather, they would be following a direction. 

In summary, proactive behavior has three key features: 

1. It is anticipatory - it involves acting in advance of a future situation, rather than just reacting. For example, the nurse in the example has thought ahead to anticipate the doctor's needs. 

2. It is change-oriented - being proactive means taking control and causing something to happen, rather than just adapting to a situation or waiting for something to happen. The production operator has caused a change in the way machines are changed. 

3. It is self-initiated - the individual does not need to be asked to act, nor do they require detailed instructions. For example, the new management consultant in the example has not waited to be given feedback, but has proactively sought it out.

Additional elements have been included in the definition of some forms of proactive behaviors. For example, Frese and Fay (2001) included persistence as a defining element of personal initiative. Being proactive can involve persistence, such as persevering to bring about change, but persistence per se is not always proactive (e.g., one might be persistent at asking a supervisor for help). Being constructive and/or prosocial is also sometimes highlighted as a feature of proactive behavior (e.g., taking charge is defined as constructive efforts to effect functional change in how work is executed), but too much, or misguided, proactive behavior can also be dysfunctional and counter-productive (Bateman & Crant, 1993). 

Proactive behavior compared to other types of work performance

Within the domains that it has been investigated, proactive behavior has been shown to be distinct from related behaviors. For example, in the area of work performance, Griffin, et al., (2007) showed that proactive behavior is distinct from task performance (which they referred to as proficiency), distinct from citizenship & contextual performance, and distinct from adaptive performance. These authors proposed a model of work role performance that distinguishes proactivity, adaptively, as well as proficiency. 

1. The first type of performance, termed "proficiency", describes the extent to which an individual meets role requirements that can be formalized. It is possible to assess proficiency when the requirements of a work role are formalized because there is a clear standard against which these judgments can be made. 
2. The second type of performance, "adaptively", describes the extent to which an individual adapts to changes in a work system or work roles. 
3. The third type of performance, "proactivity", describes the extent to which the individual takes self-directed action to anticipate or initiate change in the work system or work roles. 

                 Proactivity are important whenever a work context involves uncertainty and some aspects of work roles that cannot be formalized. It is important to note that the above perspective is different to the idea that proactive behavior should be seen as a type of contextual performance or as a type of extra-role behavior. For example, some have argued that proactive behaviors is by definition extra-role, since in-role activities are non-discretionary and hence not self-directed. However, classifications of in-role and extra-role are unclear, and depend on how employees construe the boundary of their role. Proactive individuals are likely to construe their roles more broadly

Proactive learning

Proactive learning is a generalization of active learning designed to relax unrealistic assumptions and thereby reach practical applications.

"Active learning seeks to select the most informative unlabeled instances and ask an omniscient oracle for their labels, so as to retrain a learning algorithm maximizing accuracy. However, the oracle is assumed to be infallible (never wrong), indefatigable (always answers), individual (only one oracle), and insensitive to costs (always free or always charges the same).

 "In real life, it is possible and more general to have multiple sources of information with differing reliabilities or areas of expertise. Active learning also assumes that the single oracle is perfect, always providing a correct answer when requested. In reality, though, an "oracle" (if we generalize the term to mean any source of expert information) may be incorrect (fallible) with a probability that should be a function of the difficulty of the question. Moreover, an oracle may be reluctant – it may refuse to answer if it is too uncertain or too busy. Finally, active learning presumes the oracle is either free or charges uniform cost in label elicitation. Such an assumption is naive since cost is likely to be regulated by difficulty (amount of work required to formulate an answer) or other factors."

Proactive learning relaxes all four of these assumptions, relying on a decision-theoretic approach to jointly select the optimal oracle and instance, by casting the problem as a utility optimization problem subject to a budget constraint.

 Here are a few things to consider to bolster yourself and remain in a proactive mindset now and in future situations.

1. What you say matters. In spite of how familiar the old phrase about “sticks and stones…” may be to us, we are realistic enough to know that words truly matter. A teacher’s words carry significant weight. They can uplift, wound, or even destroy. So look at each challenging circumstance as an opportunity to model proactive behavior, particularly through your language choice. Once you’ve let those first responsive words out of your mouth, there is no reeling them back in, in spite of how badly you’d love to be able to do it. How can you communicate the worth and potential of this child, parent, or co-worker as you respond—even when the need is to discipline or correct behavior? Before you speak, take just a few seconds to pause and think about your next words. Make sure they have the impact you intended.
2. Practice Habit Seek First to Understand, Then to Be Understood. How many times have you reacted to what you thought was the reality, only to find out after it is too late that the true circumstance was much different? Next time, take a proactive approach. Start with a few clarifying questions to get a good handle on what’s going on and what’s really at stake for all of those involved. Some examples of a clarifying question might be:
1. Is there anything else about this situation you think I should know?
2. What led up to this situation?
3. Was there anyone else involved that I don’t know about?
3. Take stock of your share of ownership. Could the situation have been precipitated from something you said or did that contributed to this circumstance? Could your instructions have been less than clear? Did you provide all of the needed resources? Was your expectation of the nature of others’ performance reasonable? Could at least a portion of the responsibility for this situation reside with you? If so, how will you address that ownership in a way that lets others know that you are ready to claim and address your share of the dilemma?
4. State your job or responsibility as the teacher. You are here to love, teach, and discipline your students… among other things. In the heat of the moment, it can be profoundly helpful for you to clarify your intent—exactly what your end in mind is for this circumstance. In fact, you, as well as others, will be served by pausing to clarify the intended outcome and your role in achieving it. An example of a clarifying statement could be: I am here to teach AND to help you develop disciplined behavior, and nothing is going to prevent me from doing that. So, right at this moment, though you probably aren’t going to be pleased with what we need to do next, I want you to understand my end in mind.
5. Team up and solve the problem together. If we remain in a position of absolute authority over someone or the situation, we risk fostering an adversarial relationship rather than a partnership. Keep in mind that the ultimate goal is to achieve maximum maturity, which is interdependence. Think about your student, the parent, the co-worker; they own a significant part of this problem and they know it. They don’t have the same perspective you do about the situation. In some cases, they don’t have the skill or experience either. Rather than polarizing yourself or them, move to position yourselves as a team working on the same problem together. An example of a teaming statement could be: Okay, we’ve got a problem here. But we are in this together and we’re going to solve this problem. As leaders, we strive continuously to do things that help communicate the worth and potential of others so clearly they are inspired to see it in themselves. Positioning someone as being inept in his or her role only alienates. At best, alienation produces dependency; at its worse, alienation produces negative synergy(hostility, belligerence, total withdraw

Effective Classroom Management: Proactive Teaching through Prevention

                   Great teachers do more than control their classroom; they have their students passionately engaged in the learning. An essential step to achieving success in the classroom is learning and practicing the art of prevention. Prevention is organized into multiple areas:

• Holding ground
• Positive connections
• Teaching procedures
• Consistency
• Getting ready
• Lesson designs

“Holding ground” is a facet of what teachers do proactively. It requires advance planning and commitment.

According to education expert Rick Smith, “It’s the toughest thing we do as classroom managers in the classroom is hold our ground with kids. And the research suggests that we only have to do it about seven hundred times a day…” Teachers must “avoid the Land of Reasons,” a place characterized by students asking for reasons why.

An important way for holding ground is learning to say ‘no’ effectively. It is simple, direct and to the point, and invites student cooperation. An effective ‘no’ is paradoxically firm and soft. A lot of teachers believe the word no is inherently negative, and should never be used. No problem. Use the word yes. Yes, Regina you can go to the bathroom in ten minutes when the bell rings. You never have to use the word no. Just use yes and, or yes later, or yes if…

Being proactive in a curriculum planning

Early career lecturers may find it difficult to take a proactive approach to the curriculum in their subject area, particularly if they have inherited modules, find themselves co-teaching on group modules, or have encountered opposition from colleagues to any changes they propose. They may also be unaware of how to go about implementing changes, and what the institutional mechanisms and timeframes for doing so may be.

Curriculum design

Curriculum design covers a wide range of areas, from creating individual modules to planning and implementing new degree programs. These are clearly tasks of different orders of magnitude. Creating new degree programs will require intensive pedagogical and financial planning (you will need to make a business case for it, for instance), and will necessitate a great deal of paperwork. New modules will also need to go through institutional hoops to ensure that they also meet a business case and that they conform to quality assurance procedures.

The big picture: Institutional values

This is why the place to start with your curriculum plans may not be the seemingly obvious – i.e. with the nuts and bolts of your teaching – but instead with the bigger picture. What is your institution’s guidance on curriculum development as a whole? What are the values that your institution places at the heart of any curriculum design? Good places to start include your institution’s quality manual, your student services division or equivalent, which often provide guidance on process, and you’re departmental or school Director of Teaching. Your DoT should be able to provide you with a steer on any on-going, subject-specific issues: e.g. such as the sort of teaching your institution or department favors, preferred assessment models, and even live concerns about staffing patterns. There may be little point in proposing single-instructor modules, for instance, when everyone else is teaching in teams; similarly, your ideas about assessment need to conform to some degree at least with current assessment models. Change can come, but only when it takes into account current practice.

7 Proactive Classroom Management Strategies

More and more classroom events are being caught on camera and uploaded on the internet.  Students are caught fighting each other and teachers.  Teachers are caught lashing out at students.  Campus police officers are caught physically handling male and female students.  We ask a lot of questions are a reactive in nature.  However, we believe that being proactive is the best way to prevent series discipline events.  The following seven strategies are great tools to implement in every classroom in America.

1. Teach the Expectations

2. Set Clear, Concise, Logical, and Proportional Consequences

3. Build Relationships

4. Do not Entertain Self-indulgent Behavior

 5. Seek Administrative Support

 6. Remove the Audience

7. Be a Classroom “Edutainer”