We’ve done it! We’re at the last 2 pieces of the Performance Model: Personal Factors and Fixed Factors.
The previous blog entry was Context, which was really context of the performance. We can think of the combination of Personal and Fixed Factors as the context of the performer. Personal Factors are variables that are associated with your personal and/or professional life; sort of a “what’s going on” in your life right now. Fixed Factors are also variables unique to you but things that cannot be changed (i.e., are “fixed”).
Felicity, a hobby gardener, will help us get a bead on how these factors work.
Felicity enjoys growing some of her own vegetables in a smallish garden in her back yard. She lives in Vancouver, so her growing season is a lot shorter than that of her friend, Helen (who lives in Tuscaloosa). Felicity is teaching a heavier load than usual at the local college, so has less time for the garden this summer. In general, Felicity is willing to grow most any vegetable she can cook, can, or freeze, but draws the line at zucchini, which she simply can’t stand. She doesn’t mind the hours of weeding and nurturing tender plants but uses a gardener’s stool because she doesn’t kneel well, as a result of some arthritis in both knees. She has an expensive pair of gardening shears that are specially made for left-handed gardeners like her. She really loves those shears.
There’s a lot of information there, so let’s unpack it into the different types of factors.
Personal Factors:
- Living in Vancouver (short growing season)
- Teaching a heavy load (busy)
- Hates zucchini
Fixed Factors:
- Arthritis in both knees (kneeling is difficult and painful)
- Left-handed
Felicity’s performance as a gardener is affected by her Personal Factors in that she can’t actively garden for as many months out of the year as people who live further south than Vancouver. She’s currently extra busy teaching so doesn’t have as much time to devote to gardening as usual. Both of those factors place constraints on her gardening performance. They don’t necessarily imply a poor performance, but they do affect the TYPE of performance she can manage. She will be the first to admit that if she had this summer off, she’d be growing nearly twice as much as she is now. So, the garden is smaller than usual. It also doesn’t stay as neat and tidy, and the weeds get a little bit taller before she finds the time and energy to deal with them. Of course, she isn’t growing zucchini, but that’s always the case since she’d rather eat dirt than zucchini. In a lot of ways, who Felicity is, both in her personal and professional life, is reflected in her garden. Sherlock Holmes might even be able to deduce things about Felicity, seeing only her garden.
The fact that she has arthritis in her knees doesn’t keep her from needing to be able to spend time close to the ground in her garden. But where most gardeners would simply kneel, Felicity uses a little gardener’s stool. It saves the strain on her knees, thereby sparing her pain, while allowing her to continue performing successfully as a gardener. Ditto for the shears. While she spent years using normal shears with her right hand, the fact that she is left-handed meant that she never had quite the control she wanted when using them. The shears she found at The Leftorium made all the difference! She could have lived without them and continued to be a great gardener, but there is less strain and frustration with the new ones.
Felicity can’t change the fact that she has arthritis nor that she’s left-handed. But she CAN adapt the way she goes about performing, in this case, with tools. In fact, she adapted even before the new shears, simply by using her non-dominant hand. It was frustrating but allowed her to do what she needed to do.
She takes this awareness of her Personal and Fixed Factors—her context as a gardener—into her classroom and it helps her to appreciate how the personal contexts of her students affect their performance as students.
They have a wide range of Personal Factors, some of which they have in common with others among them. Some of her students are relatively well-off and have the latest iPhones and tablets. Others make do with older models or none at all, at least in class. Those who are well-off generally don’t have jobs while they’re in school. Others have to work simply to make ends meet and show up for school with bags under their eyes. Some of her students are taking only her course; others are juggling several classes during the short summer session. Two of her students (twins) are out this week for a family funeral and will need to work hard to catch back up, even though their absence was excused.
The Personal Factors her students are dealing with can be a serious challenge to them performing successfully as students. She can’t change the income brackets of her students, making them all equal, but she can be sensitive to what she asks of them, as far as technology goes. It would be unfair, for example, for her to insist that they take in-class notes digitally, since there is no school-level requirement that students have laptops. This is one way she creates equity in her classroom, striving to give all of her students the same opportunity to succeed. This also goes for the loss her two students experienced. She will work with them as they catch back up on assignments, as it will help ensure that they have the opportunity to succeed, despite experiencing the kind of personal factors that can easily derail performance. The students who are working so hard to juggle multiple courses and jobs concern her the most and it’s for them that she ensures that the time spent in her class is maximally useful. One of the staples of her course (Public Speaking) is each student giving a presentation on staying organized as a student. She figured out years ago that THIS was information her students needed to learn. That they’re practicing putting together and delivering a presentation is just the “official” part of the assignment. That they’re each taking their Personal Factors (jobs, classes, family, etc.) into account and working to organize all their obligations so that they can be successful as students is the point-behind-the-point.
As for her students’ Fixed Factors, she is aware that while most of her students have English as their native language, several grew up speaking other languages and occasionally still struggle. One student uses a wheelchair, one has a note-taker who attends with him, and one uses speech-to-text software in class because of a hearing impairment. This list could go on and on: several are lefties like her, about a quarter of each class wear glasses, two use they/them pronouns, there are a few very tall or very short students, etc. (She knows her students certainly have many other Fixed Factors of which she is unaware;dyslexia, ADHD, blindness, clinical depression, and serious medical issues are some of the more challenging Fixed Factors she’s experienced in her classroom over the years.)
She’s aware of some of her students’ Fixed Factors because they are visible. In other cases, students have informed her of their Fixed Factors, usually because they affect how those students go about performing (such as with the help of a note-taker). Sometimes, a student’s Fixed Factors mean that Felicity needs to adapt her own performance as a teacher. For the student who uses speech-to-text software, Felicity must speak clearly and at a good volume. She needs to be sensitive to using English idioms and be ready to clarify what she means for those students who aren’t completely fluent in English. For the student in a wheelchair, she has a legal obligation to ensure that her teaching and class activities don’t present an obstacle to use of a wheelchair. Other cases simply place a social or ethical obligation on her, such as using students’ preferred pronouns and ensuring that all students have a clear line of sight to the whiteboard at the front of the room, regardless of their height.
In none of these cases are the performance of the students AS students de facto constrained, any more than Felicity’s performance as a gardener, given her Fixed Factors. Her students use a variety of tools and adaptations, a few or which require that she, as an empathic and successful teacher, also adapt. (Her college has plans and resources for many of the adaptations that help students perform successfully in spite of those Fixed Factors that can present a challenge.)
Felicity thinks of it this way: She’s a gardener of students and each of her students is a gardener of learning. The better they get at it (the more and better learning they grow), the more successful they are as students (and the more successful she is as someone cultivating students!). Each comes at it from a different direction and what’s going on in their personal lives and who they are affects how they cultivate their learning. Some of them need a metaphorical gardener’s stool and others need the equivalent of left-handed pruners. Her job as a gardener of students is to ensure that even as she gives them some of the specific Public Speaking seeds they’ll plant and grow, that she provides and tends their gardening environment as best she can and that each has the tools that let them do their best.
