12-29-2021—The discipline of geography employs “ground truthing” to verify the relationship between a map and the actual physical characteristics of the land the map represents. In days past, maps were drawn partially from actual explorations and partially from the best guess of a cartographer who extrapolated from their general knowledge to what likely existed in the landscape. Thus, an important part of the mapping process was walking around on the land and confirming if what was drawn from fact and projection was accurate. This process was known as ground truthing. In modern times, with GPS and satellite imagery, there continues to be a need for ground truthing. A satellite can show patches of vegetation, forest cover or landforms but it can’t always accurately portray the details of what is actually on the ground. The versatility and function of ground truthing has expanded beyond geography to include applications in statistics, military strategy and scientific hypothesis. What unifies all the forms of ground truthing is the checking of presumed or expected results with verifiable evidence in the lived-world.
In this post I will explore the possibilities of thinking of ground truthing in education as a form of “soul truthing”. The function is the same, verifying what is presumed to be true, but the focus is not on temporal elements of teaching but rather the eternal-ineffable features of teaching. By ineffable, I mean those aspects of teaching the originate in the heart and soul of the educator, are notoriously hard to quantify and are frequently termed as calling, passion or ethical-moral commitment. The purpose of soul truthing is to work toward consistency and accuracy between stated beliefs and values, and actual teaching practices.
My interest in soul truthing began as I reflected on a graduate course I recently taught that explored the relationship between models of teacher evaluation and effective teaching. The course invited students to consider both the technical and ineffable indicators of teaching. Most of the students in the course were practicing teachers with upwards of twenty years of experience in the classroom. Consequently, they had experienced regular observations and evaluations of their teaching. As we talked about the evaluation process, it was evident that none of the existing frameworks for evaluating teaching were considered valid and accurate representations of teaching. Students felt that even the most well designed and implemented evaluation protocol could never accurately capture the complexity and essence of their teaching, the ineffable that anchored the core of their teacher self.
The final project for the course addressed this shortcoming in teacher evaluation and professional development by inviting students to propose their ideal framework. But instead of a traditional evaluation structure of checkboxes and lists of teaching indicators, I asked students to create a cosmology of effective teaching. A metaphorical map of the instructional stars they felt were essential to distinguish between effective and less effective teaching. Accompanying this map was a short paper describing their cosmology, drawing from course readings in support of their central beliefs and values.
In my post-course reflections, it was evident that my intentions for the cosmology were partially fulfilled. Students wrote powerfully about their understandings and commitments to the ineffable elements of teaching, elements of effective teaching that rarely appeared in their teaching evaluations. However, they struggled with the construction of their cosmology. As several students noted, even twenty-year veterans, rarely if ever had anyone asked them to reflect on their inner values and passion for teaching. Students could intellectualize the ineffable but when it came to soul truthing their personal stance, there were gaps between what they professed as important and their ability to identify actual heart-centered practices.
This realization was both a shock to the students and a puzzle to me. As a community of learners, we leaned into this discrepancy, trying to understand why something that everyone agreed was central to teaching was so difficult to articulate. This led to the troubling realization that their challenge was a direct outcome of an education system that often dulls the inner sense of deep selfhood emanating from the soul and heart of the teacher. Students in the class knew that the deadening influence of schooling was a common experience for many of their students, especially Black, brown and Indigenous learners. But what was strikingly new and disruptive was the dawning awareness that they too were lulled into a sort of compliance that dampened access to the deep source of their teaching humanity.
Ground truthing confirms the accuracy of maps. I believe that soul truthing can reconnect an educator’s practice with their heart, creating a dependable map of truth and knowing that extends definitions of effective teaching beyond traditional normative models. Soul truthing requires active reflection, exploration of educational landscapes rarely encountered and a community of fact (soul) checkers who can point colleagues past the technical to their better-deeper self. Building the personal and professional capacity for soul truthing will require effort and skills rarely taught in teacher preparation programs or professional development sessions. A good place to begin is to determine your intellectual and technical definitions of effective teaching and then ask, why do I believe this in my heart? Listening to the heart requires a different form of attentiveness than the mind, a method which leads to an exploration of where truth lies in the heart and are tuning of self to hear the wisdom of the soul. If pursued with integrity, these questions might foster knowing that is deeper than the procedural elements of teaching. It is this deeper knowing, below the external, that is the goal of soul truthing. The process begins with the drawing of a spiritual map of teaching and then continues with frequent acts of soul truthing to refine the map and to work toward greater consistency between stated beliefs and actual practices of effective teaching.