Ep 112 — Conditions, Not Programs Make a Better Learning Environment Part with Dr. Dan Keller

Adding one more program can feel like the responsible move, until you look up and realize the “support” is undermining the very learning environment you’re trying to improve. We sit down with Dr. Dan Keller, an educator and researcher with three decades of experience across four countries and Plan Z Leadership Coach, to get practical about a question schools rarely slow down to ask: what conditions actually make K-12 learning environments effective, and how do we help educators use research without drowning in it?

Dan walks us through the way he built his inquiry, starting with meta-research on effective learning environments and then digging into why the field doesn’t land on one universal checklist. We talk about approaches that emphasize strategies and effect sizes, alongside broader, more holistic frameworks for classroom climate and school culture. A key turning point is language: “best” vs “effective” can lead to different conclusions, and that becomes even more important when educators rely on AI summaries or prompts. If the question shifts, the answers shift.

From there, we move into research-to-practice. Dan shares why the goal isn’t a perfect model, but a memorable one teachers and principals can carry into student contact time. That’s where the garden metaphor comes in, along with a powerful mnemonic borrowed from biology: SWAN (sunlight, water, air, nutrients). This is part one of a two-part conversation, setting up the research rationale, the history of gardens in schools, and why tending conditions with small adjustments can beat another round of initiative overload.

Come back for part two next week!

Share this with a colleague who’s feeling swamped by programs, and if you found it useful, leave a review so more educators can find the show.

Transcript

Welcome And Part One Setup

SPEAKER_03 0:08

Welcome to the Minimalist Educator Podcast, where the focus is on a less is more approach to education. Join your hosts Christine Arnold and Tammy Muziowski, authors of The Minimalist Teacher and your school leadership edit, a minimalist approach to rethinking your school ecosystem. Each week as they explore practical ways to simplify your work, sharpen your focus, and amplify what matters most so you can teach and lead with greater clarity, purpose, and joy.

SPEAKER_02 0:38

Welcome to this week's episode of the Minimalist Educator Podcast. Today we are talking with Dan Keller about effective learning environments. We had such a great conversation with Dan about the work that he's doing in effective learning environments that we've decided to split it into two episodes. So this week, you will enjoy part one of the conversation, learning all about Dan's work. And hopefully, you can join us again next week for part two. Dr. Daniel J. Keller's experience in the field of education spans over three decades in four different countries. Dan has worked as a classroom teacher, teacher trainer, principal, head of school, CEO, and educational consultant. With a Bachelor of Arts and Philosophy, a Master of Education and Educational Leadership and Policy Studies, and a PhD in curriculum and instruction. Dan served as a visiting scholar with the University of Cambridge Faculty of Education. As a leader within a number of education organisations, he has presented at a variety of international education conferences. Dr. Keller serves as a university supervisor in the College of Education at Northern Arizona University, a mentor for Arizona Teachers Academy, and a leadership coach with Plan Z Education Services.

SPEAKER_01 1:51

Hello

Dan Keller’s Global Education Path

SPEAKER_01 1:52

everyone, and welcome to this week's episode of the Minimalist Educator Podcast. Today, Christine and I are talking with our friend Dr. Dan Keller, who is our leadership coach at Plan Z Education Services. And we're super excited to talk about some of the work that Dan is developing. But of course, we need to know where he's been, what he's done, because he has a really interesting background. So welcome to the show today, Dan.

SPEAKER_00 2:18

Thank you. Good to be here. Thank you all.

SPEAKER_01 2:22

So you and I met through Nicole, who also is a coach at Plan Z, and we do some mutual work with new teachers in Arizona. But I think it's it would be really cool for people to hear about the path that you've taken to where you are now. Because, like Christine and I, you are somewhat of a nomad in terms of like locations, right? So you've been around the world a bit yourself. So can you share some of that experience with us and how you landed now in Arizona?

SPEAKER_00 2:56

Thank you. Again, thank you for the opportunity to share. I appreciate it. I guess I could say that my career has been focused on studying the world of education. And that means not only the field of education, but the field of comparative education, which typically means looking at how education is implemented in different regions of the world. But it can be a comparative within a country as well. So I've had the opportunity to be in the field of education in a bunch of positions, not all, but you know, I've I've done many from teacher to administrator to coach and mentor and various other roles, uh, researcher, collaborator, consultant, and have done it in four countries as far as living full-time and have done some other work part-time in other countries. So some of my experiences influenced a lot from Asia. I've been living in Turkey for a number of years, and then also living in the United Arab Emirates and also in Vietnam, and then the United States, uh growing up in Connecticut, going to college in the Midwest, living in the Northwest, currently in the Southwest, and there are even regional differences. And through that time, I've grabbed a bachelor's degree, a master's, and a PhD, all related to the field of education. So I've studied it from Ivory Towers and Crumbling Ruins, I guess you could say, and everything in between.

SPEAKER_02 4:20

Awesome. What a great

Why Learning Environments Became The Work

SPEAKER_02 4:22

story. And I know now you do a lot of work thinking and talking about learning environments. Can you tell us a little bit about how you got interested in that and what we what we can talk about today?

SPEAKER_00 4:34

Yeah, it really came from a conversation with Nicole and then Nicole and Tammy. I think they had had conversations before I did. And in conversations with each of them, they they were tickled by, from my point of view, tickled by an emerging research question. But that that's the researcher geeky part of me. But I lean into it because I I like research and I like looking at the research of education. And they were poking around in the realm of trying to figure out what kind of a holistic approach to schooling should be and helping people move away from too many programs being swamped on teachers in schools and maybe things not being aligned well enough. And just create there, there were a lot of efforts, maybe well-intentioned in schools to create better learning for kids. But in the result, unfortunately, we were all observing some similar phenomenon that we would describe as undermining the learning environment and the effectiveness of it. Uh, it even took us a little bit of time to land on that term to describe what we were talking about. So the conversations were pretty fuzzy early on. But, you know, in research, one of the first things we do is to try to figure out some basic terms that we are in agreement on. So we looked at uh some definitions of learning environments, which was kind of the realm of research in question from my point of view, looking at effective learning environments to get a little bit more clear on that. And that then led to us all agreeing yes, there's some realm here, there's a body of research here, we've got our own personal observations and experiences, which are detailed in some cases. And bringing it together, that that praxis of the nexus of research and in-school experience at the practitioner level, we started to get onto the idea that maybe there was some way to develop research-based workshops that might guide people in a direction that could address the concerns they have and maybe minimize some of the negative outcomes that they were having. And so it led me down a deep rabbit hole search into the field for quite a while. And I'm coming up for a brief breath as I'm trying to synthesize it all.

SPEAKER_01 6:59

You have been in the depths of this research, which I mean, we certainly appreciate because it's we know the importance of, you know, having the research to back the things that we're doing. And so, what are some of the things that you found maybe surprising in the research or like completely not surprising, right? Trending things. Here's me with my layered question again. How about I just stop there?

SPEAKER_00 7:25

Let me tell you a little bit about the uh the research questions that I probed into, because that might then give us a little bit of a structure as to some of the findings that came out of each of those research

What Meta-Research Says About Learning Environments

SPEAKER_00 7:36

questions. And I backed into this, so I'm presenting them now in a much more logical way than I wish I could say I first went about it. But I was a little rusty in my research skills. And so I began a little backwards. So apologies to my uh supervisors at the universities. But they'll be proud of me that I finally got back on track. And so the first research question I explored was how many high-quality meta-research studies on effective learning environments have been published in the last 10 years? And if you just let that sink in for a second, you can understand that the power that we have of, you know, it's about asking the right questions, right? And that's a pretty good one to start with. So if you look at Sage publications as one of the key references for this, they themselves identified over 100 research studies that were considered highly effective and in the area of K-12 effective learning environments, because we have to remember that learning environments exist outside of the K-12 realm. But I think in general, that's the realm that the three of us are talking about today. So the next question I explored is what are the best meta-research studies on effective learning environments? And what was interesting there is the variety of approaches. And you get down to someone like Hattie's work, where he's looking at very specific strategies and the effect sizes. So really probing very deeply, which allows you to do a lot of quantitative, highly accurate findings, all the way to much more global work that people were doing to try to discuss what are the holistic natures of what the concept of learning environment should include. So there's a really broad range of research. So that was one of the interesting findings. I wouldn't say it was surprising, but it's it's worth noting. And then I wanted to explore, okay, well, in the broader scope, are there agreed upon categories that we say, oh yes, all educators know that when we're talking about learning environments, there are five major categories, this that, or six major or three major. Well, no. What's really interesting to me as a researcher is that there isn't common agreement. And in part because it has to do with the way the research questions are worded. And this is what I think gets quite interesting, especially in the realm of AI. I started probing down research questions about what are the common factors of best learning environments. But then if you ask the question, what are the common factors of effective learning environments, you get different results. And so switching the different word between effective or best or strong, because you have to understand that AI is a predictive language model. It's giving you a broad brushstroke, but we have to be careful. So I I probed around with different questions. One of the questions that I really zoomed in on is what are the most important factors of effective learning environments in K-12

Definitions Matter More Than We Think

SPEAKER_00 10:42

schools? And so that starts to get at, yeah, okay, so what are they? You dig into the research and the commonalities are really different. Two general categories. Some people look at factors and they go down that approach of what basically strategies that you can implement. The challenge there is that they aren't getting consistent results and it hasn't been researched very deeply. So there's there's a lot of variety there. We're not getting solid, consistent answers from that approach. The other approach, which I think is going to resonate with our previous conversations, had to do with what are the conditions as opposed to strategies. What are the conditions of effective learning environments? So let's talk about describing what effective environments kind of look like, feel like, and then we can back into thinking, well, are there things we can do to tweak those environments? Now, from the beginning, I'm gonna jump to another topic that aligns with this. From the beginning, we started to think that this research might somehow relate to that tending a learning environment in a school might be like tending a garden. But that's a separate research question that led us, led me. I haven't even shared this yet. This is hot off the press. There's some interesting findings around that. So I'll pause for a second and see if there are any questions about anything I've shared so far.

SPEAKER_02 12:13

Yeah, no, it's a it's it's really interesting. I feel like we don't often get the opportunity to really translate the research that you're doing, like you're doing, into the classroom. So it's really great to have this discussion to kind of bring that right to the classroom.

SPEAKER_00 12:30

So, Christine, you actually actually that's the perfect lead-in question, and I don't even think you knew it. But here's why.

Translating Research Into A Usable Model

SPEAKER_00 12:37

Because to me, the the fascination is how do we translate research into practice? So at one point I had the opportunity, uh, had been offered a position to work in a uh graduate school of education at a university. And I chose not to do it because there is a little bit of legitimacy in referring to the Ivory Tower as somehow a little bit separated from K-12 education. And it has to do with the last two questions, research questions that I want to share with you. And you'll see how these last two research questions are now application-based. In other words, okay, how do we take that huge body of research and boil it down to make it effective for educators to go forward and use it? That's a worthy question. And we don't ask that often enough. So I asked what is the best way to help practitioners make sense of a large body of research studies? That's kind of an interesting question. And the results are not surprising. And it has to do because now we're getting into the realm of memory and the realm of uh learning, right? But there is some synthesis that has to work, and so we then keep coming back to how do we synthesize this huge body of research? Nobody has really done it. There is no one model that's standing out there, and that's because it looks at slightly different factors. So I went to uh even though they're slightly different factors, I want to emphasize that when we look at some of the results of the research, there's a lot of overlap and there are trends. Okay, so it's not completely random, but everyone's attempt at synthesizing it ends up with slightly different typologies, slightly different numbers of character of uh characteristics and slightly different wording for them. But there are trends. So what I did is I backed off of trying to be the person who could research and discover the true universal commonalities that all educators will accept, and rather go into now experimental mode. And that is we're going to try to develop a typology, and it's going to be based on what we know about learning and memory and understanding and helping educators take this research and go forward with it. Does it matter how much how perfect the typology is that we develop, or does it matter that they're remembering a pretty darn good typology and can easily implement it on the fly? To me, that's a key question. Another question is there, you know, are what are some of the other parts where when when educators actually have the time to sit down and plan, how can they use it in that phase too? But if we look at how much time educators are spending during their day, much of it is during student contact. So let's give them something that they can carry around in their tool belt, so to speak, and apply on the fly. So with that drumroll comes using a metaphor of a garden and then looking at and metaphors are powerful because of they develop understanding, they help us remember, they provide structure and imagery. So they they stick in our memory. So a metaphor is a helpful mnemonic tool. And we're going to use mnemonic tools, right, to help the learners, the practitioners who attend a workshop come away with this stuff. One of the other mnemonic tools that we know about are acronyms. So a good acronym would be helpful, but that acronym needs to be about what are the essential categories related to gardens that that are consistent with how gardens grow, but also can be symbols and metaphors to help people remember about what to do on the fly with students. So when we look at the essential needs of plants, we know that they are sunlight, water, and also air and nutrients that come from the soil. And biologists use that typology all the time sun, water, air, nutrients. It's an acronym that biologists use. It already exists. The acronym is SWAN for sunlight, water, air, nutrients. So then it's just a question of can we cross-reference those to four major categories that would cover basically all of the research of effective learning environments. Okay, so this is the new thing that we're trying to develop and work on. So are you interested in? I'll take a pause there because we we've led up to this so far. We can either go down some of the interesting research around gardens in in schools and and how it relates and why it works well as a metaphor, or we can jump straight into what that cross-reference is. Depends on what you're more interested in doing. I mean, we would want to hear about both, but I do I do really research story, doesn't it?

SPEAKER_01 18:02

It does. Yeah. It's so interesting to hear the path that you've taken, you know, starting with that original question around like the meta-analysis around things, and then what the direction that you've taken it. And I feel like it's it's really inspiring to hear like that path. And it would be so wonderful for practitioners to have time to go down some of these paths with questions that they have just to make a stronger connection to what they're doing in the classroom because they just there just isn't a lot of time for teachers to like read research and think about the practicality and the connections. But I so appreciate that you've been doing this and sharing your findings with us.

Why A Garden Metaphor Fits School

SPEAKER_01 18:46

Maybe, yeah, can you talk a little bit more about the gardening? Because I I love the analogy of the garden. It feels so like it's such a nice natural element of life. And we know that you know, schools were preparing kids for life. So it just feels like it makes sense.

SPEAKER_00 19:03

And so I knew I knew through conversations that Tammy, Nicole, and I all resonated with gardens. But that's not really sufficient in order to the fact that the three of us happen to like gardening isn't sufficient reasoning to choose a garden as a metaphor for a robust workshop on effective learning environments. We need to have some other rationale, right? So I wondered does the rationale exist? And so I did a little bit of a dive down the question of do gardens have a history in schools? Are people aware of gardens? And it turns out, just in the United States alone, that the history of gardens in schools, on school grounds, school campuses, goes back to the 1800s in Massachusetts, where actually a lot of if we look at our educational history, a lot of some of the better ideas that have stuck around often came from Massachusetts in the late 1800s. So a nod to them and my family who lives back there, and they're all educators as well. So Horace Mann and others live on. All right. So it turns out that there have been different periods in the history of gardens and schools that their popularity has ebbed and flowed, not surprising. And and during different periods, there were often focuses on different purposes. But consistently we see results that many schools, and depending on regions and stuff, most schools have gardens on their campuses. So it's something that a lot of educators and and students and people who have been kids growing up in schools are familiar with. Let me just ask you both. Did each of you ha experience gardens on school grounds when you were growing up? Okay, so a yes and a no.

SPEAKER_02 21:04

Yeah, absolutely. Australi Australia, they often schools are often placed on these really big lots. And so we have ovals and trees and lots of space to run around in most often. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 21:17

And so, Tammy, I'm sorry you missed that in your childhood. It may explain some challenges that you've faced in your adult life. We need to get you more of a nature fix. There's a whole lot of research on nature fix as well. But a nature fix research might be an interesting tangent on this topic or not. I don't know.

SPEAKER_01 21:34

Yeah, yeah, for sure. I mean, as a kid, I was drawn to the outdoors, though. So I spent a lot of time outside just all day exploring, took my backpack, that kind of thing, because I lived on a we lived on an acreage. But at our school grounds, I don't recall a garden. There wasn't really even, I don't think there's I don't remember even a field, because our our school is right in the center of town. And so I remember the playground, the school isn't there anymore, but then they moved to a different spot in town. So now they have like the bigger greener field and things like that. But yeah, when when I got to junior high was when we had some green space.

SPEAKER_00 22:16

But I we didn't think this is making me think right now that a good question that would probably be good to ask in the research is just or sorry, in the workshop would be to ask people to think about what's one of the earliest memories they have of experience interacting with gardens, because that will then just, you know, initiate prior memories and prior experience than their schema, which then will strengthen the connection with the metaphor. And this is something that interestingly enough, we know a lot about how memory works in education, but in workshops, we're often not intentionally designing them to implement these kind of mnemonic devices and memory strategies. And really, if we think that the success, and this is the ultimate research question of this workshop, the success is how much of an application from attending the workshop transfers to the setting of the educator in in being able to apply it, both in structured student-free planning time as well as, I think more importantly, on the fly. And so it's designed to give them tools in both settings. Yeah. So there's there's good research around gardens being really uh important in uh schools, and there's also really interesting research around, and I want to zoom to this, around what gardens mean for people. Because it turns out that there are some consistent responses that people have to just the idea of garden. And I think it's interesting when we get to that. Of course, it's a question of whether I can quickly find it. But gardens tend to be associated with peace and tranquility and safety and other factors like this that make when we think about sanctuaries and and and safe gardens and and and rich places of renewal and refurbishment, that that's kind of the stuff that often people's responses are to the concept and the word environment, which is actually very closely aligned to the kind of infusion that we want to put into learning environments to make them more effective. So the reason why I believe that this is an effective metaphor is that people can draw on it easily, and they have motivation from the metaphor that influences behaviors in the direction that we want. You know, it's interesting, like when schools choose mascots and acronyms, what kind of behaviors those are encouraging within the student body and the school climate and culture to come out. And if you're if your acronym is Roar and you're surprised that students are loud in the hallways, it's worth, you know, scratching your head and going, oh, maybe we chose the wrong acronym. So it's important to really slow down and choose one well. So I think the hypothesis that we'll test is whether the acronym, or sorry, that the metaphor of garden serves as a healthy one. And the the encouragement of the metaphor is to treat the educator on the fly like they are doing a garden walk and tending their garden. And I and I think that that can encourage behaviors in the educator, whether they are a school principal or a classroom teacher, they're both tending to gardens of different scales, if you will. And maybe if they have some of these behaviors of gentle tending, right? We don't go around with chain with chainsaws to our gardens, but we also don't ignore them completely. And so we're looking for balance in these four factors of sunlight and water and air and nutrients. And so what we're recommending is that people take an approach of trying to make minor adjustments to tend the conditions that will be most supportive of learner growth.

Part Two Tease And How To Engage

SPEAKER_02 26:35

And that's where we'll leave the conversation for this week's episode. In part two of the conversation, we'll find out more about this metaphor and this acronym and how we can implement it in our classroom environments. So please join us again then. This episode is sponsored by Plan Z Education Services, supporting educators with forward-thinking professional learning that puts both student impact and teacher wellness at the center. Driven by a vision to teach less, impact more, they help educators find purpose, prioritize what matters, and simplify their practice. Learn more at planzeducation.com.

SPEAKER_03 27:16

Thank you for listening to the Minimalist Educator Podcast. Join Christine and Tammy and guests again next time for more conversations about how to simplify and clarify the responsibilities and tasks in your role. If today's episode helped you rethink, reimagine, reduce, or realign something in your practice, share it in a comment or with a colleague. For resources and updates, visit planzeducation.com and subscribe to receive weekly emails. Until next time, keep it simple and stay intentional.