Naming the frame

Every problem statement was written by a way of thinking, usually one nobody chose. This move puts the statement on the wall and names the frame behind it. It takes half an hour and changes nothing on its own. It turns the next decision into a choice.

Ways of thinking: the four moves

Move 1 of 4 · Makes the default visible

Say which way of thinking wrote the problem before you solve it.

Time: 30 min
People: 3–12, the group that owns the decision
You need: The proposal as submitted, a whiteboard, the frame finder worksheet, a one-page summary of the four ways
You leave with: The problem in one sentence, its frame named, one sentence on what the frame hides, and a decision to keep it or switch

Start here

The idea

What the move is, and why it works

What the move is

Naming the frame means asking which way of thinking produced the problem statement on the table. The question is which habit of attention wrote it, and what that habit decided before anyone started work. Whether the statement is right comes later.

The four ways in this strand give you a vocabulary for the answer. Systems thinking writes problems as structures that produce a pattern. Design thinking writes them as a gap between what is and what is preferred. Critical thinking writes them as claims to test. Computational thinking writes them as a process to break into steps. A fifth answer comes up more often than any of them: “the last plan”. The sentence came from the previous initiative, the funder or the template, and nobody wrote it fresh.

The idea behind it

Donald Schön argued that professional judgement lives in problem setting: deciding which things in a messy situation to attend to, and how to frame them. Robert Entman showed what a frame does. It defines the problem, names a cause and implies a remedy, often in one sentence. So by the time a proposal reaches a meeting, most of the deciding is done.

Perkins, Jay and Tishman found that people often have the ability to think well and fail to notice the moment that calls for it. Naming the frame makes that moment noticeable. It does not ask anyone to think harder. It asks them to look at the sentence they are about to think inside.

Why it works

A frame with a name can be kept, changed or argued with. A frame without one just runs. Shown the working words in their own problem statement, most groups see the frame within a minute, because the nouns and verbs give it away. “Find time” is a scheduling frame. “Raise attainment” is a measurement frame. “Engage students” is a motivation frame.

The move is also cheap to be wrong about. If the frame turns out to be the right one, you have spent half an hour and gained a group that knows why it is keeping it.

When

When to reach for it, and when not to

Use it when

The problem statement arrived already written, by the last initiative, the funder, a template or the first person to speak.
The group is arguing about solutions and nobody has looked at the question.
A proposal is due for a decision and its first line describes a means, such as “find an afternoon”, not an aim.
Two people keep talking past each other, and you suspect they are solving different problems.

Skip it when

The situation is exactly what everyone says it is, and the barrier is money, time or will. Name it in one line and get on.
The decision is small, cheap to reverse and will be revisited anyway.
The group has already chosen its frame on purpose and can say why.
There is a crisis on. Naming frames while a student’s safety is at stake is a way of avoiding it.

Before

Before anyone is in the room

Get the proposal or problem statement in writing, exactly as it was submitted.
Find out who wrote it and where its wording came from: a template, a previous plan, an external brief.
Print the frame finder, one per person, and a one-page summary of the four ways.
Invite the person who wrote the statement, and tell them in advance that the session looks at the wording, not at them.
Book 30 minutes in a meeting that has the power to change the proposal.
Decide who will write the sentence on the board. Not the facilitator, who needs to watch the room.

Steps

How to run it

6 steps, about 30 min in all. The questions in quotation marks are meant to be read out as they are.

01
Get the problem into one sentence
5 min
Ask the group to agree the problem the proposal is solving, in a single sentence, and write it where everyone can see it. If the proposal already has such a sentence, use it word for word. If agreeing takes more than five minutes, write the two competing sentences up side by side. That is already a finding.
Ask the room
- In one sentence, what problem is this proposal solving?
- Is that the sentence the proposal actually uses, or the one we wish it used?
- If you had to tell a parent at the gate what this is for, what would you say?
Watch for People will polish the sentence into something better. Stop them. You want the frame that is actually operating, not an improved one.
02
Underline the working words
5 min
Ask everyone to underline the nouns and verbs that carry the meaning, then read out only the underlined words. They carry the frame. Verbs such as “find”, “increase” and “deliver” tell you what kind of action the sentence expects. Nouns such as “afternoon”, “attainment” and “engagement” tell you what it treats as the thing to change.
Ask the room
- Which words in this sentence are doing the work?
- What does this verb assume we are going to do?
- What does this noun assume is the thing that matters?
Watch for A means dressed as an end. “Find an afternoon” is a way of doing something. It is not the thing.
03
Name the way of thinking that wrote it
5 min
Show the four ways and add a fifth option, “the last plan”. Ask each person to write down, alone, which one wrote the sentence, then compare. Disagreement is fine. Most sentences are written by one way with a little of another, and “the last plan” is the commonest answer.
Ask the room
- Which of the four ways wrote this sentence, or was it the last plan?
- What in the wording makes you say that?
- If a systems thinker had written it, how would it read?
Watch for Everyone choosing “systems” or “design” because those sound better. Ask for the evidence in the wording.
04
Trace where the sentence came from
5 min
Ask who wrote the sentence first and what they were responding to. Frames are inherited. A template, a funding bid, the timetable software or a line in last year’s school work plan may have written it long before this meeting.
Ask the room
- Where did this wording first appear?
- Who was it written for, and what did they need it to do?
- Have we used this sentence, or one like it, before?
Watch for This step can feel like blame. Keep it on the document, not the author. The person who wrote it was usually filling in the box they were given.
05
Ask what the frame makes invisible
7 min
This is the step that does the work. Ask what the frame leaves out, and what would have to be true for this sentence to be the wrong problem. Write every answer on the board without discussing it. Then ask which one, if true, would most change the proposal.
Ask the room
- What does this way of describing it leave out?
- What would have to be true for this to be the wrong problem?
- Who would describe this problem differently, and how?
- Which of these, if it turned out to be true, would change the proposal most?
Watch for Generalities such as “the bigger picture” or “the students”. Push for a specific thing that could be checked this week.
06
Decide: keep the frame or switch
3 min
Ask the group to choose. Keep the frame, knowing what it hides, or take it into switching the frame. Either is a good outcome. Write the decision, and the one sentence on what the frame hides, at the top of the proposal.
Ask the room
- Knowing what it hides, do we keep this frame?
- If we keep it, what will we do about the thing it hides?
- If we switch, what question do we take into the next session?
Watch for A decision to keep the frame with no plan for what it hides. That is noticing and moving on.

Worksheets

A sheet to print and fill in

Each one prints on its own sheet of A4. The grey line under each is an example from the worked situation.

Ways of thinking · Naming the frame · Worksheet

Frame finder

Gets the problem statement, the frame behind it and what that frame hides onto one page, with a decision at the bottom.

Proposal

Group

Date

The problem, in one sentence

Word for word from the proposal, if it has one

The working words

The nouns and verbs that carry the meaning

Which way of thinking wrote it

Systems, design, critical, computational, or the last plan. Say what in the wording shows it

Where the wording came from

A template, a previous plan, an external brief, a person

What this frame makes invisible

What would have to be true for this to be the wrong problem?

Decision

Keep the frame, and what we will do about what it hides. Or switch, and the question we take with us

Example Working words: “find”, “weekly afternoon”, “without loss of teaching time”. Wrote it: the last plan, as a timetabling problem. Hides: what the afternoon is for, and who plans it across three departments.

geraldajam.com/work/toolkit

Worked example

Naming the “find an afternoon” frame

One afternoon a week for Secondary 1

The proposal reached the curriculum group with a first line written in Mr Hafiz’s office: “Find a weekly afternoon for Secondary 1 cross-curricular project work without loss of teaching time in Geography, Science or English Language.” Ms Chen had added two pages on the project itself. Few people had read past the first line. The group gave the move half an hour at the start of its meeting.

One sentence The group used the first line as it stood. Ms Chen wanted to rewrite it. The facilitator asked her to wait, because the first line was the one the school leaders would read.
The working words Underlined: “find”, “weekly afternoon”, “without loss of teaching time”. Read out on their own, they describe a search for a slot under a constraint. Nothing in them says what Secondary 1 will do or learn.
Who wrote it Three people said computational, because it reads like a constraint problem. Mr Hafiz said, fairly, that it was the last plan: the same wording the school used two years ago to fit in a study skills period, which was dropped by the June holidays. The group settled on “the last plan, written as a timetabling problem”, and called it the find-an-afternoon frame.
What it hides The list on the board: what the afternoon is for; whether an afternoon is the right unit at all; who plans across three departments, and when; how the work is assessed; what Arjun and his classmates would actually do. The one the group thought would change the proposal most was planning time. Three departments sharing an afternoon need a shared hour to plan it, and the frame had no place for that.
The awkward part Mr Hafiz objected that somebody does have to find the afternoon, and he was right. The facilitator wrote that down too. Naming the frame did not make the timetable question go away. It stopped the timetable question being the only one.
Decision Keep the timetabling frame for the timetabling question. Switch frames for the question of what the afternoon is for, before the proposal goes to the school leaders. A line went on the top of the proposal: “Written as a timetabling problem. Says nothing yet about purpose or planning time.”

What came out of it

Thirty minutes produced one sentence at the top of the proposal and a date for the next session. The proposal itself did not change that day. What changed was that the group could say which question the first line answered, and which two it left out.

Signs

How to tell it is working, and when it has gone hollow

Working

People start quoting the working words back to each other: “that’s a find-an-afternoon sentence”.
The list of what the frame hides includes at least one thing that could be checked this week.
The person who wrote the original statement adds to the list instead of defending it.
The decision says what will be done about what the frame hides, even when the frame is kept.

Gone hollow

The frame gets named and minuted, and the meeting moves to the next item as if nothing was said.
Every statement is labelled “systems”, because systems sounds most serious.
The session turns into a rewrite of the sentence, and the new sentence has the same frame in better words.
The author leaves feeling their proposal was put on trial.

Variations

Other ways to run it

In ten minutes

Skip the tracing step. Write the sentence up, underline the working words and ask one question: what would have to be true for this to be the wrong problem? Take the best answer and decide. It fits as the first item of any planning meeting.

On your own

Use the frame finder on your own draft before you send it. Write the sentence, underline it, name the frame. Then ask a colleague who thinks differently from you to fill in the box on what it hides. You will not see that part alone.

With students

Give a class a problem statement from the news or from school life, such as “students do not read enough”. Ask them to underline the working words and say what the sentence assumes the fix is. Secondary 1 students can do this. They are often quicker than adults, because they have less invested in the sentence.

What to do with what you made

Put the decision and the line on what the frame hides at the top of the proposal before it goes anywhere else. If you decided to switch, book the switching session within a week, while the named frame is fresh. If you kept the frame, give the hidden thing an owner and a date.

Switching the frame The next move. It takes the frame you named and tries the other three.The four ways, on two axes A one-page view of the four ways to have on the table during step three.Profiling the situation Run it alongside naming. It asks what kind of situation this is, which tells you whether the named frame fits at all.

Tools

Tools, templates and guides worth having

Published elsewhere, and worth the time.

Routine
“What makes you say that?”
A Project Zero thinking routine from Ritchhart, Church and Morrison’s Making Thinking Visible (2011). Use it in step three to make people point to the wording behind their answer.
Method
Bolman and Deal’s four frames
Structural, human resource, political and symbolic, from Reframing Organizations. A second vocabulary for naming a frame, and one many school leaders already know.
Method
Nine Whys
A Liberating Structure (Lipmanowicz and McCandless, 2013). Asking “why is that important to you?” several times over gets from a means such as “find an afternoon” back to a purpose.

Reading

Where it comes from

Start with the first on the list.

Schön, D. A. (1983). The Reflective Practitioner: How Professionals Think in Action. Basic Books.
Problem setting as the place where professional judgement lives.
Bolman, L. G., & Deal, T. E. (2017). Reframing Organizations (6th ed.). Jossey-Bass.
Four named frames that school leaders recognise at once. A good first vocabulary.
Entman, R. M. (1993). Framing: toward clarification of a fractured paradigm. Journal of Communication, 43(4), 51–58.
What a frame actually does: defines the problem, names a cause and implies a remedy.
Perkins, D. N., Jay, E., & Tishman, S. (1993). Beyond abilities: A dispositional theory of thinking. Merrill-Palmer Quarterly, 39(1), 1–21.
Why people who can think well often do not. Noticing the moment is the bottleneck.

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