Learning From Top-Ranking Schools--Policies for Equity and Success
Darling-Hammond’s five policy prescriptions--if implemented, would undoubtedly aid in closing the great achievement and opportunity gaps that exists between children of affluent communities and those who live in poverty. Wouldn’t it be grand if our current educational system underwent a magical transformation—implementations of meaningful learning goals, intelligent and reciprocal accountability systems, equitable and adequate resources, strong professional standards and supports, and schools organized for student and teacher learning? Our classrooms would become more equitable, our students would become better critical thinkers and problem-solvers, better collaborators, as well as better at communicating in both written and oral communication. They would become 21st century learners who are adequately prepared to be productive citizens of society because they can apply the necessary and valuable knowledge and skills they have gained in school. They would have the qualities and skills that 93% of employers desire in an ideal employee (Su, Ricci, and Mnatsakanian, 2016). Hence, these five policies would guarantee that students of all backgrounds, cultural and socio-economical, have the opportunities to become successful learners. The issue of equity is an old one. The disparity in the educational system is obvious and the causes are numerous. This ethical and moral issue is illustrated in John Dewey’s quote, “What the best and wisest parent wants for his own child, that must we want for all children in the community. Any other ideal for our schools is narrow and unlovely; acted upon, it destroys our democracy.” The answer to this problem is not further segregation. Private schools and charter schools only perpetuate the inequities that exist. How can we hope to secure the future of our country if only 9% of the student population is receiving the adequate education to be competitive in the international job market (TIMSS 2015)? The answer is to better all of our public schools in order to prepare our children to be the hope of the future. This is what we, teachers, parents, citizens of the United States must want for all children in the community and for the betterment of our country and democracy. Research studies and experts around 21st century learning and teaching, the brain, and inquiry-based learning all say the same thing. If we would only design our curriculum so that standards are adequate, learning goals are meaningful, tasks are challenging and authentic, and students are able to collaborate and communicate with one another, then learning would occur at a deeper level. Darling-Hammond (2010) iterates over and over how highly qualified teachers are the most important inputs for learning but also greatly emphasizes the need for adequate or "internationally competitive standards". Successful countries "have much leaner standards, teach fewer topics more deeply each year, focus more on inquiry, reasoning skills and applications of knowledge...and have a more thoughtful sequence of expectations based on developmental learning progressions within and across domains" (Darling-Hammond 2010). In the presentation by an expert in digital literacy and learning, Dr. James Paul Gee provides ways teachers can directly affect the learning experience for their students. He responds to educator frustrations, stating that despite our inability to directly affect change in our educational system at the state and federal level in terms of budget and curriculum, we as teachers can still affect change in our classroom through well-designed learning experiences. This however, still does not resolve the issue of the too many standards teachers are expected to teach and the necessity to teach to the test. Sanctions based on assessment performances virtually forces schools to teach to the test. If government reduced the amount of standards, frequency of assessments, and focused on how they could help schools improve, this would do greater good than putting sanctions on schools and districts. Sanctions hurt schools even more because rather than focusing on solving the issue by taking time to prepare our students to become better critical thinkers and problem solvers, schools must deal with a bombardment of multiple assessments year after year. Until our assessment system changes, this problem will continue to exist. Dr. Gee urges for an assessment system in which learning tasks and assessments are one and the same. He explains how learning tasks should be designed in a well-ordered progression that only allows students to move on when each task has been completed like that of games. It is easy to feel frustrated but instead of focusing on what we cannot do, I choose to focus on what I can do.
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Critical Thinking--Theorists and Researchers in Psychology and Instructional Design
As educators, we continually seek to improve our pedagogy and explore ways we can better serve all of our students. How do we go about accomplishing this you might ask? The answer is in action research. Looking at my own classroom, I wondered how I could help my students gain better retention of conceptual and procedural knowledge of mathematics. This gave rise to the driving question to my research on critical thinking. What effects does critical thinking have on retention? What role does metacognitive thinking play in critical thinking? It was obvious that I needed more information so I set out to gain more insight on this topic. Some basic questions I began with were: What is critical thinking? Why is there a need for teaching critical thinking skills? How do we teach critical thinking? I came across an article called A Model for Teaching Critical Thinking by Marnice K. Emerson (2013) which provided the exact answers to my questions. The author provides an extensive list of references of various influential figures in the area of critical thinking—theorists and researchers in psychology and instructional design. Prominent theorists in the area of critical thinking include Joanne Gainen Kurfiss, Diane Halpern, Robert Ennis, and Richard Paul. These theorists developed definitions of critical thinking that evolved over time to include metacognition and problem solving in addition to reflective and reasonable thinking focused on what to believe or do (Emerson, 2013). Focusing on Joanne G. Kurfiss (1988), in her report, “Critical Thinking: Theory, Research, Practice, and Possibilities”, she identifies reasoning skills most critical to success in six disciplines. She also found that these critical thinking skills only partially overlapped across disciplines. In conclusion, different disciplines value different skills. For example, in Science, the ability to draw inferences from observations, critically analyze and evaluate and generate new questions or experiments are valued while in English, the ability to elaborate an argument, develop implications, understand, analyze, evaluate arguments, support assertions, and recognize the central thesis in a work are most valued. She explains that the problem lies with the fact that “Although critical thinking skills are valued, they are seldom explicitly taught to students” (Kurfiss 1988, 21). Furthermore, products of these critical thinking skills are displayed in the form of arguments or interpretations but students rarely get the opportunity to witness the process. In addition to more explicit instruction, Kurfiss also calls for instruction that is well organized so students are able to organize what they are learning into a matrix or hierarchy. She states that knowledge takes different forms which includes declarative knowledge and procedural or strategic knowledge. Declarative knowledge includes concepts, principles, stories, and other proposition knowledge use to make inferences whereas procedural or strategic knowledge is knowing how or when to use declarative knowledge (Kurfiss 1988). She later elaborates that competent problem solvers plan and monitor their work by making plans, setting goals, ask questions, take notes, observe effectiveness of their efforts, and take corrective action when necessary. Likewise, “A third factor influencing problem solving is metacognition, the use of strategies to monitor and control attention and memory to make decisions about how to proceed on a task” (Kurfiss 1988, 59). The big idea to take away from the ideas of these theorists is that critical thinking is a necessary skill that must be taught explicitly which is particular to different disciplines. It is necessary to teach declarative and procedural knowledge as well as metacognitive thinking skills to effectively teach critical thinking skills. Emerson’s article also discusses different approaches to teaching critical thinking, listing four ways: (1) mixed approach, (2) an immersion approach, (3) a general approach, and (4) an infusion approach. Although all four yield positive results, ranging from moderate to high, the mixed method approach in which critical thinking skills were explicitly taught as a separate unit but within a topical course seemed to have the largest impact. Emerson references several figures in instructional design for the basis of her conclusion. A few well-known figures in instructional design and technology include, Robert Gagné and Marriner David Merrill. Robert Gagné developed a theory that stipulates that there are several different types or levels of learning. Different types of learning require different types of instruction. Five major categories of learning include: verbal information, intellectual skills, cognitive strategies, motor skills, and attitudes. Different learning conditions are necessary for each type of learning. For example, for cognitive strategies, there must be opportunities to practice developing new solutions. The theory also outlines nine instructional events and corresponding cognitive processes organized in a hierarchy: gaining attention (reception), informing learners of the objective (expectancy), stimulating recall or prior learning (retrieval), presenting the stimulus (selective perception), providing learning guidance (semantic encoding), eliciting performance (responding), providing feedback (responding), assessing performance (retrieval), and enhancing retention and transfer (generalization). The hierarchy serves to identify prerequisites that should be completed to facilitate learning at each level. These learning conditions serve as a basis for instructional design and selecting appropriate media (Gagné, Briggs & Wager, 1992). As mentioned before, the first level is gaining attention or engaging students. Student disposition and motivation is a factor in teaching critical thinking. The big idea is that we need students to own the learning and after that we need to teach them how and when to use these critical thinking strategies. In order to do this, we need to explicitly teach students how to apply these critical thinking skills by modeling with a think aloud process. Kurfiss also echoes the necessity for explicit teaching of critical thinking by modeling the process by an expert. Research suggests that this is an effective strategy for teaching expert behavior. “Instructional design theorists corroborate this principle by positing that practicing a skill is an integral part of instruction, leading to significantly higher retention and transfer learning” (Emerson 2013, 12). Emerson (2013) also states that an additional strategy shown to be effective for teaching critical thinking skills is the process of offering reflective feedback on learners’ practices of their thinking skills by the instructor. This is also greatly supported by instructional design theorists for maximizing transfer learning. Two strategies for providing feedback include scaffolding and Socratic dialoging. Focusing on Socratic dialoging, this strategy aids students in increasing their awareness of hidden assumptions and helps students question supposed concrete assertions. Students’ critical thinking skills begin to improve as well as their ability to transfer those skills to new contexts (Emerson 2013). Ultimately, I have gained insight on effective strategies for teaching critical thinking skills as well as gained an abundant amount of knowledge on the background of critical thinking as well as support of expert theorists calling for more research in the area of critical thinking skills and metacognition. Technological Pedagogy and Content Knowledge (TPCK)
Case Study: This study examines the integration of computer science in an Algebra class at Mariner High School in Everett, WA. The nature of this case study deals with the application and synthesis of content knowledge to enrich and extend learning. The teacher, Joshua Kwon, hopes for his students to apply what they learn in math class to the computer science field, specifically coding. Mr. Kwon states that the lesson objective was for students to make a table and/or graph to represent a given scenario. With that scenario, the students would apply what they learned from tables and graphs to create an animation, in this case, use coding to make a rocket blast off at different speeds. Students used tools like desmos.com to explore graphs and tables. They experimented with plotting points using tables and constructing equations to graph lines. As they manipulated different numbers of the equation (slope and initial value) or changed coordinates on their tables, they analyzed the results to better understand the concept of rates of change and linear equations. And thus, they applied the knowledge that they gained from desmos.com to create a rocket animation. Specific student learning objectives included, (1) being able to state the rate of change in context and (2) explicitly state the ratio between distance and time. Mr. Kwon showed them a short video as an entry event (racing game) and asked the students to activate their curiosity to generate questions or “I wonders”. Students shared their questions on their computer screen which generated a shared list on the teacher’s projected screen. The teacher administered a formative assessment to check in on students, provided feedback, and asked them questions to provoke thinking and extend their learning. I liked his overarching lesson objective (projected end product) as well as having specific student learning objectives. I also liked how he generated student interest and curiosity by including topics that were culturally relevant to the students. His task was authentic, creating a rich learning environment. He did not have students use technology just to learn it, rather, the tools served as a strategic purpose in deepening their knowledge. It provided students with different learning styles with opportunities to be hands on, explore, persevere, and discover knowledge for themselves. He used technology as a means to share student thoughts as well as to structure mini activities that scaffold for the larger learning objective. He had clear expectations and students were well aware of what they were learning and why they were learning it as well as what their end product should be. He also incorporated opportunities for students to make connections between multiple representations of the same thing (a graph, table, and equation). He included formative assessments to check student understanding and provided feedback and questioning that extended student thinking. He used Code.org to enhance learning by allowing students to see abstract concepts of Algebra in concrete context. From observing the lesson, I saw a great example how to effectively integrate technology meaningfully into a lesson to extend student learning. According to the TPCK framework, technology, pedagogy, and content knowledge should not be isolated entities independent of one another, but rather, co-dependent. However, as teaching contexts varies from teacher to teacher, there is also no one prescribed way for integrating technology, pedagogy, and content knowledge. This case study was helpful as an exemplar of how to smoothly integrate different pedagogical techniques with content knowledge and technology to effectively maximize learning in the content area of mathematics. I liked his very well-planned lesson. It included a lesson objective, student learning objectives, student interest, effective scaffolding, formative assessments, and several mathematical practices. I learned a lot of questioning techniques, modeling techniques, use of technology to scaffold learning, and formative assessment techniques. I could definitely use this lesson and would give it a score of 5 as being the highest. Link: http://www.teachingchannel.org/videos/code-in-hs-math |
Nai Saelee
Middle school math teacher preparing the leaders of the future. Inspiring curiosity, creativity, collaboration Archives
December 2017
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