Audio Webcast Program #5
Making science usable - engineering evidence-based knowledge into lessons and learning
Summary: This chapter moves back into the realm of considering the role of scientifically based research in education. "Making science usable - engineering evidence-based knowledge into lessons and learning" focuses on professionalism and how different types of educational professionals are responsible for different parts of the scientifically based research movement. Today's challenge for teachers: to become creative and scientific.
Introduction: An engineer is not a scientist, nor is a doctor. These professionals
apply the tools of their respective sciences to solve particular
problems. An engineer doesn't need to understand all of the physics and
chemistry of metallurgical stress to design a bridge that will safely
carry traffic, nor does a physician need to understand the latest
research in cellular metabolism to determine the best course of
treatment for a sick patient. Like other accomplished professionals,
they correctly apply the proven tools and strategies of their
profession in unique situations.
It is useful to view professions as being divided into three groups
with separate but interactive roles: (1) those who establish the basic
science; (2) those who translate science into tools and strategies that
can be used; and (3) those who apply these tools and strategies to
actual situations. So, while having up-to-date knowledge of the science
of education is essential to grounding their practice, having well
engineered tools based on that science is more useful to them. By
becoming skilled in creatively applying these tools to specific groups
of children with particular instructional problems teachers bring
together both the science and the art of teaching.
Listen Online (7:49)
Download Audio Webcast MP3 File: Program.mp3 (~7.3 MB)
Audio Webcast Speakers:
| Andrew Porter |
Learning Sciences Institute, Vanderbilt University |
Additional Audio: This audio webcast program includes
two additional audio segments.
Audio Webcast Transcript:
Host
Welcome
to audio webcast number 5 in our series for teachers and principals on the
new emphasis in education on gathering and using knowledge in a
systematic and objective way. I'm Ed Janus.
Let's join our two
guests in a discussion about the need for scientifically-based research
to become useful to teachers in their day-to-day work in the classroom.
We'll begin with Ellen Condliffe Lagemann, the dean of the Harvard
Graduate School of Education. We'll be joined in a moment by Peter
Robertson, the former chief information officer for the Cleveland
schools.
Lagemann
I think
education as a profession needs to become stronger. The new science of
education involves two things: one is credibility and the other is what
people call usability. By credibility I mean that we will follow the
methods of science applied to education. That means you have to ask
significant questions, use rigorous methods of research, analyze your
data carefully, be able to replicate what you've found. So that creates
credibility, so you know that the knowledge you have is right. It moves
away from the ideological and it moves away from the subjective.
So,
credibility is first, and the second is usability. Teachers, can't use
the findings of research. They need to have the findings of research
translated into usable knowledge. That is, the tools, textbooks, tests,
and other learning materials that people actually can use to promote
learning.
Robertson
I think the
biggest challenge in education, and I might argue in any helping
profession, is not improving the quality of the research, though that
needs to happen, but improving our mechanisms for transducing that into
the practice and beliefs of, of teachers and administrators and
students.
Lagemann
We know for
example, the stages of how children learn to count. And those seem to
be fairly invariant when children learn to count well. We need to
develop techniques and tools that will enable a teacher fairly quickly,
in the first grade or kindergarten, to be able to diagnose where a
child is in terms of their ability to count. And it's that kind of
thing that needs to be scaled up.
Robertson
So having good tools that really do embody the research well is very, very important to a district like yours?
You
know I would say enormously important, and I would say it's been on the
national level, really the missing piece of this whole conversation
about standards based education. Because standards based education is
enormously important in the sense of articulating exactly what it is we
want students to be able to know and do.
That at least gives
us all a common purpose. But then, there are lots and lots of teachers
who, whether they're saying it explicitly and bravely, or quietly and,
and with terror. "I don't know how to do that."
And I think
it's very important that we get in their hands tools that they can use
that are aligned with those standards. I think this is a really
interesting crux of the issue in the scientifically based research
debate.
And I think that, you know, there are instructional
approaches that you can get someone who maybe doesn't know the research
behind it to use. And if they are coached and able to see success and
understand success, gradually they can come to understand the reasons
behind it.
Lagemann
We also need
to take the tacit knowledge that teachers have. Tacit knowledge is the
knowledge you have that you don't think about very much. If we take the
tacit knowledge that teachers have and translate it into explicit
knowledge, then you can discuss it; and you can share it with other
people, you can raise questions about it, you can criticize it, you can
build on it.
Robertson
And
frankly I think the average local professor at the university ought to
be focused on, is action research. And, be – because again, this, the
issue in terms of students isn't really what that national research
agenda is going to accomplish. The issue is, what is their teacher
going to internalize about what the research says, and how is that
going to influence his or her practice? And you know, action research
projects that teach teachers how to be researchers, if you will, on
their own practice, are enormously important because they actually
change teacher behavior.
Now I was going to say that I am a
skeptic about action research; it's my experience that they kind of go
out and prove what they knew already.
And I would argue then,
they haven't had good guidance. And unfortunately, that's, there's an
awful lot of ideologues in education, in education departments of
universities. Who themselves don't have a commitment to, you know, the,
the unvarnished pursuit of the truth. And that's unfortunate because –
because what action research is really about, I would argue, is
developing in teachers the habits of reflective practice.
Of
asking, you know, "What am I trying to accomplish? How am I going to
know whether I've accomplished it? What evidence do I have of what I've
done and what it's accomplished? And what does that tell me about how
well this is working or not working, and what I might want to try next?"
Does
this begin the march towards teachers and principals adopting what are
called "best practices?" Or at least, "better practices?" Where do you
begin the march?
Personally, I start with: What are the
standards? How do we clarify them? How do we measure student progress
toward them and achievement of them? So we can put in front of
everybody's face the conversation starters around: Well, where are our
kids and where do we need to get them?
I think beyond that
where we find this conversation leading, we, we've created this
standards based report card and had every teacher in the district using
it, and the cries for good assessment tasks to help them measure these
things became quite loud. So we're actually hard at work now on: What
are the assessment tasks we can use for teachers to help them identify
student progress toward these standards? And, and I know that the next
conversation is: What's that scripted set of materials that need to be
in place so that we can, so that we can lead that conversation, so that
we can actually put things in teachers hands that they can use today.
I
think once all that stuff is in their hands, then they start saying,
"Well, I don't know how to do this." And then we're going to have a
group of people in this district intensely interested in making use of
the best knowledge and the best practices. But I don't think we're
really trying too hard to be at the cutting edge of developing that,
'cause there are a lot more good answers out there than we're making
effective use of. And so while we need better and better answers out
there, what we mostly need is to figure out how to make better use of
them.
Host
An engineer is not a
scientist, nor is a doctor. What practitioners of these professions do
however is apply the tools provided by their respective sciences to
solve quite particular problems of practice. I don't need to understand
all of the physics and chemistry of metallurgical stress to design a
bridge that will safely carry traffic nor do I need to understand the
latest research in cellular metabolism to find the best course of
treatment for my sick patient. Correctly applying the proven tools and
strategies of a profession in unique situations is what accomplished
professionals do. For Center for Comprehensive School Reform and
Improvement at Learning Point Associates, this is Ed Janus. Thanks for
listening.
| 
