Audio Webcast Program #5
Additional Audio from Audio Webcast Program #5:
Making science usable - engineering evidence-based knowledge into lessons and learning
Additional Audio 1 of 2: Eliot Asp
Title: Giving teachers proven lessons to guide their teaching
Listen Online: (2:54)
Download Audio Webcast MP3 File: asp.mp3 ~1.8 MB
Summary: Helping teachers map out step-by-step learning requires good diagnostic assessments to help them keep on track. Eliot Asp is assistant superintendent for research and assessment for the Douglas County, Colorado schools.
Introduction: The science of how people learn to master specific domains of knowledge, and the mistakes they make as they learn them, is complex to say the least. Because this knowledge is the result of experiments performed by skilled, it can be difficult for teachers -- by themselves -- to use that knowledge to piece together a step-by-step course of learning for their students. However, gaining an understanding of some aspects of cognitive science will help them better understand the complicated nature of the problems of cognition and learning that must be addressed in their lessons and assessments.
Transcript:
Ed Janus
Helping teachers map out step-by-step learning requires good diagnostic assessments to help them keep on track. Eliot Asp is assistant superintendent for research and assessment for the Douglas County, Colorado schools.
Eliot Asp
One of the required pieces of a body of evidence is what we call an anchor
assessment. And these are district wide. And what's required is for me
sometime during the year to use the district anchor assessments. And
the real purpose of the anchor assessment is not using it to evaluate
whether the kid met the standard or not. It can be part of the
teacher's body of evidence. It's for the teacher to really get grounded
in what it means to meet that standard.
And so what the anchor
assessment is supposed to do is give the teacher a real good idea of
what, what we mean when we say "met the reading standard," or "met the
math standard."
Do teachers get together and compare results?
What
they're doing is compare how they scored different papers. So that they
have a much more consistent notion about what it means to meet the
standard. And what we saw is that they were all over the place.
And the teachers saw this too, and we went through and said, "Okay, let's –
I want you to bring examples of student work that you think are
proficient on this particular assessment." And people brought those and
we debated them and argued back and forth until we were able to
identify some exemplars of performance to say, "This is way above the
standard. This is right at it. This is getting close. This is really
low."
And then we annotated those for teachers, and the
teachers helped us do that. And it was amazing, Ed, the next year, the
differences were almost gone. Because they spent time talking about the
standards, working with the assessments, and so on.
Besides
the anchor assessments, there's a bunch of just, um, recommended ones
they can use or not use if they so choose. And so a teacher might take
one of those or one of their own and then, after looking at the anchor
assessment and reading over the indicators and guides to what
proficiency means, the rubrics and so on, be able to do some, first of
all a diagnostic piece at the beginning, saying, "Okay, where are my
kids weak, where are they strong? What does that look like?" And then
start to adjust their instruction based on that.
Additional Audio 2 of 2: Robert Slavin
Title: Giving teachers good assessments to guide their teaching
Listen Online: (1:59)
Download Audio Webcast MP3 File: slavin.mp3 ~2.7 MB
About this audio clip: Having lessons that are based on solid evidence and that really map out the way to intellectual mastery, will make teachers the professionals they aspire to be. It will insure step-by-step progress by anticipating pitfalls and providing solutions to instructional difficulties. This will free teachers to use their own creativity to make their classrooms come alive.
Robert Slavin is the co-founder of Success for All, a moderately prescriptive - and highly successful - way to reading mastery.
Context: Critics of education have long decried the reliance of teachers on their own construction of how children learn and their own creation of the tools used to teach them. The late American Federation of Teachers president Al Shanker once said that he would prefer his brain surgeon not rely on creative theories about surgery but instead adhere to procedures tested by science. To perform the pedagogical "brain surgery" known as education, teachers, too, need science that supports their artful efforts to engage and motivate every student to learn. Education today requires teachers to be both creative and scientific, applying sophisticated lessons and accompanying assessments that reflect the complex science of learning.
Transcript:
Ed Janus
Having
lessons that are based on solid evidence and that really map out the
way to intellectual mastery, will make teachers the professionals they
aspire to be. It will insure step-by-step progress by anticipating
pitfalls and providing solutions to instructional difficulties. This
will free teachers to use their own creativity to make their classrooms
come alive.
Robert Slavin is the co-founder of Success for All, a moderately prescriptive – and highly successful – way to reading mastery.
Robert Slavin
Now Success for All as I understand it is a moderately prescriptive method, isn't it?
Yes.
Okay, so in a sense what you're doing is giving teachers the procedures similar to a doctor might follow in diagnosing somebody.
Yeah.
We're – we're trying to be clear about what we mean, how the lesson
should look and, and you know, what procedures you would use. That
doesn't mean that teachers can't dance with this. I mean, you know, we
want – we want teachers to understand why, why the thing is there and
to make it their own, and to use, and to put it in their own words and,
and you know, put their own embellishments on it. But I think too often
we've gone too far the other way and said, "Well, here's ten principles
of good practice. Just post them on your wall and do these whenever you
think you can." And, and the result is no change. And you know, our
concern is, is for children in high poverty schools who are very much
at risk, who are only going to be in first grade once, or we hope
they're only going to be in first grade once, and they've got to be
successful. There's just not that much room for error in, in teaching
them. And we want to, to be clear to the teacher what we mean by
effective practice, and then starting fr om that base, make it your
own. But don't try to start from scratch in every case and have to
reinvent it teacher by teacher.
So I'm optimistic in, in –
from our work and, and that of others that, that once we do have clear,
a clear idea of what we want the classroom to look like, I think we
have some good ways to get it there.
The larger problem is, if
you step back and say, "Well, what's happening nationally in terms of
this current focus on scientifically based practice?" What I think
you're, you know, I'm saying is, is nothing at all like what I just
described; it's much more, still in the mold of, "Here's five
principles of effective practice in reading: There should be phonics,
there should be phonemic awareness, there should be vocabulary, there
should be comprehension and there should be fluency."
Well,
that's real useful! The problem is that, that just knowing those things
doesn't move you very far. First off, every teacher already knew those
things. And secondly, okay, fine, now what do we do on that basis? And,
and I think that the notion that you can translate good science into
good practice by simply, you know, listing variables rather than
changing the materials and the professional development and, you know,
really getting into the guts of practice, is just not realistic.
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