{"id":3473,"date":"2015-08-24T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2015-08-24T04:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/aurora-institute.org\/blog\/cw_post\/teaching-the-most-intellectual-job-in-the-world\/"},"modified":"2020-02-05T12:55:48","modified_gmt":"2020-02-05T17:55:48","slug":"teaching-the-most-intellectual-job-in-the-world","status":"publish","type":"cw_post","link":"https:\/\/aurora-institute.org\/cw_post\/teaching-the-most-intellectual-job-in-the-world\/","title":{"rendered":"Teaching: The Most Intellectual Job in the World"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Intellectual\"Recently I received the question below. It starts with a concern about choice and agency and then expands to a number of questions about teaching and learning. Although I certainly don\u2019t know the answer to all these questions, I have had several conversations with educators in competency-based schools that might provide some insight. As always, we\u2019d love to have others share their thoughts on these questions.<\/p>\n

My concern is that the practical implementation of personalized learning in classrooms can and in many cases, will lead paradoxically and tragically to the diminution of choice and agency for students. An example of this might sound like: Sorry John, but you can\u2019t go on to multiplication until you have demonstrated mastery of two digit addition. <\/em><\/p>\n

This begs some other questions: Who decides what skills are essential to be granted access to the next series of content\/instruction? On what basis (cognitive, research-based) is that determination of sequencing made? Under what circumstances is it helpful for students to have exposure to topics that are beyond their independent or even instructional level? What are the grouping (tracking) implications of the way competency-based learning is, or may be rolled out?<\/em><\/p>\n

Agency and Choice<\/strong>: Let\u2019s tackle the question about student agency and choice: If we are comparing a personalized classroom to a traditional chalk and talk\/pacing guided classroom, I can\u2019t imagine how student agency and choice can be much less. However, I do think as a field we need to be much more clear about what it means to be personalized, the techniques for helping students to build agency, and the different ways to structure learning experiences to enable the three concepts of agency, voice and choice.<\/p>\n

Certainly, there are schools that have chosen to use adaptive software programs that provide little personalization other than pace, with students plodding through a pretty boring curriculum, answering questions at the level of recall and comprehension. I\u2019ve seen this most often in credit recovery programs and mediocre alternative schools. However, I\u2019ve also seen it in a school that is touted as an innovative school, described as personalized because of the flexibility in pacing.<\/p>\n

However, the example above about John who hasn\u2019t learned two-digit addition isn\u2019t as much about choice (assuming that we don\u2019t consider choosing not to learn something as an option) as it is about teaching and learning.<\/p>\n

Linearity and Learning Progressions<\/strong>: I have been in classrooms where teachers were marching student through worksheets in the order of the standards. This sometimes happens in the first year of conversion to competency-based education when there hasn\u2019t been enough attention to the level of knowledge. By the second year, as teachers worked together in their PLCs looking at student work using a taxonomy such as Webb\u2019s or Bloom\u2019s, they soon begin to talk about how to lift up their instruction and assessment to higher levels of learning.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s important to remember that academic standards have been written in a linear format, but that does not mean they should be taught in that exact way. In fact, standards should be taught in a way that is student-centered\u2014in other words, based on research about how children actually learn <\/strong>(don\u2019t presume they were constructed with that in mind). Thus, to answer the question about John, I would turn to the research on math learning progressions to answer that specific question. As I understand it, children may use a variety of techniques as they move from addition to multiplication, and it’s important for the teacher to be able to diagnose which strategies are being used so they can continue to help children \u201cmaster\u201d the concept of multiplication. [There is a lot written about learning progressions\u2014you might want to start with this post<\/a> and the briefing paper by Achieve<\/a>. And here is information about math learning progressions<\/a>.]<\/p>\n

Who Decides?<\/strong>: The phrasing of the question Who decides what skills are essential to be granted access to the next series of content\/instruction<\/em>? is fascinating. Who decides that in the traditional system? Essentially we have distributed that across the entire system, much of it far away from educators.Think about the Common Core or any state standards. In the traditional system, a group of people develop the standards, then curriculum is developed, educators deliver it, but then we use state accountability assessments and NAEP to determine proficiency.\u00a0 Thus, educators and students may not actually know what proficiency looks like.<\/p>\n

In competency-based schools transparency rules! Teachers work together looking at student work to agree upon what proficiency looks like. We clearly need to make sure that states and districts have developed mechanisms to ensure consistency across districts and schools. That’s what New Hampshire is doing with PACE so that there is consistency across the use of performance-based assessments that are assessing higher order skills. Students know what proficiency looks like as well with rubrics shared upfront and often examples of student work at the level of proficiency easily accessible.<\/p>\n

There is still a question about how districts might construct quality assurance mechanisms. Chugach School District thought this through and developed a policy by which teachers credential the learning within an academic level but the district has a set of assessments to ensure that students are really proficient when they move to the next academic level.<\/p>\n

The question about How<\/em><\/strong> do educators decide…? <\/em>is really fascinating and I think requires a number of really strong educators to help clarify it. As a start my conversations with educators have identified a number of issues that teachers need to think about as they think about students progressing to the next level. Of course, it makes a different about the level or importance of the next step — is it a standard, unit, class, academic level or to the next school?:<\/p>\n