I was recently speaking with a group of educators about using data to inform instruction.  Specifically, my team at Oxford High School identified that students were having trouble with graphing interpretations.  Students could successfully construct a graph, title, label, and plot, both on paper and electronically using data that they collected from experiments.  Unfortunately they were struggling with using a preconstructed graph to interpolate and extrapolate other information.

For example, we recently completed a DNA electrophoresis experiment separating DNA to make a DNA fingerprints.  The fingerprints make banding patterns that need to be measured and then graphed. A specific control is used to determine a standard curve, which is then used to predict the sizes  of other bands in the gel.  Graphs were made with little problem.  However, when the students went to predict sizes based on the standard curve, things when awry.

This has been a consistent problem.  I see the challenge:  there is definite higher-order processing going on when students are trying to extract information from a data set, in this case a graph.  We’ve focused on graph interpretation throughout the year as we recongize this as a weak point for our students.

But this has got me thinking about Bloom’s Taxonomy.  A brief summary follows:

1.Knowledge (finding out)
a. Use – records, films, videos, models, events, media, diagrams, books…
b. observed behavior – ask match, discover, locate, observe, listen.

2. Comprehension (understanding)
a. Use – trends, consequences, tables, cartoons….
b. observed behavior – chart, associate, contrast, interpret, compare.

3. Application (making use of the knowledge)
a. use – collection, diary, photographs, sculpture, illustration.
b. observed behavior – list, construct, teach, paint, manipulate, report.

4. Analysis questions (taking apart the known)
a. use – graph, survey, diagram, chart, questionnaire, report….
b. observed behavior – classify, categorize, dissect, advertise, survey.

5. Synthesis (putting things together in another way)
a. use – article, radio show, video, puppet show, inventions, poetry, short story…
b. observed behavior – combine, invent, compose, hypothesis, create, produce, write.

6. Evaluation (judging outcomes)
a. use – letters, group with discussion panel, court trial, survey, self-evaluation, value, allusions…
b. observed behavior – judge, debate, evaluating, editorialize, recommend

If I consider the taxonomy, Graphing hits Level 4: Analysis.  However, considering the interpretation from a previously constructed graph hits Level #2:  Comprehension.  This is interesting, because students are finding more success higher up the taxonomy and struggling with lower on the continuum.  There is supposed to be a higher level of thinking and processing associated with higher educational objectives, however, practical experience tells me that this might not always be the case.

What ultimately is important is figuring out how to help students think and learn well.

I very rarely am drawn into the relms of pop culture, but recently Susan Boyle’s rise to stardom on Britain’s Got Talent caught my attention.  I am impressed by the story because there are so many wonderful messages for our young children.  Frankly these messages come through best just by watching her first appearance on the show:

Here! Unfortunately YouTube is currently not allowing embedding on this video. If this changes, I will update

The two obvious morals are:

• You’re never too old to pursue your dreams
• Don’t judge a book by its cover

They are very straight forward, very obvious from the video, but more importantly teach us to really consider our judgement of individuals or situations at first glance.  We need to be thoughtful, mindful individuals capable of decision making based on a well-rounded understanding of situations.  Susan certainly never questioned her abilities in her first performance.  Susan subsequently performed in the semifinals and finals, ultimately coming in 2nd place overall.  The second place finish was pretty irrelevant, as she captured the world’s attention with her sassy, simple, yet elegant approach to stage performance.

Embedded below are both the semifinal and final performances.

As I examined my thoughts about Susan more, I came to the realization that there were more messages in her story than my initial take.  I think, in terms of teaching and learning, these messages are even more important that the initial, obvious ones:

• Excellence comes from hard work
• Quality is always quality

So many students (and for that matter, adults) are caught up in the idea that success comes from luck.  Why are people rich?  Why are actors in movies? Why did Susie get a good grade?  They think it’s because these individuals are lucky.  How far from the truth.  It’s because they work hard.  Success is certainly not a factor of luck:  it’s a factor of perseverance, task commitment, and dedication.  There is tremendous value to believing in yourself, and knowing that good things happen because they are deserved and earned.

Susan also shows us that quality is quality.  We know what good is and we know what bad is.  There generally is very little question which is which.  When you produce a product laced with pride and excellence, its good.  When the lazy route is taken, it’s not.  Quality is not a crap shoot.  Quality comes from persistent good work, and dedication.  We know what quality is, and we know when it’s not there.  Frills and thrills without the fills just doesn’t cut it. 

Ultimately, Susan came in second place to a group called Diversity.  Watch their performance and recognize the same qualities as Susan:

from: www.rwd.com

I’ve been working on several projects lately considering autonomy of learning whether it be for students or adults.  Specifically, I am (a) working with the High Ability Inquiry Research group at McGill University trying to define the term inquiry literacy, (b) working with some of my Ed.D. colleagues from Western Connecticut State Univ on several independent publications from our dissertations, (c) preparing professional development programming for Oxford, (d) developing a Moodle site for a blended learning course I teach and (d) working with my applied research students on their continued work.  These activities have me continually thinking about being a self-directed, self-effective, life-long learner. 

I was recenlty invited to view a fantastic wiki, written by my colleage, Donna Baratta, Library Media Specialist from Mildred E. Strang Middle School in Yorktown, NY.   Although I believe her wiki is currently private, it includes a wonderful explanation of models for professional development:

Five Models of Staff Development by Sparks and Loucks-Horsley may be used to differentiate instruction in order to meet the needs of teachers based on years of experience, level of technology use and/or mastery, and professional goals in conjunction with district initiatives, NYSED Standards and more. (This information also appears under the heading of Models and Activities on the Models page.)  Differentiation in regard to technology PD is particularly significant, as learners may vary from reluctant users to confident users of technology.  PD must be designed to meet the needs of all learners participating in the PD experience.

Five Models of Staff Development by Sparks and Loucks-Horsley

 1.  Individually Guided Staff Development

     A process though which teachers plan and implement their own activities to promote their own learning

 2. Observation/Assessment

     This model provides objective data and feedback regarding classroom performance to produce growth or identify areas for growth

 3.  Involvement in a Development/Improvement Process

     Teachers engage in curriculum development, program design or a school improvement process

 4.  Training

     Individual or group instruction that involves teachers in the acquisition of knowledge

 5.  Inquiry

     Teachers identify an area of instructional interest, collect data, and make changes in their instruction based on an interpretation of those data

(Sparks & Loucks-Horsley, 1989, p. 41)

 Further Reading:

Differentiation: Lessons from Master Teachers  

Recommended Reading: (Not available from ERIC in time for this posting)

Differentiation within Team-based Teacher Learning. Sparks, Dennis. Journal of Staff Development, Fall2005, Vol. 26 Issue 4, p4-4, 2/3p; (AN 20217427) 

Differentiated Instructional Strategies in Practice: Training, Implementation, and Supervision. Gregory, Gayle H.. 2003 132 pp. (ED476461)

I really like the progression presented, allowing for a continuum of growth as expertise level increases.  We certainly should be aiming for teachers to be engaged in independent action research as part of professional growth, evaluation, and supervision.  I am convinced that this change process of teacher as researcher andpractitioneris the one of the necessary steps to allow for systemic increases in student achievement.  Best practices will continue to develop out of an evidence-based profession, not one based on anecdotal, feel-good, been-doin’-it-fer-years strategy.

I think this might have applications beyond the professional growth model, as we think about how to develop 21st-century skills in all learners, both educators and our students.

I teach responsibility of giving credit to others with my students.  I need to model good practice and do the same myself.

http://www.thesharkbook.com

Right now, I am attending a professional development session with Dr. Katie Moirs.  She works with the CT State Department of Education.  Her presentation is entitled “Assessment for Learning Presentation”.  I will comment as her presentation goes, and will post at the end.   I am doing this to document the session, but to also experience what live blogging is like, for me.

She is beginning to speak about assessment literacy.  This is interesting to consider – a meaningful defintion might emerge?

Use of assessment: In the old days, assessment means standardized tests. No longer are we focused on standardized tests that rank order students.  What are we concerned with?  Think about a balanced assessment strategy. 

• Institutional levels:  e.g., CAPT, CMT – a bad thing is that we rank order schools.  Where do standardized tests fit within the big picture of assessment.  They DON’T help kids learn – rather they are used for accountability.  They are reliable and valid, yet they are insular.  They measure a restricted skill set.  
• Benchmark level:  program evaluation at a building or district level.  Common assessments fit into these categories.  Within this school, this is how many kids are at a certain, measurable level.  It’s also an accountability measure, because it’s closer to home.  They are school/district specific.  There is still accountability, but they generally still don’t promote student level.  SRBI:  Scientific research based intervention – benchmarking level. 
• Classroom level:  Most neglected area of training, yet the most important.  Formal, informal, summative, or formative.  This is what helps kids learn.  What really promotes student achievement and learning is what happens in the classroom.  That’s why it’s so important to develop meaningful assessments.

Cognitive psychology appoach and framework.  Think about the importance of assessment training at the undergraduate level. 

• Crystallized to fluid ability. Students start at a basic level and acquires basic skills, basic procedures, facts.  Simple, easily assimilated.  Easily automated – once achieved, they are crystallized.  Once there, students move to fluid abilities: doing something with the knowledge acquired.  When they can apply to novel situations, they can problem solve and tackle new things.   She refers to Picasso and developing skills. 
• Novice to expert ability.  Moving from novice to expert problem solving.  The more knowledge acquired, the better problem finding and problem solving.  There are big differences between novice and expert English students. 
• Anderson & Krawthwohl.A revised Bloom’s taxonomy to make it more useful for educators in various domains.  Cognitive process dimensions mapped onto knowledge dimensions

A website that focuses on knowledge dimensions and cognitive processes:  http://oregonstate.edu/instruct/coursedev/models/id/taxonomy/#table

• Stiggins.  A practical way to use assessments.  Offers the following taxonomy:  (a) knowledge mastery, (b) reasoning proficiency, (c) skills, (d) ability to create products, (e) dispositions

Assessment can be divided into two categories:  selected response, constructed response.  There are benefits to both.  Mapping assessment onto a continuum is critical to figuring out what’s going on because it is necessary to making sure you are following a crystallized to fluid ability

Pulling it together. You need foundational knowledge in order to do higher order thinking.    However, you can never assess anything perfectly.  Internal and external errors always exist. 

High reliability and high validity for selected responses (but measure a limited, insular skill set)–> Low reliability and low validity for constructed responses (because there are no right or wrong answers).  If teachers develop knowledge and skills then they should be successful on the standardized tests – there has to be a careful mesh of the two. 

• Clear and appropriate learning targets.  Content and learning standards from the state.  Guidelines for schools of what students are able to do and know.  How do I operationalize what I am measuring?  How can I take what students are learning and measure it?  Standards are limiting but the present a starting point.  Backward mapping from assessments to teaching.
• Observable indicators of performance.  When you think about what you are measuring – is it observable, defined, and measurable – but is it reliable and valid?
• Appropriateness of assessment method.  Are skills and abilities aligned with assessment?  What do I want students to show, do, and know?  How do we map skills and knowledge onto assessment
• Trained assessors.  I am a team of 1 in my classroom.  If I teach X, Y, and Z, does my assessment test A, B, and C?  Need to be aligned – otherwise really low validity and reliability. 

Today some of my previous statistics graduate students (all practicing teaching professionals) joined me at my home to pick up posters that they will be presenting at WestConn’s first Instructional Leadership Conference.  As part of their qualitative methods course, the professor had them conduct a brief study.  He suggested that the students make some 8.5×11 sheets on their computer, slap them up on a trifold posterboard and bring it to the conference this weekend. 

Several of the students contacted me and asked for suggestions to make more of a professional presentation.  They felt the expectations were too low.  I couldn’t agree more.  As budding educational researchers, they should learn the high quality techniques that are involved in preparing a poster for a meeting or conference.  This is not exceedingly hard, and with the features in PowerPoint, fairly easy to do, with very professional results.

This reminds me of the AERA conference I recently attended, where my poster seemed to have an edge in professionalism over some of the others.  Look at mine (37) compared to my neighbor’s (38) and make your own judgement without even considering the content.

My poster

My neighbor's poster

The students, like me, did not want their work to lack the professional results that a high-caliber member of the community of practice would produce.  In essence they are on inbound trajectory(Wenger, 1998). 

What I think is important about their (and my) dispositions is their unwillingness to sacrifice quality.  having high quality, in this case, will exceed the expectations of other members of the community of practice.  AND I LOVE IT.  I am realizing that I find exceeding expectations to be a very important part of my professional persona as well as my philosophy for my students.   I want people to say, “Wow, this was done by a <high school student>, <neophyte researcher>, <insert other here>.”  I guess that is because you see incredible growth when that happens, and you bring students more towards the boundary trajectory of becoming active members of the community of practice.

Why can’t expectations be higher?

This week during my laboratory periods with my biology students, we are completing a DNA fingerprinting laboratory.  The kit is manufactured by Bio-Rad and provides samples of DNA (crime scene and five subjects), restriction enzymes and materials for electrophoresis separation.  I like this lab, because, although it is a “scenario,” (read what bothers me about scenarios here) it gives students the opportunity to use authentic materials in a hands-on, minds-on, inquiry setting. 

Because the scientific concepts are complex, I often provide some prior direct instruction to situate the student learning.  I have also found that a prelab assignment with some good higher order thinking questions helps prepare the students to appropriately before they come to the laboratory experience.  (I will openly admit that the questions are provided by Bio-Rad as part of the kit – but it’s high quality stuff.  It’s not always necessary for teachers to recreate the wheel, when quality instructional tools already exist.) I am clearly following an information processing theory to teaching and learning.  Kind of ironic, since I always tout the situated cognition learning theory. 

Well, it turns out that my students were thinking about situated learning.  One told me about how he took the questions, Googled them, and found the online document that contained the questions from Bio-Rad.  He was actually seeking out the answers, but was dismayed not to be able to find them.  A discussion from several students in the immediate area of this student ensued questioning whether that was right or wrong.   They were specifically looking for my opinion and hadn’t really come to any conclusions themselves.

My response?  I thought it was fine.  I told them that I didn’t think that students should be denied access to information, and they should use any resources that they deem necessary to learn.  Of course, I was thinking to myself, that I have a responsibility as a teacher to ensure the work I give to students is meaningful, and that they cannot just type a few key strokes to get an answer, without some thoughtful thinking.  The assignment was demanding, and without the answers online, they retain a high level of rigor.  However, if I use work that allows the trap of the copy-paste-and-plagiarize, I am doing my students a disservice.

I guess I was lucky this time!

On Monday, I will be heading to San Diego to attend my first American Educational Research AssociationAnnual Meeting.  I have been priviledged to be selected to present my research on problem finding for student research.  I am excited to share the results of my research in a poster presentation.  I recently wrote about the process of constructing the poster, and now it sits in a tube ready to fly to San Deigo. 

I am excited to share my ideas with like-minded people and am hoping to have an experience where I can learn more about strategies to share with others on how to be more accepting of research-based practices in education.

I am regularly amazed that teachers that I work with do not pay any credence whatsoever to research-based instructional practices.  They like to do what “feels good,” or “the way they were taught.”  If we are to have  transformative changes in teaching behavior, teachers have to become, at least, consumers of educational research.  I would dare say that so many practitioners dismiss educational research.  Preservice institutes certainly play a role in this apathy.  However, in service teachers need to be challenged as well. 

Action research as a personnel evaulative tool can potentially begin to reform thinking.  Teachers thoughtfully evaluating their practice is the best tool to introduce the concept of evidence-based practice.  These types of studies don’t have to be magnificent.  They should just ask a meaningful question, have a method to collect data, and draw some conclusions.  However, without the necessary professional development, this won’t effectively happen.  I wonder most how to get buy-in from teachers.

I often shudder when I hear a teacher exclaim, “We’re going to do <insert activity here>. Its ‘LIKE REAL LIFE’!”  I think some may look at a statement like that and think, but isn’t that what we are supposed to do?  My response is why does everything have to be a simulation.  Something that the teacher preconceives:  a well-known question, with a well-known outcome.  Once again stifling the creativity of our youth. 

I say it should just be real life.  If students are conducting research on topics that they select, based on meaningful research, knowing that there is an authentic audience (and I mean a REAL authentic audience, not some ‘LIKE’ real authentic audience), then we bring more meaning to the work they do.  If they are finding and solving real problems where they really have to interact with members of a community of practice, they learn that their knowledge acquisition must be in conjunction with value-added product generation.  What could be better than cognitive growth both in scientific concepts and authentic interaction.

I reflect on this, because earlier today I was discussing the science research of my students with a visiting educational leader .  He looked at the posters the students had created and was just floored by the quality of their work.  These posters (dimensions 40″x60″) are printed using an HP T1100 wide format printer that my department has (especially for this purpose).  Students design single PowerPoint slides which are formatted with the appropriate dimensions.  They prepare, print, spray mount to foam core, and present these posters at science fairs and symposia.  They are evaluated by practicing engineers and scientists in industry and academia.

Now, at the same time, I am preparing my research for the American Educational Research Association annual meeting in San Diego next week.  I am doing exactly what my students did:  I created a large-scale poster using PowerPoint based on the extended research I conducted over a long period of time.  I spent many intricate hours designing and laying out the introduction, methodology, data, and conclusions.  My students offered me several comments along the way, just as I had offered them while they were preparing for the Connecticut Science Fair.  We were collectively involved in the preparation for presentation of research to an authentic audience. 

I am literally practicing what I preach.  My work becomes a comparison for them and I think we all benefit because it truly is REAL.

This past week, my students and I attended the Science Horizons Science Fair, the Connecticut Junior Science and Humanities Symposium, and the Connecticut Science Fair.  Although we experienced enormous success for the wonderful projects they created, executed, and presented, what stands out to me most, is how these young men and women learned about themselves. 

I was speaking with one of my student’s fathers upon return from the JSHS, and I commented on how we had an opportunity to meet one of the professors that had provided feedback for the project.  Initially, the student didn’t want to approach the professor (shy, embarrassed, whatever), but I insisted he make an approach.  After speaking with him, the student, returning with a big smile, said that it was a good choice to speak with the professor.  He had a chance to thank the professor for his help.  More important, the professor conveyed how enjoyable and important he thought the student’s project was.  That kind of authentic value from a member of the community of practice easily helps justify the reason we encourage students to do applied research.  The student KNEW his work meant something, and moreover, he had effectively communicated with an adult.  The father and I spoke about how many additional skills students acquire that might on the outside not be so evident.

Fast forward several days.

Students are at the Connecticut Science Fair; boys dressed in suits and/or sport coats and pants.  They are having an awful time attaching their pinned name tags to the front of their jacket pockets.  After the judging we gather, several parents nearby.  We discuss this and that.  One says “I have such a cheap jacket, all of the pockets are fake.”  Other boys grumble with similar complaints.  Taking a deep breath, I explain to them (probably with a little laced sarcasm), that the pockets on sport coats come stitched up.  I explained that they needed to gently cut the stitches, and the pocket would open up.  The boys are in awe – the parents are belly laughing.  The father from the previous day comments, “You’re right, they learn all sorts of things in this class!”