Information Age Education

Some Grand Global Challenges

moursund@uoregon.edu (Dave Moursund) — Thu, 16 Feb 2012 00:28:12 GMT

Various disciples create list of Grand Challenge problems and tasks that are core to their area of research and practice. See (Moursund, 11/1/2011) for an example of Grand Challenges in Education.

Recently I encountered a Website that presents a number of “future of the world” Grand Challenges.

Google (2012). Solve for <x>. Retrieved 2/14/2012 from http://www.youtube.com/user/wesolveforx?feature=watch.

Some of the leaders at Google got the idea of bringing together a group of movers and shakers—people with good ideas and good understanding of how to implement their ideas. The focus was on the big problems facing our world and people in this world that could be addressed by modern technology.

There are three important questions that distinguish a “Solve for x” talk.

Does it highlight a huge problem?
Is there a concrete solution that could make a radical impact?
Does it explain breakthrough science and technology that could enable this solution?

Larry Page, a co-founder of Google and one of the sponsors of this meeting, is quoted as saying: “I want to do research and writing that lead to action.” That flavor in captured in the presentations.

The citation given above links to 21 videos of talks—most about 14 minutes in length. Topics include:

Learning by themselves.
Negative carbon liquid fuels.
Resources reclamation. Sustainable abundance.
Global water scarcity.
Drug delivery.
Wireless connectivity every—using much less power.
Agricultural productivity and efficient nutrition production.
Higher education impact.

I found Nicholas Negroponte's presentation to be particularly interesting. As he continues to work on providing laptops to children in developing countries, he has observed that many children are using what they learn to help educate their parents. He believes that children who have no access to schools and literate adults may well be able to read and write (on their own) from very inexpensive laptops. He is currently experimenting with this idea.

Michael Crow, President of Arizona State University, gave a talk about the future of a "modern" university and what he is doing at ASU. I was very impressed by the ideas he presents. Quoting from the Website cited above:

Michael Crow… is designing the transformation of ASU into a new highly innovative, high speed adaptive knowledge enterprise which combines academic excellence, inclusiveness, and societal impact—a model he terms the `New American University.`

References

Moursund, David (11/1/2011). Grand Challenges in Education. IAE Blog. Retrieved 2/14/2012 from http://i-a-e.org/iae-blog/grand-challenge-problems-in-education.html.

Science of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education

moursund@uoregon.edu (Dave Moursund) — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 19:06:58 GMT

I believe all educators should be familiar with the Science of Teaching and Learning (SoTL). In recent years this field has been renamed the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning.

Students preparing to become precollege teachers get a healthy dose of SoTL in their various education courses. However, many college and university teachers have had very little formal education in SoTL.

The following article reports on a daylong conference on SoTL in higher education held at Harvard University.

Berrett, Dan (2/5/2012). Harvard conference seeks to jolt university teaching. The Chronicle of Higher Education. Retrieved 2/6/2012 from http://chronicle.com/article/Harvard-Seeks-to-Jolt/130683/?sid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en.

The conference, which featured demonstrations of innovative approaches to teaching, was the first event in a new Harvard Initiative for Learning and Teaching. This initiative is supported by a $40-million grant from two benefactors. Quoting from the beginning of the article:

A growing body of evidence from the classroom, coupled with emerging research in cognitive psychology and neuroscience, is lending insight into how people learn, but teaching on most college campuses has not changed much, several speakers said here at Harvard University at a daylong conference dedicated to teaching and learning.

Too often, faculty members teach according to habits and hunches, said Carl E. Wieman, a Nobel Prize-winning physicist and associate director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, who has extensively studied how to improve science education.

In large part, the problem is that graduate students pursuing their doctorates get little or no training in how students learn. When these graduate students become faculty members, he said, they might think about the content they want students to learn, but not the cognitive capabilities they want them to develop.

"It really requires someone to be doubly expert," Mr. Wieman said. As sometimes happens in some disciplines and departments, a few people develop deeper knowledge of pedagogy. These doubly expert faculty members, he said, can show colleagues how to apply new approaches to teaching the discipline.

I find it both interesting and disturbing that many colleges and universities seem to lag far behind precollege education in their efforts to prepare faculty and teaching assistants to be effective teachers.

One of the strengths of good computer-assisted learning (CAL) materials is that they appropriately integrate research practitioner-based SoTL. One of the ideas presented in the conference is the value of formative assessment. There, the suggestion is that frequent quizzes should be used. In CAL, such formative assessment can be integrated into all of the teaching/learning activities.

Some Dave Moursund Articles Related to SoTL

Order out of chaos and chaos out of order. http://i-a-e.org/iae-blog/order-out-of-chaos-and-chaos-out-of-order.html.

The math brain: Keith Devlin’s chapter in the book Mind, Brain, and Education. http://i-a-e.org/iae-blog/the-math-brain-keith-devlins-chapter-in-the-book-mind-brain-and-education.html.

All educators are engaged in the scholarship of teaching and learning. http://i-a-e.org/iae-blog/all-educators-are-engaged-in-the-scholarship-of-teaching-and-learning.html.

Grading the states on their science standards.

moursund@uoregon.edu (Dave Moursund) — Sun, 05 Feb 2012 22:52:09 GMT

We are in the midst of a strong movement to create precollege Common Core State Standards (CCSS) in Language Arts, Math, and Science. Two of the arguments that support this movement are:

Students in different parts of the country should have equal opportunities to get a good education and should be expected to meet similar academic standards.
High standards help to drive educational improvement.

The Fordham Institute has recently published its “grades” of the current science standards in the various states. The following report discusses the general idea of science standards and includes the 2005 and 2012 grades for each state.

Fordham Institute (1/31/2012). The State of Science Standards 2012. Retrieved 2/5/2012 from http://www.edexcellence.net/publications/the-state-of-state-science-standards-2012.html.

Page 7 of the report lists all of the states and their grades for 2005 and 2012. I was not pleased to see that Oregon (where I live) received an F for each of these two years. The national average was a low C.

The Website listed above also contains 2011 state-by state grades for US History standards. Oregon has a grade of F, and the national average is a D.

These “grades” are based on an analysis of the state standards. The are not based on actual performance of students in the various states. However, quoting from the 2012 science report:

The 2009 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) found barely one-third of fourth graders in the United States at or above the “proficient” level in science, with those proportions slipping to 30 percent in eighth grade and a woeful 21 percent in twelfth grade. Another recent study reported that just 30 percent of our high school graduates are prepared for college-level work in science.

The popular media carries many stories about how poorly the US is doing relative to other countries in Science and Math. These are gist for the political mill and for all who want major improvements in our educational system.

As you know, the totality of collected human knowledge continues to grow at a rapid pace and is extremely vast. The 20 or so years of formal education that it takes to earn a doctorate in a relatively narrow area of study produces a person with a relatively high level of expertise in the narrow area. Even that does not suffice in many areas of research. Post doctorate studies are now commonplace in the STEM (science, technology, engineering, math) areas.

This situation of an over whelming and steadily growing amount of accumulated knowledge in hundreds of different areas (thousands of different specialties) leads me to think about what we should be trying to accomplish in our precollege education system.

I have developed a 6-point discipline-specific or, sub discipline-specific Expertise Scale that I find useful in clarifying my thinking. The points are labeled:

Novice—a beginner. This person’s knowledge may be of little use to the person or to others.
A level that meets a person’s current needs. In a particular discipline, this level will vary widely from person to person. In areas relevant to a particular person, this level becomes higher as the person matures and gains in overall education, knowledge, and skills. In addition, for some students Level 2 will be higher than the Level 3 described below.
A level to meet the standards being set by various “powerful” stakeholder groups such as parents, teachers & schools, school districts & states, and the Federal Government. As students reach the upper years of high school, potential employers and post high school education systems become powerful stakeholders in defining desirable levels of expertise.
A level of expertise needed to compete successfully for employment, be prepared for post high school education, and to be a productive and responsible adult citizen.
A level of expertise that is high when compared to one’s peers at an extended local or regional level such as a city, county, or state.
A level of expertise that is high as compared to one’s peers at a national and international level. The term “world class” is used for the upper end of this level.

Various standards-establishing groups play a major role in establishing standards that students are supposed to meet. CCSS has crowded other areas (such as the arts) out of the curriculum in many schools. See http://i-a-e.org/newsletters/IAE-Newsletter-2012-81.html for an excellent discussion of this situation. Our overall precollege system is weak at fostering and supporting the widely varying interests of individual students.

Our educational system does a poor job in providing instrumentation that helps a student self-assess and to compare him or her self with others. I believe many students would find easy (and confidential) access to such instruments to be enlightening and useful.

School Reform

moursund@uoregon.edu (Dave Moursund) — Sun, 05 Feb 2012 03:26:02 GMT

Over the years I have read many articles written by Larry Cuban. I have often disagreed with his point of view regarding computers in education. In essence, I was in favor of use of computers and he was suspicious of or against use of computers. However, I fully agree with the following article:

Cuban, Larry (11/29/2011). Challenging Reformers’ Conventional Wisdom about Structures and Classroom Practice. Retrieved 2/4/2012 from http://larrycuban.wordpress.com/2011/11/29/challenging-reformers-conventional-wisdom-about-structures-and-classroom-practice/.

Quoting from the article:

Policymakers love creating new and different structures because they believe such arrangements will alter how teachers teach and then lead to more and better student learning. But that chain of assumptions has a few kinks in it.

Researchers have discovered (and rediscovered), however, that once new structures are put into place—school site councils, small high schools, 1:1 computing, professional “learning communities”–teaching practices do not move directly or even necessarily from point A to point B. Moreover, without teaching practices moving the needle of change then the impact on student learning is negligible.

The article then goes on to discuss some examples and some research on the failure of various school reform efforts to be adequately implemented in a manner that could lead to improvement. The reason for this is:

Because other factors come into play to influence what and how teachers teach beyond new structures: Individual teacher beliefs matter. School and district cultures of collaboration matter. How schools are organized matter. School and district leadership matter. These factors combine to create what reformers euphemistically call “barriers” to change, obstacles that reformers must disassemble for routine classroom lessons to become ambitious teaching ventures that produce desired student outcomes.

This might be summarized by the statement that “teachers teach in the way that they were taught” and the observation that the design and nature of our educational system makes it highly resistant to change. I have seen this in my many years of being an advocate for use of computers in education.

A Powerful Change Agent

Interestingly, we are now seeing a significant educational change based on distance learning and computer-assisted learning. In both cases, the task of delivering instruction is being removed from the hands of the teacher. Research on distance learning suggests that for many students, it can be approximately as effective as traditional classroom instruction. Research on computer-assisted learning suggests that for many students it is more effective than traditional classroom instruction.

Currently I am a strong advocate for:

Hybrid learning, involving a balanced combination of distance learning and/or computer-assisted learning with classroom instruction.
Thoroughly integrating the computer as an aid to representing and solving problems into the curriculum. In terms of problem solving, two brains (human and computer) are often better than one. (See http://iae-pedia.org/Two_Brains_Are_Better_Than_One.) We should be teaching students to make effective use of Information and Communication Technology as a routine component of each discipline that they study. Moreover, a significant portion of student assessment should be based on their performance in an ICT-assisted problem solving.

I define problem solving in a broad sense, and consider problem solving to be a part of every discipline of study. Problem solving includes:

• Question situations: recognizing, posing, clarifying, and answering questions.

• Problem situations: recognizing, posing, clarifying, and solving problems.

• Task situations: recognizing, posing, clarifying, and accomplishing tasks.

• Decision situations: recognizing, posing, clarifying, and making good decisions.

• Using human brain and aids: Using higher-order critical, creative, wise, and foresightful thinking to do all of the above. We humans have developed many aids to help us in these endeavors. ICT is one of these aids.

To be a successful (online) learner.

moursund@uoregon.edu (Dave Moursund) — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 20:10:11 GMT

Is there a difference between a successful online learner and a successful “off line” learner? The following article addresses this question.

Wolpert-Gawron, Heather (2/1/2012). Seven Digital Learning Tips for Students. Retrieved 2/1/2012 from http://www.edutopia.org/blog/digital-learning-seven-tips-heather-wolpert-gawron.

Quoting from the article:

Here are seven attributes that should have or need to develop for successful online learning:

You have to have a sense of self. Successful learners online have an awareness of metacognition—self-motivation, self-starting, and ownership of one’s actions. In other words, they reflect on how they learn as well as what they learn.

You need to be able to manage your time wisely. They must be able to lay out their tasks with a critical eye, plan them accordingly, and follow them through to fruition -- many times without someone looking over their shoulder.

You have GOT to know how to collaborate. This is a biggie. More than an understanding of technology, more than a perfection of writing skills, the ability to collaborate is one that must be used comfortably online.

You need to be able to set goals for yourself. Being able to see the target and backwards plan towards that target is vital.

You need to communicate well in writing. The entire online community is based on the language of words and how to communicate them effectively. One cannot use texting language and expect to be heard. A student needs to use their best level of writing.

You must follow the community norms. Just like a classroom has a set of rules, so does an online class. A student must function within the norms and rules of netiquette set up by the instructor (or, better yet, agreed upon by the class itself).

You must be your own advocate. As slam poet Taylor Mali once wrote when asked if they would be tested on the material, “If not you, then who?” So does it go with being one’s own advocate. If you won’t ask the questions, take control, and make sure your voice is heard in a positive way…then who will?

Two ideas that seem particularly important to me are:

The items in the list are relevant to both online and off-line education.
Our current educational system is not strong in facilitating student growth in some of the areas that are particularly important to online learning.

I think that the item 5. about communicating welling in writing needs to be expanded. Teaching and learning require a wide range of communication skills. The issue of writing is much more than just texting versus writing using full words, sentences, and paragraphs. We want students to learn to communicate effectively in our multimedia, connected world. Online education makes use of the media. So, think in terms of the media being an important part of the message in online education.

If you are a teacher at the precollege or higher education level, you might want to sped some class time discussing this list (and extensions of the list) with your students. For example, you might want them to do self-assessment, identifying their on strengths, weaknesses, and what they are doing to overcome their weaknesses.

In my opinion, all students need to be learning to learn in an online environment.

Advance Organizers and Planning Good Lessons.

moursund@uoregon.edu (Dave Moursund) — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 21:05:02 GMT

Currently I am writing a short book based on my very popular iae-pedia page Good Math Lesson Plans (http://iae-pedia.org/Good_Math_Lesson_Plans). I started to think about the role of Advance Organizers in a good lesson. The idea of an advance organizer is attributed to David Ausubel. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Ausubel. Quoting from this Wikipedia document:

An advance organizer is information presented by an instructor that helps the student organize new incoming information. This is achieved by directing attention to what is important in the coming material, highlighting relationships, and providing a reminder about relevant prior knowledge.

Advance organizers are helpful in the way that they help the process of learning when difficult and complex materials are introduced. This is satisfied through two conditions:

The student must process and understand the information presented in the organizer—this increases the effectiveness of the organizer itself.

The organizer must indicate the relations among the basic concepts and terms that will be used.

Some Web browsing led me to the book:

Joyce, Bruce and Weil, Marsha (1996). Models of teaching (fifth edition). Retrieved 2/1/2012 from: http://www.nimhindia.org/MODELS OF TEACHING.pdf. (The eighth edition can be purchased from Allyn & Bacon).

I knew Bruce Joyce when he was teaching at the University of Oregon, and I have previously read some of his publications. I have always considered them to be quite insightful. Quoting from the book:

Most teaching episodes have both content and process objectives. The content objectives include the information, concepts, theories, ways of thinking, values, and other substance that the students can be expected to learn from the experience that results. The process objectives are the ways of learning—the conduct of the social and intellectual tasks that increase the power to learn. In the case of a model of teaching, the process objectives are those that enable the students to engage effectively in the tasks presented when the model is being used. A good lesson plan considers both.

One of the key ideas covered in the book is that a typical teacher makes use of very few lesson plan models or designs. The authors have observed that a typical teacher will adjust the material to be taught so it fits the lesson plan and teaching model that the teacher typically uses. The authors suggest that increasing the repertoire of models a teacher is comfortable in using will lead to better learning on the part of students.

I was educated by a “stand and deliver” style of math teaching. In high school and college this model of math teaching still dominates. In my career as I transitioned from being a math teacher to being a computer science teacher to being a teacher of teachers, I gradually learned models that fit the various teaching situations. For example, in my math teaching I had never see small group discussions, but I eventually learned to make routine use of this in my teaching of teachers. In my math teaching I had never seen use of math manipulatives. Now, I am a strong supporter of math manipulatives as an aid to teaching and learning math. I encountered project-based learning only once in my math education, and I eventually came to make PBL a routine component of my teacher education courses.

Here is a list (arranged in alphabetical order) of some of the types of lesson plan models that Joyce and others have identified as particularly useful:

Cause and Effect (Inference, hypotheses, generalization). See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Causality.
Concept Attainment (Comprehension, comparison, discrimination, and recall). See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concept_learning.
Concept Development (Categorization).See http://people.selkirk.bc.ca/akosling/Study_Skills_Webpages/Memorization.html.
Cooperative Learning, including Peer Instruction and Team-based Project-based Learning. See http://i-a-e.org/iae-blog/peer-instruction-fostering-learning-for-understanding.html and http://iae-pedia.org/Good_PBL_Lesson_Plans.
Direct Instruction. See http://www.nifdi.org/15/.
Discussion (Essential questions).
Inquiry (Problem-solving, Problem-based learning). See http://iae-pedia.org/Problem_Solving and http://iae-pedia.org/Math_Problem-based_Learning.
Learning from Simulations (including Computer Simulations).
Mastery Learning. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mastery_learning.
Memorization (Aids, such as Mnemonics). See http://people.selkirk.bc.ca/akosling/Study_Skills_Webpages/Memorization.html.
Resolution of Conflict.
Synectics (Use of group interaction to stimulate creative thought through analogical thinking). See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synectics.
Values Development (Ethics, civility, cultural understanding).

Final Remarks

Take a look at the models of teaching that you routinely use. Do you have a repertoire of a half-dozen or more models? If not, think about adding one new model to your repertoire. Select one that you and/or your colleagues are confident is an effective model for use with the students and subject matter that you teach. If you use a teaching model that you find particularly effective but that few of you colleagues use, give yourself the task of helping your colleagues add this teaching model to their repertoire. .

Peer instruction fostering learning for understanding.

moursund@uoregon.edu (Dave Moursund) — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 00:02:01 GMT

We want students to understand what they are learning—not just memorize, regurgitate, and forget. The following article describes a successful approach in physics education.

Simon, Beth and Cutts, Quintin (February 2012). Peer Instruction: A Teaching Method to Foster Deep Understanding. Communications of the ACM. Retrieved 1/30 2012 from http://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2012/2/145404-peer-instruction/fulltext.

Quoting from the article:

Approximately 20 years ago, a physicist at Harvard read studies of students who had passed physics courses, yet showed little gain in their conceptual understanding of Newtonian physics. This “conceptual understanding” was measured by a newly developed test called the Force Concept Inventory (FCI). What this showed was that students could “plug and chug” using appropriate equations to solve standard problems on physics tests. But, when asked about a situation where a large truck runs into a small car, students could not correctly identify that the force exerted by the car on the truck was the same as that exerted by the truck on the car (applying Newton’s Third Law).

The physicist was Eric Mazur, who has since gained worldwide fame for his teaching at Harvard. Mazer found that his students were learning to solve the assigned problems but were not learning to think like a physicist.

I believe a similar type of problem exists throughout our educational system. Students take courses in a variety of disciplines, but relatively few make good progress in learning to think like an expert in the disciplines they study. A friend of mine used the analogy of learning to play the notes in a musical composition versus learning to play with emotion, feeling, and understanding of what the music is designed to communicate or achieve.

The article cited above discusses assessment designed to get at a deeper level of understanding and the use of peer instruction to help students gain deep understanding. Peer instruction involves students attempting to explain to each other the core concepts involved in trying to understand, and the discussions are facilitated by simple-looking but carefully chosen challenging problems. The article cites research indicating a substantial increase in learning via this approach.

In Peer Instruction, students gain preparatory knowledge before class (for example, through textbook reading) and complete a pre-lecture quiz to both incentivize their preparation and to give them feedback on whether they are ready to learn in a lecture format. During class, lecture is interspersed with or largely replaced by multiple choice questions (MCQs) and discussion.

…

This is instantiated via a four-part process:

Students individually consider a question and select an answer (typically reporting it via use of a clicker; see http://cwsei.ubc.ca/resources/ clickers.htm).

Students discuss in preassigned groups.

Students vote again on the same question.

Classwide discussion follows led by student explanations and the instructor modeling their way of understanding the problem.

Is American Education in a State of Crisis?

moursund@uoregon.edu (Dave Moursund) — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 18:56:02 GMT

I recently listed to a 15-minute interview with Yong Zhao. The (audio) interview is available at http://bcove.me/3ftbh7c0. The interview presents powerful and well reasoned ideas on how to improve our educational system. I strongly recommend that you listen to the interview ad/or read Yong’s book:

Zhao, Yong (2009). Catching Up or Leading the Way: American Education in the Age of Globalization Availability. ASCD.

Here is a brief introduction to the book, quoted from the ASCD site http://shop.ascd.org/ProductDetail.aspx?ProductId=1095&Catching-Up-or-Leading-the-Way:-American-Education-in-the-Age-of-Globalization.

This remarkable book will forever change the debate about what's wrong and what's right with U.S. education and where it should be going. Based on his own experience as a student in China and as a parent of children attending school in the United States, Zhao skewers conventional wisdom while setting straight the recent history and current state of U.S. schools. To make his case, Zhao explains:

Why the perceived weaknesses of American education are actually its strengths.
How reform proponents, business executives, and politicians have misjudged American education.
Why China and other nations in Asia are actually reforming their systems to be more like their American counterparts.
What really matters for an education system and what really counts as educational excellence.

I particularly liked his comments about our misguided over emphasis on math and reading test scores, and our weakness in providing students with a global education.

Zhao is now on the faculty at the University of Oregon (where I taught for many many years). He is a remarkable educational leader.

A game changer in higher education

moursund@uoregon.edu (Dave Moursund) — Sun, 29 Jan 2012 03:29:11 GMT

In terms of academics and research, MIT is a world-class university. In addition, it is playing a leading role in a major change that is going on in higher education. This IAE Blog entry draws on the following article:

Carey, Kevin (1/22/2012). MIT mints a valuable new form of academic currency. The Chronicle of Higher Education. Retrieved 1/28/2012 from http://chronicle.com/article/MIT-Mints-a-Valuable-New-Form/130410/.

The following quoted material summarizes what MIT is doing in terms of making its academic course offerings available to the world:

MITx is the next big step in the open-educational-resources movement that MIT helped start in 2001, when it began putting its course lecture notes, videos, and exams online, where anyone in the world could use them at no cost. The project exceeded all expectations—more than 100 million unique visitors have accessed the courses so far.

Meanwhile, the university experimented with using online tools to help improve the learning experience for its own students in Cambridge, Mass. Now MIT has decided to put the two together—free content and sophisticated online pedagogy—and add a third, crucial ingredient: credentials. Beginning this spring, students will be able to take free, online courses offered through the MITx initiative. If they prove they've learned the material, MITx will, for a small fee, give them a credential certifying as much.

The article contains a brief discussion of some of the educational ramifications and some of the potential challenges of this move. Here are some examples:

How will MIT’s high academic standards be maintained in these distance learning courses?
Will other institutions accept successful completion of an MITx course for transfer of credit? Somewhat similarly, will employers accept successful completion of a course and/or a coherent collection of courses in terms of hiring?
Information has not yet been released as to the amount to be charged for a credential indication successful completion of a course.
Will the content, rigor, and quality of these courses help to set worldwide standards that will be a challenge to other colleges and universities?
Some courses are much more suited to inexpensive distance learning than others. For example, how will the grading and feedback be handled in humanities courses or in art courses, etc?
Stanford University made a course available in this mode last fall and is planning to make more courses available. It is reported that more than 100,000 people signed up for the course and 20,000 successfully completed the course. See http://i-a-e.org/iae-blog/stanford-university-is-offering-a-free-artificial-intelligence-course.html Will we get a lot of competition among various institutions?

As the quality and reputability of distance learning continues to improve, schools at both the precollege and higher education levels will have to deal with the impact of a new type of learning opportunity and competition. Right now, both levels of educational systems are able to handle transfer of credit from other institutions. Suppose that a large number of both precollege and higher education courses become available at no cost aside from some sort of certificate of completion fee, and the standards that are maintained are indeed good enough to that it is appropriate to count the courses just like transfer credits are counted. This could have a profound impact of precollege and higher education finances.

Staff Development to Improve Education

moursund@uoregon.edu (Dave Moursund) — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 03:39:01 GMT

Today I spent some time looking for research literature on the effectiveness of using computerized white boards (CWB) in education. I did this because I had just read an article about many teachers and their students liking the $5,000 CWB and believing it improved education. My probe into the research on actual effectiveness of CWB use indicated that substantial staff development in its use may be a major factor in whether student learning is improved in a CWB environment. It may be, for example, that extensive staff development on how to facilitate interactive teaching is a key issue in effective use of CWB. In any event, this thought led me to looking at some of the literature on staff development. That, in turn, led me to the following report:

Darling-Hammond, Linda; Wei, Ruth Chung; Andree, Alethea; Richardson, Nikole; and Orphanos, Stelios (2009). Professional learning in the learning profession: A status report on teacher development in the United States and abroad. National Staff Development Council. This 36-page report was retrieved 1/24/2012 from http://www.srnleads.org/resources/publications/pdf/nsdc_profdev_short_report.pdf.

Here is a quote that I consider to be the good news from this report:

Rigorous research suggests that sustained and intensive professional learning for teachers is related to student-achievement gains. An analysis of well designed experimental studies found that a set of programs which offered substantial contact hours of professional development (ranging from 30 to 100 hours in total) spread over six to 12 months showed a positive and significant effect on student achievement gains. According to the research, these intensive professional development efforts that offered an average of 49 hours in a year boosted student achievement by approximately 21 percentile points. Other efforts that involved a limited amount of professional development (ranging from 5 to 14 hours in total) showed no statistically significant effect on student learning.

In the United States, the vast majority of teachers participate in some staff development each year. However, relatively few participate in staff development of a length and quality that makes an appreciable difference in the quality of education their students are receiving. In addition, the claim for success of well-done and lengthy staff development is based on relatively few high quality research studies.

The report also indicated that many countries do far better that the United States in the staff development they provide their teachers. One observation I found particularly interesting is that in the United States, the average teacher spends far more hours per day in actual teaching than teachers in countries that out perform us on tests designed for international comparison. Time for staff development and personal growth is more limited for United States teachers tan for teachers in many other countries.

Teaching is a very complex and demanding profession. There are many things that changes that teachers have to cope with. Examples include changes in demographics of their students, changes in the number of ELL students, changes in technological aids to teaching and learning, changes due to research in brain science, and so on. Our current staff development system is not adequate to these types of changes.

This problem can be addressed in both top-down and bottom-up manners. In a top-down manner various government agencies can attempt to place staff development requirements on teachers. For example, continued licensure might require a specified number of hours of staff development every three years.

A bottom-up approach can be undertaken by any individual teacher. If you are a teacher reading this IAE Blog entry, you can examine your own personal approach to what you do to continually improve the effectiveness of your teaching and to cope with major change agents such as those listed above.

Do you spend two or more hours a week on your own professional development? In a 36-week school year, that would total 72 or more hours. In a full year, that would total over 100 hours. According to the research cited earlier in this document, that is sufficient staff development to lead to an improvement in your student outcomes. My personal opinion is that you (as a teacher) owe it to yourself and to your students to be doing this.

This time needs to be spent in careful study of the theory and practice of changes that others have found to be successful. It is not time spent casually browsing or in reinventing the wheel. Rather, it is work that you do to transfer research-based theory and practice into your teaching repertoire.

The report and other publications suggest the value of professional learning communities at the school or school district. This is a middle-out approach. It suggests the value of teachers studying together, learning from each other, and routinely carrying on discussions about the professional problems they are encountering and dealing with. Lesson study provides one example of this approach. (See http://www.tc.edu/lessonstudy/lessonstudy.html.)

References

IAE-pedia. Staff development via distance education. Retrieved 1/24/2011 from http://iae-pedia.org/Staff_Development_via_Distance_Education.

Moursund, David (1989). Effective inservice for integrating computer-as-tool into the curriculum. Eugene, OR: Information Age Education. Retrieved 1/24/2012 from http://i-a-e.org/downloads/doc_download/25-effective-inservice-for-integrating-computer-as-tool-into-the-curriculum.html.