Getting serious about school improvement: new models of teacher professional development

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Getting serious about school improvement new
models of teacher professional development

• Dylan Wiliam
• Presentation to Governors Institute for Data
  Driven Instructional Practices in Reading and
  Mathematics for School Improvement
• Hershey, PA July 2008
• www.dylanwiliam.net

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Overview of presentation

• Why raising achievement is important
• Why investing in teachers is the answer
• Why formative assessment should be the focus
• Why teacher learning communities should be the
  mechanism
• How we can put this into practice

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Raising achievement matters

• For individuals
• Increased lifetime salary
• Improved health
• Longer life
• For society
• Lower criminal justice costs
• Lower health-care costs
• Increased economic growth

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now more than ever
Source Economic Policy Institute
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• Which of the following categories of skill is
  disappearing from the work-place most rapidly?
• Routine manual
• Non-routine manual
• Routine cognitive
• Complex communication
• Expert thinking/problem-solving

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but what is learned matters too
Autor, Levy Murnane, 2003
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Wheres the solution?

• Structure
• Small high schools
• K-8 schools
• Alignment
• Curriculum reform
• Textbook replacement
• Governance
• Charter Schools
• Vouchers
• Technology
• Computers
• Interactive white-boards

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School effectiveness

• Three generations of school effectiveness
  research
• Raw results approaches
• Different schools get different results
• Conclusion Schools make a difference
• Demographic-based approaches
• Demographic factors account for most of the
  variation
• Conclusion Schools dont make a difference
• Value-added approaches
• School-level differences in value-added are
  relatively small
• Classroom-level differences in value-added are
  large
• Conclusion An effective school is a school full
  of effective classrooms

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Its the classroom

• In the USA, variability at the classroom level is
  up to 4 times that at school level
• Its not class size
• Its not the between-class grouping strategy
• Its not the within-class grouping strategy
• Its the teacher

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USA
Within schools
Between schools
OECD PISA data from McGaw, 2008
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Teacher quality matters
Barber Mourshed, 2007
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but more for some than others
Impact of teacher quality on student outcomes
(Hamre Pianta, 2005))
Achievement gaps Disadvantaged background (mothers education) Poor behavior
Teachers provision of instructional support High No (good) Average No (good) Low Yes (bad) High Yes (bad) Average Yes (bad) Low Yes (bad)
Teachers provision of emotional support High Yes (bad) Average Yes (bad) Low Yes (bad) High No (good) Average Yes (bad) Low Yes (bad)
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The dark matter of teacher quality

• Teachers make a difference
• But what makes the difference in teachers?

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Most of the rest is probably pedagogy

• In real classrooms, over extended periods, using
  distal measures of achievement, adoption of
  formative assessment practices increases student
  achievement by 0.3 standard deviations.
• One standard deviation of increased teacher
  quality is associated with an increase of 0.2 sd
  of student achievement
• Therefore the range of teacher quality (4 sd) is
  associated with 0.8 sd of student achievement.
• Formative assessment practices would therefore
  seem to be equivalent to half of the
  unexplained difference

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Teacher quality

• A labor force issue with 2 (non-exclusive)
  solutions
• Replace existing teachers with better ones?
• Important, but very slow, and of limited impact
• Teach for America
• Gradually raising the bar for entry to teaching
• Improve the effectiveness of existing teachers
• The love the one youre with strategy
• It can be done
• Provided we focus rigorously on the things that
  matter
• Even when theyre hard to do

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Cost/effect comparisons
Intervention Extra months of learning per year Cost/yr
Class-size reduction (by 30) 4 30k
Increase teacher content knowledge from weak to strong 2 ?
Formative assessment/ Assessment for learning 8 3k
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The research evidence

• Several major reviews of the research
• Natriello (1987)
• Crooks (1988)
• Kluger DeNisi (1996)
• Black Wiliam (1998)
• Nyquist (2003)
• All find consistent, substantial effects

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The formative assessment hi-jack

• Long-cycle
• Span across units, terms
• Length four weeks to one year
• Impact Student monitoring curriculum alignment
• Medium-cycle
• Span within and between teaching units
• Length one to four weeks
• Impact Improved, student-involved, assessment
  teacher cognition about learning
• Short-cycle
• Span within and between lessons
• Length
• day-by-day 24 to 48 hours
• minute-by-minute 5 seconds to 2 hours
• Impact classroom practice student engagement

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Unpacking formative assessment

• Key processes
• Establishing where the learners are in their
  learning
• Establishing where they are going
• Working out how to get there
• Participants
• Teachers
• Peers
• Learners

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Aspects of formative assessment
Where the learner is going Where the learner is How to get there
Teacher Clarify and share learning intentions Engineering effective discussions, tasks and activities that elicit evidence of learning Providing feedback that moves learners forward
Peer Understand and share learning intentions Activating students as learning resources for one another Activating students as learning resources for one another
Learner Understand learning intentions Activating students as ownersof their own learning Activating students as ownersof their own learning
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Five key strategies

• Clarifying, understanding, and sharing learning
  intentions
• curriculum philosophy
• Engineering effective classroom discussions,
  tasks and activities that elicit evidence of
  learning
• classroom discourse, interactive whole-class
  teaching
• Providing feedback that moves learners forward
• feedback
• Activating students as learning resources for one
  another
• collaborative learning, reciprocal teaching,
  peer-assessment
• Activating students as owners of their own
  learning
• metacognition, motivation, interest, attribution,
  self-assessment

(Wiliam Thompson, 2007)
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and one big idea

• Use evidence about learning to adapt teaching and
  learning to meet student needs

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Keeping Learning on Track (KLT)

• A pilot guides a plane or boat toward its
  destination by taking constant readings and
  making careful adjustments in response to wind,
  currents, weather, etc.
• A KLT teacher does the same
• Plans a carefully chosen route ahead of time (in
  essence building the track)
• Takes readings along the way
• Changes course as conditions dictate

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Putting it into practice
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Why research hasnt changed teaching

• The nature of expertise in teaching
• Aristotles main intellectual virtues
• Episteme knowledge of universal truths
• Techne ability to make things
• Phronesis practical wisdom
• What works is not the right question
• Everything works somewhere
• Nothing works everywhere
• Whats interesting is under what conditions
  does this work?
• Teaching is mainly a matter of phronesis, not
  episteme

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Knowledge transfer
After Nonaka Tageuchi, 1995
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Implementing formative assessment requires
changing teacher habits

• Teachers know most of this already
• So the problem is not a lack of knowledge
• Its a lack of understanding what it means to do
  formative assessment
• Thats why telling teachers what to do doesnt
  work
• Experience alone is not enoughif it were, then
  the most experienced teachers would be the best
  teacherswe know thats not true (Hanushek, 2005
  Day, 2006)
• People need to reflect on their experiences in
  systematic ways that build their accessible
  knowledge base, learn from mistakes, etc.
  (Bransford, Brown Cocking, 1999)

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Teacher learning takes time

• To put new knowledge to work, to make it
  meaningful and accessible when you need it,
  requires practice.
• A teacher doesnt come at this as a blank slate.
• Not only do teachers have their current habits
  and ways of teachingtheyve lived inside the old
  culture of classrooms all their lives every
  teacher started out as a student!
• New knowledge doesnt just have to get learned
  and practiced, it has to go up against
  long-established, familiar, comfortable ways of
  doing things that may not be as effective, but
  fit within everyones expectations of how a
  classroom should work.
• It takes time and practice to undo old habits and
  become graceful at new ones. Thus
• Professional development must be sustained over
  time

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A model for teacher learning

• Content, then process
• Content (what we want teachers to change)
• Evidence
• Ideas (strategies and techniques)
• Process (how to go about change)
• Choice
• Flexibility
• Small steps
• Accountability
• Support

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Two opposing factors in any school reform

• Need for flexibility to adapt to local
  conditions, resources, etc
• Implies there is appropriate flexibility built
  into the reform
• Need to maintain fidelity to core principles, or
  theory of action of the reform, if it is to
  achieve desired outcomes
• Implies you have a well-thought-out theory of
  action

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Tight but loose

• Some reforms are too loose (e.g., the Effective
  schools movement)
• Others are too tight (e.g., Montessori Schools)
• The tight but loose formulation
• combines an obsessive adherence to central
  design principles (the tight part) with
  accommodations to the needs, resources,
  constraints, and particularities that occur in
  any school or district (the loose part), but
  only where these do not conflict with the theory
  of action of the intervention.

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Strategies and techniques

• Distinction between strategies and techniques
• Strategies define the territory of formative
  assessment (no brainers)
• Teachers are responsible for choice of techniques
• Allows for customization/ caters for local
  context
• Creates ownership
• Shares responsibility
• Key requirements of techniques
• embodiment of deep cognitive/affective principles
  
• relevance
• feasibility
• acceptability

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Examples of techniques

• Learning intentions
• sharing exemplars
• Eliciting evidence
• mini white-boards
• Providing feedback
• find it and fix it
• Students as owners of their learning
• colored cups
• Students as learning resources
• pre-flight checklist

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Design and intervention
Our design process
cognitive/affective insights
synergy/ comprehensiveness
set ofcomponents
Teachers implementation process
set of components
synergy/ comprehensiveness
cognitive/affective insights
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Sustaining formative assessment with teacher
learning communities
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Signature pedagogies
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In Law
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In Medicine
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How to set up a TLC

• Plan that the TLC will run for two years
• Identify 8 to 10 interested colleagues
• Should have similar assignments (e.g. early
  years, math/sci)
• Secure institutional support for
• Monthly meetings (75 - 120 minutes each, inside
  or outside school time)
• Time between meetings (2 hrs per month in school
  time)
• Collaborative planning
• Peer observation
• Any necessary waivers from school policies

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A signature pedagogy for teacher learning?

• Every monthly TLC meeting should follows the same
  structure and sequence of activities
• Activity 1 Introduction Housekeeping (5-10
  minutes)
• Activity 2 Hows It Going (35-50 minutes)
• Activity 3 New Learning about formative
  assessment (20-45 minutes)
• Activity 4 Personal Action Planning (10 minutes)
• Activity 5 Summary of Learning (5 minutes)

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The TLC leaders role

• To ensure the TLC meets regularly
• To ensure all needed materials are at meetings
• To ensure that each meeting is focused on AfL
• To create and maintain a productive and
  non-judgmental tone during meetings
• To ensure that every participant shares with
  regard to their implementation of AfL
• To encourage teachers to provide their colleagues
  with constructive and thoughtful feedback
• To encourage teachers to think about and discuss
  the implementation of new AfL learning and skills
• To ensure that every teacher has an action plan
  to guide their next steps
• But not to be the AfL expert

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Peer observation

• Run to the agenda of the observed, not the
  observer
• Observed teacher specifies focus of observation
• Observed teacher specifies what counts as
  evidence
• e.g., teacher wants to increase wait-time
• provides observer with a stop-watch to log
  wait-times

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The synergy

• Content formative assessment
• Process teacher learning communities
• Components of a model
• Initial workshops
• Monthly TLC meetings
• Peer observations
• Drip-feed resources
• Writings
• New ideas

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Summary

• Raising achievement is important
• Raising achievement requires improving teacher
  quality
• Improving teacher quality requires teacher
  professional development
• To be effective, teacher professional development
  must address
• What teachers do in the classroom
• How teachers change what they do in the classroom
• Formative assessment Teacher learning
  communities
• A point of (uniquely?) high leverage
• A Trojan Horse into wider issues of pedagogy,
  psychology, and curriculum

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Comments?Questions?
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Practical techniques
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Eliciting evidence

• Key idea questioning should
• cause thinking
• provide data that informs teaching
• Improving teacher questioning
• generating questions with colleagues
• closed v open
• low-order v high-order
• appropriate wait-time
• Getting away from I-R-E
• basketball rather than serial table-tennis
• No hands up (except to ask a question)
• class polls to review current attitudes towards
  an issue
• Hot Seat questioning
• All-student response systems
• ABCD cards, Mini white-boards, Exit passes

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Questioning in math discussion

• Look at the following sequence
• 3, 7, 11, 15, 19, .
• Which is the best rule to describe the sequence?
• n 4
• 3 n
• 4n - 1
• 4n 3

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Questioning in math diagnosis

• In which of these right-angled triangles is a2
  b2 c2 ?

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Questioning in science discussion

• Ice-cubes are added to a glass of water. What
  happens to the level of the water as the
  ice-cubes melt?
• The level of the water drops
• The level of the water stays the same
• The level of the water increases
• You need more information to be sure

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Questioning in science diagnosis

• The ball sitting on the table is not moving. It
  is not moving because
• no forces are pushing or pulling on the ball.
  
• gravity is pulling down, but the table is in the
  way.
• the table pushes up with the same force that
  gravity pulls down
• gravity is holding it onto the table.
• there is a force inside the ball keeping it from
  rolling off the table

Wilson Draney, 2004
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Dinosaurs extinction

• Why did dinosaurs become extinct?
• A) Humans destroyed their habitat
• B) Humans killed them all for food
• C) There was a major change in climate

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Save the ozone layer

• What can we do to preserve the ozone layer?
• Reduce the amount of carbon dioxide produced by
  cars and factories
• Reduce the greenhouse effect
• Stop cutting down the rainforests
• Limit the numbers of cars that can be used when
  the level of ozone is high
• Properly dispose of air-conditioners and fridges

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Questioning in English discussion

• Macbeth mad or bad?

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Questioning in English diagnosis

• Where is the verb in this sentence?
• The dog ran across the road

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Questioning in English diagnosis

• Which of these is the best thesis statement?
• The typical TV show has 9 violent incidents
• The essay I am going to write is about violence
  on TV
• There is a lot of violence on TV
• The amount of violence on TV should be reduced
• Some programs are more violent than others
• Violence is included in programs to boost ratings
• Violence on TV is interesting
• I dont like the violence on TV

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Questioning in history discussion

• In which year did World War II begin?
• 1919
• 1938
• 1939
• 1940
• 1941

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Questioning in history diagnosis

• Why are historians concerned with bias when
  analyzing sources?
• People can never be trusted to tell the truth
• People deliberately leave out important details
• People are only able to provide meaningful
  information if they experienced an event
  firsthand
• People interpret the same event in different
  ways, according to their experience
• People are unaware of the motivations for their
  actions
• People get confused about sequences of events

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Questioning in MFL discussion

• Is the verb être regular in French?

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Questioning in MFL diagnosis

• Which of the following is the correct translation
  for I give the book to him?
• Yo lo doy el libro.
• Yo doy le el libro.
• Yo le doy el libro.
• Yo doy lo el libro.
• Yo doy el libro le.
• Yo doy el libro lo.

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Hinge Questions

• A hinge question is based on the important
  concept in a lesson that is critical for students
  to understand before you move on in the lesson.
• The question should fall about midway during the
  lesson.
• Every student must respond to the question within
  two minutes.
• You must be able to collect and interpret the
  responses from all students in 30 seconds

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Figurative language

• He was a bull in a china shop.
• May I have a drop of water?
• This backpack weighs a ton.
• The sweetly smiling sunshine
• He honked his horn at the cyclist.
• Ive told you a million times already.
• The Redcoats are coming!
• They in the sea being burnt, they in the burnt
  ship drownd.
• He was as tall as a house.

1. Alliteration
2. Hyperbole
3. Irony
4. Metaphor
5. Onomatopoeia
6. Personification
7. Simile
8. None of the above

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Triangle shirt waist factory fire, March 25th,
1911
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Triangle factory fire

• Which of the following sources is biased?
• Photograph of the event
• New York Times story on Mar 26, 1911
• Description of the fire in the textbook
• Transcript of talk by Frances Perkins, Sep 30 1964

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Practical techniques feedback

• Key idea feedback should
• cause thinking
• provide guidance on how to improve
• Comment-only grading
• Focused grading
• Explicit reference to rubrics
• Suggestions on how to improve
• Strategy cards ideas for improvement
• Not giving complete solutions
• Re-timing assessment
• (eg three-fourths-of-the-way-through-a-unit test)

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Practical techniques sharing learning intentions

• Explaining learning intentions at start of
  lesson/unit
• Learning intentions
• Success criteria
• Intentions/criteria in students language
• Posters of key words to talk about learning
• eg describe, explain, evaluate
• Planning/writing frames
• Annotated examples of different standards to
  flesh out assessment rubrics (e.g. lab reports)
• Opportunities for students to design their own
  tests

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Students owning their learning and as learning
resources

• Students assessing their own/peers work
• with rubrics
• with exemplars
• two stars and a wish
• Training students to pose questions/identifying
  group weaknesses
• Self-assessment of understanding
• Traffic lights
• Red/green discs
• End-of-lesson students review

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Force-field analysis (Lewin, 1954)

• What are the forces that will support or drive
  the adoption of formative assessment practices in
  your school/district?

• What are the forces that will constrain or
  prevent the adoption of formative assessment
  practices in your school/district?