Beyond the Black Box: Preparing Teacher Education Candidates to Support Student Learning

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Beyond the Black Box Preparing Teacher
Education Candidates to Support Student Learning

• Mary E. Diez
• Alverno College
• March 16, 2007

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What counts as data about impact on student
learning?

• Humongous State University recently presented a
  report on data that showed HSU grads have
  greater impact on their students learning than
  grads of other programs.
• The argument HSU is better because HSU grads
  get better results (based on statistical
  comparison of test results of students in the
  classes of HSU and non-HSU grads in particular
  schools).

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Alternative conclusions to be drawn from the data?

• One conclusion That more and perhaps ALL
  students should go to HSU?
• Another That you can improve your schools
  performance by hiring HSU grads?

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• Another conclusion
• That we really dont know enough about what the
  HSU grads did to know why the student performance
  was stronger. If we knew what they did and why it
  worked, perhaps other programs could teach their
  candidates to do it too.

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Getting to the why

• HSU identifies as key
• Careful screening of candidates
• 5 year (vs. 4-year) program
• Dual degree program (i.e., candidates finish at
  the graduate (vs. undergraduate) level.
• All those factors leave the black box intact

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What are the practices that make a difference for
student learning?

• Resnick (1999)
• Cognitive Science We can teach the cognitive
  skills associated with intelligence . . .
  generating analogies, making logical deductions,
  creating and using memory aids, and monitoring
  ones own state of knowledge (metacognition).

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What are the practices that make a difference for
student learning?

• Newmann, Bryk, Nagaoka (2001)
• When teachers provide high quality intellectual
  taskscritical thinking, elaboration of thinking
  in writing and speaking, and connection to
  real-world contextsthey both produce more
  intellectually complex work and do better on test
  scores.

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What are the practices that make a difference for
student learning?

• Resnick (1999)
• Social Psychology What people believe about
  the nature of talent and intelligenceabout what
  accounts for success and failureis closely
  related to the amount and kind of effort they put
  forth in situations of learning or problem
  solving.

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What are the practices that make a difference for
student learning?

• Black Wiliam (1998) have documented gains in
  test scores that represent .5 to 2.0 standard
  deviations when teachers provide formative
  feedback to students.
• As Stiggins points out, the impact of good,
  formative feedback rivals the impact of
  one-on-one tutoring in supporting student
  achievement.

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What are the practices that make a difference for
student learning?

• Clear targets and assignments that build student
  ability to meet the target
• Targets that represent critical thinking,
  elaboration of thinking in writing/speaking, and
  connection to real world contexts
• High quality intellectual tasks
• Clear statements of expectation in
  student-friendly criteria

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What are the practices that make a difference for
student learning?

• Descriptive, formative feedback
• Provides information for the teacher about what
  the students are learning/getting
• Provides information to the student about what is
  strong in performance and what needs workthus
  building a sense of academic self- efficacy
• Provides documentation of student growth over
  time

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How might we gather evidence?

• Project CALL (focused on in-service teachers in 8
  low performing urban public schools) had these
  goals
• Develop the necessary skills to understand,
  collect, and interpret classroom and district
  data related to student achievement
• Analyze data to identify and apply needed
  instructional strategies and interventions in the
  classroom to improve student achievement

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Project Call work

• Promoting ways to incorporate higher order
  thinking skills (data on math performance)
• Developing constructed response prompts that ask
  students to write short answers to specific
  questions that require thinking
• Using the Instructional Practices Inventory as a
  way to look at the kinds of intellectual
  challenge students are engaged in

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Project Call work

• Developing clear single point, analytic rubrics
  to guide student work
• Giving students descriptive feedback
• Helping students learn to give descriptive
  feedback to each other

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Results

• Increased student engagement
• All eight schools showed some movement to
  meaningful engagement
• Impact on student performance
• No standardized test data as yet
• Individual classroom performance data strong
• Teacher reflections on classroom impact

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• The biggest success I have observed the past few
  months is the quality of my students constructed
  responses... I have learned how to write better
  questions that can assess student understanding
  by reading one response instead of giving a long
  test. Because the questions require higher levels
  of thinking, my students are being challenged

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• What surprised me was that when I provided
  descriptive feedback, I got a much better sense
  of what my students did and didnt understandIn
  the past, I didnt really probe their
  understanding in this way. As a result of the
  change, my students are moving to higher levels
  of work.

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• Teacher 3 I was working with students who were
  among the lowest in their grade level. Although
  this group began with almost no knowledge about
  geometry, they are now at a point where they can
  identify and provide evidence for their answers.
  They have learned how to use knowledge. Their
  growth comes in part from working with a single
  point analytic rubric. This rubric provided the
  information they needed to convey in a way that
  was easy to understand and apply.

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Conclusion

• How do we get beyond the black box in preparing
  teacher education candidates to support student
  learning?
• 1) Teach the theory/research about impact on
  student learning
• Cognitive Science
• Social Psychology
• Assessment

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• Model the practices in our own classrooms
• Candidates will teach as they were taught and
  assess as they were assessed.
• Beyond modeling, talk about why youre doing
  what youre doing to make the application of
  theory explicit.

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• 3) Develop and assess candidates skill in
  applying the practices
• Build candidate skill over time, through
• working with real samples of K-12
• student work
• Create assessments that call for
• application of the theory in practice.