Slides for MetroNet Conference

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Slides for MetroNet Conference
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PART 1 A MISSION THAT MATTERS
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Source of authority and collaboration

• Mission drives the work of the school when it
  creates strong internal accountability for
  student learning.
• Staff believe they are responsible for student
  performance.
• Staff collaborate with one another to analyze
  student work as well as each others
  instructional practice.
• Staff learn new knowledge and skills based on
  what the students need and what the mission
  requires.

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Mission is the purpose of schooling

• Students are meant to leave school as not merely
  learned, but inquisitive not merely
  knowledgeable, but capable of using their
  education for good ends not merely with
  technical skills but with the appropriate habits
  of mind that determine whether the skill is used
  wisely, unwisely, or not used at all when needed.
  Again, content mastery is not the primary point
  of teaching even when mission refers to academic
  goals.
• -- Wiggins and McTighe (2007)

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Thoughts on Mission

• In the social sectors, the critical question is
  not How much money do we make per dollar of
  invested capital? but
• How effectively do we deliver on our mission
  and make a distinctive impact, relative to our
  resources?
• -Jim Collins, Good to Great

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what americans think21st century skills survey

• 80 of voters say that the kind of skills
  students need to learn to be prepared for the
  jobs of the 21st century is different from what
  they needed 20 years ago.
• 88 of voters say they believe that schools can
  and should incorporate 21st century skills such
  as critical thinking and problem-solving skills,
  computer and technology skills, and communication
  and self-direction skills into their curriculum.
• 66 of voters say they believe that students need
  more than just the basics of reading, writing and
  math schools also need to incorporate a broader
  range of skills.
• 53 say they believe schools should place an
  equal emphasis on 21st century skills and basic
  skills.

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The mission of the library was never more vital

• Preparing students for the challenges of college
  and the workplace has highlighted the need for
  information literacy and technology to be a
  meaningful component of curriculum designs and
  instructional practice.
• Engaging all learners in authentic, complex tasks
  that mirror the real world have elevated the
  research process from a procedure that is carried
  out in the library to an inquiry-based framework
  that supports learning in all subjects.
• Creating tailored learning experiences and
  resources to optimize learning for each child

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what learners needGlobal achievement gap (Tony
Wagner)

• critical thinking and problem solving
• collaboration
• agility and adaptability
• initiative and entrepreneurship
• effective oral and written communication
• accessing and analyzing information

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21st century look-forsschool district in
Virginia

• Students successfully grapple with higher-order
  questions asked by teacher.
• Students articulate meaningful response to so
  what (what if, why).
• Students generate higher-level questions.
• Students engage in authentic learning activities
  and/or create authentic work.
• Students defend positions with justification
  based on factual evidence and data.
• Students analyze and solve new problems by
  generating a variety of ideas and solutions.
• Students recognize and pose problems inherent in
  a given situation.
• Students adapt learned knowledge to more
  complex/ ambiguous situations.
• Students use and explain the right method of
  thinking (reasoning, decision making, problem
  solving, making judgments).
• Students evaluate and communicate their own
  thinking.
• Students make connections and predictions using
  prior knowledge.
• Students select, create, use and communicate
  effectiveness of a variety of tools, such as
  graphic organizers or grid paper.

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Using the mission to drive the work

• What would it look like if our plans,
  instruction, and assessments reflected program
  goals and Mission?
• What is the gap between what we need to do and
  what we currently do?
• The effectiveness of the library media program
  must be measured by what students learned as a
  result of their experiences.
• The funding, structures, and policies of the
  library media program must support the
  articulated learning goals and related job
  descriptions.

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Thinking through one policy at a time

• Example 1 Students in elementary school are
  only allowed to check out 2 books each week.
• Example 2 Students in ninth grade are all
  required to attend a 40 minute orientation
  session in the library. This is the only mandated
  session in their high school experience.
• Example 3 students are allowed to come to the
  library before school, after school and during
  their lunch periods

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PART 2 the laws of learning
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What learning requires

• Student learning is caused by their active
  efforts to construct knowledge which requires
  them to pursue inquiries, locate and evaluate
  evidence, make connections, analyze patterns,
  reconcile apparent discrepancies, deliberate
  about language, communicate thinking and revise
  their work.

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What work should look like in the Library Media
Center

• The school library is about empowerment,
  connectivity, engagement, interactivity, and its
  outcome is knowledge construction. This must be
  at the centre of our philosophy, the mandate for
  our role, and the driver of all our day-by-day
  teaching and learning actions.
• -- Ross Todd

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What we worry about

• Many students emerge from high school as passive
  processors who simply sop up intellectual input
  without active response. Some passive learners,
  although able to scrape by academically, endure
  chronic boredom in school and later suffer career
  ennui. Their habit of cognitive inactivity can
  lead to mediocre performance in college and later
  on the job. -- Mel Levine (2007)

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Why we worry about it

• Of all the virtues related to intellectual
  functioning, the most passive is the virtue of
  knowing the right answer. Knowing the right
  answer requires no decisions, carries no risks,
  and makes no demands. It is automatic. It is
  thoughtless. . . Knowing the right answer is
  overrated. It is a virtue there is no debate
  about that but in conventional views of
  intelligence it tends to be given far too much
  weight. Eleanor Duckworth (1965)

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If students were really learning then

• How would they move around the library?
• What kinds of questions would they ask you?
• What kinds of conversations would they have with
  their peers?
• What would they find interesting?
• What would they find frustrating?
• How long would it take them to complete a task?
• How would they work to overcome obstacles?
• Who would they want to collaborate with?
• How would they document what they found?
• How would they work to organize and develop their
  ideas and information?

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Role of learning principles

• Provide staff with an accessible, research-based,
  conceptual foundation of how people learn.
• Establish parameters for learning within which
  staff can be free to experiment, innovate, and be
  creative.
• Guide depersonalized decision-making about
  teaching practices, selection of instructional
  resource materials, and school policies/structures
  .
• Zmuda, McTighe, Wiggins, and Brown 2007

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How good is the teaching here?

• A central part of the discipline of improvement
  is the belief that if the teaching is good and
  powerful, if the conditions of work enable and
  support that practice, then we should be able to
  see immediate evidence that students are
  learning. If we cant then we should ask whether
  the teaching was really as good as we thought it
  was.
• -- Richard Elmore (2004)

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Do they view knowledge as problematic?

• View knowledge as something to be constructed
• Subject to influences and implications
• Multiple, contrasting, and potentially
  conflicting forms of knowledge are represented
  vs.
• Knowledge as given sees the subject content
  represented as facts, a body of truth to be
  acquired
• Static and able to be handled as property

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Do they engage in substantive conversations?

• Talking to learn and to understand in the
  classroom.
• Encourages critical reasoning such as making
  distinctions, applying ideas, forming
  generalizations, raising questions.
• Moves beyond just the recounting of experiences,
  facts, definitions, or procedures
• Sustained exploration of content lead to shared
  understandings
• vs.
• Talking to finish the task or locate the answer

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Do they work for deep understanding?

• Work to develop relatively complex understandings
  of central concepts as demonstrated by success in
  producing new knowledge VS.
• Surface acquaintance with meaning as demonstrated
  when students do not or can not use knowledge to
  make clear distinctions, arguments, solve
  problems and develop more complex understandings.

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SbD Learning Principles

• 1. The goal of all learning is fluent and
  flexible transfer powerful use of knowledge, in
  a variety of contexts.
• 2. Meaning is essential to learning, hence it is
  essential to teaching and assessing learning
  goals must make sense to the teacher and to the
  learner. There must be regular opportunities to
  see the value of what we are asked to learn, how
  it relates to past learning and how it will
  relate to future learning.
• 3. Successful learning requires metacognition
  learning how to reflect, self-assess, and use
  feedback to self adjust. These metacognitive
  processes can (and should) be taught explicitly.
• 4. The complexity of learning requires teachers
  to draw upon a rich repertoire of teaching and
  assessing strategies carefully matched to the
  learning goals.
• 5. Learning is most effective when differences in
  learners prior knowledge, interests and
  strengths are accommodated.

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Learning Principles (continued)

• 6. Greater learning depends upon the right blend
  of challenge and comfort knowing that success
  is attainable, and realizing that persistent
  effort will pay off.
• 7. To maximize learning, learners need multiple
  opportunities to practice in risk-free
  environments, to receive regular and specific
  feedback related to progress against standards,
  and timely opportunities to use the feedback to
  re-do and improve.
• 8. All learning-related work in schools should be
  judged against standards related to learning
  goals (for both students and adults) and
  reflecting how people learn.
• 9. As a model learning community, a school
  appropriately requires learning from every member
  of its community, since continual learning is
  vital for institutional as well as personal
  success.
• 10. All learners are capable of excellent work,
  if the right conditions for learning are
  established.

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What does it take to cause a student to learn?

• Based on your experience working with learners in
  the library, what conditions have you come to
  believe are necessary?

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What does it take to cause a student to learn?

• Motivation goal clarity
• A sense of progress and accomplishment that comes
  soon enough to motivate continuing on
• Satisfaction both potential and actual
• Thoughts in the learners head dont
  depress/discourage learning (I cant, Im bad at
  this, Its hopeless.)
• Comfort level with the messiness of learning in
  front of other people (both staff and peers)
• Stamina to keep going
• Clarity about procedure and process of doing
  quality work helps them calm down and make peace
  with what is complex, time-consuming
• Desire to get this sense of urgency, very clear
  on significance in own life

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What does it take to cause a student to learn?

• Willingness to step back from what we are
  confident is true (what we believe) and to be
  open to new ideas/ways of thinking
• Mutual trust and respect allows for feedback to
  be received in a way that improves future
  performance.
• Learning is inspired when it is designed to fit
  the learner (which requires self-knowledge as
  well as knowledge of the learners).

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PART 3 Developing tasks of significance
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THREE key principles about assessment

• Assessment motivates achievement when it is
  grounded in the real work of the discipline.
• Assessment informs the current and future
  performance of the student.
• Assessment results clarify whether the design of
  the learning had the intended effect on each
  learner.

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Doing real Work

• Students develop academic skills by working on
  real problems. In the process they acquire the
  knowledge, skills, and attitudes needed in a
  democratic society. . . In language arts, for
  instance, students must conduct research on
  issues and interests by generating ideas and
  questions, and by posing problems (NCTE and
  IRA). In science, students must develop the
  abilities necessary to do scientific inquiry
  (National Academy of Sciences). In mathematics,
  students must apply and adapt a variety of
  appropriate strategies to solve problems, and
  develop and evaluate arguments and proofs
  (National Council of Teachers of Mathematics).
• -- Harada and Yoshina (2005)

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Sample Performance indicators (drafted by AIME)

• The task requires learners to
• Discriminate from a wealth of resources for the
  intrinsic rewards of information, enrichment, and
  personal pleasure.
• Work to complete worthy tasks that require them
  to pursue and persist in the construction of
  logical and coherent arguments.
• Develop a research plan and make appropriate
  adjustments so that the process is efficient and
  effective.
• Pay close attention and engage with presented
  materials to act upon that which is meaningful,
  reliable, and useful.
• Act on their curiosity, intuition, and
  commonsense to determine the veracity of an
  argument, source, or idea so that they can
  resolve conflicting points of view,
  discrepancies, and perceived inaccuracies/ambiguit
  ies.

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THREE key principles about assessment

• Assessment motivates achievement when it is
  grounded in the real work of the discipline.
• Assessment informs the current and future
  performance of the student.
• Assessment results clarify whether the design of
  the learning had the intended effect on each
  learner.

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effective feedback

• Focuses on particular qualities of a students
  work in relation to established criteria
• Identifies strengths as well as weaknesses
• Provides guidance about what to do to improve
• Occurs strategically throughout the learning
  process.
• -- Darling-Hammond and Bransford (2005)

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cultivating a results-oriented mindset

• What difference did this make to student
  learning? . . . What did this do in terms of
  students being and becoming?
• -- Ross Todd, 2001

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RESULTS THAT ARE FUTURE-oRIENTED

• Provide clear criteria for evaluation that hold
  students accountable for the application and
  explanation of what they know, are able to do,
  and have come to understand.
• Contain regular opportunities for feedback and
  reflection to improve quality and sophistication
  of work.
• Fuse incremental lessons together through
  establishing the need for procedure, information,
  conceptual development, communication,
  reflection, and refinement.

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THREE key principles about assessment

• Assessment motivates achievement when it is
  grounded in the real work of the discipline.
• Assessment informs the current and future
  performance of the student.
• Assessment results clarify whether the design of
  the learning had the intended effect on each
  learner.

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ASSESSMENT TYPES

• Cornerstone assessments
• Summative assessments
• Formative assessments
• Metacognitive assessments

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cornerstone assessments

• Authentic challenges and accomplishments in the
  disciplines
• Anchor the curriculum and accomplish the schools
  mission
• Recur periodically throughout the K-12 program
  designed at current level of challenge
• -- Wiggins and McTighe, 2007

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Summative assessments

• Demonstrate what students have come to know, be
  able to do and understand as a result of the
  instructional experiences
• Require students to apply their learning to a new
  problem, dilemma, challenge, or query
• Significantly inform student grades as they are
  the most reliable source of student achievement.
• Give students the opportunity to try again or to
  revise their original work and receive a new
  grade for that achievement

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Formative assessments

• Helps make students thinking visible to
  themselves, their peers, and their teacher to
  guide modification and refinement
• Part of larger process of constructing
  understanding during which students attempt to
  connect new information to what they already know
  depending on their interests, experiences, and
  learning styles
• Provide students with the opportunity to practice
  key skills, explore core concepts, and apply new
  learning in a feedback-rich environment
• Can be scored but feedback focus is to track
  progress and development of student learning

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meta-cognitive assessments

• Provide students with the opportunity to reflect
  on their learning as they are learning
• Make students more cognizant of how they think
  and work so that they can improve performance
  mindful of current strengths and challenges
• Provide teachers and learning specialists with
  valuable information about the effectiveness of
  the instructional design
• Do not affect student grades