Teaching Science 2.0

UWO is starting a new strand in our Master of Science in Education - Curriculum and Instruction degree program.  The program is entirely online, can be completed in about 2 years, and tuition is competitively priced.

The strand, Teaching 2.0, focuses on helping educators develop a vision for “21st Century” teaching.  Participants will explore the intersection between emerging technology and progressive pedagogy.

The world is changing. Globalization has influenced almost every aspect of society. Cell phones, texting, and the web, specifically social tools, have impacted business, politics, and the media and changed the way we communicate. For better or worse, it is inevitable that education will be impacted as well. As educators, we need to develop a vision of education that empowers teachers and students to collaborate, inquire, and create as they explore meaningful ideas.

This is not an educational technology graduate program. It is about more than technology tools. Instead, this strand focuses on helping educators transform their teaching. It is about harnessing these tools to foster creativity, inquiry, and problem solving. It is about exploring a variety of research-based teaching models and assessment techniques. It is about creating a meaningful and progressive curriculum that mixes student passions with educational standards.

Courses include:

MSE Core Courses

Introduction to C&I (3 cr)

Issues in K-12 Education (3 cr)

Educational Research (3 cr)

Improving Classroom Practice (6 cr)  This is a capstone / action research project.

Teaching 2.0 Strand Courses

Learning in a Connected World (4 cr)

Inquiry and Project Based Learning (3 cr)

Assessment (3 cr)

Creativity and Problem Solving (2 cr)

Special Topics (3 cr) The specific content of this course will be determined in collaboration with program participants.

Course Announcement

Last week, I observed a discussion on Twitter related to Dan Pink’s new book, Driven: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us. In this book, Pink reviews the psychological research related to motivation and applies it to business. On one side of the discussion, educators were excited about what we can learn about education from this book. On the other side was a strong critique of using business books to inform educational practice.

Pink’s Drive isn’t released (on Amazon, at least) yet, but this Ted Talk should give you a taste. (UPDATE: You can also read an interview with Public School Insights here.)

Pink states, “There is a mismatch between what science knows, and what business does.” The reward and punishment approach works for mechanistic “20^th Century tasks.” However, it doesn’t work for cognitively intense “21^st Century tasks.” This same statement is true in the classroom too. Extrinsic motivators and incentives may work to keep kids quiet, to keep them in their seats, and to compel them to memorize spelling lists and fact tables, but it builds a culture that trivializes learning. However, do we really need to wait for Dan Pink’s business book to tell us this?

Dan Pink is an engaging communicator and can present a well-crafted argument.  He is adept at “popularizing” research.  It is OK to read his book, but don’t forget - there are folks in education, experts even, that have already compellingly made this argument.

For example-

Alfie Kohn wrote about this nearly 20 years ago in the book Punished by Rewards.

In this groundbreaking book, Alfie Kohn shows that while manipulating people with incentives seems to work in the short run, it is a strategy that ultimately fails and even does lasting harm.  Our workplaces and classrooms will continue to decline, he argues, until we begin to question our reliance on a theory of motivation derived from laboratory animals.

Drawing from hundreds of studies, Kohn demonstrates that people actually do inferior work when they are enticed with money, grades, or other incentives. Programs that use rewards to change people’s behavior are similarly ineffective over the long run. Promising goodies to children for good behavior can never produce anything more than temporary obedience. In fact, the more we use artificial inducements to motivate people, the more they lose interest in what we’re bribing them to do. Rewards turn play into work, and work into drudgery.

Here is one of many examples from the research literature of mastery versus performance orientations and the impact on learning in science:

Pintrich and Sinatra (2003) state that a classroom environment that focuses on promoting mastery goals and dialogue for understanding is critical for learning to occur. The authors found that students hold one of two goals related to school achievement. Students that hold mastery goals focus on learning and understanding content. Students with performance goals focus on demonstrating their ability in comparison to other students. The researchers conclude that students who reported a focus on understanding as their primary goal orientation showed the greatest gains in conceptual understanding.

The students were actively engaged in activities and had an improved understanding of the concepts after the lessons. Students at the University of Michigan who endorsed mastery goal orientations showed a greater gain in their understanding of Newtonian physics than those students who did not endorse mastery goals. Students who espouse performance goals and do not endorse mastery goals show little or no improvement in conceptual understanding. In fact, performance goals without mastery goals have at best no effect on conceptual change, or may even hinder conceptual change. Mastery goals are promoted in contexts where the teachers emphasize learning and create situations where students can make choices and feel autonomous. Recognizing students for improvement can also help promote the adoption of mastery goals. Performance goals are promoted in contexts where teachers use normative grading and recognize students for their performance relative to others.

Dan Pink’s book is based on a wide body of research that has already been published. The premise of the book is that extrinsic motivators do not work for cognitively demanding tasks. That conclusion should be a ‘no-brainer’ for educators as it has been one of the pillars of progressive thinking for decades. But, instead of saying, “Well, duh!” educators will rush out (or online) to spend $20 to read how this applies to business.  What is the allure of books like A Whole New Mind, and Drive? Why do we need business “experts” to tell us what we should already know?

—

Pintrich, P. R. & Sinatra, G.M. (2003) The role of Intentions in conceptual change learning. In G. M. Sinatra & P. R. Pintrich (Eds.), Intentional Conceptual Change. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.

Linda Darling-Hammond’s new book, The Flat World and Education: How America’s Commitment to Equity will Determine Our Future, is a candid and brutal critique of U.S. education policy. Darling-Hammond shows how our educational policy and reform efforts at the state and national level are incoherent, misguided and inequitable. She also provides a roadmap for reform that focuses on teacher development, equity, and ‘21^st Century Curriculum.’ This book is a must read for anyone that cares about the future of education in the U.S.

Unfortunately, the book is “Temporarily out of stock” at Amazon.com, so here is a summary:

In a landslide of data, Chapter 1 chronicles how our education system was developed for an industrial age and has remained stagnant as societal demands have changed. The U.S. is falling behind other countries as they make significant investments in education reform, including removing rigid centralized structures and increasing investments in teacher education and development. The reforms undertaken by high-performing countries involve long-term commitments (not a “Race to the Top”). In contrast, reforms in the U.S. are focused on evaluating students on discrete pieces of knowledge and not on addressing significant inequities in our education system. Schools in low-socioeconomic areas (which also serve a large population of minority students) are often underfunded and have the least experienced teachers.

Chapter 2 focuses on “opportunity gap” by chronicling how inequities in resources and teacher quality impact low-socioeconomic schools. One aspect of this is the differing quality of supports for English language learners, which often involves segregating them into ‘ELL ghettos.’ Chapter 2 closes with a glimmer of hope from small school reform efforts, but also cautions how most educational policies are unfriendly to any structures that are different from traditional schools.

Chapter 3 begins with an overview of standardized testing and the resulting negative impact on instructional practices. In most cases, high-stakes standardized testing in the U.S. has lead to teachers rushing through the curriculum instead of focusing on quality teaching and students who can answer test questions, but can not apply their knowledge and skills. In addition, these accountability reforms have lead to policies that punish low-performing students and schools instead of providing the supports they need. The chapter closes with a detailed debunking of the “Texas Miracle.” Texas is often used as a poster child for using standardized testing for improving student performance. However, these improvements disappear quickly when subjected to rigorous analysis. Comparisons are made to how standardized testing has also decreased opportunities for low-income students in Massachusetts.

Chapter 4 focuses on inequitable funding and the relationship between funding and quality. The chapter details legal efforts and challenges related to arguing for equitable funding. Darling-Hammond provides evidence that builds a relationship between funding and equity and describes how investments in quality pre-school experiences and quality pedagogy have demonstrable impacts.

Chapter 5 contrasts policy in three states by showing that investments in improving teacher quality, development of quality standard, and early-learning experiences has improved achievement and narrowed achievement gaps in North Carolina and Connecticut over the past 20 years. However, a focus on reducing property taxes in California has decimated investments in education and has been devastating for its education system. Chapter 6 compares the inconsistent and often incoherent education reform policies in the U.S. to efforts in Finland, North Korea, and Singapore. These three countries made significant long-term efforts in a number of areas over the past thirty years. Although the efforts in each country are unique, they share these comonalities:

• Equitable funding
• Eliminated tracking systems
• Focused learning standards/outcomes on higher order thinking skills
• Developed national teaching policies to develop stronger teacher education programs
• Supported ongoing teacher learning, including providing 15-25 hours per week for collaborative planning and improvement.
• Pursued consistent, long-term efforts.

Chapter 7 focuses on improving teacher preparation and quality by overhauling teacher preparation, fixing teacher recruitment and retention, and creating opportunities to share teacher knowledge and skill to create widespread expertise that can improve schools.

Chapter 8 provides a vision for what quality schools should look like. Our system should move towards smaller schools that keep students and teachers together for multiple years. This will allow for building strong communities of learners. In addition, inquiry and project-based structures should be used to promote intellectually challenging, personalized and relevant instruction that is assessed through performance-based measures. Teachers and administrators should be collaborative learners as they focus on continual improvement.

Chapter 9 provides a policy roadmap in three key areas to create a high-quality and equitable school system. First, coherent and meaningful learning goals must be created. These learning goals should be complemented by appropriate state and local assessment systems that evaluate students’ abilities to solve problems, and explain and defend their ideas. Second, policies must be enacted to equalize funding. Third, policies should be enacted to improve teacher quality. Increases in funding for recruitment and retention of quality teachers in high-need areas and mentoring programs are needed. Additionally, a reconceptualization of teacher education and professional development is needed to ensure that quality teaching is the “norm,” not the exception. Finally, these reforms for improving teacher quality must be done in concert with reforms to school cultures and structures to focus on collaborative learning.

Linda Darling-Hammond ends the book with a quote from Martin Luther King, Jr.

I said to my children, “I’m going to work and do everything that I can do to see that you get a good education. I don’t ever want you to forget that there are millions of God’s Children who will not and cannot get a good education, and I don’t want you feeling that you are better than they are. For you will never be what you ought to be until they are what they ought to be.”

The Flat World and Education provides an exhaustively researched call to action for educators and policymakers. However, what sets this book apart is the focus on a coherent and comprehensive policy vision of how to get to where we need to be.

Over the past 18 months, I have been tinkering around the edges of blogging.  This year, I want to get more serious about blogging — and creating a resource for teachers.  I will focus on posting more frequently, with a focus primarily on science education - connections between science “news” and the classroom, translating science education research, and illuminating good classroom practice.  In addition, starting in February I will regularly post classroom examples of formative assessment in science.