posted by:
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Brian Drayton
on April 5, 2000
at 2:01PM
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subject:
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Summary message
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SUMMARY OF THIS DISCUSSION We present this summary so that those who may not have been following the discussion can get a flavor of what happened there. We urge you to go to the archive of the whole event, which will remain on the site. You can read the messages, and follow up with the individual contributors by email from the LSC-Net site, and see what resources and practices were recommended. We would like to thank all who participated, and especially those who contributed. LSC-Net is very grateful to Paul Black for taking part and stimulating this substantive conversation.
---Introduction--- The discussion began with a focus on good questions that can support students' conceptual growth, and their facility in evaluating their learning and their products: "Where can we find, or how can we develop, questions that explore students' understanding of the concepts and methods of science? Can we share good examples, sources, and useful ideas to help us invent and evaluate such questions? Who has gotten their pupils to develop the skills and habits of self-assessment? How can peer assessment be encouraged, and how is it best used?"
As participants considered different aspects of the topic, new challenges and contexts brought out new questions: "A long-range goal of our project is to develop assessments for the new curriculum modules that assess students' understanding of important science concepts as well as their ability to apply themStanding in the shadows of high-stakes, state testing, we too are concerned about how to encourage our faculty to move from traditional assessments which emphasize memorization to assessments that measure student learning and understanding of science concepts. What kind of support and encouragement must we provide?"
"How do we engage teachers in meaningful discussion and activities that support the need for a change in assessment practices?"
"How does formative assessment practices enable both the teacher and student to decide on next steps?"
"How do we really know what students are thinking and understanding?"
"Many of our teachers, especially those at the middle school level, remain focused on content based assessment even though they understand and recognize the importance of assessing students' understanding of concepts and methodology. The big challenge for professional developers is to assist teachers in finding structures that will bring change in assessment practices. "
----Responses---- Many of the responses focused on two broad themes: the search for good questions, and factors that support the growth of a reflective culture in which a formative assessment of student understanding is a central feature of the classroom for both teachers and students.
----A. Learning about good questions--- Paul Black has emphasized the importance of good questions -- how to recognize them, how to use them: "what is needed are good questions, i.e. questions which encourage pupils to write and/or talk at some length, and questions which bear upon important procedural and conceptual aspects of learning. here teachers can help by sharing good questions, and discussing why they are good so we can all help develop ideas about quality." One discussant asked: " I am curious to know if any projects have designed specific structures for teachers to develop questions in a collaborative context. How did you set these up (protocols?), how often did the groups meet?, and how did they "test" and refine the questions they developed? How do teachers report and get feedback about the questioning and dialogues they engage in with the students in their classrooms? In response, Paul Black told of a process using "question stems," very basic questions that both model and generate fruitful questions and thoughtful discussions in the classroom. He also provided a full list of examples of these question stems. One participant tried this approach right away.
---B. Cultural changes in the classroom, school and district--- The discussion exposed the tip of an ice-berg: the use of good questions and reflective practice to build a formative, learning environment in the science or mathematics classroom may require changes in the culture of the classroom, the school, and even the district. The goals of the classroom may need to be reconsidered or cast in a new light, and new ways of teacher collaboration and program evaluation may be needed to support the growth of this learning culture, in which faculty reflection supports teacher reflection, with the aim of fostering student thought and understanding of content -- deep learning.
" Besides questioning, there are other challenges pre-service students face, such as facilitating meaningful, equitable "science talks" with children. In my opinion, it's the most demanding part of the science meeting. In addition to use appropriate social behaviors, it's challenging to get children to interpret data and use the evidence to formulate a conclusion, to explain, to identify a pattern or relationship, to self-assess what they know or don't know."
Some messages described experiments with teacher learning -- modeling and exploring the teachers the pedagogy that we would like to see in the classroom. The sense of teaching as a learning process comes through clearly: " Since the conference I have been experimenting with comments on journal reflections that are turned in to me as part of a class that I am teaching.My challenge has been to use the comments I write to push the teachers thinking to the next level, or to encourage the teachers to reflect in a more meaningful way. I like the idea of jumping in and finding out how to make this work, but am still struggling with what makes a meaningful comment that will make a difference in a student's thinking."
"We have shifted the focus of reflection meetings to "What do students understand, and how do you know?" It has restored teachers' confidence in using observation and questions to make judgments of student performance, rather than relying solely on objective measures. The group meetings and reflection on student work are essential in developing this confidence these judgments need to become more consistent across teachers, and need to be a "theory" subject to revision as the teacher makes more observations."
" During our early workwe discovered that teachers believed they were implementing the program when they taught the lessons using the materials, but observation showed that often they unintentionally changed an inquiry task providing a high level of cognitive challenge into a routine procedural task with a low level of challenge. A consultant helped us change this culture in several ways. First, she taught teachers a process for reflecting focused on examining student understanding, whether teacher questions kept the cognitive demands high, and posing what questions would have kept the inquiry at a high level. She then recruited some of the veteran risk takers to allow her to video their lessons and lead a similar reflection processwith the consultants' help, they established a practice of asking teachers to keep a reflective journal of the lessons they taught, and bringing the journal and samples of student work to their meetings. Our teacher-leaders have kept up this routine, using department meetings every other week to reflect together on videos, journals and student work, along with alignment, pacing and other issues that come before the group."
"Now in our 5th year, the program requires all 2,600 K-6 teachers from the districts' 64elementary sites to turn in at least 1 embedded assessment packet from one FOSS module. One of the most profound outcomes has been the ability of teachers to recognize student learning by examining extensively other student work. "
"To understand what and how their students are learning, pre-service teachers collect assessment information from two children with different abilities. They use a wide range of assessment methods At the end of the investigation, they interpret all of the collected information, explain in writing how their students thinking has changed (or not changed), and propose next steps in teaching and learning. "
Paul addressed this thread in the discussion. Many of the relevant points had already been made in his talk to the January conference (which you can see on the site under the "Conference" area). However, there is much more to be said. Paul emphasized "the importance of thinking reflectively about children's responses - to see through them to what they might tell you about the children's thinking", and offered some practice comments: "The title "Cultural Change" is very appropriate - I've found elsewhere that teachers may say, and believe, that they are adopting an innovation when in fact they are assimilating superficial aspects only and changing nothing. For some primary teachers, formative dialogue and feedback are social functions, not cognitive or learning functions. We have found it very important to ask teachers to keep a journal: those that do take on change often do not realise how much they are changing.facilitating "science talks" is a most difficult and rewarding part of the work. My experience has been that pupils need to try doing it, and be supported as they do it badly at first, before some clarity and fluency develops. Here, as elsewhere, peer assessment might help : pupils might be asked to assess a talk, maybe working in small groups, and present and compare their assessments. This helps all to develop criteria of quality I would suggest you put no marks or grades on the work, but for each one make comments which will help the pupil to understand what needs doing to improve the work. One or two things is better than many, and things the pupils can be expected to take action on are the ones that might help. However, if this is a big change from normal practice, it will have to be explained carefully first: many pupils love having grades to compare, and may feel cheated, as might their parents. You'll have to get them to see that comparing grades doesn't actually help them to learn something from their efforts. The goal is to enable "reflection after the event which give a teacher that personal feedback without which (like the pupils) one cannot learn."
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