Science, Math, and History: The Historic Struggle to Marry Content and Pedagogy

Entangled, impossible to separate, that is what content and pedagogy have been and are in U.S. schooling. But not to reformers.

For decades, in science, math, and history policymakers, researchers, teacher educators, practitioners, and parents have argued over what kind of content should be taught in classrooms, playing down the inevitable presence of pedagogy or how the subject should be taught. Amnesiac reformers, pumped full of certitude, have pushed forward with “new science,” “new math” and “new history” curricula many times over  the past century believing that the content in of itself–particularly delivered by academic experts–will magically direct teachers how to put innovative units and lessons into practice in their classrooms.

Well-intentioned but uninformed, these reformers have ignored how knotted and twisted together they are. Knowing content is one strand and how to teach it is the other. Entwined forever.

Recently, educational researchers have acknowledged this age-old marriage by calling it “pedagogical content knowledge.” They have expanded it to include knowledge of how students learn, the context in which teaching occurs, and other areas. Alas, this idea has yet to crack the mindset of reform-minded policymakers.

Struggles over academic content among policymakers, parents, practitioners–I  use the popular word “wars”– have occurred time and again avoiding answers to fundamental questions of the very purpose of the subject. Consider science.

Determined reformers have battled for well over a century over the purposes for teaching science in elementary and secondary public schools. Is the purpose scientific literacy for all students because in a democratic and technological society, it is essential? Or is the purpose to prepare students for entering college and getting good jobs? Or is it to produce engineers and scientists that will keep U.S. militarily secure and economically competitive in a global economy?

From those competing, value-laden purposes have flowed, generation after generation, questions of content and pedagogy. Should teachers concentrate on teaching essential subject-matter (e.g., biology, chemistry, physics) to unknowing students or have students act as biologists, chemists, and physicists, posing hunches, inquiring, and solving problems? Should teachers concentrate on students becoming scientifically literate to deal with complex real-world issues that cut across disciplinary boundaries or stick to traditionally separate subjects?

These either-or questions of purpose became curricular battles over what content should be taught but seldom how it should be taught. In 1910, John Dewey foreshadowed these struggles when he said that:  “science has been taught too much as an accumulation of ready-made material with which students are to be made familiar, not enough as a method of thinking, an attitude of mind….”  Dewey saw the split that continues to divide policymakers and academics eager to reform science teaching over a century ago. [i]

The history of science curricula and pedagogy in both elementary and secondary schools reveals time and again a preoccupation with students learning scientific disciplines in traditional teacher-directed, textbook-driven ways alternating with science content focused on engaging students in the practice of scientific investigation and applying science to daily life—between learning  “about”  science and “doing” science. Note how pedagogy–how the subject should be taught–inevitably creeps into  what content should be taught.

Consider this quote from a national prestigious commission on science education:

Science for the high-school students has been too largely organized for the purpose of giving information and training in each of the sciences, the material being arranged in accordance with the logical sequence recognized by special students of that science…. The common method of science teaching too often has been of presenting the so-called essential with their definitions and classifications and of subordinating or omitting the common-place manifestations of science in home, community, civic, and industrial situations which make it easily possible for the learner to practice science.[i]

 Year written? 1920.

In subsequent years, “common-place manifestations of science in home” and elsewhere popped up in chemistry, physics, and biology courses. Specialists urged teachers to get students to work on projects such as building electric motors, eradicating mosquitoes in a community, and delving into the chemistry of food. Content and method were married.

In biology, for instance, curriculum experts recommended that teachers have their students see how colonies of bacteria were present in humans and animals and how they grow and spread in science labs. They recommended that colonies of bacteria be linked in classroom discussions and assignments to such direct questions to students as: Why wash your hands before meals? Why brush your teeth? Why cover garbage cans? [ii]

Supporters of traditional science courses and ways of teaching dismissed such efforts to engage students as “kitchen chemistry” and “toothbrush biology.”  How much of “kitchen chemistry” and “toothbrush biology” entered classrooms, however, is not known. Teacher responses to these policy swings in what purpose should drive science content varied greatly then (and now). How much of the new content and pedagogy entered lessons is unknown. Yet during these decades, when science literacy and relevance to students’ lives were strong, “doing” science where the content and pedagogy were one and the same seemingly triumphed over learning “about” science. But not for long.

After the Soviet Union launched Sputnik in 1957, public officials and education policymakers screamed for schools to produce more scientists, engineers, and mathematicians. The purpose for science content and instruction again shifted. Schools were drafted to defend the nation in the Cold War. The National Science Foundation funded academic experts in science to guide a total revision of the science curriculum to marry the learning ” about” to the “doing” of science.

The 1960s saw the “New Biology,” the “New Chemistry,” and the “New Physics” where university professors wrote texts, created materials, and ran summer institutes where they provided the content of the sciences to eager teachers. Scientists urged teachers to have their students solve real problems that required hypothesizing, experimenting, and reaching conclusions based on evidence. Content came first and pedagogy second again (see el_school science).

Since then, revisions of K-12 science content, in response to changes in social, political, and cultural life, have occurred again and again, led by both teachers and academic experts.  Today, it is the new science standards.

Again, how much of these changes in science content approved by commissions and state policymakers drifted down into classroom practice is, at best, hard to say. That teachers adapted lessons from new textbooks, ardent professional development during summers and science institutes led by academics, and cheerleading from superintendents and principals goes without saying. Also, it goes without saying that how much of the “new” curriculum settled into classrooms varied tremendously.

Even amid shifting purposes for science in public schools, reformers, including university scientists, too often subordinated pedagogy to content in the mistaken belief that changing the content of what students study will magically alter what occurs in classrooms. Not only in science has this occurred but also in math, and history.

I take up math and history in subsequent posts.

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[i] John Dewey, “Science as Subject-Matter and as Method,” Science (31), 1910, p.122.

[ii] Cited in DeBoer, A History of Ideas in Science Education, p. 97 of  Elliot Downing, “The Course of Study in Biology” in the National Society for the Study of Education, A Program for Teaching Science, 1932.

Teaching Isn’t Rocket Science. It’s Harder (Ryan Fuller)

Ryan Fuller describes his career as follows: “Throughout my career, I have sought meaningful work that made good use of my skills at organizations that aligned with my values and helped me grow. This pursuit has taken me from aerospace engineering to teaching to education leadership and now to data science. I completed a MicroMasters in Data Science to continue to pursue people-focused work using my analytical skills. My experiences have given me the innovative, analytical, and communication skills necessary to be successful in a wide variety of data positions. I enjoy collaborating with others to develop innovative ways to use data that leads to better outcomes for people.”

This article appeared in Slate, December 18, 2013.

 In 2007, when I was 22, I took a position as an aerospace engineer working on the design of NASA’s next-generation spacecraft. It was my dream job. I had just received a degree in mechanical engineering, and the only career ambition I could articulate was to work on something space-related. On my first days of work, I was awestruck by the drawings of Apollo-like spacecraft structures, by the conversations about how the heat shield would deflect when the craft landed in water and how much g-force astronauts could withstand. I couldn’t believe I wasn’t just watching a documentary on the space industry—I was inside it.

I was extremely motivated during my first year of work. I got in earlier and stayed later than most, and I tried to learn everything I could from my more experienced colleagues. The work wasn’t easy. Our team was trying to re-engineer, with modern technology, something that was designed in the ’60s. As a design engineer, I had to integrate the efforts of several different groups that often didn’t talk to each other or even get along very well. My deadlines haunted me like a thousand nightmares. Over the course of the next few years, though, I received awards and exceptional performance reviews, and I gained the respect of my colleagues, some of whom had been in the business for about as long as I had been alive.

Because I’ve worked as an aerospace engineer and later as a teacher through Teach for America—this is my second year of teaching 11^th grade math and robotics at Sierra High School in Colorado Springs—I find the public perception of both careers to be fascinating. When I tell people that I worked on the design of a NASA spacecraft, their mouths drop and their eyes pop, and their minds are no doubt filled with images of men in white lab coats running between rocket engines and blackboards filled with equations of untold complexity. Most people will give aerospace engineers tremendous respect, without having any idea what they actually do.

But no one can fully understand how difficult teaching in America’s highest-need communities is until he or she personally experiences it. When I solved engineering problems, I had to use my brain. When I solve teaching problems, I use my entire being—everything I have. A typical engineering task involves sending an email to a colleague about a potential design solution. A typical teacher task involves explaining for the fourth time how to get the variable out of the exponent while two students put their heads down, three students start texting, two girls in the back start talking, and one student provokes another from across the classroom.

As a teacher, I must prioritize the problems of getting the distracted students refocused and stabilizing the cross-classroom conflict before it escalates into a shouting match or worse, all the while making sure the learning of the other 25 students in the room doesn’t come to a complete halt. I also must address these problems in a consistent, respectful way that best serves the needs of the students, because if I don’t, the problems will increase in number and become more difficult to solve.

As an engineer, I dealt with very complex design problems, but before I decided how to solve them, I had a chance to think, research, and reflect for hours, days, or even weeks. I also had many opportunities to consult colleagues for advice before making any decisions. As a teacher, I have seconds to decide how to solve several problems at once, for hours at a time, without any real break, and with no other adults in the room to support them. There are days of teaching that make a day in the office seem like a vacation.

One of the biggest misconceptions about teaching is that it is a single job. Teaching is actually two jobs. The first job is the one that teachers are familiar with; people who have not taught can pretend it doesn’t exist. The tasks involved in this first job include lesson planning, grading, calling parents, writing emails, filling out paperwork, going to meetings, attending training, tutoring, and occasionally sponsoring a club or coaching a sport. The time allotted to teachers for this work is usually one hour per workday. But these tasks alone could easily fill a traditional 40-hour work week.

The second job is the teaching part of teaching, which would more aptly be called the performance. Every day, a teacher takes the stage to conduct a symphony of human development. A teacher must simultaneously explain the content correctly, make the material interesting, ensure that students are staying on task and understanding the material, and be ready to deal with the curve balls that will be thrown at her every 15 seconds—without flinching—for five hours. If, for some reason, she is not able to inspire, educate, and relate to 30 students at once, she has to be ready to get them back on track, because no matter what students say or do to detract from the lesson, they want structure, they want to learn, and they want to be prepared for life.

I experience more failure every five minutes of teaching than I experienced in an entire week as an engineer. Giving a presentation to NASA about how the thermal protection system of a spacecraft is connected to its primary structure is a cakewalk compared to getting 30 teenagers excited about logarithms. A difficult moment in engineering involves a customer in a big meeting pointing out a design problem that I hadn’t considered. The customer’s concerns can be eased with a carefully crafted statement along the lines of, “You’re right. We’ll look into it.” A difficult moment in teaching involves a student—one who has a history of being bullied and having suicidal thoughts—telling me that she is pregnant 30 seconds before class starts. What carefully crafted statement will help her?

Moments of success seem to come less often as a teacher, but when they do arrive, they can make up for all the failures: the excitement on a student’s face when she understands a concept after lots of struggle; the feeling of exhilaration when all the energy in the room is directed toward the day’s lesson; the shared laughter between teacher and student at a joke that only they understand. Sometimes successes doesn’t strike until later, as when I found out that a two-minute presentation I gave on petroleum engineering changed the areer path of one of my students. In each second of her chaotic day, a teacher has a chance to transform the lives of young people for the better. How many aerospace engineers can say that?

In teaching, a person can be extremely competent, work relentlessly, and still fail miserably. Especially in the first year or two on the job, success can seem impossible. For people who have been so successful up to that point in their lives—failure is a difficult thing to face, especially when that failure involves young people not being able to realize their full potential in life.

Because of all this, sometimes teachers in high-need communities think about leaving for other professions. As someone who quit his job designing a NASA spacecraft during a severe recession without any clear plan, I understand the power of doing what feels right to you—you have that choice, that privilege.

Just don’t forget about the ones who don’t have much in the way of choices and privileges. Don’t forget about the ones that don’t get to choose what school they go to. Who don’t get to choose who their teachers are. Who don’t get to choose how the students around them act. Who don’t get to choose what kind of environment they were born into. Don’t forget about them. They’ll be there Monday morning.

How to Use Technology in Education (Frederick Hess and Bror Saxberg)

 Frederick M. Hess is director of educational-policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute. Bror Saxberg is chief learning officer at Kaplan, Inc. They are the authors of  Breakthrough Leadership in the Digital Age: Using Learning Science to Reboot Schooling. This appeared in National Review Online, December 16, 2013

The book provides an invaluable template for how to best think about digital learning. Promising education technologies won’t “fix” schools or replace terrific teachers. Instead, they make it possible to reshape the teacher’s job, so that teachers and students have more opportunity for personalized, dynamic learning.

How can we expand on the book’s transformation of education? Well, the book has real limitations. Students learn best when eye and ear work in tandem — but books are a silent medium. Books are fixed, providing the same experience to every reader, every time. The material and language will inevitably be too difficult for some readers and too easy for others. Books can’t offer a live demonstration or a new explanation to a confused reader.

Online materials can be rapidly updated, are customizable to a student’s interests and reading level, and feature embedded exercises that let students apply new concepts and get immediate feedback. Virtual instruction makes it possible for students to access real, live teachers unavailable at their school; this can be a haven for some students, especially those reluctant to ask questions in class. Researchers have found that intelligent, computer-assisted tutoring systems are about 90 percent as effective as in-person tutors.

None of this will happen just by giving out iPads or mouthing platitudes about “flipped classrooms.” Rather, it requires getting three crucial things right. First, new tools should inspire a rethinking of what teachers, students, and schools do, and how they do it. If teaching remains static, sprinkling hardware into schools won’t much matter. Second, technology can’t be something that’s done to educators. Educators need to be helping to identify the problems to be solved and the ways technology can help, and up to their elbows in making it work. Third, the crucial lesson from those getting digital learning right is that it’s not the tools, but what’s done with them. When they discuss what’s working, the leaders of high-tech charter school systems like Carpe Diem and Rocketship Education, or heralded school districts like that of Mooresville, N.C., brush past the technology in order to focus relentlessly on learning, people, and problem-solving.

All of this is too often missed when tech enthusiasts promise miracles and tech skeptics lament that technology is an “attack on teachers.” What to make of such claims? The book didn’t work miracles or hurt teachers. It did allow us to reimagine teaching and learning, even if we’re still struggling to capitalize on that opportunity five centuries later. Here’s hoping we do better this time.

Cartoons on Digital Kids and Adults

Here’s my holiday gift to readers who might need a break from family gatherings, opening of presents, and over-eating. This monthly feature of cartoons looks at the ways that new technologies seize attention from both children and adults, parents and kids. I hope that at least one gets you to smile and, perhaps, a few to laugh aloud and shake your head in amazement at the cartoonist’s genius in capturing the truth of what each of us experiences. Enjoy!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Contradiction of School and Classroom Cultures (Part 2)

In the last post, I described a visit to a Southern California urban high school’s four social studies classes where the dominant culture expressed values of doing the least amount of work to pass the academic course. For most of the students, classroom habits revealed far more tedium than enthusiasm for, or even interest in, learning. Most of the disengaged students treated the classes like buzzing mosquitoes that had to be endured for 43 minutes before freedom came when bells ended the period.

Then after the class observations, I walked down the hallway and watched an assembly of a few hundred juniors and seniors sitting quietly and respectfully  honoring three school athletes who, through hard work, self-discipline, and display of skills had become national all-stars. They also had football scholarships to universities in hand. These players were on a team that had consistently beat rivals and was on the cusp of becoming state champions.

The disconnect between what values and habits I saw in these classrooms and the values and habits displayed by members of the football team who practice daily, play in interscholastic competition, and have to pass academic classes got me thinking about whether a school’s athletic  achievements and the spirit that flows from such hard work and grit spill over to the rest of the school influencing how non-athletes behave in classrooms and achieve academically.

Of course, I only saw these four social studies classes. How many of those 9th and 10th graders were on athletic teams, I do not know. Nor did I visit honor classes in math, science or Advanced Placement (the school had AP chemistry and calculus) that prized academic achievement, hard work, and self-discipline. Let’s grant that  such courses and classroom cultures existed in the school.

Keep in mind, however, the high school’s high dropout rate–less than 60 percent of students graduated high school–and persistent low performance on annual state tests. My hunch is that while such classes and academically engaged students were present,  in the face of such statistics, these classes hardly put a dent in the overall academic culture pervading most classrooms.

So I return to this disconnect, this apparent contradiction, between a school’s success in sports seemingly stopping at the classroom door by asking a few questions.

What does the research say about the connection between academic achievement and participation in high school sports?

No surprise here: The findings are mixed. One study of Ohio high schools concluded “that high schools that devote more energy to sports also produce higher test scores and higher graduation rates.” One writer summed up research on links between student athletes and academic achievement;

“One 2010 study by Betsey Stevenson, then at the University of Pennsylvania, found that, in a given state, increases in the number of girls playing high-school sports have historically generated higher college-attendance and employment rates among women. Another study, conducted by Columbia’s Margo Gardner, found that teenagers who participated in extracurriculars had higher college-graduation and voting rates, even after controlling for ethnicity, parental education, and other factors.”

But most students do not participate in interscholastic sports–40 percent is cited as the national average but if one were to look closely at some low-income, largely minority schools participation in competitive sports would be no more than 20 percent. For the 60 to 80 percent who do not compete, there is no research that I can find that shows a spillover affect from winning seasons in high school sports to academic culture in classrooms. What researchers and critics of high school sports programs have pointed out, however, is that so often academic programs are starved while dollars flow for hiring coaches (many of whom are not teachers), new locker rooms, and better turf for the playing field.  Some critics urge high schools to abandon interscholastic sports and spend more money on academics. See here and here.

But research findings are seldom invoked in providing resources for such value-laden policies as financing sports programs and cultivating academic success. Beliefs trump research time and again.

What  beliefs dominate current thinking about competitive athletics in high school?

For the high school I visited in Southern California and similar high schools elsewhere in the country (e.g., Dallas’s Carter High School, Cleveland’s Glenville High School), many adults believe that competitive sports are pipelines to university scholarships and an education that leads directly to middle and upper-middle class status. They also believe that winning teams build pride-in-school and community, promoting a spirit of achievement that flows across the entire school. See here and here.

So I return to the contradiction that I noticed when visiting social studies classes and then stepped into a sports assembly. Does a school’s athletic  achievements spill over to the rest of the school influencing how non-student athletes behave in classrooms and achieve academically?

From only watching four social studies classes in the California high school, I did not see it. But the sample is too small and may be unrepresentative of the larger school.  From what I have heard from athletic boosters clubs at every school I have taught at and observed, I want to say “yes.” When I turn to the research on high school sports and academics, one has to scratch to find such studies. Moreover, I have yet to see the spillover effect in a high school. So without seeing it or have studies that confirm such a connection, I can only say: I do not know.

Classroom and School Cultures: Contradictions (Part 1)

One of my former colleagues in anthropology once told me that he gags every time he hears the word “culture.” Why? Because “culture,” he said, has come to mean  everything under the sun and has thus become meaningless.

With my colleague’s gagging in mind, I will try to be careful in using the c-word in this post.

So let’s imagine going into a school.

What do you see? What do you hear the teachers and other staff members saying? What do the bulletin boards look like? How easy was it to enter the school? What are the children saying and doing? How noisy is it? Do you feel welcome or afraid? What is the general “feel” of the environment? All these questions and more pertain to the underlying stream of values and rituals that pervade schools. This underlying stream is the culture of that particular school.

The question I think about a lot is: Does a school culture influence strongly what values and rituals turn up in academic classrooms?  Can, for example, a school’s athletic success stir pride in students studying history to show up before the tardy bell rings? Sit down at their seat and start answering questions on the whiteboard that the teacher puts up daily? Can winning the state championship in football spill over into math and science classrooms so that students become engaged in studying the content, work quietly with partners in doing an assigned problem, and turn in homework regularly?

I do not know the answers to these questions. I will explore them in this two-part post.

Let me sketch out an example I saw up close recently.*

I sat in four social studies classes in a California urban high school that is largely minority and poor. With nearly a thousand students in 9th through 12th grades, the school, one of a half-dozen in the city, ranked the lowest of the city’s schools on annual state tests and graduated less than 60 percent of its students. Metal detectors and pat-downs by uniformed security personnel were daily rituals. Its football team had won state championships and provided an annual pipeline of scholarships for athletes to universities.

Since I saw only one teacher teaching classes in U.S. history and world geography, I will not generalize about classroom cultures elsewhere in the school.

While 20-plus students were enrolled in each class, only one had more than 20 students appear. The other classes had 10-15 students. Most were in their seats at the tardy bell but late arrivals entered throughout the period. The 16-year veteran social studies teacher was prepared for each class, amiable with students, and firm in following school and classroom rules.

One of the four classes (the largest with 24 students but 30 enrolled) was U.S. history but this day they were preparing for the state graduation test by going over items from a booklet prepared for this test. The teacher had an overhead projector with transparencies of test questions and topics from previous years. She marched through the items slowly by asking various students what the correct answers were and explaining why they were correct. Of the two dozen students about 8 were engaged with the lesson, the rest chatted until admonished by the teacher, applied cosmetics, had their heads down on the desks, or were engaged in other tasks. Late-comers gave slips to the teacher. The period lasted 43 minutes. The students packed up their belongings a few minutes before the bell rang.

The three ninth grade world geography classes were studying 19th century European imperialism in Africa. The teacher had the state standard for the lesson and assignment listed on the chalkboard with three questions for students to answer as they filed into the class.

There were 10-15 students in each of these classes. The teacher walked around the room making sure that cell phones were put away (a school-wide rule). She passed out  a worksheet drawn from the textbook chapter on imperialism. After 15 minutes, the teacher orally went over each question (she told them that for these questions they had copied down, the answers could be found on pp. 345-350 in the textbook and that they were going to be on Friday’s test).

Most of the students completed the worksheet and gave it to the teacher when the period ended. At least a third or more of the students in each class, however, chatted most of the time, slept, and did not complete the worksheet.

I do not know if these four classes were representative of classroom cultures in the rest of the school. Nothing much was expected of the students beyond textbook and worksheet answers. Most complied. The teacher worked hard at completing the lessons, collecting worksheets, and grading and returning them the next day. That was it.

From my perch in the back of the room in these four classes, I saw that students were largely disengaged from each lesson’s content. While school rules were enforced, the values, rituals, and habits favored the least amount of academic work possible. There were no disciplinary incidents that occurred in any of the four periods; the teacher maintained an orderly, safe classroom.

At the end of the fourth period class, I walked down the hall and stopped in and watched a joyous assembly of 11th and 12th grade students honoring athletes who had been chosen as all-stars to play in a U.S. Army-sponsored  football game.

And here is where the contradiction I noted above about school and classroom cultures occurred. I take it up in the next post.

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*I have disguised where the school is located and certain details to protect the privacy of participants.

Predictions about Technology in K-12 and Higher Education for 2024

For the past four years I have offered predictions of what I see around the corner for high-tech in K-12 schools (see December 26, 2009, December 30, 2010, December 29, 2011, and December 27, 2012 posts).

But not higher education. So I venture one now.

Last year was the year of the MOOC. Hysterical predictions of the end of higher education and the transformation of teaching soared through cyberspace and media (see here and here). And then just a few weeks ago, Sebastian Thrun, one of the “godfathers” of   MOOCs who sang the siren song of a revolutionized higher education, warbled goodbye to MOOCs. But MOOCs continue to thrive although the rhetoric has been dialed back (For an overview of the past year for MOOCs in a distinctly skeptical voice, see here).

For those who see MOOCs as a fine example of the Hype Cycle (as I do) I would put MOOCs in the “Trough of Disillusionment” in 2013. Over the next decade, however, I do believe, as others suggest, that there will be a slow crawl–see here–up the Slope of Enlightenment as community colleges and state universities, but not elite institutions, figure out how to incorporate MOOCs into revenue-producing degree programs (there are less than a handful now for the bachelors and masters degrees). No MOOCS, however, for K-12 public schools.

For public schools in 2013, reports of Los Angeles Unified School District largest (and most expensive) adoption of  iPads in the  U.S. overshadowed monthly announcements of  districts buying tablets for kindergartners. Vendors continued to tout interactive whiteboards, clickers, and devices  engaging children and increasing academic achievement. Policymakers mandated online courses for high school graduation.Blended learning, including “flipped” classrooms, spread across the country. Moreover, teacher bloggers told anyone who would read their posts how they integrated the use of new devices into daily lessons, including ways to accommodate English and math Common Core standards.

Where once limited teacher access to new technologies  doomed innovative electronic devices (recall film projectors, radios, instructional TV, computer labs in the 20th century), in 2013 policymakers have been largely victorious in getting laptops, tablets, and hand-held devices into the hands of most teachers and students.

With all of the above occurring, one would think that by 2024, age-graded schools and the familiar teaching and learning that occurs today in K-12 and universities  would have exited the rear door.

I do not think so. Getting access to powerful electronic devices for all students and teachers is surely a victory for those who believe in better technologies solving teaching and learning problems. But access does not guarantee use, especially the kind of use that vendors and ardent technophiles seek.

For nearly three decades, I have written about teacher and student access to, and instructional use of, computers in schools. In those articles and books, I have been skeptical of vendors’ and promoters’ claims about how these ever-changing electronic devices will transform age-graded schools and conventional teaching and learning. Even in the face of accumulated evidence that hardware and software, in of themselves, have not increased academic achievement, even in the face of self-evident truism that it is the teacher who is the key player in learning not the silicon chip, enthusiasts and vendors continue to click castanets for tablets, laptops, and other classroom devices as ways of getting test scores to go higher (see The_Impact_of_Digital_Technologies_on_Learning_FULL_REPORT_(2012) and here).

Amid that skepticism, however, I have often noted that many teachers adopted the latest information and communication devices and software not only for home use but also to become more efficient in planning lessons, using the Internet, grading students, communicating with parents and other educators, and dozens of other classroom and non-classroom tasks. Nor have my criticisms of policymakers’ decisions to purchase extensive hardware (far too often without teacher advice) prevented me from identifying (and celebrating) teachers leading classes in computer graphics, animation, and computer science as well as classroom teachers who have imaginatively and creatively integrated new devices and social media seamlessly into their daily lessons to advance student learning.

My allergy, however, to rose-colored scenarios of a future rich with technology remains.  I can only imagine how painful it must be for those hard-core advocates of more-technology-the-better who predicted the end of schooling years ago to see that public schools are still around.

So what might 2024 look like?

In the past four years, I have predicted that textbooks will be digitized, online learning will spread, and the onset of computer testing will create more access of devices across schools and accelerate classroom usage. These will fan out incrementally over the next decade and will be salient but hardly dominant in K-12 age-graded schools.

While the textbook market in higher education has shifted a great deal to e-books and less expensive ways of getting content into students’ devices, the K-12 market remains a proprietary domain of a handful of publishers (e.g. Pearson, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, and McGraw-Hill Education) in part due to the mechanics of  certain states (e.g.Florida, California, and Texas) dominating which texts get chosen. But changes continue. Vail (AZ) gave up textbooks; California permits districts to buy digital texts with state money; Florida will do so in 2015. Start-up companies are making digital texts available for under $20 as opposed to $80-100 prices. Changes in K-12 texts will occur in bits and pieces as publishers adapt to the impact of the web.

K-12 online learning will also spread slowly, very slowly, as blended learning and “flipped” classrooms gain traction, especially in low-income, largely minority districts. Both of these innovative twists on traditional classroom teaching, however, will reinforce the age-graded school, not destroy it.

What will shove forward greater use of online learning, however, is the implementation of adaptive testing through Common Core standards as two state consortia bring to the table their new online tests.

None of these incremental changes herald the disappearance of K-12 age-graded public schools or the dominant patterns of teacher-centered instruction. What these gradual changes will translate into is an array of options for teaching and learning available to both teachers and students.

A Second Look at iPads in Los Angeles

The rollout of iPads in Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) is becoming a classic case study of what not-to-do when implementing any innovation whether it is high-tech or low-tech.  I wrote about the adoption of the innovation six months ago.

What is clear now is that teachers and principals were excluded from the decision-making process. The Total Cost of Operation (TCO) was a mystery to the Board of Education who made the decision. And the initial deployment of the devices was so botched that the pilot project was put on hold.  Phase 2 and the eventual distribution of devices to all LAUSD students remains to be decided once errors have been sorted out.

Called The Common Core Technology Project, each iPad costs the district $678,  higher than the price of an iPad bought in an Apple store, but it comes with a case (no keyboard, however) and an array of pre-loaded software aimed at preparing students for the impending Common Core standards and the state online testing system. The Board of Education and Superintendent John Deasy want each student to have access to an iPad. With  mostly Latino and poor students in LAUSD, the eventual cost of this contract with Apple Inc. could run over $400 million.

Were the Board and Superintendent to have paused and examined the history of using technology in public schools, they might have thought twice before major bollixes occurred.

1. There is no body of evidence that iPads will increase math and reading scores on state standardized tests. There is no evidence that students using iPads (or laptops or desktop computers) will get decent paying jobs after graduation.

These are the most common reasons boards of education and school administrators across the nation give for buying tablets for K-12 students. But not in LAUSD.

Acquiring 1:1 iPads for students, according to the LAUSD press release is to: “provide an individualized, interactive and informative-rich learning environment” for every student. One would have to assume that such an “environment” would lead to gains in test scores. But it is an assumption. Since many low-income families do not have computers at home or Internet connections, providing iPads is a worthy reason–what used to be called “closing the digital divide“–for the large expenditure.

On what basis, however, will the district determine whether to move to phase 2 of the plan? Again, according to the official press release, the assessment of this first phase “will include feedback … from teachers, students, parents and other key stakeholders.” That’s it. No hard data on how often the devices were used, in what situations, and under what conditions. Nor mention of data on student outcomes.

Now, informal surveys of teachers and school administrators show mixed reactions, even disaffection for iPads in classrooms.

2. Apart from “closing the digital divide,” the main reason for the Apple Inc. contract is that Common Core standards and accompanying online tests are on the horizon and due to arrive in 2014-2015. LAUSD wants teachers and students to be ready.

3. The true cost of this experiment runs far higher than the projected $400 million to give iPads to 655,000 students. That is what Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) means. The cost for the iPad is given as $678 per unit (remember, there is no keyboard usually listed at $100 which will have to be bought eventually for secondary school students).Now, budget-watchers discovered that the devices will cost even more. An Oops! that surprised the Board of Education.

Funds to hire school technical assistants, providing the wireless infrastructure, loss of tablets, and repair of broken tablets, insurance, professional development for teachers, costs for replacement devices when three-year warranties expire—I could go on but these numbers double and triple the published hardware and software costs. Consider that the reports of the $30 million contract with Apple Inc. omitted that the Board of Education approved $50 million for this first phase to accommodate some of these other costs detailed above.

And just a few days ago, a major Oops! was announced when the Board of Education, in questioning a top administrator, discovered that the software license to use the math and English curriculum expires after three years—the clock began ticking last July when the Board approved the contract. Renewal of the license in just over two years will cost another $60 million. Add that to the TCO.

Intel, a company with a vested interest in Microsoft tablets and a losing competitor in the LAUSD bid for a contract, produced a white paper that pointed out that TCO runs from two to three times higher than the announced price of the device. No one said a word about that.

The point is that administrators and school boards eager to buy devices hide TCO in separate documents or glossy verbiage. In other instances, they simply do not know or care to find out in their enthusiasm for the innovation.  LAUSD experienced a perfect storm of mistakes in plunging into iPads without much forethought and a glance in the rear-view mirror for earlier reform debacles in putting into practice a high-tech innovation.

Anatomy of an English class: How the Common Core Is Shaping Instruction for One Miami Teacher (Sarah Carr)

Sarah Carr wrote this article for The Hechinger Report, October 15, 2013

MIAMI—English instructor Lois Seaman often speaks bluntly to her middle-school students about the increased expectations they will face under the new Common Core curriculum standards. “It’s like you are looking at this under a microscope; glean all you can from this text,” she told a class of eighth graders as they studied a passage from “Flowers for Algernon” by Daniel Keyes. “Common Core says, ‘Read like a detective and write like an investigative reporter.’”

 Seaman’s students at Richmond Heights Middle School will still be tested on the old state standards this school year. But like many of her colleagues, Seaman has already started adjusting her teaching approach to meet the new standards. Here are a few of her strategies, culled from her own research and materials and guidance provided to teachers by the Miami-Dade school district and the state.

Asking students to read multiple texts on the same theme:

This year, Seaman will assign the short story “The School Play” by Gary Soto, which includes a reference to the Donner Party, a group of American pioneers trapped in the Sierra Nevada snow during their mid 19th-century migration to California. Students will also read excerpts from diaries written by members of the Donner party in an effort to give them added insight into the short story. In addition, “Raymond’s Run,” a story about a girl who cares for her mentally disabled brother, will be accompanied by the poem “Brother and Sister” by Lewis Carroll. The pairings are part of Seaman’s effort to ensure students can analyze and write on multiple readings that explore similar themes—a key requirement of the Common Core^.

Seaman … has started adjusting her teaching style to meet the demands of the Common Core. 

Introducing more challenging readings:

Since the new standards call for teachers to introduce more challenging readings at younger grades, Seaman looked for texts that would force her middle school students out of their comfort zone in some way. Lewis Carroll’s “Brother and Sister,” for instance, engages them through humor (and is also focused on a theme many students can relate to: sibling rivalry). But it contains a mixture of antiquated and advanced words—such as mutton, wherefore, prudent, and indignantly—that Seaman knew many of her students would find difficult.

Requiring students to analyze readings independently:

When Seaman’s eighth graders started reading “Flowers for Algernon” this fall, she asked them to dive in on their own. The class did not read the opening passage together or review biographical information about the author, as they might have done in the past. Instead, the students read the first paragraph silently and then discussed it with a partner (in a new twist, Seaman told them to have an “intellectual” conversation rather than simply saying, “discuss”). At the end of those conversations, the students turned in bulleted lists with their observations about genre, setting, main characters, and story conflict. If Florida uses the PARCC exam (which appears increasingly unlikely) or something like it, the test will likely require students to write analytical essays on clusters of readings. Partly as a result, Seaman is trying to ensure students feel comfortable undertaking literary analysis without much prior background information, context, or large group discussion.

Assigning more analytical writing exercises:

Over the course of her classes, Seaman repeatedly reminds students to support almost anything they write with evidence. “It can never just be about yourself,” she tells them. “We can’t just throw things out. We have to back them up.” She hammers this point home deliberately. The PARCC exam will require students to write essays citing evidence from multiple readings. By contrast, Florida’s current standardized test focuses just on expository and persuasive writings; citing facts and evidence from the texts isn’t weighted nearly as heavily as it will be under PARCC. Seaman is trying to encourage even one of her sixth grade classes comprised largely of English language learners to focus more on evidence in their writing, advising them to start sentences with, “I know this because… .”

For another look at an English teacher at work on the Common Core, see John Merrow’s piece shown on PBS August 13, 2013.

Teachers Author a History Textbook: Being in the Right Place at the Right Time

In achieving success, talent is overrated while persistence and luck are underrated.

That is the takeaway from the story I will tell of how I (and a co-author) wrote a U.S. history textbook in the late-1960s that sought to reform how teachers teach history and along the way had a few years of modest success. By the late-1970s, however, the text had largely disappeared from the marketplace.

Beginning at Glenville high school in Cleveland in the late-1950s and after I moved to Washington, D.C. to work at Cardozo high school in 1963, I developed  instructional materials that incorporated primary sources on what was then called Negro history. Scott,Foresman published The Negro in America in 1964 (reissued in 1971 as The Black Man in America) as part of their “Problems in American History” series. The book introduced primary sources mixed with questions for students to answer in what was then called “The New Social Studies.”

In 1966, a Scott,Foresman editor contacted me and asked me if I would like to write a U.S. history textbook that would be a series of paperbacks and not the familiar three-pound, single volume text. I was very interested. Over the next five years, I and co-author Philip Roden, a teacher at Evanston High School (IL), authored five paperback volumes, each one of about 175 pages, called The Promise of America.

Conceptualizing the book as one that would engage students, get them to think about how the past informs the present, how historians interpret sources, and develop basic thinking skills was an exciting adventure for me. I wanted very much to capitalize on my experience of creating lessons with content that motivated students and turned history into detective stories with endings that students could figure out for themselves.

Phil Roden and I developed lessons around ordinary people in the past whose lives were linked to social and political movements and key events–a Forty-Niner prospecting for gold in California, a Polish immigrant working in the Chicago stockyards, and what it was like to live in early 20th-century New York City tenements. We used fiction–a passage from Stephen Crane’s The Red Badge of Courage in the Civil War unit–lyrics from protest songs sung by late-19th century farmers, and cartoons pointing to the devastating effects of the Industrial Revolution on children.

We connected the past to the present. With a chronological framework, we would insert links to the present. For example, in the background of the Spanish-American War (1898), we included primary sources that got at the tension between national self-interest (acquiring colonies) and national ideals (democratic government) connecting both to the then war in Vietnam.

And we built critical thinking skills into the content of history. Our questions following readings, photos, cartoons, and charts aimed for comprehension, analysis, and evaluation. For example, a cartoon about inequality before the Civil War, students saw a foot-race featuring white runners with a black runner with ball-and-chain, a woman, and a Native American sitting on the bench. The winners would get wealth, security, and achievement.

We asked students comprehension questions–what did they see in the cartoon. We asked them who the bench-sitters represented and why they were there. We asked for evidence that would support such a representation of equality and inequality before the Civil War. We asked how they would draw the cartoon after Reconstruction.

Or when students finished readings on Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Poor People’s Campaign in Washington, D.C. (1968), we asked them: “How did the goals and methods of the reformers who went on the Poor People’s Campaign compare to those reformers between 1830 and 1860?”

In the early 1970s, Promise of America sold well in high schools and middle schools especially for students designated as “slow learners” or “under-achievers.”  By the late-1970s, however, back-to-basics and traditional instruction had seized U.S. schools; reformers had turned their backs on open classrooms, student-centered activities, and connecting the present and the past. The hard-back, single volume three-pound textbook returned to history classrooms. Sales dropped to zero by the end of the 1970s.

But, oh, what a fine run it was for those years! Writing five paperbacks, seeing them published, hearing from students and teachers who loved and hated the readings, cartoons, photos, and questions, getting the book banned in communities outraged by the language used in the text, and inquiry-driven lessons–it was a personal high. Just thinking that maybe some students and teachers learned that history was far more than recalling facts for a test was more than worth the effort.

I and Phil Roden were lucky in being around at a time–a door opened–when reformers called for major changes in traditional history instruction and a national publisher was willing to invest in a totally different kind of U.S. textbook. We were young teachers who believed that what we produced would be better for both teachers and students in learning history. We worked five years–we persisted–and saw our work get into classrooms. Then the door closed.

Did Promise of America alter daily instruction in classrooms?  Textbooks are tools and it depended greatly on who the teachers were, what they believed, and what expertise they had. Chances are that the paperbacks may have helped those teachers ready for the kind of content and skills we offered but in most classrooms where Promise of America was the text, well, I cannot say.