Determining Success of Technology Integration in Classrooms, Schools, and Districts (Part 4)

 

I ended my last post by writing that attaining the top stage of popular models of technology integration was often equated with “success.” I stated that it was “unfortunate.”

Why?

The top stage in each model (and similar ones) implies that when the teacher has reached this apex of implementation, students are thoroughly engaged in learning tasks and the classroom has become a site of active student learning—the unspoken goal of process-driven cheerleaders of student-centered classrooms. In effect, those teachers who have reached the top rung of the ladder have fully implemented technology to produce the highest levels of student involvement in learning content and skills. Implicitly, that top rung becomes the gold standard of effective teaching in integrating technologies into classroom lessons. And that is unfortunate.

What many smart people ignore or forget is that describing exemplars of technology integration is not synonymous with student-centered teaching. And student-centered teaching is not the same as “success” in student learning. This bias toward one form of teaching leading to student “success”–however defined–is historic (see here).

After all, should K-12 teacher practices change when they reach the apex of the models for integrating technology into their lessons? Certainly, the technologies themselves do not require such a fundamental change from teacher-centered to student-centered. Evidence of technology use in Europe, Asia, and the Americas  (see JECR PDF) have pointed out how powerful devices often end up being used to support teacher-centered instruction.

What’s missing from the assumption that student-centered learning is the same as “successful” technology integration is that reaching the final stage in these models says little about whether students have actually learned anything from the content- and skill-driven classroom lessons they have experienced. Advocates of these technology integration models assume that engagement—the process of hooking children and youth into learning—will move teachers to become student-centered and that shift in practice will yield gains in academic achievement.  Maybe.

I say “maybe” because there is a prior crucial step that needs elaboration and documentation before anyone can determine what students have learned.  Although existing models of technology integration believe that engagement and student-centered classroom practices will produce gains in academic achievement, the book I am now researching will not test this underlying assumption. In my research, thus far, I focus on whether exemplary teachers, schools, and districts in integrating technologies into daily practices have altered what occurs daily in classrooms.

Why focus on changes in classroom teaching and not student outcomes? My answer goes back to the central issue of putting new technologies into daily practice. The all-important implementation question–too often overlooked, ignored, or forgotten by champions of new technologies–remains: have teachers altered their classroom practices as a consequence of using new technologies? Without such changes in teaching practices, then student learning and outcomes can hardly be expected to improve. That statement is a fundamental belief in establishing and operating any formal school, past and present. Thus, without changes in daily classroom practice, any gains in student academic achievement could not be attributed to what happens in classrooms. Improved measures of student achievement might then be the result of changes in student demography, school leadership, shifts in organizational culture or other factors–not what teachers were doing everyday with students. In my research, then, I am concentrating on determining to what degree teachers have altered how they teach as a consequence of integrating new technologies into their lessons.

Far too little research has been done in answering this question about changes in teaching practices. So in researching and writing this book, I, too, focus on the process of classroom change and not yet how much and to what degree students have learned from these lessons. Once changes in classroom practices can be documented then, and only then, can one begin to research how much and to what degree students have learned content and skills. As you have probably guessed by now, that would be another book, not the one I will be writing.

 

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The Perils of PBL’s Popularity (John Larmer)

Recently, I have published posts on Project-based Learning. A student and foundation official  have raised questions with and about PBL as an appropriate instructional approach. As this instructional reform, once the darling of early and mid-20th century Progressives, has surged again in practitioner and researcher circles, criticism of its implementation and use needs to be aired. For this post, I turn to John Larmer, a champion of PBL, who believes deeply in the instructional approach but shows concern over its potential faddishness and too easy acceptance. Former high school teacher of social studies and English, Larmer is Editor in Chief of publications at the Buck Institute for Education (BIE). He writes often about Project-Based Learning. This post originally appeared March 21, 2016

As readers of this blog well know, Project Based Learning is a hot topic in education these days. The progressive teaching method is being touted as one of the best ways to engage 21st-century students and develop a deeper understanding of content as well as build success skills such as critical thinking/problem-solving, collaboration, communication, and self-management.

At the Buck Institute for Education, we think PBL is even more than that; it can be absolutely transformative for students who experience enough high-quality PBL in their K-12 years. They gain not only understanding and success skills but also confidence in their ability as independent learners and a greater sense of their own efficacy and power.

PBL is transformative for teachers and schools, too, as they create real-world connections to learning, change school culture, and guide students to successfully complete high-quality projects. And teachers who use PBL regularly can experience  “the joy of teaching,” which they may not – make that likely will not – in a test-prep, drill-and-kill environment.

You’ll notice I use the term “high-quality” twice in the above, which points to a real concern we have at BIE. We don’t want PBL to become yesterday’s news, another education fad for which much is promised and little delivered. This is why BIE developed and promotes the Gold Standard PBL model: to help ensure PBL’s place as a permanent, regular feature of 21st century education for all students.

If it’s not done well, I see PBL facing three dangers:

1. Unprepared Teachers & Lack of Support
Teachers who are not prepared to design and implement projects effectively will see lackluster student performance and face daunting classroom management challenges. Shifting from traditional practice to PBL is not a simple matter of adding another tool to a teacher’s toolbox. PBL is not just another way to “cover standards” that’s a little more engaging for students. PBL represents a different philosophy about what and how students should learn in school, and many teachers and school leaders do not yet realize its implications. It was born in the progressive education movement associated with John Dewey, with more recent ties to constructivism and the work of Jean Piaget. Adding to this situation is the fact that most teachers teach the way they were taught, and did not experience PBL when they were students – so they don’t have a vision for what it can be.

Schools and districts need to provide teachers with opportunites for extensive and ongoing professional development, from workshops provided by experts (like BIE’s) to follow-up coaching, to work in their professional learning communities. Policies around grading, pacing guides, benchmark assessments, and more will need to be re-examined. It also means having longer class periods or blocks of time for project work, and rearranging how students are assigned to classrooms to allow for shared students for secondary-level multi-subject projects. And – I can’t stress this enough – teachers will need LOTS of time to plan projects and reflect on their practice. This means changing school schedules to create collaborative planning time, re-purposing staff meetings, perhaps providing (paid) time in the summer, and finding other creative solutions. All of this is a tall order, I realize, but these are the kinds of changes it will take for PBL to stick.

2. PBL-Lite
Many teachers and schools will create (or purchase from commercial vendors) lessons or activities that are called “project-based” and think they’re checking the box that says “we do PBL” – but find little change in student engagement or achievement, and certainly not a transformation. I’ve been seeing curriculum materials offered online and in catalogs that tout “inquiry” and “hands-on learning” that, while better than many traditional materials, are not really authentic and do not go very deep; they do not have the power of Gold Standard PBL. (For example, I’ve seen social studies “projects” from publishers that have kids writing pretend letters to government officials – instead of actually taking action to address a real-world issue – and math “projects” where students go through a set of worksheets to imagine themselves running a small business, instead of actually creating a business or at least an authentic proposal for one.)

With materials that are PBL-lite, we might see some gains in student engagement, and perhaps to some extent deeper learning; many of these materials are in fact better than the traditional alternatives for teaching the content. But the effects will be limited.

3. PBL Only for Special Occasions or Some Students
PBL might be relegated to special niches, instead of being used as a primary vehicle for teaching the curriculum – or being provided equitably for all students. I’ve heard about really cool projects that were done in “genius hours” or “maker spaces” or Gifted and Talented programs, or by A.P. students in May after the exams are over… but most students in the “regular program” did not experience PBL. Or schools might do powerful school-wide projects that do involve all students once a year or so, but the teaching of traditional academic subject matter remains unchanged. If this happens, the promise of PBL to build deeper understanding, build 21st century success skills, and transform the lives of all students, especially those furthest from educational opportunity, will remain unfulfilled.

Project-based Learning Needs More Learning (Gisèle Huff)

Gisèle Huff is the executive director of the Jaquelin Hume Foundation. This post appeared on Flypaper, August 3, 2016

After almost eighteen years in the field of education, I have become convinced of the need to transform the way our children learn so that they can confront the unknowable challenges of the twenty-first century. I applaud any effort aimed at changing the mindset of those involved in the education system so that they can leave behind the traditional twentieth-century paradigm, which was (and in most places still is) an industrial model. Today’s enthusiasm for project-based learning (PBL) fits into the paradigm-shifting category, helpfully emphasizing that we learn best by doing. As a complete educational philosophy or strategy, however, it falls short on many fronts.

At some level, doing must be based on knowing. Yet in almost every PBL model that I’ve observed—Summit Public Schools being the main exception—little or nothing is said about the acquisition of knowledge. Instead, these models emphasize the completion of the project, and whatever knowledge students may actually acquire seems incidental and not clearly assessed. Of course, it’s true that knowledge alone is insufficient for today’s economy. Skills and dispositions must be developed in the learner for content to be relevant and engaging. But it is that “content” (a.k.a. knowledge) that students must master in order to apply it to hands-on projects. There is no need to sacrifice the rigor of content. Only its delivery and assessment must be changed to move from Carnegie units and seat time to competency-based learning.

The second problem with PBL as the main vehicle for students’ learning experience is that it is not nearly as personalized as its adherents would have us believe. One of the big problems that personalized learning seeks to solve is the “Swiss cheese” problem.  Because we all learn differently, moving along at a one-size-fits-all pace means that slower students are left with big gaps of knowledge and skills—gaps that will come back to haunt them later on. That is of particular concern when PBL occurs at the elementary level, when youngsters are building their knowledge base.

When PBL is deployed, knowledge acquisition is driven by the demands of a given project. The object may be “deeper learning,” but the outcome is definitely narrower, potentially excluding other critical knowledge and skills. This should be solvable, yet the PBL instructional models make no specific reference to mastery. In other words, students can complete a project without mastering the skills in that project or the knowledge underlying its successful completion.

PBL also suffers from a significant “free rider” problem. Because most PBL schools have students work in groups and do little tracking of individual performance, some students naturally coast on the work of others. In his five-minute “commencement speech” on the Getting Smart website, Tom Vander Ark encourages listeners to develop skills in team leadership and project management in order to succeed in the new economy. But each team has only one leader and one manager. Where does that leave the other members? In Most Likely to Succeed, a film focused on the largely PBL-based High Tech High, one of the two main students takes over a project that he has obsessed over and then fails to complete it in time. Somewhere along the line, the classmates who were once part of his group disappear. They seemingly abdicated their roles, and it is not clear how they benefited from the experience or how they were able to demonstrate their achievements in order to be assessed. The featured student himself doesn’t even master the knowledge and skills critical to the project! While embracing failure is an important part of a robust learning system, such setbacks should be used to help students revisit and master the requisite competencies. Kids should be provided with more insights into why they failed and what to do about it, so as to increase their likelihood of future success. Failure of core knowledge and skills is not an option in any effective learning environment.

Finally, PBL relies heavily on highly qualified teachers, so much so that High Tech High now trains its own. That’s well and good for High Tech High, but it isn’t a satisfactory formula for mass adoption of PBL. American public education faces an immense human capital problem that we have not been able to resolve since “A Nation at Risk” sounded the alarm in 1983. We cannot rely on extraordinary people to deliver a twenty-first-century education to all our children; not enough such people exist. We have to deploy strategies that empower the learners and teachers as they are, where they are. In its current form, PBL may work well for kids in boutique school settings. But it offers scant hope of solving education problems on the scale that America needs.

Why I’m Unsure Project-based Learning Prepares Students for College (Ronnie Estoque)

“Ronnie Estoque is a junior at Seattle’s Cleveland High School. He is a staff writer for Cleveland Publications, an intern at The Seattle Globalist and is interested in pursuing a career in journalism.” This appeared in the Seattle Times, June 16, 2016.

As a junior attending Cleveland High School, I am slowly approaching the arduous process of college applications. This has led me to reflect on whether or not Cleveland has prepared me for college-level work.

In the fall of 2010, Cleveland became a STEM high school with a focus on project-based learning. The newly designed curriculum was meant to emulate a work environment for students while teaching them how to use technology in their school work. Cleveland classes revolve around group work and projects. This unique way of teaching helps students build group-work skills, but does it prepare students for college, where students mostly work independently?

Linda Chen graduated from Cleveland in 2015 and is a freshman at the University of Washington. She enjoyed her time at Cleveland, but now sees one major flaw of project-based learning.

“The one thing I hated was that they (teachers) didn’t enforce student accountability during projects,” Chen said. “Most of the time it was me just doing all the work and someone else taking the credit.”

Group projects, in other words, don’t accurately reflect students’ individual knowledge and, more often than not, the students who work hard and complete their portion of projects also have to do more work to make up for the students who aren’t pulling their weight.

Kiet Sam also graduated in 2015 and is a freshman at the University of Washington majoring in computer science. Sam describes in stark contrast his college-level and the project-based learning at Cleveland.

“In college, almost all my work is completed independently.” Sam said. “Depending on your major there may be more projects, but in general, college is mostly to measure a student’s individual ability to perform.”

Cleveland students are judged on their individual knowledge through tests, but not as frequently as other high schools that don’t use project-based learning. Catherine Brown, the School of Life Sciences principal at Cleveland, said she thinks project-based learning has been good for the school.

Before, there were small pockets of success among the student population,” Brown said. “Now success is the new norm.”

And there’s evidence that the changes at Cleveland have made a difference. According to the state Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction, only 17 percent of 10th-graders at Cleveland met state standards for math in the 2009-10 school year. During the 2013-14 school year, that number dramatically increased to more than 80 percent.

Cleveland teacher Steve Pratt, who has taught at the school for 10 years, said the implementation of STEM and project-based learning at Cleveland has also led to a drastic change in student culture. According to Pratt, before STEM and project-based learning, students weren’t as engaged and eager to learn in class. Now, he sees more students striving to take their work more seriously.

“It has done great things for Cleveland even though there are still some things that need to be improved,” Pratt said.

Pratt is one of the teachers who enforces student accountability. In his classes, students can “fire” their group members during projects. Pratt holds a high standard for his students’ group work contributions, but not all Cleveland teachers do the same. He also believes that it can be difficult for students to adjust to project-based learning if they’re coming from a conventional style of teaching, and students can quickly fall behind in the workload. I believe more teachers, like Pratt, should hold students to higher standards.

While project-based learning, along with STEM, has done great things for Cleveland as a whole, I worry that many students won’t be as prepared for college as they need to be. I believe that more teachers at Cleveland need to hold students more accountable for the roles they play in projects. By holding students to higher standards during group projects, teachers will be able to teach them more about responsibility, time management, and prioritization.

Students like Chen and Sam, who do their share of project work — and more — are doing fine in college, although Chen said the adjustment to individual work was tough at first. I am concerned about the students who are piggybacking their way through Cleveland’s system. Those are the ones who will suffer most when they get to college. This worries me, as I also have been a student who has had to do the work of peers who didn’t do their share.

What will happen to them?

Using Computers To Transform Teaching and Learning: The Flight of a Butterfly Or a Bullet?*

As regular readers of this blog know, I have embarked on another project examining “best cases” of teachers, schools, and districts integrating computers into daily activities.  After four months of classroom observations, interviews with teachers and principals, and much reading I have begun to think of this project as a possible book. Much remains to be done, however, before it becomes one. In the fall, I will visit more classrooms and schools to do observations and interviews. I will do more reading of national surveys, case studies, and rigorous inquiries into what teachers and students do with devices. But the makings of a book are there in my mind.

So here is part of a proposal that I have sent to a publisher to see if they are interested. Subsequent posts will elaborate on other parts of this book proposal.

Overview and Rationale for Proposed Book

For over 30 years, I have examined the adoption and use of computers in schools (Teachers and Machines, 1986; Oversold and Underused, 2001, Inside the Black Box, 2013). I looked at the policy hype and over-promising accompanying new technologies in each decade. The question I asked was: what happens in schools and classrooms after the school board and superintendent adopt a policy of buying and deploying new technologies to improve schooling? This is the central question for any reform-minded policymaker, entrepreneur, parent, and practitioner because if teaching practices fail to change in the desired direction embedded in the policy then the chances of any changes in student performance are diminished considerably. Thus, in pursuing the issue of changes in classroom lessons in books, articles, and my blog, I moved back and forth between adopted policies for using computers, their classroom implementation, and shifts in teaching practices.

I described and analyzed computers in schools and classrooms across the U.S. including the highly touted Silicon Valley in the San Francisco Bay area. I tracked how these advocates and donors were often disappointed in how little school and classroom practice changed, anemic results in student achievement, and uncertainties in getting the right jobs after graduation, given the claims accompanying these devices and software.

There have been, however, occasional bright spots in individual teachers thoroughly integrating laptops and tablets into their practice and moving from teacher- to student-centered classrooms. And there were scattered instances of schools and districts adopting technologies wholesale and slowly altering cultures and structures to improve how teachers teach and students learn. I documented those occasional exemplars but such instances of classroom, school, and district integration were isolated and infrequent.

What slowly became clear to me over the years of studying the use of computers to improve how teachers teach and students learn and attain the overall purposes of public schooling is that policymakers have avoided asking basic questions accompanying any policy intended to reshape classroom practice. I concluded that those questions and their answers are crucial in understanding the role that computers in schools perform when it comes to teaching and learning.

This conclusion is behind my writing this book.

Reform-driven policymakers, entrepreneurs, researchers, practitioners, and parents have sought substantial changes over the past three decades in classrooms, schools, and districts to transform schooling while improving student outcomes. Yet, too often, they either avoided the inevitable steps that need to occur for such changes to materialize in schools or hastily leap-frogged over important ones. Four simple questions capture the essential steps in going from adopted policy to classroom practice.

1. Did policies aimed at improving student performance get fully, moderately, or partially implemented?
2. When implemented fully, did they change the content and practice of teaching?
3. Did changed classroom practices account for what students learned?
4. Did what students learn meet the intended policy goals?

These questions apply to innovations aimed at improving student academic performance such as creating small high schools and launching charter schools to states and districts adopting Common Core standards, competency-based learning and project-based teaching. Most importantly for this book, these questions pertain to making new technologies from laptops to hand-held devices not only accessible to every student but also expecting teachers to regularly use computers in lessons.

The questions emphasize the critical first step of actually implementing the adopted policy. Policies are not self-implementing. They require resources, technical assistance, staff development, and administrators and teacher to work together. This is especially so for teachers who are gatekeepers determining what enters the classroom door.

So without full or moderate implementation of a policy aimed at improving student performance, there is not much sense in pursuing answers to the other questions. Evidence of putting the policy into classroom practice is essential to determining the degree to which a policy is effective (or ineffective).

Once evidence of a policy’s implementation in schools and classrooms is available then the question of whether teaching practices have changed arises. This question gets at the nexus between teaching and learning that has been taken for granted in U.S. schools since the introduction of tax-supported public education nearly two centuries ago: Change teaching and then student learning will change. This is (and has been) the taken-for-granted belief driving reformers for the past century. Determining the degree to which teaching practices have changed in the desired direction and which have remained stable is essential.

The third question closes this circle of teaching producing learning by getting at what students have actually learned as a consequence of altered teaching practices. In the past half-century, policymakers have adopted measures of desired student outcomes (e.g., test scores, graduation rates, attendance, engagement in lessons). They assume that these measures capture what students have, indeed, learned. If teaching practices have changed in the desired direction, then changes in student outcomes (i.e., learning) can be attributed to those changes in classroom practices.

The final question returns to the immediate and long-term purposes of the adopted policy and asks for an evaluation of its intended and unintended outcomes. Immediate purposes might have concentrated on student test scores and graduation rates. Long-term purposes, the overall goals for tax-supported public schools, refer to job preparation, civic engagement, and producing independent and whole human beings.

These questions establish clear linkages between reform-driven policies and teaching practice. They steer this proposed book.

What if, however, policymakers, researchers, entrepreneurs, and parents looked not only at failed uses of classroom computers but also exemplary instances that have actually altered teaching practices to achieve policy ends? Examining how such “best cases” happened and their stability (or lack of it) might unlock the crucial next step of assessing changes in teaching practices and student outcomes.

_______________________________________________________

*The sub-title is a quote used by Philip Jackson, Life in Classrooms (1968), pp. 166-167.

The Bipolar Literature on Technology in U.S. Schools

Reform-minded researchers, techno-enthusiasts, and skeptics in the U.S. have created an immense, convoluted literature on the use and effectiveness of computers in classroom, schools, and districts. It is a literature that is bipolar.

At one end there is the fiercely manic accumulation of success stories of teachers and schools that use devices imaginatively and, according to some researchers, demonstrate small to moderate gains in test scores, increased student engagement, teacher satisfaction, and other desired outcomes (see here and here). These success stories, often teacher surveys and self-reports, clothed as scientific studies (see here and here) beat the drum directly or hum the tune just loud enough for others to hear that these new technologies, especially if they are student-centered (see here) and “personalize learning” (see here), are just short of magical in their engaging disengaged children and youth in learning.

At the other end is the depressing collection of studies that show disappointing results, even losses, in academic achievement and the lack of substantial change in teaching methods during and after use of the new technologies (see here and here). Included are tales told by upset teachers, irritated parents, and disillusioned school board members who authorized technological expenditures (see here, here, and here).

These two poles of manic and depressive research studies replicate the long-term struggle between factions of Progressives who vowed to reform public schools beginning in the early 20th century. The efficiency-driven, teacher-centered wing of these Progressives whipped the experiential, whole-child, student-centered wing then but these losers in the struggle have returned time and again to preach and teach the ideology they hold so dear. Each pole of this spectrum, then, recapitulates the century-old struggle but this time the slogans and phrases are embedded in the language of new technologies. “Project-based learning” and “personalized learning” have been appropriated by current reformers who, still seeking efficiency and productivity in teaching and learning have adopted the language of their historical opponents. Knowing this historical backdrop, however, does not create a middle to this continuum. And that is necessary.

Reducing modestly the bipolarity of this literature are individual and collective case studies (see here), carefully done ethnographies (see here), and meta-analyses of  research studies done over the past half-century to ascertain the effects (or lack thereof) of computers and software upon students and teachers (see here, here, and here).

Even with these meta-analyses, the overall literature oscillating between manic and depressive has yet to develop a midpoint. Inhabiting that midpoint in this bipolar distribution of computer studies would be rigorous (and longitudinal) studies of classrooms, schools, and districts that combine technology exemplars and failures; carefully done classroom and school analyses that go beyond teacher responses on questionnaires to show the pluses and minuses of “blended learning, “project based teaching,” and “personalized learning” (see here, here, and here).  Yet such studies are occasional, not common, entries into the research swamp of technology-in-schools.

So What?

What’s the big deal about a skewed distribution of research studies and non-scientific articles and books? Here are a few reasons.

1. By making clear that the literature is bipolar, readers can be more discriminating and less promiscuous in assessing claims researchers make and picking and choosing which research studies meet minimum standards of acceptability (e.g., rigorous qualitative, random controlled trials; size and representativeness of samples; brief or extended time of study; sponsored or independent research studies).
2. Without much of a middle to the spectrum, readers seeking accurate information about the use of computers in public schools, would end up sampling studies at either end of the bipolar continuum and would get a grossly inaccurate picture of computer use and its effects in U.S. schools.
3. Being aware that the current pushing and shoving over the aims of the new technologies and how they are implemented in school mirror historic struggles among different wings of educational Progressives a century ago can give the current generation of reform-driven policymakers and practitioners  a broader perspective on the fractious rhetorical and policy choices both educators and non-educators face now.

Part 2: Draining the Semantic Swamp of “Personalized Learning” : A View from Silicon Valley

In Part 1, based on what I have seen in 17 teachers’ classrooms in eight schools, I tried to explain what I observed by offering a “personalized learning” continuum. As small as the sample is–I will continue with the project in the Fall and add more classrooms and schools–I wanted to take a first pass at making sense (for myself and readers) of what I saw in schools located at the heart of technological enthusiasm, Silicon Valley. Let me be clear, I value no end of the spectrum more than the other. I have worked hard to strip away value-loaded words that suggest some kinds of “personalized learning” are better than others.

This “personalized learning spectrum,” I pointed out, is anchored in the tangled history of school reform, the family fight a century ago among those Progressives who were efficiency-driven and behaviorist in their solutions to problems of teaching and learning and fellow Progressives who sought student agency,  growth  of the “whole child,” and democratic schooling solving societal problems. Both wings of educational Progressives tried to uproot the traditional whole-group, direct instruction model dominating public schools then and since.

The efficiency-driven, behaviorist wing of the Progressives was victorious by the 1930s and has largely dominated school reform since. Innovations appeared each decade trumpeting the next new thing that would make teaching and learning more efficient and effective. In the 1950s, it was “programmed learning machines” (launched by behavioral psychologist, B.F. Skinner); in the 1970s, it was “mastery learning” (anchored in the work of University of Chicago psychologist Benjamin Bloom) followed by “competency-based” learning in the 1980s. Each of these innovations, in different guises, continue to be found in schools in 2016. In all instances, past and present, psychologists and school reformers broke down knowledge and skills into its small, digestible parts so students could learn at their own pace through individualized lessons and teacher use of “positive reinforcement.” Extrinsic rewards from teachers and, later, software programs, guided students along paths to acquiring requisite skills and knowledge. Promoters of these innovations claimed that these approaches were both efficient and effective in getting students to acquire prescribed content and skills, graduate,  enter the labor market, and become civically engaged adults.

Challenges to this dominant approach to teaching and learning occurred periodically from the student-centered, “whole child” wing of the Progressives who championed project-based teaching, student participation, and collaborative learning to achieve the same desired ends. While these determined efforts to individualize lessons to match academic and ability differences among students and create more student agency in lessons and units rose and fell over the years (e.g., the 1960s, 1990s) incrementally increasing within more and more schools, the dominant efficiency-driven whole-group, teacher-directed approach prevailed.

What has happened recently, however, is that those efficiency-minded school reformers, filled with optimism about the power of new technologies to “transform” teaching and learning, have appropriated the language of “whole child” Progressives.  Imbued with visions of students being prepared for a world where adults change jobs a half-dozen times in a lifetime, these efficiency-minded reformers tout schools that have tailored lessons (both online and offline) to individual students, turned teachers into coaches, and where students collaborate with one another thus reflecting the changed workplace of the 21st century. Efficiency-minded reformers’ victorious capture of the vocabulary of “personalized learning”  has made parsing the present-day world of school policies aimed at making classrooms havens of “personalized learning” most confusing to those unfamiliar with century-old struggles over similar issues.

Now consider the “personalized learning spectrum,” my first pass at making sense of this world I observed in Silicon Valley. At one end are teacher-centered lessons and programs tailored for individual students to progress at that own speed. Such “personal” instructional materials and teaching seek efficient and effective learning using a behavioral approach rich in positive reinforcement that has clear historical underpinnings dating back nearly a century. At the other end of the continuum are, again, century-old efforts to create student-centered whole- and small-group lessons and programs that seek student agency and shape how children grow cognitively, psychologically, emotionally, and physically.  And, of course, on this spectrum hugging the middle of the range are hybrids mixing the two approaches. To get at this spread in 2016 within the eight schools I visited and 17 teachers I observed, I will give examples drawn from earlier posts on this blog and instances elsewhere in the U.S.  of each end of the spectrum and ones that inhabit the center.

At the behaviorist pole of the spectrum where skill-driven lessons tailored to differences among students cluster, different public schools and districts* drawn from across the nation exist such as  New Hampshire Virtual Learning Charter,  USC Hybrid High School, and Lindsay Unified School District (California). While these examples inhabit the behaviorist end of the continuum they are not cookie-cutter copies of one another–USC Hybrid High School differs in organization and content from New Hampshire Virtual Learning Charter. Yet I locate these schools and districts at this end of the spectrum because of their overall commitment to using existing online lessons (or crafting their own) anchored in discrete skills and knowledge, aligned to the Common Core standards, and tailored to the abilities and performance of individual students. Even though these schools and programs have appropriated the language of student-centeredness and encourage teachers to coach individuals and not lecture to groups, even scheduling student collaboration during lessons, their teacher-crafted playlists that vary for each student accompanied by assessments of skills and knowledge locates them here. And, finally, these programs seek the ends of thoughtful, fully engaged, and whole human beings–the same as other programs along the spectrum. And they still operate within the traditional format of K-8 and 9-12 age-graded schools

In the middle of the spectrum would be classrooms, schools and districts that have blended learning models (there are more than one) combining personalized lessons for individual students and teacher-directed classroom lessons such as ones taught by Aragon High School Spanish teacher, Nicole Elenz-Martin  and second-grade teacher Jennifer Auten at Montclaire Elementary School in Cupertino (CA) into blends of teacher- and student-centered lessons. Urban Rocketship schools in Silicon Valley, for example, has students working on online math and literacy software geared to questions  students will face on tests. They sit in cubicles for part of the day followed by chunks of time spent in classrooms where teacher-directed lessons occur.

The middle school math program I observed called Teach To One located in an Oakland (CA) K-8 school has different “modalities” that place it also in the center of the spectrum as well, tilting a bit toward the behaviorist end with its numbered math skills that have to be mastered before a student moves on. Also in Oakland is James Madison Middle School using a rotational version of blended learning for its 6th through eight graders.

I would also include teachers in the two Summit Charter schools I observed (Summit Prep–here–and Summit Rainier–here) who combined project-based teaching, online readings and self-assessments, individual coaching and collaborative work within 90-minute lessons. While Summit schools in which I observed teachers had explicitly committed itself to “project-based learning,” the projects were largely chosen by the teachers who collaborated with one another in making these decisions for all Summit schools; the projects were aligned to the Common Core state standards. While choices were given to students within these projects for presentations, reading materials, and other assignments, major decisions on projects were in teachers’ hands (the nine classes I observed at Summit schools were, for the most part, lodged at the second stage  (see here) of putting project-based learning into practice. This is why I placed these teachers and schools in the center of the continuum.

Such schools mix competency-based, individual lessons for children in large cubicle-filled rooms with teacher-directed lessons, project-based teaching. Like those at the behaviorist end, these programs lodged in the center of the spectrum contain differences among them. Yet they all work within the traditional age-graded school organization.

At the pole opposite the behaviorist end is the student-driven, “whole child” set of arrangements that prize multi-age groupings, high student participation in their learning through working on projects that both student and teacher develop, cultivate cross-disciplinary linkages, and dispense with age-graded arrangements (sometimes called “continuous progress”). Many of these schools claim that they “personalize learning” in their daily work to create graduates who are independent thinkers, can work in any environment, and help to make their communities better places to live. There are less than two-score of these schools nationally.

For example, there is High Tech High in San Diego that centers its instruction around project-based learning (and, from documents and exhibits, seem to be at the fourth stage of PBL). The teacher-led Avalon charter school in St. Paul (MN) relies on PBL implementing it through individualized learning plans. The Mission Hill School in Boston (MA), The Sycamore school in Claremont (CA), the Open Classroom at Lagunitas Elementary in San Geronimo (CA), the Continuous Progress Program at Highlands Elementary in Edina (MN)–all have multi-age groupings, project-based instruction, and focus on the “whole child.” And there are private schools such as The AltSchool, a series of small private schools located in big cities and the Khan Lab School (Mountain View, California) fit here as well. They say that they, too, “personalize learning.” Like the clusters of programs at the other end of the continuum and in the middle, much variation exists among these schools harbored here.

In the few months I observed schools and classrooms in Silicon Valley, I saw instances of technology being integrated into lessons and school programs aimed at achieving larger purposes of public schooling mentioned above. However, I saw no examples among these schools of multi-age groupings, advanced stages of project-based teaching, and other features listed above for this end of the continuum.

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These two posts are my first effort to make sense of the uses of technology to “personalize learning” that I have seen over the past few months in Silicon Valley schools and classrooms. Highly recommended to me as instances of teachers and schools that integrate technology seamlessly into their daily work, I found that their uses of technology to teach content and skills through “personalizing Learning” fell into types of programs that I could array along a continuum. All of these schools sought similar ends of producing graduates who could be problem-solvers, find jobs in a competitive labor market and become engaged in their communities.

I would appreciate comments from viewers about this first pass at understanding what I observed in these classrooms and schools. I welcome comments on the clarity (or lack of it), coherence (or lack of it) and helpfulness (or lack of it) of this spectrum in draining the semantic swamp of “personalized learning.”

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*None of the 17 teachers I observed taught wholly online so I do not include any examples here. Many of the teachers I watched, however, used a combination of online resources, teacher-directed lessons, and small-groups to “personalize learning” while conveying prescribed knowledge and skills aligned to Common Core standards adopted by the state of California.

Proof Points: Selling and Marketing “Blended Learning” to Educators and Parents

I have discovered the phrase “proof points” recently. I had known of “proof for existence” in arguments about God. I had known about the history of math proofs. But “proof points” in marketing digital technologies to schools, well, that was new to me.

So I looked up “proof points” and found that they are a favored marketing tool.

“Proof points are one of the four elements of a classic brand positioning, and are important for making points of difference believable. They provide credibility and support for the Key Points of Difference.”

Or this “monster list” infographic  that a blogger found citing  dozens of “proof points” for marketeers to use :

“Proof points” are common when the subject turns to technologies in schools. Here is one example of the extent that selling new technologies have seized the school market–$nearly 700 billion for K-12 schooling.  Proof points: Blended learning success in school districts, is a publication  that summarizes 12 case studies of schools and districts in the U.S. “Each short profile,” the article says,  “highlights key details in the district’s blended-learning strategy, the EdTech products used, and promising results in the form of test scores and graduation rates.”

Here are a few of the case studies the Clayton Christensen Institute for Disruptive Innovations, an organization devoted to spreading “blended learning,”  published last year.

Spokane, Washington, has developed and implemented blended learning in numerous programs across the district with a goal of increasing graduation rates and college and career readiness. Since implementing blended learning, the district’s graduation rate has increased from 60% in 2007 to 83% in 2014.

Hamilton County Community Unit School District 10, McLeansboro, Illinois, began offering blended learning during the 2012–13 school year as a way to shift its instructional model from whole-group instruction to personalized learning. An evaluation based on NWEA MAP scores shows students in grades using blended learning outperforming students in grades not using blended learning.

Spring City Elementary Hybrid Learning School, Spring City, Pennsylvania, uses a three-station Station Rotation model of blended learning. It has seen improved test scores in math, reading, and science since implementing its blended-learning program.

A casual reading of these three (see the other nine to determine how typical these are) make clear that the introduction of some form of “blended learning” caused scores and high school graduation rates to improve. By combining them in the same sentence–“blended learning” and improved metrics–the clear intent is not merely suggestive but forcefully states that one led to the other. That kind of sliding from description to “proven” solution is common in the ads we see when Googling as ads appear in our peripheral vision. Or watch TV ads for miracle drugs.  I assume that the metrics on improved test scores and graduation rates are accurate but, (and here is a huge “but” that should be capitalized) other factors can explain such improved outcomes than the onset of “blended learning.”

Not coming into play are key factors that have long influenced teacher and student outcomes. Consider the demography of students in families in the school and district. Or previous non-technological reforms of a decade or longer that altered existing curriculum, provided community services, and focused on building teacher expertise and skills. Or sustained leadership over a decade. Or altered pedagogies. And there are others yet all go unmentioned in the reductionist “proof points.”

What these “proof points” do, then, is reduce the complexity of schools as organizations where power, influence, relationships, and demography interact daily while avoiding the obvious point that tax-supported public schools are dissimilar to command-and-control operations in business.

From time to time, within the sales and marketing communities, warnings appear about such over-stated claims and shortcomings of “proof points.”  From a “Marketing Boot Camp” blog:

“It’s not enough to say you have studies to prove your claims. Elaborate on how the studies were uniquely conducted to shed light on the product’s proprietary formula so that it works more effectively. “

Or from a blogger on marketing for the well-known Gartner group:

“If you’re bombarded as much as most marketers are with pushed content, then you’re probably skeptical of one more claim for the “next big thing”. Every marketing technology and service provider, every specialized association and publication, and every “independent” pundit has at one time or another proclaimed the “next big thing” you need to pay attention to – and of course invest in. Even when they present proof points, I take the claims with a grain (sometimes a heaping teaspoon) of salt.”

But these occasional challenges to “proof points” are drowned out by marketing practices that have become mainstream in educational products and services. Such shabby logic in using “proof points” befits a carnival barker, not thoughtful and careful marketeers. Yes, it is slippery thinking transferred from the world of sales to the huge school market especially when new technologies are touted to improve teaching and learning. Nearly 35 years after A Nation at Risk roused reformers to tie education to the economy, sales and marketing pitches have grown to become as common as laptops in schools.

 

Confessions of a Luddite professor (Daniel Drezner)

Daniel W. Drezner is a professor of international politics at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. This post appeared in the Washington Post on April 28, 2016.

 

I had the good fortune on Wednesday to hear economist Robert Gordon talk about his magnum opus, “The Rise and Fall of American Economic Growth.” Gordon has a somber tale to tell. He argues that U.S. economic growth ain’t what it used to be, and that ain’t gonna change over the next 25 years. This is due to myriad headwinds such as demographic slowdowns, rising inequality, fiscal constraints, and — most important — the failure of newer technologies to jumpstart economic growth the way that the Second Industrial Revolution did.

It’s his last point — about the effect of information technology on productivity — that prompts so much fierce debate.  Economists are furiously debating whether the visible innovations in the information sector are leading to productivity advances that are going undetected in the current productivity statistics. On the one hand, the aggregate data suggests a serious productivity slowdown over the past decade. On the other hand, Google’s chief economist, Hal Varian, insists that “there is a lack of appreciation for what’s happening in Silicon Valley, because we don’t have a good way to measure it.”

Surely, there are sectors, such as higher education, in which technological innovations can yield significant productivity gains, right? All that talk about MOOCs and flipped classrooms and the like will make a difference in productivity, yes?

As an optimist, I’ve long resisted Gordon’s argument — but this is one area where I’m beginning to suspect that he’s right and Silicon Valley is wrong.

I’ve been teaching for close to 20 years now. During that time, the IT revolution has fundamentally transformed what I do on a day-to-day basis. It is massively easier for me to access data that helps inform my classes. The ability to use audio-visual methods to broadcast a video or audio to my students is much easier. I’ve Skyped in as a guest lecturer for numerous other colleagues. Course websites have made it far easier for me to communicate with my students, and for them to communicate with me. There is no denying that on some dimensions, technological change has made it much easier for me to do my day job.

And yet, over the past decade, I have also gone in a more Luddite direction. After having a laissez-faire policy on laptops in my classrooms for my first decade of teaching, I have pretty much banned them. I knew that taking notes by hand is much, much better for learning than taking notes on a computer (the latter allows the student to transcribe without thinking; the former forces the student to cognitively process what is worthy of note-taking and what is not), but I figured that was the student’s choice. The tipping point for me was research showing that open screens in a classroom distract students close to the screen. So I went all paternalistic and decided to eliminate them from my classroom. The effect was immediate — my students were more engaged with the material.

My lectures are pretty low-tech as well. I use videos in class on occasion, but I usually deploy them at the start and then start lecturing. Otherwise lights have to be dimmed and that’s an invitation for the student to tune out. Similarly, I don’t use Powerpoint for my notes — because that just invites the student to transcribe the points in the slide without thinking about them.

One could argue that Skyping in as a guest lecturer, or just broadcasting a superstar professor into other universities, could improve the quality of the classroom experience. But I doubt it. Speaking from experience, lecturing remotely is a radically imperfect substitute for interacting in the same physical space. A mediocre but in-the-flesh-professor still provides a superior education environment than a remote lecturer that one watches on a screen.

There has been one innovation over the past generation that has made my in-class teaching better. The whiteboard is way better than the blackboard to use. Otherwise, I have become warier of new technologies in the classroom.

Maybe this is just me being a Luddite, and, as digital natives, millennial professors will figure out how to properly exploit information technologies in the classroom. And outside of the classroom, I’m a pretty big fan of these new technologies.

But when it comes to higher education, I think Gordon is right and Varian is wrong. There are gains to be wrung from technological innovation — but they’re much more limited than Silicon Valley wants you to believe.

Cartoons on University Teaching

In looking for cartoons that caricature professors, research, and teaching–viewers of this blog have all seen up close professors teach–I found a few that got me to chuckle. Perhaps they will get you to grin. Enjoy!