Overlooked Educators Key to Personalized, Deeper Learning

Overlooked Educators Key to Personalized, Deeper Learning
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Art teacher Chris Michael gives tips for painting to Peak View Elementary School fifth grader Josh Hartman, 10, during class Tuesday, Nov. 18, 2014 in Penn Laird, Va. Michael is one of three area art teachers who received a grant from the Arts Council of the Valley. (AP Photo/Daily News-Record, Nikki Fox)

RCEd Commentary

In our drive for personalized, deeper learning, we’ve invested billions in education technology as the latest silver bullet, while ignoring proven non-tech practices and a pool of skilled educators who are often considered non-essential but could be instrumental in helping us get there.

We need not wait for ed tech to deliver fully on its promise. We can start today to scale up proven practices that promote personalized, deeper learning. Because we can’t – and shouldn’t try to – teacher-proof education, teachers must build capacity in essential skills. And to succeed at scale we must tap into a huge pool of experts that has been ignored to date.

Every district has professionals skilled in fostering personalized, deeper learning: art, music, and drama teachers; career and technical education instructors; and athletic coaches. They use practices that deeply engage their students, individually tailor their learning experiences, promote non-cognitive skills, and elicit the best from them in meaningful, demonstrable ways.

We must effectively scale up practices that change the roles of students and teachers and how they spend their time. The effort calls for in-depth content knowledge as well as implementing formative assessment practices and curriculum-embedded performance assessment, both of which foster higher-order cognitive and non-cognitive skills.

Achieving this at scale is a daunting challenge. While technology can help, research recently cited in Education Week reminded us of the persistent lag in high-quality implementation.

Deeper learning involves exploring content beyond factual recall as well as developing powerful cognitive and non-cognitive skills. Personalizing that learning involves tailoring educational experiences – opportunities, feedback, and interventions – to each student’s needs, strengths, interests, and context. Students learn and demonstrate their progress by doing – from creating work products to performing. The practitioners cited above employ these practices every day.

Excelling in the performing arts, CTE, or sports requires far more than superficially glancing at artwork, reading the notes in a score or words on a page, or just learning the basics. It inherently involves digging below the surface and developing the motivation and persistence to master complex skills that, in myriad ways, mirror what deeper learning calls for in academic subjects.

As defined by the Council of Chief State School Officers formative assessment “is a process used by teachers and students during instruction that provides feedback to adjust ongoing teaching and learning to improve students’ achievement of intended instructional outcomes.” Its practices have been researched more than any other type of assessment and found to support dramatic learning increases for all students while narrowing achievement gaps. The process is particularly powerful in fostering deeper learning and empowering students to take ownership of their learning.

Formative assessment descriptions typically include the following practices (the practitioners I’m highlighting regularly employ most, if not all, of them):

  • Teachers ensuring students understand the learning targets and criteria for success (what success looks like and how to get there);
  • Teachers gathering rich evidence of student learning through various means, from observation to work products;
  • Teachers providing individualized, descriptive feedback (rather than grades) that reflects student work and learning progressions;
  • Teachers and students engaging in meta-cognitive reflection and using the results, along with the evidence and the feedback, to adjust instruction and learning activities; and
  • Students engaging in self- and peer-assessment and serving as resources for one another

Providing individualized, qualitative feedback is one of the most difficult skills to master. But these educators – and their students – couldn’t function without it! Although these practitioners don’t have the academic content knowledge, they could be excellent models and provide ongoing support for their colleagues in this critical area.

Performance assessment is ideal for gauging deeper learning by asking students to apply their knowledge and skills in substantive ways. The range of products and demonstrations is limitless. This requirement poses significant challenges, especially for teachers steeped in the use of multiple-choice tests to measure student learning.

The educators I’m highlighting live in a performance-based world. Their work revolves around stimulating student performance and the complex tasks of evaluating substantive demonstrations of student learning, relating them to the success criteria and pathways as well as students’ trajectories, fashioning formative feedback to foster continued growth, and at some point making summative judgements (grades; work product recognition; selection of soloists, leading roles, starting positions, etc.). They can help academic subject teachers make the shift.

The arts and sports are often deemed luxuries. CTE has traditionally had second-class status. Advocates rightly highlight their benefits for students, from educating the whole child to helping those at risk reach their potential. I’m suggesting another powerful reason to maintain these programs: the benefits for academic subject teachers as they strive to meet the demands of personalized, deeper learning for all students. To succeed, we must tap this overlooked pool of skilled educators to help their colleagues scale up practices that will transform students’ educational experiences and outcomes.

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