RoboReporter Newsletter Series on Engaged Student Learning This booklet presents a compilation of articles published by the author in its 2014 RoboReporter Newsletter series on STEM learning. The articles provide commentary on Robert Marzano's writings on The Highly Engaged Classroom as applied to the project-based learning environment championed by the author and others in their shared pursuit of engaged student learning.
CONTENTS Article 1. Kids Need Time to Linger and Loiter 2. It's All So Personal 3. Marzano's 4 Keys 4. I Can Do Important Stuff 5. My Life, ... My Project Written by: DON BERTRAND, Founder and CEO of the RoboAchievement Co LLC
Citations Robert Marzano and Deborah Pickering, (2008). The Highly Engaged Classroom. Thousand Oaks, California: Corwin Press. Markus, H. and Nurius, P. (1986). Possible Selves, American Psychologist, 41, 954-969.
Kids Need Time to Linger and Loiter “Kids need time to linger and loiter.” Wow! What a shocking statement and from an important educator at that. AND I FULLY AGREE! This telling observation was made in a talk heard at the recent 2014 Connecticut STEM Conference. In between sessions on tethered marine-bot competitions presented by SeaPerch, http://www.seaperch.org/index, and tips on how to spice up math enrichment challenges, I encountered this gem of a statement that summed up all that we groped at and strained to share. Yes, kids are at the center of all that we do. And they can’t be rushed to move on. Their development and learning needs time. Creativity is generated through probing, time-consuming freedom to explore, to try, to fail, to start over, to begin again, to renew. That’s how we build learning. I lead with this quote since I too want to awake, to recenter the discussion on respectful consideration of the centrality of the student to the education process we espouse. Where are they, what do they want, what finds appeal, what can we teach, in what direction do we guide and most importantly "HOW?". As the founder of RoboAchiever <http://www.roboachiever.com>, a STEM learning enrichment program with a hands-on, activity-centered approach to learning, I never cease to amaze at the power of our students to astonish and achieve, given some goal direction, challenges, tools and obstacles, and time to reflect - to decide. I hope in this series to share with you why I believe that, in today’s environment, project-based learning is particularly well suited to address the 3 Keys to advance student learning and address the problems inherent in the many “gaps” we seek to close:
Engagement Self-Responsibility and Jobs/Career/Life Relevance.
I need to forthrightly admit, at the beginning, that much of what I write will track the sentiments and teachings expressed by noted author and educator, Robert Marzano. In his works he did not hesitate to criticize the limitations of the Bloom Taxonomy, upon which much of his teachings are built, and to amplify and extend. I can only hope to partly live up to such contributing example by here sharing my thoughts, as informed by experience in the field, on our attempts at implementation of developmental project-based learning.
IT’S All So Personal
Engagement means more than fleeting attention. It captures the whole of you. But how is that done for students who we are only getting to know? The first step, of course, is to get to know them. Learning is a per-sonal effort. It is not distant, cold, formal - and excite. And the student must be interested, motivated, invested and involved. Now to get the students’ attention and go beyond - to engage, Marzano makes several important observations (Marzano and Pickering 2008). Calling on the research of others, he speaks of the different parts of memory: sensory memory, working memory, and permanent memory. He makes the observation that “If information does not get into working memory, it has no chance of being processed.” We may Wow! with the helicopter or the catchy hipster beat, but it may be the project challenge, the task pointed at a desired end goal, the job that get’s this first triggered attention that we can then call engagement.
Marzano’s 4 Keys Okay I brought in the ‘bots, the 'copters, the bubbling volcano, the demo and tools, the balls and bats. So I, as the project-based learning Guide, must bring some stuff likely to interest - with potential to engage. But maybe pure reliance on stuff, is simply too easy a cop out. Interest must be excited by more than just stuff. Marzano’s work (Marzano and Pickering 2008) talks of the teaching guide’s possible discussion of surprising facts, excited discussion of personal anecdotal accounts, and other techniques that can engender student interest, but we’re talking of project-based learning here - and “hands-on” projects more particularly. So we must here at least recommend the selection of interesting and exciting good stuff to engage. Interest is only the 2nd of the four elements to be addressed in the effort to Engage. Here’s Marzano's list: 1. 2. 3. 4.
Secure and open emotional state Interest Perceived importance, and Perceptions of the project's efficacy (confident of ability to succeed).
The first is what he denotes as addressing the student’s emotional state their security, comfort, energy level and openness for the discovery and learning that is to be achieved. He writes, “The classroom certainly influences many aspects of emotional engagement. Here we consider three: (1) students’ energy levels, (2) a teacher’s positive demeanor, and (3) the students’ perceptions of acceptance.” Physical activity and other techniques are mentioned to address the students’ energy level, humor and other techniques to favorably dispose the students to the day’s tasks, but I want here to comment on his discussion of the last element - the student’s perception of acceptance. This particularly has bearing on the project-based learning environment. He talks of the supportive value placed by students on collaborative team, peer-topeer engagement. I have often taken great delight in seeing the joy and
pride of students taking leadership in voicing a winning observation or learned step to their peers. In this regard, it’s interesting to note how “pair learning” could just as well equally be phrased "peer learning ". Such paired approach to learning is championed in the Hour of Code sponsored by such tech notables as Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg. This is the worldwide hour-devoted focus on STEM-related “computer programming.” They recommend students work in pairs - not solo. They then help teach each other, and reciprocally support each other's learning. Now turning back to the question of interest -- to not only get the students’ attention but to go beyond - to engage. Marzano makes several important observations. Calling on the research of others, he speaks of the different parts of memory: sensory memory, working memory, permanent memory and makes the further observation “If information does not get into working memory, it has no chance of being processed.” We get to the sensory with the "Wow!" of the helicopter, the catchy hipster beat, the (s)hero example, but it will be the working project task, the job task at hand, that moves this triggered attention to the working memory stage.
I Can Do Important Stuff In the previous section, we checked to assure that the kids are feeling secure, in a good emotional state, and we’ve sparked their interest in today’s topic. To now reach what Marzano calls the highest level of “maintained situational interest” we’ve possibly utilized game-like activities, introduced friendly controversial discussion, presented unusual information and effective questioning strategies. His work The Highly Engaged Classroom (Marzano 2008) provides the details. Now moving on to true student “engagement” with a discussion of Marzano's last two keys to learning engagement: 3. Perceived importance, and 4. Perceptions of the project's efficacy (confident of ability to succeed) As with different levels of memory engagement, where working memory has the most lingering impact, Marzano’s learning research points to different student perceptions of “importance,” with the highest rank given to those topics appealing to a student’s higher order, overarching values like what they aspire to become, who they want to please. He describes these as the “self system,” the idealized sense of goals and values that one has uniquely developed for themselves over the years; albeit greatly influenced by life experience and the effect of close others. In a classroom setting it is difficult to hope for a topical presentation that is aptly tailored to the self-systems of each of the various students. Marzano’s answer to this worthwhile but difficult goal is to introduce “choice.” In my understanding, this means we should strive to allow students as much room as our practical settings permit as to both the means or methods of engagement and the selection of aspects of the presented topic for individualized, focused attention. We as Project Guides should, by knowing each student, attempt to provide suggestions on how the presented topic relates to the student’s higher idealized values. Could relate to current or future family, world health, future wealth, lifestyle, religion, academics or career. Don’t know? Each student will be different, and they
should be encouraged to learn of themselves, self-find, and self-describe their own self- system and document how the learning activity might best be made to relate. In the project learning environment, I have taken this lesson to heart by, in fact, revising even certain individualized core components of our curriculum to replace standard scripted fare with a more open menu of activity selections. All this individual choice opportunity is provided even with the hope of encouraging pair and peer learning, as well as team cooperation and engagement. The challenge then, of course, is to maintain a coherent developmental learning system of 21st century skills, with common goals and systems of measurement when the student's freedom of activity is not only allowed but encouraged. This challenge, though, forces us to rethink course content as not the sole focus, but rather as complementing (or maybe even simply serving as the means to achieve) the more fundamental goal to encourage, prepare and inspire our students to become lifelong learners. We close this section with attention to the 4th engagement key: each student's self assessment of their own ability to take on the challenge and, with appropriately expected tools and support, to achieve the desired end goal or task at hand. We again thank Marzano for comments concerning a teaching guide's need to observe a student's self-system as following either a “growth theory” or a “fixed theory” of development. A fixed theory says “I am who I am.” While a “growth theory” says “I am who I can be.” Student belief that through individualized effort they can develop, learn, grow and achieve, is the final key to the accepting student engagement we seek. Through our projects, that often start with the perception of a desired but apparent distant end-goal => THE THING. Proceeding to a candid description of the journey to be taken, the project step-by-step tasks to be studied and attacked, on the way to stair-stepped achievement of one’s desired result that now appears so distant and far. There’s no magic to
Marzano’s final observation here, citing the work of Hazel Markus (Markus and Nurisu 1986) with acknowledged recognition of special challenges and obstacles to some which we are charged to help overcome, “The extent to which stu-dents have developed clear conceptions of who they might become in the future enables them to develop skills and gather resources that add up to a sense of self-efficacy.” All that we’ve seen before in this series, should have prepared us for this culminating conclusion that the student’s vision of the future and confidence in their self-driven ability to achieve lies at the heart of what we do as Project Guides in the project-based learning environment. Through dem-onstrated project excellence, achievement through persistent trial and er-ror engagement, we can help the student see their bright future is in their confident and able hands. The final article in this series will focus on key attributes of what Marzano calls Personal Projects as a vehicle to integrate motivating personal life ambitions to the academic content found in standard school curricula. Again, I hope to present how the project-based learning approach well lends itself to such suggested methods of self-system inspired study integration and motivation.
My Life, … My Project In the earlier sections on the importance of student engagement for successful learning interaction, we found that personal attachment to the task at hand, with end-goal in mind, fosters attentive effort to the needed work involved. We now look at Marzano's closing attention to what he calls Personal Projects as bringing together all the earlier referenced observations in the course of a student's self-discovery and focused effort to goal realization (Marzano 2008). Based on our own project-based learning experience, a personalized approach is central to all that we do in a project-based learning environment. As we have earlier stated all learning, our goal in project-based learning is to provide real, hands-on, self-realized goal attainment with the hope that by building confidence in the value of focused effort the student is encouraged to adopt like strategies of dedicated personal commitment to his or her own school learning and other higher order life goals. Marzano talks of 7 key process elements of such Personal Project engagement: 1. A personally valued end-goal in mind 2. (S)heros, supporters or example of others who’ve achieved that goal 3. Knowledge of tools needed 4. Self-knowledge of beneficial personal changes to move forward 5. Developed plan with acknowledged degree of needed work involved 6. Identified small step that can now be taken to start
7. Honest self-evaluation of how you’re doing, with corrective action or resets as needed, and renewed movement toward endglization. Taking each of the foregoing Personal Project steps one-by-one: (1) our projects commonly begin with an end-goal in mind, whether it’s successful R/C helicopter flight or a Lego Mindstorms® RCX 'bot navigating a difficult landscape, the point is the goal as something valued to be achieved. (2) We are often required to point to learners in other settings or ourselves who have already completed the task and can provide a degree of supportive instructional guide. Videos can sometimes be helpful here. (3) The tool(s) often achieve high attention, since usually involving something new to the student, not seen before. The students never appear threatened by such tool introductions and demonstrations, such as the parts involved and how they work in a robot’s construction or an electronic circuit board on which the wires are to be plugged. (4) The students are now asked what changes need be made to further advance their project realization efforts. The learning gets somewhat personal here, where the student is challenged to reflect on what they already know, skills present or needing development to proceed. Recall the prior article in this series regarding affirmation of a “growth theory” of self as compared to a “fixed theory.” The student is encouraged to see who they can be. (5) The planning part is usually not too difficult to encourage and invite. The student is asked to see that the goal attainment comes at the end of a series of steps, which sometimes can come simply in the form of a building instruction guide. (6) Once the plan is established, identification and commitment to the first starting step that can be made is also often easily established in a hands-on project engagement enterprise. Maybe it’s gather the parts, assign team roles, read the instructions, or something like that. It’s important to note
here, that while each Personal Project is indeed personal to the student involved, it need not, and likely should not be developed in isolation. Shared discussion of values, the why’s and why not’s is critical to peer learning, and one of the keys to student engagement in the topic or project at hand. Healthy controversy or debate is a necessary part of teamwork, and commonly fosters healthy maintained interest and engagement. (7) Finally comes the required discipline to monitor one’s progress, for corrective trial and error learning to prove its true value in achieving the desired end-goal. Task successes along the way are to be directly acknowledged and applauded as the fuel to energize renewed quest to again take on those failures and challenges encountered along the way. Task failure should be seen not as something to be avoided at all costs, but rather as common to almost all goal-oriented, developmental learning pursuit. Think about first riding a 2-wheel bicycle for example. What did you do then? Simply continue to walk? No, you got up and tried again until the bicycle ride soon became almost second hand; smooth, even somestimes, dare I say, with no hands. The difference today though, from first try at a bike, is that we must encourage our students to be aware of what’s going on; that they are the stewards of their own desired end-goal results. They must acknowledge and give explicit recognition and voice to the steps involved in the Personal Project undertaking itself. The 7 steps should ultimately become a learning mantra. I believe that repeated demonstration to oneself of the value and pleasure of achievement from gainfully focused process engagement toward a valued project goal, will reinforce extension to the student’s other higher order goal and life pursuits. This concludes our series on the Engaged Student Learner. I hope we have provided the reader insight into one project-based learning company’s realized gain in applying Marzano’s published works on the importance and methods of student engagement to the work we daily undertake. We trust that many other activity-centered learning programs have likewise with success given it a try. Thank you for reading this booklet, and best wishes for your continued success in meeting the developmental challenges that we, in the project-based learning environment, and your student cohorts so confidently engage.
Thank you for your interest in reviewing this booklet on our efforts to achieve engaged student learning. Please visit our website to see more of what we do. We’d love to connect and hear from you. Don Bertrand WWW.ROBOACHIEVER.COM 203 430-3141