Connecting the Dots

Teacher Effectiveness and Deeper Professional Learning “James A. Bellanca and a talented team of writers have created a blueprint for contemporary schooling . . . that seeks to personalize learning, elevate thinking, harness connecting technologies, interrupt poverty cycles, instill confidence and grit in learners, professionalize teaching, offer authentic challenges in the quest for deeper learning, and fundamentally prepare today’s students to transfer their learning to the novel and unpredictable conditions of the future.”

—From the foreword by Jay McTighe James A. Bellanca

James holds a master’s degree in English from the University of Illinois at UrbanaChampaign.

Jay McTighe highlights the vastly different experiences in modern learning classrooms versus traditional classrooms.

Bob Lenz and Gia L. Truong describe a performance assessment framework for assessing deeper learning performances.

James A. Bellanca discusses four common elements that take shape through effective teaching.

Melinda G. George offers essential components for 21st century teachers to continually and effectively adapt to the digital world.

Kiera Chase details project-based learning practices for general education students and students with special needs.

James M. Bentley discusses his transformation as a deeper learning teacher.

Aaron Brengard chronicles how his school became a P21 exemplar school despite its limited resources.

Todd Whitaker presents how lecture-bound teachers can effectively engage students.

Deborah Rosalia Esparza explores the importance of staying familiar with the demographically and culturally changing world.

Will Richardson notes how effective teachers must be digitally fluent to gain modern literacy.

Sonny Magaña and Robert J. Marzano depict how formative assessment, standards, grading, and technology, when joined together, can strengthen student learning.

solution-tree.com

Yvette Jackson and Dale Allender focus on what professional learning will most impact urban teachers’ readiness for the future.

Lillian Hsu and Tim McNamara illustrate key elements in designing authentic work, building relationships, and reflecting on practice at High Tech High Chula Vista (HTHCV).

James A. Bellanca summarizes the shift taking place in American education and connects key concepts of the book’s contributors.

Bellanca

Louis H. Falik and Refael S. Feuerstein highlight the benefits that a cognitive curriculum can have on student learning.

James H. Stronge, Leslie W. Grant, and Xianxuan Xu record what teachers must learn to prepare students for 21st century success.

Teacher Effectiveness and Deeper Professional Learning

James A. Bellanca began his career as a high school English teacher and went on to found two experimental alternative schools, a multicounty intermediate service agency, and Skylight Publishing and Professional Development. He is president of the Illinois Consortium for 21st Century Schools and lead trainer for Mind Quest: Project-Based Learning in the 21st Century Classroom.

James advises the Partnership for 21st Century Learning as a senior fellow, edits the partnership’s innovative online publication P21 Blogazine, and continues his writing career with a focus on the how-to elements of 21st century skills and deeper learning.

In Connecting the Dots: Teacher Effectiveness and Deeper Professional Learning, education authorities from around the globe reach the heart of 21st century teaching and learning: the shift in day-to-day classroom practice that must occur to deepen student learning and prepare learners for college and future careers.

connecting the dots

connecting the dots

10

10 The Leading Edge is the undefined space where leaders venture to impact change—it is the place where transformation begins.

The Leading Edge™ series unites education authorities from around the globe and asks them to confront the important issues that affect teachers and administrators—the important issues that profoundly impact student success.

The experts contributing to this anthology do not prescribe one method to transact change. They embrace the mission, trusting that teachers and administrators—the true change leaders—will venture to the Leading Edge to embrace challenges and opportunities that will guarantee the success of their students.

You are invited to the Leading Edge to explore Connecting the Dots: Teacher Effectiveness and Deeper Professional Learning. This tenth book in the series provides insights from leading educators as they confront the important issues that profoundly affect teacher, administrator, and student success. The contributors present the most effective practices in 21st century classrooms to ensure all students achieve success, and they look forward to what exemplary practices will be crucial in deepening student learning as the 21st century progresses.

The Leading Edge series also includes On Common Ground: The Power of Professional Learning Communities; Ahead of the Curve: The Power of Assessment to Transform Teaching and Learning; Change Wars; On Excellence in Teaching; 21st Century Skills: Rethinking How Students Learn; Mind, Brain, and Education: Neuroscience Implications for the Classroom; Rebuilding the Foundation: Effective Reading Instruction for 21st Century Literacy; Breaking Through: Effective Instruction and Assessment for Reaching English Learners; and Deeper Learning: Beyond 21st Century Skills.

Copyright © 2016 by Solution Tree Press All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction of this book in whole or in part in any form.

555 North Morton Street Bloomington, IN 47404 800.733.6786 (toll free) / 812.336.7700 FAX: 812.336.7790 email: info@solution-tree.com solution-tree.com Printed in the United States of America 19 18 17 16 15

1 2 3 4 5

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Connecting the dots : teacher effectiveness and deeper professional learning / editor, James A. Bellanca ; contributors, Dale Allender [and others]. pages cm Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-1-936764-14-3 (hardcover with dustjacket) 1. Effective teaching. 2. Teacher effectiveness. 3. Teachers--In-service training.

4. Teachers--Professional relationships.

LB1025.3.C664 2015 371.102--dc23 2015029665

Solution Tree Jeffrey C. Jones, CEO Edmund M. Ackerman, President Solution Tree Press President: Douglas M. Rife Senior Acquisitions Editor: Amy Rubenstein Editorial Director: Lesley Bolton Managing Production Editor: Caroline Weiss Production Editor: Tara Perkins Copy Editor: Ashante K. Thomas Proofreader: Jessi Finn Cover Designer: Abigail Bowen

Table of Contents

About the Editor �������������������������������������������������������������������������������ix Foreword Jay McTighe ���������������������������������������������������������������xi Introduction Finding Edison’s Better Way James A. Bellanca . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

Part I What Today’s Effective Teachers Do. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27 Chapter 1

The Power of Full Inclusion Kiera Chase . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29

Chapter 2

What Does It Take? A Teacher’s View on 21st Century Effectiveness James M. Bentley . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49

Chapter 3

Touring an Effective School From the Inside Out Aaron Brengard . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71

Chapter 4

Death of the Lecture Todd Whitaker . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93

Chapter 5

Realizing the American Dream: Engaging Students in a Culturally Diverse Classroom Deborah Rosalia Esparza . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107

Chapter 6

Stopping to Think: A Lifetime of Learning to Learn Louis H. Falik and Refael S. Feuerstein . . . . . . 133

vii

viii

CONNECTING THE DOTS

Chapter 7

Teaching Modern Learners: New Contexts, New Literacies, New Roles Will Richardson . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 165

Chapter 8

Leveraging Technology, Increasing Performances Sonny MagaĂąa and Robert J. Marzano . . . . . . 181

Chapter 9

The Interrupters Bob Lenz and Gia L. Truong . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 203

Part II Professional Learning: The Key to Effectiveness in Today’s Classrooms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 225 Chapter 10

Rethinking Professional Learning in a Digital Age Melinda G. George . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 227

Chapter 11

Searching for Excellence in a New Age: Rethinking Teacher Qualities to Promote Student Success for 21st Century Learning James H. Stronge, Leslie W. Grant, and Xianxuan Xu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 249

Chapter 12

Waiting to Excel: Mediating 21st Century Teaching Through the Pedagogy of Confidence Yvette Jackson and Dale Allender . . . . . . . . . . 279

Chapter 13

Starting a School Year of Deeper Learning for Teachers Lillian Hsu and Tim McNamara . . . . . . . . . . . 299

Chapter 14

Why Not? James A. Bellanca . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 323

Glossary. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 343 Index. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 349

About the Editor

James A. Bellanca James A. Bellanca is nationally recognized as a practical innovator who provides teachers and administrators with the how-to knowledge to make abstract ideas concrete and ready to go on the next school day. He is a senior fellow with the Partnership for 21st Century Learning and editor of its innovative online publication P21 Blogazine. He is the 2013 recipient of the Malcolm Knowles Award for lifetime contribution to the field of self-directed learning from the International Society for Self-Directed Learning and an advisor to the GEMS Education 21st Century Competencies group.

With his extensive experience as a classroom English and language arts teacher, alternative school director, professional developer, intermediate service center director, business owner, and not-forprofit executive, Jim has developed expertise for transforming mandates, such as the Common Core State Standards, into practical classroom tools that enrich instruction and engage students.

He is president of the Illinois Consortium for 21st Century Schools and lead trainer for Mind Quest: Project-Based Learning in the 21st Century Classroom, which helps schools with large English learner populations and students of color and poverty adopt the project-based learning model of instruction. Jim has worked with educational leaders in the United States, Australia, New Zealand,

ix

x

CONNECTING THE DOTS

Norway, and Israel. His specialty is the application of group investigation and inquiry models of learning as the primary methods for helping school leaders and teachers adopt 21st century models of instruction. His aim is to assist school districts to design, implement, and assess programs that promote 21st century skills to increase academic performance among all students, including high-risk populations.

Jim works closely with Solution Tree Press to identify emerging authors who address the themes and practices that define and describe 21st century learning. He has authored or coauthored multiple Solution Tree Press “how-to� books about thinking in the Common Core, enriched learning projects, and leadership for the Common Core. He coedited the Leading Edge series title 21st Century Skills: Rethinking How Students Learn with Ron Brandt and edited Deeper Learning: Beyond 21st Century Skills.

To book James A. Bellanca for professional development, contact pd@solution-tree.com.

Foreword

Jay McTighe Welcome to a book about educating for the unknown. James A. Bellanca and a talented team of writers have created a blueprint for contemporary schooling. They serve educators just as architects serve builders; they provide a concrete vision of a desired structure and a guide to its construction. Their blueprint portrays a system of education that seeks to personalize learning, elevate thinking, harness connecting technologies, interrupt poverty cycles, instill confidence and grit in learners, professionalize teaching, offer authentic challenges in the quest for deeper learning, and fundamentally prepare today’s students to transfer their learning to the novel and unpredictable conditions of the future.

Learners who are fortunate enough to inhabit such schools will experience a markedly different education than their forebears. Their learning will more likely be framed around authentic issues and problems. They will be encouraged to think outside the box rather than to simply learn prescribed material from a textbook and lectures. Their daily work will be collaborative, emphasizing the social construction of knowledge. Technology will provide the new “textbook,� amplifying connections to information, ideas, and people well beyond traditional classroom walls. Engaging projects will support the confluence of academic content with 21st century skills. Transfer of learning will take precedence over test preparation. Learning

xi

xii

CONNECTING THE DOTS

will become increasingly personalized and self-directed as learners explore their interests and pursue their passions. Students will be rewarded for displaying persistence, for seeking and using feedback to improve, and for self-assessing and reflecting on their learning.

Teachers in such schools will be empowered to co-create the curriculum with learners. Rather than being pressured to cover lists of knowledge and skills according to a rigid pacing guide, teachers will be allowed to uncover the key ideas of subjects while integrating thinking skills and habits of mind. Teachers’ roles will shift from dispensers of knowledge to mediators of learning. They will function as curators and mentors for learning; as facilitators and providers of just-in-time feedback as students become knowledge producers and “makers.” Rather than relying on once-a-year snapshots of achievement from a standardized test, teachers will have opportunities to regularly examine the results from authentic tasks and projects. Like athletic coaches analyzing game film, teacher teams will review student work as data to inform needed adjustments in practice.

School leaders will create environments that emphasize teamwork and data-driven improvement processes. They will establish school structures and schedules that enable collaborative staff planning, support in-depth student inquiries and projects, and allow for team examination of student work. The new educational leader will be expected to establish a culture of continuous learning within a thinking environment—for staff as well as students. Professionals will be challenged to question desired outcomes, time-honored practices, and well-established school structures in the face of disruptive technologies, increasingly diverse student populations, and new demands from the wider world.

Like the details of a blueprint, the Connecting the Dots chapters describe the various building materials and outline the construction process for creating updated forms of schooling. At its core, the book raises implicit questions for the profession. In an era where much of the world’s knowledge can be accessed through a smartphone, and free online resources enable constant learning on any imaginable topic, today’s educators must consider questions such as the following.

Teaching Modern Learners

xiii

• What are the most valued outcomes of education in this century?

• What evidence will demonstrate attainment of those outcomes?

• How should student achievement be documented and communicated?

• What are the students’, teachers’, and school leaders’ roles in the process?

• How should technology be employed?

• What is a “school”?

Such questions and the proposed answers presented in this book may leave you both enchanted and unsettled. If this brave new world of education excites you, then you will enjoy studying the blueprints for 21st century teaching and learning as you examine the building materials en route to envisioning and constructing your version of the modern schoolhouse.

Finding Edison’s Better Way James A. Bellanca There’s a way to do it better—find it.

—Thomas Edison Thomas Edison’s words are the perfect launch for this collection that journeys to the heart of the paradigm shift in classroom practice in the 21st century. It is in this shift that the most important changes are occurring. It is here that we focus on what the most effective teachers will do from day to day to ready all students for their tomorrows.

When I invited the authors in this collection to contribute, I made only one request. I asked each to share insights on what the most effective teachers in today’s and tomorrow’s classrooms look and sound like while practicing their craft as the makers of 21st century citizens. I requested that they look forward on the flight path rather than backward into the jet stream.

Indeed, each complied with that request. From long-term researchers and students of effective teaching, from leaders in the field of teacher education, from well-respected professional developers, and most importantly from principals and exemplary teachers came the well-thought-out replies. Each description was based on a wide and deep range of experience and a lifelong, serious, and

1

© 2016 by Solution Tree Press. All rights reserved.

Introduction

2

CONNECTING THE DOTS

positive commitment to ensuring that every student was taught by the most ready and capable teachers.

In this collection, you will find more emphasis on practice than on theory. This is intentional. Earlier titles in the Leading Edge series focusing on deeper learning gave preference to the research, the rationale, and the readiness in today’s classrooms via the Partnership for 21st Century Skills’s (P21, 2010) 4Cs: (1) critical thinking and problem solving, (2) communication, (3) collaboration, and (4) creativity and innovation. In this volume, we dive deeply into the exemplary practices in classrooms and schools where effective teachers are “just doing it.”

Today, the numbers grow in transformed classrooms, schools, and districts. Teachers and principals are showing what works— how to make the little changes that may be no more than modifying lectures with a metacurriculum or showing a video that sparks discussion and allows an increased student voice. Others share their transformations from bubble worksheet fanatics and page-by-page textbook page turners who “covered” the curriculum to makers in classroom studios where students are able to create public-service documentaries or write digital stories resulting in increased academic gains and portfolios bulging with artifacts.

From these examples, new models of effective teaching are showing the way, identifying for all to see what it takes to help all students become effective learners who know how to make new learning rather than just consume old information. In these new approaches, four common elements stand out: (1) a shared vision of the most-desired student attributes, (2) a shared vision of the

© 2016 by Solution Tree Press. All rights reserved.

I was pleasantly surprised when the puzzle pieces began to fall into place, forming as it were a very coherent flight manual, complete with illustrations and photos. The authors not only agreed on the major direction for this flight to the future, they compiled descriptions of the crew’s most-desired attributes and the checklist of the most helpful tools. When all was said and done, a remarkably coherent guide emerged, showing what was left behind, what lay ahead, and what practices would bring the best results. If Edison were present, he might well exclaim, “I do think you have found a better way!”

Finding Edison’s Better Way

3

most-desired teacher attributes, (3) evidence-based best practices, and (4) a way to make change happen.

A Shared Vision of the Most-Desired Student Attributes

One thing I never want to see happen is schools that are just teaching the test because then you’re not learning about the world, you’re not learning about different cultures, you’re not learning about science, you’re not learning about math. . . .

All you’re learning about is how to fill out a little bubble on an exam and little tricks that you need to do in order to take a test and that’s not going to make education interesting. . . . young people do well in stuff that they’re interested in. They’re not going to do as well if it’s boring. (Kain, 2011)

In addition, by safely predicting the likelihood that 21st century graduates will require preparation for a different job world, one that already was demanding students’ ability to think critically and creatively, problem solve, collaborate, and communicate in diverse workplaces, the authors in this anthology took their descriptions a step further. Skills for becoming more effective learners are important, they suggest, but there is a bigger “what if?” to investigate.

© 2016 by Solution Tree Press. All rights reserved.

Like many of the schools labeled as 21st century exemplars by the Partnership for 21st Century Learning (P21, n.d.), authors in this anthology started their work by identifying the characteristics that tomorrow’s career- and college-ready preK–12 learners will carry to the next level. By mirroring multiple calls from business, highereducation, and professional-education organizations and government agencies for a different kind of student, these descriptions highlight attributes that contrast sharply with the learner qualities desired in past decades and that are exacerbated by the massive use of short-answer tests as the principal determinant of a student’s school success. Leaders such as President Barack Obama and California State Superintendent of Instruction Tom Torlakson have called for an end to the short-answer bubble tests. “Enough bubble testing,” Torlakson has said. “Life is not a bubble test” (Kuznia, 2013).

Obama added to this when he noted to a 2011 town-hall meeting of students and parents that:

4

CONNECTING THE DOTS

As you read, you will find that authors’ answers to these questions come together in a coherent vision capturing the most-desired attributes of 21st century learners. In chapter 3, school principal Aaron Brengard describes an exemplar school’s guiding framework.

The framework aligns the school’s defined student attributes as they align with the faculty’s beliefs and the practices that make their teaching effective. In chapter 13, Lillian Hsu and Tim McNamara capture the connection between High Tech High’s vision of the learner and how that school advances its teachers’ effectiveness. Bob Lenz and Gia L. Truong look through the assessment lens at tools and skills that empower poor students to escape their bonds in chapter 9.

A Shared Vision of the Most-Desired Teacher Attributes Much has been written about the unique, desired attributes of learners in this century. The Hewlett Foundation’s (n.d.) depiction of the key attributes synthesizes the characteristics of the deeper learner. Its attributes of the deeper learner are based on a plethora of studies since the 1990s (Dede, 2010). The following attributes align with P21’s (2010) 4Cs and similar frameworks.

• Mastery of Core Academic Content: Students build their academic foundation in subjects like reading, writing,

© 2016 by Solution Tree Press. All rights reserved.

Following the admonitions of 21st century thinkers Yong Zhao, Tony Wagner, Linda Darling-Hammond, and other contributors to Deeper Learning: Beyond 21st Century Skills (Bellanca, 2015), several authors note that there is a second, perhaps more important reason for students to develop these learning-to-learn skills beyond job readiness. These contributors comment on the shaky future students face. In the students’ super-fast, technology-driven world, our authors pose and challenge us to consider several important questions, including: Who can predict what jobs will even exist? Is it not more important that our schools ready students with lifelong learning mindsets and problem-solving skills? What if we concentrated on helping students navigate a vast unknown future? Is it not better to develop the skills to learn for a lifetime than it is to settle on content that will be dead and gone in less than a decade?

Finding Edison’s Better Way

5

mathematics, and science. They understand key principles and procedures, recall facts, use the correct language, and draw on their knowledge to complete new tasks.

• Critical Thinking and Problem Solving: Students think find, evaluate, and synthesize information to construct arguments. They can design their own solutions to complex problems.

• Collaboration: Collaborative students work well in teams.

They communicate and understand multiple points of view and they know how to cooperate to achieve a shared goal.

• Effective Communication: Students communicate effectively in writing and in oral presentations. They structure information in meaningful ways, listen to and give feedback, and construct messages for particular audiences.

• Self-directed Learning: Students develop an ability to direct their own learning. They set goals, monitor their own progress, and reflect on their own strengths and areas for improvement. They learn to see setbacks as opportunities for feedback and growth. Students who learn through self-direction are more adaptive than their peers.

• An “Academic Mindset”: Students with an academic mindset have a strong belief in themselves. They trust their own abilities and believe their hard work will pay off, so they persist to overcome obstacles. They also learn from and support each other. They see the relevance of their schoolwork to the real world and their own future success. (Hewlett Foundation, n.d.)

How right it is that Hewlett’s vision begins with students at the center. Although our authors may compose variations on this student-centered theme, they start with many shared assumptions about the learning priorities. Their assumptions are very similar to the Hewlett Foundation’s. This cohesion makes it easier to paint a

© 2016 by Solution Tree Press. All rights reserved.

critically, analytically, and creatively. They know how to

6

CONNECTING THE DOTS

picture of this century’s effective teacher. In that picture, the effective teacher can be defined as a person who takes responsibility to develop these attributes in every child.

Evidence-Based Best Practices Early in my career, my student-teaching critique teacher introduced me to questions derived from Bloom’s taxonomy, projectbased learning, and students assessing the quality of their own work. Ironically, these evidence-based methods have grown, found a research base years later, and today are in my top ten favorites, proving there is little new under the sun. Most important, my critique teacher convinced me of the importance of marrying what I taught with the strategies that focused on how my students learned.

It is clear as I trace back through my career as an educator that there are certain best practices that have withstood the test of time, gaining more and more research-based evidence as to their efficacy.

Allow me to provide a short chronology here of my experience with a handful of these.

Many years after my first days in the classroom, I made other discoveries. One came when I stumbled on the writings of Carl Rogers (1969) and Malcolm Knowles (1975), the early advocates of self-directed learning. This led to engagement in the creation of an alternative school within a school, based on self-directed learning, and the facilitating practices that fostered student engagement, thinking, and problem solving. These, I learned from experience, were needed to enable a talented group of students who may not know how to take charge of their own learning to learn free from the constraints of traditional lecture classrooms.

Š 2016 by Solution Tree Press. All rights reserved.

As a next step, it is easy to list the attributes of the 21st century effective teacher, as the list is but a mirror of the desired student attributes. The only difference is the teacher becomes the person who helps students build the foundation of core content, think critically and problem solve, collaborate, communicate effectively, develop selfdirection as a learner, and build confidence in their lifelong learning abilities. In this image, effective teachers first and foremost are those whose actions keep the student at the center of every decision.

Finding Edison’s Better Way

7

The third discovery arrived when the national education community began to understand the importance of data, not just for students but as evidence that practices we were using to advance instruction indeed could make a strong impact on achievement.

Robert J. Marzano and his colleagues hammered the nail when he advanced the field with his meta-analysis of high-effects instructional strategies (Marzano Research, 2015). His lab defines high effects as those instructional tools or skills shown by evidence of multiple valid and reliable studies to have the most likely, strongest impact on the increase of student achievement.

In the following years when professional learning became my central interest, other individuals and events shaped my thinking.

Fascinated by the depth of Reuven Feuerstein’s thinking (as cited in Steinberg, 2011) and the evidence of impact his programs on developing students’ prerequisite learning-to-learn skills showed, I investigated his theory and methods. At the same time, I was reintroduced to project-based learning and reflective practice, two approaches I adopted in my work with teachers, integrated with what Feuerstein calls the mediated learning experience methods.

In the first decade of the 21st century, when No Child Left Behind (NCLB, 2002) pressured schools to do what I considered to be dumbing-down instruction to the lowest common denominator, the outlook for all that I had learned and come to believe about teaching and learning was bleak. I thought to myself, “This is the worst of times.” But the sun always does rise.

© 2016 by Solution Tree Press. All rights reserved.

The second discovery came during the thinking-skills movement Educational Leadership’s farsighted editor Ron Brandt fostered in the 1980s. Through Ron’s work at the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development (ASCD), I met Art Costa, Mary Budd Rowe, John Barell, Roger and David Johnson, Robert Sternberg, Howard Gardner, and most importantly, Reuven Feuerstein.

Although research had not caught up to the work that flowed from this group, the members influenced the work I was learning to do in professional development. Thinking, problem solving, collaboration, and communication became central in my adaptation of emerging theories into practice.

8

CONNECTING THE DOTS

The 4Cs framework P21 developed provided a focus for a change.

It soon became apparent it was time for rethinking how students in this new century would be able to learn. Ron Brandt and I edited 21st Century Skills: Rethinking How Students Learn (Bellanca & Brandt, 2010), a collection to recapture and resurrect an old way of thinking about how the thinking instruction taking place in the U.S. classroom had been pilfered by the back-to-basics advocates who loved the factory of facts and hated anyone looking to find the stars of thinking that glittered in the sky by relying on the methods that promoted what we call today deeper learning. Gone were the opportunities for teachers to ask higher-level questions, conduct reading and writing workshops, inquire, debate, and argue. Leading voices captured the tone, mood, and data, making the case for a direction different from the NCLB thrust, a thrust that had limited the vast majority of teachers to use methods that provided “nice” test results for superficial memorization and bits of information tested by bubbles.

Even as P21 was advocating with state and federal education offices for policies and practices that looked more forward into the current century rather than back to the assembly-line practices perfected in the past few decades of the last century, in the field, innovative individuals in public, independent, and charter schools were risking new ways of teaching and learning. Reacting to the shallow teaching of the NCLB era and with interest from the Hewlett Foundation, new models of schooling sprang up around the United

© 2016 by Solution Tree Press. All rights reserved.

With the advent of the Common Core, I had a glimmer of hope.

That glimmer was brightened by the emergence of new voices in the education community, voices calling for a new day, a new direction that was student centered, not content focused. In 2000, the first Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) test results shocked many U.S. educators (Adams & Wu, 2002). However, these results also reinforced the intuitions that many were feeling about the ineffectiveness of NCLB. With the formation of the Partnership for 21st Century Skills (now the Partnership for 21st Century Learning), voices from education, business, government, and the general citizenry spoke up and advocated for a new direction.

Finding Edison’s Better Way

9

These images of the school as a learning lab or art studio hark back to Sophocles making inquiry, to John Goodlad raising minds in the garden, and to Art Costa with the school as a home for the mind.

The studio concept rests on a new set of beliefs about the practices and outcomes of a school.

• The beliefs: Learning is most helpful when it prepares students for the world and times in which they will live, learn, and work.

• The practices: Learning results when teachers engage and challenge students to understand significant and relevant ideas deeply by sharpening each student’s abilities to think, problem solve, collaborate, and communicate even as that student becomes more self-directed in applying these skills to advance him- or herself in new, highly personal, and different life situations.

• The outcomes: Students not only answer higher-order questions about the content in their curriculum, showing that they “know” that content, they also demonstrate that they can “do” the deeper learning skills as students solve problems, make products, and present their insights into the content. Teachers use alternate assessment tools to record observations and student self-reflections that indicate the degree of demonstrated 4Cs skill development.

Reviews of the most common practices in these emerging new studios and labs align tightly with what continuing research on high-effects teaching and learning are saying. Indeed, with the meta-analyses of John A. C. Hattie (2009) and his colleagues and with data from other groups such as the American Institutes for Research (Huberman et al., 2014), it is becoming clearer and clearer that cognitive strategies applied in more constructivist ways of

© 2016 by Solution Tree Press. All rights reserved.

States. They shared a common belief and many common practices.

Most of all, they provided a new metaphor for the school in place of the factory. With many creative variations, innovative educators in many different spaces created studios and laboratories for making learning rather than for devouring information.

10

CONNECTING THE DOTS

knowing are the most powerful of the tools at the effective teachers’ disposal. When several of these strategies are connected in a single framework such as a project-based learning unit or an inquiry lesson, the effects are multiplied.

Such test results are helpful. However, they are also insufficient reasons for teaching and learning in the studio where teachers are leading students into deeper learning. That is why today’s most effective teachers can facilitate broader, deeper, and faster learning in a studio than was ever possible with the isolated 20th century methods, such as cooperative learning, applied to consumption of isolated bits of information. To help students deepen what they learn, today’s effective teachers help students experiment, investigate, build, construct, and make. These teachers take care to help students learn a plethora of learning strategies, including learning together in cooperative groups and communicating face to face so that the students not only score better than they did in the factory model but they think and problem solve better as the same tool in a new context accelerates and deepens what learning happens.

No teaching method serves as a better example of how today’s effective teachers facilitate multiple skill development than projectbased learning (PBL). That is because the most efficacious PBL is more than a method. It is multiple methods rolled into a PBL unit.

It is most effective when teachers combine cooperative learning with graphic organizers, the advance organizer, goals and outcomes, technology, metacognition, and inquiry—such as authors Deborah Rosalia Esparza (chapter 5), Kiera Chase (chapter 1), and others

© 2016 by Solution Tree Press. All rights reserved.

In the assembly-line school where each bit of information is isolate and separate, it is a best practice to teach each fact or idea with a single strategy such as cooperative learning. Used well and consistently in this manner, the results are documented as superior to such ineffective strategies as the lecture or individualized worksheet (Johnson & Johnson, 2009; Marzano Research, 2015). Thus, teachers—even those in the assembly-line classroom who use the strategy appropriately to help students recall material—will call on cooperative learning as a strategy to get higher achievement results on the next test.

Finding Edison’s Better Way

11

In addition to the fit with PBL, the effective facilitators of learning in these learning studios weave PBL’s comprehensive instructional model through the school day in other ways. Increasing interest is developing in metacurricula as a way of helping all teachers blend the deeper learning attributes and practices into all aspects of instruction. For instance, as Todd Whitaker points out in chapter 4, today’s technology-talented students can reflect on key points in a lecture via mobile-made tweets, ask questions, talk in pairs or trios via Facebook, or post an “I learned . . .” reflection at the end of a talk. Each interjection is formally planned by the instructor. Each of these tactics is grounded in the best-practice research and primes students’ critical thinking, collaboration, and communication about the course content.

The Fit Between the Competencies and Deeper Learning For all their effectiveness, these strategies and the 21st century competencies they enhance are but means to a more important end—deeper learning outcomes. Deeper learning, then, is what occurs when teachers stimulate student thinking and problem solving, communicating and collaborating so they are able to understand the complexities of the content they are studying and make transfers in and across their course work and later for lifelong learning.

© 2016 by Solution Tree Press. All rights reserved.

describe—to help students construct new knowledge and not just acquire old knowledge. These teachers prepare students to transfer these skills and personalize their use with whatever content comes along. Not only is it possible to see magnified content achievement from such connections, it is clear that the measurable and multiple impacts on thinking, innovating, and problem solving are key contributors. Whether we look back at the previous book in this series (Bellanca, 2015) and read about Manor New Tech High School (chapter 11) or look in this edition to stories from Foulks Ranch Elementary School or Katherine R. Smith Elementary, we see the centrality of PBL as the most prominent instruction model for all students in the new studio models of schooling—and visitors to those schools observe a different type of student.

Teacher Effectiveness and Deeper Professional Learning “James A. Bellanca and a talented team of writers have created a blueprint for contemporary schooling . . . that seeks to personalize learning, elevate thinking, harness connecting technologies, interrupt poverty cycles, instill confidence and grit in learners, professionalize teaching, offer authentic challenges in the quest for deeper learning, and fundamentally prepare today’s students to transfer their learning to the novel and unpredictable conditions of the future.”

—From the foreword by Jay McTighe James A. Bellanca

James holds a master’s degree in English from the University of Illinois at UrbanaChampaign.

Jay McTighe highlights the vastly different experiences in modern learning classrooms versus traditional classrooms.

Bob Lenz and Gia L. Truong describe a performance assessment framework for assessing deeper learning performances.

James A. Bellanca discusses four common elements that take shape through effective teaching.

Melinda G. George offers essential components for 21st century teachers to continually and effectively adapt to the digital world.

Kiera Chase details project-based learning practices for general education students and students with special needs.

James M. Bentley discusses his transformation as a deeper learning teacher.

Aaron Brengard chronicles how his school became a P21 exemplar school despite its limited resources.

Todd Whitaker presents how lecture-bound teachers can effectively engage students.

Deborah Rosalia Esparza explores the importance of staying familiar with the demographically and culturally changing world.

Will Richardson notes how effective teachers must be digitally fluent to gain modern literacy.

Sonny Magaña and Robert J. Marzano depict how formative assessment, standards, grading, and technology, when joined together, can strengthen student learning.

solution-tree.com

Yvette Jackson and Dale Allender focus on what professional learning will most impact urban teachers’ readiness for the future.

Lillian Hsu and Tim McNamara illustrate key elements in designing authentic work, building relationships, and reflecting on practice at High Tech High Chula Vista (HTHCV).

James A. Bellanca summarizes the shift taking place in American education and connects key concepts of the book’s contributors.

Bellanca

Louis H. Falik and Refael S. Feuerstein highlight the benefits that a cognitive curriculum can have on student learning.

James H. Stronge, Leslie W. Grant, and Xianxuan Xu record what teachers must learn to prepare students for 21st century success.

Teacher Effectiveness and Deeper Professional Learning

James A. Bellanca began his career as a high school English teacher and went on to found two experimental alternative schools, a multicounty intermediate service agency, and Skylight Publishing and Professional Development. He is president of the Illinois Consortium for 21st Century Schools and lead trainer for Mind Quest: Project-Based Learning in the 21st Century Classroom.

James advises the Partnership for 21st Century Learning as a senior fellow, edits the partnership’s innovative online publication P21 Blogazine, and continues his writing career with a focus on the how-to elements of 21st century skills and deeper learning.

In Connecting the Dots: Teacher Effectiveness and Deeper Professional Learning, education authorities from around the globe reach the heart of 21st century teaching and learning: the shift in day-to-day classroom practice that must occur to deepen student learning and prepare learners for college and future careers.

connecting the dots

connecting the dots

10

10 The Leading Edge is the undefined space where leaders venture to impact change—it is the place where transformation begins.

The Leading Edge™ series unites education authorities from around the globe and asks them to confront the important issues that affect teachers and administrators—the important issues that profoundly impact student success.

The experts contributing to this anthology do not prescribe one method to transact change. They embrace the mission, trusting that teachers and administrators—the true change leaders—will venture to the Leading Edge to embrace challenges and opportunities that will guarantee the success of their students.

You are invited to the Leading Edge to explore Connecting the Dots: Teacher Effectiveness and Deeper Professional Learning. This tenth book in the series provides insights from leading educators as they confront the important issues that profoundly affect teacher, administrator, and student success. The contributors present the most effective practices in 21st century classrooms to ensure all students achieve success, and they look forward to what exemplary practices will be crucial in deepening student learning as the 21st century progresses.

The Leading Edge series also includes On Common Ground: The Power of Professional Learning Communities; Ahead of the Curve: The Power of Assessment to Transform Teaching and Learning; Change Wars; On Excellence in Teaching; 21st Century Skills: Rethinking How Students Learn; Mind, Brain, and Education: Neuroscience Implications for the Classroom; Rebuilding the Foundation: Effective Reading Instruction for 21st Century Literacy; Breaking Through: Effective Instruction and Assessment for Reaching English Learners; and Deeper Learning: Beyond 21st Century Skills.