Notes
May 26th to June 18th, 2016
May 26th to June 18th, 2016
Session 13: Classrooms and Schools That Support Learning
WJS_session13-classrooms-schools_20June-2016
Discussion Points
1. How do we develop the sense of community among school staff necessary to insure that learning principles are coherent across the school? Many teachers have succeeded in the academic environment, which emphasizes individual success rather than communal success.
Key Questions
• How can schools organize for powerful learning
Learning Objectives
• Organizing schools around students’ development and learning—Teachers will understand that organizing
schools for powerful learning means integrating what we know about children’s development and
learning with what we know about organizing curriculum and teaching.
• Providing structural features that support powerful learning—Teachers will understand the structural
features of schools that support teaching and learning for understanding.
Notes
All for success
loc. 40
All the many dimensions of sound learning theory have to come together in classrooms and schools to mutually ensure students’ learning.
loc. 40-41
The application of the learning principles needs to be coherent across the school. Moreover, teachers need to work with all of the learning principles at the same time.
loc. 49-50
Notes: 1) All 2) Inividual
Supporting the growth and development of the individual learner
loc. 51-52
Supporting the individual learner requires teaching in developmentally appropriate ways, engaging learners’ interests, and connecting to their prior knowledge, experiences, and ideas. It involves engaging students in a wide variety of activities to allow them to find their developmental level of performance and use their different intelligences.
loc. 52-55
Notes: 1) Individual - support description
Supporting the individual learner requires teaching in developmentally appropriate ways, engaging learners’ interests, and connecting to their prior knowledge, experiences, and ideas. It involves engaging students in a wide variety of activities to allow them to find their developmental level of performance and use their different intelligences. It includes giving students opportunities to make explicit their current knowledge and strategies and to introduce them to new strategies by modeling how experts think and approach problems.
loc. 52-56
Creating a positive, productive environment for learning
loc. 56-56
Notes: 1) Individual - description 2) Environment
—This set of principles includes constructing a nurturing environment that supports the social and emotional growth of students and connects to students’ cultural backgrounds, communities, and families. Positive learning environments take into account how students’ feelings affect their processing of information and their understanding. Such environments use the social group—both teachers and peers—as sources for learning, as well as other parts of the environment (e.g., school resources, home resources, natural resources). They strive to make cultural connections for the students around things that are relevant and meaningful to them. Such environments thus enable teaching for diversity—teaching “in ways that help different kinds of learners find productive paths to knowledge as they also learn to live constructively together”
loc. 56-62
Notes: 1) Environment - how and what
Organizing the curriculum content for students to master
loc. 62-63
Notes: 1) Curriculum
Organizing content involves using the structure of the disciplines to make decisions about curriculum and instruction. It also includes the idea of cognitive apprenticeship, through which teachers support the process of learning to think, just as masters guided their apprentices in learning their trades. It refers to how teachers scaffold the learning process and provide assistance through cognitive apprenticeships that get at the core ideas of the disciplines. Organizing the content includes helping students to think metacognitively by teaching them to reflect on their own thinking and guide their own learning. It means constructing tasks so that students will be able to transfer their learning, to apply the knowledge and skills that are learned in one setting in other situations. Classrooms that are organized around learning principles ask students to transfer ideas across the disciplines, to share information and ideas within a community of learners, and to teach others as a means of deepening their own understanding (Perkins, 1998). Such classrooms are consciously constructed to ensure that learners are able to master the content and develop the skills they will need in life.
loc. 65-73
Notes: 1) Organizing content and curriclum 2) Organizing content and curriclum -description
three components of learning for teaching—the individual learner, creation of a nurturing environment, and organization of content so that it is important, engaging, and accessible—students are motivated.
loc. 74-75
Notes: 1) 3 components of teaching 2) 3 components of learning for teaching
Motivation cuts across all the learning themes in this course.
loc. 75-76
Notes: 1) Motivation
Students are motivated when tasks are made interesting and exciting because they are authentic and relevant, when feedback and assistance help them develop competence, when numerous opportunities are provided to engage work that is within their zone of proximal development (ZPD), and when significant opportunities to revise with support are provided. Together, these aspects of teaching help students become competent learners, which serves to motivate them.
loc. 76-79
Notes: 1) Motivation - how
[A]ctive in-depth learning, emphasis on authentic performance, attention to development, appreciation for diversity, opportunities for collaborative learning, a collective perspective across the school, structures for caring, support for democratic learning, [and] connections to family and community (DarlingHammond, 1997, p. 331).
loc. 83-85
Notes: 1) Organizational tools to bring learning theory into practice
Active in-depth learning —Active in-depth learning “begins with the disciplines” and “engages students in doing the the 108). Learning tasks are real performances based on the concept that “I do and I understand.” Teachers build on students’ prior learning, and students use higher-order cognitive skills to apply ideas to meaningful activities. Students’ learning is designed to enable them to transfer ideas to novel situations and contexts, and to make connections across different situations. Teachers use principles of cognitive apprenticeship—modeling, scaffolding, coaching, and fading or descaffolding—to foster in-depth learning.
loc. 87-91
Notes: 1) Active in depth learning 2) Active in-depth learning
Emphasis on authentic performance —Curriculum and assessment are integrated around meaningful performances in real-world contexts. Performance-based assessments use multiple criteria to determine how students are thinking and learning, as well as what they know and can do. Performance tasks are central to the work of the disciplines and are selected to represent the big ideas and modes of inquiry in each subject area. For example, performance assessments in science include designing, conducting, evaluating, and representing a scientific experiment as the core mode of discovery in the discipline. Students learn how to reflect on their own performance, how to evaluate it against a standard, and how to apply what they are learning to real-life situations. Students are motivated by opportunities to perfect their work and succeed in meaningful tasks. These carefully selected tasks that result in public performances structure the overall curriculum of the school (Darling-Hammond
loc. 91-98
Notes: 1) Authentic performances
Attention to development —Teaching and learning are informed by knowledge about learning and development. Teachers observe children carefully and design their instruction so that it is appropriate for the students’ stages of growth and ZPDs. Schools are organized to support students’ physical, cognitive, social, emotional, and moral development. Instruction considers students’ prior knowledge and developmental signs of readiness, and helps them to become more ready for new accomplishments in each domain of development.
loc. 98-102
Notes: 1) Attention to development
Appreciation for diversity —Successful schools organize curriculum and teaching to embrace students’ differences as opportunities for sharing student expertise and learning from one another. Teachers connect the curriculum to learners’ experiences, differing strengths and intelligences, and frames of reference. Schools recognize and affirm students’ cultures and “funds of knowledge” while also moving students toward mainstream competencies.
loc. 102-105
Notes: 1) Diversity
Opportunities for collaborative learning —Classrooms are organized for students’ participation in a “learning community.” Successful schools support Vygotsky’s notion that learning takes place in a social context and relies on communication and interaction with others. Classrooms are designed to foster communities of discourse that make students’ and teachers’ thinking visible. Individual and collective learning is encouraged as teachers and expert peers assist students in reaching their potential developmental levels. The classroom environment encourages students’ motivation by minimizing comparison, and by providing opportunities for risk-taking and improvement over time.
loc. 105-110
Notes: 1) Collaborative learning
Collective perspective across the school —Successful schools have common goals, a shared ethos, and common norms of instruction. Rather than students encountering a fragmented curriculum and different expectations in each classroom, restructured schools collectively plan for students’ learning goals, including how they will be achieved and assessed. When objectives are reinforced throughout the school and curriculum is more coherent, the total learning is much more powerful than when it is fragmented or inconsistent. Teachers work collaboratively to develop instruction that reflects the central concepts and ideas in the disciplines. Teachers “go meta” in their own practice to reflect on their successes and struggles, support their colleagues’ teaching, and direct their own learning.
loc. 110-116
Notes: 1) Collective perspectives
Structures for caring —The school structure enables teachers and students to develop relationships based on mutual trust, respect, and thoughtfulness. Teachers and students develop strong, ongoing relationships as they spend extended time together—often two full years—within small school units and teams. Students’ success depends in part on teachers’ keen knowledge of their learning styles and skills, enabled by small pupil loads, advisories, and other means for close encounters. Teachers provide an emotionally safe and responsive learning environment and teach the skills of emotional intelligence, including self-awareness, managing emotions, motivation, empathy, and handling social relationships (Goleman, 1995).
loc. 116-121
Notes: 1) Caring
Support for democratic learning —Successful schools prepare students for active participation in a democratic society by engaging them in shared decision-making and respectful debate and discourse about matters that are important to the members of the community. Such preparation both motivates and educates students. Such schools also support students’ equal access to knowledge, democratic communication, and active participation in social dialogue.
loc. 121-124
Notes: 1) Democratic learning
Connections to family and community —Successful schools build connections to students’ families and communities. This enables teachers to learn about students’ cultures and interests and to learn from parents about their children’s experiences and strategies for learning. This understanding allows teachers to build on the family’s assets and funds of knowledge. Teachers apply culturally relevant and equity-oriented classroom practices that help students transfer what they have learned in school to their home and community (Darling-Hammond, 1997, pp. 107-146).
loc. 124-128
Notes: 1) Family and clmmunity 2) Family and community
schoolwide goals need to be shared. These goals should be informed by a common understanding of what constitutes important learning and high-quality work. This means that faculty must be involved in continuous conversation about how the learning experiences support student development and about how to structure active learning around the central ideas and modes of inquiry within and across the disciplines. Faculty also need to be involved in conversations about assessment that lead to performances of understanding that reflect the ways in which knowledge is used in the world outside of school. Teachers need regular opportunities to collaborate in their planning and in their work with students in order to create these shared goals and put them into practice. Teachers also need time to support collaboration with students’ families.
loc. 129-134
Notes: 1) Teaching and learning for understanding
learning is enhanced in different ways when learning environments are student-centered, knowledge-centered, assessment-centered, and community-centered.
loc. 147-148
Notes: 1) Enhanced learning charcteristics 2) Enhanced learning environment characteristics
Each of these lenses on the learning environment influences “what is taught, how it is taught, and how it is assessed” (Bransford, Brown, & Cocking, 2000, p. 131.)
loc. 148-149
Notes: 1) Lenses on learning environment influence
As teachers design the work that goes on within and across classrooms, they might ask, “What do students bring in terms of their experience and knowledge and what do they need?”“How am I drawing on students’ interests and strengths?” (learner-centered); “What kind of knowledge am I trying to develop?” (knowledge-centered); “What kinds of assessments will help me know what students understand and how they learn?” (assessment-centered); and “How can I construct a community of learners in the classroom—and beyond—to support students’ learning?” (community-centered). These questions can be used for teachers to consider their practice individually or with others. These questions can also become the tools to integrate ideas about learning theory that inform broader school change.
loc. 149-155
Notes: 1) Questions to guide teachers
WJS_session13-classrooms-schools_20June-2016
Discussion Points
1. How do we develop the sense of community among school staff necessary to insure that learning principles are coherent across the school? Many teachers have succeeded in the academic environment, which emphasizes individual success rather than communal success.
Key Questions
• How can schools organize for powerful learning
Learning Objectives
• Organizing schools around students’ development and learning—Teachers will understand that organizing
schools for powerful learning means integrating what we know about children’s development and
learning with what we know about organizing curriculum and teaching.
• Providing structural features that support powerful learning—Teachers will understand the structural
features of schools that support teaching and learning for understanding.
Notes
All for success
loc. 40
All the many dimensions of sound learning theory have to come together in classrooms and schools to mutually ensure students’ learning.
loc. 40-41
The application of the learning principles needs to be coherent across the school. Moreover, teachers need to work with all of the learning principles at the same time.
loc. 49-50
Notes: 1) All 2) Inividual
Supporting the growth and development of the individual learner
loc. 51-52
Supporting the individual learner requires teaching in developmentally appropriate ways, engaging learners’ interests, and connecting to their prior knowledge, experiences, and ideas. It involves engaging students in a wide variety of activities to allow them to find their developmental level of performance and use their different intelligences.
loc. 52-55
Notes: 1) Individual - support description
Supporting the individual learner requires teaching in developmentally appropriate ways, engaging learners’ interests, and connecting to their prior knowledge, experiences, and ideas. It involves engaging students in a wide variety of activities to allow them to find their developmental level of performance and use their different intelligences. It includes giving students opportunities to make explicit their current knowledge and strategies and to introduce them to new strategies by modeling how experts think and approach problems.
loc. 52-56
Creating a positive, productive environment for learning
loc. 56-56
Notes: 1) Individual - description 2) Environment
—This set of principles includes constructing a nurturing environment that supports the social and emotional growth of students and connects to students’ cultural backgrounds, communities, and families. Positive learning environments take into account how students’ feelings affect their processing of information and their understanding. Such environments use the social group—both teachers and peers—as sources for learning, as well as other parts of the environment (e.g., school resources, home resources, natural resources). They strive to make cultural connections for the students around things that are relevant and meaningful to them. Such environments thus enable teaching for diversity—teaching “in ways that help different kinds of learners find productive paths to knowledge as they also learn to live constructively together”
loc. 56-62
Notes: 1) Environment - how and what
Organizing the curriculum content for students to master
loc. 62-63
Notes: 1) Curriculum
Organizing content involves using the structure of the disciplines to make decisions about curriculum and instruction. It also includes the idea of cognitive apprenticeship, through which teachers support the process of learning to think, just as masters guided their apprentices in learning their trades. It refers to how teachers scaffold the learning process and provide assistance through cognitive apprenticeships that get at the core ideas of the disciplines. Organizing the content includes helping students to think metacognitively by teaching them to reflect on their own thinking and guide their own learning. It means constructing tasks so that students will be able to transfer their learning, to apply the knowledge and skills that are learned in one setting in other situations. Classrooms that are organized around learning principles ask students to transfer ideas across the disciplines, to share information and ideas within a community of learners, and to teach others as a means of deepening their own understanding (Perkins, 1998). Such classrooms are consciously constructed to ensure that learners are able to master the content and develop the skills they will need in life.
loc. 65-73
Notes: 1) Organizing content and curriclum 2) Organizing content and curriclum -description
three components of learning for teaching—the individual learner, creation of a nurturing environment, and organization of content so that it is important, engaging, and accessible—students are motivated.
loc. 74-75
Notes: 1) 3 components of teaching 2) 3 components of learning for teaching
Motivation cuts across all the learning themes in this course.
loc. 75-76
Notes: 1) Motivation
Students are motivated when tasks are made interesting and exciting because they are authentic and relevant, when feedback and assistance help them develop competence, when numerous opportunities are provided to engage work that is within their zone of proximal development (ZPD), and when significant opportunities to revise with support are provided. Together, these aspects of teaching help students become competent learners, which serves to motivate them.
loc. 76-79
Notes: 1) Motivation - how
[A]ctive in-depth learning, emphasis on authentic performance, attention to development, appreciation for diversity, opportunities for collaborative learning, a collective perspective across the school, structures for caring, support for democratic learning, [and] connections to family and community (DarlingHammond, 1997, p. 331).
loc. 83-85
Notes: 1) Organizational tools to bring learning theory into practice
Active in-depth learning —Active in-depth learning “begins with the disciplines” and “engages students in doing the the 108). Learning tasks are real performances based on the concept that “I do and I understand.” Teachers build on students’ prior learning, and students use higher-order cognitive skills to apply ideas to meaningful activities. Students’ learning is designed to enable them to transfer ideas to novel situations and contexts, and to make connections across different situations. Teachers use principles of cognitive apprenticeship—modeling, scaffolding, coaching, and fading or descaffolding—to foster in-depth learning.
loc. 87-91
Notes: 1) Active in depth learning 2) Active in-depth learning
Emphasis on authentic performance —Curriculum and assessment are integrated around meaningful performances in real-world contexts. Performance-based assessments use multiple criteria to determine how students are thinking and learning, as well as what they know and can do. Performance tasks are central to the work of the disciplines and are selected to represent the big ideas and modes of inquiry in each subject area. For example, performance assessments in science include designing, conducting, evaluating, and representing a scientific experiment as the core mode of discovery in the discipline. Students learn how to reflect on their own performance, how to evaluate it against a standard, and how to apply what they are learning to real-life situations. Students are motivated by opportunities to perfect their work and succeed in meaningful tasks. These carefully selected tasks that result in public performances structure the overall curriculum of the school (Darling-Hammond
loc. 91-98
Notes: 1) Authentic performances
Attention to development —Teaching and learning are informed by knowledge about learning and development. Teachers observe children carefully and design their instruction so that it is appropriate for the students’ stages of growth and ZPDs. Schools are organized to support students’ physical, cognitive, social, emotional, and moral development. Instruction considers students’ prior knowledge and developmental signs of readiness, and helps them to become more ready for new accomplishments in each domain of development.
loc. 98-102
Notes: 1) Attention to development
Appreciation for diversity —Successful schools organize curriculum and teaching to embrace students’ differences as opportunities for sharing student expertise and learning from one another. Teachers connect the curriculum to learners’ experiences, differing strengths and intelligences, and frames of reference. Schools recognize and affirm students’ cultures and “funds of knowledge” while also moving students toward mainstream competencies.
loc. 102-105
Notes: 1) Diversity
Opportunities for collaborative learning —Classrooms are organized for students’ participation in a “learning community.” Successful schools support Vygotsky’s notion that learning takes place in a social context and relies on communication and interaction with others. Classrooms are designed to foster communities of discourse that make students’ and teachers’ thinking visible. Individual and collective learning is encouraged as teachers and expert peers assist students in reaching their potential developmental levels. The classroom environment encourages students’ motivation by minimizing comparison, and by providing opportunities for risk-taking and improvement over time.
loc. 105-110
Notes: 1) Collaborative learning
Collective perspective across the school —Successful schools have common goals, a shared ethos, and common norms of instruction. Rather than students encountering a fragmented curriculum and different expectations in each classroom, restructured schools collectively plan for students’ learning goals, including how they will be achieved and assessed. When objectives are reinforced throughout the school and curriculum is more coherent, the total learning is much more powerful than when it is fragmented or inconsistent. Teachers work collaboratively to develop instruction that reflects the central concepts and ideas in the disciplines. Teachers “go meta” in their own practice to reflect on their successes and struggles, support their colleagues’ teaching, and direct their own learning.
loc. 110-116
Notes: 1) Collective perspectives
Structures for caring —The school structure enables teachers and students to develop relationships based on mutual trust, respect, and thoughtfulness. Teachers and students develop strong, ongoing relationships as they spend extended time together—often two full years—within small school units and teams. Students’ success depends in part on teachers’ keen knowledge of their learning styles and skills, enabled by small pupil loads, advisories, and other means for close encounters. Teachers provide an emotionally safe and responsive learning environment and teach the skills of emotional intelligence, including self-awareness, managing emotions, motivation, empathy, and handling social relationships (Goleman, 1995).
loc. 116-121
Notes: 1) Caring
Support for democratic learning —Successful schools prepare students for active participation in a democratic society by engaging them in shared decision-making and respectful debate and discourse about matters that are important to the members of the community. Such preparation both motivates and educates students. Such schools also support students’ equal access to knowledge, democratic communication, and active participation in social dialogue.
loc. 121-124
Notes: 1) Democratic learning
Connections to family and community —Successful schools build connections to students’ families and communities. This enables teachers to learn about students’ cultures and interests and to learn from parents about their children’s experiences and strategies for learning. This understanding allows teachers to build on the family’s assets and funds of knowledge. Teachers apply culturally relevant and equity-oriented classroom practices that help students transfer what they have learned in school to their home and community (Darling-Hammond, 1997, pp. 107-146).
loc. 124-128
Notes: 1) Family and clmmunity 2) Family and community
schoolwide goals need to be shared. These goals should be informed by a common understanding of what constitutes important learning and high-quality work. This means that faculty must be involved in continuous conversation about how the learning experiences support student development and about how to structure active learning around the central ideas and modes of inquiry within and across the disciplines. Faculty also need to be involved in conversations about assessment that lead to performances of understanding that reflect the ways in which knowledge is used in the world outside of school. Teachers need regular opportunities to collaborate in their planning and in their work with students in order to create these shared goals and put them into practice. Teachers also need time to support collaboration with students’ families.
loc. 129-134
Notes: 1) Teaching and learning for understanding
learning is enhanced in different ways when learning environments are student-centered, knowledge-centered, assessment-centered, and community-centered.
loc. 147-148
Notes: 1) Enhanced learning charcteristics 2) Enhanced learning environment characteristics
Each of these lenses on the learning environment influences “what is taught, how it is taught, and how it is assessed” (Bransford, Brown, & Cocking, 2000, p. 131.)
loc. 148-149
Notes: 1) Lenses on learning environment influence
As teachers design the work that goes on within and across classrooms, they might ask, “What do students bring in terms of their experience and knowledge and what do they need?”“How am I drawing on students’ interests and strengths?” (learner-centered); “What kind of knowledge am I trying to develop?” (knowledge-centered); “What kinds of assessments will help me know what students understand and how they learn?” (assessment-centered); and “How can I construct a community of learners in the classroom—and beyond—to support students’ learning?” (community-centered). These questions can be used for teachers to consider their practice individually or with others. These questions can also become the tools to integrate ideas about learning theory that inform broader school change.
loc. 149-155
Notes: 1) Questions to guide teachers
Session 12: Motivation and Learning
WJS_session12-motivation-learning_20June-2016
Discussion Points
1. If punishment and reward are ineffective motivators, why are they so common in today's schools?
2. Can student engagement fully replace punishment and reward to motivate students?
3. Why does minimizing competition and comparison increase student motivation? Many believe otherwise and use competition as a major motivator in learning.
Key Questions
• What motivates us to learn?
• How can teachers create motivating learning environments?
Learning Objectives
• Influences on motivation—Teachers will understand motivation as something constructed by both teacher
and students. Teachers will learn how students’ expectations for success and interests in learning can influence
motivation.
• Motivating learning environments—Teachers will understand the characteristics of learning environments
that enhance students’ motivation, including building on students’ interests and strengths, offering choices,
encouraging risk-taking and improvement over time, and minimizing competition and comparison.
Notes
motivation as something constructed by both teacher and students.
loc. 5-5
Notes: 1) motivation constructed
including building on students’ interests and strengths, offering choices, encouraging risk-taking and improvement over time, and minimizing competition and comparison.
loc. 7-8
Notes: 1) motivating learning environments
being motivated to learn refers to the degree to which students are dedicated to and engaged in learning.
loc. 15-16
Notes: 1) motivated to learn - behaviors observed
Students who expected to succeed exerted more effort than those who thought their chances of success were slim (Bandura,
loc. 25-26
Notes: 1) Why invest time in something you will fail at?
the external reward undermined their intrinsic interest in the activity (Lepper, Greene, & Nisbett, 1973).
loc. 29-30
Notes: 1) External reward undermined intrinsic interest
Some believe that intelligence is fixed, whereas others believe it can be developed by working hard on something.
loc. 46-47
Notes: 1) Intelligence - fixed or exlandable?
“Make sure that [students] achieve success consistently by beginning at their level, moving in small steps, and preparing them sufficiently for each new step so that they can adjust to it without too much confusion or frustration”
loc. 62-64
Notes: 1) How do we do provide incremental instruction with large classeswith large classes?
students also need to witness their own progress.
loc. 67-67
Notes: 1) Students need to see wn progress
If students are allowed to focus on the subject matter and a meaningful assignment rather than the grade, they are less likely to worry about their competence.
loc. 74-75
Notes: 1) focus on subject matter - nkt grade
Students are more likely to find an assignment interesting if they have a say or a choice about what they get to work on.
loc. 98-98
Notes: 1) Autonomy
First and foremost, teachers need to make sure the task is clear and that the students have the information necessary to pursue the task.
loc. 126-127
Notes: 1) Clear doable task
Teachers also need to convey that the primary goal is learning and understanding, that asking questions is desirable, that making mistakes is not cause for embarrassment, and that taking risks is necessary for learning.
loc. 127-129
Notes: 1) learning environment for youth 2) contrast between task and ability oriented classrooms
a task-oriented classroom, the goal is to learn and consistently improve; whereas in an ability-oriented classroom, the goal is the grade and the work is merely a requirement to be dispatched as quickly as possible.
loc. 136-138
success means doing better than others.
loc. 139-139
Notes: 1) Success means doing better than others - 2) Success means doing better than others - that's real world?
Students need to be aware of the criteria on which their evaluation is based.
loc. 152-153
Notes: 1) clear evaluation criteria
if evaluations are based on the extent to which students understand a concept, how much their understanding or performance has improved over time, and how much effort they have put forth, students will be more likely to learn the material in a meaningful and more thoughtful way.
loc. 158-160
Notes: 1) Isn't it the result that matters - not process - traditionally
The most expert teachers in heterogeneous classrooms know how to differentiate tasks so that all students are working at endeavors that are appropriate for their zone of proximal development, allowing them to make continual progress while achieving success.
loc. 163-164
Notes: 1) Task differetiation is possibe
To communicate that mistakes are a part of the learning process, teachers can give students continual opportunities to revise their work and demonstrate their improvement.
loc. 165-167
Notes: 1) mistakes ok.
Students who feel that their teachers support them and care about them as individuals are more likely to feel motivated.
loc. 171-172
Notes: 1) personal relationships
Information on Self-Efficacy: A Community of Scholars:
loc. 305-306
Notes: 1) self-efficacy
Pintrich, P. R., & De Groot, E. (1990). Motivation and self-regulated learning in middle school classrooms. Journal of Educational Psychology, 80, 123-129.
loc. 326-327
Notes: 1) motivation of self-regulated learning in middle school
WJS_session12-motivation-learning_20June-2016
Discussion Points
1. If punishment and reward are ineffective motivators, why are they so common in today's schools?
2. Can student engagement fully replace punishment and reward to motivate students?
3. Why does minimizing competition and comparison increase student motivation? Many believe otherwise and use competition as a major motivator in learning.
Key Questions
• What motivates us to learn?
• How can teachers create motivating learning environments?
Learning Objectives
• Influences on motivation—Teachers will understand motivation as something constructed by both teacher
and students. Teachers will learn how students’ expectations for success and interests in learning can influence
motivation.
• Motivating learning environments—Teachers will understand the characteristics of learning environments
that enhance students’ motivation, including building on students’ interests and strengths, offering choices,
encouraging risk-taking and improvement over time, and minimizing competition and comparison.
Notes
motivation as something constructed by both teacher and students.
loc. 5-5
Notes: 1) motivation constructed
including building on students’ interests and strengths, offering choices, encouraging risk-taking and improvement over time, and minimizing competition and comparison.
loc. 7-8
Notes: 1) motivating learning environments
being motivated to learn refers to the degree to which students are dedicated to and engaged in learning.
loc. 15-16
Notes: 1) motivated to learn - behaviors observed
Students who expected to succeed exerted more effort than those who thought their chances of success were slim (Bandura,
loc. 25-26
Notes: 1) Why invest time in something you will fail at?
the external reward undermined their intrinsic interest in the activity (Lepper, Greene, & Nisbett, 1973).
loc. 29-30
Notes: 1) External reward undermined intrinsic interest
Some believe that intelligence is fixed, whereas others believe it can be developed by working hard on something.
loc. 46-47
Notes: 1) Intelligence - fixed or exlandable?
“Make sure that [students] achieve success consistently by beginning at their level, moving in small steps, and preparing them sufficiently for each new step so that they can adjust to it without too much confusion or frustration”
loc. 62-64
Notes: 1) How do we do provide incremental instruction with large classeswith large classes?
students also need to witness their own progress.
loc. 67-67
Notes: 1) Students need to see wn progress
If students are allowed to focus on the subject matter and a meaningful assignment rather than the grade, they are less likely to worry about their competence.
loc. 74-75
Notes: 1) focus on subject matter - nkt grade
Students are more likely to find an assignment interesting if they have a say or a choice about what they get to work on.
loc. 98-98
Notes: 1) Autonomy
First and foremost, teachers need to make sure the task is clear and that the students have the information necessary to pursue the task.
loc. 126-127
Notes: 1) Clear doable task
Teachers also need to convey that the primary goal is learning and understanding, that asking questions is desirable, that making mistakes is not cause for embarrassment, and that taking risks is necessary for learning.
loc. 127-129
Notes: 1) learning environment for youth 2) contrast between task and ability oriented classrooms
a task-oriented classroom, the goal is to learn and consistently improve; whereas in an ability-oriented classroom, the goal is the grade and the work is merely a requirement to be dispatched as quickly as possible.
loc. 136-138
success means doing better than others.
loc. 139-139
Notes: 1) Success means doing better than others - 2) Success means doing better than others - that's real world?
Students need to be aware of the criteria on which their evaluation is based.
loc. 152-153
Notes: 1) clear evaluation criteria
if evaluations are based on the extent to which students understand a concept, how much their understanding or performance has improved over time, and how much effort they have put forth, students will be more likely to learn the material in a meaningful and more thoughtful way.
loc. 158-160
Notes: 1) Isn't it the result that matters - not process - traditionally
The most expert teachers in heterogeneous classrooms know how to differentiate tasks so that all students are working at endeavors that are appropriate for their zone of proximal development, allowing them to make continual progress while achieving success.
loc. 163-164
Notes: 1) Task differetiation is possibe
To communicate that mistakes are a part of the learning process, teachers can give students continual opportunities to revise their work and demonstrate their improvement.
loc. 165-167
Notes: 1) mistakes ok.
Students who feel that their teachers support them and care about them as individuals are more likely to feel motivated.
loc. 171-172
Notes: 1) personal relationships
Information on Self-Efficacy: A Community of Scholars:
loc. 305-306
Notes: 1) self-efficacy
Pintrich, P. R., & De Groot, E. (1990). Motivation and self-regulated learning in middle school classrooms. Journal of Educational Psychology, 80, 123-129.
loc. 326-327
Notes: 1) motivation of self-regulated learning in middle school
Session 11: Learning Transfer
WJS_session11-learning-transfer_20June-2016
Discussion Points
1. How can I assess for prior experience and understandings that may block transfer?
2. How can I help students apply what they learned outside the classroom to the classroom?
3. How does one take a less is more approach to education and still satisfy Common Core Requirements?
Key Questions
• How do people transfer skills and knowledge from one situation to another?
• How can we teach for transfer?
Learning Objectives
• Conditions for transfer—Teachers will understand what conditions are needed for knowledge and skills
learned in one context to be retrieved and applied to a new situation.
• Teaching for transfer—Teachers will develop ideas about how to facilitate transfer in their own classrooms
and how to build bridges for their students between concepts, activities, and lessons.
Notes
a teacher helped urban, African American students apply the linguistic knowledge they already had about words, rhymes, and symbolism from their lives outside the classroom to academic tasks (Lee, 1995).
loc. 110-111
Notes: 1) African American students applying dialect word skills to classroom 2) List examples
many ways a student’s prior experiences and understandings may impede new learning.
loc. 113-114
they know that 5 is bigger than 4, they may have trouble understanding that 1/5 is smaller than 1/4 unless they are given the opportunity to work hands-on with materials that allow them to manipulate fractional portions.
loc. 115-116
Notes: 1) Math fractions hands on relieves transfer interference
general rule for past tense verbs that does not work in this irregular case.
loc. 118-118
Notes: 1) verb conjugation
intuitive but inaccurate understandings of concepts like force and motion in physics or natural selection in biology can also interfere with new learning.
loc. 118-119
Notes: 1) intuitive understanding of science
unearth these misconceptions, explain the differences in the situations under study, and help students to reshape their thinking.
loc. 119-120
Notes: 1) Very important to keep students motivated
the teacher can draw on those ideas in a totally different area, such as bridge building or physics, for example.
loc. 135-135
Notes: 1) Art concepts to teach physics 2) derive formula for volume
derive the formula themselves through the exploration and manipulation of substances encapsulated in different shaped containers.
loc. 150-151
central principles
loc. 151-151
Notes: 1) list
Analogies
loc. 154-154
Notes: 1) Analogies facilitate transfer - list
asking learners to think about alternatives to the original case or having them create general principles that apply to a whole class of related problems:
loc. 161-162
Notes: 1) increase flexibility
(Bransford et al., 2000, p. 63).
loc. 165-165
Notes: 1) transfer reference - look up
make clear the fundamental structure of the subject and where an idea stands in relation to many others, and the clearer they make the general principles that apply to what is being studied, the more likely that students will be able to understand the idea and use it later.
loc. 165-167
Notes: 1) Summary of principles for making transfer happen 2) Summary of principles for making transfer happen
discipline structure
relationships of idea to structures and other ideas
general principles
metacognitive activities—helping them become more aware of how to focus on critical ideas or features of problems, generate themes or procedures, and evaluate their own progress--
loc. 178-179
Notes: 1) metaognitive activities - major 2) metaognitive activities - major
critical ideas or features
themes or procedures 3) metaognitive activities - major
critical ideas or features
themes or procedures
evaluate own progress
general metacognitive questions learners can ask themselves to facilitate transfer are: “How is this problem like others I have solved before?” and “Does anything here remind me of anything I have learned earlier?”
loc. 180-181
Notes: 1) General metacognitive questions for learners 2) Writing program to transfer skills
taught to apply certain thinking and performance strategies in multiple situations. For instance, Marlene Scardamalia and her colleagues developed a program for teaching written composition. The teacher models expert writing strategies and encourages students to use writing prompts to help them identify goals, generate new ideas, improve and elaborate on existing ideas, and develop coherence in their compositions (Scardamalia, Bereiter, & Steinbach, 1984, cited in Bransford et al., 2000, p. 67).
loc. 184-188
transfer in its most powerful general form is the ability to apply a wide range of learning strategies to new learning situations.
loc. 195-196
Notes: 1) most general form of transfer
“How can I assess and facilitate the knowledge, understandings, and skills my students are transferring into a task or unit of study?” And “What are my goals for the skills and knowledge I would like my students to be able to transfer out to other tasks and situations?” In the process of constructing an activity or task, you might ask, “How can I help my students understand the central principles and underlying structures of knowledge in this topic? How can I help them see the similarities and differences among the concepts and problems we are working with? How can I help them use self-monitoring strategies as they work to appropriately apply what they know across these different problems?” And, finally,“How can I create a learning environment where students apply what they have learned in real-world contexts?”
loc. 197-202
Notes: 1) Questions for incuding transfer scaffolding kn ldsson plans
The Thinking Classroom: http://learnweb.harvard.edu/alps/thinking/
loc. 291-292
Notes: 1) Lesson plans and curricular design tools
WJS_session11-learning-transfer_20June-2016
Discussion Points
1. How can I assess for prior experience and understandings that may block transfer?
2. How can I help students apply what they learned outside the classroom to the classroom?
3. How does one take a less is more approach to education and still satisfy Common Core Requirements?
Key Questions
• How do people transfer skills and knowledge from one situation to another?
• How can we teach for transfer?
Learning Objectives
• Conditions for transfer—Teachers will understand what conditions are needed for knowledge and skills
learned in one context to be retrieved and applied to a new situation.
• Teaching for transfer—Teachers will develop ideas about how to facilitate transfer in their own classrooms
and how to build bridges for their students between concepts, activities, and lessons.
Notes
a teacher helped urban, African American students apply the linguistic knowledge they already had about words, rhymes, and symbolism from their lives outside the classroom to academic tasks (Lee, 1995).
loc. 110-111
Notes: 1) African American students applying dialect word skills to classroom 2) List examples
many ways a student’s prior experiences and understandings may impede new learning.
loc. 113-114
they know that 5 is bigger than 4, they may have trouble understanding that 1/5 is smaller than 1/4 unless they are given the opportunity to work hands-on with materials that allow them to manipulate fractional portions.
loc. 115-116
Notes: 1) Math fractions hands on relieves transfer interference
general rule for past tense verbs that does not work in this irregular case.
loc. 118-118
Notes: 1) verb conjugation
intuitive but inaccurate understandings of concepts like force and motion in physics or natural selection in biology can also interfere with new learning.
loc. 118-119
Notes: 1) intuitive understanding of science
unearth these misconceptions, explain the differences in the situations under study, and help students to reshape their thinking.
loc. 119-120
Notes: 1) Very important to keep students motivated
the teacher can draw on those ideas in a totally different area, such as bridge building or physics, for example.
loc. 135-135
Notes: 1) Art concepts to teach physics 2) derive formula for volume
derive the formula themselves through the exploration and manipulation of substances encapsulated in different shaped containers.
loc. 150-151
central principles
loc. 151-151
Notes: 1) list
Analogies
loc. 154-154
Notes: 1) Analogies facilitate transfer - list
asking learners to think about alternatives to the original case or having them create general principles that apply to a whole class of related problems:
loc. 161-162
Notes: 1) increase flexibility
(Bransford et al., 2000, p. 63).
loc. 165-165
Notes: 1) transfer reference - look up
make clear the fundamental structure of the subject and where an idea stands in relation to many others, and the clearer they make the general principles that apply to what is being studied, the more likely that students will be able to understand the idea and use it later.
loc. 165-167
Notes: 1) Summary of principles for making transfer happen 2) Summary of principles for making transfer happen
discipline structure
relationships of idea to structures and other ideas
general principles
metacognitive activities—helping them become more aware of how to focus on critical ideas or features of problems, generate themes or procedures, and evaluate their own progress--
loc. 178-179
Notes: 1) metaognitive activities - major 2) metaognitive activities - major
critical ideas or features
themes or procedures 3) metaognitive activities - major
critical ideas or features
themes or procedures
evaluate own progress
general metacognitive questions learners can ask themselves to facilitate transfer are: “How is this problem like others I have solved before?” and “Does anything here remind me of anything I have learned earlier?”
loc. 180-181
Notes: 1) General metacognitive questions for learners 2) Writing program to transfer skills
taught to apply certain thinking and performance strategies in multiple situations. For instance, Marlene Scardamalia and her colleagues developed a program for teaching written composition. The teacher models expert writing strategies and encourages students to use writing prompts to help them identify goals, generate new ideas, improve and elaborate on existing ideas, and develop coherence in their compositions (Scardamalia, Bereiter, & Steinbach, 1984, cited in Bransford et al., 2000, p. 67).
loc. 184-188
transfer in its most powerful general form is the ability to apply a wide range of learning strategies to new learning situations.
loc. 195-196
Notes: 1) most general form of transfer
“How can I assess and facilitate the knowledge, understandings, and skills my students are transferring into a task or unit of study?” And “What are my goals for the skills and knowledge I would like my students to be able to transfer out to other tasks and situations?” In the process of constructing an activity or task, you might ask, “How can I help my students understand the central principles and underlying structures of knowledge in this topic? How can I help them see the similarities and differences among the concepts and problems we are working with? How can I help them use self-monitoring strategies as they work to appropriately apply what they know across these different problems?” And, finally,“How can I create a learning environment where students apply what they have learned in real-world contexts?”
loc. 197-202
Notes: 1) Questions for incuding transfer scaffolding kn ldsson plans
The Thinking Classroom: http://learnweb.harvard.edu/alps/thinking/
loc. 291-292
Notes: 1) Lesson plans and curricular design tools
Session 10: The Structure of the Disciplines
WJS_session10-discipline-structure_11June-2016
Discussion Points
1. Compare and contrast the structure of mathematics, science, history and political science.
Key Questions
• How does the way knowledge is organized influence learning?
• How can teachers use the structure of a discipline to organize their teaching and enhance student learning?
Learning Objectives
• Structure of the disciplines—Teachers will understand that disciplines have structures representing interrelated core ideas and particular modes of inquiry. They will think about how to use these core ideas and inquiry tools to help students understand disciplinary ideas more deeply.
• Pedagogical content knowledge—Teachers will consider the kinds of knowledge of content and students they need in order to represent disciplinary ideas so that they are more likely to be understood.
The structure of a discipline affects two things: 1) how knowledge and ideas are related and interconnected, and 2) how inquiries are carried out.
Education
==========
- Your Note on Location 15 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 5:35:42 PM
Principles of learning
==========
- Your Highlight on Location 12-15 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 5:35:42 PM
There are two ways to think about the principles of learning. One is to ask,“What are the principles that are so general and universal that in some ways they apply regardless of what you are teaching and to whom?”There are such principles, and they can be very useful. We have been dealing with them throughout this course. But there are also questions about principles of learning that are particular to the domain under study and to the kinds of understanding that learners bring to the table
==========
- Your Note on Location 20 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 5:38:08 PM
Core of pedagogy
==========
- Your Highlight on Location 18-20 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 5:38:08 PM
the core of pedagogical content knowledge is a deep understanding of the structure of the discipline—how knowledge is organized and pursued in a particular subject area—connected to a deep understanding of the particular students being taught.
==========
- Your Note on Location 21 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 5:39:00 PM
Structure Affects
==========
- Your Highlight on Location 20-21 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 5:39:00 PM
The structure of a discipline affects two things: 1) how knowledge and ideas are related and interconnected, and 2) how inquiries are carried out.
==========
- Your Note on Location 28 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 5:42:17 PM
Unconnected facts
==========
- Your Highlight on Location 27-28 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 5:42:17 PM
an academic subject she is studying is a long list of unconnected facts without clues to detect the core ideas and patterns that surface repeatedly.
==========
- Your Note on Location 29 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 5:44:00 PM
Importance of connecting facts
==========
- Your Highlight on Location 27-30 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 5:44:00 PM
an academic subject she is studying is a long list of unconnected facts without clues to detect the core ideas and patterns that surface repeatedly. Making these connections clear to students provides a window into the field and makes it possible for them to acquire meanings that would be hard to acquire otherwise.
==========
- Your Note on Location 33 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 5:46:18 PM
Structures pave way for transferring knowledge beyond school
==========
- Your Highlight on Location 32-34 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 5:46:19 PM
The structures of the disciplines are the building blocks for organizing the curriculum to engage students in activities and experiences around these core ideas. These structures also pave the way for transfer to other ideas, subjects, and real-life problems inside and outside of school.
==========
- Your Note on Location 38 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 5:47:45 PM
Stucture of mathematics
==========
- Your Highlight on Location 37-38 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 5:47:45 PM
mathematics is structured around core ideas like the inverse operations of addition and subtraction, the concepts of ratio and proportion, and the ideas of balance and equilibrium, among other topics.
==========
- Your Note on Location 45 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 5:50:17 PM
3 kinds of knowledge packages for instructing math
==========
- Your Highlight on Location 43-45 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 5:50:17 PM
three kinds of mathematical knowledge: “procedural topics” (e.g., how to divide by a fraction); “conceptual topics” (e.g., the concept of fraction); and “basic principles” (e.g., a deeper understanding of the inverse operations of multiplication and division and their application to the whole subject area of mathematics.)
==========
- Your Note on Location 52 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 5:54:32 PM
Countries that focus on teaching a few large math ideas have students that do better on math.
==========
- Your Highlight on Location 51-53 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 5:54:32 PM
This focus on a few large ideas and the ways they permeate many operations certainly reflects the curriculum organization in many countries where students perform well in mathematics.
==========
- Your Note on Location 58 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 5:56:37 PM
Sense of discovery heightens excitement of learning
==========
- Your Highlight on Location 56-58 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 5:56:37 PM
Bruner describes how students’ interest and enjoyment of learning can be heightened through the “sense of excitement of discovery” they experience as the structure of a discipline becomes clear to them.
==========
- Your Note on Location 65 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 5:58:17 PM
Structure of biology
==========
- Your Highlight on Location 64-65 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 5:58:17 PM
Many scientists will argue that in modern biology the theory of evolution is the central structure of all biology.
==========
- Your Note on Location 66 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 5:59:07 PM
Core biological concepts
==========
- Your Highlight on Location 65-66 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 5:59:07 PM
core concepts like adaptation, organisms, and environments that undergird ideas about the role of chance in how well organisms adapt to environments and how that relates to notions of evolution.
==========
- Your Note on Location 69 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 6:00:21 PM
Basic ideas transfer broadly
==========
- Your Highlight on Location 67-69 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 6:00:21 PM
This type of transfer is at the heart of the educational process—the continual broadening and deepening of knowledge in terms of basic ideas .... The more fundamental or basic is the idea he has learned, almost by definition, the greater will be its breadth of applicability to new problems (Bruner, 1960, pp. 17-18).
==========
- Your Note on Location 75 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 6:01:20 PM
spiral curriculum
==========
- Your Highlight on Location 72-75 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 6:01:20 PM
spiral curriculum that introduces central concepts in the disciplines early in a child’s education and revisits these concepts again and again in the later grades in more sophisticated ways. “By consistently reexamining material taught in elementary and secondary schools for its fundamental character, one is able to narrow the gap between ‘advanced’ knowledge and ‘elementary’ knowledge” (Bruner, 1960, p. 26).
==========
- Your Note on Location 78 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 6:02:11 PM
Spiral curriculum video
==========
- Your Highlight on Location 76-78 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 6:02:11 PM
How do mass and velocity affect momentum?” Each age group represents the subject matter knowledge differently, representing, in turn, the three ways of representing subject matter—active, graphic, and symbolic--
==========
- Your Note on Location 87 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 6:04:04 PM
Language structure
==========
- Your Highlight on Location 87-88 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 6:04:04 PM
students learn vocabulary based on the root meaning of words (for example, that “photo” means light), they can transfer
==========
- Your Note on Location 94 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 6:06:13 PM
Language- rules for conjugating parts of speech
==========
- Your Highlight on Location 94-94 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 6:06:13 PM
Knowing the structure of verb conjugations enables transfer.
==========
- Your Note on Location 101 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 6:07:27 PM
Literature core ideas
==========
- Your Highlight on Location 100-101 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 6:07:27 PM
literature, for example, teachers ask students to consider the core ideas of theme, character, and plot:
==========
- Your Note on Location 108 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 6:08:38 PM
Stucture of history
==========
- Your Highlight on Location 107-108 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 6:08:38 PM
history, students may consider core ideas about human power, the clash of cultures, and how societies organize themselves to engage in government, commerce, or religious pursuits.
==========
- Your Note on Location 111 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 6:09:38 PM
Teaching structure
==========
- Your Highlight on Location 110-111 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 6:09:38 PM
Teachers can help students understand the structure of a topic by providing an overarching conceptualization of the big ideas and then locating specific facts or information that relate to the big ideas.
==========
- Your Note on Location 119 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 6:11:15 PM
Central modes of inquiry
==========
- Your Highlight on Location 118-119 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 6:11:15 PM
the central modes of inquiry and knowledge-finding tools of the disciplines: How does each discipline construct, critique, and revise knowledge? How do you know something is true? What counts as evidence?
==========
- Your Note on Location 128 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 6:12:30 PM
Interdisciplinary ideas
==========
- Your Highlight on Location 127-128 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 6:12:30 PM
Certain ideas do cut across disciplines—notions of description, analysis, careful observation, the evidence for a claim, and theory.
==========
- Your Note on Location 143 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 6:15:05 PM
Teaching benefits of understanding discipline structure
==========
- Your Highlight on Location 141-143 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 6:15:05 PM
when teachers understand the structure of a discipline they can help students examine ideas critically, analyze the “kind” of information gathered, examine the “truth” of statements, and interpret the “meaning” of information (Schwab, 1978).
==========
- Your Note on Location 151 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 6:17:05 PM
How does one match teaching with students interests and abilities?
==========
- Your Highlight on Location 148-151 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 6:17:05 PM
The problem is twofold: first, how to have the basic subjects rewritten and their teaching materials revamped in such a way that the pervading and powerful ideas and attitudes relating to them are given a central role; second, how to match the levels of these materials to the capacities of students of different abilities at different grades in school (Bruner, 1960, p. 18).
==========
- Your Note on Location 153 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 6:17:56 PM
Organizing learning
==========
- Your Highlight on Location 152-153 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 6:17:56 PM
Part of the answer to this question is found in how teachers choose general ideas to guide the content of teaching and how teachers engage students in activities and experiences around these ideas,
==========
- Your Note on Location 169 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 6:19:32 PM
Effective teaching
==========
- Your Highlight on Location 168-169 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 6:19:32 PM
Effective teaching involves knowing not only what to teach, but also how and when to teach important content to the particular students in a given classroom.
==========
- Your Note on Location 173 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 6:21:06 PM
Pedagogical content knowledge
==========
- Your Highlight on Location 172-173 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 6:21:06 PM
“pedagogical content knowledge”—an understanding of what kinds of experiences, what kinds of objects, and what kind of examples can be used to help students acquire an understanding of complex ideas.
==========
- Your Note on Location 177 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 6:22:54 PM
Patholgies of learning
==========
- Your Highlight on Location 177-177 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 6:22:54 PM
three pathologies of learning: amnesia, fantasia, and inertia?
==========
- Your Note on Location 182 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 6:25:07 PM
Description of pedagogical content knowledge
==========
- Your Highlight on Location 180-182 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 6:25:07 PM
Pedagogical content knowledge is shaped not only by how teachers think about why they are teaching their subject, but also by their understanding of what they are teaching, how they are creating curriculum, and when students are ready for learning.
==========
- Your Note on Location 184 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 6:26:03 PM
requirements of pedagogy
==========
- Your Highlight on Location 184-184 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 6:26:03 PM
deep understanding of the subject matter as well as a strong understanding of the student’s intellect, motivation, development, and culture.
==========
- Your Note on Location 206 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 6:28:01 PM
Goals of teaching
==========
- Your Highlight on Location 205-206 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 6:28:01 PM
goal of teaching is not only to encourage particular understandings, but also to develop dispositions, values, commitments, and attitudes particular to a content area.
==========
- Your Note on Location 211 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 6:29:31 PM
Instructional strategies to represent content knowledge
==========
- Your Highlight on Location 210-211 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 6:29:31 PM
instructional strategies teachers use— metaphors, analogies, stories, visual representations, etc.—to represent content knowledge.
==========
- Your Note on Location 221 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 6:32:50 PM
math beyond computation
==========
- Your Highlight on Location 218-221 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 6:32:50 PM
She helps her elementary students engage in the work of mathematicians—to “conjecture, experiment, build arguments, and frame and solve problems” (Bransford et al., 2000, p. 166). Using these modes of inquiry, which take students beyond mere computation, Ball engages her students with concrete manipulatives, graphic examples related to real-life problems, and practice in identifying mathematical patterns.
==========
- Your Note on Location 229 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 6:35:52 PM
Approach for key content
==========
- Your Highlight on Location 228-229 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 6:35:52 PM
approach requires ascertaining what the students already understand, or misunderstand, and applying a set of strategies to build bridges between students and the content.
==========
- Your Note on Location 232 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 6:37:09 PM
Planning curriculum, inquiries and instruction
==========
- Your Highlight on Location 230-232 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 6:37:09 PM
As you plan curriculum, what do you identify as the important, generative ideas in your discipline? As you plan inquiries, what are the central tools and habits of mind students need to develop? And as you plan instruction, how do you develop hooks into the content for your students?
==========
Education
==========
- Your Note on Location 15 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 5:35:42 PM
Principles of learning
==========
- Your Highlight on Location 12-15 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 5:35:42 PM
There are two ways to think about the principles of learning. One is to ask,“What are the principles that are so general and universal that in some ways they apply regardless of what you are teaching and to whom?”There are such principles, and they can be very useful. We have been dealing with them throughout this course. But there are also questions about principles of learning that are particular to the domain under study and to the kinds of understanding that learners bring to the table
==========
- Your Note on Location 20 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 5:38:08 PM
Core of pedagogy
==========
- Your Highlight on Location 18-20 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 5:38:08 PM
the core of pedagogical content knowledge is a deep understanding of the structure of the discipline—how knowledge is organized and pursued in a particular subject area—connected to a deep understanding of the particular students being taught.
==========
- Your Note on Location 21 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 5:39:00 PM
Structure Affects
==========
- Your Highlight on Location 20-21 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 5:39:00 PM
The structure of a discipline affects two things: 1) how knowledge and ideas are related and interconnected, and 2) how inquiries are carried out.
==========
- Your Note on Location 28 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 5:42:17 PM
Unconnected facts
==========
- Your Highlight on Location 27-28 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 5:42:17 PM
an academic subject she is studying is a long list of unconnected facts without clues to detect the core ideas and patterns that surface repeatedly.
==========
- Your Note on Location 29 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 5:44:00 PM
Importance of connecting facts
==========
- Your Highlight on Location 27-30 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 5:44:00 PM
an academic subject she is studying is a long list of unconnected facts without clues to detect the core ideas and patterns that surface repeatedly. Making these connections clear to students provides a window into the field and makes it possible for them to acquire meanings that would be hard to acquire otherwise.
==========
- Your Note on Location 33 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 5:46:18 PM
Structures pave way for transferring knowledge beyond school
==========
- Your Highlight on Location 32-34 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 5:46:19 PM
The structures of the disciplines are the building blocks for organizing the curriculum to engage students in activities and experiences around these core ideas. These structures also pave the way for transfer to other ideas, subjects, and real-life problems inside and outside of school.
==========
- Your Note on Location 38 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 5:47:45 PM
Stucture of mathematics
==========
- Your Highlight on Location 37-38 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 5:47:45 PM
mathematics is structured around core ideas like the inverse operations of addition and subtraction, the concepts of ratio and proportion, and the ideas of balance and equilibrium, among other topics.
==========
- Your Note on Location 45 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 5:50:17 PM
3 kinds of knowledge packages for instructing math
==========
- Your Highlight on Location 43-45 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 5:50:17 PM
three kinds of mathematical knowledge: “procedural topics” (e.g., how to divide by a fraction); “conceptual topics” (e.g., the concept of fraction); and “basic principles” (e.g., a deeper understanding of the inverse operations of multiplication and division and their application to the whole subject area of mathematics.)
==========
- Your Note on Location 52 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 5:54:32 PM
Countries that focus on teaching a few large math ideas have students that do better on math.
==========
- Your Highlight on Location 51-53 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 5:54:32 PM
This focus on a few large ideas and the ways they permeate many operations certainly reflects the curriculum organization in many countries where students perform well in mathematics.
==========
- Your Note on Location 58 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 5:56:37 PM
Sense of discovery heightens excitement of learning
==========
- Your Highlight on Location 56-58 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 5:56:37 PM
Bruner describes how students’ interest and enjoyment of learning can be heightened through the “sense of excitement of discovery” they experience as the structure of a discipline becomes clear to them.
==========
- Your Note on Location 65 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 5:58:17 PM
Structure of biology
==========
- Your Highlight on Location 64-65 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 5:58:17 PM
Many scientists will argue that in modern biology the theory of evolution is the central structure of all biology.
==========
- Your Note on Location 66 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 5:59:07 PM
Core biological concepts
==========
- Your Highlight on Location 65-66 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 5:59:07 PM
core concepts like adaptation, organisms, and environments that undergird ideas about the role of chance in how well organisms adapt to environments and how that relates to notions of evolution.
==========
- Your Note on Location 69 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 6:00:21 PM
Basic ideas transfer broadly
==========
- Your Highlight on Location 67-69 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 6:00:21 PM
This type of transfer is at the heart of the educational process—the continual broadening and deepening of knowledge in terms of basic ideas .... The more fundamental or basic is the idea he has learned, almost by definition, the greater will be its breadth of applicability to new problems (Bruner, 1960, pp. 17-18).
==========
- Your Note on Location 75 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 6:01:20 PM
spiral curriculum
==========
- Your Highlight on Location 72-75 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 6:01:20 PM
spiral curriculum that introduces central concepts in the disciplines early in a child’s education and revisits these concepts again and again in the later grades in more sophisticated ways. “By consistently reexamining material taught in elementary and secondary schools for its fundamental character, one is able to narrow the gap between ‘advanced’ knowledge and ‘elementary’ knowledge” (Bruner, 1960, p. 26).
==========
- Your Note on Location 78 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 6:02:11 PM
Spiral curriculum video
==========
- Your Highlight on Location 76-78 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 6:02:11 PM
How do mass and velocity affect momentum?” Each age group represents the subject matter knowledge differently, representing, in turn, the three ways of representing subject matter—active, graphic, and symbolic--
==========
- Your Note on Location 87 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 6:04:04 PM
Language structure
==========
- Your Highlight on Location 87-88 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 6:04:04 PM
students learn vocabulary based on the root meaning of words (for example, that “photo” means light), they can transfer
==========
- Your Note on Location 94 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 6:06:13 PM
Language - rules for conjugating parts of speech
==========
- Your Highlight on Location 94-94 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 6:06:13 PM
Knowing the structure of verb conjugations enables transfer.
==========
- Your Note on Location 101 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 6:07:27 PM
Literature core ideas
==========
- Your Highlight on Location 100-101 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 6:07:27 PM
literature, for example, teachers ask students to consider the core ideas of theme, character, and plot:
==========
- Your Note on Location 108 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 6:08:38 PM
Stucture of history
==========
- Your Highlight on Location 107-108 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 6:08:38 PM
history, students may consider core ideas about human power, the clash of cultures, and how societies organize themselves to engage in government, commerce, or religious pursuits.
==========
- Your Note on Location 111 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 6:09:38 PM
Teaching structure
==========
- Your Highlight on Location 110-111 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 6:09:38 PM
Teachers can help students understand the structure of a topic by providing an overarching conceptualization of the big ideas and then locating specific facts or information that relate to the big ideas.
==========
- Your Note on Location 119 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 6:11:15 PM
Central modes of inquiry
==========
- Your Highlight on Location 118-119 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 6:11:15 PM
The central modes of inquiry and knowledge-finding tools of the disciplines: How does each discipline construct, critique, and revise knowledge? How do you know something is true? What counts as evidence?
==========
- Your Note on Location 128 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 6:12:30 PM
Interdisciplinary ideas
==========
- Your Highlight on Location 127-128 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 6:12:30 PM
Certain ideas do cut across disciplines—notions of description, analysis, careful observation, the evidence for a claim, and theory.
==========
- Your Note on Location 143 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 6:15:05 PM
Teaching benefits of undrerstanding discipline structure
==========
- Your Highlight on Location 141-143 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 6:15:05 PM
when teachers understand the structure of a discipline they can help students examine ideas critically, analyze the “kind” of information gathered, examine the “truth” of statements, and interpret the “meaning” of information (Schwab, 1978).
==========
- Your Note on Location 151 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 6:17:05 PM
How does one match teaching with students interests and abilities?
==========
- Your Highlight on Location 148-151 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 6:17:05 PM
The problem is twofold: first, how to have the basic subjects rewritten and their teaching materials revamped in such a way that the pervading and powerful ideas and attitudes relating to them are given a central role; second, how to match the levels of these materials to the capacities of students of different abilities at different grades in school (Bruner, 1960, p. 18).
==========
- Your Note on Location 153 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 6:17:56 PM
Organizing learning
==========
- Your Highlight on Location 152-153 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 6:17:56 PM
Part of the answer to this question is found in how teachers choose general ideas to guide the content of teaching and how teachers engage students in activities and experiences around these ideas,
==========
- Your Note on Location 169 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 6:19:32 PM
Effective teaching
==========
- Your Highlight on Location 168-169 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 6:19:32 PM
Effective teaching involves knowing not only what to teach, but also how and when to teach important content to the particular students in a given classroom.
==========
- Your Note on Location 173 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 6:21:06 PM
Pedagogical content knowledge
==========
- Your Highlight on Location 172-173 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 6:21:06 PM
“pedagogical content knowledge”—an understanding of what kinds of experiences, what kinds of objects, and what kind of examples can be used to help students acquire an understanding of complex ideas.
==========
- Your Note on Location 177 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 6:22:54 PM
Patholgies of learning
==========
- Your Highlight on Location 177-177 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 6:22:54 PM
three pathologies of learning: amnesia, fantasia, and inertia?
==========
- Your Note on Location 182 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 6:25:07 PM
Description of pedagogical content knowledge
==========
- Your Highlight on Location 180-182 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 6:25:07 PM
Pedagogical content knowledge is shaped not only by how teachers think about why they are teaching their subject, but also by their understanding of what they are teaching, how they are creating curriculum, and when students are ready for learning.
==========
- Your Note on Location 184 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 6:26:03 PM
requirements of pedagogy
==========
- Your Highlight on Location 184-184 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 6:26:03 PM
deep understanding of the subject matter as well as a strong understanding of the student’s intellect, motivation, development, and culture.
==========
- Your Note on Location 206 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 6:28:01 PM
Goals of teaching
==========
- Your Highlight on Location 205-206 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 6:28:01 PM
goal of teaching is not only to encourage particular understandings, but also to develop dispositions, values, commitments, and attitudes particular to a content area.
==========
- Your Note on Location 211 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 6:29:31 PM
Instructional strategies to represent content knowledge
==========
- Your Highlight on Location 210-211 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 6:29:31 PM
instructional strategies teachers use— metaphors, analogies, stories, visual representations, etc.—to represent content knowledge.
==========
- Your Note on Location 221 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 6:32:50 PM
math beyond computation
==========
- Your Highlight on Location 218-221 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 6:32:50 PM
She helps her elementary students engage in the work of mathematicians—to “conjecture, experiment, build arguments, and frame and solve problems” (Bransford et al., 2000, p. 166). Using these modes of inquiry, which take students beyond mere computation, Ball engages her students with concrete manipulatives, graphic examples related to real-life problems, and practice in identifying mathematical patterns.
==========
- Your Note on Location 229 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 6:35:52 PM
Approach for key content
==========
- Your Highlight on Location 228-229 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 6:35:52 PM
approach requires ascertaining what the students already understand, or misunderstand, and applying a set of strategies to build bridges between students and the content.
==========
- Your Note on Location 232 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 6:37:09 PM
Planning curriculum, inquiries and instruction
==========
- Your Highlight on Location 230-232 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 6:37:09 PM
As you plan curriculum, what do you identify as the important, generative ideas in your discipline? As you plan inquiries, what are the central tools and habits of mind students need to develop? And as you plan instruction, how do you develop hooks into the content for your students?
==========
WJS_session10-discipline-structure_11June-2016
Discussion Points
1. Compare and contrast the structure of mathematics, science, history and political science.
Key Questions
• How does the way knowledge is organized influence learning?
• How can teachers use the structure of a discipline to organize their teaching and enhance student learning?
Learning Objectives
• Structure of the disciplines—Teachers will understand that disciplines have structures representing interrelated core ideas and particular modes of inquiry. They will think about how to use these core ideas and inquiry tools to help students understand disciplinary ideas more deeply.
• Pedagogical content knowledge—Teachers will consider the kinds of knowledge of content and students they need in order to represent disciplinary ideas so that they are more likely to be understood.
The structure of a discipline affects two things: 1) how knowledge and ideas are related and interconnected, and 2) how inquiries are carried out.
Education
==========
- Your Note on Location 15 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 5:35:42 PM
Principles of learning
==========
- Your Highlight on Location 12-15 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 5:35:42 PM
There are two ways to think about the principles of learning. One is to ask,“What are the principles that are so general and universal that in some ways they apply regardless of what you are teaching and to whom?”There are such principles, and they can be very useful. We have been dealing with them throughout this course. But there are also questions about principles of learning that are particular to the domain under study and to the kinds of understanding that learners bring to the table
==========
- Your Note on Location 20 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 5:38:08 PM
Core of pedagogy
==========
- Your Highlight on Location 18-20 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 5:38:08 PM
the core of pedagogical content knowledge is a deep understanding of the structure of the discipline—how knowledge is organized and pursued in a particular subject area—connected to a deep understanding of the particular students being taught.
==========
- Your Note on Location 21 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 5:39:00 PM
Structure Affects
==========
- Your Highlight on Location 20-21 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 5:39:00 PM
The structure of a discipline affects two things: 1) how knowledge and ideas are related and interconnected, and 2) how inquiries are carried out.
==========
- Your Note on Location 28 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 5:42:17 PM
Unconnected facts
==========
- Your Highlight on Location 27-28 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 5:42:17 PM
an academic subject she is studying is a long list of unconnected facts without clues to detect the core ideas and patterns that surface repeatedly.
==========
- Your Note on Location 29 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 5:44:00 PM
Importance of connecting facts
==========
- Your Highlight on Location 27-30 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 5:44:00 PM
an academic subject she is studying is a long list of unconnected facts without clues to detect the core ideas and patterns that surface repeatedly. Making these connections clear to students provides a window into the field and makes it possible for them to acquire meanings that would be hard to acquire otherwise.
==========
- Your Note on Location 33 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 5:46:18 PM
Structures pave way for transferring knowledge beyond school
==========
- Your Highlight on Location 32-34 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 5:46:19 PM
The structures of the disciplines are the building blocks for organizing the curriculum to engage students in activities and experiences around these core ideas. These structures also pave the way for transfer to other ideas, subjects, and real-life problems inside and outside of school.
==========
- Your Note on Location 38 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 5:47:45 PM
Stucture of mathematics
==========
- Your Highlight on Location 37-38 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 5:47:45 PM
mathematics is structured around core ideas like the inverse operations of addition and subtraction, the concepts of ratio and proportion, and the ideas of balance and equilibrium, among other topics.
==========
- Your Note on Location 45 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 5:50:17 PM
3 kinds of knowledge packages for instructing math
==========
- Your Highlight on Location 43-45 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 5:50:17 PM
three kinds of mathematical knowledge: “procedural topics” (e.g., how to divide by a fraction); “conceptual topics” (e.g., the concept of fraction); and “basic principles” (e.g., a deeper understanding of the inverse operations of multiplication and division and their application to the whole subject area of mathematics.)
==========
- Your Note on Location 52 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 5:54:32 PM
Countries that focus on teaching a few large math ideas have students that do better on math.
==========
- Your Highlight on Location 51-53 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 5:54:32 PM
This focus on a few large ideas and the ways they permeate many operations certainly reflects the curriculum organization in many countries where students perform well in mathematics.
==========
- Your Note on Location 58 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 5:56:37 PM
Sense of discovery heightens excitement of learning
==========
- Your Highlight on Location 56-58 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 5:56:37 PM
Bruner describes how students’ interest and enjoyment of learning can be heightened through the “sense of excitement of discovery” they experience as the structure of a discipline becomes clear to them.
==========
- Your Note on Location 65 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 5:58:17 PM
Structure of biology
==========
- Your Highlight on Location 64-65 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 5:58:17 PM
Many scientists will argue that in modern biology the theory of evolution is the central structure of all biology.
==========
- Your Note on Location 66 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 5:59:07 PM
Core biological concepts
==========
- Your Highlight on Location 65-66 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 5:59:07 PM
core concepts like adaptation, organisms, and environments that undergird ideas about the role of chance in how well organisms adapt to environments and how that relates to notions of evolution.
==========
- Your Note on Location 69 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 6:00:21 PM
Basic ideas transfer broadly
==========
- Your Highlight on Location 67-69 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 6:00:21 PM
This type of transfer is at the heart of the educational process—the continual broadening and deepening of knowledge in terms of basic ideas .... The more fundamental or basic is the idea he has learned, almost by definition, the greater will be its breadth of applicability to new problems (Bruner, 1960, pp. 17-18).
==========
- Your Note on Location 75 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 6:01:20 PM
spiral curriculum
==========
- Your Highlight on Location 72-75 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 6:01:20 PM
spiral curriculum that introduces central concepts in the disciplines early in a child’s education and revisits these concepts again and again in the later grades in more sophisticated ways. “By consistently reexamining material taught in elementary and secondary schools for its fundamental character, one is able to narrow the gap between ‘advanced’ knowledge and ‘elementary’ knowledge” (Bruner, 1960, p. 26).
==========
- Your Note on Location 78 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 6:02:11 PM
Spiral curriculum video
==========
- Your Highlight on Location 76-78 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 6:02:11 PM
How do mass and velocity affect momentum?” Each age group represents the subject matter knowledge differently, representing, in turn, the three ways of representing subject matter—active, graphic, and symbolic--
==========
- Your Note on Location 87 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 6:04:04 PM
Language structure
==========
- Your Highlight on Location 87-88 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 6:04:04 PM
students learn vocabulary based on the root meaning of words (for example, that “photo” means light), they can transfer
==========
- Your Note on Location 94 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 6:06:13 PM
Language- rules for conjugating parts of speech
==========
- Your Highlight on Location 94-94 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 6:06:13 PM
Knowing the structure of verb conjugations enables transfer.
==========
- Your Note on Location 101 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 6:07:27 PM
Literature core ideas
==========
- Your Highlight on Location 100-101 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 6:07:27 PM
literature, for example, teachers ask students to consider the core ideas of theme, character, and plot:
==========
- Your Note on Location 108 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 6:08:38 PM
Stucture of history
==========
- Your Highlight on Location 107-108 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 6:08:38 PM
history, students may consider core ideas about human power, the clash of cultures, and how societies organize themselves to engage in government, commerce, or religious pursuits.
==========
- Your Note on Location 111 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 6:09:38 PM
Teaching structure
==========
- Your Highlight on Location 110-111 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 6:09:38 PM
Teachers can help students understand the structure of a topic by providing an overarching conceptualization of the big ideas and then locating specific facts or information that relate to the big ideas.
==========
- Your Note on Location 119 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 6:11:15 PM
Central modes of inquiry
==========
- Your Highlight on Location 118-119 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 6:11:15 PM
the central modes of inquiry and knowledge-finding tools of the disciplines: How does each discipline construct, critique, and revise knowledge? How do you know something is true? What counts as evidence?
==========
- Your Note on Location 128 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 6:12:30 PM
Interdisciplinary ideas
==========
- Your Highlight on Location 127-128 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 6:12:30 PM
Certain ideas do cut across disciplines—notions of description, analysis, careful observation, the evidence for a claim, and theory.
==========
- Your Note on Location 143 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 6:15:05 PM
Teaching benefits of understanding discipline structure
==========
- Your Highlight on Location 141-143 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 6:15:05 PM
when teachers understand the structure of a discipline they can help students examine ideas critically, analyze the “kind” of information gathered, examine the “truth” of statements, and interpret the “meaning” of information (Schwab, 1978).
==========
- Your Note on Location 151 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 6:17:05 PM
How does one match teaching with students interests and abilities?
==========
- Your Highlight on Location 148-151 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 6:17:05 PM
The problem is twofold: first, how to have the basic subjects rewritten and their teaching materials revamped in such a way that the pervading and powerful ideas and attitudes relating to them are given a central role; second, how to match the levels of these materials to the capacities of students of different abilities at different grades in school (Bruner, 1960, p. 18).
==========
- Your Note on Location 153 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 6:17:56 PM
Organizing learning
==========
- Your Highlight on Location 152-153 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 6:17:56 PM
Part of the answer to this question is found in how teachers choose general ideas to guide the content of teaching and how teachers engage students in activities and experiences around these ideas,
==========
- Your Note on Location 169 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 6:19:32 PM
Effective teaching
==========
- Your Highlight on Location 168-169 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 6:19:32 PM
Effective teaching involves knowing not only what to teach, but also how and when to teach important content to the particular students in a given classroom.
==========
- Your Note on Location 173 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 6:21:06 PM
Pedagogical content knowledge
==========
- Your Highlight on Location 172-173 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 6:21:06 PM
“pedagogical content knowledge”—an understanding of what kinds of experiences, what kinds of objects, and what kind of examples can be used to help students acquire an understanding of complex ideas.
==========
- Your Note on Location 177 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 6:22:54 PM
Patholgies of learning
==========
- Your Highlight on Location 177-177 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 6:22:54 PM
three pathologies of learning: amnesia, fantasia, and inertia?
==========
- Your Note on Location 182 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 6:25:07 PM
Description of pedagogical content knowledge
==========
- Your Highlight on Location 180-182 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 6:25:07 PM
Pedagogical content knowledge is shaped not only by how teachers think about why they are teaching their subject, but also by their understanding of what they are teaching, how they are creating curriculum, and when students are ready for learning.
==========
- Your Note on Location 184 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 6:26:03 PM
requirements of pedagogy
==========
- Your Highlight on Location 184-184 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 6:26:03 PM
deep understanding of the subject matter as well as a strong understanding of the student’s intellect, motivation, development, and culture.
==========
- Your Note on Location 206 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 6:28:01 PM
Goals of teaching
==========
- Your Highlight on Location 205-206 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 6:28:01 PM
goal of teaching is not only to encourage particular understandings, but also to develop dispositions, values, commitments, and attitudes particular to a content area.
==========
- Your Note on Location 211 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 6:29:31 PM
Instructional strategies to represent content knowledge
==========
- Your Highlight on Location 210-211 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 6:29:31 PM
instructional strategies teachers use— metaphors, analogies, stories, visual representations, etc.—to represent content knowledge.
==========
- Your Note on Location 221 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 6:32:50 PM
math beyond computation
==========
- Your Highlight on Location 218-221 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 6:32:50 PM
She helps her elementary students engage in the work of mathematicians—to “conjecture, experiment, build arguments, and frame and solve problems” (Bransford et al., 2000, p. 166). Using these modes of inquiry, which take students beyond mere computation, Ball engages her students with concrete manipulatives, graphic examples related to real-life problems, and practice in identifying mathematical patterns.
==========
- Your Note on Location 229 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 6:35:52 PM
Approach for key content
==========
- Your Highlight on Location 228-229 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 6:35:52 PM
approach requires ascertaining what the students already understand, or misunderstand, and applying a set of strategies to build bridges between students and the content.
==========
- Your Note on Location 232 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 6:37:09 PM
Planning curriculum, inquiries and instruction
==========
- Your Highlight on Location 230-232 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 6:37:09 PM
As you plan curriculum, what do you identify as the important, generative ideas in your discipline? As you plan inquiries, what are the central tools and habits of mind students need to develop? And as you plan instruction, how do you develop hooks into the content for your students?
==========
Education
==========
- Your Note on Location 15 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 5:35:42 PM
Principles of learning
==========
- Your Highlight on Location 12-15 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 5:35:42 PM
There are two ways to think about the principles of learning. One is to ask,“What are the principles that are so general and universal that in some ways they apply regardless of what you are teaching and to whom?”There are such principles, and they can be very useful. We have been dealing with them throughout this course. But there are also questions about principles of learning that are particular to the domain under study and to the kinds of understanding that learners bring to the table
==========
- Your Note on Location 20 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 5:38:08 PM
Core of pedagogy
==========
- Your Highlight on Location 18-20 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 5:38:08 PM
the core of pedagogical content knowledge is a deep understanding of the structure of the discipline—how knowledge is organized and pursued in a particular subject area—connected to a deep understanding of the particular students being taught.
==========
- Your Note on Location 21 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 5:39:00 PM
Structure Affects
==========
- Your Highlight on Location 20-21 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 5:39:00 PM
The structure of a discipline affects two things: 1) how knowledge and ideas are related and interconnected, and 2) how inquiries are carried out.
==========
- Your Note on Location 28 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 5:42:17 PM
Unconnected facts
==========
- Your Highlight on Location 27-28 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 5:42:17 PM
an academic subject she is studying is a long list of unconnected facts without clues to detect the core ideas and patterns that surface repeatedly.
==========
- Your Note on Location 29 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 5:44:00 PM
Importance of connecting facts
==========
- Your Highlight on Location 27-30 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 5:44:00 PM
an academic subject she is studying is a long list of unconnected facts without clues to detect the core ideas and patterns that surface repeatedly. Making these connections clear to students provides a window into the field and makes it possible for them to acquire meanings that would be hard to acquire otherwise.
==========
- Your Note on Location 33 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 5:46:18 PM
Structures pave way for transferring knowledge beyond school
==========
- Your Highlight on Location 32-34 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 5:46:19 PM
The structures of the disciplines are the building blocks for organizing the curriculum to engage students in activities and experiences around these core ideas. These structures also pave the way for transfer to other ideas, subjects, and real-life problems inside and outside of school.
==========
- Your Note on Location 38 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 5:47:45 PM
Stucture of mathematics
==========
- Your Highlight on Location 37-38 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 5:47:45 PM
mathematics is structured around core ideas like the inverse operations of addition and subtraction, the concepts of ratio and proportion, and the ideas of balance and equilibrium, among other topics.
==========
- Your Note on Location 45 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 5:50:17 PM
3 kinds of knowledge packages for instructing math
==========
- Your Highlight on Location 43-45 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 5:50:17 PM
three kinds of mathematical knowledge: “procedural topics” (e.g., how to divide by a fraction); “conceptual topics” (e.g., the concept of fraction); and “basic principles” (e.g., a deeper understanding of the inverse operations of multiplication and division and their application to the whole subject area of mathematics.)
==========
- Your Note on Location 52 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 5:54:32 PM
Countries that focus on teaching a few large math ideas have students that do better on math.
==========
- Your Highlight on Location 51-53 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 5:54:32 PM
This focus on a few large ideas and the ways they permeate many operations certainly reflects the curriculum organization in many countries where students perform well in mathematics.
==========
- Your Note on Location 58 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 5:56:37 PM
Sense of discovery heightens excitement of learning
==========
- Your Highlight on Location 56-58 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 5:56:37 PM
Bruner describes how students’ interest and enjoyment of learning can be heightened through the “sense of excitement of discovery” they experience as the structure of a discipline becomes clear to them.
==========
- Your Note on Location 65 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 5:58:17 PM
Structure of biology
==========
- Your Highlight on Location 64-65 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 5:58:17 PM
Many scientists will argue that in modern biology the theory of evolution is the central structure of all biology.
==========
- Your Note on Location 66 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 5:59:07 PM
Core biological concepts
==========
- Your Highlight on Location 65-66 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 5:59:07 PM
core concepts like adaptation, organisms, and environments that undergird ideas about the role of chance in how well organisms adapt to environments and how that relates to notions of evolution.
==========
- Your Note on Location 69 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 6:00:21 PM
Basic ideas transfer broadly
==========
- Your Highlight on Location 67-69 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 6:00:21 PM
This type of transfer is at the heart of the educational process—the continual broadening and deepening of knowledge in terms of basic ideas .... The more fundamental or basic is the idea he has learned, almost by definition, the greater will be its breadth of applicability to new problems (Bruner, 1960, pp. 17-18).
==========
- Your Note on Location 75 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 6:01:20 PM
spiral curriculum
==========
- Your Highlight on Location 72-75 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 6:01:20 PM
spiral curriculum that introduces central concepts in the disciplines early in a child’s education and revisits these concepts again and again in the later grades in more sophisticated ways. “By consistently reexamining material taught in elementary and secondary schools for its fundamental character, one is able to narrow the gap between ‘advanced’ knowledge and ‘elementary’ knowledge” (Bruner, 1960, p. 26).
==========
- Your Note on Location 78 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 6:02:11 PM
Spiral curriculum video
==========
- Your Highlight on Location 76-78 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 6:02:11 PM
How do mass and velocity affect momentum?” Each age group represents the subject matter knowledge differently, representing, in turn, the three ways of representing subject matter—active, graphic, and symbolic--
==========
- Your Note on Location 87 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 6:04:04 PM
Language structure
==========
- Your Highlight on Location 87-88 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 6:04:04 PM
students learn vocabulary based on the root meaning of words (for example, that “photo” means light), they can transfer
==========
- Your Note on Location 94 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 6:06:13 PM
Language - rules for conjugating parts of speech
==========
- Your Highlight on Location 94-94 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 6:06:13 PM
Knowing the structure of verb conjugations enables transfer.
==========
- Your Note on Location 101 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 6:07:27 PM
Literature core ideas
==========
- Your Highlight on Location 100-101 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 6:07:27 PM
literature, for example, teachers ask students to consider the core ideas of theme, character, and plot:
==========
- Your Note on Location 108 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 6:08:38 PM
Stucture of history
==========
- Your Highlight on Location 107-108 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 6:08:38 PM
history, students may consider core ideas about human power, the clash of cultures, and how societies organize themselves to engage in government, commerce, or religious pursuits.
==========
- Your Note on Location 111 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 6:09:38 PM
Teaching structure
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- Your Highlight on Location 110-111 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 6:09:38 PM
Teachers can help students understand the structure of a topic by providing an overarching conceptualization of the big ideas and then locating specific facts or information that relate to the big ideas.
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- Your Note on Location 119 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 6:11:15 PM
Central modes of inquiry
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- Your Highlight on Location 118-119 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 6:11:15 PM
The central modes of inquiry and knowledge-finding tools of the disciplines: How does each discipline construct, critique, and revise knowledge? How do you know something is true? What counts as evidence?
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- Your Note on Location 128 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 6:12:30 PM
Interdisciplinary ideas
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- Your Highlight on Location 127-128 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 6:12:30 PM
Certain ideas do cut across disciplines—notions of description, analysis, careful observation, the evidence for a claim, and theory.
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- Your Note on Location 143 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 6:15:05 PM
Teaching benefits of undrerstanding discipline structure
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- Your Highlight on Location 141-143 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 6:15:05 PM
when teachers understand the structure of a discipline they can help students examine ideas critically, analyze the “kind” of information gathered, examine the “truth” of statements, and interpret the “meaning” of information (Schwab, 1978).
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- Your Note on Location 151 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 6:17:05 PM
How does one match teaching with students interests and abilities?
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- Your Highlight on Location 148-151 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 6:17:05 PM
The problem is twofold: first, how to have the basic subjects rewritten and their teaching materials revamped in such a way that the pervading and powerful ideas and attitudes relating to them are given a central role; second, how to match the levels of these materials to the capacities of students of different abilities at different grades in school (Bruner, 1960, p. 18).
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- Your Note on Location 153 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 6:17:56 PM
Organizing learning
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- Your Highlight on Location 152-153 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 6:17:56 PM
Part of the answer to this question is found in how teachers choose general ideas to guide the content of teaching and how teachers engage students in activities and experiences around these ideas,
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- Your Note on Location 169 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 6:19:32 PM
Effective teaching
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- Your Highlight on Location 168-169 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 6:19:32 PM
Effective teaching involves knowing not only what to teach, but also how and when to teach important content to the particular students in a given classroom.
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- Your Note on Location 173 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 6:21:06 PM
Pedagogical content knowledge
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- Your Highlight on Location 172-173 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 6:21:06 PM
“pedagogical content knowledge”—an understanding of what kinds of experiences, what kinds of objects, and what kind of examples can be used to help students acquire an understanding of complex ideas.
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- Your Note on Location 177 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 6:22:54 PM
Patholgies of learning
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- Your Highlight on Location 177-177 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 6:22:54 PM
three pathologies of learning: amnesia, fantasia, and inertia?
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- Your Note on Location 182 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 6:25:07 PM
Description of pedagogical content knowledge
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- Your Highlight on Location 180-182 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 6:25:07 PM
Pedagogical content knowledge is shaped not only by how teachers think about why they are teaching their subject, but also by their understanding of what they are teaching, how they are creating curriculum, and when students are ready for learning.
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- Your Note on Location 184 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 6:26:03 PM
requirements of pedagogy
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- Your Highlight on Location 184-184 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 6:26:03 PM
deep understanding of the subject matter as well as a strong understanding of the student’s intellect, motivation, development, and culture.
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- Your Note on Location 206 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 6:28:01 PM
Goals of teaching
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- Your Highlight on Location 205-206 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 6:28:01 PM
goal of teaching is not only to encourage particular understandings, but also to develop dispositions, values, commitments, and attitudes particular to a content area.
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- Your Note on Location 211 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 6:29:31 PM
Instructional strategies to represent content knowledge
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- Your Highlight on Location 210-211 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 6:29:31 PM
instructional strategies teachers use— metaphors, analogies, stories, visual representations, etc.—to represent content knowledge.
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- Your Note on Location 221 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 6:32:50 PM
math beyond computation
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- Your Highlight on Location 218-221 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 6:32:50 PM
She helps her elementary students engage in the work of mathematicians—to “conjecture, experiment, build arguments, and frame and solve problems” (Bransford et al., 2000, p. 166). Using these modes of inquiry, which take students beyond mere computation, Ball engages her students with concrete manipulatives, graphic examples related to real-life problems, and practice in identifying mathematical patterns.
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- Your Note on Location 229 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 6:35:52 PM
Approach for key content
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- Your Highlight on Location 228-229 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 6:35:52 PM
approach requires ascertaining what the students already understand, or misunderstand, and applying a set of strategies to build bridges between students and the content.
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- Your Note on Location 232 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 6:37:09 PM
Planning curriculum, inquiries and instruction
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- Your Highlight on Location 230-232 | Added on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 6:37:09 PM
As you plan curriculum, what do you identify as the important, generative ideas in your discipline? As you plan inquiries, what are the central tools and habits of mind students need to develop? And as you plan instruction, how do you develop hooks into the content for your students?
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Session 9: Metacognition
WJS_session9-metacognition_11June-2016
Discussion Points
1. Predicting outcomes - how often do we use that in school. After setting an objective, predicting is essential to choosing between alternative courses of action.
Key Questions
• How can people learn by reflecting on what they know and do?
• How can teachers help students think about their own thinking?
Learning Objectives
• Defining metacognition—Teachers will understand what metacognition is and how it improves learning. They will become familiar with two aspects of metacognition: reflection and self-regulation.
• Developing metacognitive skills—Teachers will understand what it means to develop a culture of metacognition in the classroom. Teachers will become familiar with strategies for helping students regulate, monitor, and guide their learning.
Research has shown that one of the key traits good problem-solvers possess is highly developed metacognitive skills. They know how to recognize flaws or gaps in their own thinking, articulate their thought processes, and revise their efforts (Brown, Bransford, Ferrara, & Campione, 1983).
Teachers must create the classroom equivalent of the mirror on the dance studio wall or the videotape of the golf swing.
Metacognitive strategies help us become more efficient and powerful in our learning because they help us to find information, evaluate when we need additional resources, and understand when to apply different approaches to problems.
Teachers can help their students learn how to ask self-monitoring questions as they are learning. These questions might differ depending on the developmental level of the learner. For very young children, the focus of the question might serve to self-test. For instance, while they are reading a story, young students might be encouraged to ask, “Do I know who this character is, what problem he is trying to solve, or the sequence of events in this story?” As students enter the middle grades, the nature of the questions increasingly shifts to “What inferences can I draw?”“What is the meaning of this symbol in the story”or “What is the relevance of this information to a problem that I’m trying to solve?” High school teachers might encourage their students to evaluate the stand an author is taking: “What is the author’s perspective?” “Is the author’s evidence sufficient to support the stand that he has taken?”
Questions that explicitly help students think about, “How do I study best?” or “What kinds of tools help me learn?” all engage metacognitive knowledge.
Metacognitive regulation involves the ability to think strategically and to problem-solve, plan, set goals, organize ideas, and evaluate what is known and not known. It also involves the ability to teach to others and make the thinking process visible.
Ann Brown and her colleagues (1983) describe three ways we direct our own learning: • Planning approaches to tasks—identifying the problem, choosing strategies, organizing our thoughts, and predicting outcomes; • Monitoring activities during learning—testing, revising, and evaluating the effectiveness of our strategies; and • Checking outcomes—evaluating the outcomes against specific criteria of efficiency and effectiveness. Learning how to be mindful of one’s process and how to think strategically about a task can make problem solving more efficient.
Strategies for Learning
Teachers who are developing metacognitive skills in the classroom help students incorporate active reflection in their learning. They model and scaffold the processes of reflection, questioning, evaluating, and other thinking strategies that may not come naturally. The strategies below include opportunities to reflect on learning and to learn to regulate or direct one’s work: • Predicting outcomes—Most often seen in mathematics or science classes, predicting helps students understand what kinds of information they might need to successfully solve a problem. Prediction also helps students compare their initial thoughts with the final outcomes of a problem or experiment. • Evaluating work—Students review their work and determine where the strengths and weaknesses are in their work and their thinking. • Questioning by the teacher—The teacher asks students as they work. “What are you doing now? Why are you doing it? How does it help you?” (Schoenfeld, 1987). • Self-assessing—Students reflect on their learning and determine how well they have learned something or how their skills have developed. • Self-questioning—Commonly taught for use in reading tasks, but also useful in writing and problem-solving of all kinds, students use questions to check their own knowledge as they are learning. When students learn to ask questions (of themselves or of others) while they work, they intentionally direct their thinking and clarify the areas where they need assistance. Selecting strategies—Students decide which strategies are useful for a given task. Strategy selection may depend on understanding one’s own learning style and strengths as well as understanding the features of a problem. • Using directed or selective thinking—Students choose consciously to follow a specific line of thinking or structured approach in order to find an answer. • Using discourse—Students discuss ideas with each other and their teacher. This process makes thinking more concrete and helps students learn to ask questions, identify gaps in their own knowledge, and learn from others’ thoughts and ideas. • Critiquing—Students provide feedback to other students about their work in a constructive way. This process allows students giving feedback to practice verbalizing their own thinking and students receiving feedback to improve their own thinking process and performance. • Revising—Students return to their work after receiving feedback. This opportunity allows students to update their thinking and check their use of learning strategies.
WJS_session9-metacognition_11June-2016
Discussion Points
1. Predicting outcomes - how often do we use that in school. After setting an objective, predicting is essential to choosing between alternative courses of action.
Key Questions
• How can people learn by reflecting on what they know and do?
• How can teachers help students think about their own thinking?
Learning Objectives
• Defining metacognition—Teachers will understand what metacognition is and how it improves learning. They will become familiar with two aspects of metacognition: reflection and self-regulation.
• Developing metacognitive skills—Teachers will understand what it means to develop a culture of metacognition in the classroom. Teachers will become familiar with strategies for helping students regulate, monitor, and guide their learning.
Research has shown that one of the key traits good problem-solvers possess is highly developed metacognitive skills. They know how to recognize flaws or gaps in their own thinking, articulate their thought processes, and revise their efforts (Brown, Bransford, Ferrara, & Campione, 1983).
Teachers must create the classroom equivalent of the mirror on the dance studio wall or the videotape of the golf swing.
Metacognitive strategies help us become more efficient and powerful in our learning because they help us to find information, evaluate when we need additional resources, and understand when to apply different approaches to problems.
Teachers can help their students learn how to ask self-monitoring questions as they are learning. These questions might differ depending on the developmental level of the learner. For very young children, the focus of the question might serve to self-test. For instance, while they are reading a story, young students might be encouraged to ask, “Do I know who this character is, what problem he is trying to solve, or the sequence of events in this story?” As students enter the middle grades, the nature of the questions increasingly shifts to “What inferences can I draw?”“What is the meaning of this symbol in the story”or “What is the relevance of this information to a problem that I’m trying to solve?” High school teachers might encourage their students to evaluate the stand an author is taking: “What is the author’s perspective?” “Is the author’s evidence sufficient to support the stand that he has taken?”
Questions that explicitly help students think about, “How do I study best?” or “What kinds of tools help me learn?” all engage metacognitive knowledge.
Metacognitive regulation involves the ability to think strategically and to problem-solve, plan, set goals, organize ideas, and evaluate what is known and not known. It also involves the ability to teach to others and make the thinking process visible.
Ann Brown and her colleagues (1983) describe three ways we direct our own learning: • Planning approaches to tasks—identifying the problem, choosing strategies, organizing our thoughts, and predicting outcomes; • Monitoring activities during learning—testing, revising, and evaluating the effectiveness of our strategies; and • Checking outcomes—evaluating the outcomes against specific criteria of efficiency and effectiveness. Learning how to be mindful of one’s process and how to think strategically about a task can make problem solving more efficient.
Strategies for Learning
Teachers who are developing metacognitive skills in the classroom help students incorporate active reflection in their learning. They model and scaffold the processes of reflection, questioning, evaluating, and other thinking strategies that may not come naturally. The strategies below include opportunities to reflect on learning and to learn to regulate or direct one’s work: • Predicting outcomes—Most often seen in mathematics or science classes, predicting helps students understand what kinds of information they might need to successfully solve a problem. Prediction also helps students compare their initial thoughts with the final outcomes of a problem or experiment. • Evaluating work—Students review their work and determine where the strengths and weaknesses are in their work and their thinking. • Questioning by the teacher—The teacher asks students as they work. “What are you doing now? Why are you doing it? How does it help you?” (Schoenfeld, 1987). • Self-assessing—Students reflect on their learning and determine how well they have learned something or how their skills have developed. • Self-questioning—Commonly taught for use in reading tasks, but also useful in writing and problem-solving of all kinds, students use questions to check their own knowledge as they are learning. When students learn to ask questions (of themselves or of others) while they work, they intentionally direct their thinking and clarify the areas where they need assistance. Selecting strategies—Students decide which strategies are useful for a given task. Strategy selection may depend on understanding one’s own learning style and strengths as well as understanding the features of a problem. • Using directed or selective thinking—Students choose consciously to follow a specific line of thinking or structured approach in order to find an answer. • Using discourse—Students discuss ideas with each other and their teacher. This process makes thinking more concrete and helps students learn to ask questions, identify gaps in their own knowledge, and learn from others’ thoughts and ideas. • Critiquing—Students provide feedback to other students about their work in a constructive way. This process allows students giving feedback to practice verbalizing their own thinking and students receiving feedback to improve their own thinking process and performance. • Revising—Students return to their work after receiving feedback. This opportunity allows students to update their thinking and check their use of learning strategies.
Session 8: Cognitive Apprenticeship
WJS_session8-cognitive-apprenticeship_9June-2016
Discussion Points
1. What are examples of cognitive apprenticeships? Have you had one?
2. What are the characteristics of productive feedback? Can you cite examples?
3. What are the benefits of making students' teaching more visible? Can you cite examples?
4. Would it be helpful, and feasible, to allow students to work on one, or a succession of, open-ended topics all year?
Key Questions
• How can students learn to think strategically?
• How can teachers make thinking visible for their students and support more powerful learning?
Learning Objectives
• Creating cognitive apprenticeships—Teachers will learn what kinds of tasks and projects are appropriate to a cognitive apprenticeship. They will recognize that tasks should be authentic, representative of the field or domain being pursued, and based on real-world needs and contexts. Eventually in a cognitive apprenticeship, peers can coach one another and students can learn to scaffold their own process. (pg. 148)
• Making thinking visible—Teachers will consider how to make expert thinking visible and how to support student learning through modeling, scaffolding, and coaching. They will recognize the need to break down a task, to carefully scaffold, and structure activities to guide a cognitive apprenticeship.
• Assessing students’ learning—Teachers will understand how to make student thinking visible so they can judge when and how to support students’ learning.
Cognitive Apprenticeship
Applies the ancient tradition of practical, trade-oriented apprenticeships to the kinds of teaching and learning that take place in modern schools. pg 145. A cognitive apprenticeship is not just an open-ended inquiry. Rather, it is a carefully structured set of activities designed with end goals in mind and with attention to the individual needs of students. Classroom activities are purposeful and goal-oriented, often revolving around the production of substantial, meaningful products.
Features of Context for Real-World Apprenticeships (pg. 145)
1. Realistic Tasks
2. Collaborative Learning Community
3, Motivating to Students (often through real-world value)
Teaching Strategies (pg. 146)
1. Modeling (whole task) (e.g. expert strategies)
2. Coaching
3. Scaffolding
Reciprocal Teaching Strategies (pg. 146)
1) summarizing, 2) questioning, 3) clarifying, and 4) making predictions.
Coaching Strategies - Feedback (pg. 147)
Feedback is most productive when: • It is concrete and specific rather than global or local, • Strengths are noted before critical suggestions are made, so that students can see what they did right as well as learning what they might do differently, • It has clear indicators of what the goals of the performance are—like rubrics, models, or guidelines.
Making Students' Thinking Visible
Benefits (pg. 148)
1) help them become aware of their own understandings and misconceptions,
2) provide opportunities for students to assist their peers, and
3) give teachers insights to use in scaffolding and assisting students’ learning
Strategy for Visualizing Thinking
1) Articulate reasoning
2) Reflect on problem-solving strategies
WJS_session8-cognitive-apprenticeship_9June-2016
Discussion Points
1. What are examples of cognitive apprenticeships? Have you had one?
2. What are the characteristics of productive feedback? Can you cite examples?
3. What are the benefits of making students' teaching more visible? Can you cite examples?
4. Would it be helpful, and feasible, to allow students to work on one, or a succession of, open-ended topics all year?
Key Questions
• How can students learn to think strategically?
• How can teachers make thinking visible for their students and support more powerful learning?
Learning Objectives
• Creating cognitive apprenticeships—Teachers will learn what kinds of tasks and projects are appropriate to a cognitive apprenticeship. They will recognize that tasks should be authentic, representative of the field or domain being pursued, and based on real-world needs and contexts. Eventually in a cognitive apprenticeship, peers can coach one another and students can learn to scaffold their own process. (pg. 148)
• Making thinking visible—Teachers will consider how to make expert thinking visible and how to support student learning through modeling, scaffolding, and coaching. They will recognize the need to break down a task, to carefully scaffold, and structure activities to guide a cognitive apprenticeship.
• Assessing students’ learning—Teachers will understand how to make student thinking visible so they can judge when and how to support students’ learning.
Cognitive Apprenticeship
Applies the ancient tradition of practical, trade-oriented apprenticeships to the kinds of teaching and learning that take place in modern schools. pg 145. A cognitive apprenticeship is not just an open-ended inquiry. Rather, it is a carefully structured set of activities designed with end goals in mind and with attention to the individual needs of students. Classroom activities are purposeful and goal-oriented, often revolving around the production of substantial, meaningful products.
Features of Context for Real-World Apprenticeships (pg. 145)
1. Realistic Tasks
2. Collaborative Learning Community
3, Motivating to Students (often through real-world value)
Teaching Strategies (pg. 146)
1. Modeling (whole task) (e.g. expert strategies)
2. Coaching
3. Scaffolding
Reciprocal Teaching Strategies (pg. 146)
1) summarizing, 2) questioning, 3) clarifying, and 4) making predictions.
Coaching Strategies - Feedback (pg. 147)
Feedback is most productive when: • It is concrete and specific rather than global or local, • Strengths are noted before critical suggestions are made, so that students can see what they did right as well as learning what they might do differently, • It has clear indicators of what the goals of the performance are—like rubrics, models, or guidelines.
Making Students' Thinking Visible
Benefits (pg. 148)
1) help them become aware of their own understandings and misconceptions,
2) provide opportunities for students to assist their peers, and
3) give teachers insights to use in scaffolding and assisting students’ learning
Strategy for Visualizing Thinking
1) Articulate reasoning
2) Reflect on problem-solving strategies
Session 7: Learning in a Social Context
WJS_session7-social_learning_9June-2016
Discussion Points
Key Questions
• How do people learn in social contexts?
• How can teachers develop communities of learning?
Learning Objectives
• Assisted performance and the “zone of proximal development”—Teachers will understand how they can identify students’ levels of proficiency and readiness for a given task and target assistance accordingly.
• Strategies for fostering communication—Teachers will understand the importance of language, communication, and interaction in learning. Teachers will consider several specific teaching strategies to foster and guide communication in the classroom, including the role of questioning, group work, managed discourse, and reciprocal teaching.
1. Managing Discourse
2. Strategically assessing student performance
• Social contexts and learning communities—Teachers will recognize that when students work collaboratively to assist one another and take on expert roles, their learning is strengthened, reinforced, and refined. Teachers will consider strategies they can use to build learning communities.
==========================================================================================
pg. 126 The teacher or a more expert peer is essential to this learning process. Individual development takes place in the context of activities modeled or assisted by this more skilled personj.
The teacher’s job is to assess the student’s understanding to locate the point in the “zone of proximal development” (ZPD) where the learner needs the assistance. Once that has been done, the teacher provides that assistance; for example, by modeling or demonstrating, by asking questions or coaching, by creating a group task in which peer assistance can occur, or by providing readings or hands-on materials that support the next stage of learning.
Principles for Effective Pedagogy (Teaching Transformed, Roland Tharp and his colleagues (2000) )
1. Having teachers and students produce work together,
2. Developing language and literacy across the curriculum
3. Making meaning: Connecting school to students’ lives,
4. Teaching complex thinking, and
5. Teaching through guided conversation
pg. 127
1. Work together on Joint activity
Joint activity means teachers share power with students—they share decisions about the selection of topics, as well as responsibilities for how to proceed, for instance. This kind of collaboration requires dialogue, negotiation, and compromise.
2. Language and literacy
Both oral and written language are central to such a setting (principle 2)
3. Making meaning by contextualizing instruction, and building on the knowledge students bring from their families and communities.
4. Teaching complex thinking with cognitively challenging activities, those that require thinking and analysis, rather than merely memorization and recall.
5. Foundation of instruction is dialogic - learn through exchange and discussion with an academic goal
Managing Discourse (pg. 127)
One way to assist and assess students’ learning is by structuring classroom discussions with purposeful questions and listening carefully to what students say as a means to guide the instructional conversation toward deeper understanding.
Assisted Performance and Scaffolding (pg. 129)
Perhaps the most important form of assistance is the well-timed question, which can serve a number of purposes. Questions can determine when and what a student is ready to learn and can provide information about the developmental level of each student in a particular domain. Questions can also serve to extend students’ thinking further and provide opportunities for them to articulate and reflect on their thoughts. Questions can serve as “scaffolds” by guiding the student through a logical thinking process or by prompting the learner to think about a problem in a new way. “
Developing Learning Communities
In a learning community, students learn through carefully structured collaboration as they participate in a shared practice or a group project in a setting that resembles a real-life situation (Wenger, 1998). Learning is always “situated” in a social context because what is learned cannot be separated from how it is learned and used (Brown, Collins, & Duguid, 1989).
“Most ‘good’ schools (or ‘good’ programs within schools), however, have secured their advantages by excluding - by economics, neighborhood, achievement scores, or racial codes - those who represent the other half (or more) of children. (Darling-Hammond, pg. 71, 2000)
References
1. Linda Darling-Hammond et al. 2003. The Learning Classroom: Theory Into Practice. Detroit: Annenberg Media.
2. Linda Darling-Hammond 2000. School Contexts and Learning: Organizational Influences on the Achievement of Students of Color, in Addressing Cultural Issues in Organizations: Beyond the Corporate Context, Robert T. Carter editor, Thousand Oaks, California: Sage Publications.
WJS_session7-social_learning_9June-2016
Discussion Points
- How would you involve students in a joint activity, for instance sharing decisions about the selection of topics, as well as responsibilities for how to proceed, [1st - plan fun activities with students (free time); 2nd - develop menu of academic topics that satisfy common core for children to choose from]
- Are there activities that require cognitive thinking, but not written language, especially for the younger students?
- For youngest kids, jointly imagine animals, places, people ...., act out numbers ...
- Alternatives to Socratic dialogue for younger grades? (below 6th?)
- Could WebQuests be used for developing learning communities? - How do questions promote learning?
Key Questions
• How do people learn in social contexts?
• How can teachers develop communities of learning?
Learning Objectives
• Assisted performance and the “zone of proximal development”—Teachers will understand how they can identify students’ levels of proficiency and readiness for a given task and target assistance accordingly.
• Strategies for fostering communication—Teachers will understand the importance of language, communication, and interaction in learning. Teachers will consider several specific teaching strategies to foster and guide communication in the classroom, including the role of questioning, group work, managed discourse, and reciprocal teaching.
1. Managing Discourse
2. Strategically assessing student performance
• Social contexts and learning communities—Teachers will recognize that when students work collaboratively to assist one another and take on expert roles, their learning is strengthened, reinforced, and refined. Teachers will consider strategies they can use to build learning communities.
==========================================================================================
pg. 126 The teacher or a more expert peer is essential to this learning process. Individual development takes place in the context of activities modeled or assisted by this more skilled personj.
The teacher’s job is to assess the student’s understanding to locate the point in the “zone of proximal development” (ZPD) where the learner needs the assistance. Once that has been done, the teacher provides that assistance; for example, by modeling or demonstrating, by asking questions or coaching, by creating a group task in which peer assistance can occur, or by providing readings or hands-on materials that support the next stage of learning.
Principles for Effective Pedagogy (Teaching Transformed, Roland Tharp and his colleagues (2000) )
1. Having teachers and students produce work together,
2. Developing language and literacy across the curriculum
3. Making meaning: Connecting school to students’ lives,
4. Teaching complex thinking, and
5. Teaching through guided conversation
pg. 127
1. Work together on Joint activity
Joint activity means teachers share power with students—they share decisions about the selection of topics, as well as responsibilities for how to proceed, for instance. This kind of collaboration requires dialogue, negotiation, and compromise.
2. Language and literacy
Both oral and written language are central to such a setting (principle 2)
3. Making meaning by contextualizing instruction, and building on the knowledge students bring from their families and communities.
4. Teaching complex thinking with cognitively challenging activities, those that require thinking and analysis, rather than merely memorization and recall.
5. Foundation of instruction is dialogic - learn through exchange and discussion with an academic goal
Managing Discourse (pg. 127)
One way to assist and assess students’ learning is by structuring classroom discussions with purposeful questions and listening carefully to what students say as a means to guide the instructional conversation toward deeper understanding.
Assisted Performance and Scaffolding (pg. 129)
Perhaps the most important form of assistance is the well-timed question, which can serve a number of purposes. Questions can determine when and what a student is ready to learn and can provide information about the developmental level of each student in a particular domain. Questions can also serve to extend students’ thinking further and provide opportunities for them to articulate and reflect on their thoughts. Questions can serve as “scaffolds” by guiding the student through a logical thinking process or by prompting the learner to think about a problem in a new way. “
Developing Learning Communities
In a learning community, students learn through carefully structured collaboration as they participate in a shared practice or a group project in a setting that resembles a real-life situation (Wenger, 1998). Learning is always “situated” in a social context because what is learned cannot be separated from how it is learned and used (Brown, Collins, & Duguid, 1989).
“Most ‘good’ schools (or ‘good’ programs within schools), however, have secured their advantages by excluding - by economics, neighborhood, achievement scores, or racial codes - those who represent the other half (or more) of children. (Darling-Hammond, pg. 71, 2000)
References
1. Linda Darling-Hammond et al. 2003. The Learning Classroom: Theory Into Practice. Detroit: Annenberg Media.
2. Linda Darling-Hammond 2000. School Contexts and Learning: Organizational Influences on the Achievement of Students of Color, in Addressing Cultural Issues in Organizations: Beyond the Corporate Context, Robert T. Carter editor, Thousand Oaks, California: Sage Publications.
Session 6: Culture and Learning
WJS_session6-culture_learning_10June-2016.pdf
‘In order to teach you, I must know you.’ I pray for all of us the strength to teach our children what they must learn, and the humility and wisdom to learn from them so that we might better teach. Lisa Delpit (1995, p. 183)
Discussion Points
1. Encouraging that studies have demonstrated we can improve lives of poor or disadvantaged minority students by giving them access to rich curricula and well-qualified teachers. [Follow up by reading Darling-Hammond's 1997 paper]
2. What are separate tracks in integrated schools? Studying tracking in Bay Area schools is a potentially enlightening, and explosive high school social studies project.
3. School funding - there's a project for parents, school administrators, teachers and students - but a broad perspective is needed
4. Use of teachers exclusively from the dominant group - why - and should I target teaching at minority schools?
5. African American students “enter school having to unlearn or, at least, to modify their own culturally sanctioned interactional and behavioral styles and adopt those styles rewarded in the school context if they wish to achieve academic success. How?
6. Good sources for multi-cultural lesson plans, readings, activities or text books.
7. Crossing cultural boundaries is vital to learning - and all benefit from it. The pace of scientific research and technological development is accelerating as boundaries between academic disciplines breakdown.
Key Questions
• What role does culture play in learning?
• How can teachers develop culturally responsive practices?
Learning Objectives
• Multicultural education—Teachers will become familiar with some of the causes of inequality in education, as well as the sources of diversity in classrooms. They will understand the importance of multicultural education and the different forms multicultural education can take in schools.
• Culturally responsive teaching— Teachers will reflect on and consider the relationship between culture and learning. Teachers will understand that culturally responsive teaching involves a genuine respect for students and belief in their potential as learners. Teachers will understand the importance of connecting to students’ experiences and will explore how to create culturally responsive, caring environments.
• Congruity between home and school—Teachers will consider the impact of school culture and home culture on students’ learning. They will evaluate how to make the classroom a place where students feel comfortable, see themselves represented, and engage with curriculum materials that reflect their home cultures.
‘In order to teach you, I must know you.’ I pray for all of us the strength to teach our children what they must learn, and the humility and wisdom to learn from them so that we might better teach. Lisa Delpit (1995, p. 183)
Culture, Inequality and Schooling
A growing body of research illustrates that the vast differences in learning opportunities within and across U.S. schools are the single greatest source of differences in achievement among students. Studies have found that students from different groups who take similar courses and have access to equally rich curricula and equally well-qualified teachers perform similarly (Darling-Hammond, 1997).
1. Encouraging that studies have demonstrated we can improve lives of poor or disadvantaged minority students by giving them access to rich curricula and well-qualified teachers. [Follow up by reading Darling-Hammond's 1997 paper]
2. What are separate tracks in integrated schools?
3. School funding - there's a project for parents, school administrators, teachers and students - but a broad perspective is needed
4. Use of teachers exclusively from the dominant group - why - and should I target teaching at minority schools?
5. African American students “enter school having to unlearn or, at least, to modify their own culturally sanctioned interactional and behavioral styles and adopt those styles rewarded in the school context if they wish to achieve academic success. How?
Multicultural Education
Content Integration
Knowledge Construction
Prejudice Reduction
Equity Pedagogy
Empowerment of School Culture
Content Integration
Select curriculum materials and teaching examples across subject matters can be selected to reflect the language, history, and values of a diverse range of peoples and perspectives.
Knowledge Construction
“How knowledge is created and how it is influenced by the racial, ethnic, and social-class positions of individuals and groups."
Funding creates knowledge - exposing tracking in Bay Area schools would be a good project here.
The example in the book was so outrageous, and dated, it is safe. More subtle, recent examples given in the book itself, such as tracking. are more enlightening and useful.
Prejudice Reduction - light on specifics teachers can do or examples of what they have done
In addition to teaching in ways that counter this lack of information and misinformation, another aim of multicultural education is to encourage teachers and students to reflect on their own attitudes, biases, and practices in their lives and in the classroom. As Nieto suggests, being antiracist and antidiscriminatory is not about assigning blame or feeling guilt, but “paying attention to all areas in which some students are favored over others: the curriculum, choice of materials, sorting policies, and teachers’ interactions and relationships with students and their families” (Nieto, 2000, p. 306).
Equity Pedagogy - this may simply be a synonym for multicultural education
Teaching for equity means having high expectations and believing in the potential of all students, documenting and understanding how different populations learn, and putting into practice culturally responsive approaches.
Empowering School Culture - motivates students and provides activities that will require learning
An increasing body of research illustrates that students of color, as well as others, are succeeding in many new small schools featuring structures that foster more cooperative modes of learning, less departmentalization and tracking, a more common curriculum for students, stronger relationships between teachers and students that extend over multiple years, greater use of team teaching, and participation of parents, teachers, and students in making decisions about schooling (Darling-Hammond, 2000). East Palo Alto
Crossing cultural boundaries is essential to social learning. This is true for learning across disciplines, for learning across communities and cultures, for learning across ideas and ideologies, and for learning across the many groups of individuals— parents, teachers, staff, and students—who make up a school. Educative institutions can actively strive to construct and incorporate diversity, rather than trying to suppress it.
Rich Curricula Uplift Disadvantaged Students
Rich
1) Culture motivates by facilitating autonomy, purpose, mastery
2) Diversity enriches the curriculum and allows more people to act autonomously to master more skills
3)
Ignore culture - generates rejection of school norms to resist deculturization.
“ Schools deculturalize in many ways, including (a) segregation and isolation of minority students; (b) forced change of language; a curriculum whose content and textbooks reflect the culture of the dominant group; (d) a setting in which dominated groups are not allowed to express their culture; and (e) the use of teachers exclusively from the dominant group. (Darling-Hammond 2000, pg. 80)
“A growing body of research illustrates that the vast differences in curriculum opportunities across U.S. schools are the single greatest source of differences in outcomes among students. Studies during the past decade have repeatedly found that students from different groups who take similar courses and have access to equally rich curriculum and equally well-qualified teachers perform similarly.” (Darling-Hammond 2000, pg. 73)
Did these studies consider the degree of deculturization of moving inner city students to the suburbs?
Regarding African American high school youth randomly placed in public housing in suburbs rather than the in the city of Chicago: “Compared to their comparable city-placed peers, who were of equivalent income and initial academic attainment, the students who were enabled to attend largely white and better funded suburban schools had better educational outcomes across many dimensions.” (Darling-Hammond 2000, pg. 73-74)
“Most ‘good’ schools (or ‘good’ programs within schools), however, have secured their advantages by excluding - by economics, neighborhood, achievement scores, or racial codes - those who represent the other half (or more) of children. (Darling-Hammond, pg. 71, 2000)
References
1. Linda Darling-Hammond et al. 2003. The Learning Classroom: Theory Into Practice. Detroit: Annenberg Media.
2. Linda Darling-Hammond 2000. School Contexts and Learning: Organizational Influences on the Achievement of Students of Color, in Addressing Cultural Issues in Organizations: Beyond the Corporate Context, Robert T. Carter editor, Thousand Oaks, California: Sage Publications.
Session 5: Emotions and Learning
WJS_session5-emotions_learning_5June-2016
Discussion Points
1. Develop at least one competency for each student - let a student work longer on an activity and not participate in others
2. Role of competition in the classroom - competition important once students gain confidence in their skill
3. Ideas for encouraging students to develop empathy? Engaging pair and group activities with different partners?
4. How do we include parents and the community in social and emotional education programs?
Key Questions
• How do emotions affect learning, and how does the classroom affect emotions?
• How can teachers foster emotional intelligence and create emotionally safe classroom environments?
Learning Objectives
• Emotions affect learning—Teachers will understand how their students’ emotions affect learning. Teachers will understand the need to make judgments about when emotions are interfering with or supporting learning.
• Emotional intelligence—Teachers will consider and understand the five aspects of “emotional intelligence.” They will begin to develop strategies to help themselves and their students become aware of and manage their emotions.
• Creating emotionally safe learning environments—Teachers will consider how to create emotionally safe learning environments where students can take risks, develop confidence, and grow emotionally and academically.
Emotional intelligence expands on Howard Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligences, in particular, the intrapersonal and interpersonal intelligences he defines, which deal with understanding oneself and others (Gardner, 1999).
Emotional intelligence requires abstract reasoning, including the ability to perceive and understand emotion, and the ability to understand how emotions facilitate and influence thought (Mayer & Cobb, 2000).
Specific behaviors and skills can be taught to help students develop emotional intelligence.
Five skills
1) being aware of one’s emotions
2) managing those emotions
3) motivating oneself
4) empathizing, and
5) relating well with others in a group
Teacher behaviors and skills
Dealing with students when their emotions are heightened
In these situations, students may need extra prompts to help them with learning. Some might need a reminder to help them stay focused and to redirect their attention to events in the classroom. Some students might need one on-one time with the teacher to help process their feelings or resolve a problem. In some cases, the distraction might be temporary, such as a bad day or a fight with a friend. But other students, such as those whose parents are going through a divorce, may need more intensive assistance to direct their intellectual resources to learning instead of focusing solely on their emotions. They may need counseling beyond the classroom.
Dealing with students who are anxious about their schoolwork
Teachers can help reduce their students’ performance anxieties by providing multiple opportunities for feedback about their work, and by emphasizing that mistakes are okay and a part of learning. For these students, it is important that their entire grade not be based on one big project and that feedback emphasize the things they are doing right, while also giving specific, focused advice on ways to improve. Moreover, they will benefit from knowing that the teacher really cares about them as a person and as a learner.
Dealing with students upset by classroom events
A student who is angry and only knows how to blame others is not going to be able to succeed in or out of the classroom. The student needs to learn how to acknowledge and express his feelings, manage his anger, and come up with strategies for letting off steam. Goleman describes one of these strategies:
Teaching Student Skills
Self-Awareness
We can support students in developing this self-confidence by helping them learn to identify what they are thinking and how they are feeling when they make decisions. For example, a teacher might model the use of self-reflective language in the classroom to help students get in touch with their emotional states of mind. Talking about positive and negative feelings is one way to help students learn how to deal appropriately with their emotions. Talking about feelings of stress, anger, frustration, and disappointment can help students learn how to identify their feelings. Teachers can facilitate this discussion during class meetings or during one-on-one conversations with students, or as students work together in pairs and groups. For young children, stories can provide opportunities to talk about different emotions; for older students, journal writing may be a productive way to help them identify complex feelings.
In the process, teachers can give students the language to interact productively with one another about how they are feeling (e.g., teaching students to make “I” statements, such as “I feel frustrated when ...” rather than, “He was mean.”) Teachers can also support students’ patience to wait to act after acknowledging their feelings until they have considered thoughtful alternative actions.
Teachers should be aware of and sensitive to the different ways children respond to and display emotion.
Managing Emotions: Conflict Resolution
The steps Kristen Bijur uses to coach her students to take responsibility for their actions include: 1) cool down, 2) agree to ground rules, 3) talk it out (share versions of the incident, feelings, etc.), 4) brainstorm solutions, and 5) come to an agreement. Good conflict resolution “is nonviolent, meets important needs of each person involved, and maintains—and can improve—the relationships of the people involved” (Lieber, 1998, p. 19).
Self-Motivation
First priority - Develop at least one competency for each student!
Developing a competency of any kind strengthens the sense of self-efficacy, making a person more willing to take risks and seek out more demanding challenges (Goleman, 1995, p. 89).
To be motivated, people need to value a goal and feel that, with effort, the goal is attainable.
Teachers motivate students when they develop engaging lessons that connect to students’ lives, help students to see how they can meet learning goals, and provide opportunities for their success. We motivate our students when we encourage them to be optimistic and help them think through how they can try again after a failure; when we give them specific, concrete feedback about how to improve their work; and when we help them identify the strengths on which they can build.
Empathy - marginally useful descriptions of how to develop empathy
Teachers can foster empathy by encouraging students to remember what it was like for them when they experienced a similar frustration. Teachers can also choose texts and select activities that enable students to explore multiple experiences and different points of view.
Handling Social Relationships
Teachers can facilitate positive relationships and effective group interactions when they encourage a commitment to working as a group, valuing each other’s participation, being mindful and caring of others, and showing appreciation for team members (Preskill & Torres, 1999). Teachers can also model ways to have students work together in groups, including taking II. Session Overview, cont’d. Session 5 - 94 - The Learning Classroom different roles, sharing responsibility, active listening, developing consensus, and reflecting on one’s own and the group’s work (Johnson & Johnson, 1991).
Creating an Emotionally Safe Classroom Environment
Role of competition in the classroom
Teachers can create emotionally safe classrooms by affirming students’ accomplishments in noncompetitive ways, encouraging self-confidence, providing opportunities to take risks without penalty, and giving thoughtful feedback.
The positive relationships that develop between students and teachers.
Teachers can foster positive relationships with their students by conveying respect and compassion for students, by listening carefully to them, and by responding to their needs and feelings. It is also important that students feel that teachers will manage the classroom environment and relationships among students in ways that protect their integrity and right to learn without fear of ridicule or humiliation (e.g., where classroom norms for interacting include respect rather than put-downs)
Sandwich feedback
Teachers can create an emotionally safe classroom environment by providing targeted, positive feedback on successful elements of work in conjunction with suggestions for improvement. Positive classrooms have many ways of acknowledging students’ capabilities (for example, through teacher comments and display of students’ work).
High expectations of students, combined with support, encouragement, and opportunities for success help affirm students’ accomplishments in noncompetitive ways.
How do we include parents and the community in social and emotional education programs?
Social and emotional education programs that work best extend beyond the school to include parents and the community.
WJS_session5-emotions_learning_5June-2016
Discussion Points
1. Develop at least one competency for each student - let a student work longer on an activity and not participate in others
2. Role of competition in the classroom - competition important once students gain confidence in their skill
3. Ideas for encouraging students to develop empathy? Engaging pair and group activities with different partners?
4. How do we include parents and the community in social and emotional education programs?
Key Questions
• How do emotions affect learning, and how does the classroom affect emotions?
• How can teachers foster emotional intelligence and create emotionally safe classroom environments?
Learning Objectives
• Emotions affect learning—Teachers will understand how their students’ emotions affect learning. Teachers will understand the need to make judgments about when emotions are interfering with or supporting learning.
• Emotional intelligence—Teachers will consider and understand the five aspects of “emotional intelligence.” They will begin to develop strategies to help themselves and their students become aware of and manage their emotions.
• Creating emotionally safe learning environments—Teachers will consider how to create emotionally safe learning environments where students can take risks, develop confidence, and grow emotionally and academically.
Emotional intelligence expands on Howard Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligences, in particular, the intrapersonal and interpersonal intelligences he defines, which deal with understanding oneself and others (Gardner, 1999).
Emotional intelligence requires abstract reasoning, including the ability to perceive and understand emotion, and the ability to understand how emotions facilitate and influence thought (Mayer & Cobb, 2000).
Specific behaviors and skills can be taught to help students develop emotional intelligence.
Five skills
1) being aware of one’s emotions
2) managing those emotions
3) motivating oneself
4) empathizing, and
5) relating well with others in a group
Teacher behaviors and skills
Dealing with students when their emotions are heightened
In these situations, students may need extra prompts to help them with learning. Some might need a reminder to help them stay focused and to redirect their attention to events in the classroom. Some students might need one on-one time with the teacher to help process their feelings or resolve a problem. In some cases, the distraction might be temporary, such as a bad day or a fight with a friend. But other students, such as those whose parents are going through a divorce, may need more intensive assistance to direct their intellectual resources to learning instead of focusing solely on their emotions. They may need counseling beyond the classroom.
Dealing with students who are anxious about their schoolwork
Teachers can help reduce their students’ performance anxieties by providing multiple opportunities for feedback about their work, and by emphasizing that mistakes are okay and a part of learning. For these students, it is important that their entire grade not be based on one big project and that feedback emphasize the things they are doing right, while also giving specific, focused advice on ways to improve. Moreover, they will benefit from knowing that the teacher really cares about them as a person and as a learner.
Dealing with students upset by classroom events
A student who is angry and only knows how to blame others is not going to be able to succeed in or out of the classroom. The student needs to learn how to acknowledge and express his feelings, manage his anger, and come up with strategies for letting off steam. Goleman describes one of these strategies:
Teaching Student Skills
Self-Awareness
We can support students in developing this self-confidence by helping them learn to identify what they are thinking and how they are feeling when they make decisions. For example, a teacher might model the use of self-reflective language in the classroom to help students get in touch with their emotional states of mind. Talking about positive and negative feelings is one way to help students learn how to deal appropriately with their emotions. Talking about feelings of stress, anger, frustration, and disappointment can help students learn how to identify their feelings. Teachers can facilitate this discussion during class meetings or during one-on-one conversations with students, or as students work together in pairs and groups. For young children, stories can provide opportunities to talk about different emotions; for older students, journal writing may be a productive way to help them identify complex feelings.
In the process, teachers can give students the language to interact productively with one another about how they are feeling (e.g., teaching students to make “I” statements, such as “I feel frustrated when ...” rather than, “He was mean.”) Teachers can also support students’ patience to wait to act after acknowledging their feelings until they have considered thoughtful alternative actions.
Teachers should be aware of and sensitive to the different ways children respond to and display emotion.
Managing Emotions: Conflict Resolution
The steps Kristen Bijur uses to coach her students to take responsibility for their actions include: 1) cool down, 2) agree to ground rules, 3) talk it out (share versions of the incident, feelings, etc.), 4) brainstorm solutions, and 5) come to an agreement. Good conflict resolution “is nonviolent, meets important needs of each person involved, and maintains—and can improve—the relationships of the people involved” (Lieber, 1998, p. 19).
Self-Motivation
First priority - Develop at least one competency for each student!
Developing a competency of any kind strengthens the sense of self-efficacy, making a person more willing to take risks and seek out more demanding challenges (Goleman, 1995, p. 89).
To be motivated, people need to value a goal and feel that, with effort, the goal is attainable.
Teachers motivate students when they develop engaging lessons that connect to students’ lives, help students to see how they can meet learning goals, and provide opportunities for their success. We motivate our students when we encourage them to be optimistic and help them think through how they can try again after a failure; when we give them specific, concrete feedback about how to improve their work; and when we help them identify the strengths on which they can build.
Empathy - marginally useful descriptions of how to develop empathy
Teachers can foster empathy by encouraging students to remember what it was like for them when they experienced a similar frustration. Teachers can also choose texts and select activities that enable students to explore multiple experiences and different points of view.
Handling Social Relationships
Teachers can facilitate positive relationships and effective group interactions when they encourage a commitment to working as a group, valuing each other’s participation, being mindful and caring of others, and showing appreciation for team members (Preskill & Torres, 1999). Teachers can also model ways to have students work together in groups, including taking II. Session Overview, cont’d. Session 5 - 94 - The Learning Classroom different roles, sharing responsibility, active listening, developing consensus, and reflecting on one’s own and the group’s work (Johnson & Johnson, 1991).
Creating an Emotionally Safe Classroom Environment
Role of competition in the classroom
Teachers can create emotionally safe classrooms by affirming students’ accomplishments in noncompetitive ways, encouraging self-confidence, providing opportunities to take risks without penalty, and giving thoughtful feedback.
The positive relationships that develop between students and teachers.
Teachers can foster positive relationships with their students by conveying respect and compassion for students, by listening carefully to them, and by responding to their needs and feelings. It is also important that students feel that teachers will manage the classroom environment and relationships among students in ways that protect their integrity and right to learn without fear of ridicule or humiliation (e.g., where classroom norms for interacting include respect rather than put-downs)
Sandwich feedback
Teachers can create an emotionally safe classroom environment by providing targeted, positive feedback on successful elements of work in conjunction with suggestions for improvement. Positive classrooms have many ways of acknowledging students’ capabilities (for example, through teacher comments and display of students’ work).
High expectations of students, combined with support, encouragement, and opportunities for success help affirm students’ accomplishments in noncompetitive ways.
How do we include parents and the community in social and emotional education programs?
Social and emotional education programs that work best extend beyond the school to include parents and the community.
Session 4: Multiple Intelligences
WJS_session4-multiple-intelligences_4June-2016
Key Questions:
Personal Questions:
1. How does one assess the development of each intelligence in a student?
2. How does one customize teaching to address various levels of each intelligence?
a. Identify student strengths?
b. Provide entry points into subject matter?
c. Which representation for which student when?
===============================================================
Application Overview
• Using MI theory to help understand students as learners and to provide opportunities for them to strengthen their abilities in different areas,
• Introducing new topics by drawing on the diversity of ways we learn and understand, and
• Developing lessons and curricula that require students to practice and apply multiple intelligences
Definitions of Intelligence
Gardner (1983) emphasizes that an intelligence is most accurately thought of as a potential, and the various intelligences are sets of “know-how”—or ways of doing things.
Linguistic Intelligence omits LISTENING (Reading, Writing, Speaking only)
Linguistic intelligence
Musical intelligence
Logical-mathematical intelligence
Spatial intelligence
Bodily-kinesthetic intelligence
Interpersonal intelligence
Intrapersonal intelligence
Naturalistic intelligence
Assessing Students' Strengths
In order for students to remain motivated in school, they need opportunities to succeed in learning. An important aim of schooling is to give students opportunities to feel successful. Teaching focused on multiple intelligences can identify the areas where students excel and provide opportunities for students with different kinds of minds to flourish and to find pathways into all kinds of material.
Examples of targeting students strengths to engage in new material
For instance, students who are interested in art can be given the choice of first illustrating an idea or topic and then composing a short story; the student who seems particularly strong in spatial thinking can be given the opportunity to work with manipulatives to explore mathematical concepts; the student who exhibits strong interpersonal skills can be called on to lead a group investigation.
Pigeon holing - engineer's don't need to write! Just calculate!
• What choices do students make when given options?
- most students choose to read books about children in urban environments similar to theirs
- fewer students read books about science and math
- English Language Learners just go through the motions of reading science and math books - but devour fiction at their reading level
• What roles do they play when working together?
- one 6th grader always wants to be the leader, always wants to pass things out
- others, especially those with ADHD, insist on being the center of attention and will engage in gross behavior
- some just quietly do their work and help others who ask and avoid those who are a distraction
- several middle school students test limits - how far will an adult let them go?
• How do they handle unanticipated problems?
- some get frustrated and actively work to draw attention to themselves
- others seek help immediately without any effort to solve the problem themselves
- a few ask others for ideas that would contribute to a solution
- some employ several strategies themselves to try to solve problems before consulting others
- accuse others of not understanding them (short hand for this school is you are a whitey)
• What captures their attention? When do they lose interest?
- stories of life in an urban setting
- success in pushing adults beyond allowed limits
- hands-on activities, drawing, building ....
• What problem-solving strategies do they offer? (see above answer to unanticipated problems)
• How do they communicate ideas, understandings, thoughts, and feelings?
- reserved words, language
- emotional outbursts,
• What does their physical behavior suggest?
- they cut-up when they are bored (throw things around the class room)
- they are engaged
Frames of Mind Gardner (1983/1993) as cited by Kreshnevsky and Seidel 1998 "defines intelligence as the abilty to solve problems or fashion products that are valued in at least one culture.
Ritchart
Learning is a consequence of thinking.
In this story, our schools, classrooms, and organizations become places in which a group's collective as well as individuals' thinking is valued, visible, and actively promoted as part of the regular, day-to-day experience of all group members. Teachers "must strive to constantly make thinking valued, visible, and actively promoted in all our interactions with learners."
The outcome of a quality education: The promotion of the dispositions needed for students to become active learners and effective thinkers eager and able to create, innovate and solve problems." "stuff of passion, energy and drive." Vehicle is enculturation. Teachers must shape culture and manage messages to realize this new vision. Understand and employ the forces shaping group culture.
Teacher Journal (pg. 77)
When are individuals frustrated, particularly engaged, and what are students’ questions and ideas (Krechevsky & Seidel, 1998)?
References
1. Darling-Hammond et al. (2003). The Learning Classroom: Theory Into Practice. Detroit: Annenberg Media
2. Jay Gillen (2014). Educating for Insurgency: THE ROLES OF YOUNG PEOPLE IN SCHOOLS OF POVERTY. Oakland, CA: AK Press.
3. Mara Krechevsky and Steve Seidel (1998). Minds at Work: Applying Multiple Intelligences the Classroom. In Intelligence, Instruction, and Assessment: Theory into Practice, Robert J. Sternberg and Wendy M. Williams (eds.). Mahwah, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc..
4. Ron Ritchart (2015). Creating cultures of thinking The 8 Forces We Must Master to Truly Transform Our Schools. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass, A Wiley Brand.
5. Jie-Qi Chen (editor) with Emily Isberg and Mara Krechevsky (contributing editors) (1998). Project Spectrum: Early Learning Activities. Volume 2 of the series Project Zero Frameworks for Early Childhood Education, General Editors Howard Gardner, David Henry Feldman, Mara Krechevsky. New York: Teachers College Press.
WJS_session4-multiple-intelligences_4June-2016
Key Questions:
- How are students “smart” in different ways?
- How can teachers use multiple intelligences in the classroom?
- Defining intelligence – Teachers will understand that intelligence is multidimensional and can be developed. Teachers will consider how definitions of intelligence inform thinking.
- Gardner's theory of multiple intelligences – Teachers will consider and understand eight different intelligences, how they might be accessed, and how they might be instrumental in helping students learn.
- Applying the theory of multiple intelligences – Teachers will become familiar with how the theory of multiple intelligences can be used in their classrooms by helping to identify students' strengths, providing entry points into subject matter, and encouraging students to represent their understanding in different ways.
Personal Questions:
1. How does one assess the development of each intelligence in a student?
2. How does one customize teaching to address various levels of each intelligence?
a. Identify student strengths?
b. Provide entry points into subject matter?
c. Which representation for which student when?
===============================================================
Application Overview
• Using MI theory to help understand students as learners and to provide opportunities for them to strengthen their abilities in different areas,
• Introducing new topics by drawing on the diversity of ways we learn and understand, and
• Developing lessons and curricula that require students to practice and apply multiple intelligences
Definitions of Intelligence
Gardner (1983) emphasizes that an intelligence is most accurately thought of as a potential, and the various intelligences are sets of “know-how”—or ways of doing things.
Linguistic Intelligence omits LISTENING (Reading, Writing, Speaking only)
Linguistic intelligence
Musical intelligence
Logical-mathematical intelligence
Spatial intelligence
Bodily-kinesthetic intelligence
Interpersonal intelligence
Intrapersonal intelligence
Naturalistic intelligence
Assessing Students' Strengths
In order for students to remain motivated in school, they need opportunities to succeed in learning. An important aim of schooling is to give students opportunities to feel successful. Teaching focused on multiple intelligences can identify the areas where students excel and provide opportunities for students with different kinds of minds to flourish and to find pathways into all kinds of material.
Examples of targeting students strengths to engage in new material
For instance, students who are interested in art can be given the choice of first illustrating an idea or topic and then composing a short story; the student who seems particularly strong in spatial thinking can be given the opportunity to work with manipulatives to explore mathematical concepts; the student who exhibits strong interpersonal skills can be called on to lead a group investigation.
Pigeon holing - engineer's don't need to write! Just calculate!
• What choices do students make when given options?
- most students choose to read books about children in urban environments similar to theirs
- fewer students read books about science and math
- English Language Learners just go through the motions of reading science and math books - but devour fiction at their reading level
• What roles do they play when working together?
- one 6th grader always wants to be the leader, always wants to pass things out
- others, especially those with ADHD, insist on being the center of attention and will engage in gross behavior
- some just quietly do their work and help others who ask and avoid those who are a distraction
- several middle school students test limits - how far will an adult let them go?
• How do they handle unanticipated problems?
- some get frustrated and actively work to draw attention to themselves
- others seek help immediately without any effort to solve the problem themselves
- a few ask others for ideas that would contribute to a solution
- some employ several strategies themselves to try to solve problems before consulting others
- accuse others of not understanding them (short hand for this school is you are a whitey)
• What captures their attention? When do they lose interest?
- stories of life in an urban setting
- success in pushing adults beyond allowed limits
- hands-on activities, drawing, building ....
• What problem-solving strategies do they offer? (see above answer to unanticipated problems)
• How do they communicate ideas, understandings, thoughts, and feelings?
- reserved words, language
- emotional outbursts,
• What does their physical behavior suggest?
- they cut-up when they are bored (throw things around the class room)
- they are engaged
Frames of Mind Gardner (1983/1993) as cited by Kreshnevsky and Seidel 1998 "defines intelligence as the abilty to solve problems or fashion products that are valued in at least one culture.
Ritchart
Learning is a consequence of thinking.
In this story, our schools, classrooms, and organizations become places in which a group's collective as well as individuals' thinking is valued, visible, and actively promoted as part of the regular, day-to-day experience of all group members. Teachers "must strive to constantly make thinking valued, visible, and actively promoted in all our interactions with learners."
The outcome of a quality education: The promotion of the dispositions needed for students to become active learners and effective thinkers eager and able to create, innovate and solve problems." "stuff of passion, energy and drive." Vehicle is enculturation. Teachers must shape culture and manage messages to realize this new vision. Understand and employ the forces shaping group culture.
Teacher Journal (pg. 77)
When are individuals frustrated, particularly engaged, and what are students’ questions and ideas (Krechevsky & Seidel, 1998)?
References
1. Darling-Hammond et al. (2003). The Learning Classroom: Theory Into Practice. Detroit: Annenberg Media
2. Jay Gillen (2014). Educating for Insurgency: THE ROLES OF YOUNG PEOPLE IN SCHOOLS OF POVERTY. Oakland, CA: AK Press.
3. Mara Krechevsky and Steve Seidel (1998). Minds at Work: Applying Multiple Intelligences the Classroom. In Intelligence, Instruction, and Assessment: Theory into Practice, Robert J. Sternberg and Wendy M. Williams (eds.). Mahwah, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc..
4. Ron Ritchart (2015). Creating cultures of thinking The 8 Forces We Must Master to Truly Transform Our Schools. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass, A Wiley Brand.
5. Jie-Qi Chen (editor) with Emily Isberg and Mara Krechevsky (contributing editors) (1998). Project Spectrum: Early Learning Activities. Volume 2 of the series Project Zero Frameworks for Early Childhood Education, General Editors Howard Gardner, David Henry Feldman, Mara Krechevsky. New York: Teachers College Press.
Session 3: Cognitive Processing
June 2, 2016
Concern about adequacy of methods I can implement to address students with learning issues
Although the general theories and methods for improving cognitive processing presented by Darling-Hammond’s program will help me address students with learning issues identified by an Understood.org checklist, I am concerned that more specialized approaches will be needed as well. In the schools I plan to serve, I expect only limited support in diagnosing learning disabilities from specialized education teachers and school psychologists.
Concern about getting to know student cultures better
As I recognize that my rural midwestern culture made major contributions to my strengths, preferences, knowledge and experiences that allowed my teachers to engage me, I need to become familiar with the cultures of my students. I hope that Session 6,The Classroom Mosaic, will provide formal tools for accessing these traits of students.
Integrated multidisciplinary projects promote communication
Session 3 makes it clear that cognitive processing requires communication of both facts and concepts. Communication requires engagement. Integrated projects engage more than disjointed exercises and make meaning more meaningful and the transfer of understanding and proficiency more likely to students of any ability. This view of engagement is consistent with the views of Dr. Darling-Hammond and the many studies she cites that “the more learning is meaningful to the individual, the greater the likelihood of its acquisition, retrieval and later use.”
June 2, 2016
Concern about adequacy of methods I can implement to address students with learning issues
Although the general theories and methods for improving cognitive processing presented by Darling-Hammond’s program will help me address students with learning issues identified by an Understood.org checklist, I am concerned that more specialized approaches will be needed as well. In the schools I plan to serve, I expect only limited support in diagnosing learning disabilities from specialized education teachers and school psychologists.
Concern about getting to know student cultures better
As I recognize that my rural midwestern culture made major contributions to my strengths, preferences, knowledge and experiences that allowed my teachers to engage me, I need to become familiar with the cultures of my students. I hope that Session 6,The Classroom Mosaic, will provide formal tools for accessing these traits of students.
Integrated multidisciplinary projects promote communication
Session 3 makes it clear that cognitive processing requires communication of both facts and concepts. Communication requires engagement. Integrated projects engage more than disjointed exercises and make meaning more meaningful and the transfer of understanding and proficiency more likely to students of any ability. This view of engagement is consistent with the views of Dr. Darling-Hammond and the many studies she cites that “the more learning is meaningful to the individual, the greater the likelihood of its acquisition, retrieval and later use.”