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NAEP: Frameworks and the Assessment Development Process: Providing More Informative Portrayals of Student Performance

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NAEP: Frameworks and the Assessment Development Process: Providing More Informative Portrayals of Student Performance

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https://www.nap.edu/read/6296/chapter/7

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Since the late 1960s, the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP)-the nation's report card-has been the only continuing measure of student achievement in key subject areas. Increasingly, educators and policymakers have expected NAEP to serve as a lever for education reform and many other purposes beyond its original role.

Grading the Nation's Report Card examines ways NAEP can be strengthened to provide more informative portrayals of student achievement and the school and system factors that influence it. The committee offers specific recommendations and strategies for improving NAEP's effectiveness and utility, including:

Linking achievement data to other education indicators.

Streamlining data collection and other aspects of its design.

Including students with disabilities and English-language learners.

Revamping the process by which achievement levels are set.

The book explores how to improve NAEP framework documents-which identify knowledge and skills to be assessed-with a clearer eye toward the inferences that will be drawn from the results.

What should the nation expect from NAEP? What should NAEP do to meet these expectations? This book provides a blueprint for a new paradigm, important to education policymakers, professors, and students, as well as school administrators and teachers, and education advocates.

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Read "Grading the Nation's Report Card: Evaluating NAEP and Transforming the Assessment of Educational Progress" at NAP.edu

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Since the late 1960s, the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP)-the nation's report card-has been the only continuing measure of student achievement in key subject areas. Increasingly, educators and policymakers have expected NAEP to serve as a lever for education reform and many other purposes beyond its original role.

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CORI stands for Concept-Oriented Reading Instruction. It is designed to teach children reading comprehension through the integration of science and reading. Its primary aim is to increase the reading comprehension of students in grades 3 to 5 by increasing their reading engagement.

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What is CORI?

CORI stands for Concept-Oriented Reading Instruction. It is designed to teach children reading comprehension through the integration of science and reading. Its primary aim is to increase the reading comprehension of students in grades 3 to 5 by increasing their reading engagement.

Why orient reading instruction around concepts?

Gaining conceptual knowledge is a main purpose for both reading and inquiry science. Reading is a set of processes that individuals apply to text for the purpose of gaining meaning, knowledge, or experience. Similarly, inquiry science is a set of processes for operating directly on the physical environment to gain understanding and knowledge of it.

The building blocks of reading (the alphabetics - phonics and phonemic awareness; the fluency and automaticity; the vocabulary; the comprehension) must be taught explicitly. A best practice is to tie explicit teaching of reading strategies to "Big Ideas."

Information books give kids knowledge, which increases their comprehension skills. Reading about the world around them fosters children's long-term development.

Students who have a commitment to understand the concepts within an instructional unit are likely to get a deeper understanding of the content.

For an overview of Concept-Oriented Reading Instruction, see Overview of CORI.

How can CORI benefit students' learning?

Research that compared CORI classrooms to traditional classrooms in the same schools found large benefits in three areas:

Reading comprehension
CORI students comprehended new books better.

Motivation
CORI students want to read. In fact, they do choose to read more books after being in CORI (for more about CORI and reading motivation, see Promoting Reasons for Reading: Teacher Practices that Impact Motivation.

Scientific knowledge
CORI students learn the concepts they study deeply, which is valuable for their general knowledge and valuable for their content learning.

What are the components of CORI that particularly benefit struggling readers?

Hands-on activities

Active learning is motivating. Concrete experiences increase text comprehension. Many kids who don't read very well don't realize that each book is really about life - maybe about their life, about someone else's life, or the world around them. So for children who might not realize that, CORI tries to help them make a connection to their experience. That link becomes very powerful for them.

Information books

CORI uses information books that are interesting and accessible.

A variety of information books

CORI teachers use trade and information books to teach. Teachers match text difficulty levels to individual instruction. Books in which the print is easy, the vocabulary is not too complex, and interesting illustrations back up the text are enjoyable to less-advanced readers. From these kinds of books they can hone reading skills while learning scientific information. In the same classroom, more complex books with advanced vocabulary, charts, and text are available for those readers who can and want to tackle them. So everyone is learning (how to summarize, for example) with a text matched to them.

All students participate with the class in concept learning

While students are using different books and researching different subtopics, all readers - regardless of reading level - are learning new information about the same concept (such as weather, woodlands, animal behavior, birds of the world).

Choice of subtopics for investigation

Choice is a key part of the student motivational scheme. Choices of subtopics and text increase students' effort, persistence, and book completion. When investigating the concept of weather, one might choose clouds, while another might choose tornadoes and yet another human influences on the weather. Kids chose a topic that essentially enables them to study and read a long time. Choice creates a commitment to the reading that fosters their learning. Teachers offer a choice in the subtopic and a choice in the text in order to keep kids motivated to read for a large amount of time.

Frequent reading

One of the best ways to become a proficient reader is by reading widely and frequently. CORI students read 30-40 books over 12 weeks in order to foster comprehension. Reading that much takes effort, persistence, and energy - therefore motivation is key in fostering comprehension development.

What are some cognitive processes for reading and science in CORI?

Observation

Students observe natural and scientific phenomena in their neighborhood (e.g., measuring and recording readings at the weather station outside school, or dissecting an owl pellet to find animal bones).

Questioning

Children asking their own questions about what's going on in their environment, and get those answers through their reading.

In-depth reading

Students delve deeply into investigating their scientific topic via books. Reading lots of books is valuable for comprehension. CORI fosters high amounts of reading in order to build comprehension.

Collaboration

Children collaborate with each other to understand what these books say.

Writing and communicating

Children work to understand the topics through their reading activities, and then they share their understanding with others in their class through writing and presentations.

To see CORI in action in a classroom, see the "Engaging Nonfiction Readers" portion of the Reading Rockets Reading for Meaning video.

What reading strategies are explicitly taught in CORI?

Several reading strategies taught explicitly - with modeling and scaffolding and practice for students - within a context of inquiry about a big idea. Strategies taught systematically in the CORI program include the strategies mentioned in the National Reading Panel report.

Using background knowledge

Using what you know to understand a new book. All children need to know how to activate background knowledge. All children can be taught to do this.

Questioning

Questions to help you learn. Questioning refers to students asking or writing self-initiated questions about the content of the text before and during reading. It's a very important strategy that can be taught.

Searching

Readers are purposeful; they have purposes, needs, and goals. They need to search through different portions of books in order to learn what they want to learn. Knowing how to search for information to fulfill your goals as a reader is important.

Summarizing

Summarizing sounds simple, but it's hard to teach third grade students, In fact, it's hard to teach to college students. But it's a fundamental strategy. CORI focuses on teaching children how to form an accurate abstract representation (summary) of the text explicitly and deliberately.

Organizing graphically

When developing an understanding of informational text, it is very helpful to draw a picture or make a concept map as you read along in a book. CORI teaches children to compose these graphic representations of information.

Structuring stories

Forming a concept how a story looks and works (setting, plot, character, motives, themes, and their relationships in literature) is key to becoming a good reader. Making a map of a story is a good way to study story structure.

The CORI program teaches these strategies one at a time at the beginning, addressing one a week. In the next portion of the program (six weeks), students combine the strategies. Teachers spend time helping students integrate the strategies.

How is the program adapted for struggling readers?

In-class, daily, small-group instruction

Focused reading instruction for smaller group of those students who are struggling with one or more reading skills.

Emphasis on oral reading fluency and expressiveness

One tool for this is readers theater - where kids learn to be expressive. It is very important for this group of students to learn these skills.

Simplified strategy instruction

If you ask a struggling third grader to summarize a page in a book without scaffolding his or her efforts, that child will be frustrated. CORI aims to build bridges from text to strategy, giving a bridge for the child between a teacher's request and the text. So, for example, CORI teachers provide a little chart to help them build a summary.

Opportunities to learn reading strategies

Text difficulty matched to reading level

Teachers match the difficulty of the book to the child's level and help guide children to them. The CORI whole class plan is adaptive to individual children and their needs by having diverse text. Key to the CORI classroom is lots of books. There can easily be multiple levels of readers within one classroom. For example, a third grade class could easily have three different levels of readers - those reading on a first or second grade level, those reading at the third grade level, and those reading at a fourth grade level. Having many books helps teachers adapt to their children's needs.

Is CORI like "whole language" instruction?

CORI is not the same as whole language instruction. It is distinguished from whole language in that it is not primarily oriented to literature. It is primarily oriented to concepts.

How long does it take to get CORI started?

There is no one pathway to implementation. But it probably takes a year of planning, training, and book buying to make CORI work.

CORI takes administrative support. Support within the school, and in the district, as well as a commitment of time and effort on the part of individuals to become knowledgeable CORI teachers. Administrative considerations include: principal endorsement; teaming to work with reading specialist to find books and with special education experts to tailor instruction, etc.; and the cost of books.

Professional development is also a consideration. Professional development of a teacher is very valuable for teaching comprehension - it is difficult or impossible to learn to teach comprehension by taking materials off a shelf and then reading a script. Teaching comprehension is a form of teacher practice, of teaching expertise, that teachers learn. Schools and states have to spend money to help teachers gain these skills.

What does CORI teacher training look like?

Training through the University of Maryland entails a 10-day workshop and full-days monthly thereafter for follow-up mentoring and problem solving. Training at other universities or places may look different. Workshops cover:

Principles of good teaching

How to select good books to match all students

How to do the strategies (e.g., many teachers haven't drawn a concept map recently, so they do it in the training. Once teachers experience the strategies, they become much better teachers of them)

Actually doing the inquiry (whether it's weather, birds, aquatic environments, animals). They do the inquiry that they'll provide to their learners so they have experienced the same kind of teaching that they're going to foster for kids.

For more information about CORI, visit www.cori.umd.edu.

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CORI stands for Concept-Oriented Reading Instruction. It is designed to teach children reading comprehension through the integration of science and reading. Its primary aim is to increase the reading comprehension of students in grades 3 to 5 by increasing their reading engagement. Gaining conceptual knowledge is a main purpose for both reading and inquiry science.

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As students grow older, they are asked by their teachers to do more and more with the information they have stored in their brains. These types of requests require accessing higher order thinking. Here are some strategies to help foster children's complex thinking.

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Parents and teachers can do a lot to encourage higher order thinking. Here are some strategies to help foster children's complex thinking.

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6 Tips For Creating Powerful Assessments 

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6 Tips For Creating Powerful Assessments 

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By Melissa Maypole
Assessments are no longer simply tests that students fret about or neglect to study for. As you may well know, today's environment of heightened accountability for educators has made assessments stressful for not only students, but for teachers as well. Not to worry, though. Assessments can actually be powerful (and even fun!) tools to evaluate how well your students are mastering the material you're covering in class and how well you're doing covering said material. Just follow these 6 simple tips:

1) Begin with the end in mind.

For years, teachers have planned their lessons in a linear fashion. First, we create daily lessons aligned with objectives followed by tests to assess the objectives each lesson addresses. Logical, right? Sure, but this traditional method of teaching and assessing learning may not necessarily be the most effective way to go about things. Instead, try creating an objectives-based assessment first, and then plan activities that target the learning goals the assessment evaluates. This not only ensures that the assessment aligns to your students' learning objectives, but it also allows the assessment to help drive your instruction, meaning you'll know for sure that you've actually taught the material and skills that require mastery.

2) Communicate your purpose.

The purpose of a traditional pencil and paper test may be fairly cut and dry to your students-I answer a bunch of questions and it tells the teacher if I've learned the material-but this may not be the case for a more open-ended assessment such as a project or essay that a student may see as busy work. In order to get the outcome you want from your students, it's important to let them know why they are doing something, including what skills and knowledge you're expecting them to demonstrate mastery of. One of the best ways to do this is to create a clear rubric and give your students a copy prior to beginning work on the assignment. This way, there will be no question as to what you expect your students to demonstrate, and it may even motivate many to perform.

3) Blend assessments into your teaching.

Highly effective educators use assessments to adapt and enhance instruction. Instead of treating assessments as intimidating bookends to curriculum units, successful teachers assess learning more frequently and less formally with the intention of using the results of the assessment as an arrow toward the next steps in the learning process. Create opportunities for non-threatening, formative checkpoints in your instruction. Give deliberate and targeted mini-quizzes that allow you to assess common misconceptions and truly know in real-time where your students are tracking. Craft your quiz by following assessment-writing best practices outlined in this article.

4) Identify and avoid bias.

Since assessments are such an important tool in your teaching toolbox, it's important to ensure that they are as authentic and targeted as possible. This means making an intentional effort to check for any biases that may affect students' performance or invalidate your results. An assessment should be designed in parts that specifically test single, targeted skills, and unintended bias will quickly invalidate your efforts. Although it may seem impossible to create an assessment with zero bias, we can still do our due diligence to identify and remove bias.

The most common types of bias in assessments are those that inadvertently assume knowledge other than the specific skill being tested. This bias can be blatant such as assuming knowledge of a certain cultural group, for instance, or it could be hidden. Hidden biases are often found in the language of the assessment. Teachers must be especially careful not to create written assessments that are on a higher reading level than their students, so that a mathematics assessment, for example, doesn't unintentionally assess how well the student can read the problem as well as the specific skills.

5) Consider non-traditional assessments.

Nothing crushes classroom morale faster than announcing a pop quiz or traditional paper and pencil test. In order to incorporate some fun into your assessment repertoire and keep your students engaged in their learning, you'll need to think outside of the box. Create a game or activity based on specific learning objectives to mix things up while bringing out the very best in your students. Or consider tying in a cross-curricular semester-long project that connects the material together and forces a higher level application of skills. You can pepper in traditional mini-assessments throughout the span of the project to determine where your students are, but the journey here is much more fun.

We all know that assessments provide feedback to us teachers-they let us know which material students have mastered and which material they still need to work on. They also tell us how well we're delivering the necessary information and facilitating learning in our classrooms. Don't forget, though, that assessments can and should provide vital feedback for your students as well. After all, if we want them to be in charge of their learning (and we do!), then we must give them the necessary information to make and reach their learning goals. Reviewing the results of a quiz or test has the potential to help students realize their deficits and detect meaningful patterns in their errors. These are discoveries that are crucial to correcting misconceptions and directing future learning. When planning a review or follow-up on an assessment, keep in mind that sooner is always better. The quicker you provide learners with feedback on their performance, the more meaningful this information will be.

When crafted carefully, assessments can be incredibly powerful tools for learning. Well-planned assessments provide teachers and students with the necessary information to gauge progress and plan the next steps in the learning process. When we assess learning clearly, frequently and without bias, we get a better picture of how well we're doing with instruction and how to best serve our students in the future.

For more, see:

Melissa Maypole is an English Teacher with a Master's of Science in Education, and is a contributor at .
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6 Tips for Creating Powerful Assessments for Your Students

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By Melissa Maypole - Today's heightened accountability for educators has made assessments stressful for teachers. Here's how to do them right.

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BOOK: Spotlight on Young Children and Assessment. Derry Koralek, ed. NAEYC, 2004.

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BOOK: Spotlight on Young Children and Assessment. Derry Koralek, ed. NAEYC, 2004.

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BOOK: Early Childhood Assessment: Why, What, and How written by the National Research Council. Catherine E. Snow and Susan B. Van Hemel, eds. The National Academies Press, 2008.

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BOOK: Early Childhood Assessment: Why, What, and How written by the National Research Council. Catherine E. Snow and Susan B. Van Hemel, eds. The National Academies Press, 2008.

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Paper airplanes fly across the room. Students race between desks. You can't get a word in, as they yell over you.

Disruptive behavior doesn't have to be this dramatic, like a movie scene you'd watch in a media literacy lesson, but poor classroom management will almost assuredly elevate your stress and burnout rates.

Unfortunately, a 2019 report indicates that teachers overwhelmingly report a lack of professional development support in improving classroom management. Despite this unideal situation, there are straightforward and effective classroom management approaches you can implement by yourself. These approaches can enhance prosocial student behavior and academic engagement, establishing an orderly learning environment.

Available as a downloadable list to keep at your desk, below are 20 research-backed classroom management strategies and techniques.

Use the ones that best appeal to your situation and teaching style.

Universal classroom management strategies for educators

These 20 classroom management techniques have shown to improve classroom behavior, build relationships for a better classroom community, and foster a positive classroom environment where student learning is the number one collective goal.

Try these effective classroom management strategies with your students to become a happier, more effective teacher.

1. Model ideal behavior

Make a habit of demonstrating behavior you want to see, as many studies show that modelling effectively teaches students how to act in different situations.

A straightforward way to model certain behaviors is holding a mock conversation with an administrator, other teacher or student helper in front of the class. Talking about a test or other relatable topic, be sure to:

Use polite language

Maintain eye contact

Keep phones in your pockets

Let one another speak uninterrupted

Raise concerns about one another's statements in a respectful manner

After, start a class discussion to list and expand upon the ideal behaviors you exemplified.

2. Let students help establish guidelines

Encourage all students to help you build classroom expectations and rules, as you'll generate more buy-in than just telling them what they're not allowed to do.

This is especially essential for new teachers. Near the start of the school year or during the first day of a semester, start a discussion by asking students what they believe should and shouldn't fly in terms of appropriate behavior.

At what points are phones okay and not okay? What are acceptable noise levels during lessons?

This may seem like you're setting yourself up for failure, but -- depending on the makeup of your class -- you may be shocked at the strictness of some proposed rules. Regardless, having a discussion should lead to mutually-understood and -respected expectations for your classroom culture.

3. Document rules
Don't let your mutually-respected guidelines go forgotten.
Similar to handing out a syllabus, print and distribute the list of rules that the class discussion generated. Then, go through the list with your students. Doing this emphasizes the fact that you respect their ideas and intend to adhere to them. And when a student breaks a rule, it'll be easy for you to point to this document.

You'll likely want to post these rules up in your classroom - if you haven't already - for occasional reference. If you're feeling creative, you can include the rule list in a student handbook with important dates, events and curriculum information, too.

4. Avoid punishing the class

Address isolated discipline problems individually instead of punishing an entire class, as the latter can hurt your relationships with students who are on-task and thereby jeopardize other classroom management efforts.

Instead, call out specific students in a friendly manner. For example:

"Do you have a question?", not "Stop talking and disrupting other students"

"Do you need help focusing?", not "Pay attention and stop fooling around while I'm talking"

This basic approach will allow you to keep a friendly disposition, while immediately acknowledging inappropriate behavior.

5. Encourage initiative

Promote growth mindset, and inject variety into your lessons, by allowing students to work ahead and deliver short presentations to share take-away points. Almost inevitably, you'll have some eager learners in your classroom. You can simply ask them if they'd like to get ahead from time-to-time.

For example, if you're reading a specific chapter in a textbook, propose that they read the following one too. When they deliver their subsequent presentations to preview the next chapter on your behalf, you may find that other students want a bit more work as well.

6. Offer praise

Praise students for jobs well done, as doing so improves academic and behavioral performance, according to a recent research review and study.

When it is sincere and references specific examples of effort or accomplishment, praise can:

Inspire the class

Improve a student's self-esteem

Reinforce rules and values you want to see

Perhaps more importantly, it encourages students to repeat positive behavior. Let's say a student exemplifies advanced problem-solving skills when tackling a math word problem. Praising his or her use of specific tactics should go a long way in ensuring he or she continues to use these tactics. Not to mention, you'll motivate other students to do the same.

7. Use non-verbal communication

Complement words with actions and visual aids to improve content delivery, helping students focus and process lessons.

Many differentiated instruction strategies and techniques are rooted in these communication methods. For example, running learning stations -- divided sections of your classroom through which students rotate -- allows you to deliver a range of non-spoken content types. These include videos, infographics and physical objects such as counting coins.

8. Hold parties

Throw an occasional classroom party to acknowledge students' hard work, motivating them to keep it up.

Even if it's just for 20 or 30 minutes, they should be happy with snacks and a selection of group games to play. Clarify that you're holding the party to reward them and they can earn future parties by demonstrating ideal behavior, collectively scoring high on assessments and more.

9. Give tangible rewards

Reward specific students at the end of each lesson, in front of the class, as another motivational and behavior-reinforcement technique.

Let's say a few students are actively listening throughout the entire lesson, answering questions and asking their own. Before the class ends, walk over to their desks to give them raffle tickets. So others can learn, state aloud what each student did to earn the tickets. On Friday, they can submit their tickets for a shot at a prize that changes each week -- from candy to being able to choose a game for the next class party.

10. Make positive letters and phone calls

Keep students happy in and out of class by pleasantly surprising their parents, making positive phone calls and sending complimentary letters home.

When the occasion arises, from academic effort or behavioral progress, letting parents know has a trickle-down effect. They'll generally congratulate their kids; their kids will likely come to class eager to earn more positive feedback. This can also entice parents to grow more invested in a child's learning, opening the door to at-home lessons. Such lessons are a mainstay element of culturally-responsive teaching.

11. Build excitement for content and lesson plans

This one works well no matter the grade level: elementary school, middle school or high school. Start lessons by previewing particularly-exciting parts, hooking student interest from the get-go.

As the bell rings and students settle, go through an agenda of the day's highlights for the whole class. These could include group tasks, engaging bits of content and anything else to pique curiosity. For example, "Throughout the day, you'll learn about:"

How to talk like you're a teacher (sentence structure)

Why you don't know anyone who's won the lottery (probability)

What all the presidents of the United States have had in common (social analysis)

The goal of this classroom management technique is to immediately interest students in your agenda and thereby dissuade misbehavior.

Ready to make learning an exciting adventure?

Use Prodigy to boost classroom engagement and excitement with two captivating learning games for math and English!

12. Offer different types of free study time

Provide a range of activities during free study time to appeal to students who struggle to process content in silence, individually.

You can do this by dividing your class into clearly-sectioned solo and team activities. In separate sections, consider:

Providing audiobooks, which can play material relevant to your lessons

Maintaining a designated quiet space for students to take notes and complete work

Creating a station for challenging group games that teach or reinforce standards-aligned skills

Allowing students to work in groups while taking notes and completing work, away from quiet zones

By running these sorts of activities, free study time will begin to benefit diverse learners. This should contribute to overall classroom engagement.

13. Write group contracts

Help student group work run smoothly and effectively by writing contracts that contain guidelines, having everyone sign.

Group contracts should be based on expectations that students have for each other, and you have for them. You can gather the class's thoughts by holding a discussion about what the ideal group member does, and how he or she acts. Once you've written the contract, encourage students to come up with consequences for violating expectations.

By having them sign a fresh version of the contract before each group task and project, you're empowering them to hold each other accountable.

14. Assign open-ended projects

Encourage students to tackle open-ended projects -- projects that don't demand a specific product -- to allow them to demonstrate knowledge in ways that inherently suit them.

This starts by giving the class a list of broad project ideas, asking each student to choose one. Be sure to provide a rubric for each project that clearly defines expectations. By both enticing and challenging students, you should notice they'll:

Work and learn at their own paces

Engage actively with appropriate content

Demonstrate knowledge as effectively as possible

With these benefits, students may actually look forward to taking on new projects.

15. Give only two scores for informal assessments

Recall a time you saw a big "F" in red ink on your work. You were probably too upset to review mistakes and feedback, and so are your students when they see the same.
So, consider avoiding standard marks on informal and formative assessments.
Instead, just state if a student did or did not meet expectations. Then, provide struggling students with a clear path to improve. For example, pair classmates who didn't meet expectations with those who did, giving them a review and practice activity. When strugglers are confident they understand key concepts, encourage them to tell you. Provide a new assessment, allowing them to prove their competency.

Classroom management strategies for individual students

16. Use EdTech that adjusts to each student

Give students who struggle to process your content opportunities to try educational technology that adapts to their needs.

There are many games and platforms that use adaptive learning principles to detect a given student's skill deficits, serving them content to help overcome them.

For example, Prodigy Math adjusts its content to help students in grades 1 to 8 address their trouble spots. It also offers feedback to help them solve specific mistakes, as they answer questions that use words, charts, pictures and numbers.

The best bit? Teaching tools are all available at no cost to educators and schools.
See the student experience below!
Educators, access at no cost

17. Interview students

Interview students who aren't academically engaged or displaying prosocial behavior to learn how to better manage them.

While running learning stations or a large-group activity, pull each student aside for a few minutes. Ask about:

What helps them focus

Who they work well with

Their favorite types of lessons

Their favorite in-class activities

Which kinds of exercises help them remember key lesson points

Note their answers to come up with activities and approaches that engage them, thereby limiting classroom disruptions.

18. Address inappropriate or off-task behavior quickly

Avoid hesitation when you must address inappropriate or off-task behavior, especially when a student breaks a documented rule.

Acting sooner than later will help ensure that negative feelings -- whether between students or you and a student -- won't fester. Failure to act can result in more poor behavior, leading to needlessly-difficult conversations.

But keep in mind: It's usually best to talk to the student in private. Research shows that punishing students in front of peers has "limited value."

19. Consider peer teaching

Use peer teaching as a classroom management strategy if you feel your top performers can help engage and educate disruptive and struggling students.

Peer teaching activities, such as pairing students together as reading buddies, can be especially beneficial for students who suffer from low confidence and poor interpersonal skills.

Authoritative research states tutors improve self-esteem and interpersonal skills by giving feedback. Tutees realize benefits because they can ask questions and receive immediate clarification. A later study of at-risk students echoes these advantages. Although you should spend time teaching peer tutors how to properly communicate with tutees, you'll likely find the benefits are worth the work.

20. Gamify personal learning plans

Motivate students on personal learning plans by gamifying those plans, as studies - such as recent research from South Korea - indicate this will continuously engage and incentivize them.

Consider gamification strategies such as:

Adjusting your scoring system -- Give experience points (XP) -- along with traditional scores -- on tests and assignments, setting a goal for the student to reach a certain amount of XP per unit. For example, if a student scores 60% on a quiz, give him or her 6,000 XP. You can also award XP for completing extra assignments, participating in class or anything else that shows effort to learn.

Using stages -- Refer to topics and units as stages. The former terms have clear connotations for you, but students may not see how they fit together. If they're gamers, they'll understand that reaching the next stage requires overcoming precursory challenges. Emphasize this by framing certain tasks as prerequisites to reach the next learning stage.

If these strategies work especially well for individual students, you should see similar success by using them as class-wide student management techniques.

Classroom management strategy FAQs

What is the best classroom management style?

According to Diana Baumrind's work, a clinical psychologist known for her research on parenting styles, some educators believe an authoritative classroom management style may the best one. This type of high control, high involvement classroom management style is characterized by strong expectations of appropriate behavior, clear understandings of why certain behaviors are acceptable and others not acceptable, and warm student-teacher relationships.

However, there is no specific approach that has been proven to be the most effective. So you may wish to review The Classroom Management Book by Harry K. Wong and Rosemary T. Wong which includes a variety of solutions that can be easily implemented. Every group of students has varying needs and will likely need a unique approach to help every student bring his or her best self to the classroom and be ready-to-learn every single day.

What are the four components of classroom management?

Implementing the top four components of classroom management from the start will set you and your students up for success all year long. They are:

Classroom design - be intentional about how you set up your desk, your students' desks, bulletin board displays, devices and other aspects of your classroom. Thoughtful classroom design can help create a safe and welcoming learning environment.

Rules/discipline - to create a safe and caring school community, develop classroom rules your students understand and - hopefully - respect. While it may not be fun, be sure to communicate that breaking classroom rules will have concrete yet fair consequences.

Scheduling/organization - being on time, keeping on task and staying organized will help set up your lessons (and your students' learning) up for success.

Instructional technique - while you may not have the flexibility you'd like when it comes to content and curriculum, you should have the freedom to choose how you teach. For example, 8th grade students may prefer a lecture-style lesson with small group discussions while 3rd grade students may prefer learning math with a digital game-based learning platform. Observe how your students learn best and use the classroom management strategies and techniques to teach your lessons.

Why is classroom management so important?

When done effectively, classroom management is important for three main reasons. It:

1. Creates and sustains an orderly learning environment in the classroom

2. Improves meaningful academic learning and fosters social-emotional growth

3. Increases students' academic engagement and lowers negative classroom behavior

Final thoughts about these classroom management strategies

These class-wide and one-on-one approaches to classroom management largely work across subjects and grade levels. Implementable without admin and parent support, they should empower you to establish an orderly - yet friendly and engaging - environment.

Look forward to better teacher-to-student and student-to-student interactions as a result.

Looking for a fun way to engage and reward your students? Try Prodigy Math! Aligned with curricula for grades 1 to 8, students will practice key skills while also exploring an exciting fantasy world.

Plus, you'll get access to free teacher tools that help you differentiate math content, send assessments and collect student insights - in just a few clicks.

Educators, access at no cost

Paper airplanes fly across the room. Students race between desks. You can't get a word in, as they yell over you.

Disruptive behavior doesn't have to be this dramatic, like a movie scene you'd watch in a media literacy lesson, but poor classroom management will almost assuredly elevate your stress and burnout rates.

Unfortunately, a 2019 report indicates that teachers overwhelmingly report a lack of professional development support in improving classroom management. Despite this unideal situation, there are straightforward and effective classroom management approaches you can implement by yourself. These approaches can enhance prosocial student behavior and academic engagement, establishing an orderly learning environment.

Available as a downloadable list to keep at your desk, below are 20 research-backed classroom management strategies and techniques.

Use the ones that best appeal to your situation and teaching style.

Universal classroom management strategies for educators

These 20 classroom management techniques have shown to improve classroom behavior, build relationships for a better classroom community, and foster a positive classroom environment where student learning is the number one collective goal.

Try these effective classroom management strategies with your students to become a happier, more effective teacher.

1. Model ideal behavior

Make a habit of demonstrating behavior you want to see, as many studies show that modelling effectively teaches students how to act in different situations.

A straightforward way to model certain behaviors is holding a mock conversation with an administrator, other teacher or student helper in front of the class. Talking about a test or other relatable topic, be sure to:

Use polite language

Maintain eye contact

Keep phones in your pockets

Let one another speak uninterrupted

Raise concerns about one another's statements in a respectful manner

After, start a class discussion to list and expand upon the ideal behaviors you exemplified.

2. Let students help establish guidelines

Encourage all students to help you build classroom expectations and rules, as you'll generate more buy-in than just telling them what they're not allowed to do.

This is especially essential for new teachers. Near the start of the school year or during the first day of a semester, start a discussion by asking students what they believe should and shouldn't fly in terms of appropriate behavior.

At what points are phones okay and not okay? What are acceptable noise levels during lessons?

This may seem like you're setting yourself up for failure, but -- depending on the makeup of your class -- you may be shocked at the strictness of some proposed rules. Regardless, having a discussion should lead to mutually-understood and -respected expectations for your classroom culture.

3. Document rules
Don't let your mutually-respected guidelines go forgotten.
Similar to handing out a syllabus, print and distribute the list of rules that the class discussion generated. Then, go through the list with your students. Doing this emphasizes the fact that you respect their ideas and intend to adhere to them. And when a student breaks a rule, it'll be easy for you to point to this document.

You'll likely want to post these rules up in your classroom - if you haven't already - for occasional reference. If you're feeling creative, you can include the rule list in a student handbook with important dates, events and curriculum information, too.

4. Avoid punishing the class

Address isolated discipline problems individually instead of punishing an entire class, as the latter can hurt your relationships with students who are on-task and thereby jeopardize other classroom management efforts.

Instead, call out specific students in a friendly manner. For example:

"Do you have a question?", not "Stop talking and disrupting other students"

"Do you need help focusing?", not "Pay attention and stop fooling around while I'm talking"

This basic approach will allow you to keep a friendly disposition, while immediately acknowledging inappropriate behavior.

5. Encourage initiative

Promote growth mindset, and inject variety into your lessons, by allowing students to work ahead and deliver short presentations to share take-away points. Almost inevitably, you'll have some eager learners in your classroom. You can simply ask them if they'd like to get ahead from time-to-time.

For example, if you're reading a specific chapter in a textbook, propose that they read the following one too. When they deliver their subsequent presentations to preview the next chapter on your behalf, you may find that other students want a bit more work as well.

6. Offer praise

Praise students for jobs well done, as doing so improves academic and behavioral performance, according to a recent research review and study.

When it is sincere and references specific examples of effort or accomplishment, praise can:

Inspire the class

Improve a student's self-esteem

Reinforce rules and values you want to see

Perhaps more importantly, it encourages students to repeat positive behavior. Let's say a student exemplifies advanced problem-solving skills when tackling a math word problem. Praising his or her use of specific tactics should go a long way in ensuring he or she continues to use these tactics. Not to mention, you'll motivate other students to do the same.

7. Use non-verbal communication

Complement words with actions and visual aids to improve content delivery, helping students focus and process lessons.

Many differentiated instruction strategies and techniques are rooted in these communication methods. For example, running learning stations -- divided sections of your classroom through which students rotate -- allows you to deliver a range of non-spoken content types. These include videos, infographics and physical objects such as counting coins.

8. Hold parties

Throw an occasional classroom party to acknowledge students' hard work, motivating them to keep it up.

Even if it's just for 20 or 30 minutes, they should be happy with snacks and a selection of group games to play. Clarify that you're holding the party to reward them and they can earn future parties by demonstrating ideal behavior, collectively scoring high on assessments and more.

9. Give tangible rewards

Reward specific students at the end of each lesson, in front of the class, as another motivational and behavior-reinforcement technique.

Let's say a few students are actively listening throughout the entire lesson, answering questions and asking their own. Before the class ends, walk over to their desks to give them raffle tickets. So others can learn, state aloud what each student did to earn the tickets. On Friday, they can submit their tickets for a shot at a prize that changes each week -- from candy to being able to choose a game for the next class party.

10. Make positive letters and phone calls

Keep students happy in and out of class by pleasantly surprising their parents, making positive phone calls and sending complimentary letters home.

When the occasion arises, from academic effort or behavioral progress, letting parents know has a trickle-down effect. They'll generally congratulate their kids; their kids will likely come to class eager to earn more positive feedback. This can also entice parents to grow more invested in a child's learning, opening the door to at-home lessons. Such lessons are a mainstay element of culturally-responsive teaching.

11. Build excitement for content and lesson plans

This one works well no matter the grade level: elementary school, middle school or high school. Start lessons by previewing particularly-exciting parts, hooking student interest from the get-go.

As the bell rings and students settle, go through an agenda of the day's highlights for the whole class. These could include group tasks, engaging bits of content and anything else to pique curiosity. For example, "Throughout the day, you'll learn about:"

How to talk like you're a teacher (sentence structure)

Why you don't know anyone who's won the lottery (probability)

What all the presidents of the United States have had in common (social analysis)

The goal of this classroom management technique is to immediately interest students in your agenda and thereby dissuade misbehavior.

Ready to make learning an exciting adventure?

Use Prodigy to boost classroom engagement and excitement with two captivating learning games for math and English!

12. Offer different types of free study time

Provide a range of activities during free study time to appeal to students who struggle to process content in silence, individually.

You can do this by dividing your class into clearly-sectioned solo and team activities. In separate sections, consider:

Providing audiobooks, which can play material relevant to your lessons

Maintaining a designated quiet space for students to take notes and complete work

Creating a station for challenging group games that teach or reinforce standards-aligned skills

Allowing students to work in groups while taking notes and completing work, away from quiet zones

By running these sorts of activities, free study time will begin to benefit diverse learners. This should contribute to overall classroom engagement.

13. Write group contracts

Help student group work run smoothly and effectively by writing contracts that contain guidelines, having everyone sign.

Group contracts should be based on expectations that students have for each other, and you have for them. You can gather the class's thoughts by holding a discussion about what the ideal group member does, and how he or she acts. Once you've written the contract, encourage students to come up with consequences for violating expectations.

By having them sign a fresh version of the contract before each group task and project, you're empowering them to hold each other accountable.

14. Assign open-ended projects

Encourage students to tackle open-ended projects -- projects that don't demand a specific product -- to allow them to demonstrate knowledge in ways that inherently suit them.

This starts by giving the class a list of broad project ideas, asking each student to choose one. Be sure to provide a rubric for each project that clearly defines expectations. By both enticing and challenging students, you should notice they'll:

Work and learn at their own paces

Engage actively with appropriate content

Demonstrate knowledge as effectively as possible

With these benefits, students may actually look forward to taking on new projects.

15. Give only two scores for informal assessments

Recall a time you saw a big "F" in red ink on your work. You were probably too upset to review mistakes and feedback, and so are your students when they see the same.
So, consider avoiding standard marks on informal and formative assessments.
Instead, just state if a student did or did not meet expectations. Then, provide struggling students with a clear path to improve. For example, pair classmates who didn't meet expectations with those who did, giving them a review and practice activity. When strugglers are confident they understand key concepts, encourage them to tell you. Provide a new assessment, allowing them to prove their competency.

Classroom management strategies for individual students

16. Use EdTech that adjusts to each student

Give students who struggle to process your content opportunities to try educational technology that adapts to their needs.

There are many games and platforms that use adaptive learning principles to detect a given student's skill deficits, serving them content to help overcome them.

For example, Prodigy Math adjusts its content to help students in grades 1 to 8 address their trouble spots. It also offers feedback to help them solve specific mistakes, as they answer questions that use words, charts, pictures and numbers.

The best bit? Teaching tools are all available at no cost to educators and schools.
See the student experience below!
Educators, access at no cost

17. Interview students

Interview students who aren't academically engaged or displaying prosocial behavior to learn how to better manage them.

While running learning stations or a large-group activity, pull each student aside for a few minutes. Ask about:

What helps them focus

Who they work well with

Their favorite types of lessons

Their favorite in-class activities

Which kinds of exercises help them remember key lesson points

Note their answers to come up with activities and approaches that engage them, thereby limiting classroom disruptions.

18. Address inappropriate or off-task behavior quickly

Avoid hesitation when you must address inappropriate or off-task behavior, especially when a student breaks a documented rule.

Acting sooner than later will help ensure that negative feelings -- whether between students or you and a student -- won't fester. Failure to act can result in more poor behavior, leading to needlessly-difficult conversations.

But keep in mind: It's usually best to talk to the student in private. Research shows that punishing students in front of peers has "limited value."

19. Consider peer teaching

Use peer teaching as a classroom management strategy if you feel your top performers can help engage and educate disruptive and struggling students.

Peer teaching activities, such as pairing students together as reading buddies, can be especially beneficial for students who suffer from low confidence and poor interpersonal skills.

Authoritative research states tutors improve self-esteem and interpersonal skills by giving feedback. Tutees realize benefits because they can ask questions and receive immediate clarification. A later study of at-risk students echoes these advantages. Although you should spend time teaching peer tutors how to properly communicate with tutees, you'll likely find the benefits are worth the work.

20. Gamify personal learning plans

Motivate students on personal learning plans by gamifying those plans, as studies - such as recent research from South Korea - indicate this will continuously engage and incentivize them.

Consider gamification strategies such as:

Adjusting your scoring system -- Give experience points (XP) -- along with traditional scores -- on tests and assignments, setting a goal for the student to reach a certain amount of XP per unit. For example, if a student scores 60% on a quiz, give him or her 6,000 XP. You can also award XP for completing extra assignments, participating in class or anything else that shows effort to learn.

Using stages -- Refer to topics and units as stages. The former terms have clear connotations for you, but students may not see how they fit together. If they're gamers, they'll understand that reaching the next stage requires overcoming precursory challenges. Emphasize this by framing certain tasks as prerequisites to reach the next learning stage.

If these strategies work especially well for individual students, you should see similar success by using them as class-wide student management techniques.

Classroom management strategy FAQs

What is the best classroom management style?

According to Diana Baumrind's work, a clinical psychologist known for her research on parenting styles, some educators believe an authoritative classroom management style may the best one. This type of high control, high involvement classroom management style is characterized by strong expectations of appropriate behavior, clear understandings of why certain behaviors are acceptable and others not acceptable, and warm student-teacher relationships.

However, there is no specific approach that has been proven to be the most effective. So you may wish to review The Classroom Management Book by Harry K. Wong and Rosemary T. Wong which includes a variety of solutions that can be easily implemented. Every group of students has varying needs and will likely need a unique approach to help every student bring his or her best self to the classroom and be ready-to-learn every single day.

What are the four components of classroom management?

Implementing the top four components of classroom management from the start will set you and your students up for success all year long. They are:

Classroom design - be intentional about how you set up your desk, your students' desks, bulletin board displays, devices and other aspects of your classroom. Thoughtful classroom design can help create a safe and welcoming learning environment.

Rules/discipline - to create a safe and caring school community, develop classroom rules your students understand and - hopefully - respect. While it may not be fun, be sure to communicate that breaking classroom rules will have concrete yet fair consequences.

Scheduling/organization - being on time, keeping on task and staying organized will help set up your lessons (and your students' learning) up for success.

Instructional technique - while you may not have the flexibility you'd like when it comes to content and curriculum, you should have the freedom to choose how you teach. For example, 8th grade students may prefer a lecture-style lesson with small group discussions while 3rd grade students may prefer learning math with a digital game-based learning platform. Observe how your students learn best and use the classroom management strategies and techniques to teach your lessons.

Why is classroom management so important?

When done effectively, classroom management is important for three main reasons. It:

1. Creates and sustains an orderly learning environment in the classroom

2. Improves meaningful academic learning and fosters social-emotional growth

3. Increases students' academic engagement and lowers negative classroom behavior

Final thoughts about these classroom management strategies

These class-wide and one-on-one approaches to classroom management largely work across subjects and grade levels. Implementable without admin and parent support, they should empower you to establish an orderly - yet friendly and engaging - environment.

Look forward to better teacher-to-student and student-to-student interactions as a result.

Looking for a fun way to engage and reward your students? Try Prodigy Math! Aligned with curricula for grades 1 to 8, students will practice key skills while also exploring an exciting fantasy world.

Plus, you'll get access to free teacher tools that help you differentiate math content, send assessments and collect student insights - in just a few clicks.

Educators, access at no cost

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20 Classroom Management Strategies and Techniques [+ Downloadable List]

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Paper airplanes fly across the room. Students race between desks. You can't get a word in, as they yell over you. Disruptive behavior doesn't have to be this dramatic, like a movie scene you'd watch in a media literacy lesson, but poor classroom management will almost assuredly elevate your stress and burnout rates.

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The Differentiating Process

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Edutopia is a free source of information, inspiration, and practical strategies for learning and teaching in preK-12 education. We are published by the George Lucas Educational Foundation, a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization.

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TeacherTube has thousands of videos uploaded by teachers and students that have been vetted for safety. Since TeacherTube has a multitude of videos, it also has a lot of information on any content.

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Since launching on March 6, 2007, our goal at TeacherTube has been to provide an online community for sharing instructional and education videos for college students, high school students, middle school students and elementary school students. We seek to fill a need for a more educationally focused, safe venue for teachers, students, schools, and home learners. It is a site to provide anytime, anywhere professional development with teachers teaching teachers. It is also a site where teachers can post videos designed for students to view in order to learn a concept or skill.

On September 1, 2017, TeacherTube.com was acquired by Salem Web Network. Salem's goal is to continue the growth of TeacherTube and support innovative ideas for education.

Most importantly, TeacherTube community members are a major part of the evolution of the site. Members are encouraged to not only upload educationally relevant videos but also to make constructive comments and use the rating system to show appreciation for videos of value to one as an educator or learner. Users also have the ability to preserve the integrity of the site by flagging inappropriate videos. TeacherTube staff review flagged sites and will remove any inappropriate posts. With more collegial commentary and discussion through messaging and responses, the quality of this resource will only increase.

The service is free for everyone. We always encourage our users to Contact Us with thoughts, suggestions, or other feedback. We do have a vision for TeacherTube to truly be a better alternative to other video storage sites. With the community's help, it can become more interactive and engaging for all teachers and learners.

Science videos are one of the key subjects that students are taught in school. Science is present from the early years of grade school up to the highest levels of academic achievement. As students move up the ranks, their study of science tends to get more specialized into one specific field only, like chemistry, biology, or physics. We have educational videos for all of these courses.

TeacherTube.com's section on science educational videos has content of interest to all learning levels. We have topics as varied as educational songs for elementary school students, up to chemical engineering for college students.

Mathematics is one of the fundamental 3Rs of early education. Known as "arithmetic" in those levels, it involves counting and the basic operations of addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. As kids advance through the grade levels, they progressively deal with more complex mathematical problems. Also, more new concepts get introduced as they progress.

Math is crucial for almost any business career. Accounting, budgeting, and projecting sales all require some level of competence in math. Many resources for these topics can be found here on TeacherTube.

Even everyday situations benefit a lot from math skills. Managing one's finances, for instance, obviously requires math, as with anything involving money. Cooking also involves math: proportions of ingredients, for example, as well as measurements.

TeacherTube.com's section on math education videos covers everything from fractions and measurements to money management. We also cover more complicated subjects such as trigonometry, and well as probability and statistics.

History is a very valuable subject, but not just because it is useful for preventing future wars. The lessons from history can also teach people to build a better future. What people have done right in the past should be continued and improved upon in the present.

The subject of history covers a wide range of timelines and locations. There's ancient history and modern history. There is also Asian history, US history, Latin American history, and European history. Each one is unique, reflecting the cultures of the people involved.

If there's one thing common to all history classes, it's usually names, dates, and places. This is also the part that many kids hate the most. They do not see the point of memorizing so many random facts that appear purposeless. Well, that is the wrong way to teach history.

TeacherTube's history education videos section makes the past come alive with a sterling array of videos and tutorials that cover subjects as varied as our prehistory, ancient history, the civil war, and the study of world civilizations.

The purpose of social studies, based on the US National Council for the Social Studies, is to promote "civic competence" among students. In other words, the subject equips students to become better citizens of a country. This is done by exploring history, geography, current events, and governments, among others. Middle school social studies usually deal with one of each of these fields per grade level.

With this knowledge, students gain the ability to become more socially aware and to be actively involved citizens of their country. Through analyzing current events, students will also learn how to predict the consequences of the things happening around them. With that, they can be good influences on their communities.

It is with this goal in mind that TeacherTube offers a wide variety of learning video materials for both students and enthusiasts.

We have videos on everything from strengthening your knowledge of economics terminology to the nuances of various world cultures.

Language arts, as the name suggests, equips students with a wide range of ways to use language. It comprises both speaking and writing skills. In addition to the basics, the subject also deals with the artistic side of language, infusing creativity in the ways students communicate.

There are four basic aspects to understanding a language: speaking, reading, listening, and writing. Language arts classes aim to enhance those skills at each year level. At first, it covers basic topics like grammar, sentence construction, and paragraphs. Exercises in language arts become progressively more complex as students move up the ranks, and usually, in higher grades, more emphasis is put on creativity and persuasiveness.

With the noble goal of harnessing the power of words to effect change in the world in mind, TeacherTube is proud to offer videos on everything from general communications to speaking and even videos on strengthening your studying skills.

Not all kids want to go through lectures. Some of them may not have the attention span or the patience to endure long hours just sitting down and listening to someone talk in front. No, that doesn't mean these kids are lazy. It just means they learn differently.

Some kids are auditory learners. In other words, they learn best when they listen to sounds and music. For this type of student, educational songs will certainly be a big helping hand. Even the most complex of concepts, when taught through songs, will be very easy for them to understand and remember. Even kids who are not so much inclined to auditory learning may like this method.

Educational song vidoes are available in a wide variety of subjects. English, math, social studies, science, and everything in between, there's bound to be a song for every subject. For example, on the website Teachertube.com, there are science topic songs, reading songs, skip counting songs, reading phonics songs, and even quadratic formula songs.

The advantage of using educational song videos is that it accomplishes two things at once. First, these songs are entertaining, and second, they also teach a concept. They facilitate learning a lot better than plain lectures simply because of the entertainment part. When a lesson is made fun of, kids will want to learn them. In fact, it could even be the kids themselves, on their own, who will play the songs repeatedly.

TeacherTube offers education songs on topics as varied as the circulatory system to math songs about polynomials and even videos on St. Patrick's Day.

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TeacherTube Educational Videos for the School Classroom and Home - Including Educational Songs, History Videos, Student Videos and Math Videos

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A free community for sharing instructional videos, Educational Songs, History Videos, Student Videos, Math Videos, and other content for teachers and students. We are an education focused, safe venue for teachers, schools, and home schoolers to access educational for the classroom and home learning.

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Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development

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Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development

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How Classroom Assessments Improve Learning

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Large-scale assessments, like all assessments, are designed for a specific purpose. Those used in most states today are designed to rank-order schools and students for the purposes of accountability-and some do so fairly well. But assessments designed for ranking are generally not good instruments for helping teachers improve their instruction or modify their approach to individual students. First, students take them at the end of the school year, when most instructional activities are near completion. Second, teachers don't receive the results until two or three months later, by which time their students have usually moved on to other teachers. And third, the results that teachers receive usually lack the level of detail needed to target specific improvements (Barton, 2002; Kifer, 2001).

The assessments best suited to guide improvements in student learning are the quizzes, tests, writing assignments, and other assessments that teachers administer on a regular basis in their classrooms. Teachers trust the results from these assessments because of their direct relation to classroom instructional goals. Plus, results are immediate and easy to analyze at the individual student level. To use classroom assessments to make improvements, however, teachers must change both their view of assessments and their interpretation of results. Specifically, they need to see their assessments as an integral part of the instruction process and as crucial for helping students learn.

Despite the importance of assessments in education today, few teachers receive much formal training in assessment design or analysis. A recent survey showed, for example, that fewer than half the states require competence in assessment for licensure as a teacher (Stiggins, 1999). Lacking specific training, teachers rely heavily on the assessments offered by the publisher of their textbooks or instructional materials. When no suitable assessments are available, teachers construct their own in a haphazard fashion, with questions and essay prompts similar to the ones that their teachers used. They treat assessments as evaluation devices to administer when instructional activities are completed and to use primarily for assigning students' grades.

To use assessments to improve instruction and student learning, teachers need to change their approach to assessments in three important ways.

Nearly every student has suffered the experience of spending hours preparing for a major assessment, only to discover that the material that he or she had studied was different from what the teacher chose to emphasize on the assessment. This experience teaches students two un-fortunate lessons. First, students realize that hard work and effort don't pay off in school because the time and effort that they spent studying had little or no influence on the results. And second, they learn that they cannot trust their teachers (Guskey, 2000a). These are hardly the lessons that responsible teachers want their students to learn.

Nonetheless, this experience is common because many teachers still mistakenly believe that they must keep their assessments secret. As a result, students come to regard assessments as guessing games, especially from the middle grades on. They view success as depending on how well they can guess what their teachers will ask on quizzes, tests, and other assessments. Some teachers even take pride in their ability to out-guess students. They ask questions about isolated concepts or obscure understandings just to see whether students are reading carefully. Generally, these teachers don't include such "gotcha" questions maliciously, but rather-often unconsciously-because such questions were asked of them when they were students.

Classroom assessments that serve as meaningful sources of information don't surprise students. Instead, these assessments reflect the concepts and skills that the teacher emphasized in class, along with the teacher's clear criteria for judging students' performance. These concepts, skills, and criteria align with the teacher's instructional activities and, ideally, with state or district standards. Students see these assessments as fair measures of important learning goals. Teachers facilitate learning by providing students with important feedback on their learning progress and by helping them identify learning problems (Bloom, Madaus, & Hastings, 1981; Stiggins, 2002).

Critics sometimes contend that this approach means "teaching to the test." But the crucial issue is, What determines the content and methods of teaching? If the test is the primary determinant of what teachers teach and how they teach it, then we are indeed "teaching to the test." But if desired learning goals are the foundation of students' instructional experiences, then assessments of student learning are simply extensions of those same goals. Instead of "teaching to the test," teachers are more accurately "testing what they teach." If a concept or skill is important enough to assess, then it should be important enough to teach. And if it is not important enough to teach, then there's little justification for assessing it.

The best classroom assessments also serve as meaningful sources of information for teachers, helping them identify what they taught well and what they need to work on. Gathering this vital information does not require a sophisticated statistical analysis of assessment results. Teachers need only make a simple tally of how many students missed each assessment item or failed to meet a specific criterion. State assessments sometimes provide similar item-by-item information, but concerns about item security and the cost of developing new items each year usually make assessment developers reluctant to offer such detailed information. Once teachers have made specific tallies, they can pay special attention to the trouble spots-those items or criteria missed by large numbers of students in the class.

In reviewing these results, the teacher must first consider the quality of the item or criterion. Perhaps the question is ambiguously worded or the criterion is unclear. Perhaps students mis-interpreted the question. Whatever the case, teachers must determine whether these items adequately address the knowledge, understanding, or skill that they were intended to measure.

If teachers find no obvious problems with the item or criterion, then they must turn their attention to their teaching. When as many as half the students in a class answer a clear question incorrectly or fail to meet a particular criterion, it's not a student learning problem-it's a teaching problem. Whatever teaching strategy was used, whatever examples were employed, or whatever explanation was offered, it simply didn't work.

Analyzing assessment results in this way means setting aside some powerful ego issues. Many teachers may initially say, "I taught them. They just didn't learn it!" But on reflection, most recognize that their effectiveness is not defined on the basis of what they do as teachers but rather on what their students are able to do. Can effective teaching take place in the absence of learning? Certainly not.

Some argue that such a perspective puts too much responsibility on teachers and not enough on students. Occasionally, teachers respond, "Don't students have responsibilities in this process? Shouldn't students display initiative and personal accountability?"

Indeed, teachers and students share responsibility for learning. Even with valiant teaching efforts, we cannot guarantee that all students will learn everything excellently. Only rarely do teachers find items or assessment criteria that every student answers correctly. A few students are never willing to put forth the necessary effort, but these students tend to be the exception, not the rule. If a teacher is reaching fewer than half of the students in the class, the teacher's method of instruction needs to improve. And teachers need this kind of evidence to help target their instructional improvement efforts.

If assessments provide information for both students and teachers, then they cannot mark the end of learning. Instead, assessments must be followed by high-quality, corrective instruction designed to remedy whatever learning errors the assessment identified (see Guskey, 1997). To charge ahead knowing that students have not learned certain concepts or skills well would be foolish. Teachers must therefore follow their assessments with instructional alternatives that present those concepts in new ways and engage students in different and more appropriate learning experiences.

High-quality, corrective instruction is not the same as reteaching, which often consists simply of restating the original explanations louder and more slowly. Instead, the teacher must use approaches that accommodate differences in students' learning styles and intelligences (Sternberg, 1994). Although teachers generally try to incorporate different teaching approaches when they initially plan their lessons, corrective instruction involves extending and strengthening that work. In addition, those students who have few or no learning errors to correct should receive enrichment activities to help broaden and expand their learning. Materials designed for gifted and talented students provide an excellent resource for such activities.

Developing ideas for corrective instruction and enrichment activities can be difficult, especially if teachers believe that they must do it alone, but structured professional development opportunities can help teachers share strategies and collaborate on teaching techniques (Guskey, 1998, 2000b). Faculty meetings devoted to examining classroom assessment results and developing alternative strategies can be highly effective. District-level personnel and collaborative partnerships with local colleges and universities offer wonderful resources for ideas and practical advice.

Occasionally, teachers express concern that if they take time to offer corrective instruction, they will sacrifice curriculum coverage. Because corrective work is initially best done during class and under the teacher's direction, early instructional units will typically involve an extra class period or two. Teachers who ask students to complete corrective work independently, outside of class, generally find that those students who most need to spend time on corrective work are the least likely to do so.

As students become accustomed to this corrective process and realize the personal benefits it offers, however, the teacher can drastically reduce the amount of class time allocated to such work and accomplish much of it through homework assignments or in special study sessions before or after school. And by not allowing minor errors to become major learning problems, teachers better prepare students for subsequent learning tasks, eventually need less time for corrective work (Whiting, Van Burgh, & Render, 1995), and can proceed at a more rapid pace in later learning units. By pacing their instructional units more flexibly, most teachers find that they need not sacrifice curriculum coverage to offer students the benefits of corrective instruction.

To become an integral part of the instructional process, assessments cannot be a one-shot, do-or-die experience for students. Instead, assessments must be part of an ongoing effort to help students learn. And if teachers follow assessments with helpful corrective instruction, then students should have a second chance to demonstrate their new level of competence and understanding. This second chance helps determine the effectiveness of the corrective instruction and offers students another opportunity to experience success in learning.

Writing teachers have long recognized the many benefits of a second chance. They know that students rarely write well on an initial attempt. Teachers build into the writing process several opportunities for students to gain feedback on early drafts and then to use that feedback to revise and improve their writing. Teachers of other subjects frequently balk at the idea, however-mostly because it differs from their personal learning experiences.

Some teachers express concern that giving students a second chance might be unfair and that "life isn't like that." They point out that that a surgeon doesn't get a second chance to perform an operation successfully and a pilot doesn't get a second chance to land a jumbo jet safely. Because of the very high stakes involved, each must get it right the first time.

But how did these highly skilled professionals learn their craft? The first operation performed by that surgeon was on a cadaver-a situation that allows a lot of latitude for mistakes. Similarly, the pilot spent many hours in a flight simulator before ever attempting a landing from the cockpit. Such experiences allowed them to learn from their mistakes and to improve their performance. Similar instructional techniques are used in nearly every professional endeavor. Only in schools do student face the prospect of one-shot, do-or-die assessments, with no chance to demonstrate what they learned from previous mistakes.

All educators strive to have their students become lifelong learners and develop learning-to-learn skills. What better learning-to-learn skill is there than learning from one's mistakes? A mistake can be the beginning of learning. Some assessment experts argue, in fact, that students learn nothing from a successful performance. Rather, students learn best when their initial performance is less than successful, for then they can gain direction on how to improve (Wiggins, 1998).

Other teachers suggest that it's unfair to offer the same privileges and high grades to students who require a second chance that we offer to those students who demonstrate a high level of learning on the initial assessment. After all, these students may simply have failed to prepare appropriately. Certainly, we should recognize students who do well on the initial assessment and provide opportunities for them to extend their learning through enrichment activities. But those students who do well on a second assessment have also learned well. More important, their poor performance on the first assessment may not have been their fault. Maybe the teaching strategies used during the initial instruction were inappropriate for these students, but the corrective instruction proved more effective. If we determine grades on the basis of performance and these students have performed at a high level, then they certainly deserve the same grades as those who scored well on their first try.

A comparable example is the driver's license examination. Many individuals do not pass their driver's test on the first attempt. On the second or third try, however, they may reach the same high level of performance as others did on their first. Should these drivers be restricted, for instance, to driving in fair weather only? In inclement weather, should they be required to pull their cars over and park until the weather clears? Of course not. Because they eventually met the same high performance standards as those who passed on their initial attempt, they receive the same privileges. The same should hold true for students who show that they, too, have learned well.

Using assessments as sources of information, following assessments with corrective instruction, and giving students a second chance are steps in a process that all teachers use naturally when they tutor individual students. If the student makes a mistake, the teacher stops and points out the mistake. The teacher then explains that concept in a different way. Finally, the teacher asks another question or poses a similar problem to ensure the student's understanding before going on. The challenge for teachers is to use their classroom assessments in similar ways to provide all students with this sort of individualized assistance.

Successful coaches use the same process. Immediately following a gymnast's performance on the balance beam, for example, the coach explains to her what she did correctly and what could be improved. The coach then offers specific strategies for improvement and encourages her to try again. As the athlete repeats her performance, the coach watches carefully to ensure that she has corrected the problem.

Successful students typically know how to take corrective action on their own. They save their assessments and review the items or criteria that they missed. They rework problems, look up answers in their textbooks or other resource materials, and ask the teacher about ideas or concepts that they don't understand. Less successful students rarely take such initiative. After looking at their grades, they typically crumple up their assessments and deposit them in the trash can as they leave the classroom. Teachers who use classroom assessments as part of the instructional process help all of their students do what the most successful students have learned to do for themselves.

Using classroom assessment to improve student learning is not a new idea. More than 30 years ago, Benjamin Bloom showed how to conduct this process in practical and highly effective ways when he described the practice of mastery learning (Bloom, 1968, 1971). But since that time, the emphasis on assessments as tools for accountability has diverted attention from this more important and fundamental purpose.

Assessments can be a vital component in our efforts to improve education. But as long as we use them only as a means to rank schools and students, we will miss their most powerful benefits. We must focus instead on helping teachers change the way they use assessment results, improve the quality of their classroom assessments, and align their assessments with valued learning goals and state or district standards. When teachers' classroom assessments become an integral part of the instructional process and a central ingredient in their efforts to help students learn, the benefits of assessment for both students and teachers will be boundless.

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Position paper

Open Access

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Disciplinary and Interdisciplinary Science Education Research 1, Article number: 4 (2019) Cite this article

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Abstract

The coupled influences of scholarship in the fields of Psychology, Philosophy, and Pedagogy beginning in the 1950s, set in motion the emergence of new images, methodological perspectives, theories, and design principles about learners and learning. Advances in cognitive and sociocultural psychology, shifting images of the nature of science, recognition of the importance of disciplinary discourse practices in learning, the scaffolding of learning by tools and technologies, along with the adoption of 'assessment for learning' instructional strategies are among the factors that have led researchers and practitioners to advance positions that learning ought to be coordinated and sequenced along conceptual trajectories, developmental corridors, and learning progressions (LP). Following opening Introduction and LP Research Framework sections that provide an overview of the runup to LP research and development, I then turn to future research discussions and implications targeting five LP domains: Using Knowledge with Scientific Practices; Instructional Pathways - Early Childhood Learning; Teaching Experiments - Science and Mathematics; Upper/Lower Anchors for Measuring Progress; and Concepts & Practices. The Conclusion section points to overarching challenges for researchers, planners, and teachers in STEM education. There is much to learn for all!

Introduction

Science education practices and policy over the past 100 years reveals a narrative of oscillating changes and developments (Rudolph, 2019). The 1950s was a pivotal turning point, a disruptive decade with significant changes to psychological, philosophical, and pedagogical frameworks that informed science education. For psychology, the emergence during the 1960s and 1970s of cognitive and constructivist learning theories for science and mathematics learning began to challenge the tenets of behavioral learning theory (National Research Council, 1999). In philosophy, the adoption of historical and cognitive frameworks for depicting the growth of scientific knowledge challenged logical positivism images for building and refining scientific theories, models, and explanations (Giere, 1988; Kuhn, 1970). The major pedagogical shift regarding teaching science was adopting an 'enquiry into enquiry' stance for science education (Duschl, 1990; Rudolph, 2019; Schwab, 1962). This change summarily influenced and ignited considerations regarding the central roles that epistemic and scientific practices (e.g., systems thinking, modeling, argumentation, computational thinking) have on learning science.

The changes begun in the 1950s ignited ideas that science education needed to be more than learning what we know; mere mastery learning. The new learning goals seek to understand and engage with how ideas and concepts build together. That is, taking a 'science as practices' stance that examines how we came to know the natural world and about using evidence to explain why we believe a scientific explanation in the face of alternative competing ideas. The shift was toward 'using knowledge' and engaging learners in discipline-based epistemic and scientific practices. The new emerging models led researchers and educators to advance positions that learning ought to be coordinated and sequenced over longer periods of time; not over days of lessons but rather over months and years of development. The emergent perspectives include conceptual trajectories (Driver, Leach, Scott, & Wood-Robinson, 1994), developmental corridors (Brown, 1997), learning trajectories (Simon, 1995) and learning progressions (National Research Council, 2006, 2007). And, importantly, the developmental psychology research (National Research Council, 2007) indicated that learning progressions can start at early ages well before children enter formal schooling.

Over the course of one-decade 1999-2009, the US National Research Council assembled distinguished panels of scholars to develop synthesis reports on learning research. Targeted topics included social, cognitive, and behavioral models of learning, assessing learning, test standards, reading education, mathematics education, and science education. Titles included How People Learn; Knowing What People Know; Starting Out Right; Adding It All Up; Systems for State Science Assessment, Taking Science to School. Each synthesis report contributed to the emergent thinking about developmental pathways, teaching sequences, learning trajectories (LT) and learning progressions (LP).

Two highly influential reports released by the Center for Policy Research in Education (CPRE) further synthesized and provided overviews of the evidence and rationales for extant reasoning about and conjectures regarding potential contributions that the design of coherent sequences of instruction might achieve. The first CPRE report Learning Progressions in Science: An evidence-based approach to reform (Corcoran, Mosher, & Rogat, 2009) was followed shortly by Learning Trajectories in Mathematics: A foundation for Standards, Curriculum, Assessment and Instruction (Daro, Mosher, & Corcoran, 2011).

The CPRE reports challenged the established thinking that government agencies and school districts "shouldn't prescribe classroom practices to frontline educators .... . The concept of learning progressions offers one promising approach to developing the knowledge needed to define the "track" that students may be on, or should be on." (Daro et al., 2011). The LT report goes on to summarize the hoped-for potential of LPs in science. One, is LP can inform teachers about what to expect from their students. LP's provide an empirical basis for choices about when to teach what to whom. LP identify key waypoints along the path in which students' knowledge and skills are likely to grow and develop in school subjects. Such waypoints could then form the backbone for curriculum and instructionally meaningful assessments and performance standards.

The agenda now for education researchers and curriculum developers is scripting and enacting the design principles for preK-16 curriculum, instruction, and assessment models. More specifically, it is taking the research on student learning from the domains of science education, developmental psychology, sociocultural theory, epistemic cognition, and nature of science to develop coherent instructional sequences that span grade bands, integrate STEM disciplines, and ultimately inform coherent progressions of teaching and learning.

In 2011 the NSF convened the "Learning Progressions Footprint Conference" with two purposes (1) to examine the impact NSF research was having on LP (science) and LT (mathematics) research, and, (2) to provide guidance for NSF's future investments in LP and LT research and development. Three contexts were taken up:

1. 1.
Large scale assessment, informing designs and tasks that monitor reasoning and progress toward learning goals;

2. 2.
Classroom practices, guiding the design of curriculum, instruction, and formative assessments as well as professional development; and

3. 3.
State and national standards development, examining effectiveness of educational systems at local, state, and national contexts.

Research on the design of learner-centered curricula (Bransford et al., 2006; Duschl & Gitomer, 1991; Krajcik, Blumenfeld, Marx, & Soloway, 1994; Linn, 1995) and on the design of student-centered learning environments (Cobb, Confrey, diSessa, Lehrer & Schauble, 2003) provided guidelines on how to scaffold learning opportunities into classrooms. This focus on student-centered learning sequences brought to light the need for developing performance assessment and formative assessment tasks that would make learners' thinking visible so as to inform whether and how learning was progressing and enable helpful feedback and supports for subsequent learning. The shift is away from teacher-centered and toward learner-centered classrooms. The research focus continues to be about developing and adopting learning progressions (LP) that are framed around (1) the learning goal(s) or outcome; (2) the learners' developmental progressions in thinking, reasoning, and learning; (3) the design of assessments that inform feedback on learning; and (4) the design of activities and tasks that are accessible to learners and the sequence of instruction that promotes increasingly more sophisticated ways of knowing and thinking.

The next two sections examine some of the unresolved issues in LP research and development. The discussion focuses on a set pf selected LP -Topics and the accompanying theoretical frameworks that reveal the 'theme and variation' of varying LP design and methodological perspectives. The topic selection of LP research and development is drawn from four sources:

"Learning progressions and teaching sequences: A review and analysis" (Duschl, Maeng, & Sezen, 2011);

"Learning Progressions Footprint Conference" (National Science Foundation, 2012);

"Geoprogressions - Learning progressions for maps, geospatial technology and spatial thinking: A research handbook" (Solem, Huynh, & Boehm, 2014);

Future of education and skills 2030: Curriculum analysis - A synthesis of research on learning trajectories/progressions in mathematics (Confrey, 2019)

For each 'LP-Topic', a brief description is provided first to contextualize the conceptual and methodological frameworks therein. Each LP-Topic is then followed by an 'Implications for Future Research' statement that focuses on LP issues and research agendas.

Learning progression research frameworks

Any analyses of LP research studies must address two overarching questions:

We should be asking research questions that make it possible to judge a LP as complete, near complete, incomplete, and flawed LP. Advancing the LP research agenda will necessitate attaining some degree of consensus regarding the guiding conceptions that frame LP research questions, curriculum frameworks, instructional methods and formative and summative assessments. Lehrer and Schauble ( 2015) identify several issues and questions scholars needs to consider to extend the scope and potential of LP research. For establishing clearer aims and goals; What to include in long-term (multiple years or grades) LP designs? For determining the granularity of LP description; How to support conceptual development in LP? and How to generate and test LP?

Driver et al. ( 1994) argue how cross-age studies of conceptual development can inform curriculum planning. They posit there are three factors influencing students conceptual reasoning and learning pathways; "changes in students' ontologies within specific domains, changes in reasoning strategies, and changes in epistemological commitments" (p. 97). This suggests a need for more longitudinal research studies to understand and characterize students' learning pathways and the ways students' changing ontologies, reasoning strategies, and epistemic commitments influence learning.

The introduction of science education Learning Progressions (LP) and math education Learning Trajectories (LT), as described in the Introduction section above, coincided with the emergence of new curriculum, instruction, and assessment frameworks and national policy discussions and reforms about rethinking science and mathematics, teaching and learning.

The guiding frameworks adopted by researchers when developing a LP naturally have an effect on shaping the LP design and the validation process. Duschl et al. ( 2011) found that LP research reports guided by 'achievement measurement models' (e.g., State Tests, NAEP, TIMMs) tend to lead to curriculum designs that are days or week-long. Furthermore, the instructional frameworks adopt a 'fix it' model to address students' novice/expert conceptions. Not surprisingly, considerations for scientific and epistemic practices are typically absent as are expectations for students using knowledge with practices.

In contrast, LP research reports employing 'cognitive learning assessment' models such as the 'assessment triangle' (National Research Council, 2001) adopt longer instructional sequences timeframes employing multiple units of study that are implemented across on months and years. Here instruction frameworks and learning performances adopt a 'work with it' learning model grounded in student's intuitions and innate capacities for reasoning and sensemaking. Here, there are strong commitments to using knowledge linked to scientific practices; e.g., argumentation, data analysis, computational thinking, and modelling.

Huynh and Gotwals ( 2014) reporting as part of a project developing a geography LP through the lenses of spatial thinking, mathematics, and geospatial technology. The report reveals several important issues regarding engagement in LP research when bridging between practices, content, and tool-use. One issue is how to begin creating a LP. They argue for the coordination of three qualities for:

1. (i)
Have conceptual coherence of how learners/teachers new to a domain come to master that domain;

2. (ii)
Build on and be compatible with the existing learning research learning findings in a domain; and,

3. (iii)
Including processes for measuring and validating students' learning.

A second issue that arises concerns the multiple strategies available for determining the starting/ending points or lower/upper anchors for the design of LPs. One method is to conduct cross-sectional studies of learners' understandings at different stages and ages of development to establish a hypothetical progression for instructional pathways (c.f., Duncan, Rogat, & Yarden, 2009; Mohan, Mohan & Utall, 2014). A second method, is to examine specific instructional activities and conduct teaching experiments to ascertain what students are capable of learning with proper supports and opportunities. (c.f., Cobb, McClain, & Gravemeijer, 2003; Lehrer & Schauble, 2012). A third method is to determine the Upper/Lower anchors for measuring progress, or progress variables. Here questions focus on what does it mean to be at a 'level' and how does one progress to higher levels? (c.f., Morell, Collier, Black, & Wilson, 2017). Yet another issue has been labeled the 'messy middle' problem. Here the challenge is that there are multiple and variable pathways that learners can traverse; as alluded to above by Driver et al. ( 1994) and Lehrer and Schauble ( 2015). Such diversity among learners can be a quandary for group/class instructional frameworks.

Here, then, a discussion of five domains relevant for conducting LP research: Using Knowledge with Scientific Practices; Instructional Pathways - Early Childhood Learning; Teaching Experiments - Science and Mathematics; Upper/Lower Anchors for Measuring Progress; and Concepts & Practices.

LP research domains - topics & implications

Using knowledge with scientific practices

Research on designing LP for science and epistemic practices (e.g., building and refining theories, models, and mechanisms; systems and spatial thinking; argumentation) is needed to support deep learning during project-, problem-, or place-based inquiry contexts. Science LP researchers might consider adopting the 'learning models' approach for LT in mathematics education (see Teaching experiments - science and mathematics below). Historical inquiry methods (Duschl, 1990; Osborne, 2018) as well as contemporary ethnographies and case studies of epistemic cultures (Knorr-Cetina, 1999) can also generate LP designs. For science practices LP, the broad focus is examining the developmental pathways and science skills and reasoning associated with building and refining knowledge. Such epistemic practices are critical for engaging in the critique and communication of scientific inquiry and for developing understandings about the nature of science. Consider two examples for research on science and epistemic practices: Spatial Thinking, Reasoning with Evidence.

Spatial thinking

Reasoning with and about spatial data or phenomena and using spatial technology is increasingly a part of the daily lives and the technical tools we use. Mohan, Mohan and Uttal ( 2014) report on the process they used for designing a 'Geoprogression' LP for maps, geospatial technology and spatial thinking. The approach included three components 1) Identifying the Knowledge Space, 2) Defining the Domain of a Spatial Thinking LP, and 3) Learning Progression Anchors and Progress Variables. The third component serves as a good example of the complex decision-making that often arises when striving to decide and define the beginning (Lower Anchor) and ending (Upper Anchor) ends points of a LP. At issue, are the competing perspectives for the psychological, philosophical, and pedagogical frameworks that are adopted; e.g., cognitive vs socio-cultural learning theory, realist vs instrumental philosophical views of science, group vs individualized teaching routines.

With respect to the temporal development of spatial thinking, there is a lack of consensus among developmental psychology researchers; especially for young pre-K and elementary age students. There are two competing schools of thought among nativist and constructivist researchers. "There is a notable debated about the capabilities of these very young children that is significant to consider in learning progressions research." (Mohan et al. 2014, p 13). (See Instructional pathways - early childhood learning below).

Nativist researchers believe that humans are born with innate mental modules for spatial thinking and with little guidance from adults can perform spatial tasks. Children as young as three can use some of the spatial properties of room maps. Constructivist researchers maintain that full mastery of spatial thinking cannot occur until later in life. A conceptual understanding of maps depends on substantial learning and experience. The issues raised here apply to all domains for early childhood learning and LP design.

Reasoning with evidence

More LP research is needed on teaching and learning about the nature of scientific evidence and the links to epistemic cognition (Greene, Sandoval, & Bråten, 2016). Here, too, there are competing and complementary perspectives for designing LP learning strategies for obtaining and using evidence. Consider three examples:

1. (1)
McNeill and Berland ( 2017) identify three 'using evidence' teaching practice problems (P) and three design heuristics (H) as solutions:

P1 Teaching science knowledge as final form ideas and not as evolving evidence-based models and theories. H1 Use evidence that is phenomenon based.

P2 Viewing data as factual information. H2 focus on the Evidence - Explanation continuum (Duschl, 2003):

◦ (i) include decision steps for determining the evidence: questions to measures to data to evidence and

◦ (ii) include decision steps for deploying the evidence: evidence to patterns to models to explanations.

P3 learning discrete final form ideas. H3 point to evidence used in argumentation discourse

2. (2)
Duncan, Chinn and Barzilai ( 2018) introduce the 'Grasp of Evidence' framework steps - Analysis, Evaluation, Interpretation, Integration - to instructional sequences to distinguish between expert's and layperson's use of evidence. These are applied to epistemic components of the AIR model: Epistemic Aims & Values, Epistemic Ideals, and Reliable epistemic processes.

3. (3)
Krist, Schwarz, and Reiser ( 2019) advance essential epistemic heuristics for guiding mechanistic reasoning Thinking across scalar levels; Identifying and unpacking relevant factors; Linking to coordinated relationships over time and/or space. The heuristics help to characterize and compare mechanistic reasoning across science content areas and thus have the potential to inform development of mechanisms over time.

Implications for LP research

The research on epistemic practices shares the challenge of defining and measuring the mid-point development of progress regarding scientific practices. The three 'Teaching Problems', the 'Grasp of Evidence' dynamics, and the three 'Mechanistic Reasoning' guiding heuristics are sound examples of LP research programs that take up important interdisciplinary questions of teaching and learning across the grade span. More research on disciplinary, interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary science practices is needed. Consider the following assessment research targets from the NSF Footprint Conference:

▪ Conducting research on examining students' progress over extended and varied time periods (weeks, months, years)

▪ Developing expertise with using LPs to gauge progress and diagnose difficulties.

▪ Using LP to develop classroom assessments and

▪ Using LP to evaluate high/low quality instructional interventions.

The research tells us that developing rich, conceptual knowledge takes time and requires instructional support employing sound assessment practices. Importantly, the content of a LP is more than core conceptual knowledge but also epistemic and social practices that characterize a domain of science or mathematics. The LP approach to the design and alignment of curriculum, instruction and assessment is grounded in core knowledge theories of cognitive development and learning. The emerging notion is design a LP around the most generative and core disciplinary ideas/practices. Additionally, the core ideas should be accessible to students in beginning school grades and have the potential for sustained exploration across several grades (e.g., K-8). Critically important is the need to research instructional interventions that advance learning.

Instructional pathways - early childhood learning

The extensive research on infants and young children's cognitive development underscores the variety of knowledge resources and reasoning capabilities children bring to formal/informal education. Young learners are anything but empty minds. Contemporary research while maintaining the notion of developmental pathways, rejects age-based stages of development; e.g., concrete to formal. Young children are capable of noticing patterns and attributes in the natural world, linking the patterns and attributes to science concepts, to developing explanations of natural phenomena, and to reason about abstract ideas in meaningful and productive ways (National Research Council, 2007, 2008). As such, LPs can begin at early grade levels.

Learning research reveals that developing rich, conceptual knowledge takes time and requires instructional support employing sound assessment practices. The content of LPs needs to be more than attaining core conceptual knowledge learning goals. LP designs must also take up important epistemic reasoning practices (e.g., building and refining knowledge claims) and social practices (critiquing and communicating claims) that characterize a disciplinary domain of science or mathematics. Reasoning in chemistry, physics, biology, or the Earth/Space sciences while sharing some similar domain general practices (i.e., hypothesis testing, physics of matter and engery, particulate nature of matter) involve very different types and forms of evidence, measures, scales, models, and mechanisms. As such, LPs are frequently situated in domain specific contexts that couple together using concepts within practices contexts.

The PISA (OECD, 2018) and National Research Council ( 2012) frameworks distinguish between conceptual, procedural, and epistemic learning goals. The LP/LT approach to the design and alignment of curriculum, instruction and assessment is grounded in theories of cognitive development and learning that focus on core knowledge, not cognitive levels (Bloom's Taxonomy) nor developmental stages (Piaget's concrete/formal stages.) The emerging perspective is for LPs/LTs to be built around learner's experiences, intuitions, and prior knowledge. The focus is determining the most generative and core ideas/practices that are central to the discipline and that support students' learning. Additionally, the selection of core ideas should be accessible to students in beginning school grades and have the potential for sustained exploration across several grades (e.g., K-8). Critically important are instructional interventions that deepen and broaden learning.

Implications for LP research

The recommendation (National Research Council, 2007, 2008, 2012) is that contexts for experiencing science and introducing new disciplinary core ideas and practices should be accessible to learners and have the potential for sustained generative exploration across subsequent grades. One current area of interest for LP researchers is studying the impact culturally relevant and place-based learning contexts have on learning. The basic research issue is determining how learning occurs, for whom, and under what conditions. The 'one size fits all' assessment models are being challenged (Penuel & Shepard, 2017).

Characterizing and determining accessible and generative contexts needs further attention by researchers. Research shows that young children ages 3-4 are, in select domains, capable of sophisticated reasoning (NRC, 2007); as was shown above for spatial reasoning. It also follows, then that if learning environments do not continue to present science as a theory-building or model-building enterprise with specialized ways of talking, writing, and representing ideas, then these innate abilities of children may fade away (Gopnik, 1996). Metz ( 2004, 2008) cogently argues that we need a rethinking of 'developmentally appropriate' when adopting a learning progression perspective, young children are more capable than we think. We must ask then, what are the robust generative topics/skills and when are they accessible to learners?

Longitudinal studies of teaching and learning across grade bands (for the US; preK-2, 3-5, 6-8, 9-12) are needed (See Upper/lower anchors for measuring progress section below). We need to ask, how does reasoning emerged and develop? Schauble ( 2008) offers some advice that while we certainly want research on young children to answer the question 'Where does reasoning and learning come from?'; she states we must also ask 'Where is reasoning going?' and, 'What conditions support productive change?'

"Answers to the first question help us better understand the foundation on which further development can build. Answers to the second provide a sense of developmental trajectory, or more likely, trajectories. What characteristic changes are coming up? What pathways of change are usually observed? And answers to the third question focus on how those changes can get supported in a productive way." (p. 51).

Criteria for what's accessible to learners dictates when - grade/age level - an LP should begin. Researchers need to establish empirically the foundational platforms or lower anchors from which the generative ideas and practices obtain. More research is needed on establishing criteria to determine age appropriate developmentally appropriate progressions. Longitudinal studies are needed as well as conducting research on the roles and distinctions between domain general and domain specific reasoning (Fisher, Chinn, Engelmann, & Osborne, 2018).

Teaching experiments - science and mathematics

Teaching experiments (TE) is a methodological framework that has contributed to our thinking about the design of instruction and pathways of learning. There are two TE research programs, one by mathematics education researchers and another by science education researchers. The two research approaches have differing perspectives about informing learning pathways.

In mathematics education, the TE goal is the design and validate of Learning Trajectories (LT) the inform instructional practices for teaching pathways. The beginning thinking about LTs is attributed to two sources. One is the 'Realistic Mathematics Education (RME) Group' from the Netherlands Freudenthal Institute (Gravemeijer, 1994) that advanced an agenda of developmental progression learning experiments that conjectures possible learning routes for significant mathematical ideas. The RME approach studies students' solution strategies to instructional tasks. The goal is establishing guidelines for the sequence of instructional tasks that promote participation in targeted types of thinking, reasoning, and learning.

The second contributor is Simon ( 1995) who proposed a constructivist model of pedagogical thinking for LT. According to Simon a LT is comprised of 'the learning goal, the learning activities, and the thinking and learning in which the students might engage" (p. 133). The focus of the research here as well is the development of tasks that are connected to students' thinking and learning; the 'learning model' (Clements & Sarama, 2004). The learning model is tested and extended with TE that examine tasks and teacher interactions that elicit students' thinking and reasoning. Such models which guide LT designs, may be grounded in the historical development of mathematics, observations of informal solution strategies or the emergent mathematical practices of student groups (Cobb, McClain, & Gravemeijer, 2003).

The TE framework in science education was influenced by Didactiks and Conceptual Change research. The Model of Educational Reconstruction (MER) by Duit, Gropengieβer, and Kattman ( 2005) uses three strands of research to design instruction formats: 1) Investigations into students' perspectives, 2) Clarification and analysis of subject matter content, 3) Design of learning environments. The corner stone of the MER research program is the 'Teaching Experiment', an interview-type method that seeks to understand how individuals coordinate core conceptual understandings in domain-specific contexts (e.g., evolution, ecology, adaptation, cellular functions, among others).

In a teaching experiment, students are presented demonstrations of or engagements with phenomenon and asked to employ think aloud protocols while reasoning through the task. Von Aufschnaiter and Rogge ( 2010) and Von Aufschnaiter, Erduran, Osborne, and Simon ( 2008) employs a two phase, six-step process when conducting TE. The research phase three steps - Description, Intuitions, and Rules - identify students' missing conceptions or misconceptions. The development phase three steps - Explicit Rule-Based, Intuitive Rule-Based, Exploration - develops students' conceptual reasoning. Students in dyads or triads are presented with situations/scenarios typically presented in the form of demonstrations of phenomenon and asked to employ think aloud protocols to reason through the task.

Implications for LP research

LT are the basis for sequences of activities and inform how to help avoid the fragmentation and short curriculum strands common in textbooks. The goal, which is shared with science LPs, is to develop coherent instructional sequences that are justified by both theoretical deliberations and empirical data. But the mathematics education researchers' 'learning models' TE outcome which target thinking and reasoning differs in interesting and important ways to that of the science education research goals of address missing and mis - conceptions. Research recommendations from the NSF Footprint Conference regarding instruction are:

▪ Studies of Professional Development models on how to use LP frameworks are emerging with increasing adoptions and adaptations of the US Next Generation Science Standards 'Three Dimensional' (Disciplinary Core Ideas, Science & Engineering Practices; Crosscutting Concepts) teaching and learning frameworks. Mechanisms for sharing LP findings to curriculum developers need to be established.

▪ Developing teachers' capacities to recognize and nurture students' forms of thinking. Adapting instruction based on contingent pedagogical responses is another important domain for LP R&D. Professional Learning Community, Japanese Lesson Study, and Network Improvement Community models are promising approaches for engaging groups of teachers.

▪ Navigating diversity of student experiences and connections to LPs.

Upper/lower anchors for measuring progress

Adopting LP formats requires measurements of what precisely is progressing. The articulation of boundaries and levels in the form of lower and upper anchors is a starting point for researchers. The concerns about multiple learning pathways (e.g., messy middle, stepping stones) are important. Research needs to carefully examine such pathways, and the junctures within, in order to provide teachers with 'sign posts' for guiding learning and to enable LP designers to generate assessments for 'making thinking visible'.

A good example is the study by Morell et al. ( 2017) who report on a 'Construct Modeling' approach for testing the design a LP on structure of matter. Four core construct maps - Macro Properties, Changes of State and Physical Changes, Particulate Explanations of Physical Change, Particulate Explanations of Chemical Change - were identified as core or central for learning structure of matter along with two auxiliary constructs - Measurement and Data Handling, Density, Mass & Volume. Employing rigorous methods and analyses to conduct 'construct modeling approach', they discovered that students' thinking was more complicated than hypothesized revealing sub-structures to the core constructs. The recommendation is "the choice of instructional approach needs to be fashioned in terms of a model. . .of the paths through which learning might best proceed" (p. 1045).

The research challenges here, as with all LP designs adopting the lower/upper anchor levels framework, is ascertaining and measuring the intermediate mid-point understandings of core constructs and practices which are referred to as 'Progress Variables' (Wilson, 2009). For example, some of the spatial progress variables used in the Maps and Geospatial Technology LP include Symbols, Scales, Perspective Taking, Distance and Direction, Identity and Location and are described across ages 3-6, 7-9, and 10-12. One important issue for Mohan, et al. ( 2014) arising from LP work, is the current emphasis on understanding the development of ideas and the lack of attention to the development of scientific practices such as Mapmaking, Map Reading and Navigation, and Using geospatial technologies like GIS. Confrey ( 2019) in a synthesis of LT research, found that LT research over the last decade has concentrated on five topics: Number, Measurement, Geometry, Algebra & Functions, and Probability & Statistics.

There is a need to focus more LP research around topics receiving less attention but are nonetheless prominent in State and National standards and high-stakes exams. Topics need to go beyond conceptual learning goals and attend to science and mathematics practices as well as cognitive and epistemic learning goals. Another research domain that needs more attention is studying how Curriculum, Instruction, Assessment are incorporated in LP designs. The emergence of integrated STEM education (Cunningham & Kelly, 2017) has complicated matters regarding curriculum designs. New lines of research are needed to examine conceptual and social learning goals with an emphasis on potential 'clashes' within and between the numerous STEM disciplines epistemic practices. Another arena for additional LP research is considering the impact LP design has on Equity & Diversity. Culturally relevant curriculum contexts and formative assessment formats are vitally important for engaging and motivating beginning and adolescent learners (Penuel & Shepard, 2017).

Concepts & practices

The growth of scientific knowledge and the growth of children's scientific knowledge both involve processes and mechanism about seeing nature in new ways. One approach to conceptual change research adopts cognitive schema theory to explain conceptual change processes. The suggestion is that science learning is similar to scientific theory change. Learning is fundamentally theory like and seen as an individual process of cognitive theory revision. On this view, children's new insights are explained by processes of appropriating a new set of theoretical lenses or mental models that can change the way a child understands a domain and develops new broader contexts of meaning. With this view of conceptual change, teaching sequences are constructed to teach to the misconception by providing experiences (evidence) that challenge learners' extant incomplete mental models leading to cognitive dissonance, new insights, and conceptual change. The goal is to fix what is wrong in the child's thinking, correct the mistakes.

However, the translation of this view to the classroom has led to uniform instructional conceptual change teaching practices that jump too quickly to the established scientific explanation. Consider the following excerpt from Ready, Set, Science!

Many teachers have their students do experiments or make observations with the hope that scientific understanding will miraculously emerge from the data. Being exposed to new information, however, is not the same as understanding or integrating that information into what one already knows. Real conceptual change requires that deeper reorganization of knowledge occur. (National Research Council, 2008, p. 41).

Driver et al. ( 1994) echo the same sentiment, "New knowledge is the result not only of the broadening in use of existing conceptions or the addition of new notions. It also involves the reorganisation of conceptual schemes themselves." (p. 89). Duschl et al. ( 2011) found that its often quite evident when the researcher(s) is working from one or another conceptual change framework - the misconception-based fix it view or the intuition-based work with it view. Adoption of one or the other view also impacts the inclusion of epistemic learning goals, typically ignored in the fix it view but more frequently considered in the work with it view. Developing epistemic criteria and evaluating the epistemic status of ideas are viewed as necessary elements in a conceptual ecology of science learning environments that seek to promote enculturation into scientific cultures and/or achieve NOS learning goals (Duschl & Grandy, 2013; Greene et al., 2016)

Implications for LP research

In summary, having conceptual change as a learning goal is not seeing science as seeking justified true beliefs but rather as practices pursuing rational beliefs and explanatory coherence that are influenced and shaped by new tools, instruments, theories, and methods. The strong recommendation from Taking Science to School is the teaching of conceptual knowledge should not be independent of learning science practices. We recognize and appreciate today, where previous efforts have that the need to view science as a set of processes that involve (1) logical reasoning about evidence, (2) theory change, and (3) participation in the culture of scientific practices. The hypotheses testing experimentation practices of science are a critical component of what it means to do science. But such practices are conducted in service to other equally important dynamic elements for doing science (NRC, 2007, 2008):

Building theories and models.

Collecting and analyzing data from observations or experiments.

Constructing arguments.

Using specialized ways to talking, writing, and representing phenomenon.

Conclusions

Learning Progressions and developmental pathways are relatively new research domains. New theoretical frameworks in psychology, philosophy, and pedagogy, along with new technological platforms for aiding the delivery of instruction and the analysis of learning (e.g., evidence-centered design performance assessments) are shifting thinking for framing learning goals and designing science learning environments. There are numerous challenges and opportunities for researchers, curriculum planners, and teachers in the quest to design extended coherent sequences of teaching and learning. The shift away from teaching what we know to instructional formats that focuses on reasoning and how we know and why be believe it, reflects a change of learning goals that seek competence with scientific and epistemic practices. Taking a scientific reasoning and a 'science as practice' view applied to disciplinary and interdisciplinary contexts, and increasingly, to transdisciplinary contexts that merge natural sciences, social sciences, and the humanities, is becoming the new normal.

One significant challenge, or perhaps conversation among researchers, is the selection, adoption, and implementation of teaching and learning frameworks or guiding conceptions that cohere across longer spans of time. Research on early childhood learning indicates that foundational knowledge and practices can begin early on, ages 3-6. However, tensions abound with respect to the various learning frameworks used to design instruction; e.g., information processing, socio-cultural, cognitive, behavioral, social/emotional among others. Continued research on domain-general and domain-specific learning will be critically important for understanding approaches to 'integrated STEM' in both formal and informal out-of-school contexts. So, too, will research on epistemic cognition inasmuch as different disciplinary domains - sciences, mathematics, engineering - employ different epistemologies for building knowledge. If left uncoordinated, then epistemic mash-ups are inevitable and may confuse rather than enlighten learners.

Another contentious conversation among learning scientists is the debate among information processing psychologists (Kirschiner, Sweller & Clark, 200) and constructivist psychologists (Hmelo-Silver, Duncan, & Chinn, 2007) on the topic of cognitive or mental load and the scaffolding of problem-based and inquiry learning. Yet, another challenge is using LP research to inform the design of standards and large-scale assessments. Currently, there are gaps in the LP research with respect to curriculum topics and STEM practices that are being tested. And finally, LP research in science education will be impacted by the ongoing debates regarding explicitly teaching the nature of science (Abd-El Khalick, 2012; Duschl & Grandy, 2013)

All the LP challenges, however, will pale in comparison to challenges with reforming our educational systems to embrace LP formats. There are systemic issues with regard to national, state, and local curriculum and instruction guidelines; STEM teacher preparation and inservice education programs, curriculum and assessment redesign, as well as the mission of STEM teacher and leadership professional associations and government agencies.

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Caruth Institute of Engineering Education, Southern Methodist University, PO Box 750278, Dallas, TX, 75275, USA

Richard A. Duschl

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Duschl, R.A. Learning progressions: framing and designing coherent sequences for STEM education. Discip Interdscip Sci Educ Res 1, 4 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1186/s43031-019-0005-x
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Learning progressions

Science & epistemic practices

Assessment

Early childhood learning

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Learning progressions: framing and designing coherent sequences for STEM education - Disciplinary and Interdisciplinary Science Education Research

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The coupled influences of scholarship in the fields of Psychology, Philosophy, and Pedagogy beginning in the 1950s, set in motion the emergence of new images, methodological perspectives, theories, and design principles about learners and learning.