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Promoting a Spirit of Inquiry
by Carl Sagan

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What is Student-Centered Learning?

Student-centered learning is a philosophy or an approach to education that is designed to meet the needs of each student individually. In their post " What Exactly IS Student-Centered Learning? ", Harrington and DeBruler (2019) shared,

"In a truly student-centered learning environment, teachers and students work collaboratively to co-create a learning plan or pathway that best suits the needs of each individual learner. In a student-centered learning environment, the teacher helps to create an environment that is personal to each student's learning needs. The teacher serves as an architect of each student's learning experience."

Student-centered learning may include some components of blended learning or personalized learning models, such as a flipped classroom, station rotation, or competency-based learning, and you are likely to see students using technology. However, true student-centered learning is more than that. No matter what model is used, student-centered learning will look like students and teachers working together to choose a path for learning that works best for each individual learner.

What Do Organizations and Experts Have to Say?

A student-centered learning model has four main characteristics:

voice,

choice,

competency-based progression, and

continuous monitoring of student needs (Harrington & DeBruler, 2019).

In a truly student-centered learning environment, students have voice and choice. According to Susan Patrick, Aurora Institute President and CEO and co-founder of CompetencyWorks, "Students co-construct their goals and have 'voice and choice' in determining what, how, when, and where the learning occurs" (Bouffard, 2019). Rather than a teacher leading students through a lesson where the students are all doing the exact same thing at the exact same time, the teacher serves more as a facilitator of the learning, helping to give each student the support that they need when and where they need it.

In a truly student-centered learning environment, learning is competency-based. In order to advance through a unit, students must demonstrate mastery of the individual concepts before moving on. As Erin Figula, director of professional learning at LEAP Innovations stated, "Students advance based on demonstrated competency, not time spent on a subject" (Bouffard, 2019). Competency-based progression acknowledges the fact that all students learn differently and should be allowed to progress at different paces while still demonstrating their knowledge.

In a truly student-centered learning environment, there is continuous monitoring of student needs. Technology is used to help monitor students' progress and to help both teachers and students evaluate and adjust learning pathways. "Assessment can be formal or informal, summative or formative, observational, anecdotal, via portfolios, rubrics, or projects, but ongoing monitoring of student progress is key to personalization of the learning experience" (Harrington & LeBlanc, 2019).

Student-Centered Learning, Blended Learning, Personalized Learning, & Customized Learning: Related, But Not the Same

While student-centered learning, blended learning, and personalized learning are all closely related, they are not, in fact, interchangeable.

"Student-centered learning is an educational philosophy or approach to learning that places students' needs and interests at the forefront of the operations and decision-making of a school or district. Conversely, blended learning is a format or a method of learning experienced by students. In short, blended learning combines traditional face-to-face instruction with online experiences that work together as an integrated experience for students." (Harrington & DeBruler, 2019)

In the same "family" of educational concepts, in a personalized learning approach, students have some degree of control over their curricular pacing and learning pathways towards achieving standards. Customized learning is a variation of personalized learning that provides a deeper, more entirely customized learning experience for each child.

So to pull it all together, student-centered learning is an approach that aligns all aspects of a school community (curriculum, staffing, finances, technology, facilities, schedules, community partnerships, etc.) in a way that truly focuses on the desired outcomes for each individual student, while accounting for the differences of each student. Blended learning, personalized learning, and customized learning are all models that schools and school districts may choose to implement in order to create a student-centered learning environment.

Student-Centered Learning: Why is it Such a Good Idea?

As our society becomes increasingly more dependent on technology, it is even more important that students graduate high school prepared with the knowledge and the 21st-century skills they need to enter the workforce and/or further their education. School districts are realizing the importance of starting this preparation early on and are also recognizing that the education models that have traditionally been used, such as the teacher-led, one-size-fits-all model, are not helping students become digitally literate or equipping them with the skills they need for their futures.

As Dr. Sarah Pazur, director of school leadership at FlexTech High Schools, stated, "Student-centered learning mirrors what happens in life and the workplace; you have to set goals, take action, manage your time, reflect and revise, and have a belief in yourself that you can improve." Dr. Pazur added, "Students need to learn how to leverage resources and make connections between prior learning and the problem at hand."

In a student-centered learning environment, students are encouraged to be more self-directed, to take control of their own learning, and to understand how they learn best. Learning is more self-directed, allowing students to learn in a way that ultimately works best for them and encouraging them to go at their own pace. Mastery of knowledge and skills is encouraged and expected, which has been shown to lead to a deeper understanding of concepts. This all leads to more engaged, responsible learners.

Okay, But What Does Student-Centered Learning Really Look Like?

In a student-centered learning environment, technology is usually a key component as it can help to better prepare and equip students with skills they will need for continuing their education beyond high school and/or when entering the workforce. Technology is often provided in a 1:1 ratio where each student has their own computing device. Schools implementing a student-centered learning model also usually have some sort of digital curriculum and many use a Learning Management System (LMS). Technology and the data features of an LMS can help track student progress and provide high-quality, ongoing feedback to both students and teachers to help guide the learning process.

It is important to note that technology-based instruction does not imply that student-centered learning is taking place. John Armstrong, the Director of Technology and Information Services for Joliet Public Schools (Joliet, IL), added:

Used correctly, technology can greatly support key practices of a student-centered learning environment.

In reality, student-centered learning looks very different from school to school. It all depends on the degree of implementation that each district or each school chooses to pursue. In some school districts, their student-centered learning environment looks like some degree of technology-rich personalized learning, blended learning, or customized learning where the teacher serves as more of a guide or a facilitator of the learning instead of the traditional teacher-led model. Some school districts may choose to take it a step further, implementing additional components such as flexible scheduling options, offering alternative pathways to graduation, placing students into learning bands rather than placing students by traditional grade levels, or even using Marzano-scale proficiency levels as opposed to the more traditional letter grade scale. As Dave Tebo, superintendent of Hamilton Community Schools reminds us, "Grades don't necessarily correlate to success."

No matter what the degree of implementation is, school districts that choose to move to a more student-centered learning model are doing so because they realize that what has traditionally been done in the past, what is easiest to continue to do because "that's just the way that it has been done" or what their traditional bell schedule permits, is not necessarily what is best for students. Schools that choose to implement student-centered learning are doing so because they are realizing that in order to overcome the challenges that they may be facing (declining test scores or graduation rates, lack of student engagement, low achievement, etc.), schools may need to make changes that are difficult, but that are made keeping in mind what is best for students.

Student-Centered Learning: Put Into Practice

Not all student-centered learning models look the same. The following are just a few examples of some of the innovative approaches being utilized by school districts across the country.

Crossroads FLEX High School - Cary, North Carolina
Providing choice by offering flexible learning options for students following outside pursuits
Serving students in grades 9-12 since August 2016, Crossroads FLEX High School focuses on helping students take advantage of opportunities they are presented because of their talents and abilities, despite the time commitments that are required. The Crossroads FLEX building offers an open and flexible learning space, ideal for these students whose outside activities and interests interrupt the traditional school day. While students do have to spend 10-15 hours per week on-site, they have the option to attend school anytime between 7:30 am - 5 pm Monday through Friday, giving them choice and flexibility. Students can also choose to take courses face-to-face or virtually through the North Carolina Virtual Public School (NCVPS) to alleviate scheduling conflicts. As the Dean of Students, Natarshia Sharpe says, "...our goal is for students to feel connected, even when they are away. For us, school goes along with you wherever you go" (DLC, 2020).

Virtual Learning Academy Charter School - Exeter, New Hampshire
Voice and choice: Offering variety in supplemental online learning
Founded in 2007, Virtual Learning Academy Charter School (VLACS) serves over 12,000 students in grades 6-12 and has plans to expand into grades 4-5. While approximately 400 students take courses from VLACS full-time, 72% of their students take courses supplementally and 15% are homeschooled. Because VLACS uses open enrollment, students can start anytime and work at a flexible pace. Their 300+ course offerings are divided into three different "Journeys." The first journey is a "Traditional Course," offering flexible, asynchronous learning. Through badging, students can see what learning looks like outside of the traditional classroom by earning competencies and pursuing industry certifications. The second journey is "Projects" which take 3-4 weeks and targets a single competency. Students are placed in fictional scenarios where they create learning artifacts true to the industry they are interested in. The third journey is "Experiences" which allows students to create their own learning adventure. Students propose their own experience and then work with their teacher to design what the learning competencies will look like. At VLACS, students can choose their own journey, or even combine journeys, forging their own paths in the design of their learning (DLC, 2020).

High Tech High - San Diego, California
Making learning authentic and applicable to the real world
Founded as a charter school in 2000, High Tech High (HTH) has grown into a school development organization made up of a growing network of K-12 charter schools. Students at HTH are encouraged to use their schools' wealth of technology to pursue projects in subjects that they are passionate about. Students engage in project-based learning, often related to community-based issues and real-world problems, using curriculum based on personalization, adult world connection, and common intellectual mission. "The leadership at HTH believes that giving their students the freedom to pursue their passions, and providing them with the tools to do so in a professional, authentic manner, results in students who are more engaged than students forced to work on projects of little or no interest to them" (Moller & Reitzes, 2011). Most of their assessments are performance-based, culminating in a performance or product. Juniors participate in a semester-long internship in a field of their interest and HTH schools boast that 100 percent of their students attend college with 80 percent attending a four-year school. "From the ground up, technology enables many of the innovative practices at HTH" (Moller & Reitzes, 2011).

Governor Mifflin School District - Shillington, Pennsylvania
Connecting to the world through student-centered learning
In order to better prepare their students for the future, Governor Mifflin School District (GMSD) implemented K-12 one-to-one Chromebooks and offers students three primary learning modalities: traditional classroom instruction (with technology-enhanced experiences), formal blended learning opportunities, or fully online opportunities. By leveraging their devices, digital curriculum, and varied learning modalities, students and families are afforded more choice when it comes to their learning. In working towards a more developed student-centered learning model, the district launched a pilot program at the start of the 2018-19 school year called the "Student-Centered Learning Experience" or "SCLE." As part of this program, teachers have developed courses that include competency-based progressions, resulting in students becoming more self-directed and developing an even greater degree of agency in their learning. As one SCLE student stated, "I like to come to school now. I don't feel anxious about school anymore because I can control more things." Both students and teachers a GMSD have embraced the concept of anytime, anywhere learning. (Harrington & LeBlanc, 2019).

Westminster Public Schools - Adams County, Colorado
Rethinking the system of education: Competency-based learning
To better serve a highly-mobile and at-risk population of students, Westminster Public Schools (WPS), whose mantra is "where education is personal," fully implemented a Competency-Based System (CBS) of learning. In order for students to move on to the next concept in their curriculum, they must master the previous one, focusing on their learning targets. Students understand that with this system, not everyone will have the same pathway to mastery because each student has the ability to move at their own pace. Resulting from their student-centered learning efforts, WPS teachers and administrators have seen improved academic achievement, higher graduation rates, and improved student growth. A WPS teacher described her own experiences by saying, "[Adopting competency-based learning is] absolutely the right thing for kids - and it is absolutely the hardest thing I have ever done in my life" (Harrington & LeBlanc, 2019).

And that is what student-centered learning is all about - doing what is right for kids.

Student-Centered Learning in Michigan schools

Throughout schools in Michigan, student-centered learning models are being implemented in varying degrees and to various depths. School leaders at three innovative schools shared some of the exciting ways in which they are making learning more student-centered.

Hamilton Community Schools - Hamilton, Michigan

Prior to spending the last 10 years as the superintendent of Hamilton Community Schools, Dave Tebo spent 4 years as a superintendent at Michigan Center Schools. After serving in this role for some time, Tebo has come to realize that "as a superintendent, you can't scare parents, you don't want to be the bad guy. As a result, it's hard to implement ideas that are outside the box." He admits, however, that at Hamilton, the shift towards implementing a more student-centered learning philosophy was made easier because test scores were already good, families were already supportive, and they already had eager students.

Although Hamilton's transition had been in progress for quite some time, Tebo said that he feels the real work has been done in the last 5-6 years when they really began to embrace their strategic plan. In 2015, Hamilton Community Schools entered into a collaborative partnership with Michigan Virtual to increase student engagement and achievement through the implementation of personalized and blended learning strategies. Hamilton saw that this work would complement the continuous work they were already doing in regards to standards-based grading and competency-based learning. Teachers were trained in cohorts and learned the blended learning coaching model. Then in 2017, Hamilton updated its vision and mission statement and in 2018 adopted an Instructional Model, coining the phrase "Each Will Thrive" based on this updated vision. The model is based on four pillars: a safe educational environment, rigorous instruction and assessment, a modern learning culture, and personalized learning. Students have additional choices and opportunities as Hamilton offers a few Project-Based Learning (PBL) classes, online courses, as well as the option to enroll in the Hamilton Flex Virtual School.

Tebo believes that the school district has made their greatest gains in giving students choice and voice and says that the next step is pushing them together. "Giving choice gives voice, but it requires a leap of faith, which is difficult for teachers to take - to empower students to make the decisions for themselves. Giving students ownership of their learning is a key component of a student-centered approach." He also pointed out that when transitioning to a more student-centered learning model, there is no quick and easy path, so you need to play the long game. "It's not about throwing out what was done before, it's about determining what we are going to bring with us to a new model. It's about adding and enhancing."

FlexTech High Schools - Brighton, Novi, & Shepherd, Michigan

At FlexTech High Schools, student-centered learning is at the heart of everything they do - it is a project-based learning school, founded on student-centered learning principles. FlexTech Director of School Leadership, Dr. Sarah Pazur, shared:

"We are student-centered by design. Student projects are governed by a framework, but students can pitch modifications to projects, tailoring them to their own interests. They can pitch their own deliverables to show mastery, giving students voice and agency. We are competency-based and give kids permission to use their time how they need to in order to complete projects. Students can move at their own pace through courses. This removes barriers related to time, place, and pace."

FlexTech's competency-based approach to learning is based on Michigan's state standards and includes the use of mastery-based progress reports and transcripts.

FlexTech is unique in the sense that it was designed with formal student-centered learning principles in mind. Their curriculum is entirely project-based, built on competency-based learning progressions. Self-assessment practices are used in all classes. At FlexTech, they focus on really getting to know students as individuals. According to Dr. Pazur, "We use learner profiles, where students describe what they want the adults in the building to know about them, how they learn, how they like to receive feedback, what they are passionate about." At FlexTech, this model gives students permission to choose rather than deciding for them. Dr. Pazur says that this model helps students feel that they are part of a community, it's part of their school culture. "When students have a voice, they feel ownership over everything - the whole school. It's not just about them."

Dr. Pazur noted that in a traditional school model, the transition to a more student-centered learning model would be an overhaul and requires a mindset change as you can't design student schedules around adult conveniences.

"You can start small and slowly implement more student voice, but until you really take a look at the system as a whole, you will only get so far. It is important to take a holistic view of your curriculum, instruction, assessment, schedule, culture - this works together to empower or disempower students. Embrace the fact that kids will make good choices, poor choices, and everything in between, but they won't get better until they can authentically practice being in control of their education."

Fraser Public Schools - Fraser, Michigan

Prior to spending the last 2 years as the superintendent of Fraser Public Schools, Carrie Wozniak spent 7 years as their assistant superintendent of curriculum and instruction. So she understands the ins and outs of the journey this school district has been on towards a more student-centered approach to education. Fraser is changing the traditional view of school to a new personalized, engaging, and customized learning environment for each student. Students are given both voice and choice in their learning. At Fraser, students are 1:1 with technology - all high school students have a MacBook and all K-8 students have an iPad. In addition, they provide a digital curriculum housed within an LMS. Blackboard is the LMS used for their secondary students, and itsLearning is used at the elementary level.

Fraser's transition to a competency-based learning (CBL) environment began many years ago. Their CBL model is based on using a Universal Design for Learning (UDL) framework. Every teacher at Fraser has gone through (UDL) training, which helped to improve their lesson design and helped them focus on meeting the needs of all of their students. By using a competency-based approach in a UDL framework, students are given options to show what they know. In addition to the UDL training, 11 of Fraser's teachers have gone through training to become 21st-century literacy coaches. These teachers/coaches teach 50% of the time and spend the other 50% coaching at one of the schools throughout the district. This coaching model has been used throughout Fraser Public Schools for over 7 years and it really gives the district a sense of balance between top-down and bottom-up communication.

For schools and districts that have not already adopted student-centered learning principles, Wozniak sees student engagement and satisfying the personalization needs of students and families as being compelling reasons for making such a shift. She emphasized that schools must be purposeful in their design. "These days, students are different. There is an expectation of choice from students and families. Everybody has choices in their lives outside of school, and they now expect that from education," noted Wozniak.She also believed that Fraser's transition to remote learning caused by the COVID-19 pandemic was actually easier because they already employed a student-centered approach to learning and both students and teachers were used to utilizing technology and their LMS on a daily basis. Wozniak explained:

"We have a digital ecosystem. For us to shift to fully remote learning, we only had to shift slightly, modifying content somewhat as we already had the infrastructure and protocols in place to support remote learning. Our teachers already had their curricular resources in our LMS, so when we went fully remote, it wasn't a lot of work, actually. Being student-centered already, we simply stayed focused on student learning instead of figuring out how to teach remotely. This allowed our teachers to focus more on learning, than emergency remote teaching. They didn't need to entirely shift their focus."

Conclusion

Student-centered learning is about meeting students where they are and giving them what they need, but doing so in a way that meets the needs of each student individually. It is about giving students the ability to direct their own learning, go at their own pace, and demonstrate what they know in a way that truly shows their understanding. The ways in which school districts accomplish this personalization of student learning can vary, but it is clear that true student-centered learning is more than just providing students with a computer and a technology-rich learning environment. It requires turning traditional education, traditional classrooms, and traditional ways of thinking upside down. Dr. Sarah Pazur, FlexTech's director of school leadership, would agree. "You kind of have to blow the whole thing up - it's hard to start small as there are many interconnected pieces."

While there are indeed many interconnected pieces that make up a student-centered learning system, Dave Tebo, superintendent of Hamilton Community Schools, cautions against being afraid of change and knows sometimes getting started is the hardest part. "You may not be able to see your work through to completion yourself and it may outgrow you as a leader. However, you may be the one to get the ball rolling and to get the work started," Tebo explained. To truly implement student-centered learning, it requires the alignment of all aspects of a school community: curriculum, staffing, finances, technology, facilities, schedules, community partnerships, etc. If starting small by implementing pieces and parts in phases or through a pilot program is what makes the most sense for your district and your community, start there.

Doing what is best for students isn't always easy but sometimes there are situations that serve as a springboard for change, providing more of a reason behind doing what seemed too difficult to do before. Maybe the recent extended school closures across the nation and need for remote learning is one of those situations. As Dr. Pazur explained:

"Schools that have created the conditions for student agency are going to have an easier time with rapid or extended closures because students aren't waiting on the adults or the system to tell them what to do. They [students] are inspired by the work they're doing because they had a voice in shaping and designing it - they created it and it doesn't live in the school building. When the student drives the learning, the arbitrary structures like class periods and teacher-driven lessons in the form of worksheets or rote learning tasks become obsolete."

Isn't that the goal? Inspired students. Students who see that learning doesn't live inside the classroom. Students who see connections to real-world situations. Students who have opportunities to work at their own pace and show what they know in a way that makes sense to them. Maybe with those goals in mind, the difficult conversations and discomfort that tends to exist with change are worth it.

References

Bouffard, S. (2019). What does personalized learning mean? Experts weigh in. The Learning Professional, 40(4), 28-31. https://learningforward.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/what-does-personalized-learning-mean-experts-weigh-in.pdf

Digital Learning Collaborative. (February 2020). Snapshot 2020: A review of k-12 online, blended, and digital learning. https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5a98496696d4556b01f86662/t/5e61341d879e630db4481a01/1583428708513/DLC-KP-Snapshot2020.pdf

Harrington, C. & DeBruler, K. (2019, October 22). What Exactly IS Student-Centered Learning? [Blog post]. https://michiganvirtual.org/blog/what-exactly-is-student-centered-learning/

Harrington, C. & DeBruler, K. (2019, November 21). Close relatives: Student-centered learning and blended learning [Blog post]. https://michiganvirtual.org/blog/close-relatives-student-centered-learning-and-blended-learning/

Harrington, C. & LeBlanc, E. (2019). The intersection of personalization, technology, and leadership - Research into customized learning. Institute for Teaching and Leading, LLC. https://static1.squarespace.com/static/58b6471486e6c03c662ce3a6/t/5d2d4cc034226700015e7924/1563249944915/2018_i4tl_Customized_Learning_Full_Report.pdf

Moeller, B. & Reitzes, T. (2011). Integrating technology with student-centered learning. Nellie Mae Educational Foundation. https://www.edc.org/sites/default/files/uploads/Integrating-Technology-with-Student-Centered-Learning.pdf

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Student-Centered Learning: In Principle and in Practice | Michigan Virtual

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Student-centered learning is a philosophy or an approach to education that is designed to meet the needs of each student individually. In the following report, MVLRI researchers provide a rationale for student-centered learning and provide multiple examples of student-centered learning models being implemented in schools throughout the country.

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Student-Centered Learning: It Starts With the Teacher

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Teachers encourage student-centered learning by allowing students to share in decisions, believing in their capacity to lead, and remembering how it feels to learn.

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What is Bloom's Taxonomy

Bloom's Taxonomy is a classification of the different outcomes and skills that educators set for their students (learning outcomes). The taxonomy was proposed in 1956 by Benjamin Bloom, an educational psychologist at the University of Chicago. The terminology has been recently updated to include the following six levels of learning. These 6 levels can be used to structure the learning outcomes, lessons, and assessments of your course. :

1. Remembering: Retrieving, recognizing, and recalling relevant knowledge from long‐term memory.

2. Understanding: Constructing meaning from oral, written, and graphic messages through interpreting, exemplifying, classifying, summarizing, inferring, comparing, and explaining.

3. Applying: Carrying out or using a procedure for executing, or implementing.

4. Analyzing: Breaking material into constituent parts, determining how the parts relate to one another and to an overall structure or purpose through differentiating, organizing, and attributing.

5. Evaluating: Making judgments based on criteria and standards through checking and critiquing.

6. Creating: Putting elements together to form a coherent or functional whole; reorganizing elements into a new pattern or structure through generating, planning, or producing.

Like other taxonomies, Bloom's is hierarchical, meaning that learning at the higher levels is dependent on having attained prerequisite knowledge and skills at lower levels. You will see Bloom's Taxonomy often displayed as a pyramid graphic to help demonstrate this hierarchy. We have updated this pyramid into a "cake-style" hierarchy to emphasize that each level is built on a foundation of the previous levels.

You may use this graphic for educational or non-profit use if you include a credit for Jessica Shabatura and citation back to this website.
How Bloom's can aid in course design

Bloom's taxonomy is a powerful tool to help develop learning outcomes because it explains the process of learning:

Before you can understand a concept, you must remember it.

To apply a concept you must first understand it.

In order to evaluate a process, you must have analyzed it.

To create an accurate conclusion, you must have completed a thorough evaluation.

However, we don't always start with lower order skills and step all the way through the entire taxonomy for each concept you present in your course. That approach would become tedious-for both you and your students! Instead, start by considering the level of learners in your course:

1. Are lots of your students freshman? Is this an "Introduction to..." course? If so, many your learning outcomes may target the lower order Bloom's skills, because your students are building foundational knowledge. However, even in this situation we would strive to move a few of your outcomes into the applying and analyzing level, but getting too far up in the taxonomy could create frustration and unachievable goals.

2. Are most of your students juniors and seniors? Graduate students? Do your students have a solid foundation in much of the terminology and processes you will be working on your course? If so, then you should not have many remembering and understanding level outcomes. You may need a few, for any radically new concepts specific to your course. However, these advanced students should be able to master higher-order learning objectives. Too many lower level outcomes might cause boredom or apathy.

How Bloom's works with learning outcomes

Fortunately, there are "verb tables" to help identify which action verbs align with each level in Bloom's Taxonomy.

You may notice that some of these verbs on the table are associated with multiple Bloom's Taxonomy levels. These "multilevel-verbs" are actions that could apply to different activities. For example, you could have an outcome that states "At the end of this lesson, students will be able to explain the difference between H2O and OH-." This would be an understanding level outcome. However, if you wanted the students to be able to "... explain the shift in the chemical structure of water throughout its various phases." This would be an analyzing level verb.

Adding to this confusion, you can locate Bloom's verb charts that will list verbs at levels different from what we list below. Just keep in mind that it is the skill, action or activity you will teach using that verb that determines the Bloom's Taxonomy level.

Bloom's Level

Key Verbs (keywords)

Example Learning Outcome

Evaluate
choose, support, relate, determine, defend, judge, grade, compare, contrast, argue, justify, support, convince, select, evaluate.

By the end of this lesson, the student will be able to determine whether using conservation of energy or conservation of momentum would be more appropriate for solving a dynamics problem.

Learning outcome examples adapted from, Nelson Baker at Georgia Tech: nelson.baker@pe.gatech.edu
How Bloom's works with Quality Matters

For a course to meet the Quality Matters standards it must have learning outcomes that are measurable. Using a verb table like the one above will help you avoid verbs that cannot be quantified, like: understand, learn, appreciate, or enjoy. Quality Matters also requires that your course assessments (activities, projects, and exams) align with your learning outcomes. For example, if your learning outcome has an application level verb, such as "present", then you cannot demonstrate that your students have mastered that learning outcome by simply having a multiple choice quiz.

Course level and lesson level outcomes

The biggest difference between course and lesson level outcomes is that we don't directly assess course level outcomes. Course level outcomes are just too broad. Instead, we use several lesson level outcomes to demonstrate mastery of one course level outcome. To create good course level outcomes, we need to ask ourselves: "what do I want the students to have mastery of at the end of the course?" Then, after we finalize our course level outcomes, we have to make sure that mastery of all of the lesson level outcomes underneath confirm that a student has mastery of the course level outcome-in other words, if your students can prove (through assessment) that they can do each and every one of the lesson level outcomes in that section, then you as an instructor agree they have mastery of the course level outcome.

How Bloom's works with course level and lesson level outcomes:

Course level outcomes are broad. You may only have 3-5 course level outcomes. They would be difficult to measure directly because they overarch the topics of your entire course.

Lesson level outcomes are what we use to demonstrate that a student has mastery of the course level outcomes. We do this by building lesson level outcomes that build toward the course level outcome. For example, a student might need to demonstrate mastery of 8 lesson level outcomes in order to demonstrate mastery of one course level outcome.

Because the lesson level outcomes directly support the course level outcomes, they need to build up the Bloom's taxonomy to help your students reach mastery of the course level outcomes. Use Bloom's Taxonomy to make sure that the verbs you choose for your lesson level outcomes build up to the level of the verb that is in the course level outcome. The lesson level verbs can be below or equal to the course level verb, but they CANNOT be higher in level. For example, your course level verb might be an Applying level verb, "illustrate." Your lesson level verbs can be from any Bloom's level that is equal or below this level (applying, understanding, or remembering).

Steps towards writing effective learning outcomes:

1. Make sure there is one measurable verb in each objective.

2. Each outcome needs one verb. Either a student can master the outcome , or they fail to master it. If an outcome has two verbs (say, define and apply), what happens if a student can define, but not apply? Are they demonstrating mastery?

3. Ensure that the verbs in the course level outcome are at least at the highest Bloom's Taxonomy as the highest lesson level outcomes that support it. (Because we can't verify they can evaluate if our lessons only taught them (and assessed) to define.)

4. Strive to keep all your learning outcomes measurable, clear and concise.

When you are ready to write, it can be helpful to list the level of Bloom's next to the verb you choose in parentheses. For example:

Course level outcome 1. (apply) Demonstrate how transportation is a critical link in the supply chain.

1.1. (understand) Discuss the changing global landscape for businesses and other organizations that are driving change in the global environment.

1.2. (apply) Demonstrate the special nature of transportation demand and the influence of transportation on companies and their supply chains operating in a global economy.

This trick will help you quickly see what level verbs you have. It will also let you check that the course level outcome is at least as high of a Bloom's level as any of the lesson level outcomes underneath.

Before you begin constructing your outcomes:

Please read our Learning Outcome : Before and After Examples page.

Additional External Resources:

For a longer list of Bloom's Verbs - TIPS tip: You can also use the "find" function (press: Ctrl-f or command-f on a mac) in your browser to locate specific verbs on this list.

To see how Bloom's can be applied specifically to distance education: Digital Approaches to Bloom's Taxonomy

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Using Bloom's Taxonomy to Write Effective Learning Outcomes

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Bloom's Taxonomy is a classification of the different outcomes and skills that educators set for their students (learning outcomes). The taxonomy was proposed in 1956 by Benjamin Bloom, an educational psychologist at the University of Chicago. The terminology has been recently updated to include the following six levels of learning.

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Designing tests is an important part of assessing students understanding of course content and their level of competency in applying what they are learning. Whether you use low-stakes and frequent evaluations-quizzes-or high-stakes and infrequent evaluations-midterm and final-careful design will help provide more calibrated results.

A few general guidelines to help you get started

Consider your reasons for testing.

Will this quiz monitor the students' progress so that you can adjust the pace of the course?

Will ongoing quizzes serve to motivate students?

Will this final provide data for a grade at the end of the quarter?

Will this mid-term challenge students to apply concepts learned so far?

The reason(s) for giving a test will help you determine features such as length, format, level of detail required in answers, and the time frame for returning results to the students.

Maintain consistency between goals for the course, methods of teaching, and the tests used to measure achievement of goals. If, for example, class time emphasizes review and recall of information, then so can the test; if class time emphasizes analysis and synthesis, then the test can also be designed to demonstrate how well students have learned these things.

Use testing methods that are appropriate to learning goals. For example, a multiple choice test might be useful for demonstrating memory and recall, for example, but it may require an essay or open-ended problem-solving for students to demonstrate more independent analysis or synthesis.

Help Students prepare. Most students will assume that the test is designed to measure what is most important for them to learn in the course. You can help students prepare for the test by clarifying course goals as well as reviewing material. This will allow the test to reinforce what you most want students to learn and retain.

Use consistent language (in stating goals, in talking in class, and in writing test questions) to describe expected outcomes. If you want to use words like explain or discuss, be sure that you use them consistently and that students know what you mean when you use them.

Design test items that allow students to show a range of learning. That is, students who have not fully mastered everything in the course should still be able to demonstrate how much they have learned.

Multiple choice exams

Multiple choice questions can be difficult to write, especially if you want students to go beyond recall of information, but the exams are easier to grade than essay or short-answer exams. On the other hand, multiple choice exams provide less opportunity than essay or short-answer exams for you to determine how well the students can think about the course content or use the language of the discipline in responding to questions.

If you decide you want to test mostly recall of information or facts and you need to do so in the most efficient way, then you should consider using multiple choice tests.
The following ideas may be helpful as you begin to plan for a multiple choice exam:

Since questions can result in misleading wording and misinterpretation, try to have a colleague answer your test questions before the students do.

Be sure that the question is clear within the stem so that students do not have to read the various options to know what the question is asking.

Avoid writing items that lead students to choose the right answer for the wrong reasons. For instance, avoid making the correct alternative the longest or most qualified one, or the only one that is grammatically appropriate to the stem.

Try to design items that tap students' overall understanding of the subject. Although you may want to include some items that only require recognition, avoid the temptation to write items that are difficult because they are taken from obscure passages (footnotes, for instance).

Consider a formal assessment of your multiple-choice questions with what is known as an "item analysis" of the test.
For example:

Which questions proved to be the most difficult?

Were there questions which most of the students with high grades missed?

This information can help you identify areas in which students need further work, and can also help you assess the test itself: Were the questions worded clearly? Was the level of difficulty appropriate? If scores are uniformly high, for example, you may be doing everything right, or have an unusually good class. On the other hand, your test may not have measured what you intended it to.

Essay questions

"Essay tests let students display their overall understanding of a topic and demonstrate their ability to think critically, organize their thoughts, and be creative and original. While essay and short-answer questions are easier to design than multiple-choice tests, they are more difficult and time-consuming to score. Moreover, essay tests can suffer from unreliable grading; that is, grades on the same response may vary from reader to reader or from time to time by the same reader. For this reason, some faculty prefer short-answer items to essay tests. On the other hand, essay tests are the best measure of students' skills in higher-order thinking and written expression."
(Barbara Gross Davis, Tools for Teaching, 1993, 272)

When are essay exams appropriate?

When you are measuring students' ability to analyze, synthesize, or evaluate

When you have been teaching at these levels (i.e. writing intensive courses, upper-division undergraduate seminars, graduate courses) or the content lends it self to more critical analysis as opposed to recalling information

How do you design essay exams?

Be specific

Use words and phrases that alert students to the kind of thinking you expect; for example, identify, compare, or critique

Indicate with points (or time limits) the approximate amount of time students should spend on each question and the level of detail expected in their responses

Be aware of time; practice taking the exam yourself or ask a colleague to look at the questions

How do you grade essay exams?

Develop criteria for appropriate responses to each essay question

Develop a scoring guide that tell what you are looking for in each response and how much credit you intend to give for each part of the response

Read all of the responses to question 1, then all of the responses to question 2, and on through the exam. This will provide a more holistic view of how the class answered the individual questions

How do you help students succeed on essay exams?

Use study questions that ask for the same kind of thinking you expect on exams

During lecture or discussion emphasize examples of thinking that would be appropriate on essay exams

Provide practice exams or sample test questions

Show examples of successful exam answers

Assessing your test

Regardless of the kind of exams you use, you can assess their effectiveness by asking yourself some basic questions:

Did I test for what I thought I was testing for?
If you wanted to know whether students could apply a concept to a new situation, but mostly asked questions determining whether they could label parts or define terms, then you tested for recall rather than application.

Did I test what I taught?
For example, your questions may have tested the students' understanding of surface features or procedures, while you had been lecturing on causation or relation-not so much what the names of the bones of the foot are, but how they work together when we walk.

Did I test for what I emphasized in class?
Make sure that you have asked most of the questions about the material you feel is the most important, especially if you have emphasized it in class. Avoid questions on obscure material that are weighted the same as questions on crucial material.

Is the material I tested for really what I wanted students to learn?
For example, if you wanted students to use analytical skills such as the ability to recognize patterns or draw inferences, but only used true-false questions requiring non-inferential recall, you might try writing more complex true-false or multiple-choice questions.

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Designing tests is an important part of assessing students understanding of course content and their level of competency in applying what they are learning. Whether you use low-stakes and frequent evaluations-quizzes-or high-stakes and infrequent evaluations-midterm and final-careful design will help provide more calibrated results. Consider your reasons for testing.

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Non-OSU Article: Writing Social Studies Exam

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Non-OSU Article: Writing Social Studies Exam

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The new question-of-the-week is:
What are the best ways to integrate writing in social studies classes?
In schools, all of us need to be writing teachers, incuding those of us who teach social studies. This series will explore specific ways to integrate writing in social studies classes.

In addition to the ideas discussed by contributors to this two-part series, you might also want to explore The Best Resources For Writing In Social Studies Classes, The Best Scaffolded Writing Frames For Students, and previous columns appearing here on Writing Instruction and on Teaching Social Studies.

Today, Stan Pesick, Ben Alvord, Dawn Mitchell, Rachel Johnson, and Rebecca Testa-Ryan share their suggestions. You can listen to a 10-minute conversation I had with Stan, Ben, Dawn, and Rachel on my BAM! Radio Show. You can also find a list of, and links to, previous shows here.
Response From Stan Pesick
Stan Pesick currently works with both the Bay Area (California) and National Writing Projects and the Lesson Study Group at Mills College, Oakland, Calif. He taught American history and American government/economics in the Oakland Unified school district (OUSD) for 18 years (1976 - 1994). Between 2001 and 2013, he co-directed OUSD's History/Social Studies Department and its programs focused on curriculum and professional development. Since 2014, he's also worked as a curriculum consultant to the National Japanese American Historical Society and teh National Park Service:
Below are three ideas that can help students develop the skills and understandings necessary for writing, and have something meaningful to say, in history-social-studies classes. I. History as Inquiry If writing is actually thinking, it's best integrated into history-social-studies classes when connected to specific ideas, events, and people at the center of what is being studied. For writing to be meaningful and engaging, it has to be about something and supported by teaching that unites the writing and the content. A first step in that process is developing good inquiry questions that frame lessons, units of instruction, and investigations. What makes a good inquiry/argumentative writing prompt?

1. Generates discussion and encourages varied points of view.

2. Demands an answer that is not just a simple yes or no.

3. Demands a critical or careful reading of the text(s).

4. Moves beyond opinion, into positions that connect claim, evidence, and reasoning

II. Working With Models In history-social-studies classrooms, students can be asked to write in a variety of ways, including narratives, explanations, interpretations, and evidence-based arguments but may not often get a chance to actually read the kinds of writing they are asked to produce. A common activity in history these days has students working with primary-source documents and brief background pieces, including a textbook excerpt, that provide some context on the time and place where the sources were created. But a source document is just a piece of the past to be analyzed and interpreted; it is not written history, and a brief background piece or a textbook excerpt is most often not a good example of well-written history.
Students need to read and discuss good examples of the kind of writing we are looking for; we need to make visible what we have in mind. For students to understand how to construct a historical account, they need the opportunity to discuss, analyze, and appreciate well-written history. Consider this historical narrative and interpretation the historian Nell Painter uses to begin her book, Exodusters. As you read, consider how the following questions might help students better understand what comprises quality historical writing.

1. Who were the Exodusters, and why does Nell Painter write about them?

2. How does the brief narrative about the Solomon family help you understand what's happening in this place and time?

3. What argument is Painter making about the hopes and dreams of African-Americans in post-Civil War America?

4. What are the key pieces of evidence Painter uses to support her arguments around Reconstruction and the hopes and dreams of African-Americans?

5. What questions do you have about the content of this piece? What more do you want to know?

III. Working with source documents, as part of work within an academic discipline such as history, economics, or geography, requires a specific kind of conversation between reader and text. In history, this conversation begins with "sourcing" questions, which ask the reader to read "around" the historical text, noting time, place, authorship, and other information about the text's origins and historical context. It is then continued with a close examination and conversation with the text itself. What information, perspectives, ideas, and questions are communicated and raised? Below is an example of what an "annotation guide" for working with historical sources might focus on in preparing a student to read and analyze an historical source. It can easily be adapted for the reading of source documents connected to other subjects and disciplines.
Identify, comment on, or question the words, ideas, and/or perspectives that:

1. Provide information on who created the document, when, where, and for what audience;

2. Illustrate how the creator of the document might have viewed the historical question, event, or individual at the center of your historical inquiry;

3. Provide insight into what reasoning you will use to analyze the documents and develop your argument; i.e., criteria-based evaluation, cause and effect, cost-benefit, analogy

4. You will use to support the argument you develop in response to the inquiry question;

5. You disagree with and will need to counter as you develop your argument in response to the inquiry question.

6. Intrigue, confuse, or trouble you?

Response From Ben Alvord
A Guide to Annotating in History Moving from Students to Historians Social studies is under attack in the education world. This is not a revelation to teachers of this subject, but as the required courses are whittled away in many states, we have to fight against this and against students who don't share the same passion for history that we do. One way to do this is to turn your students into historians. A great way to make students historians is to have them answer a historical question in your class. The Stanford History Education Group, or SHEG (sheg.stanford.edu), has created many lesson plans that have this premise. One of these is the "Battle of Lexington" lesson plan. Like many other things in history, there are open questions regarding this battle. This lesson centers around the question of "Which side shot first?". Asking students to provide an answer, in the correct way, to questions that remain unanswered makes them historians. Provide your students relevant primary sources that show multiple accounts of the same incident and allow them to find the answers on their own. Of course, to do this, you will have to provide them with some skills. Utah and many other states are moving their standards from content-based standards to skills-based standards following the C3 Framework provided by the National Council for the Social Studies. Many of the skills listed in these frameworks are the skills you would use in a lesson plan such as the "Battle of Lexington" and other SHEG lesson plans. For this lesson, students will need to know sourcing, corroboration, and contextualization. SHEG also provides lesson plans to help teach your students these skills. Once the students have these skills, they can show them off by writing an essay. Another benefit of a lesson like this is that it lends itself easily to another important task in education, which is integrating writing into your curriculum. The best way for the students to answer an open historical question is with an argumentative essay. The students are then forced to identify the results of their sourcing, corroboration, and contextualization. This can be done at any level. I often hear from my elementary school peers that they have little time to teach social studies in their classroom. A lesson like this allows you to teach social studies while teaching a language arts lesson. You can also scaffold lessons like this for younger students by rewriting primary sources into more accessible language while keeping the original intent. Students no matter what level love to argue. Another issue we deals with as social studies teachers is apathy in our students. When you allow students to find answers on their own rather than giving them the answer, it allows them to have that moment of discovery that can engage them. Moments of discovery are what drew us in to being lovers of history, and it can be the same for our students. As social studies teachers, we have to step up and defend our subject from the attack it is under. To do this, we have to be willing to adapt to a changing world and changing priorities in the world of education. Integrating skills-based lessons and writing into our curriculum is a great way to do that.

Response From Dawn Mitchell & Rachel Johnson Annotation: Writing that prepares for writing Show What You Know: Using Principles of Visible Learning to Integrate Writing Into Social Studies Effective teachers of social studies view writing as a natural and necessary tool for learning. When we integrate writing within the discipline of social studies, we are using it as a way for students to show what they are learning. Just as historians would, students are using disciplinary writing to build inquiry and knowledge of the given time frame and topic. This approach to writing isn't an additional assignment. Instead, it is a pathway toward increased student interest, inquiry, and engagement not just in the activity or the product but also in the authentic process. Through using principles of visible learning, students become active learners in the social studies classroom, not merely passive paragraph writers or test-takers.
Example (children playing among the ruins in East Berlin): with open-ended questions specific to that day's content that I want to find out students' responses to in order to determine student understanding. For example, one that I have used often with United States history is "What is something that we talked about that you think will have an effect on future events in our country's history?" Typically, my exit slips are targeted to a specific skill or concept that I want to make sure students grasp. Not only are their responses beneficial to me as their teacher, but the process of writing down their thoughts and reading the responses of their peers, allows for their further learning. Example: Padlet Board
to see actual photographs of Shin and his tricycle." Example: Response From Rebecca Testa-Ryan
Benjamin D. Alvord is a 7th and 8th grade history teacher in Utah's Tooele County school district and a Hope Street Group/NNSTOY Utah Teacher Fellow:
I have been a social studies teacher for 23 years and I have developed my teaching beyond presenting concepts of government, geography, history, economics, and current events. In my view, the teaching of social studies is an opportunity to integrate curriculum, such as writing, to augment the connection between the content presented and the student experience. Written communication is quite possibly the most significant form of expression; the skill to articulate through writing allows each student the freedom to share their analysis of historical events in a meaningful and effective way. As an educator, it is my responsibility to assist my students to develop those skills that will enable them to organize their thoughts, formulate arguments, and support ideas. Developing students' writing skills should not be an isolated practice only experienced in a language arts class. In my case, I find various way to incorporate writing in social studies to prepare my students for the transition from middle school to high school, as well as beyond this, where acquiring written skills is critical. The simplest way to have daily writing in my social studies class is to make available individual copies of primary sources to analyze. The purposeful grouping of students and the usage of appropriate academic language to analyze and evaluate sources initiate channels into meaningful accounts of the past. Students learn to listen and observe and value each other's interpretation of sources. Once students have processed the sources visually and exchanged their ideas, it is then when students will demonstrate their individual experience in written form. Peer to peer interaction and discourse becomes part of the writing process as they engage with the same materials but have unique points of view. As we begin the school year, I provide my students with framed paragraphs until they are more comfortable with the structure of an academic paragraph. Once they have developed an understanding of the structure, we go deeper and identify the paragraph's purpose, why the paragraph is relevant, what evidence will be used to support their argument, how to show the reader that evidence adds to an argument, and how the conclusion shows the significance of the evidence a writer has presented. When I observe students are prepared to take on more, I challenge them by responding to three writing tasks a week. As students see a piece of work that they have successfully mastered, they feel a sense of confidence and are ready to take on the next challenge. The last writing activity I would like to share is one my students enjoy completing. I call it "Wocabulary-Writing and Vocabulary." Depending on the academic level of my students, I provide Tier 1, 2, or 3 vocabulary words from the historical period we are covering. I give my students the title of the writing assignment with the list of four, six, or 10 words placed in the center of the paper. My nonreaders can also participate by making a story board using illustrations of each vocabulary word and present to the class. Students who are given 10 words can divide the words to make two paragraphs if they wish, but they must make certain the historical account is accurate. They may use the vocabulary word in the beginning, middle, or at the end of a sentence. On many occasions, students have properly used three vocabulary words in one sentence. The goal of this activity is to force students to think critically, use academic vocabulary appropriately, enjoy writing, and have some fun during social studies class.
Dawn Mitchell serves in instructional services in Spartanburg District 6, where she leads the induction and mentoring program as well as provides professional development in literacy and in project- based learning. Dawn is also an adjunct instructor at Furman University, where she currently serves as a university supervisor and teacher mentor. Connect with Dawn on twitter @dawnjmitchell:

Dr. Rebecca Testa-Ryan is a Latina educator who has worked for the the Chicago public school district for 23 years. Rebecca received her doctorate degree from Loyola University in curriculum and instruction, a master's degree in special education and administration, and a bachelor's in history. She grew up in Humboldt Park and has taught in that district to model the importance of leading by example:

Thanks to Stan, Ben, Dawn, Rachel, and Rebecca for their contributions!
Just a reminder; you can subscribe and receive updates from this blog via email or RSS Reader. And if you missed any of the highlights from the first seven years of this blog, you can see a categorized list below. The list doesn't include ones from this current year, but you can find those by clicking on the "answers" category found in the sidebar. Look for Part Two in a few days.
Please feel free to leave a comment with your reactions to the topic or directly to anything that has been said in this post.

Education Week has published a collection of posts from this blog, along with new material, in an e-book form. It's titled Classroom Management Q&As: Expert Strategies for Teaching.

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Response: Ways to Integrate Writing in Social Studies Classes (Opinion)

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Stan Pesick, Ben Alvord, Dawn Mitchell, Rachel Johnson and Rebecca Testa-Ryan share their suggestions on integrating writing into Social Studies classes.

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Non-OSU Article: Writing a Language Arts Exam

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Non-OSU Article: Writing a Language Arts Exam

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How do you include writing on a language arts test?
The first time I wrote my own language arts test, it was too long. Like, embarrassingly the wrong length. Those poor students.

Of course I realized the test required students to write more than was sensible and modified it. I felt terrible, and I'm sure many students stressed about it.

I needed to include writing on a language arts test though, especially in a writing course. At every school that I've taught, administrators require final exams. Teachers ultimately decide the format of the final exam, so I present a balance of methods. Concerning writing, what is the balance between seeing if students are applying writing methods and the constraints of a timed test?

It took years but I feel that I finally met the threshold of a meaningful evaluation. If you are creating a final exam or a language arts test that includes a writing portion, here are a few ways to include writing that won't require your students to write a book.
1. Include short answer questions.
I ask myself if including a short answer section can serve a dual purpose. This works especially well with literature tests. Students can respond about characters or literary terms in application to the short story or novel.

Another application is for a test in a writing class. Students can answer writing vocabulary questions, while writing.

Examples of short answer questions?

- Explain the difference between a topic sentence and a thesis statement.

- In Animal Farm, what character best symbolizes 'corruption'?

When grading short answer questions, I explicably write out for students that they will be graded on a) their response to the question and b) conventions. This allows me to minimize portions on the test as I'm evaluating two content areas through the short answer section.
2. Assign a writing topic before the test.
One semester a few days before the final test, I gave students 3 essay prompts and told them to choose one. I then asked them not to research their prompt but to brainstorm ideas. I encouraged them to get input from peers, other teachers, adults, parents, anyone. They were free to brainstorm any which way-webs, lists, outlines, groupings, whatever they fancied.

At the time, I feared my experiment could be a colossal flop. What if they copied something off the Internet? Had parents write the whole brainstorming activity?

The results were great. Students told me they were relieved that the final exam wasn't brainstorming and writing about a topic they had just read the day of a test. Writing out the brainstorming results into a short paper didn't take them long since they already had ideas grouped. Plus, I took into account that this was a rough draft when grading it. Which leads to...
3. Grade the final as you would a rough draft.
I assume that my students know how to spell check and capitalize letters. For a writing class test, I feel comfortable grading a final draft (of the test's writing prompt) as I would a normal rough draft. This means I may overlook run-on sentences and give points for students returning to the writing and adding editing marks.

To me, that is a fair assessment. Can students follow the writing process? If I've seen students create finished products and publish them, then assessing their final drafts they complete during a test as I normally would their rough drafts is fair.
4. Have students write an essay, not a 'paper.'
High school students must know how to write an essay. College classes require students to respond in a mature manner to a discussion point. Even if students won't head to college, jobs do require some degree of writing skills.

I often approach students: would they like an essay question, or short answer questions on their writing test? Every class is different and unless the class itself dictates that students respond to an essay, I allow a class to choose. Sometimes they want all their eggs in one basket, and other times they want lots of opportunity to show me their writing, even if they are unsure of the content answer.

A writing assessment test does not mean that students must write for a 90 minute final. You can ask objective questions about writing so that students don't write the entire class period! By diversifying the writing requirements, teachers can provide students with choice and varying testing methods. If you are trying to include writing on a language arts test, be sure that the writing prompts are suitable for the class, that you will get a fair evaluation of students' writing skills, and that students can complete the writing prompts in the allotted time.

writing activities writing lessons

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Ways to Include Writing on a Language Arts Test - Language Arts Classroom

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How do you include writing on a language arts test? The first time I wrote my own language arts test, it was too long. Like, embarrassingly the wrong length. Those poor students. Of course I realized the test required students to write more than was sensible and modified it.

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Non-OSU Article: Conceptualizing Tech in the classroom

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Non-OSU Article: Conceptualizing Tech in the classroom

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Educators have always had to be extremely flexible reinventors, perhaps never more so than recently. Students and teachers are connecting digitally in ways that were previously unimagined. Although virtual connections have been instrumental throughout pandemic teaching, they've also exposed the larger digital divide between student opportunity and achievement beyond the four walls of a classroom.

The rapid switch to technology means that everyone needs to move from just consuming and sampling new technology to a true application and reliance on digital tools to transfer learning. Educators need to understand what tech equity is-leveraging technology to support all students' needs-and how to best apply instructional design through culturally responsive teaching to assist learner-centered modalities.

Tech to Support Equity

The International Society for Technology in Education ( ISTE) is a "community of global educators who believe in the power of technology to transform teaching and learning." Educators can begin to grasp tech equity by first understanding the ISTE Standards for Educators -for example, "Leader Standard 2b: Advocating to meet the needs of all students with technology." The first step to take toward advocacy for our students is authentically applying UDL, accessibility, and inclusion in our design.

Universal Design for Learning

CAST (Center for Applied Special Technology) set up the Universal Design for Learning (UDL) as a framework to "improve and optimize teaching and learning for all people based on scientific insights into how humans learn."

When we apply the principles of UDL, we ensure an inclusive approach to learning because we give students opportunities to make choices based on their strengths. Examining how we infuse technology with UDL lesson plans helps identify components that complement the strengths of all students and circumvent inequities.

Accessibility

One way to ensure ease of access is to consider how accessible digital tools really are for our learners. The Web Accessibility Initiative makes clear that students' needs vary online and in person. "When websites and web tools are properly designed and coded, people with disabilities can use them. However, currently many sites and tools are developed with accessibility barriers that make them difficult or impossible for some people to use."

We can also use a tool like Grackle to evaluate how accessible our digital documents already are (e.g., accessing images, headings for screen readers). Accounting for accessibility while considering UDL is one step in ensuring equity in the technology we're integrating.

Application

Understanding how technology increases the need for UDL implementation, accessibility, and inclusion is integral to our short- and long-term educational settings. The following applications can act as a guide as we increase our learners' opportunities:

Productivity apps allow students to collaborate in real time and produce in multiple modes (e.g., Google Slides, Google Forms, Jamboard, Sway).

Feedback and online discussion platforms permit conversations to suit the strengths of each learner (e.g., Flipgrid, Padlet, Mote).

Prerecording encourages students to learn asynchronously, at their own pace (e.g., Edpuzzle, Loom, Pear Deck).

Gamification provides students a new way to interact with content and increases engagement (e.g., Quizlet, digital escape rooms, choose your own adventure, choice boards).

Digital libraries supply reading materials in text, in audio, and with additional tools to further increase access (e.g., Epic, CommonLit, Newsela, StoryCorps).

Conversion tools accommodate to help all students feel successful (e.g., Chrome extensions, screen readers, closed captioning, YouTube's speed adjustment, transcriptions, printed-out HyperDocs).

Incorporate diverse curriculum and reflection throughout all digital learning activities to make greater connections (e.g., #OwnVoice texts, virtual field trips, content to dismantle stereotypes, inviting diverse speakers).

Enhance digitalformative and summative assessmentswith the tools above (e.g., using EdPuzzle for formative assessment or Flipgrid to present a final project). Vary these assessments as one-on-one, group work, or voice and choice crossover, using UDL and ISTE standards to continuously support accessibility and inclusion.

Reinventing Transformation

The pandemic has taught us not to fear advances in technology, but instead to view them as ways we can explore how to best assist our students. Continuous learner-centered design will help us build upon tech equity advances so that we can unite all learners through inclusion and access for success. To commit further to tech equity in a digital or in-person class, we must continuously ask these questions:

What do my students know? What strengths can I build upon?

How is the technology I use enhancing equitable teaching through UDL, accessibility, and inclusion?

Are my students' voices being heard?

There's still work to be done because putting a device in every child's hand and providing Wi-Fi alone doesn't bridge the digital divide, but we must have confidence in our ability to minimize the inequities. Focusing on tech equity in virtual and in-person instruction strengthens 21st-century skills. If we continue to go forward with confidence, creativity, and an attitude of meeting challenges head-on, we will persevere in our transformation to best foster growth for all of our students.

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Leveraging Technology to Support Students' Needs

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Educators have always had to be extremely flexible reinventors, perhaps never more so than recently. Students and teachers are connecting digitally in ways that were previously unimagined. Although virtual connections have been instrumental throughout pandemic teaching, they've also exposed the larger digital divide between student opportunity and achievement beyond the four walls of a classroom.

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So what can we do to help students become proactive recipients? Here are a few tips.

1. Understand the Barriers to Strong Engagement With Feedback

One reason feedback is often difficult to engage with, says Winstone, is the emotional reaction to it. "In many cases, feedback can seem like a threat to our self-esteem, and we often protect ourselves by limiting our engagement with the comments."

In some of her previous research, Winstone and Dr. Rob Nash uncovered four main barriers to strong engagement with feedback:

Awareness of what feedback means and what it's for: Learners may have a limited understanding of the purpose of feedback or the language used.

Knowledge of strategies by which the feedback could be implemented: We equip learners with many useful skills, but how often do we explicitly teach them how to use feedback?

Agency to implement strategies: Feedback may not always feel achievable or worthwhile. For example, learners may feel that feedback on one piece of work has little relevance to another piece of work.

Willingness to scrutinize feedback and implement strategies: Using feedback is hard. It requires a lot of effort to improve skills and techniques.

Once you understand these barriers, you'll be able to structure your feedback so that it's not only clear to the learner what needs to improve, but also what specific steps they should be taking and how this will benefit them in the future.

2. Help Students Develop the Skills to Use Feedback Well

Winstone says students often need support in developing the skills to engage with and implement feedback. She and Nash have identified four important skills, which they call "SAGE recipience skills."

Self-appraisal: Students need to be able to appraise their own skills, strengths, and weaknesses.

Assessment literacy: Students need an understanding of standards and criteria so they know what a good piece of work looks like.

Goal setting: Students need the ability to set goals for themselves and monitor their progress toward achieving these goals.

Engagement and motivation: Students need the engagement and motivation to put in the hard work required to implement feedback.

Once students understand the importance of improving in a specific area, the motivation to improve will follow naturally, so start by providing clear examples of high-quality work and then give students a chance to reflect on their own work to see if there are areas that need improvement.

3. Provide Students Opportunities to Implement Feedback

In addition to helping students develop the skills to engage with feedback, it's important to provide them with opportunities to use it.

Winstone says many teachers in the U.K. use Dedicated Improvement and Reflection Time, which entails using classroom time to help learners put the feedback they receive into practice. During this time, students might redraft a section of their work using the comments they received or practice a particular skill they need to improve. Allocating classroom time to implementing feedback helps students recognize the importance of acting on feedback rather than just passively reading it.

4. Help Students See That Improvement Is Achievable

Although Winstone's work focuses heavily on how feedback is used and implemented, she notes that there is still a place for well-crafted and encouraging feedback.

"When writing feedback, teachers can transmit subtle messages which may influence a learner's engagement," she says. "It's important that learners receive the implicit or explicit message that improvement is achievable." For example, instead of saying, "You're repeatedly making the same errors. Reread chapter X in your textbook," you could make the same feedback more encouraging by saying something like, "There are still some errors here, but I can tell you're making progress in your understanding of this topic. Focus on X and you'll soon be all the way there."

Most importantly, though, remember that even the most specific and well-timed feedback cannot be effective if students don't use it. So providing students with feedback is only the first step. We also need to motivate them to take ownership of their learning by equipping them with the skills necessary to engage with and implement that feedback.

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So what can we do to help students become proactive recipients? Here are a few tips. One reason feedback is often difficult to engage with, says Winstone, is the emotional reaction to it. "In many cases, feedback can seem like a threat to our self-esteem, and we often protect ourselves by limiting our engagement with the comments."

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Non-OSU Article: Emotions in the Classroom

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Non-OSU Article: Emotions in the Classroom

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Maurice J. Elias

Prof. of Psychology, Director, Rutgers Social-Emotional and Character Development Lab (www.secdlab.org), Director, the Collaborative Center for Community-Based Research and Service (engage.rutgers.edu)

We all know that whatever gets measured usually gets attention and focus. Right now, there is no widespread, practical way for all schools to assess children's social-emotional skills and character development (SECD). Or is there? If one looks at student report cards, one often finds on "the other side" of the academic grades a set of comments about behavior, character, preparation, motivation, and more.

Teacher comments have long been provided alongside academic grades to recognize the essential role of many abilities and competencies in academic performance and future potential. And we know that academic ability and potential are not always directly related. We have all served on committees with colleagues who are extremely smart but not productive members of the team -- indeed, their actions often impede the collective work. In the world that our students will enter as adults, there can be no either/or of academic or social-emotional and character competencies. Students require both/and. Therefore, feedback about students in schools must incorporate both aspects, systematically and carefully.

Improving Report Cards

In The Other Side of the Report Card: Assessing Students' Social, Emotional, and Character Development, J.J. Ferrito, Dominic Moceri, and I analyzed report card comments and their ubiquitous drop-down menus, and we found many flaws in the current system. Taking what we learned, we've provided a downloadable guide for you to analyze your own report card's comment section.

The upshot is that current methods are far from systematic. We can, should, and must do a lot better in assessing and reporting on SECD, and the technology exists for this to happen. But making any change in educational practice -- even the most obvious and necessary -- asks many individuals to look at what they are doing and then do things differently. We can't consider asking this without well-thought-out justification. In that light, start by reflecting on the following driving forces for making changes in current report cards:

Pedagogical requirements of Common Core State Standards and related standards require social-emotional and character competencies.

Teachers already allocate time to assigning report card comments but almost never receive summary feedback based on those comments.

Comment sections are often the only formal rating of student behavior.

Finances are already allocated for producing and distributing report cards three or four times per year.

Parents and students could receive feedback on student progress toward demonstrating specific skills that have been shown in research and practice to influence academic achievement, as well as feedback identifying a number of positive and negative behaviors.

Student progress toward the skill and/or character development deemed most meaningful by your school can be tracked on individual, school, and district levels.

Ratings of SEL skills and character can be used as early indicators of students at risk or who may be able to serve as positive role models and resources for their peers.

SEL and character ratings present a natural opportunity to emphasize positive behaviors. There's a big difference between "not bullying" and actually being an asset to one's classroom and peers.

These will become important talking points with colleagues as you consider moving in this direction.

Framing Essential Conversations

The gifts of individual students include their academic abilities, personality, character, and skills of relating and interacting. We can use SECD in our report cards to frame essential, multiyear conversations between students and teachers, teachers and parents, and parents and students. Some of the most important of these conversations, particularly for parents and guardians who aren't closely attuned to schools' academic rigors, revolve around that "other side of the report card." Our current comment systems too rarely address the behaviors most worth talking about, i.e., those best aligned with our ultimate goal of educating the future citizens of our society.

Integrating SEL and Character Development Into Report Cards

Schools generally arrive at a decision to integrate SEL and/or character into their report cards in one of two ways:

1. Schools have made a commitment to build students' social-emotional competencies and/or character and now wish to have a formal, explicit, systematic way of assessing progress.

2. Schools realize the importance of SEL and/or character for their broader purposes of developing the whole student, fostering academic achievement, promoting positive behavior, and creating a positive culture and climate for learning.

Either way, the best process is to create assessments aligned with your school and district priorities. And what is most valuable is indeed the process of dialogue, conversation, and selection of SECD priorities and focus. The resulting system is tailored to your school and truly owned by the school community. No specialized school or outside personnel are needed to score or interpret these assessments, which reduces cost and increases efficient use of in-school expertise.

Examples of SEL skills and character indicators can be found in our downloadable guide (see the link above). The Other Side of the Report Card provides developmental guidance and examples at all grade levels for how to design and implement a report card comment system aligned with your own SEL and/or character goals, including:

Guided exercises for analyzing existing report cards

Samples and suggested report card designs

Tips on improving communication with parents

Case studies highlighting common challenges

Testimonials from teachers and students

We know that our students' social-emotional and character development is essential for their success in school and life. Since it matters so much, we should give serious thought to assessing it in ways that are much better aligned with theory, research, and practical utility than our current report card comment systems allow.

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How Do We Measure Social and Emotional Learning?

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Maurice J. Elias Prof. of Psychology, Director, Rutgers Social-Emotional and Character Development Lab (www.secdlab.org), Director, the Collaborative Center for Community-Based Research and Service (engage.rutgers.edu) We all know that whatever gets measured usually gets attention and focus. Right now, there is no widespread, practical way for all schools to assess children's social-emotional skills and character development (SECD).

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Non-OSU Article: How to Write Assessments

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Non-OSU Article: How to Write Assessments

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https://www.readingrockets.org/article/writing-assessment

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An introduction to 6 + 1 Trait® Writing, customized rubrics, student self-assessment, and peer editing.

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Non-OSU Article: Reframing Writing Assessments

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Non-OSU Article: Reframing Writing Assessments

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https://www.edutopia.org/article/reframing-how-we-assess-student-writing

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Every teaching role has its unique burden. Science teachers invest long hours in preparing laboratory experiments with expensive and sometimes hazardous materials. Math teachers wrestle with innumeracy and negative stereotypes of math, especially at the higher levels. History teachers work hard to avoid turning their subject matter into the rote memorization of isolated facts.

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https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1226&context=specedfacpub

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https://www.edutopia.org/blog/planning-best-curriculum-unit-ever-todd-finley

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Teaching is not natural.

The public believes, incorrectly, that classroom instruction is as natural as showing your child how to fish or helping a nephew play Ms. Pac-Man. But those comparisons don't take into account the profoundly specialized discourse of K-12 instruction.

Answering a learner's question with a question, creating a holistic rubric, or (take a deep breath) facilitating a high-level discussion of new content on the Thursday before prom with 35 diverse students (two of whom present ADHD behaviors) while an administrator evaluates you-all of this requires a ridiculous constellation of specialized, unnatural skills.

That alien skill set means that even the most brilliant teachers cannot just wing it. They have to plan.

While the public has no idea how much mental muscle curriculum planning requires, corporations that sell education materials do know. Unfortunately, their support is often in the form of selling a "sure-fire" scripted curriculum that "guarantees" growth (if teachers will just follow directions). There are, however, several reasons why scripted curricula-in-a-box don't work:

What works in one classroom often won't work the next period, so flexibility, intuition, and judgment calls by instructors are needed.

Values and motivations vary by classroom.

Prepackaged curricula undermine teachers' professionalism and agency.

Cultural sensitivity does not come in a package.

All students are not at the same level of development.

Scripted lessons interfere with the all-important teacher-student relationship.

Finally, prepackaged programs are overwhelmingly used with poor minority populations, according to Jonathan Kozol, who argues that this practice is characteristic of a "deeply segregated system in which more experienced instructors teach the children of the privileged." In other words, the rich get quality instruction, and the poor get drill-and-kill worksheets and laminated platitudes. For all these reasons, it is imperative that teachers develop their own unit plans.

Unit Planning

Fortunately, a unit plan can help us master specialized classroom discourse. Don't think of units as just curriculum artifacts. They're also a mapping process that enables teachers to think carefully about research-supported teacher-learner-content interactions that help kids meet standards and grow up to save the world.

Within a unifying theme, a unit guides the sequence and pace of skills and knowledge acquisition described in more granular detail by lesson plans. Its importance should not be underestimated, says education consultant Max Thompson, who identifies bad curriculum design as the cause of widespread achievement gaps. Tangentially, Thompson emphatically states that because it raises achievement and is connected to how people organize their thinking, the "focal point of learning, especially for students impacted by poverty," should be vocabulary.

To assess the quality of an existing unit plan, the four most important questions to ask are:

1. Is the unit aligned with standards, objectives, and guidelines?

2. Is there a balance of teaching strategies, learning strategies, and authentic tasks that engage and meet the needs of diverse learners?

3. Have I sequenced the activities clearly?

4. Do the formative and summative assessments measure the knowledge and skills identified in the objectives?

The next section will help with the necessary, unnatural, invisible, and painstaking process of writing unit plans.

How to Use the Downloadable Unit Plan Document

To help you develop a new unit, overhaul curriculum, or just tweak an existing plan, I created a printable checklist of potential unit elements, broken into eight sequential planning steps:

1. Describe your vision, focus, objectives, and student needs.

2. Identify resources.

3. Develop experiences that meet your objectives.

4. Collect and devise materials.

5. Lock down the specifics of your task.

6. Develop plans, methods, and processes.

7. Create your students' experience.

8. Go!

You may be tempted to save time by skipping steps 1-5 and immediately begin writing your lesson plans, but that will cost you more time and limit the effectiveness of curriculum. Those first five steps will help you map out the learning journey and destination. You're not supposed to do everything on this checklist-think of it as a menu of different formats, features, models, and sequences that you might consider as you develop curriculum.

A universal unit-planning checklist might not support your curriculum development style or suit your grade and content. I hope, however, that the list of possibilities encourages further professional exploration.

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Teaching is not natural. The public believes, incorrectly, that classroom instruction is as natural as showing your child how to fish or helping a nephew play Ms. Pac-Man. But those comparisons don't take into account the profoundly specialized discourse of K-12 instruction.

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https://www.edutopia.org/blog/9-ways-plan-transformational-lessons-todd-finley

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How to Plan Transformational Lessons

1. Know the Standards, Curriculum, Core Concepts, and Strategies: For decades, many educators let a textbook's table of contents determine the scope and sequence of a course. Today, transformational teachers know their anchor standards by heart and recognize the difference between teaching strategies and learning strategies.

Teaching strategies are approaches that teachers use to improve student learning. Example: whole-class discussion or presentation.

Learning strategies are initiated and controlled by students to solve problems and increase their understanding. Example: using freewriting, brainstorming, and outlining to organize ideas.

Balancing teaching strategies with learning strategies keeps instructors and students actively engaged and focused on the same purpose.

2. Shift From Solo to Collaborative Lesson Design: As teachers gain fluency in using Padlet, Google Hangouts, Evernote, Skype, Dropbox, Hackpad, Google Drive, and Chatzy, collaborative planning is becoming second nature.

Additionally, more sharing of relevant curriculum is occurring via terrific open education resources (OER) like EngageNY, OER Commons, CK-12, and even iTunesU.

3. Create the Assessment Before Developing Content: Due in part to the influence of Understanding by Design (UbD) by Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe, transformational instructors no longer "teach then test." Instead, they " design the test, then teach." By building formative assessment and performance task checkpoints into their plans, instructors know when and why students don't understand a skill or concept.

4. Write Objectives for Students (Not an Administrator) to Read: A while back, teachers submitted lesson plans for their principals to check. In many cases, the administrator remained the primary audience for written objectives. Today, objectives are posted and made understandable to students. To ensure clarity, transformational teachers follow the Goldilocks rule. Objectives can't be too general ("students will learn about the Civil War") or too narrow, because narrow objectives "put you in danger of listing activities or assignments," writes Robyn R. Jackson in Never Work Harder Than Your Students & Other Principles of Great Teaching.

Here's another objective hack: To add relevance to the curriculum, simply add the stem "so that _____" at the end of each posted objective as a way of describing how the skill and content will benefit students. Example: "Students will be able to evaluate the credibility of sources so that they can protect our democracy from the influence of those spreading misinformation."

5. Create Presentations That Do More Showing and Less Telling: On the rare occasion that transformational teachers lecture, they are sure to use visuals created with tools like Canva and Pic Monkey. Using pictures can "banish boredom," asserts Dan Roam, author of Show and Tell. To keep pace with the 30 percent of students who access online videos for homework assistance, teachers' materials have become more interactive and optimized for mobile device consumption.

6. Don't Forget the Introverts: "Introverts like to work autonomously," says Susan Cain, author of Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking, "but the trend in education over the past 20 years has been focused on group learning." Cain notes that popular teaching strategies like cold calling don't allow introverts time to process what they want to say. Adding a think-pair-share activity or increasing wait time to seven seconds after asking a question plays to the strengths of introverts.

7. Provide More Opportunities for Students to Choose How They Accomplish Tasks: danah boyd's research determined that teenagers' lives are over-programmed: "Contemporary teens often have little freedom to connect with others on their own terms." A boost to student motivation can occur, says Kevin Perks in Crafting Effective Choices to Motivate Students, if we let learners determine-when possible-whom they work with, content, due dates, where to work, and how they will complete tasks.

8. Plan Ahead: Transformational teachers plan at least a month ahead, building in flex time to absorb inevitable weather- or activity-related interruptions in the school schedule. Through careful design, each time a learner encounters skills and concepts, they are more challenging. The spiral curriculum approach increases understanding and retention.

9. Integrate Productive Struggle Into the Curriculum: Lubricating the learning process with frictionless turn-in-the-worksheet compliance denies students opportunities for productive struggle-a condition important for learning and retention, according to an article by Richard Schmidt and Robert Bjork in Psychological Science. When students struggle, relax. Don't lower the expectations of your next lesson plan. Instead, scaffold instruction and check to see that you're challenging students appropriately with Hess's Cognitive Rigor Matrix.

Quality curriculum planning-publicly unacknowledged, unglamorous, and taxing-is ultimately the golden road to areté (Homer's word for "exemplary effectiveness"). Undoubtedly the tenets of effective planning will soon change, because transformational teachers never stop learning.

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9 Ways to Plan Transformational Lessons: Planning the Best Curriculum Unit Ever

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1. Know the Standards, Curriculum, Core Concepts, and Strategies: For decades, many educators let a textbook's table of contents determine the scope and sequence of a course. Today, transformational teachers know their anchor standards by heart and recognize the difference between teaching strategies and learning strategies.

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https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4041495/

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Abstract

The authors explore a history of grading and review the literature regarding the purposes and impacts of grading. They then suggest strategies for making grading more supportive of learning, including balancing accuracy-based and effort-based grading, using self/peer evaluation, curtailing curved grading, and exercising skepticism about the meaning of grades.

INTRODUCTION

When we consider the practically universal use in all educational institutions of a system of marks, whether numbers or letters, to indicate scholastic attainment of the pupils or students in these institutions, and when we remember how very great stress is laid by teachers and pupils alike upon these marks as real measures or indicators of attainment, we can but be astonished at the blind faith that has been felt in the reliability of the marking systems.

-I. E. Finkelstein (1913)

If your current professional position involves teaching in a formal classroom setting, you are likely familiar with the process of assigning final course grades. Last time you assigned grades, did you assign an "E," "E+," or "E−" to any of your students? Likely you assigned variations on "A's," "B's," "C's," "D's," and "F's." Have you wondered what happened to the "E's" or talked with colleagues about their mysterious absence from the grading lexicon? While we often commiserate about the process of assigning grades, which may be as stressful for instructors as for students, the lack of conversation among instructors about the mysterious omission of the "E" is but one indicator of the many tacit assumptions we all make about the processes of grading in higher education. Given that the time and stress associated with grading has the potential to distract instructors from other, more meaningful aspects of teaching and learning, it is perhaps time to begin scrutinizing our tacit assumptions surrounding grading. Below, we explore a brief history of grading in higher education in the United States. This is followed by considerations of the potential purposes of grading and insights from research literature that has explored the influence of grading on teaching and learning. In particular, does grading provide feedback for students that can promote learning? How might grades motivate struggling students? What are the origins of norm-referenced grading-also known as curving? And, finally, to what extent does grading provide reliable information about student learning and mastery of concepts? We end by offering four potential adjustments to our general approach to grading in undergraduate science courses for instructors to consider.

A BRIEF HISTORY OF GRADING IN HIGHER EDUCATION

It can be easy to perceive grades as both fixed and inevitable-without origin or evolution ... Yet grades have not always been a part of education in the United States.

- Schneider and Hutt (2013)

Surprisingly, the letter grades most of us take for granted did not gain widespread popularity until the 1940s. Even as late as 1971, only 67% of primary and secondary schools in the United States used letter grades ( National Education Association, 1971). It is therefore helpful to contextualize the subject to appreciate the relatively young and constantly changing nature of current systems of grading. While not an exhaustive history, the sections below describe some of the main developments leading to the current dominant grading system.

Early 19th Century and Before

The earliest forms of grading consisted of exit exams before awarding of a degree, as seen at Harvard as early as 1646 ( Smallwood, 1935). Some schools also awarded medals based on competitions among students or held regular competitions to assign seats in class ( Cureton, 1971). Given that universities like Yale and Harvard conducted examinations and elected valedictorians and salutatorians early in the 18th century, some scale of grading must have existed. However, the first official record of a grading system surfaces in 1785 at Yale, where seniors were graded into four categories: Optimi, second Optimi, Inferiores, and Perjores ( Stiles, 1901, cited by Smallwood, 1935). By 1837, Yale was also recording student credit for individual classes, not just at the completion of college studies, using a four-point scale. However, these "merit marks" were written in code and hidden from students ( Bagg, 1871).

Harvard and other schools soon experimented with public rankings and evaluations, noting that this resulted in "increasing [student] attention to the course of studies" and encouraged "good moral conduct" ( Harvard University, 1832). Concerned that such public notices would inspire competition among students, which would distract from learning, other schools used more frequent, lower-stakes "report cards" to provide feedback on achievement ( Schneider and Hutt, 2013). In 1837, at least some professors at Harvard were grading using a 100-point system ( Smallwood, 1935). During this same period, William and Mary placed students in categories based on attendance and conduct. The University of Michigan experimented with a variety of grading systems in the 1850s and 1860s, including various numeric and pass/fail systems ( Smallwood, 1935). Still, many schools at this time kept no formal records of grades ( Schneider and Hutt, 2013).

Late 19th Century and 20th Century

With schools growing rapidly in size and number and coordination between schools becoming more important, grades became one of the primary means of communication between institutions ( Schneider and Hutt, 2013). This meant grades needed to have meaning not just within an institution but also to distant third parties. A record from 1883 indicates a student at Harvard received a "B," and in 1884, Mount Holyoke was grading on a system including "A," "B," "C," "D," and "E." Each letter corresponded to a range of percentage scores, with lower than 75% equating to an "E" and indicating failure. Mount Holyoke added an "F" grade (for failing) to the scale in 1898 and adjusted the percentages relating to the other letters ( Smallwood, 1935). This appears to be the initial origin of the "A"-"F" system familiar to most faculty members today, albeit including an "E" grade. By 1890, the "A"-"E" system had spread to Harvard after faculty members expressed concerns regarding reliably grading students on a 100-point scale. Still, grading was not always done at schools and grading systems varied widely ( Schneider and Hutt, 2013).

By the early 1900s, 100-point or percentage-based grading systems were very common ( Cureton, 1971). This period also saw an increased desire for uniformity in grading, and many expressed concerns about what grades meant from one teacher or institution to the next ( Weld, 1917). Numerous studies of the period sought to understand and perfect grading systems ( Cureton, 1971). Grading on a 100-point scale was found to be highly unreliable, with different teachers unable to assign consistent grades on papers in English, math, and history ( Starch, 1913). Researchers felt that getting away from a 100-point scale and grading into only five categories (e.g., letter grades) could increase reliability ( Finkelstein, 1913, p. 18). While it is unclear exactly when and why "E" grades disappeared from the letter grade scale, it seems possible that this push to use fewer categories resulted in an "A"-"F" scale with no "E" ("F" being retained, since it so clearly stood for "fail"). Others have conjectured that "E" was removed so students would not assume "E" stood for "excellent," but whatever the reason, "E's" apparently disappeared by the 1930s ( Palmer, 2010).

As research on intellectual ability appeared to show that, like other continuous biological traits, levels of aptitude in a population conformed to a normal curve, some experts felt grades should similarly be distributed according to a curve in a classroom ( Finkelstein, 1913). Distributing grades according to a normal curve was therefore considered as a solution to the subjective nature of grading and a way to minimize interrater differences in grading ( Guskey, 1994). Others worried that measuring aptitude was different from measuring levels of classroom performance, which might not be normally distributed ( Schneider and Hutt, 2013).

Based on the above research and the pressure toward uniformity of grading systems, by the 1940s the "A"-"F" grading system was dominant, with the four-point scale and percentages still also in use ( Schneider and Hutt, 2013). However, many inconsistencies remained. As one example, Yale used no less than four different grading systems from the 1960s to 1980s ( Yale University, 2013).

Present Day

Grading systems remain controversial and hotly debated today ( Jaschik, 2009). Some argue grades are psychologically harmful ( Kohn, 1999). Others raise concerns about the integrity of the "A"-"F" system, given well-documented trends in grade inflation ( Rojstaczer and Healy, 2012). One professor summed it up by saying grades do no more than "create a facade of coherence" ( Jaschik, 2009). A number of colleges have abandoned numerical and categorical grading altogether, opting instead for creating contracts with students to define success or employing student self-reflection in combination with written evaluations by faculty ( Jaschik, 2009). Among the Ivy League schools, Brown University does not calculate grade point averages, does not use "D's" in its grading scale, and does not record failing grades ( Brown University, 2014). Even Yale, the institution that started this history of grading more than 200 yr ago, is today still considering changes to its grading system ( Yale University, 2013).

Though grades were initially meant to serve various pedagogical purposes, more recent reforms have focused on "grades as useful tools in an organizational rather than pedagogical enterprise-tools that would facilitate movement, communication, and coordination" ( Schneider and Hutt, 2013). So, what are the potential purposes of grading in educational settings?

PURPOSES OF GRADING-PAST AND PRESENT

Grades as Feedback on Performance-Does Grading Provide Feedback to Help Students Understand and Improve upon Their Deficiencies?

[This] work affirms an observation that many classroom teachers have made about their students: if a paper is returned with both a grade and a comment, many students will pay attention to the grade and ignore the comment.

- Brookhart (2008, p. 8)

For most faculty members, the concept of feedback has at least two applications to the concept of grading. On one hand, grading itself is a form of feedback that may be useful to students. In addition, in the process of grading student work, faculty members sometimes provide written comments as feedback that students could use to improve their work. Because college students express a desire for feedback ( Higgins et al., 2002), faculty members may feel pressured to grade more (rather than facilitating ungraded activities) and to provide more written feedback while grading. Especially in large classes, this can significantly increase workload on faculty ( Nicol and Macfarlane-Dick, 2006; Crisp, 2007). But are grades and written comments effective forms of feedback that assist students in achieving conceptual mastery of the subject?

Feedback is generally divided into two categories: evaluative feedback and descriptive feedback. Evaluative feedback, such as a letter grade or written praise or criticism, judges student work, while descriptive feedback provides information about how a student can become more competent ( Brookhart, 2008, p. 26). Butler and Nisan (1986) compared the impacts of evaluative feedback, descriptive feedback, and no feedback on student achievement in problem-solving tasks and in "quantitative" tasks (e.g., those requiring quick, timed work to produce a large number of answers). They found that students receiving descriptive feedback (but not grades) on an initial assignment performed significantly better on follow-up quantitative tasks and problem-solving tasks than did students receiving grades or students receiving no feedback. Students receiving grades performed better on follow-up quantitative tasks than students receiving no feedback, but did not outperform those students on problem-solving assignments. In other words, providing evaluative feedback (in this case, grades) after a task does not appear to enhance students' future performance in problem solving.

While descriptive, written feedback can enhance student performance on problem-solving tasks; reaping those benefits requires students to read, understand, and use the feedback. Anecdotal accounts, as well as some studies, indicate that many students do not read written feedback, much less use it to improve future work ( MacDonald, 1991; Crisp, 2007). In one study, less than half of undergraduate medical students even chose to collect the feedback provided on their essays ( Sinclair and Cleland, 2007). Other studies suggest that many students do read feedback and consider it carefully but the feedback is written in a way that students do not find useful in improving future work ( Higgins et al., 2002). Some studies have further investigated the relationships between grading and descriptive feedback by providing students with both written feedback and grades on assignments. In these cases, the addition of written comments consistently failed to enhance student performance on follow-up tasks ( Marble et al., 1978; Butler 1988; Pulfrey et al., 2011). Brookhart (2008, p. 8) concludes, "the grade 'trumps' the comment" and "comments have the best chance of being read as descriptive if they are not accompanied by a grade." Even when written feedback is read, there is widespread agreement that instructor feedback is very difficult for students to interpret and convert into improved future performance ( Weaver, 2006).

Grading does not appear to provide effective feedback that constructively informs students' future efforts. This is particularly true for tasks involving problem solving or creativity. Even when grading comes in the form of written comments, it is unclear whether students even read such comments, much less understand and act on them.

Grades as a Motivator of Student Effort-Does Grading Motivate Students to Learn?

Our results suggest...that the information routinely given in schools-that is, grades-may encourage an emphasis on quantitative aspects of learning, depress creativity, foster fear of failure, and undermine interest.

- Butler and Nisan (1986)

As described in the history of grading above, our current "A"-"F" grading system was not designed with the primary intent of motivating students. Rather, it stemmed from efforts to streamline communication between institutions and diminish the impacts of unreliable evaluation of students from teacher to teacher ( Grant and Green, 2013). That is not to say, however, that grades do not have an impact on student motivation and effort. At some point, every instructor has likely experienced desperate petitions from students seeking more points-a behavior that seems to speak to an underlying motivation stimulated by the grading process.

It would not be surprising to most faculty members that, rather than stimulating an interest in learning, grades primarily enhance students' motivation to avoid receiving bad grades ( Butler and Nisan, 1986; Butler, 1988; Crooks, 1988; Pulfrey et al., 2011). Grades appear to play on students' fears of punishment or shame, or their desires to outcompete peers, as opposed to stimulating interest and enjoyment in learning tasks ( Pulfrey et al., 2011). Grades can dampen existing intrinsic motivation, give rise to extrinsic motivation, enhance fear of failure, reduce interest, decrease enjoyment in class work, increase anxiety, hamper performance on follow-up tasks, stimulate avoidance of challenging tasks, and heighten competitiveness ( Harter, 1978; Butler and Nisan, 1986; Butler, 1988; Crooks, 1988; Pulfrey et al., 2011). Even providing encouraging, written notes on graded work does not appear to reduce the negative impacts grading exerts on motivation ( Butler, 1988). Rather than seeing low grades as an opportunity to improve themselves, students receiving low scores generally withdraw from class work ( Butler, 1988; Guskey, 1994). While students often express a desire to be graded, surveys indicate they would prefer descriptive comments to grades as a form of feedback ( Butler and Nisan, 1986).

High-achieving students on initial graded assignments appear somewhat sheltered from some of the negative impacts of grades, as they tend to maintain their interest in completing future assignments (presumably in anticipation of receiving additional good grades; Butler, 1988). Oettinger (2002) and Grant and Green (2013) looked specifically for positive impacts of grades as incentives for students on the threshold between grade categories in a class. They hypothesized that, for example, a student on the borderline between a "C" and a "D" in a class would be more motivated to study for a final exam than a student solidly in the middle of the "C" range. However, these studies found only minimal ( Oettinger, 2002) or no ( Grant and Green, 2013) evidence that grades motivated students to perform better on final exams under these conditions.

This is not to say that classroom evaluation is by definition harmful or a thing to avoid. Evaluation of students in the service of learning-generally including a mechanism for feedback without grade assignment-can serve to enhance learning and motivation ( Butler and Nisan, 1986; Crooks, 1988; Kitchen et al., 2006). Swinton (2010) additionally found that a grading system that explicitly rewarded effort in addition to rewarding knowledge stimulated student interest in improvement. This implies that balancing accuracy-based grading with providing meaningful feedback and awarding student effort could help avoid some of the negative consequences of grading.

Rather than motivating students to learn, grading appears to, in many ways, have quite the opposite effect. Perhaps at best, grading motivates high-achieving students to continue getting high grades-regardless of whether that goal also happens to overlap with learning. At worst, grading lowers interest in learning and enhances anxiety and extrinsic motivation, especially among those students who are struggling.

Grades as a Tool for Comparing Students-Is Grading on a Curve the Fairest Way to Grade?

You definitely compete for grades in engineering; whereas you earn grades in other disciplines ... I have to get one point higher on the test than the next guy so I can get the higher grade.

-Student quoted in Seymour and Hewitt (1997, p. 118)

The concept of grading on a curve arose from studies in the early 20th century suggesting that levels of aptitude, for example as measured by IQ, were distributed in the population according to a normal curve. Some then argued, if a classroom included a representative sample from the population, grades in the class should similarly be distributed according to a normal curve ( Finkelstein, 1913). Conforming grades to a curve held the promise of addressing some of the problems surrounding grading by making the process more scientific and consistent across classrooms ( Meyer, 1908). Immediately, even some proponents of curved grading recognized problems with comparing levels of aptitude in the population with levels of classroom achievement among a population of students. For a variety of reasons, a given classroom might not include a representative sample from the general population. In addition, teachers often grade based on a student's performance or accomplishment in the classroom-characteristics that differ in many ways from aptitude ( Finkelstein, 1913). However, despite the reservations of some teachers and researchers, curved grading steadily gained acceptance throughout much of the 20th century ( Schneider and Hutt, 2013).

Grading on a curve is by definition a type of "norm-referenced" grading, meaning student work is graded based on comparisons with other students' work ( Brookhart, 2004, p. 72). One issue surrounding norm-referenced grading is that it can dissociate grades from any meaning in terms of content knowledge and learning. Bloom (1968) pointed out that, in grading on a curve "it matters not that the failures of one year performed at about the same level as the C students of another year. Nor does it matter that the A students of one school do about as well as the F students of another school." As this example demonstrates, under curved grading, grades might not communicate any information whatsoever regarding a student's mastery of course knowledge or skills.

Of even more concern, however, is the impact norm-referenced grading has on competition between students. The quote at the start of this section describes how many students respond to curve-graded classes compared with classes that do not use a grading curve. Seymour and Hewitt (1997, p. 118) explain, "Curve-grading forces students to compete with each other, whether they want to or not, because it exaggerates very fine degrees of differences in performance. Where there is little or no difference in work standards, it encourages a struggle to create it." Studies have shown that science students in competitive class environments do not learn or retain information as well as students in cooperative class environments ( Humphreys et al., 1982). Students in cooperative environments are additionally more interested in learning and find learning more worthwhile than students in competitive environments ( Humphreys et al., 1982). Of particular concern is that the competitive environment fostered by norm-referenced grading represents one of the factors contributing to the loss of qualified, talented, and often underrepresented college students from science fields ( Seymour and Hewitt, 1997; Tobias, 1990). Disturbingly, even when a science instructor does not grade on a curve, students might, due to their past experiences, assume a curve is used and adopt a competitive stance anyway ( Tobias, 1990, p. 23).

Bloom (1968, 1976) presents evidence and a theoretical framework supporting an alternate view of grading whereby most students would be expected to excel and not fall into the middle grades. He states, "If the students are normally distributed with respect to aptitude, but the kind and quality of instruction and the amount of time available for learning are made appropriate to the characteristics and needs of each student, the majority of students may be expected to achieve mastery of the subject. And, the relationship between aptitude and achievement should approach zero" ( Bloom, 1968). In other words, even if we were to accept a concept of innate aptitude that is normally distributed in a classroom, that distribution should not predict classroom achievement, provided the class environment supports diverse learners in appropriate ways. This idea was a significant development, because it freed teachers from the stigma associated with awarding a larger number of high grades. Previously, an excess of higher grades was thought to arise only from either cheating by students or poor grading practices by teachers ( Meyer, 1908). Bloom's model argues that, when given the proper learning environment and compared against standards of mastery in a field (rather than against one another), large numbers of students could succeed. This type of grading-where instructional goals form the basis of comparison-is called "criterion-referenced" grading ( Brookhart, 2004, p. 72).

Of course, Bloom's work did not rule out the possibility that some teachers might still give high grades for undesirable reasons unrelated to standards of mastery (e.g., to be nice, to gain the admiration of students, etc.). Such practices would not be in line with Bloom's work and would lead to pernicious grade inflation. Indeed, many of those bemoaning recent trends in grade inflation in higher education (though less prevalent in the sciences) point to the abandonment of curved grading as a major factor ( Rojstaczer and Healy, 2012). Such studies often promote various forms of curving-at the level of individual courses or even at the institution as a whole-to combat inflation ( Johnson, 2003, chaps. 7-8). In light of the above, however, it seems strange to aspire to introduce grading systems that could further push students into competition and give rise to grades that indicate little about the mastery of knowledge or skills in a subject. The broader distribution of grades under curve-adjusted grading could simply create the illusion of legitimacy in the grading system without any direct connection between grades and achievement of learning goals. Perhaps the more productive route is to push for stronger, criterion-referenced grading systems in which instructional goals, assessments, and course work are more intimately aligned.

In brief, curved grading creates a competitive classroom environment, alienates certain groups of talented students, and often results in grades unrelated to content mastery. Curving is therefore not the fairest way to assign grades.

Grades as an Objective Evaluation of Student Knowledge-Do Grades Provide Reliable Information about Student Learning?

Study Critiques Schools over Subjective Grading: An Education Expert Calls for Greater Consistency in Evaluating Students' Work.

- Los Angeles Times (2009)

As evidenced by the above headline, some have criticized grading as subjective and inconsistent, meaning that the same student could receive drastically different grades for the same work, depending on who is grading the work and when it is graded. The literature indeed indicates that some forms of assessment lend themselves to greater levels of grading subjectivity than others.

Scoring multiple-choice assessments does not generally require the use of professional judgment from one paper to the next, so instructors should be able to score such assessments objectively ( Wainer and Thissen, 1993; Anderson, 2008, p. 451). However, despite their advantages in terms of objective grading, studies have raised concerns regarding the blanket use of multiple-choice assessments. Problems with such assessments range from their potential to falsely indicate student understanding to the possibilities that they hamper critical thinking and exhibit bias against certain groups of students ( Towns and Robinson, 1993; Scouller, 1998; Rogers and Harley, 1999; Paxton, 2000; Dufresne et al., 2002; Zimmerman and Williams, 2003; Stanger-Hall, 2012).

Grading student writing, whether in essays, reports, or constructed-response test items, opens up greater opportunities for subjectivity. Shortly after the rise in popularity of percentage-based grading systems in the early 1900s, researchers began examining teacher consistency in marking written work by students. Starch and Elliott (1912) asked 142 teachers to grade the same English paper and found that grades on the paper varied from 50 to 98% between teachers. Because different teachers awarded scores ranging from failing to exceptional, the researchers concluded "the promotion or retardation of a pupil depends to a considerable extent upon the subjective estimate of his teacher" rather than upon the actual work produced by the student ( Starch and Elliott, 1912). Even greater levels of inconsistency were found in teachers' scoring of a geometry paper showing the solution to a problem ( Starch and Elliott, 1913).

Eells (1930) investigated the consistency of individual teachers' grading by asking 61 teachers to grade the same history and geography papers twice-the second time 11 wk after the first. He concluded that "variability of grading is about as great in the same individual as in groups of different individuals" and that, after analysis of reliability coefficients, assignment of scores amounted to "little better than sheer guesses" ( Eells, 1930). Similar problems in marking reliability have been observed in higher education environments, although the degree of reliability varies dramatically, likely due to differences in instructor training, assessment type, grading system, and specific topic assessed ( Meadows and Billington, 2005, pp. 18-20). Factors that occasionally influence an instructor's scoring of written work include the penmanship of the author ( Bull and Stevens, 1979), sex of the author ( Spear, 1984), ethnicity of the author ( Fajardo, 1985), level of experience of the instructor ( Weigle, 1999), order in which the papers are reviewed ( Farrell and Gilbert, 1960; Spear, 1996), and even the attractiveness of the author ( Bull and Stevens, 1979).

Designing and using rubrics to grade assignments or tests can reduce inconsistencies and make grading written work more objective. Sharing the rubrics with students can have the added benefit of enhancing learning by allowing for feedback and self-assessment ( Jonsson and Svingby, 2007; Reddy and Andrade, 2010). Consistency in grading tests can also be improved by writing longer tests with more narrowly focused questions, but this would tend to limit the types of questions that could appear on an exam ( Meadows and Billington, 2005).

In summary, grades often fail to provide reliable information about student learning. Grades awarded can be inconsistent both for a single instructor and among different instructors for reasons that have little to do with a students' content knowledge or learning advances. Even multiple-choice tests, which can be graded with great consistency, have the potential to provide misleading information on student knowledge.

GRADING-STRATEGIES FOR CHANGE

In part, grading practices in higher education have been driven by educational goals such as providing feedback to students, motivating students, comparing students, and measuring learning. However, much of the research literature on grading reviewed above suggests that these goals are often not being achieved with our current grading practices. Additionally, the expectations, time, and stress associated with grading may be distracting instructors from integrating other pedagogical practices that could create a more positive and effective classroom environment for learning. Below we explore several changes in approaching grading that could assist instructors in minimizing its negative influences. Kitchen et al. (2006) additionally provide an example of a high-enrollment college biology class that was redesigned to "maximize feedback and minimize the impact of grades."

Balancing Accuracy-Based Grading with Effort-Based Grading

Multiple research studies described above suggest that the evaluative aspect of grading may distract students from a focus on learning. While evaluation will no doubt always be key in determining course grades, the entirety of students' grades need not be based primarily on work that rewards only correct answers, such as exams and quizzes. Importantly, constructing a grading system that rewards students for participation and effort has been shown to stimulate student interest in improvement ( Swinton, 2010). One strategy for focusing students on the importance of effort and practice in learning is to provide students opportunities to earn credit in a course for simply doing the work, completing assigned tasks, and engaging with the material. Assessing effort and participation can happen in a variety of ways ( Bean and Peterson, 1998; Rocca, 2010). In college biology courses, clicker questions graded on participation and not correctness of responses is one strategy. Additionally, instructors can have students turn in minute papers in response to a question posed in class and reward this effort based on submission and not scientific accuracy. Perhaps most importantly, biology instructors can assign out-of-class work-case studies, concept maps, and other written assignments-that can promote student practice and focus students' attention on key ideas, while not creating more grading work for the instructor. Those out-of-class assignments can be graded quickly (and not for accuracy) based on a simple rubric that checks whether students turned the work in on time, wrote the required minimum number of words, posed the required number of questions, and/or included a prescribed number of references. In summary, one strategy for changing grading is to balance accuracy-based grading with the awarding of some proportion of the grade based on student effort and participation. Changing grading in this way has the potential to promote student practice, incentivize in-class participation, and avoid some of the documented negative consequences of grading.

Providing Opportunities for Meaningful Feedback through Self and Peer Evaluation

Instructors often perceive grading to be a separate process from teaching and learning, yet well-crafted opportunities for evaluation can be effective tools for changing students' ideas about biology. Nicol and Macfarlane-Dick (2006) argue that, just as teaching strategies are shifting away from an instructor-centered, transmissionist approach to a more collaborative approach between instructor and students, so too should classroom feedback and grading. Because feedback traditionally has been given by the instructor and transmitted to students, Nicol and Macfarlane-Dick argue that students have been deprived of opportunities to become self-regulated learners who can detect their own errors in thinking. They advocate for incorporating techniques such as self-reflection and student dialogue into the assessment process. This, they hypothesize, would create feedback that is relevant to and understood by students and would release faculty members from some of the burden of writing descriptive feedback on student submissions. Additionally, peer review and grading practices can be the basis of in-class active-learning exercises, guided by an instructor-developed rubric. For example, students may be assigned out of class homework to construct a diagram of the flow of a carbon atom from a dead body to a coyote ( Ebert-May et al., 2003). With the development of a simple rubric, students can self- or peer-evaluate these diagrams during the next class activity to check for the inclusion of key processes, as determined by the instructor. The use of in-class peer evaluation thus allows students to see other examples of biological thinking beyond their own and that of the instructor. In addition, self-evaluation of one's own work using the instructor's rubric can build metacognitive skills in assessing one's own confusions and making self-corrections. Such evaluations need not take much time, and they have the potential to provide feedback that is meaningful and integrated into the learning process. In summary, both self- and peer-evaluation of work are avenues for providing meaningful feedback without formal grading on correctness that can positively influence students' learning ( Sadler and Good, 2006; Freeman et al., 2007; Freeman and Parks, 2010).

Making the Move Away from Curving

As documented in the research literature, the practice of grade curving has had unfortunate and often unintended consequences for the culture of undergraduate science classrooms, pitting students against one another as opposed to creating a collaborative learning community ( Tobias, 1990; Seymour and Hewitt, 1997). As such, one simple adjustment to grading would be to abandon grading on a curve. Because the practice of curving is often assumed by students to be practiced in science courses, a move away from curving would likely necessitate explicit and repeated communication with students to convey that they are competing only against themselves and not one another. Moving away from curving sets the expectation that all students have the opportunity to achieve the highest possible grade. Perhaps most importantly, a move away from curving practices in grading may remove a key remaining impediment to building a learning community in which students are expected to rely on and support one another in the learning process. In some instances, instructors may feel the need to use a curve when a large proportion of students perform poorly on a quiz or exam. However, an alternative approach would be to identify why students performed poorly and address this more specifically. For example, if the wording of an exam question was confusing for large numbers of students, then curving would not seem to be an appropriate response. Rather, excluding that question from analysis and in computing the exam grade would appear to be a more fair approach than curving. Additionally, if large numbers of students performed poorly on particular exam questions, providing opportunities for students to revisit, revise, and resubmit those answers for some credit would likely achieve the goal of not having large numbers of students fail. This would maintain the criterion-referenced grading system and additionally promote learning of the material that was not originally mastered. In summary, abandoning curving practices in undergraduate biology courses and explicitly conveying this to students could promote greater classroom community and student collaboration, while reducing well-documented negative consequences of this grading practice ( Humphreys et al., 1982).

Becoming Skeptical about What Grades Mean

The research literature raises significant questions about what grades really measure. However, it is likely that grades will continue to be the currency of formal teaching and learning in most higher education settings for the near future. As such, perhaps the most important consideration for instructors about grading is to simply be skeptical about what grades mean. Some instructors will refuse to write letters of recommendation for students who have not achieved grades in a particular range in their course. Yet, if grades are not a reliable reflection of learning and reflect other factors-including language proficiency, cultural background, or skills in test taking-this would seem a deeply biased practice. One practical strategy for making grading more equitable is to grade student work anonymously when possible, just as one would score assays in the laboratory blind to the treatment of the sample. The use of rubrics can also help remove bias from grading ( Allen and Tanner, 2006) by increasing grading consistency. Perhaps most importantly, sharing grading rubrics with students can support them in identifying where their thinking has gone wrong and promote learning ( Jonsson and Svingby, 2007; Reddy and Andrade, 2010). Much is yet to be understood about what influences students' performance in the context of formal education, and some have suggested grades may be more of a reflection of a students' ability to understand and play the game of school than anything to do with learning ( Towns and Robinson, 1993; Scouller, 1998; Stanger-Hall, 2012). In summary, using tools such as rubrics and blind scoring in grading can decrease the variability and bias in grading student work. Additionally, remembering that grades are likely an inaccurate reflection of student learning can decrease assumptions instructors make about students.

IN CONCLUSION-TEACHING MORE BY GRADING LESS (OR DIFFERENTLY)

A review of the history and research on grading practices may appear to present a bleak outlook on the process of grading and its impacts on learning. However, underlying the less encouraging news about grades are numerous opportunities for faculty members to make assessment and evaluation more productive, better aligned with student learning, and less burdensome for faculty and students. Notably, many of the practices advocated in the literature would appear to involve faculty members spending less time grading. The time and energy spent on grading has been often pinpointed as a key barrier to instructors becoming more innovative in their teaching. In some cases, the demands of grading require so much instructor attention, little time remains for reflection on the structure of a course or for aspirations of pedagogical improvement. Additionally, some instructors are hesitant to develop active-learning activities-as either in-class activities or homework assignments-for fear of the onslaught of grading resulting from these new activities. However, just because students generate work does not mean instructors need to grade that work for accuracy. In fact, we have presented evidence that accuracy-based grading may, in fact, demotivate students and impede learning. Additionally, the time-consuming process of instructors marking papers and leaving comments may achieve no gain, if comments are rarely read by students. One wonders how much more student learning might occur if instructors' time spent grading was used in different ways. What if instructors spent more time planning in-class discussions of homework and simply assigned a small number of earned points to students for completing the work? What if students themselves used rubrics to examine their peers' efforts and evaluate their own work, instead of instructors spending hours and hours commenting on papers? What if students viewed their peers as resources and collaborators, as opposed to competitors in courses that employ grade curving? Implementing small changes like those described above might allow instructors to promote more student learning by grading less or at least differently than they have before.

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Articles from CBE Life Sciences Education are provided here courtesy of American Society for Cell Biology

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Teaching More by Grading Less (or Differently)

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The authors explore a history of grading and review the literature regarding the purposes and impacts of grading. They then suggest strategies for making grading more supportive of learning, including balancing accuracy-based and effort-based grading, ...

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Students across the country have begun to return to school for distance learning. Among concerns about equity and access to technology, flexibility to move to in-person instruction, and the toll on working parents, schools also face decisions about how, if at all, to diverge from standard grading practices. In the spring, many districts have opted to eliminate grades for the portion of the year students completed remotely. Other districts have either offered a pass-fail option or instituted it across the board. The thinking is that, given the reality of the coronavirus pandemic, there are too many external factors that are impossible to monitor, control, or remediate for a grading system to function fairly.

Because distance learning was rolled out quickly, often with little preparation, there are few checks to guarantee the integrity of individual assessments: without high confidence that students are doing their own work, what weight can any of the work students submit actually hold? Even more significantly, some students don't have access to broadband internet. Others have internet access but share a device with several family members. Even in circumstances where districts have sought to address issues of access to technology and internet, equity remains a problem. Some students have a parent who can assist with assignments; others are hiring private tutors at rates of hundreds of dollars an hour; others still are doing their best to complete school work independently, sometimes facing economic uncertainty or food insecurity.

But the problems that coronavirus and the resulting months of isolation have brought to light predate the pandemic. And these issues will remain unresolved after students have returned to whatever the new "normal" of public schooling looks like. Is the aim of grading to measure? To reward? To assess? What method or methods best allow teachers to achieve that aim? How objective can teachers be, especially in these conditions? Should students be graded against a set standard or in comparison to one another?

The accuracy, ethics, purpose, and nature of grades in American secondary education has been extensively debated by scholars since at least the turn of the last century. Even something as commonplace as the A-through-F letter grading system was once a controversial departure from report cards showing precise number percentages. Those percentage-based grades had replaced narrative comments and what we'd now call standards-based grading, or universal (within a district or school) benchmarks students were expected to demonstrate having achieved-rather than an average of scores on specific assessments.

The role grades play in motivating students and their necessity as part of the college admissions process are both questionable.

Standards-based grading and adding narrative comments to letter grades have both gained traction in recent years. But a more progressive argument can be made for eliminating grades, or at least grades as we understand them, in secondary education. Despite long-held assumptions about the inextricability of assessing student work and assigning grades, the role grades play in motivating students and their necessity as part of the college admissions process are both questionable.

Educators like Irvin Peckham and Alfie Kohn offer compelling evidence for higher quality student work and more meaningful opportunities for instruction when grades are either eliminated or nearly unrecognizable as grades. They suggest that being explicit about what defines "grading" makes it easier to understand the argument for eliminating grades beyond the current necessity to do so during remote learning. Does "grading" mean assessing? Measuring? Reporting? Are narrative comments a kind of grade? In Kohn's 2013 article " The Case Against Grades," he argues that even standards-based grades or rubrics, in which descriptors replace letter grades, are still a type of grading. His argument against grades is an argument in favor of radical trust in educators.

In " Beyond Grades," Peckham lays out an argument against traditional grading, using the success of alternative methods of assessment and feedback with his college writing students as evidence. Although his methods are in some ways specific both to writing and to older students (he notes both that evaluating writing itself is an inherently subjective act and that as his students mature they seem to depend less on grades), "[c]ollecting information doesn't require tests and sharing information doesn't require grades."

Peckham goes so far as to argue that traditional grading practices limit student achievement, a claim echoed by Susan Brookhart and her team in " A Century of Grading Research " through data on the impact on graduation rates of traditional grades for at-risk students in three specific ways: there is an inverse relationship between GPA and drop-out rates; failing a core course in sixth grade is highly predictive of eventual high-school drop-out; and, failing a core class in ninth grade "places a student off-track" for graduation. If one of the central aims of schooling, Peckham argues, is truly to educate the masses, it's paramount that teaching practices be designed to reach the greatest number of students. Traditional grading, particularly of writing, often serves to extinguish the natural hope and curiosity that "weaker" students bring to class at the beginning of the term.

In contrast to the widely accepted belief that grades are necessary "carrots" that motivate students to work, he proposes that some students-particularly the most vulnerable-are more likely to take intellectual risks and remain engaged when he's not grading each individual assignment. The classroom just works better for them when they're instead engaged in a semester-long conversation about writing.

The problem, as Peckham sees it, is inseparable from America's consumer capitalist economic system, oriented toward extrinsic rewards while offering little social safety net. For Peckham, the problem of extrinsic motivation can be addressed by undoing the way students-particularly C and D students-have been socialized to view school's rewards as entirely tied to grades. "What they need," he argues, "are the right conditions that will encourage labor and learning through intrinsic rewards." Peckham wants his students to take risks and to see writing as a skill with a purpose beyond the classroom. Those conditions, Peckham argues, are possible.

Peckham has found his students more willing to engage with his feedback on individual assignments when the comments are not overshadowed by a letter grade.

In his own classrooms, Peckham has moved toward narrative comments and conferences to provide student feedback. He has found his students more willing to engage with his feedback on individual assignments when the comments are not overshadowed by a letter grade. Instead, he focuses on three specific non-grade means of motivation: "learning how to write better in order to get along better in a literate culture, learning how to use text as a mediating agent between self and others, and learning how to realize oneself through text." When students are motivated in these ways, rather by the traditional carrot of grades, Peckham's class comes to feel collaborative: "I can join the conversation."

At the outset of his classes, he explains that he will comment on individual writing assignments "as a reader," saying what he liked and didn't like about the writing and offering suggestions for improvement in the future. Midway through his course, he emails students with an approximate grade, taking into consideration not only the student work itself (as is the expectation with most current standards-based grading paradigms), but also participation and attendance. At the end of the term, Peckham does give his students grades, but only because he has to, as part of an institution that gives grades. He admits his grades are subjective, though, he maintains, no more so than a grade determined from several individually graded assignments. The scale, which he lays out for students, is this:

A = a lot of effort; excellent work in class; excellent writing
B = significant effort; good work in class; good writing
C = reasonable effort; fair work in class; fair writing
D = not very much effort; poor work in class; poor writing
F = you didn't try.

Like Peckham, Kohn argues that grades "diminish student interest" and "create a preference for the easiest possible work" and ultimately "reduce the quality of student thinking." Kohn advocates for assessment being done "carefully and sparingly" and urges a distinction between our perceived need to "measure" student work-something that's often impossible-and the importance of "assessing" student work.

Unlike Peckham, Kohn sees reform that works within the assumption that schools must grade students as inadequate. Instead, he advocates for replacing grades with "qualitative summaries of student progress offered in writing or part of a conversation." Acknowledging administrative and even legal hurdles to eliminating grades, he argues that these hurdles ultimately stand on widespread misconceptions: narrative feedback being less objective, and the necessity of grades for college admissions, for example. Kohn suggests that individual "teachers can mitigate considerable harm by replacing grades with authentic assessment" and that "students can be invited to participate in [the grading] process either as a negotiation... or simply by permitting students to grade themselves."

Both Peckham and Kohn deal directly with student responses to unorthodox grading methods. In response to his unorthodox grading methods, students in Peckham's class often wonder if grades, rather than being a motivator, might be a "demotivator," with students doing only enough to achieve a desired grade. They note that eliminating grades on individual essays has made them more willing to engage with the narrative feedback. In one of his case studies, Kohn quotes students who say school was "easier with grades," and that a focus like Kohn's on self-assessment leads to more in-depth conversations about learning.

Although it is Kohn whose study focuses on secondary education, in some ways, Peckham's methods seem more replicable: after all, in what he sees as an inevitable concession to the institutional requirements for grades, he does assign letter grades to his students at the end of the term. What neither Kohn nor Peckham address is the political unpalatability of eliminating grades entirely, particularly at a time when more universities have made standardized testing optional.

Decentering grades may feel impossible in a climate where teachers are not given autonomy and respect by the institutions that employ them. Although all grading is subjective, and studies attempting to quantify fairness of grading practices show no more objectivity with letter or number grades than with narrative comments or standards-based grades, doing away with the symbols students, parents, and teachers are used to is at odds with the status quo in most school districts. Changing that dynamic could have positive ramifications far beyond the role that grading plays in secondary education.
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Is It Time to Reexamine Grading? - JSTOR Daily

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Students across the country have begun to return to school for distance learning. Among concerns about equity and access to technology, flexibility to move to in-person instruction, and the toll on working parents, schools also face decisions about how, if at all, to diverge from standard grading practices.

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https://www.edutopia.org/article/how-make-sure-grades-are-meaningful-and-useful-students

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Slowly but surely, I started to identify some crucial mindset shifts that I had to make if I really wanted assessments to be meaningful.

Assessments as Evidence of Learning

The assessment doesn't matter; the learning it reveals does. That was hard for me to grapple with. The key is in remembering that a single assessment is just part of a larger ecosystem of information that can be used to determine student progress. This helped me broaden my understanding of assessment. A conversation with a student? That's evidence! Listening in on some group work? Evidence!

How did I make the shift? It came down to asking two questions: What do I want my students to learn? And what are the ways that they can show me that they have learned it? An approach to assessment that uses a variety of techniques gives you a more complete picture of student learning than you would get from an isolated snapshot.

Multiple Attempts, Not Redoing Tasks

When students have multiple attempts to provide evidence of learning, we can start questioning the practice of having students redo tasks. There are absolutely times when students need to understand the value of creating a high-quality product through revisions, but doing something again for the sake of points is just painful.

Instead of making a student redo something, what if we asked, "How else can you show me you know it?" That takes the emphasis off the task and puts it back on the student and their learning.

How did I make the shift? Recognize that not all of the multitudes of standards deserve equal time and focus. This matters because you can't offer multiple attempts at a million standards. Limit multiple attempts to what is essential. Think deep, not wide, so that you can gather multiple pieces of evidence for a single concept or skill.

The Grade Book Can Be a Communication Log

I can remember the moment -walking down the hallway at the end of my first year of teaching to submit my final grades-when I thought, "What does this thing mean to anyone?" I knew who was good at quizzes, who turned things in, and honestly who hated my class, but that was about it. I had to ask, "What is my grade book communicating, and why?"

How did I make the shift? Step one is to identify the information you want to communicate. Think about what information would be helpful for all stakeholders, and then think about how you can clearly communicate that. From there, create space in your grade book for each of those individual elements. Make your grade book clear, make it meaningful, and make it accurate.

Using Comments to Point Students Toward Further Learning

When I started teaching, most of the feedback students got was a simple identification of an error, whether that was through a comment or a score. Slowly, I learned that my job wasn't to identify the mistakes; my job was to identify the trends, analyze them to determine the learning need, and then point students in the right direction.

How did I make the shift? Honestly, this one came down to finding new ways to leave feedback. A short, written comment often didn't do what I needed in terms of helping the student focus on the learning-too often my comments focused them on the mistakes. By leaving video feedback, using text expanders, leveraging one-on-one conferences, and making use of feedback portfolios, I was able to provide feedback that was more than just the sum of the mistakes.

I know these shifts seem small, but without them, our assessment practices will stay rooted in methods that don't align with how kids learn best. For too long, grading and assessment have been a threat for students as they go through the school system, kicking them into a fight, flight, or freeze response because the assessment process has not felt safe, positive, or helpful to them.

The problem was that grades were out of their control, a process they didn't feel part of. I still give grades, but with the changes I've made students know they are part of the process-they have a say in it and ownership over the results.

These shifts in thinking aren't everything, but I can tell you that they have changed the atmosphere in my classroom. My kids don't run from assessment anymore-they aren't afraid of it. They understand it, and they understand that it has value for them, not just for me.

That matters.

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How to Make Sure Grades Are Meaningful and Useful to Students

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Slowly but surely, I started to identify some crucial mindset shifts that I had to make if I really wanted assessments to be meaningful. The assessment doesn't matter; the learning it reveals does. That was hard for me to grapple with.

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Non-OSU Article: Culture in the Classroom

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Non-OSU Article: Culture in the Classroom

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https://www.childrensartsguild.org/educator-new?gclid=CjwKCAjwu_mSBhAYEiwA5BBmf_RWBKH3kBk4Vrn7NifpdLeVF72eqdxB33rlLAA6gYpU_m1fohCIBxoCa-MQAvD_BwE

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Programming for Educators - Children's Arts Guild - Children's Arts Guild

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How can you ensure your students continue to discover their place in the world? How can you show them it's okay to embrace their authentic selves? You can be a model by showing up as your authentic self. This means bringing your full self into your teaching practice and letting your students see that you're human.

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https://memphistr.org/snapshot/?gclid=CjwKCAjwu_mSBhAYEiwA5BBmfxYrUWFURQRTFXu26Rr02IQuavBqiT7GM6lqd_1WrGZpBFqZ2BqbfhoCZRsQAvD_BwE

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Today, educational inequality exists along economic and racial lines. Too many children are condemned to substandard educational opportunities based solely on their zip code.

The Memphis Teacher Residency believes this is unjust and unfair. We address this inequity by training effective teachers for Memphis classrooms, and we employ a model of teacher training that emphasizes the spiritual, social and instructional needs of teachers that we call Christian Community Education. We invite you to explore our model and to join us in Memphis as work toward educational equity in our city.

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Program Snapshot - Memphis Teacher Residency

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Today, educational inequality exists along economic and racial lines. Too many children are condemned to substandard educational opportunities based solely on their zip code. The Memphis Teacher Residency believes this is unjust and unfair.

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Non-OSU Article: English Language Learners

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Non-OSU Article: English Language Learners

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https://www.supportrealteachers.org/the-importance-of-recess-and-play.html?gclid=CjwKCAjwu_mSBhAYEiwA5BBmf5LXUmFijCdZyd4tEkPttOOjdjsn1kS13fQJVhE1g5ubAgJdqWAUnRoCdVcQAvD_BwE

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Research has shown that physical activity opportunities throughout the school day can improve: attendance, student motivation, classroom behaviors, social and emotional learning, and cognitive performance. Not only does time spent being active not hinder student learning, it enhances it. You can even incorporate physical activity into various content areas!​

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Importance of Recess, Play, and Active Classrooms

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Research has shown that physical activity opportunities throughout the school day can improve: attendance, student motivation, classroom behaviors, social and emotional learning, and cognitive performance. Not only does time spent being active not hinder student learning, it enhances it. You can even incorporate physical activity into various content areas!​

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https://www.educateradiateelevate.org/blog/?gclid=CjwKCAjwu_mSBhAYEiwA5BBmfxbmjIPjhlKEJ1WGMhIkhnfVNLjhCXRGGsQs19ejL0JgDJYYSujRlxoCSIcQAvD_BwE

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Blog Advice for Parents & Educators How to Continue Celebrating Black History Month Year-Round February 25, 2022 5 Random Acts of Kindness Ideas February 11, 2022 Why is Tutoring so Effective? February 4, 2022 Integrating Art into Education January 29, 2022 The 5 Most Important Learning and Life Skills January 21, 2022 View all Advice ...

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Non-OSU Article: How Teaching Affects Students

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Non-OSU Article: How Teaching Affects Students

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https://child-aid.org/the-problem/?gclid=CjwKCAjwu_mSBhAYEiwA5BBmf2k7TYtB_mVHiUbmHrAgmscLaiaxSFnne_EQeXD3A05hcDaWhWW4_RoCWe4QAvD_BwE

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Non-OSU Article: Why Teaching is Important

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Non-OSU Article: Why Teaching is Important

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https://excelined.org/2020/06/16/classwithjeb-brad-meltzer-and-the-arts/?gclid=CjwKCAjwu_mSBhAYEiwA5BBmf7N-1av8tCx7MIgtr_CEklTD2WoBj6ZUigCmIRBNA7dLOBTlTbnghxoCH-MQAvD_BwE

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#ClassWithJeb: Brad Meltzer and the Arts

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New York Times bestselling author Brad Meltzer shares insights from his successful career as an author and his thoughts on why writing is such an important element of a student’s education. Watch the Video Class in Session with Jeb Bush is a series of video conversations with today’s visionaries for…

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https://www.edutopia.org/redefining-role-teacher

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Students aren't consumers of facts. They are active creators of knowledge. Schools aren't just brick-and-mortar structures -- they're centers of lifelong learning. And, most important, teaching is recognized as one of the most challenging and respected career choices, absolutely vital to the social, cultural, and economic health of our nation.

Today, the seeds of such a dramatic transformation in education are being planted. Prompted by massive revolutions in knowledge, information technology, and public demand for better learning, schools nationwide are slowly but surely restructuring themselves.

Leading the way are thousands of teachers who are rethinking every part of their jobs -- their relationship with students, colleagues, and the community; the tools and techniques they employ; their rights and responsibilities; the form and content of curriculum; what standards to set and how to assess whether they are being met; their preparation as teachers and their ongoing professional development; and the very structure of the schools in which they work. In short, teachers are reinventing themselves and their occupation to better serve schools and students.

New Relationships and Practices

Traditionally, teaching was a combination of information-dispensing, custodial child care and sorting out academically inclined students from others. The underlying model for schools was an education factory in which adults, paid hourly or daily wages, kept like-aged youngsters sitting still for standardized lessons and tests.

Teachers were told what, when, and how to teach. They were required to educate every student in exactly the same way and were not held responsible when many failed to learn. They were expected to teach using the same methods as past generations, and any deviation from traditional practices was discouraged by supervisors or prohibited by myriad education laws and regulations. Thus, many teachers simply stood in front of the class and delivered the same lessons year after year, growing gray and weary of not being allowed to change what they were doing.

Many teachers today, however, are encouraged to adapt and adopt new practices that acknowledge both the art and science of learning. They understand that the essence of education is a close relationship between a knowledgeable, caring adult and a secure, motivated child. They grasp that their most important role is to get to know each student as an individual in order to comprehend his or her unique needs, learning style, social and cultural background, interests, and abilities.

This attention to personal qualities is all the more important as America continues to become the most pluralistic nation on Earth. Teachers have to be committed to relating to youngsters of many cultures, including those young people who, with traditional teaching, might have dropped out -- or have been forced out -- of the education system.

Their job is to counsel students as they grow and mature -- helping them integrate their social, emotional, and intellectual growth -- so the union of these sometimes separate dimensions yields the abilities to seek, understand, and use knowledge; to make better decisions in their personal lives; and to value contributing to society.

They must be prepared and permitted to intervene at any time and in any way to make sure learning occurs. Rather than see themselves solely as masters of subject matter such as history, math, or science, teachers increasingly understand that they must also inspire a love of learning.

In practice, this new relationship between teachers and students takes the form of a different concept of instruction. Tuning in to how students really learn prompts many teachers to reject teaching that is primarily lecture based in favor of instruction that challenges students to take an active role in learning.

They no longer see their primary role as being the king or queen of the classroom, a benevolent dictator deciding what's best for the powerless underlings in their care. They've found they accomplish more if they adopt the role of educational guides, facilitators, and co-learners.

The most respected teachers have discovered how to make students passionate participants in the instructional process by providing project-based, participatory, educational adventures. They know that in order to get students to truly take responsibility for their own education, the curriculum must relate to their lives, learning activities must engage their natural curiosity, and assessments must measure real accomplishments and be an integral part of learning.

Students work harder when teachers give them a role in determining the form and content of their schooling -- helping them create their own learning plans and deciding the ways in which they will demonstrate that they have, in fact, learned what they agreed to learn.

The day-to-day job of a teacher, rather than broadcasting content, is becoming one of designing and guiding students through engaging learning opportunities. An educator's most important responsibility is to search out and construct meaningful educational experiences that allow students to solve real-world problems and show they have learned the big ideas, powerful skills, and habits of mind and heart that meet agreed-on educational standards. The result is that the abstract, inert knowledge that students used to memorize from dusty textbooks comes alive as they participate in the creation and extension of new knowledge.

New Tools and Environments

One of the most powerful forces changing teachers' and students' roles in education is new technology. The old model of instruction was predicated on information scarcity. Teachers and their books were information oracles, spreading knowledge to a population with few other ways to get it.

But today's world is awash in information from a multitude of print and electronic sources. The fundamental job of teaching is no longer to distribute facts but to help children learn how to use them by developing their abilities to think critically, solve problems, make informed judgments, and create knowledge that benefits both the students and society. Freed from the responsibility of being primary information providers, teachers have more time to spend working one-on-one or with small groups of students.

Recasting the relationship between students and teachers demands that the structure of school changes as well. Though it is still the norm in many places to isolate teachers in cinderblock rooms with age-graded pupils who rotate through classes every hour throughout a semester -- or every year, in the case of elementary school -- this paradigm is being abandoned in more and more schools that want to give teachers the time, space, and support to do their jobs.

Extended instructional periods and school days, as well as reorganized yearly schedules, are all being tried as ways to avoid chopping learning into often arbitrary chunks based on limited time. Also, rather than inflexibly group students in grades by age, many schools feature mixed-aged classes in which students spend two or more years with the same teachers.

In addition, ability groups, from which those judged less talented can rarely break free, are being challenged by a recognition that current standardized tests do not measure many abilities or take into account the different ways people learn best.

One of the most important innovations in instructional organization is team teaching, in which two or more educators share responsibility for a group of students. This means that an individual teacher no longer has to be all things to all students. This approach allows teachers to apply their strengths, interests, skills, and abilities to the greatest effect, knowing that children won't suffer from their weaknesses, because there's someone with a different set of abilities to back them up.

To truly professionalize teaching, in fact, we need to further differentiate the roles a teacher might fill. Just as a good law firm has a mix of associates, junior partners, and senior partners, schools should have a greater mix of teachers who have appropriate levels of responsibility based on their abilities and experience levels. Also, just as much of a lawyer's work occurs outside the courtroom, so, too, should we recognize that much of a teacher's work is done outside the classroom.

New Professional Responsibilities

Aside from rethinking their primary responsibility as directors of student learning, teachers are also taking on other roles in schools and in their profession. They are working with colleagues, family members, politicians, academics, community members, employers, and others to set clear and obtainable standards for the knowledge, skills, and values we should expect America's children to acquire. They are participating in day-to-day decision making in schools, working side-by-side to set priorities, and dealing with organizational problems that affect their students' learning.

Many teachers also spend time researching various questions of educational effectiveness that expand the understanding of the dynamics of learning. And more teachers are spending time mentoring new members of their profession, making sure that education school graduates are truly ready for the complex challenges of today's classrooms.

Reinventing the role of teachers inside and outside the classroom can result in significantly better schools and better-educated students. But though the roots of such improvement are taking hold in today's schools, they need continued nurturing to grow and truly transform America's learning landscape. The rest of us -- politicians and parents, superintendents and school board members, employers and education school faculty -- must also be willing to rethink our roles in education to give teachers the support, freedom, and trust they need to do the essential job of educating our children.

Judith Taack Lanier is a distinguished professor of education at Michigan State University.

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Redefining the Role of the Teacher: It's a Multifaceted Profession

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A closer look at what being an educator really means.

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https://scholarworks.umb.edu/nejpp/vol26/iss1/5/

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Abstract

Within the United States and across nations, there seems to be consensus that teacher quality is the most important school-based variable in determining how well a child learns. While such an observation hardly sounds like headline news, it is a milestone in the development of teaching as a profession. It suggests where investments should be made if people really are serious about student learning. It also explains why policymakers and the public should care about what it means to be an effective teacher and what it will take to create and sustain a teaching workforce defined by accomplished practice. Teachers, administrators, and others whose work is designed to support best practice in our schools must seize this moment to rethink every aspect of the trajectory people follow to become accomplished teachers. Getting that path right and making sure all teachers follow it asserts the body of knowledge and skills teachers need and leads to a level of consistent quality that is the hallmark of all true professions. No profession has ever been established in any other way, and there is no reason to believe that teaching is or should be different.

Recommended Citation

Thorpe, Ronald (2014) "Sustaining the Teaching Profession," New England Journal of Public Policy: Vol. 26 : Iss. 1 , Article 5.
Available at: https://scholarworks.umb.edu/nejpp/vol26/iss1/5

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Within the United States and across nations, there seems to be consensus that teacher quality is the most important school-based variable in determining how well a child learns. While such an observation hardly sounds like headline news, it is a milestone in the development of teaching as a profession.