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Objective D: Reflecting on the Impacts of Science is a great way to include elements of International Mindedness and Global Engagement (IMaGE) to the course, through the Global Contexts and real-world case studies. It doesn't need to be a weeks-long endeavour and can be a powerful hook or anchor for the unit.

It also doesn't need to be (should't be) all doom and gloom ( Stephen's post here). Through connecting wonder for and appreciation of the world we live in and the science that can make it better, we can help drive meaningful, evidence-based inquiry and develop a " fact-based worldview " in our learners. Case studies can really help with this.
Here are some resources:
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A graphic organiser for analysing case-studies (or developing ideas) in CritD.

The colour image shows some instructions/suggestions. The b/w image can be stuck on the middle of a large sheet for mind-mapping, planning and discussion. To make an editable copy of just the map & instructions, click here.

The presentation below includes some sample case study videos and a lesson plan for tuning-in to Crit D. As always, this is Creative Commons, attribution, share-alike work, so please use appropriately.

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What if...?

What if we made explicit connections to the Sustainable Development Goals in the place of the factors in CritD?

There are many natural connections and some amazing resources out there, including Our World in Data's SDG Tracker.

See the slide below for some outlines, hexagonal thinking cards and links to datasets. Animated gif by me.

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I'll keep adding to this post over time.

[IMaGE = International Mindedness and Global Engagment. To see my dissertation & resources on this, click here.]

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Objective D: Reflecting on the Impacts of Science is a great way to include elements of International Mindedness and Global Engagement (IMaGE) to the course, through the Global Contexts and real-world case studies. It doesn't need to be a weeks-long endeavour and can be a powerful hook or anchor for the unit.

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This quick brain-dump is based on ideas from Hattie's Visible Learning for Teachers, Wiliam's Embedded Formative Assessment and the pdf of The Power of Feedback (Hattie & Timperley) linked below.
I spent much of today trying to grade a large project ( Describing the Motion of the Rokko Liner, our local train), which was assessed for MYP Sciences criteria D, E, F. Based on some of our Student Learning Goal work on helping students cope with data presentation and interpretation, the lab had been broken into stages (almost all completed in-class), spread across A4 and A3 paper and GoogleDocs in Hapara.

The result: a lot of visible learning in that I could keep track of each student, see their work in progress and comment where needed. A lotof verbal feedback was given along the way, with some worked examples for students. Breaking the large assignment into stages helped keep it authentic and manageable for students, with some days dedicated to individual strands of the assessment criteria.

The challenge: a Frankenstein's monster of a grading pile, part paper, part digital and all over the place. After trying to put comments on the various bits of paper and Google Docs I gave up, realising that I would be there for many hours and that potentially very little would be read carefully be students or actioned in the next assignment. I turned to Hattie (and Wiliam). Visible Learning for Teachers has a very useful section on Feedback (d=0.73, though formative assessment is d=0.9) and so I spent some time making up the following document, with the aim of getting all the feedback focused and in one place for students.

It is based on the four levels of feedback: task-level, process-level, self-regulation and self. In each of the first three sections I have check-boxed a few key items, based on things I am looking for in particular in this task and the common advice that I will give based on a first read through the pile. A couple of boxes will be checked for each student as specific areas for improvement, with the 'quality' statements explained in person. There is space under each for personal comments where needed. I fudged the 'self' domain a bit for the purpose of student synthesis of the feedback they are given - really making it a reflective space, geared towards the positive after the preceding three sections of constructive commentary.

Once I got the sheets ready, I chugged through the grading, paying attention most closely to the descriptors in the rubric, the task-specific instructions to students and then the points for action. However, I put very little annotation directly on the student work, instead focusing on this coversheet. It was marginally quicker to grade overall than the same task would have been normally, but the feedback this time is more focused. The double-sided sheet was given to them in class, attached to the paper components of their work, with the feedback facing out and the rubrics with grades hidden behind. This is a deliberate attempt to put feedback first. We spent about 25 minutes explaining and thinking through this in class.

Importantly, students were given time to think carefully about why certain notes had been made and boxes checked on their sheet. I asked them to respond to the feedback in the 'self' section, and make additional notes in the three sections of task-level, process-level and self-regulation. In discussion with individual students, we identified which were most pertinent - for some higher-achieving students they can take action in more detail at the task level, whereas others need to focus more on self-regulation. At the end of the lesson, the sheets and work were collected back, so I can read the feedback and use this to inform next teaching of lab skills.

The purpose of all this is to make it explicit where they need to focus their efforts for the next time, without having to wade through pages of notes. It hopefully serves to make the " discrepancy between the current and desired " performance manageable, and a sea of marking on their work will not help with this. I will need to frame this carefully with students - some need work on many elements, but I will not check or note them, instead focusing on the few that are most important right now. Incidentally, it also allows me to more quickly spot trends and potentially form readiness groupings based on clusters of students needing work on individual elements in the following lab.

At the end of the task I asked students for feedback on the process. They generally found the presentation of feedback in this way easier to manage than sifting through multiple multimedia components, and will keep this document as a reference for next time. A couple of higher-achieving students asked for more detailed feedback by section in their work, which is somthing I can do at request, rather than perhaps by default; I know these students will value and take action on it.

Here's the doc embedded. If it looks as ugly on your computer as it does mine, click here to open it.

If you've used something like this, or can suggest ways to improve it without taking it over one side per section, I'd love to hear your thoughts in the comments or on Twitter. I'll add to the post once I've done the lesson with the students.

UPDATE (2 December): Feedback-first, peer-generated

Having read that adding grades to feedback weakens the effect of the feedback, I've been thinking about ways to get students to pay more attention to the feedback first. For this task, a pretty basic spring extension data-processing lab, I checked the labs over the weekend and wrote down the scores on paper. In class I put students in groups of three and asked them to share the GoogleDoc of the lab with their partners. They then completed a feedback circle, using the coversheet below to identify specific areas for improvement and checking them. If they could suggest an improvement (e.g. a better graph title), they could add this as a comment.

This took about 15-20 minutes, after which students completed the process-level and self-regulation sections and returned the form to me, before continuing with the day's tasks. Before the next class, I'll add their grades to the form (rubrics are on the reverse of the copy I gave students) and log them in Powerschool. Delaying communication of the grade this way should, I hope, have helped students engage more effectively with the feedback - I learned last week that making changes in Powerschool resulted in automatic emails to students.

I was wary of doing this first thing on a Monday, but the kids were great and enjoyed giving and receiving feedback from peers. Of course some goofed off a little, but they were easy to get back on track. For the high-flyers who enojoyed the method less the first time, this gave them a chance to really pick through each others' work to give specific feedback for improvement.

Here is the document:

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The Power of Feedback (pdf). John Hattie & Helen Timperley, University of Auckland. DOI: 10.3102/003465430298487

Categories: Assessment, Differentiation, Hattie / Learning Impacts, Middle Years Programme | Permalink.

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Making Feedback Visible: Four Levels Experiment

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This quick brain-dump is based on ideas from Hattie's Visible Learning for Teachers, Wiliam's Embedded Formative Assessment and the pdf of The Power of Feedback (Hattie & Timperley) linked below. I spent much of today trying to grade a large project ( Describing the Motion of the Rokko Liner, our local train), which was assessed for MYP Sciences criteria D, E, F.

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Use this as a reading for adaptations section

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Scarce oxygen, cold temperatures, and intense ultraviolet radiation make the Andes a tough place to live. How did humans adapt to such heights? A new study of ancient and modern DNA suggests in some South American highlanders, the answer includes changes to their heart muscles. The same study found that ancient highlanders adapted to digest starch more easily as they came to rely on potatoes for food, and that they most likely split from their lowland brethren some 8750 years ago. But those conclusions have been questioned by scientists who say the comparison population is simply too distant to reveal anything specific about highland life.

To find out how ancient Andeans adapted to living at more than 2500 meters, John Lindo, a population geneticist at Emory University in Atlanta, sequenced seven genomes from people who lived near Lake Titicaca in the Peruvian Andes from 6800 years ago to about 1800 years ago. The team then compared those genomes to genetic data from two modern populations: the high-living Aymara of Bolivia, and the Huilliche-Pehuenche, who live on the lowland coast of southern Chile.

Another high-dwelling folk-the people of the Tibetan plateau-have genetic variations that reduce hemoglobin levels in their blood and make their bodies extremely efficient at using oxygen. So Lindo and his colleagues scanned the ancient South American genomes for signs of similar adaptations. They didn't find what they were looking for, but they did see signs of selection on a gene called DST, related to cardiovascular health and heart muscle development, they report today in Science Advances. That, says Mark Aldenderfer, an archaeologist at the University of California (UC), Merced, and a co-author of the new study, "suggests a very different process by which ancient Andean people adapted to high elevation life."

An even stronger sign of natural selection turned up in genes related to starch digestion. Because the starchy potato was domesticated in the Andes and quickly became a dietary staple, such an adaptation makes sense, Lindo says. By measuring the number of random genetic differences that accumulated steadily over time between the highland and lowland populations, Lindo's team estimates the genetic split between those peoples likely happened about 8750 years ago, a date that fits with archaeological data.

But some geneticists question whether these differences are really related to highland living. The coastal Huilliche-Pehuenche live so far south of the Andes that their genomes aren't a meaningful comparison to the ancient and modern highland groups, says Lars Fehren-Schmitz, a biological anthropologist at UC Santa Cruz. He thinks the genetic variations used to estimate when the groups split are not evidence of people moving to the mountains, but likely a remnant of differences already carried by various populations as they settled South America. "It's like comparing apples and pears," agrees Bastien Llamas, a geneticist at The University of Adelaide in Australia. The only way to see which genetic differences are true high-altitude adaptations, they say, would be to compare ancient Andeans to ancient inhabitants of the nearby coasts of Peru or northern Chile. Lindo agrees that those would be better comparisons-if data about them were available.

One big difference between the Huilliche-Pehuenche and the modern highlanders is how their ancestors were affected by European contact and colonization. By modeling past population bottlenecks, Lindo calculated that the indigenous highland population fell by 27% after European contact. But a shocking 97% of the Huilliche-Pehuenche's ancestors died, possibly because of extensive wars with colonists that lasted well into the 19th century.

Finally, the team found one specific sign of European contact in modern highlanders' genomes: an immune receptor that kicks into gear in response to the smallpox vaccine. Smallpox epidemics were documented in the Andes, especially in the early days of European contact, and the marker drives home the fact that modern Andeans descend from the survivors, Lindo says. "It's a signal that human evolution continues on," Aldenderfer says.

doi:10.1126/science.aaw0016

Lizzie is Science's Latin America correspondent, based in Mexico City.

More from News

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How the people of the Andes evolved to live in high altitudes

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Scarce oxygen, cold temperatures, and intense ultraviolet radiation make the Andes a tough place to live. How did humans adapt to such heights? A new study of ancient and modern DNA suggests in some South American highlanders, the answer includes changes to their heart muscles.

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Executive Summary

Common wisdom has it that to build support for a change project, visionary leadership is needed to outline what is wrong with the current situation and how the envisioned change will result in a better and more appealing future. New research suggests that doing so might create resistance to change, especially in environments of uncertainty. After all, employees identify with and care for their organizations. They may fear that, after the change, the organization will no longer be the one they value and identify with. Counterintuitively, then, effective change leadership has to emphasize continuity - how what is central to "who we are" as an organization will be preserved, despite the uncertainty and changes on the horizon.

Eric Raptosh/Getty Images

Common wisdom in management science and practice has it that to build support for a change project, visionary leadership is needed to outline what is wrong with the current situation. By explaining how the envisioned change will result in a better and more appealing future, leaders can overcome resistance to change. But our research, recently published in the Academy of Management Journal, leads us to add a very important caveat to this.

A root cause of resistance to change is that employees identify with and care for their organizations. People fear that after the change, the organization will no longer be the organization they value and identify with - and the higher the uncertainty surrounding the change, the more they anticipate such threats to the organizational identity they hold dear. Change leadership that emphasizes what is good about the envisioned change and bad about the current state of affairs typically fuels these fears because it signals that changes will be fundamental and far-reaching.

Counterintuitively, then, effective change leadership has to emphasize continuity - how what is central to "who we are" as an organization will be preserved, despite the uncertainty and changes on the horizon.

This is a straightforward and actionable notion that we put to the test in two studies. The first study was a survey of 209 employees and their supervisors from a number of organizations that announced organizational change plans (including relocations and business expansions, reorganizations, structural or technical changes, product changes, changes in leadership, and mergers). The focus was on how effective the leadership was in stimulating employee support for the change, measured through supervisor ratings of employee behavior. As predicted, results showed that leadership was more effective in building support for change the more that leaders also communicated a vision of continuity, because a vision of continuity instilled a sense of continuity of organizational identity in employees. These effects were larger when employees experienced more uncertainty at work (as measured by employee self-ratings).

In the second study, we tested the same idea using a laboratory experiment so that we could draw conclusions about causality. 208 business school students participated in the study, and the context was potential changes in the school's curriculum. They received one of two messages allegedly from the dean of the business school. One conveyed a vision of change for the curriculum, and the other conveyed the same vision of change but also conveyed a vision of continuity of identity. Independent of which message they were exposed to, students received one of two versions of background information that suggested either low uncertainty or high uncertainty about change outcomes. We then assessed their sense of continuity of identity and their support for the change as expressed in actual behavior: help in drafting a letter to persuade other students to support the change. The results of this second study were similar to those of the first: Support for change was higher when the vision of change was accompanied by a vision of continuity, because in this case people's sense of continuity of identity was higher. Again, the effects were stronger when uncertainty about the change was higher.

The implications of this research are straightforward. In overcoming resistance to change and building support for change, leaders need to communicate an appealing vision of change in combination with a vision of continuity. Unless they are able to ensure people that what defines the organization's identity - "what makes us who we are" - will be preserved despite the changes, leaders may have to brace themselves for a wave of resistance.

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Research: To Get People to Embrace Change, Emphasize What Will Stay the Same

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Executive Summary Common wisdom has it that to build support for a change project, visionary leadership is needed to outline what is wrong with the current situation and how the envisioned change will result in a better and more appealing future. New research suggests that doing so might create resistance to change, especially in environments of uncertainty.

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How do we give students voice?

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I was talking with an educator who is deeply invested in his students and committed to promoting learner agency. He shared that he was really trying to create student-driven, authentic learning experiences. Yet when he asked his students to describe how they learn in school, most described him, the teacher, as the sole source of information.

So what's the disconnect you might wonder?

This teacher wants his students to own their learning and engage in authentic learning experiences as so many do.Despite his goals, however, as we dove into the day to day activities he realized although he had created fun and engaging activities all the information still came from him. Students hadn't had opportunities to connect with experts beyond the teacher. All the books or articles had been assigned by the teacher and all feedback and guidance had been provided by the teacher so of course, the students believe that the teacher has all the answers.

This is not uncommon as often our own experiences and habits are such a powerful force and impact our actions.When we want a different outcome we have to challenge our own process, assumptions, and actions as we work to create new norms and systems. We will continually have to ask ourselves,

Why are we doing it this way?

Is this having the impact I was hoping for?

Is there a better way?

Agency is one of the 10 characteristics of learner-centered experiences that I have written about. I often hear people equate learner agency with "doing whatever they want".Agency is by definition the power to act, but this doesn't have to be misconstrued as a free for all. We all operate within constraints but we don't have to all do things the same way to reach the intended learning targets and goals. Educators have certain expectations they are accountable for teaching and there is a variety of content and skills that we want students to learn. Within the content, there can still opportunities for learners to have choice and opportunities to drive their own learning process with shared goals and expectations.

In order to create opportunities for learners to seek information and learn to learn, here are 6 questions that you could pose to promote learner agency and encourage learners to wonder, explore, and drive their learning (yes, even within your content and standards).

What do you know and what do you still need to learn?

What resources i.e books, articles, videos might help you learn more?

How does this connect to what you already know?

What are some creative ways to solve this problem?

Who are the experts you can you learn from?

How will you share what you are learning?

It is critical that we are asking these questions (and more) and helping learners understand that learning is a lifelong pursuit rather than something we do for a test or for the teacher. When we focus on learners, connect to their interests, needs, and goals, we can create experiences that ignite curiosity, develop passion, and unleash genius.

One of my favorite lines from Google's video, Rubik's Cube: A question, waiting to be answered (If you haven't seen it, take a minute and watch it), "...when the right person finds the right question, it can set them on a journey to change the world." The images of kids conducting experiments, building robots, playing in the mud and even blowing things up always make me smile at the thought of what is possible when learners are inspired and have the support to explore their ideas, questions, and passions in and out of school.

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I was talking with an educator who is deeply invested in his students and committed to promoting learner agency. He shared that he was really trying to create student-driven, authentic learning experiences. Yet when he asked his students to describe how they learn in school, most described him, the teacher, as the sole source of information.

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Students need to grapple with problems and own their learning, and the same holds true for educators. The rally cries are clear: If you want to see learner-centered practices in the classroom, we need learner-centered professional learning. Educators are looking to develop skills, particularly in areas based on their own content area, skills, and goals. Learner-centered professional learning should honors the needs of educators as professionals while addressing the larger goals of the system.

I recently wrote this post 10 Characteristics of Learner-Centered Experiences and many people have asked me about professional learning would support educators to create learner-centered experiences. These same characteristics of learner-centered experiences that we want to see in classrooms should be present in professional learning as well. Educator's beliefs, knowledge, and skills are shaped by their experiences both past and present, and often these get mirrored in their classrooms and in their leadership practices. The following are a few examples and ideas from my upcoming book, Learner-Centered Innovation: Spark Curiosity, Ignite Passion, Unleash Genius, which is set to be released early February!

UPDATE: The book it out. You can get it here!

Personal

Too often for the sake of convenience, we mandate training or professional development for all when it only pertains to a few. Diverse contexts and areas of expertise require flexibility to meet the desired goals and support individuals along the path. To support learner-centered innovation, ensure that the learning is connected to the content, experience, and resources of those in the rooms and connects the students they serve. We need to allow for diverse paths and outcomes to support learners to move forward from where they are to where they want to go.

I'm encouraged to see many districts and individual schools moving away from the large-session, one-size-fits-all format and allowing educators as learners to have more choice in a variety of sessions. I have also seen some alternatives to stand-and-deliver sessions and information-heavy staff meetings, such as flipping faculty meetings or providing choice options for an all-day district professional development day. This focus on voice and choice can lead to more engagement in sessions. But we can't stop there. To integrate new ideas into practice, we can't just change the format of the meeting to make them more exciting or find a different way to share information. If we aren't clear on our desired outcomes, what we believe about good teaching and learning and fail to create the time and space for teachers to learn and try out that learning with their students in their unique context-based on their needs and goals-we will not see the "training" translate to learning and ultimately better outcomes for students.

Agency

In the Power of Habit, Charles Duhigg provides an example of assembly line workers who were provided an opportunity to make decisions about their workday. They were allowed to design uniforms and make their schedules. Two months later without any pay raises or other changes to their work environment, productivity increased by 20 percent. Workers were taking fewer breaks and they were making fewer mistakes. Giving the employees a sense of control impacted the level of self-discipline, focus, and energy they brought to their jobs. This same phenomenon applies to educators and the students they serve. If we engage learners in experiences that allow them to solve a challenge that is meaningful and relevant to their context, they will be more empowered to devise a solution and take action to make the desired improvement.

Brad Gustafson, a principal, and author of Renegade Leadership , shared a great example of how he shifted a traditional professional development day for his staff to model the type of teaching and learning he wanted to see in the classroom. He started by collaborating with his staff to design a day that was built on the school goals and priorities. Together, they leveraged research-based practices and gave teachers choices on the topics they wanted to grapple with based on challenges that were most meaningful to them. This learning experience, which took place within a four-hour period, focused on relevant topics and built on previous learning to sustain momentum and go deeper. The goal was to drive the change they want to see in their school. [3] This intentionally crafted day of learning provides a great example of balancing the system goals while allowing for individuals to get what they need.

Goals + Accountability (based on competency, not seat time)

In his book, Where Good Ideas Come From , Steven Johnson notes that "innovative systems have a tendency to gravitate toward the 'edge of chaos:' the fertile zone between too much order and too much anarchy." If we want innovation in our schools-and we should-we have to create systems that live in this fertile zone. When we are too rigid and demand compliance, we leave little room for creativity nor opportunities to be innovative. On the other hand, when we lack the vision and support to get there, many feel lost without a clear direction and revert back to what they have always done. To balance the goals of the system and the personal growth of the individual, we need to provide a clear vision and the structure for individuals to learn in a way that aligns the system goals and personal goals.

Kettle Morraine School District in Wisconsin, led by Superintendent Pat Deklotz, has been a pioneer in this work at the district level. The administration worked with teachers to listen to their needs as they moved toward a new vision of teaching and learning. Pat shared, "We took deliberate and thoughtful action, listening to our teachers, and aligning their interests with our system's need to attract and retain high-quality staff. We wanted to provide opportunities to recognize the differences in the professional development needs of our educators and for them to experience personalized learning themselves, in a competency-based model." [2] By offering personal pathways and using a micro-credential system to assess, track, and reward the development of desired competencies, teachers have been empowered to drive their own professional growth. In a blog, Mr. Anderson, a teacher in Kettle Morraine shared that, "Micro-credentialing has changed, for the positive, how educators are viewing their own professional development and career path-it has enabled educators to personalize what it means to be a career educator for themselves and their classrooms."

A competency-based system allows educators to demonstrate proficiency in areas where they excel and seek support and guidance for specific areas of growth. Similar to demonstrations of student learning linked to mastery, competency-based professional learning allows leaders to identify the expectations, co-construct the goals and create for personal paths to develop and demonstrate mastery of desired competencies based on needs and context in which the educators teach.

Inquiry-based

Learning to better understand the challenges I am facing and then generating and testing new ideas has allowed me to own my learning and has provided me with a sense of agency. It is so empowering to see the results that come from putting what you are discovering into practice!

An inquiry-based approach to learning and improvement, commonly known as improvement science , aims to engage learners in rapid cycles of Plan, Do, Study, and Act (PDSA) to learn fast through action, fail fast, and improve quickly. This approach acknowledges that failure is part of the process and that failure itself is not the problem; failing to learn from the process is where we can go wrong. Improvement science empowers learners to make tweaks as they investigate ideas. For educators, this model of discovery, exploration, and doing allows us to continually improve the way we serve the learners in our specific context.

Amy Var, a middle-school teacher, engaged in an improvement science project to figure out how to enhance her peer-editing process by teaching students to give more thoughtful feedback. After learning about a variety of strategies, she thoughtfully implemented a few, including editing in Google Docs, to allow for more fluid commenting and editing. She found that this tool empowered students to invite outside collaborators to make comments on their writing. It also allowed her to collect evidence to determine the effectiveness of the tools. As Amy learned to use new tools and saw it working with her students, she let go of the control of editing and became more willing to allow her students lead. The evidence she collected included student work, student feedback, and her own observations. She embraced the role of the learner and shared her thoughts on her blog on the process:
More than anything, I'm looking forward to our next steps. I feel like I started by dipping my toe into the pool, and now I'm ready to dive headfirst into the waters of change and see where the tides continue to take me. It's such a good feeling, after eighteen years of teaching, to be this excited again!
I want to underscore her reflection. With so much focus on how to motivate and incentivize learners, Amy's personal learning experience illustrates that when what we are learning is directly tied to our own goals and is meaningful in our daily work, learning can be its own reward and can push us to want to know more. When learners are empowered to work through issues that matter to them rather than just going through the motions, the time and energy spent isn't a chore; it's productive because it improves both job performance and satisfaction.

Collaboration

You can have all the right structures in place, but if you haven't built the relationships and created a community with shared goals where the individuals feel valued, none of it matters. If we don't invest in the relationships and build connections between people and our ideas, we limit the potential of what we all can achieve together. High-functioning teams value the team as a whole and understand the relationships are at the core of the work. They ensure they invest time in building those relationships to best serve the team so that they accomplish the desired goals. A willingness to ask for and receive input characterizes the best teams. That vulnerability shows that the team members respect one another's opinions and are willing to incorporate diverse viewpoints to become more productive and efficient. In schools where empowerment and collaboration are norms, teachers often have higher morale and stronger commitment as well as the desire to remain in teaching.

This quote from Henry Ford captures the difference in calling yourself a team and working together as a team: "Coming together is a beginning. Keeping together is progress. Working together is success." We have become accustomed to showing up at team or staff meetings and counting that as our duty, but showing up is not success. Showing up is the first step. Coming together as a team and pooling our expertise to develop ideas that will improve outcomes for all learners is what we should be working toward every day. We have too much to do, and the stakes are too high to go at it alone.

Authentic

After engaging in a Personal Learning Challenge, one teacher highlighted the impact of publishing her work and the power of an audience. "I was skeptical about this project and how it would impact my learning if all I was talking about was running. Then I posted my blog on Twitter and Facebook, and I started to receive a lot of feedback. I realized that publishing work brings a different level of accountability that I had never expected. You know you have a wider audience to critique but also to support."

Another teacher noted that, throughout this process, she was most struck by the support network that helped her achieve her goal. "Whether they came up to me with advice, posted articles on my timeline, or commented on my blog, I had a support group that would not have existed without social media. I also felt motivated to succeed because I had so many people checking on my progress. If I can use these resources and have my students publish their work, it will have a huge impact on their learning."

Creating structured opportunities to be metacognitive about how and what you are learning can inspire the creation of new learning experiences for students. Throughout the Personal Learning Challenge, teachers began to see the value of the vast resources online as well as the variety of opportunities that exist for learning. Beyond the resources, they also experienced the power of connecting across diverse networks. Most importantly, they see the possibilities for their own students and are able to imagine ways to bring those learner-centered experiences to their classrooms.

Critique + Revision

A fairly common practice is to share activities and showcase the final products produced in classrooms, but when it comes to delving into what is working and what is not, many teachers are not used to this level of transparency in their practice. Only when we are open to exploring the challenges we face can we develop better experiences for those we serve. To improve teaching, we have to focus on what students are learning. To go beyond discussing lesson plans and curricula, looking at student work helps educators understand how students apply what they are learning and focus on the actual impact of the teaching.

Presenting challenges, providing feedback, and creating actionable next steps are all valuable exercises that help improve learning experiences. Teachers can benefit from presenting a lesson idea or project on which they are just beginning to hear feedback. Midway through a project, you can seek feedback to help improve and determine next steps. In my experience, one of the best ways to understand and provide feedback to improve teaching and learning is to look at student work samples from your own projects. When educators look collectively at student work to determine strengths and implications for designing learning experiences, we can learn a great deal about our impact on desired learning outcomes and discover ways to improve.

Productive Struggle

There is a tendency to model step by step and ensure we provide clear directions for how to do everything. We often feel like we aren't doing our jobs if we don't take people through the process and teach them every single step. In reality, this often limits creativity and ownership in the learning.

As I worked with a group of leaders, I asked them to create an elevator pitch in a video to communicate their ideas. They had to plan what they wanted to say, work with their group, figure out an app and record something... in 30 minutes. Instead of walking everyone through the process together, I pointed them to the link and communicated the goal and the timeframe and allowed them to figure it out. There was frustration, there were questions, mistakes, and challenges but in the end, they figured it out. And at the end of the 30 minutes when they reflected on all the steps and what they accomplished as a group and individually they were proud and empowered to keep learning and exploring new things...on their own.

Creating an environment where educators have permission and feel encouraged (and expected) to take risks in pursuit of learning and growth rather than perfections is absolutely foundational to shifting practices.

Models

A school leader shared with me that, although she felt her school offered ample professional development, she was frustrated that there hadn't been a dramatic shift in the classrooms. She had hoped to see an increase in students solving authentic problems and using applications to have deeper learning experiences. Instead, students used technology to upload and share information or to complete assignments that looked very similar to the work they had done without technology. In response, I asked the leader to describe a typical professional learning day. She told me that, in every after-school meeting, she showed teachers how to use different apps; in fact, she constantly shared tips on new apps and tech tools she came across. What puzzled her is that the teachers seemed encouraged in the meetings and even shared their own ideas.

As we dug deeper into why the training wasn't translating into the classroom experience, she realized that her teachers were doing exactly what she had modeled for them: They were using new tools to do the same activities and teach the same content they always had. Although they liked learning about new tools, they didn't connect them to student applications for different or deeper learning.

Reflection

Reflection (and even more so, open reflection) is often put off if we don't make time for it. Most teachers, however, understand the value of reflection and how it helps us improve. Blogging and even quick shares on social media provide an opportunity for self-reflection and then takes those reflections public where others can read, critique, and learn from us. It also gives us an authentic audience and level of accountability that pushes us to think through our ideas even more and to be open to accepting feedback in order to push our own thinking. Knowing that we have a wider audience to critique and support us empowers us to try new things, take risks, and hopefully lead us to innovate to create better experiences in our schools and classrooms.

Learner-Centered Innovation

In education, we have a lot of systems that run smoothly because we have been doing them-for years. The problem is that when we work with the same people, doing the same things, ineffective practices are rarely challenged or changed. Traditions and habits don't inspire new ways of thinking for educators or for students.

By maximizing the multiple and diverse resources available, we can rethink the traditional model of professional learning to chart unique pathways and reach desired goals. Valuing the differences in teachers and immersing them in learner-centered experiences in professional learning is an essential lever that will allow educators to design similar learning experiences for the students they teach.

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10 Characteristics of Professional Learning that Inspires Learner-Centered Innovation

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Students need to grapple with problems and own their learning, and the same holds true for educators. The rally cries are clear: If you want to see learner-centered practices in the classroom, we need learner-centered professional learning. Educators are looking to develop skills, particularly in areas based on their own content area, skills, and goals.

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Why do some leadership teams create great dynamics enabling them to lead high performing organisations, while others appear dysfunctional? Oblivious leadership teams are blissfully unaware of their personal and team alignment with organisational purpose. They lead an unfocused organisation.

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Took an idea from @cultofpedagogy and used @padlet to allow Ss groups to curate information regarding lifestyle consequences to body systems. Ss then had to rank resources based on usefulness with reasoning. #MYPChat #IBChat #edtech https://t.co/BfupmWeqLn

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Took an idea from @cultofpedagogy and used @padlet to allow Ss groups to curate information regarding lifestyle consequences to body systems. Ss then had to rank resources based on usefulness with reasoning. #MYPChat #IBChat #edtech https://t.co/BfupmWeqLn https://t.co/2t7LUZLDYx

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Took an idea from @cultofpedagogy and used @padlet to allow Ss groups to curate information regarding lifestyle consequences to body systems. Ss then had to rank resources based on usefulness with reasoning. #MYPChat #IBChat #edtech https://t.co/BfupmWeqLn pic.twitter.com/2t7LUZLDYx
— Jeff Handley (@Handley_EDU) November 9, 2018

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Took an idea from @cultofpedagogy and used @padlet to allow Ss groups to curate information regarding lifestyle consequences to body systems. Ss then had to rank resources based on usefulness with reasoning. #MYPChat #IBChat #edtech https://t.co/BfupmWeqLn https://t.co/2t7LUZLDYx

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Took an idea from @cultofpedagogy and used @padlet to allow Ss groups to curate information regarding lifestyle consequences to body systems. Ss then had to rank resources based on usefulness with reasoning. #MYPChat #IBChat #edtech https://t.co/BfupmWeqLn https://t.co/2t7LUZLDYx

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Took an idea from @cultofpedagogy and used @padlet to allow Ss groups to curate information regarding lifestyle consequences to body systems. Ss then had to rank resources based on usefulness with reasoning. #MYPChat #IBChat #edtech https://t.co/BfupmWeqLn

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Feedback include a "Keep Doing" section along with a "Next time try this" section.

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This sheet I use with my DP Bio students so they can reflect on their tests and how to improve

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Stephen Taylor

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Five years ago I was starting to become concerned with the difference between marking and feedback. What was making a difference to my students' learning and was the effort I was putting into detailed marking worth it in terms of their improvement? In reading Hattie's Visible Learning for Teachers, Wiliam's Embedded Formative Assessment and the pdf of The Power of Feedback (Hattie & Timperley), I developed a four-levels feedback template for use on student work.

This post is to share an updated version - I still really like this method of giving timely, actionable, goal-focused and student-owned feedback. It definitely saves me time, but puts the focus of feedback on what's most important for the student to take the next step. I'll keep updating, editing and adding to this post.

When giving feedback on a piece of work, I paste this at the top of the student's assignment, give some comments in the work and check their self-assessed rubric. Before we open individual feedback, I summarise whole-class feedback.

A copyable GoogleDoc version of the grid (and teacher explanation) is here, and to export it as pdf, click here.

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Why present feedback this way?

Feedback addresses three questions:

Feedback is timely, actionable and needs to be more work for the learner than the teacher.

Clarity of achievement so far: goal-referenced, tangible & transparent.

Understanding " the gap" between where the learner is and where they need to go next (not necessarily the top bands)

Timely. Using a system like this saves time in grading/giving feedback, makes it more accessible to digest (is user-friendly) and can be easily reviewed for the next time the student works towards similar goals.

Feedback first, then grades. Not presented together, to enforce student reflection & action.

Making The Four Levels Work

1. Goals and outcomes need to be clear - do students & teachers have a shared understanding of what success looks like at different levels of achievement?

2. Feedback needs to be ongoing. Students are taught to self-assess in the drafting stages and feedback (not grading) given on the drafts with plenty of time to take action before submission.

3. Students self-assess before submission. Even better - they can peer-assess and give feedback. If tasks are differentiated, this does not present a collusion challenge.

4. Teacher gives feedback in the grid, on the front page of the work (or in an accessible place):

1. Check the student's self-assessment against descriptors

2. Check the assignment, making comments only on actionable next steps - not an overwhelming number, as this can increase the perceived "gap" for students. Students who want and will take action on very detailed marking can request this in follow-up.

3. Summarize feedback in the grid: task-level, process level and self-regulation level.

4. Link to support resources where appropriate

5. Teacher places value on interaction with feedback by giving class time to digest & reflect

1. Give "whole class" feedback on common issues and note needs for later workshops

2. Students read their feedback: table and comments.

3. Students synthesise this into a "feed-forwards" note to self . Showing this to the teacher and a shared agreement on the next steps releases the grade, not before.

6. Next time the task type is attempted, the first thing students do is open the feedback and set achievable, specific goals to "level up" based on the feedback & feed forwards.

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Reflections in Practice

I worried initially that the pushback from students would be that I wasn't grading enough. This didn't happen for a couple of reasons:

1. We made explicit the reason for doing this and I keep no secrets about the "magic" of learning from students. I explain and demonstrate what works in learning and why we do things this way.

2. Most students like seeing the next steps really clearly. We're not all aiming for top levels right away - we're aiming for progress upwards.

3. We talk about "the gap" a lot, and our quest to close the gap in prep.

4. I already know what the grades are likely to be, as we invest time in class for drafting, feedback and conferencing. I expect students to show their work and take action on feedback.

5. I will happily take a piece of work back and sit with a student, giving really detailed marking and justification if they request it. This rarely happens and it is usually one or two who are working at the very top of the rubric. This is far more efficient and effective doing acres of marking for large classes, the bulk of which won't have an impact.

References

Hattie, J. & Timperley, H. (2007) The Power of Feedback. Review of Educational Research . Vol. 77 no 1 (pp 81-112). https://www.jstor.org/stable/4624888 (includes diagram above)

Wiggins, G. (2012) (and related: EL Takeaways Poster Seven Keys to Effective Feedback. Educational Leadership Magazine . Vol. 70 no. 1. (pp 10-16). www.ascd.org/publications/educational-leadership/sept12/vol70/num01/Seven-Keys-to-Effective-Feedback.aspx http://inservice.ascd.org/seven-things-to-remember-about-feedback )

Dylan Wiliam Centre: Ten Feedback Techniques That Make Students Think (poster). https://www.dylanwiliamcenter.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/10-Feedback-Techniques.pdf

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More Resources on Feedback & Grading

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Making Feedback Visible: Four Levels in Action

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Five years ago I was starting to become concerned with the difference between marking and feedback. What was making a difference to my students' learning and was the effort I was putting into detailed marking worth it in terms of their improvement? In reading Hattie's Visible Learning for Teachers, Wiliam's Embedded Formative Assessment and the pdf...

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cultofpedagaogy

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Listen to my interview with Joe Hirsch (transcript):
Sponsored by Kiddom and Pear Deck

As teachers, we pretty much give feedback all day long. We tell students how they can improve on assignments, we praise them for things they're doing well, we correct their incorrect responses, and we redirect them when they behave in ways that aren't helpful to learning.

And that's just the students. We also give feedback to our colleagues, although in most cases, these exchanges don't happen as often or as freely as they probably should. We receive plenty of feedback as well, from our students, their parents, our administrators, and our peers. And we encourage our students to give feedback to each other, albeit with pretty uneven results. Really, the experience of school could be described as one long feedback session, where every day, people show up with the goal of improving, while other people tell them how to do it.

And it doesn't always go well. As we give and receive feedback, people get defensive. Feelings get hurt. Too often, the improvements we're going for don't happen, because the feedback isn't given in a way that the receiver can embrace.

It turns out there's a different way to give feedback that works a lot better, a way of flipping its focus from the past to the future. It's a concept called "feedforward," which was originally developed by a management expert named Marshall Goldsmith. As far as I can tell, not a lot of educators are familiar with the practice of feedforward, and I really think if we learned how to do it and started using it more consistently, it could make a huge difference in how our students grow and how we grow as professionals.

In this week's podcast, I interview Joe Hirsch, author of The Feedback Fix: Dump the Past, Embrace the Future, and Lead the Way to Change. ( Bookshop.org | Amazon). In the book, Joe digs deep into the practice of feedforward and shows us how and why it works. You can listen to our full conversation in the player above, read the full transcript, or stay right here-I'll give you a quick overview.

What's Wrong with the Way We Give Feedback?

When we give feedback to our students, or when our co-workers or administrators give feedback to us, the focus is on the past. "People can't control what they can't change, and we can't change the past," says Hirsch. "And that happens to be the focus of most of the feedback that we give or receive."

More specifically, backward-looking feedback doesn't often get good results for three reasons:

It shuts down our mental dashboards. "When we get negative feedback about something that we can't change or control," Hirsch says, "our brains flood with stress-inducing hormones, cortisol, that trigger our threat awareness and put us on the defensive. The parts that are responsible for executive function, for creativity, the parts that allow us to sort of set our agendas and make rational decisions, essentially we are in a state of mental paralysis."

It focuses primarily on ratings, not on development. Most of feedback's time and energy is spent on looking back and rating (or grading) performance that's already over, rather than focusing on what can be done from now on. "When feedback consists of an impersonal set of performance standards, we're overlooking the essential goal of feedback, and that's to create positive and lasting improvement."

It reinforces negative behaviors. "When we hear about flaws that we can't fix anymore-because they're in a past that we can't change-it creates a feeling of learned helplessness, the feeling that we are unable to do anything about our future. Instead of committing ourselves to improvement, which is what we would hope would happen, we hold onto this debilitating view of who we are instead of focusing on who we are becoming."

What is Feedforward?

When we give feedforward, instead of rating and judging a person's performance in the past, we focus on their development in the future.

Suppose my student is writing an essay. Instead of waiting until she is finished, then marking up all the errors and giving it a grade, I would read parts of the essay while she is writing it, point out things I'm noticing, and ask her questions to get her thinking about how she might improve it.

In his book, Hirsch takes this broad concept of feedforward and defines six components of it, six specific characteristics of feedforward that make it so effective. He refers to these by the acronym REPAIR (regenerates, expands, particular, authentic, impact, refines).

So let's take a look at each of these. If you want to implement feedforward well, it should have these attributes:

It REGENERATES talent.

The most effective kind of feedforward helps people see opportunities for growth-ways they could take on new opportunities and roles. "At the simplest level," Hirsch writes in his book, "it leads to the unmistakable feeling that we're moving forward in our professional and personal lives. Getting positive feedback about our performance may feel good, but it doesn't break new ground. It merely confirms what we already know about ourselves and our talents, essentially holding our growth in check. But when feedback gets us thinking about how to spread that talent to others, it has a multiplying effect."

So when we notice that a student is developing a strength or an interest in an area, instead of just pointing that out, we might give the student an opportunity to enter their work in some kind of competition, publish it in some way, or share it with others in a presentation, rather than simply keeping it to themselves. This helps students see themselves in a new light and gets them thinking about ways they could grow.

It EXPANDS possibilities.

Effective feedback starts with what is and helps add to it, expanding what's possible, rather than simply pointing out problems. In his book, Hirsch describes a concept used by Pixar studios called "plussing." When Pixar's creators get together to review a day's work, they are expected to give each other feedback to improve the work. What makes these sessions so effective is one important rule: Participants can't point out a problem without proposing an alternative, saying "What if?" to a problem.

This concept of "plussing" could work wonders in staff or committee meetings: When we are discussing possible solutions to an issue, rather than shooting down ideas that might not work, we could add to them by making small tweaks. "That's an interesting idea. What if we made this small change and tried that?" This technique would also work beautifully with project-based learning tasks, when students may need to come up with several ideas for solving a problem before arriving at the best solution.

It is PARTICULAR.

Far too often, feedback is given in an "information dump," with lots of criteria being measured and reported on at the same time. This can be a pretty ineffective way to help people grow. "There's a limit to how much we can absorb and operationalize in any given time," Hirsch says. "Feedforward is really about picking your battlegrounds strategically and selectively." He advises us to make feedback an ongoing process that is embedded in the day-to-day work, and to only focus on a few things at a time.

So rather than wait until an assignment is done to point out all the ways a student can improve, find ways to give them specific pointers while they work, and only one thing at a time, so students can process and act on it right away.

It is AUTHENTIC.

No one particularly likes giving criticism. "We see problems, we see pitfalls in other people, and we know it's a problem," Hirsch says, "but we don't want to be mean, right? We don't want to crush them. So the tendency is to either avoid giving feedback altogether or to disguise it as a praise sandwich, where we basically slip one piece of criticism in between two very, very surface level gauzy praises."

The problem with that approach, Hirsch explains, is what's called the recency effect: People remember most the thing they heard last. So when you tack on some praise after delivering constructive feedback, the person doesn't really absorb the critical part as well as they would if you'd just given it to them more directly.

Hirsch recommends a more direct approach: Describe what's happening, explain why it's a problem, then prompt the person for a solution. "When delivered this way," Hirsch explains, "it puts people at ease, it takes them off the defensive. It is clear, it is concise, it's locating the problem, it's looking for solutions together. People don't want a praise sandwich. People want the truth."

This approach could work with academic situations or classroom management problems: If you're dealing with a student who is disrupting class, describe the behavior you're seeing, explain why it's a problem, then ask the student for ideas on how to solve it. It sounds really simple, but if what you're doing right now isn't giving you the results you want, it's worth a try.

It has IMPACT.

One of the reasons people don't make progress after receiving feedback is that they don't necessarily know what to do with it. "If you want feedback to make an impact," Hirsch notes, "you have to put it in terms that people can operationalize." In his book, he cites studies showing that regular feedback doesn't typically result in a transfer of new skills or habits, but when that feedback is combined with coaching, the transfer skyrockets to 95 percent.

So if a student regularly forgets to bring materials to class, rather than simply telling him to change, help him make a specific plan for improvement. Ideally, that plan should have lots of small steps to make it achievable, and the student should take the lead in developing that plan.

It REFINES group dynamics.

"Feedback is a team sport," Hirsch says. "It is not just something that happens one to one. It happens in groups and across and within organizations. And when we dump that command and control nature of traditional feedback, we make room for something much more collaborative and shared."

So rather than give feedback in a top-down, hierarchical model, open up more pathways for people to get feedback from their peers, even those whose jobs might on the surface have little in common with our own. In his book, Hirsch borrows a term from management circles known as "creative abrasion," which is what happens when people with opposing views work on the same task together. Although it can result in more conflict, the contributions from different points of view usually produce a higher-quality product in the end.

This idea can play out in a lot of educational settings: Instead of just having our department head observe our teaching, why not get feedback from someone who teaches a completely different subject? When students go to the same peers for feedback on their work, have them seek out the opinion of someone new, or consider getting the input of a group of students from a different class or grade level entirely.

There's nothing simple or straightforward about telling people how to improve. So it's no surprise that we're still figuring it out and finding new ways to refine it. If the feedback you're giving to your students, your coworkers, and even the people at home isn't having quite the effect you intend, try shifting to a feedforward approach. Doing so can help us, as Hirsch says, stop seeing ourselves just as who we are, but who we are becoming. ♦

Learn more about Joe Hirsch on his website or visit his LinkedIn page. Teachers who read The Feedback Fix should also grab this free Discussion Guide for Teachers to help apply the book's principles to your own work.

Come back for more.
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Instead of rating and judging a person's performance in the past, feedforward focuses on their development in the future.

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Crit D formative?

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The teardrop-shaped soap bottle that helped take Method from an experiment in a San Francisco apartment to shelves at Target just got a redesign: The company is now making a version in glass, in an attempt to nudge consumers away from creating more plastic trash.

"With this bottle, what we were hoping to do was bring some of our commitments to sustainability and design together and kind of use it as a test-and see how the consumer responds," says Saskia Van Gendt, who leads the company's sustainability team.

It's a small test. The bottle, for now, is only available at SFMOMA's museum store, so it won't lead to any immediate widespread changes in how people buy soap. But it points toward the company's larger interest in helping customers shift to buying refills instead of new packages.

Already, refills are a growing part of the company's business. While Method wouldn't share figures, it says that refills are projected to grow "strong double digits" this year. Thin refill packages use less plastic, and have an 82% lower carbon footprint. "It's a huge unlock around sustainability if you can get a consumer to reuse the bottle that they've already purchased," she says. "So we've tried to figure out all of the different ways to influence that."

At the moment, she says, most U.S. retailers aren't interested in having large refill stations in stores and letting customers bring in their own bottles-retailers can make more money by allocating shelf spaces to small packages. So Method is selling its individual pouches that can refill a bottle around three times, and still using a small amount of plastic. (For online sales, too, it's necessary to have some form of packaging.) But Ecover, a European cleaning product company that bought Method in 2012, and was later itself acquired by SC Johnson, does have a growing number of in-store refill stations for its brand in Europe. There's a stronger push there to solve the problem of plastic pollution.

"You have retailers saying how can we have this better offering for consumers to allow them to lower their plastic footprint, increase the refillability and reusability of the bottles, so you see retailers supporting it, but then there's also a huge consumer demand," Van Gendt says. "That's created this whole new opportunity for us in Europe that is beginning to be supported by the retailer." Other companies have shifted to refills elsewhere; Kao, the Japanese company that makes brands like Biore and Jergens, says that 80% of its sales in Japan now come from refills.

The same thing could happen in the U.S. as consumers become increasingly aware of the fact that plastic is trashing the ocean and entering the food chain. "You just kind of need that consumer pressure and demand to get the retailer excited to allow [a refill system]," Van Gendt says.

The company's current bottles are made from 100% post-consumer recycled plastic. "You need to be purchasing recycled content in your packaging to drive the economics of recycling to exist in the first place," she says. "If you don't have demand, then you're really not closing the loop." Another limited edition is made partly from ocean plastic. The standard bottles are PET, the same material as water bottles, making them widely recyclable. Still, most American consumers don't actually recycle plastic, and plastic packaging makes up about a third of the carbon footprint of Method's products. Switching from plastic to single-use glass containers wouldn't make sense, since glass is heavy and would take more fuel to ship. But shifting to a refillable system linked to reusable glass containers would help.

"Now, where we are today with the awareness around plastic, we're continuing to look at what are those new solutions that might not be the obvious solution today," says Van Gendt. "And I'm very hopeful that durables are part of that."

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Method wants you to stop buying plastic soap bottles

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The teardrop-shaped soap bottle that helped take Method from an experiment in a San Francisco apartment to shelves at Target just got a redesign: The company is now making a version in glass, in an attempt to nudge consumers away from creating more plastic trash.