ASCD Inservice

The Kinds of Knowledge Principals Use

A new article from the International Journal of Education Policy and Leadership explores the types of knowledge principals use and need, underscoring the need for more principal training that develops candidates' experiential or tacit knowledge.

The article identifies three big motivations to better understanding the nature of the principalship and the cognitive tools principals use to do their jobs:

• In many districts there is a crisis in succession.
• In many instances preparation programs appear to be deficient, even misdirected.
• There is uncertainty about the kinds of knowledge principals now need.

Here's article author Lazaridou's table highlighting the international reach of the succession/principal shortage; read the article to discover the four general areas, and 12 specific subsets, of knowledge principals identified as comprising their ever-evolving job descriptions.

Principals, is there a particular body of knowledge (i.e. organizational, interpersonal, experiential) you draw on most in your day-to-day, and how much did your training draw on flexing this sort of knowledge?

Source: Lazaridou, Angeliki. "The Kinds of Knowledge Principals Use: Implications for Training." International Journal of Education Policy & Leadership, October 19, 2009. Volume 4, Number 10.

Avoiding Misplaced Empathy, Achieving Total Participation

If we're going to make more than small dents in the achievement gap, improving teaching and learning for English language learners must be a schoolwide goal, not just the purview of specialists, say ASCD authors Pérsida and William Himmele in their interview in the October issue of Education Update.

Read the interview here: "Making Challenges Meaningful for English Language Learners"

The Himmeles' framework for teaching ELLs combines content reading strategies, higher-order thinking skills, assessment, total participation techniques, and scaffolding to ensure all students are deeply engaged in acquiring and comprehending academic language.

That can be a challenge, specifically for ELL students, because it is more difficult to actively listen in one's weaker language, the Himmeles note. Teachers should be careful, they warn, not to accommodate these challenges with "misplaced empathy" (i.e., fewer opportunities for language learners to answer questions aimed at higher-order thinking).

How do you avoid misplaced empathy and work toward total participation in mixed groupings?

Let Me Entertain You?

As I head back to school in a brief two weeks, Art & Science of Teaching Chapter 5 ("What Will I Do To Engage Students?") falls open and asks me to consider the basic question: How can I get students hooked on what's going on in my classroom? Marzano suggests some time-honored traditions backed up by research: using games, inconsequential competition, physical movement, pacing with a logical pattern that kids understand, providing unusual information, allowing kids to discuss themselves, and the kicker for me: teacher enthusiasm.

Stuck in My Head:

Marzano lays it out in the very first few sentences of the chapter. Engagement is "capturing students' attention in a way that enhances their knowledge of academic content"—and this becomes both the gold standard and the big prickly burr in my side for the entire conversation. It sent me scurrying back to a lively conversation I had last year with educator bloggers dy/dan and TMAO on content versus delivery:

Dy/dan: "Engaging a classroom on a daily basis requires more than just some superficial adjustment to classroom form. You've gotta bring great, diverse content daily and, unfortunately, there exists no tool, no shortcut, nothing else to do the job but the blunt application of profound creativity in the direction of challenging content standards."

TMAO: "[but] a lot of the time my content ain't that great. I'm teaching 14-year-olds short vowel sounds. That content sucks. But I can change the form to make it engaging, change the product so you don't feel like you're dumb when you're 14 and still spitting out short-e, and so on."

Dina: "If I scan a page of a vocabulary workbook into the computer, convert it to PDF, and add digital fill in the blanks, my kids may be "motivated" to work on it—but it's still the same damn workbook that has no basis in effective teaching practice, flexible problem solving, or language acquisition research."

My point: games, TPR techniques, unusual responses and so on are indeed useful for creating engagement, and especially useful when you need to teach thrilling content like "short e" vowel sounds. But they never, ever, take the place of finding and creating relevance. Relevance self-generates the student engagement we seek.

Zhao Stirs Debate Over Standards

ASCD author and Michigan State University professor Yong Zhao's opinions on global competitiveness, national standards, and accountability, among other education issues, have recently garnered coverage in the Washington Post, Education Week, and the Detroit Free Press: 

• Washington Post columnist Jay Mathews cites Zhao's book as evidence that the U.S. education system is still far ahead of the Chinese education system, especially in terms of producing creative thinkers.
  
• An Education Week article discusses a video in which Zhao argues that the current reforms in American education hamper creative and critical thinking.
  
• A blog post on Dangerously Irrelevant highlights important points Zhao made during a presentation at this year's School Administrators of Iowa Conference.
  
• In an op-ed in the Detroit Free Press, Zhao criticizes the K-12 national standards movement as potentially leading to "irreversible damage." (He also previously guest-blogged here at Inservice on the same topic.)

Zhao is the author of the ASCD book Catching Up or Leading the Way: American Education in the Age of Globalization. Zhao is critical of a U.S. education reform agenda that he says

• Limits student talents to math and reading achievement.
• Stifles creativity and diversity of talents by instilling a single view of worthwhile knowledge.
• Discourages innovations in schools by forcing educators to focus only on the standards.

Have reforms produced similar effects in you school? 

Highly Effective Teachers: Defining, Rewarding, Supporting, and Expanding Roles

This week, D.C. Schools Chancellor Rhee unveiled the 200-page framework for teaching and learning that will define and guide effective teaching practices in the district.

Rhee's document guides at the granular level, but what are the bones of sound policies for highly effective teaching?

Free, online, and less than eight pages long, the latest ASCD Infobrief covers Highly Effective Teachers: Defining, Rewarding, Supporting, and Expanding Their Roles.

We survey advocacy, research, and policies that drive teacher effectiveness—including which states are building the legislative momentum to align incentives for growing effective teachers (go to the Infobrief site to see a full-screen version of this state-by-state graphic).

What policies (federal, local, or school-based) support highly effective teachers at your school? What policies undermine support?

What Incentives Work for New Teachers in Urban Districts?

Working conditions, in particular principal support, showed a significant influence on job choice in simulations conducted by the researchers and authors of "Recruiting New Teachers to Urban School Districts: What Incentives Will Work?"

The article suggests that instead of offering higher beginning salaries to teachers, urban districts struggling to recruit and retain teachers might be better served by investing in attracting, retaining, and training highly effective principals.

While compensation influences working conditions and the decision to stay at a school, especially over the long run, study participants were, at least initially, more concerned with supports other than salary.

What's your first priority in a teaching placement?

Mailbag: Media Specialist as Coteacher

We love feedback, especially the kind we can learn from. A recent issue of the e-newsletter ASCD Express on the theme "The Transformational Media Center," prompted this response from Library Media Specialist Ava Biffer of Nathan Hale-Ray Middle School in Moodus, Conn.:

I'm delighted to see the articles on librarianship in today's schools. You provide excellent information which will assist my effort to constantly evaluate and improve my program.

I'm disappointed, however, in the "well-crafted" assessment document (referenced in the last bullet point of this article). It is absolutely true that the evaluative documents most of us have in place are geared toward a teacher in a traditional classroom, not a library. However, the document you cite would not meet the standards in my state.

We are moving beyond the concept of having a library curriculum and teaching lessons on discrete skills. Rather than the old methodology of teacher librarians teaching stand-alone lessons, we are embracing the concepts of co-teaching, integration, and cooperation--precisely the instruction addressed by the other portions of this ASCD Express issue. The Connecticut Department of Education's Information and Technology Literacy Framework is a document worth sharing with others, as it encompasses the guidelines of both Information Power and the ISTE standards. I would particularly call page four to your attention. It's an excellent explication of the optimum melding of the library with the greater learning community of the school.

Thank you for providing excellent information to discuss in continuing conversations with my principal and at Curriculum Council meetings.
 
How are media specialists and other teachers collaborating at your school?

Got something to share with the ASCD community? Whether it's a response to something we've published or something entirely new, e-mail us and let us know.

Challenging the Whole Child E-Book Free for Limited Time

How do we motivate students to embrace challenge? How do we encourage students to rise to challenges of their own? What is the connection between a meaningful, challenging curriculum and lasting achievement? ASCD's newest e-book, Challenging the Whole Child: Reflections on Best Practices in Learning, Teaching, and Leadership, addresses many of these questions and is available for download free of charge starting today and running through August 16, 2009.

This addition to ASCD's e-book series on educating the whole child features articles from Educational Leadership magazine and other ASCD publications that focus on challenging every student, offering a rigorous curriculum, meeting 21st century learning challenges, using formative assessments, and preparing students for college and the world of work. Authors include Arthur L. Costa, Robert J. Sternberg, Linda Darling-Hammond, Howard Gardner, Susan Brookhart, and other leading authorities.

Complementing this free e-book is the $7.95 ($9.95 for nonmembers) Engaging the Whole Child e-book, as well as the always free, always updated Whole Child Blog, a community-generated resource for strategies, ideas, and news relevant to ensuring that all children are healthy, safe, engaged, supported, and challenged.

Bold Opportunities for District–Union Collaboration on Teacher Quality

Teachers unions are often cast as at odds with education reform and innovation. But frequently, behind a conservative national agenda, there's a union local working with districts on reforms like performance compensation and better, fairer educator evaluation systems. Even charter schools, where flexibility in staffing decisions is a hallmark, are seeking union support.

 "Bold Opportunities for District–Union Collaboration on Teacher Quality" in the July '09 issue of Education Update (members log in for full access; nonmembers can access an index of links to reports and resources related to this article) looks at some established and potential common ground for union and district leaders: better use of single salary scales, more meaningful use of tenure, voluntary performance pay, and peer-evaluations with a strong mentoring component. Union–district partnerships might not always work, but they're far from the polarities often presented in the media.

Teacher Turnover Twice as High in Lowest-Paying Texas Districts

It's an oft-heard phrase: "You don't get into teaching for the money." While the average amount of time and personal sacrifice compared to average teacher salaries certainly bears this out, debates about teacher retention, incentives, compensation, and national attrition figures also show teachers and their advocates are not keen on maintaining a low-paying status quo.

A new article from the International Journal of Education Policy and Leadership (IJEPL), a joint publication of ASCD, Simon Fraser University, and George Mason University, focuses on the connection between teacher salary and turnover rates in the state of Texas. Researchers cite lack of competitive compensation and benefits, along with poor working conditions*, as the primary reason for high teacher turnover in Texas. Not surprisingly, this is a trend that plays out across the United States and in the United Kingdom, Sweden, and Australia.

Teachers gravitate to well-paying districts, and schools lose money continually retraining and recruiting a revolving faculty, perpetuating an inequitable distribution of effective teachers and school budget woes. This article adds one more voice to the call for competitive teaching salaries.

*For more on teacher working conditions leading to burnout and attrition, specifically as an unintended consequence of NCLB, see another recent IJEPL article.

Back to School with Lighter Backpacks

Author Cathy Vatterott is no stranger to the homework debate. She travels nationally talking about homework policy with all types of educators and parents. "Educators and parents often ask me, 'So, are you for homework or against it?'—as if there are only two choices," says Vatterott. "I think we need to find middle ground. The end result is homework that works—for all students, at all levels."

In her new ASCD book, Rethinking Homework: Best Practices That Support Diverse Needs, Vatterott helps both educators and parents reexamine and reform homework practices but also charges school leaders with implementing a bill of homework rights for students. Her suggested rights, such as de-emphasizing graded homework, granting flexible time limits, and providing access to school-sponsored support programs, respect the important relationship between educators and families—a key component to student achievement.

"I applaud [Cathy Vatterott] for writing such a thought-provoking work," says Sara Bennett, anti-homework advocate. "It'd be great if [teachers] began to differentiate homework, stop grading homework, provide feedback, allow students to stop after working for a certain amount of time, and not punish for late work."

Read a free chapter of the book, or listen to Vatterott on ASCD Talks With an Author.

Hypotheses: They're Not Just for Science Anymore

Are you saying to yourself, "What on earth does a hypothesis have to do with English?" Or perhaps, "Hypotheses? You're kidding me. I need my kids to know the causes of the Civil War first." Read on, colleagues. Marzano [Chapter Four, Art & Science of Teaching] may surprise you. 

Summary:

You've set learning goals with your kids, presented the related knowledge, and worked with that knowledge. Hypothesis-generating and testing are the next essential step. There are four types of this kind of higher level work: experimental inquiry, problem solving, decision making, and investigation.

Stuck in My Head:

There's an innocent statement on the top of page 97 that goes like this: "Of course, students will be better able to address these questions if they have had some previous experience with experimental inquiry, problem-solving, decision-making, and investigation tasks designed by the teacher." My response, unfair as it is, goes like this: "And where is this going to happen, Dr. Marzano? Atlantis?"

It's not Dr. Marzano's job in this book to deconstruct school systems, but simply to suggest good teaching. I get that. Yet of all the chapters I have read so far, this is the one that strikes me as the most important—and the most difficult to implement. Why? Because aside from some very limited and teacher-directed applications in the sciences, hardly anyone teaches like this. Despite all our buzzwords like "differentiation", "higher-level thinking," and "student-centered learning," in practice, the majority of our educational culture is still crawling at a painfully slow pace away from the "banking" model of school: kids heads are empty, and we need to fill them.

Parental Help with Goals Gets the Grades

In a new meta-analysis on parental involvement, researchers found the highest positive effect on student achievement among middle schoolers whose parents engaged them in goal setting that valued education as integral to future successes.

Though middle school is often marked by declining interest in academics in favor of social pursuits, it's also the time when adolescents begin to internalize personal goals. Parental guidance on goal setting and learning or studying strategies tied to achieving those goals goes a long way for students at this age. 

Parental involvement with homework had less of a clear connection to academic gains--some students found parents helpful, while others found their parents' help confusing or over-bearing.  

Chapter 9 of the new ASCD book, Changing the Way You Teach, Improving the Way Students Learn (Martin-Kniep, Picone-Zocchia) gets into goal setting and planning as part of growing strategic learners. Here's an excerpt:

Practice, Practice, Practice (Or: Homework, Homework, Homework?)

Hang onto your hats, folks. If you’re mired in the homework/no homework debate, read on for some very interesting commentary from Dr. Marzano in Chapter Three of The Art & Science of Teaching.

Summary

It is essential for students to not merely be exposed to new knowledge, but actively and authentically work with the knowledge. Not every kind of work fits every kind of knowledge, however.

When teaching procedural skills (how to accomplish something step by step), you also need to allow students to practice those skills. This practice should be frequent and simple at first, giving way to more complex activities. Importantly, students should reflect consistently on their own use of the procedures and come to an understanding that works for them individually: changing, adding, or deleting steps as necessary.

When teaching declarative knowledge (concepts or ideas), you need to create activities that allow students to review and revise. By making active corrections, connections, and reflections, students incorporate their knowledge into their long-term memories, like pressing pieces of pottery into a mosaic. There are seven pages at the end of this chapter that give some solid practical tools for working with declarative knowledge in class.

Stuck in My Head

By far the most interesting writing in this chapter to me is Marzano’s position on—you guessed it—homework. And serendipity strikes! As I write, commenters are raging over this Inservice post on "The Homework Lady," Cathy Vatterott.(Full disclosure: I attended Homework Lady’s workshop at ASCD's 2008 Annual Conference and loved it.)

For those of you out there spurning Homework Lady's seemingly anti-homework policies, it's worth mentioning here that Marzano's own homework recommendations echo Vatterott’s nearly point for point. See below for a list.

Planning the Possible: How Schools Can Use Stimulus Dollars for Lasting Impact

This week, ASCD releases its report, "Planning the Possible: How Schools Can Use Stimulus Dollars for Lasting Impact". The report synthesizes data and policy recommendations on the ARRA funding, and answers questions like

• How is the stimulus funding being distributed over the five different government programs? (Title I, IDEA, Innovation fund, Ed Tech, SFSF)
• For each distribution, what are the potential uses for funds?
• How do the states match up on funding levels?
• What are the stipulations about how funds can't be used?
• What are the deadlines for committing funds?
• Why invest in professional development, and what are the features of effective PD?

"Planning the Possible" lays out the ARRA funding situation in clear terms, and identifies a range of ASCD programs, products, and services engineered to provide sustained, capacity-building professional development to elevate teacher effectiveness and improve student achievement.

The report is completely available online--check it out and let us know what you think. What's your district's PD area of focus or high need? What ARRA guidance hasn't been covered? How is your school or district already responding to the ARRA infusion? What future programming or services from ASCD would help your school or district's reform efforts?

Engaging Students in Learning

As many of you know, ASCD's Whole Child Initiative is based on the belief that students must be healthy, safe, engaged, supported, and challenged. Since we launched the Whole Child Web site just over two years ago, we have noticed the resources we've posted about engaging students have received the most traffic. We think this could be because most educators know that we need to engage students in learning, but they are having difficulty doing so in light of the mounting pressures of assessment and acocuntability.

To respond to this need, ASCD created a new e-book, Engaging the Whole Child: Reflections on Best Practices in Learning, Teaching, and Leadership, which is available for free download through May 6. The e-book includes a collection of articles from Educational Leadership by renowned authors such as Carol Ann Tomlinson, Richard Sagor, Nell Noddings, Thomas R. Guskey, and Allison Zmuda. The articles address how to inspire trust and confidence, deepen students' thinking, instill the desire to achieve, build on student interests, and more.

How do you engage students in learning? Share your thoughts here.

Struggling Teachers: Boot or Retrain?

In the April issue of Education Update, the article "Supporting Struggling Teachers" asks whether struggling teachers should get the boot or be retrained. Robyn Jackson, author of Never Work Harder Than Your Students and Other Principles of Great Teaching, says, "Teachers don't get have the option of getting rid of 'bad' kids, so why is our only solution to get rid of 'bad' teachers?" Some education experts and administrators say professional development, coaching, and mentoring can give underperforming teachers the tools they need to improve.

What do you think—should they stay, or should they go? How can you help teachers who struggle in the classroom?

[Bonus: Check out this new report (PDF) from the National Commission on Teaching and America's Future on how best to retain inexperienced new teachers with learning teams.]

Chapter 2: The Art & Science of Teaching

Summary

After identifying key learning goals, the teacher must then figure out the activities or network of activities—what Marzano calls critical input experiences—students need to achieve those goals. Marzano suggests the general framework of the following:

• previewing;

• division of students into groups;

• chunking information in ways that require students to describe, discuss, and make predictions;

• asking inferential questions;

• recording information in various forms of notes; and

• reflecting on the learning.

Stuck in My Head: The Power of Narrative

Figure 2.1 on page 32 says it all, doesn't it?

Effects of Different Types of Learning Experiences in Nuthall's Research

Type of Experience	Percent of Information Recalled One Year After Completion of Unit
Visual Instruction	77
Dramatic Instruction	57
Verbal Instruction	53
Source: Data from Nuthall, 1999; Nuthall & Alton-Lee, 1995.

I've got a thing for narrative as an English teacher, of course, and so this tidbit isn’t enough for me. Check out Daniel Willingham's column on the neuroscience behind the power of narrative. I give this link to almost everyone I talk to eventually—no kidding. I'm also kicking around researching something along these lines for a doctorate someday.

Playing It Out

I'd like to focus here on a central concept of the chapter: group work.

Classroom Instruction That Works for the 21st Century Learner

ASCD's best-selling book Classroom Instruction That Works and it's nine core instructional strategies have influenced instruction around the world and spawned spin-offs focusing on assessment and grading, classroom management, English language learners, and technology.  

If you could help rewrite Classroom Instruction That Works today, what would you change?

Would you include more guidance for working with different learning styles and types of learners? How administrators can use CITW? Give more attention to 21st century learning skills like communication, collaboration, and innovation? Or . . . ?

If you're using CITW, let us know what you think. And if you've blogged on CITW or have a Web site you rely on for practical information for using the CITW framework, send us the link!

Marzano: "I Can Think of No Strategy Every Teacher Should Use"

This post is Bob Marzano's response to our teacher-blogger Dina Strasser's analysis of Chapter One of Marzano's The Art and Science of Teaching.

My overarching comment is that the title "art and science of teaching" is meant to convey the message that research only gets you so far and then teachers' reasoned adaptations must take over. All research is equivocal at least to some extent, and its application to new situations must be discussed and debated.

Regarding the issue of rewards, that's a tough one. People seem to be lined up strongly on one side or the other of the issue. On page 16 of the book, I said, "It is safe to say, however, that when used appropriately verbal rewards and perhaps also tangible rewards can positively affect student achievement," which I believe is a fair and accurate interpretation of the research. My intent wasn't to say that all teachers should use rewards. However, it was to say that it's not prudent to ban them either. I included the long quote by Deci, Ryan, and Koestner, however, to allow people to read the concerns of the major researchers in the field.

On the issue of setting goals and tracking student progress, I think the research is less equivocal. I find it hard to make a case that it's not a practice that all teachers should consider. We have done quite a few experimental/control studies on this practice and have received very good results. These studies will be posted on a new Web site going up in a few weeks; I'll provide a link soon.