Download Learning Progressions: Supporting Instruction and Formative

Learning Progressions:
Supporting Instruction and
Formative Assessment
Margaret Heritage
Center on Continuous Instructional
Improvement
Meeting on Advancing Research on Adaptive
Instruction and Formative Assessment
February 21-22, 2008
Philadelphia, PA
Overview
• Current descriptions of learning
• Learning progressions
• A Possible Example
• Moving forward
Plus Ça Change, Plus C'est la Même
Chose
“the teaching and learning of structure, rather
than the simple mastery of facts and techniques,
is at the center of the classic problem of
transfer…if learning is to render later learning
easier, it must do so by providing a general
picture in terms of which the relations between
things encountered earlier and later are made as
clear as possible” (Bruner, 1960:12)
What Pictures of Learning
Do Teachers Currently
Have?
Standards
“
…do not describe how students
learn in ways that are
maximally useful for
curriculum and instruction”
(NCR, 2001:256).
…..and assessment.
Scope and Sequence
• Specify procedural
objectives to be mastered
at each grade
• Discrete objectives and not
connected to each other in
a larger network of
organizing concepts
(NRC, 2000)
Units
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• Units are often not
connected to each
other in a
coherent vision for
the progressive
acquisition of
concepts and
skills
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Formative Assessment
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• An ongoing
process to close
the gap between
the learner’s
current state and
desired goals
Features of Formative Assessment
• Elicit evidence about student learning
• Provide feedback to teachers and
students about learning
• Use feedback to adjust instruction and
learning tactics in real time
• Involve students actively in their learning
What are Learning
Progressions?
Masters & Forster (1997:1)
“A description of skills, understanding
and knowledge in the sequence in
which they typically develop: a picture
of what it means to ‘improve’ in an
area of learning.”
Wilson & Bertenthal (2005:3)
“Descriptions of successively more
sophisticated ways of thinking about an idea
that follow one another as students learn:
they lay out in words and examples what it
means to move toward more expert
understanding.”
Stevens et al., (2007:2 )
“They represent not only how knowledge
and understanding develops, but also
predict how knowledge builds over
time.”
What the Definitions Share
• Vertical development over an extended period of
time
• Learning is envisioned as a development of
progressive sophistication in understanding and
skills within a domain
• No references to grade or age level expectations
• Learning is conceived as a sequence or
continuum of increasing expertise
Examples of Learning Progressions
• A Counting and Ordering Process Map, (Masters & Forster, 1997)
• The U.K. National Curriculum in History (Qualifications and
Curriculum Authority, 2007)
• Stages of Listening Comprehension and Speaking Skills (Bailey &
Heritage, 2008)
• Stages of Spelling (Gillet & Temple, 2000)
• A Developmental Model for Learning Functions (Kalchman &
Koedinger, 2005)
• FAST trajectory (Shavelson, Stanford Educational Assessment
Laboratory (SEAL) & Curriculum Research & Development Group,
2005)
• A Conceptual Flow for Genetics (DiRanna & Topps, 2005)
• Progression of Molecular-Atomic Theory (Smith, Wiser, Anderson &
Krajcik, 2006)
Progressions Differ In:
• The time span of the development
of increased sophistication in
knowledge, skills and
understanding
• The level of detail or granularity
The U.K. National Curriculum in History
(Qualifications and Curriculum Authority, 2007)
• Starts at a rudimentary level (e.g., students
recognizing the distinction between present and
past in their own and other people's lives)
• Increasing sophistication to highest level ( e.g.,
students using factual knowledge and concepts
to analyze the relationships between events,
people and changes, and between the features
of different past societies and cultures)
• Levels linked to national system of attainment
The U.K. National Curriculum in History
(Qualifications and Curriculum Authority, 2007)
• A program of study
• Links to other domains ( e.g., ICT,
Reading, Speaking and Listening)
• Profiles of work
The U.K. National Curriculum in History
(Qualifications and Curriculum Authority, 2007)
• Enables teachers to keep the big picture
in mind
• Connect prior and successive learning to
students’ current focus
• Enough detail to establish goals
• Map formative assessment opportunities
onto goals
• Know what to teach next
QCA, 2007
Constructing Learning
Progressions
Top-Down
• Experts in the domain
(e.g., physicists,
mathematicians,
historians)
Ç
• Other experts such as
development
specialists
• Domain and research
knowledge
Bottom-Up
• Involves curriculum
content experts and
teachers
Ç
• Progression is based
on their experience of
teaching children
• Content knowledge,
their views of what is
best taught when,
and their knowledge
of children's learning
How To Do It?
Research centers
could be charged
with convening the
appropriate
experts to produce
a synthesis of the
best available
scientific evidence
of how students
learn in particular
domains of the
curriculum" (NRC,
“
2001:256 ).
How To Do It?
“…findings from
cognitive research
cannot always be
directly translated
into classroom
practice" (NRC,
2001:258).
Research syntheses
would need to be
couched in ways
that are useful for
practitioners
(NRC,2001).
How To Do It?
Until there is a
sufficiently well
developed research
base to inform
learning
progressions in
each domain, we
need other
strategies for
figuring out
learning
progressions
(Herman, 2006).
Bringing Them Together
Structure of disciplinary knowledge
Iterative Validation Research
Structure of curricular progressions
Empirical Verification
“Well-tested ideas about learning progressions
could provide much needed guidance for both
the design of instructional sequences and largescale and classroom-based assessments” (NRC,
2007: 8-6).
Research That Helps
• Studies on the ways in which student
understanding of the big ideas of science
develop over time and the ways in which
students represent their understanding of these
ideas as they develop competence (NRC, 2005)
• Rand Reading Study Group (2002) called for
more research on reading comprehension
Our Students and Teachers Deserve No Less
How
Margaret Heritage
[email protected]