|
September 2004
| Volume 62 | Number 1
Teaching for Meaning
I Had This Teacher . . .
Marge Scherer
To See Beyond the Lesson
Jacqueline Grennon Brooks
Teaching for meaning means preparing students for the world beyond school, fostering deep understandings of content areas, offering curriculum with both depth and breadth, and leading students to develop the disposition to want to achieve. Although educators would agree with these lofty goals, they often balk at the idea of teaching for meaning, citing lack of time and pressure to teach to the test. But test preparation is no synonym for teaching. Only solid instructional practices, such as constructivism, concept mapping, and problem-based learning, can help create classrooms that focus on making meaning.
Knowledge Alive
David Perkins
The author asserts that schools need to spend less time exposing students to large volumes of knowledge, and more time teaching them the diverse skills involved in handling knowledge well—the knowledge arts. He discusses four aspects of knowledge: creating it, communicating it, organizing it, and acting on it. Typical schooling would receive a grade of B in communicating knowledge, but only a C on organizing knowledge, and D's in both creating knowledge and acting on knowledge. The article provides examples of classrooms that enliven teaching and learning through the knowledge arts, and asserts that the knowledge arts constitute a second curriculum for which teachers should be held accountable.
The Engaged Classroom
Sam M. Intrator
Intrator—who “shadowed” and interviewed many high school students—gives colorful descriptions of teens' actual emotions and behaviors during classtime. He categorizes various types of non-engaged behavior (such as “slow time,” “fake time,” and “worry time”). The article then discusses the “holy grail” of engaged student time and how to achieve it. Intrator describes teacher behaviors he witnessed—from working the room like a deejay to offering quietly authentic and personal presence—that lead to true student engagement.
You Can Teach for Meaning
Jay McTighe, Elliott Seif and Grant Wiggins
Is teaching for meaning impractical in the real world of content standards and high-stakes testing? Teachers seem to think so as they devote greater amounts of time to practicing for the test and covering large amounts of facts and figures that hold out a promise of proficiency. The authors debunk two prevailing misconceptions, that covering tested items and test format is the only way to safeguard or raise test scores and that breadth of coverage is preferable to a deeper and more focused approach to content.
The authors cite innumerable studies that show that teaching for meaning actually raises achievement, from the TIMSS to research in learning and cognition to studies on mathematics reform curriculums to studies conducted in various schools and districts throughout the United States.
Teaching for meaning and understanding raises achievement by focusing on “big ideas,” by requiring students to use high-level problem solving skills within authentic contexts, and by creating meaningful and effective assessments. Using this “uncoverage” approach—focusing on fewer topics and core understandings—teachers can avoid the twin problems of aimless coverage and activity-oriented instruction.
Facts or Critical Thinking Skills? — What NAEP Results Say
Harold Wenglinsky
By measuring the relationship between specific instructional practices and student performance on higher-order test items from the National Assessment of Educational Progress, the author compares the effectiveness of teaching for meaning and teaching basic skills. His analyses show that “across subjects, teaching for meaning is associated with higher NAEP test scores.” He draws a distinction, however, among various subject areas. In mathematics and science, test scores suggest an advantage for teaching for meaning in the early grades. In reading and civics, the author's analyses suggest a more linear approach. Basic skills instruction is helpful as students learn basic decoding and fluency, but teaching for meaning is more effective in promoting reading comprehension. In civics, scores suggest teaching factual content first, and then giving students opportunities to apply that content in the middle grades through more hands-on activities such as service learning. The author also points out that federal policy under NCLB now intervenes in state and local curriculum choices in favor of basic skills and against teaching for meaning.
Snapshots of Meaning-Making Classrooms
Jacqueline Ancess
In today's education environment of accountability and high-stakes testing, the goal of helping students make personal meaning seems to have almost disappeared from the landscape. Educators, Ancess writes, must recommit themselves to teaching and learning for meaning. She describes classrooms that successfully engage at-risk, urban high school students in personal meaning making. In these classrooms, teachers encourage students to rigorously explore powerful ideas from multiple perspectives and sources. Necessary schoolwide conditions for teaching and learning for meaning making include a strong teacher ethos and mission; trust in teacher judgment; organization of the curriculum into meaningful units; and an infrastructure that provides the support students need.
Reading and Rewriting History
Sam Wineburg and Daisy Martin
More than ever in this digital age, students need to be able to effectively assess the trustworthiness of the printed word, from Web site content to textbooks to an enormous variety of primary and secondary resources. History and social studies classes in particular should focus on teaching the interpretive and evidentiary nature of history. Because, as the authors point out, “The ability to judge the quality of information can no longer be considered extra credit.” A National Science foundation-funded project called PATHS—Promoting Argumentation Through History and Science— helps elementary school students understand the nature of evidence in history and science. In a 5th grade unit on Pocahontas and John Smith, students compare and contrast conflicting narratives that surface in several primary sources. They debate various historians' interpretations and “rewrite” the account to more accurately reflect the facts and ultimately learn lifelong critical thinking skills.
Using Technology to Dig for Meaning
Stone Wiske
Wiske discusses the pressing need for agreed-upon criteria to judge effective teaching practice—and to evaluate which new digital technologies truly enhance teaching. She proposes the Teaching for Understanding framework, developed at Harvard, as an answer to both needs. The five elements of the framework provide a guide for curriculum development and explicit criteria to evaluate the quality of planning and teaching. Wiske asserts that digital technology, used well, greatly enhances teaching for meaning. Examples of teachers using the World Wide Web, computer simulations, electronic portfolios, and other applications with different grade levels and subjects illustrate her claim.
Launching Self-Directed Learners
Arthur L. Costa and Bena Kallick
Schools can cultivate internally motivated learners by making self-directed learning an explicit outcome for students and by establishing effective feedback systems. Self-directed learners are self-managing, self-monitoring, and self-modifying. To hone these characteristics, lesson units and learning activities should challenge students to engage in rich tasks that require complex thinking and provide opportunities to practice self-directedness and self-assessment. A group of high school students creates TV ads promoting the various candidates in a class project related to the presidential election. Checklists, rubrics, and class discussion promote self-awareness. An elementary school writing program encourages students to reflect on their thinking and their capabilities as writers. Classroom experiences such as these facilitate individual meaning making and self-directed learning.
Projects That Power Young Minds
Judy Harris Helm
Helm contrasts teacher-controlled “crafts”-type projects traditionally pushed in preschool and early grades with more complex, thought-provoking projects. Quality projects are inspired by children's questions and draw on diverse learning areas and thinking skills, according to Helm. She cites research to show child-initiated projects lead to practice in foundational academic skills, like reading in the content areas, and boost achievement long-term. The article outlines the three phases through which teachers can channel complex project work. Helm alerts teachers on ways to hold projects to high standards while keeping them fun and true to students' passions.
Inquiring Scientists Want to Know
Alan Colburn
Too much science instruction relies on “cookbook”-oriented experiments that provide students with a scientific question, the procedure to address the question, the expected results of the experiment, and even an interpretation of those results. By contrast, inquiry-based instruction—a teaching practice that encourages students to learn inductively with the help of real-world exemplars—gives students more freedom to come up with a question to investigate, devise an experimental procedure, and decide how to interpret the results. As a result, inquiry-based teaching hones students' skills in critical thinking and independent problem solving and fosters authentic discovery and debate. The three different kinds of inquiry-based instruction—structured, guided, and open—reflect varying degrees of student decision making, and thus make it relatively easy to gradually implement inquiry-based teaching in the classroom.
The Art of Changing the Brain
James E. Zull
Neurological research has shown us that learning produces physical changes in the brain. This concept represents a new way to look at both learning and neuroscience. Earlier models of the brain viewed it as a fixed structure with the learning wiring already in place. Now, scientists talk about the brain being “plastic,” meaning that it is molded and reshaped by our experiences. The author describes research showing how the brain changes in response to practice and emotion.
He suggests three additional approaches based on the way the brain works. First, teachers should avoid explanations because other methods, such as demonstrations, metaphors, and stories, allow students to build on their own neurological networks. Second, teachers should view student errors as tools to identify the nature of students' incomplete networks and to provide ideas for building on those networks. Finally, teachers should engage several regions of the brain in learning, which will result in deeper learning.
A Time and a Place for Authentic Learning
Joseph S. Renzulli, Marcia Gentry and Sally M. Reis
To counteract the increased focus on test preparation, numerous schools across the United States have developed the enrichment cluster concept to provide students with challenging hands-on authentic learning. Teachers develop enrichment clusters on the basis of their own strengths and interests. Students then select the topic that has the most appeal. Clusters focus on a specific real-world problem and challenge students to identify relevant information, critically analyze that information, and effectively communicate the results by producing a particular product or service. The problems that students tackle in enrichment clusters generally differ from the rote material that often characterizes more traditional education settings. The student becomes a first-hand inquirer and the teacher resembles a combination of coach, resource procurer, mentor, and guide. Key questions that focus on activities, methods, resources, products, and audience determine the content of an enrichment cluster and help students understand how professionals effectively resolve problems in their areas of expertise.
Landscapes for Learning
Cathy Cochrane
Cochrane describes “Campus Calgary,” a project-based learning program that lets Calgary elementary students spend a week on-site at one of several community agencies—from a wildlife sanctuary to a homeless shelter—learning hands-on from adults working in the agency. Team teaching between classroom teachers and experts at the site ensures that what children learn that week is connected to their classroom curriculum for the school year. Expressive writing and drawing are a major part of each experience. Cochrane includes research results showing how participation in Campus Calgary improved students' writing skills—and impressive examples of the children's writing.
Why Assessment Illiteracy Is Professional Suicide
W. James Popham
The Eroding Curriculum
Deborah Perkins-Gough
New Year, New Goals
Thomas R. Hoerr
The First Day of School
Joanne Rooney
Teach Mathematics Right the First Time
Steve Leinwand and Steve Fleischman
Reviews
ASCD Community in Action
Web Wonders / Teaching for Meaning
Naomi Thiers
EL Study Guide / Teaching for Meaning
Naomi Thiers
Copyright © 2004 by Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development
|