Consider the following quiz question: In 1492, Christopher Columbus sailed into the Americas. Describe what Columbus encountered when he went ashore.
Although it asks students to do more than select the correct answer or fill in a blank, the question posed above only exercises a student's ability to recall and recite what was studied in class. Such a question (a Level 1) does not require students to apply what they've learned, said Eleanor Reneé Rodriguez, adding that a better one (a Level 2) would, among other things, ask students to reason or compare, as in the following question:
Explain why Christopher Columbus might have been disappointed rather than excited when he discovered America.
Even better, continued Rodriguez, is a question such as the following that requires students to evaluate, imagine, and speculate (a Level 3):
How might U.S. history have been changed if, rather than discovering America, Christopher Columbus discovered what he had hoped to in 1492?
Asking teachers to analyze the kinds of questions they ask their students is a key step is helping them create better tools for assessing student learning, according to Rodriguez. Most teachers, she stated, write test items that fall into the Level 1 or 2 categories. "We need to help teachers create Level 3 questions," she said, because these require students to use and develop higher-order thinking skills.
Posing only Level 1 questions may suggest to students that the teacher doesn't think they're capable of applying what they've learned. Conversely, Rodriguez said, when a teacher asks higher-order thinking questions, she's using an instructional strategy that tells students she expects them to extend their thinking and put their knowledge to work.
There are other instructional strategies that help teachers "get the results they want" in the classroom, Rodriguez noted. She urged teachers to use the Teacher Expectations and Student Achievement (TESA) characteristics as a guide. This list of behaviors "exhibited by teachers in classrooms that have had successful results" was originally published in 1972 and is still valuable today, Rodriguez affirmed. (For more information, visit the Web site of the Los Angeles County Office of Education at .)
The TESA list is "designed to help teachers fight their own biases," she said. Research has shown that teachers will often behave differently toward perceived "high" students than toward perceived "low" students, Rodriguez said. The potential for such favoritism is offset, however, if a teacher chooses to consistently use the TESA behaviors in the classroom, with all students.
And equity is the point. The instructional approaches presented in her session can help reverse the trend of low achievement in urban schools, Rodriguez contended. But, as she stressed, there are low achievers in all schools, and "these strategies can be applied by all teachers to improve teaching and learning."