ACADEMIC RIGORDEFINED & DESCRIBED WITH BEST PRACTICES

PREPARED BY SUSANNE C. ASHBY, PHD & LAURA GOVIA

INTRODUCTION TO ACADEMIC RIGOR

• Term typically identified with high school curriculum and instruction • Success of high school students in a postsecondary learning

environment• Now linked to US community colleges which have touted for

years an open-door policy for admittance, but have struggled with balancing unrealistic student expectations and ill-prepared students with academic rigor

PURPOSE

• Define academic rigor• Discuss academic rigor • Identify best practices that will increase rigor across

programs @ PTC• Start a campus dialog

ACADEMIC RIGOR DEFINED

• An accessible curriculum that challenges students to increase their knowledge, expand and hone their skill sets (such as writing), develop complex reasoning, and strengthen their critical thinking skills (Arum & Roksa, 2014; Arnett, 2006, Blackburn, 2013; Marzano & Toth, 2014)• “A demanding, yet accessible curriculum that engenders

critical-thinking skills as well as content knowledge” (Quint, Thompson & Bald, 2008, p. 48).

ACADEMIC RIGOR DEFINITION INCLUDES

• These definitions also include:• Creating a learning environment with expectations that students will

learn and demonstrate their learning at high levels (Blackburn, 2013, Marzano & Toth, 2015)• Maintaining a curriculum that offers content along with critical

thinking (Arum & Roksa, 2014; Hechinger Institute, 2009; Marzano & Toth, 2015; Pathways, 2004)• Providing students with the academic support they need to

successfully address the learning challenges without developing paralyzing frustration (Blackburn, 2013; Marzano & Toth, 2015; Pathways, 2004)

ACADEMIC RIGOR & THE CURRICULUM

A rigorous curriculum offers learning opportunities • to acquire new concepts and to apply them with deeper

comprehension• to think analytically, and • to write across the disciplines

ACADEMIC RIGOR & THE CURRICULUM

A rigorous curriculum also maintains• student learning outcomes and benchmarks be established

for programs or gate-keeping courses• course requirements, course expectations, student learning

outcomes, and grading standards

FOUNDATIONS OF COLLEGE READINESSCognitive Capabilities:• analysis • Interpretation• precision and accuracy• problem solving• reasoning skills• writing skills• content knowledge specific to a discipline

FOUNDATIONS OF COLLEGE READINESSMetacognitive Capabilities• self-management • time management • study skills • self-awareness • self-control• persistence • “awareness of one’s true performance”• being able to identify and appropriately select from among a range

of learning strategies AND to transfer those learning strategies from familiar to unfamiliar situations

THE STUDENTS WE SERVE• Students come to college

unprepared for a rigorous curriculum• Students are spending less

time per week studying than in previous years• Students have unrealistic

expectations regarding their own ability to work successfully at the postsecondary level

The research has acknowledged that students can learn to change their beliefs about learning in which an emphasis on effort and responsibility are cultivated within the learning environment (Marzano, 2001).

REQUISITES OF A 21ST CENTURY EDUCATION• Provide your students with many and varied opportunities to: • demonstrate their knowledge• show how they can apply their knowledge in different, new and

unfamiliar settings• engage in an instructional setting where they share responses,

verbalize their reasoning, or demonstrate through a hands-on activity • engage in real world, application-based assessments or

assessment projects that require higher order thinking skills• be held accountable for demonstration of their own

understandings • take ownership of their own learning

BALANCE IN CURRICULUM:TEACHER-CENTERED WITH STUDENT-CENTERED TASKS

TEACHER-CENTERED TASKS• Identifying critical information• Practicing skills, processes

and strategies• Chunking content into

digestible bites and • Reviewing content

STUDENT-CENTERED TASKS• Examining errors in their own

reasoning• Engaging in cognitively complex

tasks and authentic tasks• Revising knowledge, and• Collaboratively solving problems

HALLMARKS OF A RIGOROUS COURSE/ CURRICULUM

• Student work is assessed both by a classroom instructor and outside experts;• Standards and expectations are high and known to all

students;• Assessments are comprehensive and well aligned to learning

outcomes;• Focus is on both content and critical thinking.

• Hechinger Institute, Columbia University (2009)

RIGOR AND THE INSTRUCTIONAL ENVIRONMENT

Building rigor into instruction

is an intentional act.

RIGOR AND THE INSTRUCTIONAL ENVIRONMENT

Marzano & Toth’s (2015) 13 Essential Strategies for Rigorous Instruction:• Identifying Critical Content• Learning/Previewing new content• Organizing students to interact with content• Helping students process content• Helping students elaborate on content• Helping students record and represent knowledge• Managing response rates with tiered questioning techniques

RIGOR AND THE INSTRUCTIONAL ENVIRONMENT

Marzano & Toth’s (2015) 13 Essential Strategies for Rigorous Instruction:• Reviewing content• Helping students practice skills, strategies, and processes• Helping students examine similarities and differences• Helping students examine their reasoning• Helping students revise knowledge• Helping students engage in cognitively complex tasks

4 TYPES OF QUESTIONS FOR USE IN INSTRUCTION1) Detail Questions: Asking questions about important details.2) Category Questions: Asking students to identify examples.3) Elaborating Questions: Require students to make inferences.4) Evidence Questions: Identify sources and examine reasoning.

INSTRUCTIONAL EXPERIENCES THAT ENGAGE LEARNERS

Learning experiences that truly engage learners commonly hold these attributes:• Authenticity, • Relevance to life situations or workplace contexts, • Interdisciplinary nature (whenever possible), • Cognitively stimulating (which leads to high motivation due to a

lack of tedium or ordinariness), • Mix of collaborative and individual problem solving, and • Incorporation of the full range of the cognitive taxonomy.

INSTRUCTION THAT SUPPORTS STUDENT LEARNING• Intentionally scaffold lessons so that conceptual building growth occurs.• Consistently organize your instructional materials to provide clear directions,

examples, and demonstrations of tasks, outcomes and expectations.• Be available to assist your students or maintain a close working relationship

with the College’s Tutoring Center in order to better facilitate assistance for your students, so that they are not consumed with frustration or left on their own to feel overwhelmed by an assignment.• Content knowledge is made relevant to students’ experiences, interests, and

backgrounds, and delivered in a manner that students can relate to easily.• Establish relationships with your students that let them know you see them as

unique individuals.

RIGOR AND ASSESSMENT

The fourth principle of the nine Principles of Good Practice for Assessing Student Learning (Astin, et al., 1992) stresses the role of formative assessment in meeting student learning outcomes:

Assessment requires attention to outcomes, but also and EQUALLY

to the experiences that lead to those outcomes.

2 BASIC TYPES OF ASSESSMENT: FORMATIVEFormative Assessment• Goal: The goal of formative assessment is to monitor student

learning to provide ongoing feedback that can be used by instructors to improve their teaching and by students to improve their learning. • Provides the immediate, contextualized feedback useful for helping

teacher and student during the learning process• Provides information needed to adjust teaching and learning during

instruction • Serves as practice for the student and a check for understanding during

the learning process• Guides teachers in making decisions about future instruction

2 BASIC TYPES OF ASSESSMENT: SUMMATIVESummative• Goal to evaluate student learning at the end of an

instructional unit by comparing it against some standard or benchmark.• Provides information regarding student’s overall performance or

acquisition of concepts, skills and processes • Serves as a final evaluation of student’s learning experiences

EMPHASIZE FORMATIVE OR SUMMATIVE?

Formative• Occurs when teachers

provide feedback to students in ways that enable the student to learn better• Occurs when students can

engage in a similar, self-reflective process

Summative• Summarizes student

learning at some point in time• Shapes how teachers

organize their coursesIf the primary purpose of assessment is

to support high-quality learning, then formative assessment ought to be understood

asthe most important assessment practice.

SUGGESTED GUIDELINES FOR FORMATIVE ASSESSMENT1) Formative assessments should contain feedback, not grades2) Feedback should be specific and analytic rather than holistic 3) Feedback on assignments should be given as quickly as possible to encourage

better performance4) Feedback should encourage higher order thinking skills through a balance of

questions and observations related to the student’s work 5) Students should be aware of their learning/work as a process (this means that all

assessments should be explicitly linked and feedback should focus on improving skills for the next assignment)

6) Faculty may also ask students to respond to the feedback in a variety of ways: answering questions the instructor poses in response to the student’s work evaluating the instructor’s suggestions for improvement stating how they plan to address their areas for improvement

SUGGESTED GUIDELINES FOR SUMMATIVE ASSESSMENT• Should be assigned after due deliberation of the students’

abilities to succeed• Students may be asked to write a reflection of their learning

process as part of the summative assessment• Faculty may consider reporting the grade on the assessment

after the student has responded to the feedback• Summative assessments given during the course of a

semester should contain the same quality of feedback as formative assessments

DELICATE BALANCE

Since students and faculty are working within time constraints:

Quality of learning X Rate of learning

RIGOR IN ASSESSMENT

• Rigor in assessment is established by our expectations: how we evaluate and score student work. • Rigor is established by the three different elements of

assessment:• The difficulty of the task or questions;• The difficulty of the criteria, as established by rubrics;• The level of achievement expected, as set by ‘anchors’ or cut scores.

Grant Wiggins, 2014

STUDENT LEARNING ASSESSMENT PROCESS INFORMS ACADEMIC RIGOR

Web source: http://www.sfccmo.edu/pages/1499.asp

ACADEMIC RIGOR: WHAT DOES IT ALL MEAN?• What does this information mean for you • as an individual educator?• as part of a faculty team?• as part of this college?

• How can we best check for rigor across:• the curriculum? • instruction? • assessment?

• How can we best document our academic rigor?• Next steps?