Paving the road to a 21st century learning system

Ohio ASCD – June 2010

Beth RatwaySenior Consultant – 21st Century Learning

Learning Point Associates

When the question: 'What's new?' is pursued at the expense of all other questions, what follows in its wake is often an endless flood of trivia and fashion. I wish to be

concerned with the question: 'What is best?' for this question cuts deeply, rather than broadly sweeping over

everything."

Robert Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

MY MANTRA

Who are you

Please introduce yourself:• Name• Where you work• What is your role at work (teacher,

administrator, student etc)• What is 21st century learning?

Our goals• To examine a 21st century framework for

learning• To begin to think about how to connect

standards to instruction using a 21st century framework for learning

• To share resources and tools to help create 21st century learning systems

Which goal should we focus our time on?

To think about: • How do we find ourselves reflected in this

work?• How can we use this framework to foster cross

curricular conversations?–How do we know our students learn this skill?–How do we measure the skill?–What types of authentic products show this?

• What is the 21st century purpose for curriculum?

Connecting to the bigger picture

• Race to the Top• ESEA Blueprint for reform• Common Core State Standards• Assessment Consortia

ARRA 4 Assurances

Support Effective Teachers and School

Leaders

Support Effective Teachers and School

Leaders

Improve theUse of DataImprove theUse of Data

Complement the Implementation of High

Standards and High-Quality Assessments

Complement the Implementation of High

Standards and High-Quality Assessments

Turn Around Persistently Low-Performing Schools,

Whole-School Reform, and Targeted

Approaches to Reform

Turn Around Persistently Low-Performing Schools,

Whole-School Reform, and Targeted

Approaches to Reform

What does this mean?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oRBchZLkQR0

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Current National DebateCOMMON CORE STATE

STANDARDSOHIO ACADEMIC

CONTENT STANDARDS

NATIONAL ASSESSMENT CONSORTIA

OHIO ACHIEVEMENT TESTS, OGT, PERFORMANCE ASSESSMENT

PILOT

Are we REALLY addressing the needs of our children?

What is 21st century learning

“Developing skills and habits of mind that allow people to actively participate and create

solutions that serve personal needs” (Sessums, 2009, p.1).

What is it students need to know and be able to do in the 21st century?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMcfrLYDm2U

How do 21st century students learn?STUDENTS

• Students come to the classroom with preconceptions about how the world works. If their initial understanding is not engaged, they may fail to grasp the new concepts and information that are taught, or they may learn them for purposes of a test but revert to their preconceptions outside the classroom.

• To develop competence in an area of inquiry, students must: (a) have a deep foundation of factual knowledge, (b) understand facts and ideas in the context of a conceptual framework, and (c) organize knowledge in ways that facilitate retrieval and application.

• A "metacognitive" approach to instruction can help students learn to take control of their own learning by defining learning goals and monitoring their progress in achieving them.

TEACHERS• Teachers must draw out and work with the

preexisting understanding that their students bring with them.

• Teachers must teach some subject matter in depth, providing many examples in which the same concept is at work and providing a firm foundation off actual knowledge.

• The teaching of metacognitive skills should be integrated into the curriculum in a variety of subject areas.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hF2LSjMlC4I

An International Model for Education in the 21st Century

http://atc21s.org/Assets/Files/db85f4fb-e589-40a3-8d08-cc60dfd2a73a.pdf

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Core Subjects & 21st Century Themes

Standards & Assessment

Information, Media, and Tech Skills

Curriculum & Instruction

Professional Development

Learning Environments

Learning and Innovation Skills

Life & Career Skills

Partnership for 21st Century Skills

RELEVANCE

RIGOR

Catalina Foothills

How can make this a reality in our schools?

21st Century Skills Framework

Building a road to 21st century learningMain Ingredients: There are 6 essential elements for building a

concrete road to learning (stronger and more resilient and resistant to change than asphalt)

• Cement– Standards– Assessments– Curriculum – Instruction

• Concrete (add)– Professional development – Learning environments

Process:– Clear the land– Level the path – Survey – Pave

Building the Road

The Ingredients

Framework

• Define• Guiding principles• Promising Practices• Places to start from

ReflectionStandards

+

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Curriculum and Instruction+

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Assessment+

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Professional Development+

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Standards• Focus on 21st century skills, content knowledge

and expertise• Build understanding across and among core

subjects as well as 21st century interdisciplinary themes

• Emphasize deep understanding rather than shallow knowledge

• Engage students with the real world data, tools and experts they will encounter in college, on the job, and in life; students learn best when actively engaged in solving meaningful problems

• Allow for multiple measures of mastery

Guiding Recommendations• Integrate 21st century skills into core academic

subject standards.• Integrate 21st century themes into core subject

area standards, where appropriate.• Make standards inch-wide and mile-deep.• Incorporate 21st century technology literacy and

tools where appropriate into standards.• Make standards observable and measurable.• Make standards useful and accessible.• Ensure standards are an integrated component of

curriculum, assessment and professional development.

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Life

and

Care

er Sk

ills

Lear

ning

and

Inno

vatio

n Sk

ills

Mathematics

ELA

Science

Social Studies

Are there currently intersections?

Should there be intersections?

At what level(s):• State Standards/Benchmarks• District Curriculum• Classroom

Info

rmati

on M

edia

& T

echn

olog

y Ski

lls

21st C

entu

ry T

hem

es

Promising Practices

• WestVirginia’s Teach 21Web site: Teach 21 is a comprehensive Web resource designed by teachers working collaboratively with the West Virginia Department of Education. The site assists colleagues in planning and delivering effective 21st century instruction in West Virginia classrooms. The site links West Virginia Content Standards and Objectives for every grade and subject to sample lesson plans, formative assessments and a variety of teacher tools. http://wvde.state.wv.us/teach21

Standards• 21st Century Skills Maps: While they are not

standards documents, the Partnership for 21st Century Skills has worked with the national content groups to create a series of awareness-raising tools that illustrate the intersection between the core academic subjects and 21st century skills. To date, maps have been published in social studies, English language arts, science and geography. http://www.21stcenturyskills.org

• AASL standards • New technology standards

Curriculum and Instruction• Teaches 21st century skills discretely in the

context of core subjects and 21st century interdisciplinary themes

• Focuses on providing opportunities for applying 21st century skills across content areas and for a competency-based approach to learning

• Enables innovative learning methods that integrate the use of supportive technologies, inquiry- and problem-based approaches and higher order thinking skills

• Encourages the integration of community resources beyond school walls

Guiding Recommendations• Curriculum:

– Develop curricula for understanding.– Unpack the standards to articulate essential concepts and skills.– Build widespread consensus around the big ideas and essential

questions.– Use curriculum-embedded, performance-based, assessments– Commit to continuous improvement in 21st century curriculum

design processes.– Collaborate

• Instruction:– Use “Teach for Understanding” principles.– Create meaningful opportunities for student

demonstration/mastery of 21st century skills– Deliver learner-centered instruction that enables 21st century

skills– Reflect, refine and improve 21st century skills instruction

Promising Practices• Henrico County Public Schools in Virginia has pursued a

multi-year process to create and improve curriculum maps around 21st century learning. The process and samples are described here: http://bionicteaching.com/?p=1129

• Intel® Teach Elements: These short courses provide deeper exploration of 21st century learning concepts focusing on project based learning approaches. http://www.intel.com/education/elements/index.htm

Curriculum and Instruction

• Skill definitions• Content Maps• Route 21

Assessment• Supports a balance of assessments, including high-quality

standardized testing along with effective formative and summative classroom assessments

• Emphasizes useful feedback on student performance that is embedded into everyday learning

• Requires a balance of technology-enhanced, formative and summative assessments that measure student mastery of 21st century skills

• Enables development of portfolios of student work that demonstrate mastery of 21st century skills to educators and prospective employers

• Enables a balanced portfolio of measures to assess the educational system’s effectiveness in reaching high levels of student competency in 21st century skills

Guiding Recommendations• Build measurement of 21st century skills into large-scale

summative assessments.• Globally benchmark summative assessments.• Build 21st century skills into formative assessment strategies.• Create an aligned accountability system; all assessment

strategies should align with 21st century skills standards, professional development and curriculum and instruction.

• Consider ICT literacy assessment as a starting point Encourage and fund research and development around 21st century skills assessment.

• Create open repositories for assessment items and rubrics that help measure 21st century skills

Promising PracticesUse rubrics to evaluate 21st century skills.• Promising Practice: Catalina Foothills School District in

Arizona has a series of rubrics used to assess students in real time. Rubrics evaluate 21st century skills such as critical thinking, productivity, and self-direction.

• Promising Practice: Lawrence Township of Indiana currently uses rubrics to evaluate interactive communication and self-direction.

• Promising Practice: New Technology High School has implemented rubrics for evaluating peer collaboration and teamwork, work ethic and written communication.

http://www.p21.org/route21/

Assessment

• Performance Counts: Assessment Systems that Support High-Quality Learning

Professional development• Highlights ways teachers can seize opportunities for integrating 21st

century skills, tools and teaching strategies into their classroom practice — and help them identify what activities they can replace/de-emphasize

• Balances direct instruction with project-oriented teaching methods• Illustrates how a deeper understanding of subject matter can actually

enhance problem-solving, critical thinking, and other 21st century skills• Enables 21st century professional learning communities for teachers that

model the kinds of classroom learning that best promotes 21st century skills for students

• Cultivates teachers’ ability to identify students’ particular learning styles, intelligences, strengths and weaknesses

• Helps teachers develop their abilities to use various strategies (such as formative assessments) to reach diverse students and create environments that support differentiated teaching and learning

• Supports the continuous evaluation of students’ 21st century skills development

• Encourages knowledge sharing among communities of practitioners, using face-to-face, virtual and blended communications

• Uses a scalable and sustainable model of professional development

Guiding Recommendations• Develop intensive teacher professional development programs that

focus intentionally on 21st century skills instruction.• Integrate 21st century skills into teacher preparation and certification.• Build capacity.• Develop district leadership teams to infuse 21st century skills

throughout the school district.• Invest in ICT (information communications technologies) excellence.• Develop professional learning communities around specific 21st

century skills.• Train administrators around how to lead 21st century skills initiatives.• Offer professional development to state departments of education

staff.• Engage colleges of education for 21st century skills leadership.• Integrate 21st century skills into teaching standards.• Leverage the reach of the Web to distribute resources.

Promising Practices• Teacher Leader Capacity Building Model: Southfield Public Schools,

MI and Cypress Fairbanks ISD in Houston, TX are implementing capacity building professional development using the teacher leader model at selected schools in their districts. Teacher leaders and school-based coaches are working with ASCD Faculty members to develop expertise in specific instructional practices by participating in job-embedded professional development experiences. Teacher leaders are leading the professional learning of their colleagues and have their classrooms serve as demonstration classrooms. District leaders have played an integral role in assuring that there is effective professional development planning in place before and during the implementation, including gathering evidence of changes in teacher practice. http://www.ascd.org

• Authentic Intellectual Work Framework (Newmann, Secada, & Wehlage, 1995)

Learning Environments• Create learning practices, human support and physical

environments that will support the teaching and learning of 21st century skill outcomes

• Support professional learning communities that enable educators to collaborate, share best practices and integrate 21st century skills into classroom practice

• Enable students to learn in relevant, real world 21st century contexts (e.g., through project-based or other applied work)

• Allow equitable access to quality learning tools, technologies and resources

• Provide 21st century architectural and interior designs for group, team and individual learning

• Support expanded community and international involvement in learning, both face-to-face and online

Guiding Recommendations• Establish a 21st century vision for learning

environments in your state/district.• Ensure educational structures enable 21st

century skills.• Move toward flexible units of time that enable

project-based work, interdisciplinary themes and competency-based measures of student progress.

• Empower the “People Network” in learning environments.

Promising Practices

• The Build SF Institute's School-to-Career Program engages San Francisco students in architectural projects and internships that integrate real-life math, science, design and technology skills. http://www.edutopia.org/learning-design

Creating Effective Learning Communities• Learner-centered: Learner-centered environments pay careful attention to the knowledge, skills,

attitudes, and beliefs that learners bring to the educational setting. Teachers must realize that new knowledge is built on existing knowledge—students are not blank slates. Therefore, teachers need to uncover the incomplete understandings, false beliefs and naïve renditions of concepts that students have when they begin a course. If these are ignored, students may develop understandings very different from what the teacher intends them to gain.

• Knowledge-centered: Knowledge-centered environments take seriously the need to help students learn the well-organized bodies of knowledge that support understanding and adaptive expertise. Teachers are wise to point their students directly toward clear learning goals—to tell students exactly what knowledge they will be gaining, and how they can use that knowledge. In addition, a strong foundational structure of basic concepts will give students a solid base on which to build further learning.

• Assessment-centered: Assessment-centered environments provide frequent formal and informal opportunities for feedback focused on understanding, not memorization, to encourage and reward meaningful learning. Feedback is fundamental to learning, but feedback opportunities are often too scarce in classrooms. Students may receive grades on tests and essays, but these are summative assessments that occur at the end of projects. What are needed are formative assessments that provide students with opportunities to revise and improve the quality of their thinking and understanding. The goal is for students to gain meta-cognitive abilities to self-assess, reflect and rethink for better understanding.

• Community-centered: Community-centered environments foster norms for people learning from one another, and continually attempting to improve. In such a community, students are encouraged to be active, constructive participants. Further, they are encouraged to make—and then learn from—mistakes. Intellectual camaraderie fosters support, challenge and collaboration.

• The most effective learning environments contain all four of these interdependent

http://www.vanderbilt.edu/cft/resources/teaching_resources/theory/HPL.htm

Building the Road

The Process

Clear the land (Determine and focus on non-negotiables for learning)

• MILE guide (Partnership for 21st Century Skills, 2009

• 3 Circle Audit (Wiggins & McTighe, 2001)• Enduring Understandings Framework

(Wallingford Public Schools, 2007)

Key Questions

• What is it that students REALLY need to know and be able to do in the 21st Century?

• What are the non-negotiables for our curriculum?

• How do we make this manageable and meaningful?

Level the path (Create learning progressions)

• Defining Learning Progressions – Margaret Heritage

• 21st Century Curriculum Mapping (New Technology High School, 2010)

• P21 framework definitions

Learning ProgressionsLearning progressions describe in words and examples

what it means to move over time toward more expert understanding. Learning progressions depict successively more sophisticated ways of thinking about an idea that might reasonably follow one another as students earn. Learning progressions have been referred to by many different names, including progress variables, learning trajectories, progressions of developmental competence, and profile strands.

Learning progressions should be developed around the big ideas of a domain. These big ideas are the coherent foundation for the concepts, theories, principles, and explanatory schemes for phenomena in a discipline. (Pearson, Feb. 2010)

Learning Progressions• Progression over larger time units• Deepening of ideas and level of sophistication

(conceptual framework)• Change in terms of what kids can do over time

(performances)• Based on research on student learning • Progress along model from novice to expert-

notions- recognition - formulation- construction -generation

• Making connections- developing web of interconnected ideas

Key Questions

• What do we want someone to be able to do as a result of this – starting place for change

• Who knows how to do that in the world?• How did they learn to do it?

Survey (Create Assessments FOR and OF learning)

• Common Pre assessments• Common Rubrics• Ed Steps• Standards Passport

Key Questions

• How will we know when they learn it?• What kind of feedback do we need to help

them move from one level to the next?

Pave (Determine opportunities to learn – learning experiences)

• Keys to Learning Tool (Taylor, Dimino, Gellar, & Koontz, 2009)

• Inside Teaching (Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, 2006)

• Coalition of Essential Schools Northwest/Small Schools Project Instructional Framework (Coalition of Essential Schools Northwest/Small Schools Project, 2004)

Key Questions

• Where are the opportunities to learn?• What are the best practices in my field to

help them learn?• What do I need to learn to help my students?

Creating a Roadmap

Drive (Student Driver)

“Stop asking me if we’re almost there!We’re nomads, for crying out loud!”

My challenge to you:

During your work continually ask yourself –

How can we all work together towards this common purpose to prepare all kids for the

21st century?

The only man who is educated is the man who has learned how to learn...how to

adapt and change.

Carl Rogers, Freedom to learn, 1969

Beth Ratway

P: 630-649-6565 > F: 630-649-6700

E-Mail: beth.ratway@learningpt.org

1120 East Diehl Road, Suite 200Naperville, IL 60563-1486General Information: 800-356-2735

ResourcesBransford, John. How People Learn: Brain, Mind, Experience, and School. Washington, D.C.: National Academy, 2000.

Print.Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. (2006). Inside teaching: A living archive of practice. San Francisco,

CA: Author. Retrieved April 26, 2010, from http://gallery.carnegiefoundation.org/insideteaching/Coalition of Essential Schools Northwest/Small Schools Project. (2004). Instructional framework: Rigor, relevance,

relationship. Seattle, WA: Author. Retrieved April 22, 2010, from http://www.wsascd.org/07conf/judeg/instfrmwk.pdf

The College Board. (2010). Pre-AP: Preparing every student for college. New York: Author. Retrieved April 22, 2010, from http://professionals.collegeboard.com/k-12/prepare/pre-ap

Daggett, W. (1991). Rigor and relevance from concept to reality. New York: International Center for Leadership in Education.

Mid-continent Research for Education and Learning. (n.d.). PreK–12 standards: Keys to learning. Denver, CO: Author. Retrieved April 22, 2010, from http://www.mcrel.org/keystolearning/Default.aspx

Newmann, F. M., Secada, W. G., & Wehlage, G. G. (1995). A guide to authentic instruction and assessment: Vision, standards and scoring. Madison, WI: Wisconsin Center for Education Research.

New Technology High School. (2010). New Tech High School [Website]. Napa, CA: Author. Retrieved April 22, 2010, from http://www.newtechhigh.org

Nichols, Paul D. What Is a Learning Progression? Publication. Vol. 12. Pearson, Feb 2010. Print. Test, Measurement and Reseach Services.

Partnership for 21st Century Skills. (2009). Framework for 21st Century Learning. Tuscon, AZ: Author. Retrieved April 21, 2010, from http://www.p21.org/documents/P21_Framework.pdf

Pellegrino, J. W. (2006). Rethinking and redesigning curriculum, instruction and assessment: What contemporary research and theory suggests. Washington, DC: National Center on Education and the Economy. Retrieved April 21, 2010, from http://www.skillscommission.org/pdf/commissioned_papers/Rethinking%20and%20Redesigning.pdf

Wiggins, G., & McTighe, J. (2001). Understanding by design. New York: Prentice Hall.Wallingford Public Schools (2007). Social Studies: K-12 Enduring Understandings and Essential Questions. Wallingford, CT:

Wallingford Public Schools. Retrieved April 27, 2010, from http://www.wallingford.k12.ct.us/uploaded/Curriculum/SOCIAL_STUDIES_K-12/SS_K-12_EUs_&_EQs.pdf