SCATE Faculty WorkshopFebruary 19, 2004

• It is time to stop the music and write a new score.

Richard Wisniewski in ReCreating Colleges of Teacher Education

Everyone Brings Something to the Table!

• In your table group place an item ON THE TABLE that begins with each letter of the alphabet.

• The group that completes the task first WINS!

• If your group believes that they have completed the task, raise your hands. PS: Another group will serve as judge!

So what is the point?

Andragogy (the art and science of teaching adults) and Brain-based learning/teaching require that you:

•Recognize that adults bring a

variety of experiences with them. •Connect to their prior learning.•Connect the new learning to the

“real world.” (Where and when

will I use this?)•Design tasks that are active

(Hands-on!) and problem-based.•Honor adult learning by allowing

them to share it.

Developer’s Guide for Reviewing CIA Standards in a Lesson

Let’s Focus on

Best Practices

• CONTENT STANDARDS• INSTRUCTION STANDARDS• ASSESSMENT STANDARDS

Foundations and higher education institutions continue to dance together to the music of change. If real transformationis to occur, we must alter the dance’s

pattern.

Two of the recommendations made from an analysis of the BellSouth ReCreating Colleges of Teacher

Education Initiative (1996 – 2000) include

1. Encourage clusters of faculty to be free to invent completely different programs

in an effort to foster fresh thinking and innovation.

2. Create teams of faculty in education, arts and sciences to implement the new programs.

Schlechty’s Eight Seismic Shifts*

1. Culturally elite and intellectually gifted were expected to achieve high levels of academic competence.

2. Parents were in the majority; their race/ethnicity was clear and understood.

1. Nearly all students are expected to achieve at high levels.

2. Parents are in the minority; majority status is not clear.

*Shaking Up the School House: How to Support and Sustain Educational Innovation, 2001

More Shifts

3. Schools were local institutions central to the life of the community.

4. The place where one lived and one’s sense of community were highly correlated.

3. Schools are government agencies controlled and directed by state/national interests and other forces.4. One’s sense of community is determined more by the interest groups to which one belongs,the place one works, and one’s racial and ethnic identity.

Shifts continued…

5. Adolescents were integrated into the life of the community.

6. Two parent families7. Schools had little

competition for the minds and hearts of children.

8. Society valued efficiency and standardization.

5. The young establish a life almost totally lacking in meaningful adult interaction.6. Single-parent families and blended families.7. Powerful commercial interests seek to attract students to their wares (and away from schoolwork.)8. Quality, Choice and Customization are core values.

Technology Shift

• Tools

• Processes

• Skills

The Business of Education

• To invent tasks, activities, and assignments that the students find engaging and that bring them into profound interactions with content and processes they will need to be judged well educated; well educated means a judgment made by the adult community, especially those such as colleges, universities, employers, and parents who set standards for student performance.

Can we make learning about volume engaging?

• Make a prediction: If I use two 8½ X 11½

sheets of paper to construct cylinders, rolling one sheet into a cylinder along its length (the “hotdog roll”) and the other other sheet along its width (the “hamburger roll”), which cylinder will hold the most product?

The Results of Education Doing This WELL…

• The learning of skills, the creation of a world-class workforce, the development of a democratic citizenry, the ability to think, reason, and use one’s mind well.

The Proper Focus of Education then is…

• The quality of the work provided students and the capacity of that work to engage students, to cause students to persist when they have difficulty and to produce in students a sense of satisfaction and accomplishment.

“KNOWLEDGE WORK”

Can we make solving a system of linear equations in three unknowns engaging and cause students to persist?

• Working with a partner, place your animals appropriately in their meadows.

3

6

5Pecan Apple

Grapefruit

Three Equations

P = 1, A = 2, G = 4

P + A = 3P + G = 5A + G = 6

Can really difficult concepts be made engaging, hands-on and connected to the real world ?

• Let’s take the limits concept from AP Calculus.

Working on the Work Framework (WOW)

• Content and Substance• Organization of knowledge• Product Focus• Clear and compelling product standards• Protection from adverse consequences for initial

failures• Affirmation of the significance of performance• Affiliation• Novelty and variety• Choice• Authenticity

The Ten Qualities on which teachers can work to make tasksmore engaging.

The first and primary useof the WOW Framework is to help teachers think through the lessons they present and the tasks they assign to students.

The work of teachers is to be found in inventing work—specifically KNOWLEDGE WORK—that has attributes that appeal to the motives of students. Great teachers do not seek to motivate students. Rather great teachers understand that students are motivated, and they design work in a way that

appeals to those motives.