Content Standards – Build 2 (Beta)

Channeling my internal edu-ninja to cut through to the heart of what I think we should do

What defines the target that k-12 educators are aiming for?  What defines (in theory, at least) the way that we measure success?

National, State, and Local Standards

Stakeholders despairing that our education system is failing will often look to teaching strategies, class sizes, technology, teacher training/quality, and a host of other variables as flashpoints for ushering in reforms.  While I think that those are worthy areas on which to focus our attention, I believe that ultimately it is the target itself that needs  re-examined and re-defined prior to, or at least in conjunction with, implementing other reforms.

In the TED video below, “How to learn? From mistakes,” Diana Laufenberg provides a nice overview of the relationship of information to the school-house.

In the past students had to go to school because that was were the information was housed.  People at home didn’t have access, so they needed to walk five miles, uphill, in a snow storm to go to school to learn.  Eventually, books and encyclopedias were widely available so the information was a bit more diffuse.  Today information is widely available.  Students can access libraries, museums, and classrooms from anywhere with mobile devices.

If you are wondering what transformation your child should undergo by a year of education at your local public school, look at the standards (usually state standards) that define the target for that grade level’s education.  But state standards are defined based on an old model of how people learn, an old model of information storage, and an old model of how information is organized.

Old model of teaching: The transmission model of teaching saw learning as merely an input process. There is a set of ideas and knowledge in the teacher’s head that just needs transferred to the student’s brain.   So all you need to do to teach is provide the information.  State and other agencies developing standards simply needed to outline what they wanted to see stuck to the brains of students.

California Science Standard - Grade 8

Old model of information storage: Because information was historically not readily available, the focus was on teaching information to the point that it was remembered and understood.  Students would not have access to it later.  So the standards had to make sure that students retained the information and took it with them.  In fact if you look at how standards tend to be stated, they generally begin with “Students know…” as you can see by the 8th grade science standard on Motion from the state of California above.  The standards don’t outline any expected USE of the information.

Old model of information organization: Back in the days of the Dewey decimal system as the main organizational scheme, information was stored in a physical form.  A book or periodical could only be put in one place.  So books were categorized based on broad themes such as science, philosophy, literature, etc.  Where do you put Kuhn’s, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions?  In science or in philosophy? You had to choose.  Since information was conceived as falling into categories, that is how students were/are instructed as well.  Students take literature, science, math, and history classes.

New model of teaching: Learning is now understood to be a complex cognitive process by which we integrate new knowledge into existing schemas and that many variables affect this process beyond the efforts of the teacher such as prior knowledge, individual aptitudes and preferences, and more.  Furthermore, we better understand now that encoding an understanding of a concept does not entail that a student will be able to use that concept in a situation where it ought to be applied.  If students are only taught information at the remembering or understanding level, it is not necessarily the case that they will be able to use the concept in more sophisticated ways, especially if they are never given the opportunity or prompting to do so.  Nowadays there is a greater push for and emphasis on helping students become critical thinkers and effective problem-solvers, but this desire is not represented very well in standards.

New model of information storage: Nowadays the reality is that information is not just abundant but ubiquitous and often intrusive (case-in-point – my Twitter app jars me every few seconds with a new link, idea, or feeling that someone is sharing).  Since much information is now digitized, we can take it with us wherever we go.  We don’t bother memorizing phone numbers any more – our phones do that for us.  Information is  now available to us whenever we need  it.

New model of information organization: Now that information is stored digitally, it can be tagged and sorted in much more complex ways.  Short stories like the Yellow Wallpaper can be categorized by databases in feminism, literature, psychology, 19th century, and many other categories.  It doesn’t need to be put in a particular information silo, such as literature, where the other relevant features of this story are only novelties or pathways to understanding the piece as literature.  When I used to teach science, at least every once in awhile a student would get indignant that I expected the class to use math to solve problems and conduct experiments.  I would make the point that math exists because of science, commerce, and construction.  It isn’t just an entity unto itself.  Scientists need math.  But the story goes to show that our organization of standards and courses reinforces an antiquated understanding of how to categorize information, namely that information and skills fall into distinct and separate categories.

So what implications does all this have for redefining and reorganizing standards?  Well here’s what I think should happen:

1. Shift the Focus:

Content standards should not be the core outcome of each year of teaching.  Much content is taught one time and it’s use is not reinforced and repeated.  It is a wasted effort to spend our precious time with students in an effort to cram information into their heads.  I think that the standards should define the most important core transformations that we would like to see students make over the entire course of their academic training and that these should be the primary guide for whatever year of school or class subject that they are in.   What counts as the core transformation that students should undergo during their k-12 years is something to be negotiated by stakeholders, but here’s what I would consider core:

• Critical Thinking – be able to critically evaluate, sort, and analyze information – Using information well is more important than remembering it!
• Problem Solving – be able to break down problems, brainstorm, devise solutions, troubleshoot problems
• Collaborative Skills – be able to be good listeners, resolve disagreements, compromise, divide up tasks,
• Creativity – be able to think and express themselves creatively
• Oral, Visual, and Written Communication – be able to communicate both via their own expression and by having the ability to understand and interpret the expression of others
• Technical skills – be able to use various forms of technology as a means toward communicating, solving problems, and creative expression
• Information Literacy – be able to locate information as needed, identify trusted vs. suspect sources, etc.
• Empathy and Citizenship – seeing themselves as members of a global community as well as a country, state, and locality
• Reading – not as a subject but as a skill that is used in every course
• Math – also, not as a subject but as a skill that is used in every course

If a set of core skills, attitudes, and aptitudes are identified and agreed upon, then we can truly measure the growth of the student through time.  Right now our standardized testing is almost exclusively geared toward measuring the retention of a discreet set of facts and skills that will not have continued value for the students.  As I discuss in my previous blog post under problem #4 there is no continued use of much of the standards outlined each year in the content areas.  In eighth grade science a student may “know to interpret graphs of position vs. time” long enough for the assessment at the end of the year, but will the student ever need to know that again?  Will he or she ever be asked to use that skill again?  Realistically, probably not.   But if the main focus of instruction was geared to inspiring thinkers, communicators, creators, etc. then once students start to specialize they can learn the information that they need to do their job well but will have the benefit of their core skills and abilities rather than the current set up where students arrive at college not being particularly good writers or thinkers.

So to sum up, I think that the major focus, what we should be measuring and tracking year to year as students progress through school, should not be the tidbits of information but the important global skills that will have enduring value no matter what goals a student has for the future or what problems they face.  If we shift the focus, then we can truly gauge  progress from year to year based on established rubrics or assessments for measuring student growth.  Wouldn’t it be great if report card from year to year showed trackable, observable progress toward these core goals?  Redefining education standards in this way would go a long way to making it more possible for educators to use an instructional design model as an approach to instruction, as I discussed in my previous two posts.  In addition, it could make the curriculum more meaningful and truly useful to the future success of students.

2.  Keep Content Standards

“Huh?” you may be asking.  “What was all that ranting about tidbits of information and having access to information like never before.  I thought you were going to say that content standards aren’t important.”  Yes, I think we should keep them, but we should re-imagine them.

There are three reasons I think content standards are important, and I’ll use a story to illustrate each one:

Story #1

On the radio I heard an NPR story about Richard Holbrooke being in critical condition before he later died.  The reporter said that doctors had to “fix a tear in the large artery that moves blood from the heart.”  When I heard that I thought, why didn’t they just say ‘aorta’ instead of ‘large artery’?  What this made me realize is that one important reason for content standards is that they provide a foundation for civic dialogue.  There are certain facts, concepts, core values, ideas, etc. that should be ”common knowledge,” as the phrase goes.  In order for us to have a robust civic dialogue, there need to be certain things that we expect everyone to know.  Content standards should be carefully crafted so as to identify those things we need to know as a community.  For example, your average citizen doesn’t need to know huge amounts of detail about the process of photosynthesis, but in order for us to have a dialogue about global warming, CO2 output, and more, everyone should probably know that photosynthesis is a process by which plants take in carbon dioxide and expel oxygen.

Story #2

During the 2010 midterm elections, my jaw dropped when I saw the exchange in the video below between Christine O’Donnell and Chris Coons during their Delaware debate.  It worried me that there was a chance that an individual who displayed ignorance of both our Constitution’s first amendment and the science of evolution could be elected to office.  I wondered why it was that people would vote for someone like this.  Why isn’t their BS detector beeping wildly?  What I realized is that BS detector’s only work if you don’t know something about what someone is talking about.  You need to have some understanding of our nation’s history, the Constitution, and the strong grounding of evolution to recognize that what is going on in this debate is absurd.  If you don’t have that knowledge, it is easy to interpret the video differently.  So in my mind, content standards are critical.

Story #3

This isn’t really a story but rather a general observation.  Some students fall in love with a particular content; it is what makes them tick.  For me the subjects that inspired me were art, science, and philosophy.  For other students it is literature, music, and history.  There are probably infinite combinations of interests that students have.  I think content standards are important because the information will be remembered and valued by those students who truly love that subject/discipline/topic.  I mentioned earlier that most students will never have to look at a distance vs. time graph after 8th grade.  However, those that love physics definitely will.  They will take physics in high school and in college.  Having a foundation in the basics of physics at an early age will be meaningful and of enduring value to those that love it.   I think where we go wrong is expecting that type of information to have meaningful and enduring value for all students.

3. Redefine content standards.

So content standards are important because they are the foundation for much of our civic discourse, allow us to have BS detectors (at least, those are two reasons they are important), and are of keen and enduring value to some students.  But I do not believe that content standards should be formulated as they have been in the past.  How they should be newly conceived should reflect two factors:

1.  Emphasize USE of Content: Since the emphasis no longer has to be on remembering information, content standards can be redefined to reflect that.  The emphasis should no longer be on simply “knowing” information but on its use.  This should be parsed in two ways.  First of all, content standards should not be written using the “Students should know” structure.  One common method for writing objectives, the ABCD method, requires that you indicate a specific behavior.  “Know” is far too vague and does not indicate what you expect students to do or give any guidance in how you would measure success.  Since the standards don’t indicate what students should be able to do with the information, it is difficult for teachers to know what performance they are guiding students to.   For example,

“Students know how to interpret position vs time  graphs and speed vs  time graphs”

could be reformulated to:

“Students can identify when an object is speeding up, slowing down, or not changing speed in both position vs. time and speed vs. time graphs.”

There is probably a lot more that you might want students to be able to do with these types of graphs, but specifically identifying what the expectation is helps both students and teachers.  It provides a clear guide for what should be taught and measured.

The second way that standards should reflect USE of information is by identifying what the real-world use of the information is.  The real-world value should be identified as party of the standards document.  Students are always asking “why do we need to know this.”  In addition, teachers who value teaching depth rather than breadth often develop project/problem-based units of study around real-world topics.  One thing we want is for students to use the information in authentic, real-world ways.  It is by using the information to solve-problems, clarify concepts, etc. that students really own the information.  Plus, aren’t we teaching them this stuff for reasons beyond just taking tests?  The whole point is that we want students to be able to USE information in their efforts to make sense of the world, solve problems, and make their mark on the future.  I think, though, that it is incumbent on those bodies that devise these content standards to provide guidelines, examples, and suggestions for where these concepts will be used by students in the real-world.  Since teachers already have limited time, having part of the job done for them would be helpful and provide a more unified vision.

2.  Prioritize Content Standards: Many teachers believe that the content standards expect too much to be taught in a single year.   You often hear teachers express the need to make a decision - whether to go for breadth (coverage) or depth (true understanding and rich interaction with content).   So, in my mind, any re-conception of state standards should include a prioritization of the content because depth should be the expectation (with a focus on the core standards) rather than coverage, which would only allow low level interaction with content.  There are certain skills and basic knowledge that still may need to be taught to the point that students remember it and this content would be standard across classrooms.  It is these things that will be most important for continuing our civic discourse and in the development of a solid BS detector.  But there may be additional content that isn’t critical but would provide almost a menu of optional/supplemental content for teachers to choose from.

So here’s how that might look.  Content standards would be divided into Central and Supplemental content.  For biology, there are certain things that probably all students should know and remember, such as the following for example:

Biology Central Content Standard Examples

• The basic evidence and premise of evolution and why it is a unifying concept in biology
• Cells are the building blocks of living things and it contains differentiated organelles each with an important function
• The cell nucleus and mitochondria contain DNA that is used for inheritance
• Genetic inheritance accounts for many traits of offspring

Biology Supplemental Content Standard Examples

• Meiosis and Mitosis
• Memorizing the names of organelles and their corresponding functions
• Constructing branching diagrams to classify living things
• Generating Punnett squares for traits

By relegating some content to the supplemental category, I’m not trying to say that it is not useful for students to know.  In fact depending on the angle a teacher takes toward teaching the central standards, some of the supplemental standards may come into play.  However, rather than having to focus on teaching these things to the point where they are remembered for a test, the focus can be on using the supplemental content as an illustration, clarification, or example in a unit of study that delves at something deeper.

Okay I’m done.

Teachers CAN’T Do Instructional Design

I’m sorry but it’s true.  They just can’t do it…BUT it’s not their fault.  You can blame “the Man,” as long as “the Man” conjures up an image of the long entrenched educational complex guided by tradition, infrastructure, and the latest fads.  In my last post, I compared educators and instructional designers, and I think it is interesting how different their role is.  I had always considered the two synonymous.  I went to graduate school to learn about instructional design in a program that was designed for k-12 educators.  What I learned was a very effective model for designing instruction based on the ADDIE model.  It was a revelatory program that provided powerful insights into the creation of engaging, research-based, and most importantly effective learning experiences.   So it would seem to follow that educators can and should use the same model of instructional design in performing their work.  Certainly I thought so at the time, but I want to elaborate on why I think educators just CAN’T DO it, and as I mentioned before, blame “the Man.”  I think “the Man” has handicapped educators by blindfolding them, spinning them around, and not giving them a clear target.  Why should we be playing educational “Pin the Tail on the Donkey?”  But that is what I think is happening.

In my previous post I identified five reasons that educators cannot do instructional design, time, lack of meaningful analysis, lack of defined performance, lack of continued use, and lack of motivation. I want to elaborate on why this is, why it is important, and hint at what this implies about where  we need to make the biggest changes to the hulking and inertially impaired educational complex.

Problem #1 – Time

No one in education would disagree that teachers simply do not have enough time built into their day to do their job well.  That’s why the best teachers spend much of their evenings and weekends planning, grading work, and calling parents.  The problem is that if educators were to actually do instructional design, they would need to do even more than what they are currently doing, and that  means an investment of more time.  The Science of Learning by Robert T. Hays makes the point that Instructional Design is effective as long as it is done scientifically and methodically.  Teachers, however, tend to barely have enough time to Develop and Implement their lessons (the third and fourth letters in the ADDIE acronym).  In ADDIE, one of the most important steps is the Analysis.  By gathering information about your audience and the performance you are aiming to improve, you are able to tailor instruction so that it is successful.  For educators, there just isn’t time to gather and analyze this information, let alone spend the time to carefully Design the instruction you want to Develop before you Implement it.  Currently the vast majority of a teacher’s day is spent in Implementation, teaching the day’s lesson.  Also, it is difficult to have time to truly Evaluate the instruction as well.  Sure assessments and tests will provide some level of Evaluation of the success of instruction.  Plus teachers are constantly doing informal evaluations through a variety of means.  But Evaluation is meant to inform the instructional strategy itself.  It is a key element to the concept of data-based decision making because it allows for the instruction to be modified, re-designed, and improved.  Even if you have an electronic means of assessing students that provides analytics, you still need to interpret those analytics in order to determine how you should modify instruction and this takes time!  But time is probably the least of my worries for why educators can’t do instructional design, so read on.

Problem #2 – There is No Opportunity for Meaningful Analysis

Above I mentioned that educators don’t have the time to perform analysis, but lets say that they did.  What would they be analyzing?  Instructional designers are tasked with improving performance.  So what they are generally analyzing is prior performance.  For example, if a designer is tasked with improving the accuracy of TSA baggage security, they will analyze how the performance is currently being done.  They are detectives looking for clues to why the performance isn’t optimal and ways that it can be improved.  In the case of education, most likely what you are teaching is the first experience a student has with the material.  So what would you be analyzing?  At best you may be able to do a pre-test that lets you know what students already know, but how would this inform your instructional strategy which is the whole point of Analysis in ADDIE?  So you know what they don’t know.  That tells you that you need to teach it.  Big deal.  The instructional designer gets a lot more information from their analysis.  It tells you where the breakdown in performance is and will actually provide insight into whether the audience will need training, job aids, a change in the structure of the job, new equipment, or what.

Problem #3 – There is No Defined Performance

In my mind, this is probably the biggest problem and is the root of a lot of the problems that educators face.  If this were altered (as I will discuss in my next post ), it has the potential to solve some of the most niggling problems of education.  Here’s the problem:  Instructional designers know what they want the audience to do better.  If the audience is TSA baggage handlers, the designers know they want them to be more accurate in checking bags.  If the audience is the 7-Eleven employees that make the coffee, the designers know they want them to make the coffee in a reliably tasty fashion.   In order to improve performance, the designer may have to teach the audience a thing or two.  This may include facts, attitudes, a process, etc.  But the things being taught are important only because they are necessary in order to inspire performance.

Educators have no performance they are aiming for.  They are tasked with pumping facts and ideas into students’ heads without a context-of-use and without a desired performance where the facts and ideas are useful.  At best you could say that they want the students to do well on the standardized tests, and so the performance is that students should be able to use the massive array of facts and concepts they  learn to answer questions correctly in a testing environment.  Shoot, I don’t understand why our students aren’t motivated by that.  It’s almost as if what our educational complex is trying to prepare our students for is an international Trivial Pursuit tournament.  But guess what, in the future our students are not going to be playing Trivial Pursuit with China.  They need to be able to be innovators, hard-workers, creative problem-solvers, etc. in order to compete in the global marketplace, which is at least one of the goals of a good education.  But the only performance that we have identified is the recall and understanding of facts, concepts, etc.  There is not context-of-use for the information that we are teaching to students.  How are students supposed to use the information in the future?  What will be the context-of-use where this information will be important.  If educators were also provided with a guide to why the information is important, aside from the need for students to remember it on a test, perhaps instruction could be designed better.  In fact, that might be what we decide to test in order to define whether our efforts have been successful.  Some educators create project-based learning opportunities for students that create a real-world context of use.  This is great, but it takes time and requires the educator define the importance of the information.  If the local, state, or national entity that created the standards in the first place also identified how they expected this information to be used and why it is important, it could make instruction and the evaluation of success much simpler and more meaningful.  This will be the topic of my next post, because I think this point is very important, and I’m not sure I’m making it well here.  Essentially I think our standards need re-thought in two respects.

Problem #4 – There is No Continued Use

Another reason that instructional designers are able to employ the ADDIE model effectively is that there is an expectation that their target audience will continue to use the knowledge they acquire from any instructional intervention.  If they are taught the necessary information in order to perform their job more effectively, they will be constantly using that information in the future.  This is what makes it worth it for instructional designers to put significant effort into the ADDIE process.  The designer isn’t just focusing a day’s worth of instruction to teach a topic that will be irrelevant the next day and just needs to be remembered months later for a test.  The information has inherent value because it will be used again and again.   Let’s say an educator who teaches 7th grade science is planning to teach about photosynthesis in a unit about plants.  They are also expected to teach the structure and function, reproductive processes, and other important processes of plants.  Well the next unit may be about evolution.  Will photosynthesis be something that students will need to remember in detail for that unit? No.  Next year they will go on to physical science.  Will students need to remember photosynthesis then?  No.  When the child grows up will it be important to remember specific details about the process of photosynthesis?  No (unless they become a scientist).  Will they need to remember specific details about the process of photosynthesis for the test?  Yes.  The only future performance that is important is the test, unless the students were to become a scientist in the future.  A whole lot of effort will need to be employed to teach photosynthesis effectively so that students remember key details for a test, but to me that’s a lot wasted effort.  The students who will need to know about photosynthesis in detail will learn about it in depth when they have chosen a career path that will require the continued use of this information.  At that point, that knowledge will become important for a specific performance!   For average Joe student a lot of time will be invested into trying to force Joe to remember something that is ultimately value-less in his life, for a very meager payoff – the student just might remember tedious facts for the standardized test. 

Problem #5 – Lack of or Manufactured Motivation

This is another important difference between the job of an instructional designer and the job of an educator.  Instructional designers are lucky enough to be working with people that care about their job, at least they probably do.  Since they care about bonuses, advancement, job security, etc. the audience of an instructional designer is already motivated to a certain degree to do their job well.  Plus the audience may truly love what they do.  They already have an interest in the topic and skills related to the performing their role.  Sure instructional designers still have to worry about creating instruction that is motivating and engaging.  You can squander the motivational capital that the audience of an instructional designer brings with boring instruction, but for the most part the motivation is there and it is only possible to lose it. Educators are in a totally different boat.  Unless a student simply loves to learn or has an interest in the topic, the educator is tasked with imprinting that information in their brains whether the student cares or not.  Some teachers are masters of making things like photosynthesis seem like vital and interesting information, but that is a tall order, especially since students don’t know why this is important or how they will ever use it.  This lack of motivation, paired with the concerns above, is the key to why instruction tends to be ineffective.

Okay, so I’ve told you the five reasons that I think educators CANNOT do instructional design.  Here’s why I think this is important revelation.  I think educators should do instructional design.  It is an effective and proven strategy for designing instruction.  But I think that the system needs restructured in order to make this possible because there are significant barriers to making it possible for teachers to employ a proven strategy for quality instruction.  In my mind the first step in restructuring is to re-define the outcomes of a quality education.  Are we preparing our students for international trivial pursuit tournaments, which is what I think our current system is designed to do, or do we want something much more significant?  I think this goes back to the age old debate about standards-based education.  My 2¢ is coming soon to a blog near you, in fact it’s coming to this blog, in a post entitled Building a City, Building a Future.  That is, unless I decide to change the title.

Educators vs Instructional Designers – Tackling Some Questions

Educators.  Instructional designers.  Are they the same thing?  Should they follow an identical process?   Does education have something to learn from the field of instructional design?  These are the questions I want to tackle in this blog post.  I’ll try to tackle them, but maybe they run faster than me.  Recently thinking about education has made my mind hurt and I feel like sitting on the sidelines.  Okay coach is sending me in.  I’m gonna try to make the tackle…

Tackling Question 1:  Are educators and instructional designers synonymous (or at least should they be synonymous)?

Here’s what I think:

If educators and instructional designers did the same thing, then they would employ the same methodology in performing their respective roles.  For example, instructional designers typically employ the ADDIE model when designing trainings, job aids, or other interventions to improve performance.  So are educators and instructional designers the same?  This is the first step in answering the next question, “Should they employ the same methodology?”

I think educators have a very different, but related, task when compared with instructional designers, and I believe their job is much more difficult. “Why?” you ask.  Ok, I’m running after the wide-receiver…

Instructional designers tend to be employed in order to improve performance.  There is a specific target that the company or organization hiring them has in mind.  For example, 7-Eleven may feel that their traditionally awesome coffee has started to taste a little bitter or weak.  Something has gone wrong with how 7-Eleven employees are managing the coffee station.  (This isn’t true – 7-Eleven still has awesome coffee.)  If 7-Eleven were to experience this problem, then they could call in an instructional designer who would identify what barriers there are to performance and either design trainings or job aids to help the employees perform more effectively.

Educators tend to be employed in order to teach some proscribed set of knowledge and skills to all students.  A state or local agency outlines specific target sets of knowledge and skills to be taught in each subject matter and grade.  So a history teacher may be expected to teach about the Constitutional Convention.  All students are expected to learn about this important event in our nation’s history and there are generally no guidelines offered by the state for how students are expected to use this knowledge – other than that students should be able to correctly answer questions about the Constitutional Convention on a standardized test.  So the teacher designs a learning experience that teaches these facts in a way that the information will be encoded into long-term memory (not necessarily used).  There is no expected performance utilizing this information rather than recall for the standardized test.

So there are several key difference between these two roles:

• Goals:
  • Instructional Designers have a very specific goal.  Their goal is to improve a SPECIFIC PERFORMANCE in a particular CONTEXT.  Information that is learned in their trainings has value because it improves performance.  That is why it is learned.  The why is the reason for the instruction.
  • Educators have as their goal to help students acquire a BROAD SPECTRUM of knowledge and skills considered FOUNDATIONAL to an educated citizen regardless of context, chosen profession.  Why this particular knowledge is important is not specified.  The reason for the instruction is simply so that students learn the information.  There are no specific goals related to use of the information.
• Audience:
  • Instructional designers generally have members of an organization as their audience.  Certain commonalities generally follow simply because their audience are all members of the organization.  They have all CHOSEN to be employed or members of the organization.  Audience members likely have similar SKILL SETS or INTERESTS because they have chosen this career path or membership.
  • Educators on the other hand largely work with an audience that has no unifying characteristics other than AGE.  ALL students are expected to learn the material regardless of their interests, passions, career goals, etc. because the knowledge is seen as foundational.
• Outcomes:
  • Instructional designers are expected to produce DEFINED RESULTS.  What counts as success is clear, and all knowledge and skills are situated in a particular CONTEXT OF USE.  Designers know exactly why, how, and when the knowledge and skills will be applied, and there is a specific GAP they are trying to close with the intervention.  Performance will be REPEATED as the employee or organization member continues their work.
  • With educators the results are Ill-DEFINED.  State standards do not tend to outline how the knowledge and skills students are gleaning from their education should be used, and the only performances that are measured and valued are GRADES and STANDARDIZED TESTS that provide NO CONTEXT OF USE and certainly NO CONTINUED, SUSTAINED USE of the the information.
• Motivation:
  • In the case of instructional designers, their audience will tend to have motivation built into their membership:  SALARY, ADVANCEMENT (based on performance reviews), JOB SECURITY, ATTAINING COMMON GOALS.  The knowledge and skills are something that they will use again and again in order to do their job.  The knowledge itself has value because they know how they will use it.  It isn’t just something to be remembered for no specific/clear purpose.
  • Educators have a problem with motivation.  Almost always the motivation for learning that is offered is simply that learning the material is a hurdle that is necessary for advancement.  If you do well and make a good GRADE, you may get into COLLEGE or get your DIPLOMA.  Unless you simply happen to be interested, the information only has value until you have achieved the grade or have gotten your diploma.  Then it becomes irrelevant.  The motivation for learning is not related to the value of the knowledge or skills.

Summing up.  Even though the job of both educators and instructional designers is to instruct and guide, educators and instructional designers work in very different circumstances.  The apparent role of the educator is to provide a broad-base education for students that provides a sampling of knowledge in important fields as well as provides a foundation of knowledge and skills that allow the students to be active and successful citizens.  The role of the instructional designer is to militate the circumstances of successful performance in a specific context.  They are very different.

Sweet!  Made the tackle!  Or is there a penalty on the play?  You tell me.  Gotta move on to the next play…

Tackling Question 2:  Should they follow an identical process?  Does education have something to learn from the field of instructional design?

Working in different circumstances does not necessarily imply that educators and instructional designers should employ different models as a guide for their practice.   Although I worked in K-12 education, I went to graduate school at San Diego State in order to get a  Master’s in Educational Technology where I learned about instructional design.  (Quick plug:  great program at SDSU) But that still doesn’t answer the question.  Should they use the same process?  The most pervasive model used by instructional designers as a guide for their practice is the ADDIE model (Analyze, Design, Develop, Implement, and Evaluate).  At least at first glance it seems like perhaps educators should use this model.  Why shouldn’t they analyze, then design an instructional package, develop it, implement it in the classroom, and evaluate the effectiveness of the instructional package?  Should educators use this model in their work?

Well, in some important respects, they can’t even if they wanted to.

1. Time:   Planning an instructional intervention in Instructional Design takes a lot of back end work.  You analyze the audience, the needs, the goals, and most importantly the gaps prior to instruction.  Educators have to daily churn out plans for the day with limited time.  Generally the process is more like the DIE model of teaching.  Design, Implement, Eternally with no chance to take a breath.  Create a lesson, deliver it, and repeat without having time to truly analyze needs, design instruction to meet those needs, and evaluate success.  So even if educators want to analyze, carefully design, and evaluate their instruction, there just isn’t time.
2. No Meaningful Analysis:  When instructional designers do the Analysis portion of ADDIE, they are generally analyzing the status of the performance they are tasked with improving.  For example, in the 7-Eleven case above, the instructional designer would perhaps observe employees performing their task, survey them about the current process, guidelines, etc.  This data would provide information for the designer so that they could identify why the performance is not up to par.  It may indicate a need for better training, better job aids, a need form more staff, etc.  The analysis informs the strategy.  In the case of education there is no prior performance to be analyzed because ultimately education is not focused on performance.  The goal each year is to fill the child’s head with new knowledge.  So analysis would be simply the flimsy act of determining what students already know.  The analysis will only inform what you need to focus on, not what strategy to implement.
   
3. No Defined Performance: Instructional design hinges on improving performance.  In education there is no specifically outlined way that students are expected to use the knowledge they gain; there is no context of use.  This is probably why information tends to be taught at a surface level (recall and comprehension).  Educators can simulate or create contexts of use where students will be asked to apply and use the information they learn, but these are not an inherent part of the system.  If educators create or simulate the contexts of use, this takes time (see above).  Plus then the specific ideas of the educator are defining the value of the information.  If the state or locality takes the time to identify the information that should be taught, why aren’t they articulating its value as well.
4. Lack of Continued Use:  Part of what makes the very extensive nature of the ADDIE model feasible is that all of the effort put into the endeavor is meant to not only support a single performance but extended performance over time.  In education you are covering so much material, it is not worth repeatedly coming back to topics like the Krebs cycle or the Roman empire.  Generally the knowledge is only important until the end of that grade level and then it is never mentioned again.  Why put the effort into making sure that students learn, and learn well, what the Magna Carta is and why it was important?
5. Lack of or Manufactured Motivation:  Encouraging students to feel motivated to learn can be an art-form.  Some teachers are masters and some students simply love to learn, but for many students telling them that they need to know a broad array of information that crosscuts academic fields and includes tidbits like the steps of photosynthesis because it may be important some day or because it is basic scientific literacy isn’t going to provide the motivational gravitas the student needs.

So my argument is that teachers can’t employ the ADDIE model because it isn’t feasible and the circumstances of the task outlined for them by the state and how success is measured makes it unrealistic.

Did I make the tackle?  Oh I see a flag on the field.  Here it is:

Notable Exceptions to my “they can’t even if they wanted to” claim:

If an educator is teaching an audience that is motivated by a specific outcome, then I believe that educators should use instructional design strategies.  Some examples would be educators in teacher education programs, elective classes that teach a skill such as drama or wood shop, or any education program that is preparing students for a specific trade, hobby, or career.  In these situations, you know what you want your students to be able to do to be successful, and you can identify what knowledge and skills are necessary.  In addition, they are motivated because they are training in a field that they have chosen.  The outcome is defined and the students have a reason to attain that outcome.  For example, if you are a professor in a teacher education program, all of your students want to become exceptional teachers.  So you can identify particular outcomes that are important, and design instruction appropriately.  In contrast, if you are teaching high school biology, you are given a goodie bag of facts and skills the students should acquire, but you don’t know how they will use this knowledge in the future.

Why does this matter?

Well, frankly I think it matters a lot.  I think sometimes we act like the process for teachers is clear and straightforward.  If only teachers did it, then everything would be peachy.  Instructional designers have a much more straightforward task.  Teachers have way too much on their shoulders because ultimately their task is not even defined for them.   I know that when I first learned about instructional design, it seemed to me that it defined how teachers should approach the process of education, but now a days it seems an insurmountable task.  In my next few posts I’m going to write about my thoughts for education reform because I am still trying to work through what I think about the following:

• What counts as foundational knowledge and skill for teachers
• How should we teach teachers to teach
• What expectations we should have as a locality, state, or larger society for education and the role it plays
• How can the system be better structured to meet those expectations

Sorry for all of the sports metaphor embedded in the post.  It felt right at the time.  Funny thing is, I don’t even like football.

Relishing My Cognitive Dissonance – I Recommend Some

I’ve been feeling a bit chagrin these past few weeks.  Despite the effort that I have put in to becoming a knowledgeable educator, guided by theory and best-practice rather than intuition alone, I have recently been faced with new knowledge that doesn’t gel with the delicate schema that I’ve built up that is represents the totality of my knowledge about teaching and learning.  And all of a sudden, this cognitive dissonance that I feel leaves me wondering what do I really know about teaching and learning.

Here’s what happened:

I was planning a professional development about lecturing (I know that lecturing may seem like a red-headed step-child, but I’m still a fan…really I am).  My goal was to use research to support certain strategies for lecture that would make it more effective as a teaching strategy, especially when it comes to moving beyond mere recall and understanding of information.  Anyway, one of the things I was looking into was research on learning styles.  Unbeknownst to me there has been talk about learning styles being bunk for years (Here, here, here, here, here, and many more, and this one’s nice because it links to some nice research).  So I pick up the book The Science of learning (2006) hoping for some help, and I find a section called “Myth 5: Instruction Should Consider Learning Styles.”   “WHAT?” was my immediate reaction, “You are kidding me!”

So then I pick up Efficiency in Learning co-authored by my new favorite author, Ruth Colvin Clark, just to see what they say, and on page 248, she calls learning styles an “unproductive instructional mythology.”

Here’s the thing, for years, and I mean for years, I have heard that educators should consider learning styles/modalities as they construct learning experiences.  It has come up in professional development, conferences, readings, etc.  I’ve referred to learning styles when I have presented, because I had assumed it was a research-established notion.  So now I’m starting to wonder where have I been.  Am I an idiot?  (I know that I am in general, but am I educationally idiotic too)  How did I not know about this earlier?  These books, articles, and discussions aren’t new.

Plus, a recent overview of the research surrounding learning styles stated,

“our search of the learning-styles literature has revealed only a few fragmentary and unconvincing pieces of evidence that meet this standard [of rigorous research], and we therefore conclude that the literature fails to provide adequate support for applying learning-style assessments in school settings.  Moreover, several studies that used appropriate research designs found evidence that contradicted the learning-styles hypothesis”

So suddenly, as I mentioned above, I feel like an idiot, and I am experiencing some pretty major discomfort.  But the reason I’m feeling discomfort isn’t so much about learning styles being something I need to pluck from my web of understanding.  I can do that without a major reorganization of my thinking.  In practice I never really used learning style theory.  I didn’t do inventories or try to direct individuals to resources using a particular modality.  Ultimately, I’d always just seen it as additional justification for differentiating instruction and providing multiple types of contacts with material.

My real problem was this:

• I have developed an extensive web of understanding about teaching and learning based on training, research, and experience that I trust to be accurate.
• One element of that web that I  have been taught about since I first got my teaching credential needs plucked from that web because it lacks justification
• So what other items that need removed, modified, etc.?  Is this an isolated incident?

That is the true dissonance I feel.  If there is fairly good evidence that learning styles are a myth, why has it continued to be so pervasive?  What other landmines are in my schema that are waiting to explode?  What “folk” understanding of education are wrapped up tightly in my network of ideas that could be hampering my efforts to educate effectively?  More importantly, what are we as an entire community of educators accepting as gospel truth in education that has no solid grounding?  I feel anxiety…core-shaking anxiety…blech!

In order to resolve this dissonance for myself, I have begun sifting through books and research articles that suggest best practices and research-based strategies, but only accepting those practices where I see the evidence.  Until I can identify the real grounding for my understandings, I think I will continue to feel adrift.  But I am thankful that I have some tried and true sources that make me feel a bit less woozy right now.  But since my real concern is about our larger community of educators, I offer a plea that we examine our guiding  principles and do a double-check to make sure that we aren’t following fads and intuition as we structure our instruction or guide others in their own practice.  Despite the wooziness and anxiety, I actually feel stronger as an educator now that I have been a bit disrupted.

So here are my recommendations if you are experiencing similar cognitive dissonance:

• any book by Ruth Colvin Clark because of her adherence to the practice of Evidence Based Teaching.  I mentioned how much I love her book Efficiency in Learning in an earlier post.
• The Department of Education has a guide for identifying and implementing educational practice on research.  It’s more about evaluating research, but I find it helpful.
• I also recommend The Science of Learning by Robert T. Hays and almost anything by Robert Marzano because he too uses research as a guide for practice.
• I know my list should be more extensive, but that’s all I’ve got for now.

I am hungry for other trusted authors and resources where I can sink my teeth into some dense research but at the same time enjoy a course of pedagogy that compliments it.  Any suggestions are appreciated!

Thanks,

Heidi