Clear Goals, Clear Pathways, Clearly Better Results
Clear Goals, Clear Pathways, Clearly Better Results
By Dr. Edwin C. Weaver
The buzz word in the educational world is "improve grades". Every school in every country is attempting to raise the academic level of education. The
As I said, 'some form of' and this is the key word. (Arter 2003) Often teacher do not; clearly state the goals of the lesson(s), clearly state the 'learning pathway' to achieve these goals and have trouble designing assessment which will clearly state if the goals where reached and if not where on the pathway is the student weak.
Clearly stating the goals is a foundational part of student involvement. Arter, Chapius & Stiggins stated that if teachers do not start with clearly stated learning goals, they will not end up with sound assessments.
Checking to verify that the student understands the goals as the teacher intended them is important (Cown 2004). When students know and 'understand' exactly what is expected of them, they usually respond. In addition, with clearly stated goals the student knows when they are not on track and go to the teacher for help. So how does a student know if he/she is on track?
The teachers need to have a clear pathway to learning. To reach a goal a student must learn various items. Normally, you need to understand and be able to apply one piece of knowledge before you can effectively use another piece of knowledge. The teacher must map out this process for the students, so that they can participate in the learning process.
Moody and Shafer (2003) found that standards do not help teachers, students or parents to understand what is missing in the students understanding or abilities. A clear outline of each step in the learning process or 'learning pathway' must be given to the students. An example is the language arts teacher who is teaching the paragraph. Usually the stated goal or standard is "the student will be able to construct a 4 sentence descriptive paragraph." What does the student need to write a good paragraph?
- The first sentence is the topic sentence, it gives the main idea
- The other sentences support or give evidence to the topic sentence
Is this all that the student needs to know to write a paragraph? No, before the student can write a paragraph he/she needs to know how to write various types of sentences and questions. Additionally, before the student can write a sentence he/she needs to know the various parts of the sentence.
This is the 'learning pathway' for the student. Clearly stating this pathway enables both students and parents to understand at which point there is a gap in the understanding. This allows the student and/or the teacher to fill the gap or to fix the misunderstanding in the information. As you can see the 'learning pathway' is as equally important as setting the goals. When these two are combined with frequent (daily, bi-weekly or at most weekly) assessments, the students are empowered to learn.
Because proper assessments are so vital to measure where the student is, if there are any gaps and what the next step in the learning process is, teachers must be able to design good oral and written assessments. Research has proved that many of the teachers in our school at this moment have not had much training in setting benchmarks, designing standards or designing assessments for learning. In the university they learned to write tests to assess what the students had learned or summative assessment, but not the important assessment which will improve student learning.
In order for the whole process to work and work well, teachers need additional training in assessing the students. They must learn how to assess the students daily in conversation, bi-weekly or weekly in written or quiz form and end of lesson assessments. These assessments must be tied to the goals, standards and learning pathway set out at the beginning of the lesson(s).
The results of these assessments need to inform the teacher at what point in the pathway the student is stopped, what skill they need to acquire (or strengthen) and what the student needs to move to the next level (Talbot 1997).
Once the teacher is competent at all three parts, you will see an increase in the learning capacity of the students. If you are using a scale of 1 - 100 the students will experience anywhere from 10 to 30 points gain in their scores. This is a significant increase and well worth the time to train the teachers.
An added benefit is the increase in the motivation by students to learn (Peace, Mayo, and Watkins (2000)). Today we find the majority of secondary student apathetic to learning (Broadwater Hilker (1993)). When the student realizes that he/she can be competent and they understand what is required of them and how to get to that point, the apathy disappears and intrinsic motivation grows.
If you are reforming your educational system and want your students to be happy, competent students, design a plan to implement Formative Assessment and train your teachers. You will be glad you did and your students will thank you for it.
Unique Leaders Educational Leadership Development works with schools around the world to develop leadership and train teachers. For more information contact Unique Leaders at www.we-develop.leaders.com info@we-develop-leaders.com
© 2005 Unique Leaders www.uniqueleaders.org www.we-develop.leaders.com
References:
Arter, J. (2003). Assessment for learning: What it looks like in the classroom. Retrieved June 27, 2006, from http:www.adprima.com
Arter, J. A., Chappuis, J., Chappuis, S., Stiggins, R. J. (2004). Classroom assessment for student learning. Doing it right-using it well.
Cown, W. (2004, May 05). Boxes and Arrows. Retrieved June 22, 2006, from
http://www.boxesandarrows.com/view/
focus_on_the_student_how_to_use_learning_objectives_to_improve_learning
Hilker, J. B. (1993). Toward creating the intrinsically motivating classroom: can students' motivational orientations be changed? (Rep. No. Sp 034 606).
Peace, T. M., Mayo, K., & Watkins, R. (2000). Becoming consumers of our own research: What really makes a difference in improving learning? (Rep. No. SP 039 118).
Schafer, W., & Moody, M. (2003). Designing accountability assessments for teaching (Rep. No. TM 034 932).
Talbot, G. (1997). Can self-regulated learning be taught to college students? (Rep. No. SP 037 412).
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