WIDE Wonders

The TfU framework has been used widely at very different educational levels (k-12 classrooms, higher ed, teacher ed, professional development) to nurture inquiry-based learning and teacher learning about inquiry. In many ways, Teaching for Understanding provides a useful scaffold for inquiry approaches. Both share a performance view of learning, which is at the heart of an inquiry approach (learning through active, reflective doing). TfU goes further in providing structure by asking teachers to:

• think hard about what they want students to learn from their inquiry experience (UGs), then
• think even harder about where to aim inquiry in the service of getting at those learning goals (Performances of Understanding), and
• think even harder still about how teacher and student will both gauge that learning as it’s taking place in ways that deepen and extend that learning (Ongoing Assessment).

Moreover, TfU’s take on performances of understanding helps teachers discern different kinds of performances appropriate to different stages of inquiry (messing about, guided inquiry, culminating).

Useful sources: San Francisco’s Exploratorium Institute for Inquiry Research has a page on Inquiry Education Research. Four of 18 articles listed for further reading about inquiry learning are from the Teaching for Understanding Project. These include:

Brandt, Ron “On Teaching for Understanding: A Conversation with Howard Gardner” Educational Leadership, v50 n7, April 1993.

Perkins, David and Tina Blythe “Teaching for Understanding: Putting Understanding Up Front” Educational Leadership, v51 n5, February 1994.

Perkins, David “Teaching for Understanding” American Educator: The Professional Journal of the American Federation of Teachers; v17 n3, pp. 8,28-35, Fall 1993.

Wiske, Martha Stone “How Teaching for Understanding Changes the Rules in the Classroom.” Educational Leadership; v51 n5, pp. 19-21, Deb 1994.

Examples of Inquiry w/ TfU http://learnweb.harvard.edu/alps/tfu/pop3.cfm  http://www2.terc.edu/handsonIssues/s03/o…

“Try Science” designed with teaching for understanding Best Practices Applied in Online Science Teacher Education by June Talvitie-Siple, ABD University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, USA http://vawin.jmu.edu/vertex/article.php?…

Treagust, D. F., Jacobowitz, R., Gallagher, J. L., & Parker, J. (2001). Using assessment as a guide in teaching for understanding: A case study of a middle school science class learning about sound. Science Education, 85, 137-157.

Inquiry and the National Science Education Standards: A Guide for Teaching and Learning (National Research Council, 2000) provides an overview of inquiry-based teaching strategies and examples of what inquiry teaching and learning look like, both inside and outside the classroom. Underlying all of this work is the notion that teaching for understanding requires more in-depth treatment of a smaller number of key ideas, which is sometimes summarized by the slogan “less is more.”

[DES]

A WIDE Team in TSNT recently asked their coach for information comparing “the costs of using new technology and their benefits in terms of educational outcomes with the cost of more traditional programs and their respective educational outcomes.” I (DES) had to stare at this question a bit. It really involves a three-step:

(a) relationship between (teaching and learning with technology) and student outcomes;

(b) comparing student outcomes for teaching and learning with technology AND teaching and learning without technology

(c) comparing benefit (in terms of student outcomes) with costs of t&l with tech and t&l without.

When you get to (b) above, comparing t&l with and without tech., things become a bit more confusing. Clear-headed researchers would say, just like the Vermont farmer, “can’t get theah from heah,” because just introducing an innovation changes the equation. So you have to spend a lot of time justifying why the comparisons are equivalent and that already puts you on shaky ground. I’m not ducking (c), comparative cost-benefit, by claiming that (b), comparison, is a bridge too far; it’s just that I wouldn’t trust any studies that got to (c) without some firm footing in (b). So that’s why I’m sticking with (a)!

The most robust research has to do with (a) anyway. NCREL has done some good work in this arena. http://www.ncrel.org/tech/index.html See, in particular, the study “A Meta-Analysis of the Effectiveness of Teaching and Learning with Technology on Student Outcomes” by Don Waxman (2003) http://www.ncrel.org/tech/effects2 .

WestEd published the following study: Ringstaff, C. & Kelley, L. (2002). The learning return on our educational technology investment. San Francisco, CA: WestEd. http://www.wested.org/online_pubs/learning_return.pdf

A bit more dated and less rigorous but still helpful meta-analysis was done under the aegis of the Milken Foundation. http://www.mff.org/publications/publications.taf?page=161 This was also published in a peer-reviewed journal. Schacter, J., & Fagnano, C. (1999). Does computer technology improve student learning and achievement? How, when, and under what conditions? Journal of Educational Computing Research, 20(4) These articles all point to distinct, situation-specific, context-dependent advantages, all of which make addressing the comparison quesiton, b, trickier & trickier.

[DES]

No wide-scale, experimental studies have been conducted of the Teaching for Understanding framework, but several wide-scale studies of constructivist teaching have made connections between instructional practices and student gains on standardized tests. Among the most recent and rigorous is that of Martin Abbott and Jeffrey Fouts of the Washington School Research Center. In their study, Constructivist Teaching and Student Achievement, Abbott and Fouts conducted observations of 669 classrooms in 2000-2001 and found, after controlling for income, that constructivist teaching was clearly correlated with higher student achievement on standardized tests in reading, writing, and math. While analyses such as this are seldom straightforward, these researchers felt that the benefit of constructivist teaching would have shown up as even greater if certain study variables had been aggregated in different ways. We’d add that more precise measurement of what constitutes constructivist teaching would have strengthened the correlations as well. In the National Research Council’s synthesis of research around student learning in history, math, and science, How Students Learn, the authors write the following:

. . . in some cases there is evidence that teaching for understanding can increase scores on standardized measures (e.g., Resnick et al., 1991); in other cases, scores on standardized tests are unaffected, but the students show sizable advantages on assessments that are sensitive to their comprehension and understanding rather than reflecting sheer memorization (e.g., Carpenter et al., 1996; Secules et al., 1997). (p. 177)

Relevant here is the statement by leading educational evaluator Jim Popham, of UCLA, that “the vast majority of [state standardized tests] are instructionally insensitive—that is, they’re unable to detect even striking instructional improvements when such improvements occur” [1]. Since arguably the most prominent trend in educational testing in the last five years has been greater demands for tests that tap into higher order thinking, we may soon start to see research results that show greater effects from instructional changes such as the adoption of the Teaching for Understanding approach. Other reports that have received attention in linking constructivist teaching to student outcomes include:

• the “authentic pedagogy” study of the Wisconsin Center for Education Research’s Center on Organization and Restructuring of Schools. (A critique of the study, commissioned by a group opposing the adoption of “authentic pedagogy” instructional methods, draws into question the validity of its findings.)
• a meta-analysis of Comprehensive School Reform initiatives and student achievement that mentions the ATLAS schools reform, which incorporates the Teaching for Understanding framework, among those models of reform with “promising research evidence of their effectiveness.” (The full report is available here.)

References:

[1] Popham, James W. (2006) “Assessment for Learning: An Endangered Species?” Educational Leadership. (63)5. p. 82-83

[DES/RBS]

The Teaching for Understanding framework has been widely used to plan, conduct, and assess teaching aimed at developing learners’ capacities to apply their understanding flexibly in varied situations. The framework derives from a multi-year collaborative research program that synthesized contemporary theories of pedagogy with analyses of effective classroom practice [1]. Both strands of research–theoretical and practice-based–draw on over three decades of studies of understanding, learning, and teaching conducted by researchers at the Harvard Graduate School of Education’s Project Zero. Broadly, Teaching for Understanding or TfU is rooted in constructivist notions of the nature of knowledge, student cognition, and instruction. Talbert, McLaughlin and Rowan [2] describe constructivist teaching in the following way:

The constructivist view of effective classroom instruction is often called ‘teaching for understanding,’ and research on this topic has become a priority for educational policy makers. The importance of this form of teaching lies in its potential to enhance the kinds of cognitive outcomes for students that the American educational system has heretofore been notoriously ineffective at producing. While American schools have been relatively successful in engendering basic-skills achievement, they have not done well in promoting students’ success in tasks variously described as problem solving, critical analysis, higher-order thinking, or flexible understanding of academic subject matter- learning outcomes associated with teaching for understanding. (p.47)

References:

[1] Published works include:

Blythe, T. (1998). The teaching for understanding guide. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Wiske, M. S. (Ed.). (1998). Teaching for understanding. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Wiske, M. S., Rennebohm Franz, K., & Breit, L. (2005). Teaching for understanding with new technologies. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Wiske, M. S., & Perkins, D. N. (2005). Dewey goes digital: The wide world of online professional development. In C. Dede, J. P. Honan & L. C. Peters (Eds.), Scaling up success: Lessons learned from technology-based educational innovation. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

[2] Talbert, Joan E., McLaughlin, Milbrey W., and Rowan, Brian. “Understanding Context Effects on Secondary School Teaching.” TEACHERS COLLEGE RECORD (Fall 1993) 45-68, as quoted in Teaching for Understanding: Educating Students for Performance by Ken Kickbusch.

[DES]

A compendium of musings from the research staff of WIDE World, Harvard Graduate School of Education.