When I reflect on the C-Content speakers, I feel like there are several underlying threads. All of them insist we must have cultural change to enable creativity. Specifically, I think they all come back around to the way we treat failure. Some of them refer to it as playing or experimenting and some refer to it straight up as failing, but they all agree it is a necessary thing. It is okay to not have instant success. It is okay to try things, even when they don’t work out. Trying things out is part of learning. Getting experience makes you better. Failing helps you become flexible and reflective. When these elements are absent from a classroom, creativity is stifled or worse, completely absent. A second theme I notice running through all the speakers is the idea of motivation. They all speak to students having choice, driving curriculum, making things that are meaningful. Nothing stifles creativity like meaningless work. Students need to feel motivated in order to be creative. They have to believe what they are doing matters. The carrot and stick dichotomy no longer work. Educators cannot encourage creativity by threatening students with disciplinary or grade related consequences.
When considering Mobley’s 6 insights, I feel like what Hammond says about the purpose of our education system is relevant. Our education system was designed to churn out laborers and workers. Not inventors or scientists or problem solvers. Mobely’s first point is that traditional teaching goes directly against building creativity. His second point is that creativity becomes an “unlearning process.” In our education system, with number of standards and the need to pass curriculum assessments, we never take the time to unlearn and think. Unlearn and approaching content from new perspectives takes time and we simply do not allow for that time. We are learning forward as fast as we can. The rest of his points about becoming creative, surrounding yourself with creative people, and being reflective are all fully possible in the school system. Nothing says that we cannot reflect or collaborate within the classroom. However, unless the first two points are present, there are no creative people to surround yourself with. Without creative people around, becoming creative is that much more challenging. We can still reflect and many school have some type of reflection, in the form of a portfolio or at least Open House. However, that reflection does not build creativity unless there are creative projects and collaboration to reflect on in the first place. Essentially, I can see creativity becoming a thing in public education. I even see it in some schools and individual classrooms, in some content areas more than other content areas. However, in order to make creativity something that can extend to all students in all contents, which we need to develop mathematical and scientific problem solvers, we need to reimagine the structure of public education. Without room to be wrong or to unlearn or to reflect on new perspectives, students will not have the opportunity to develop those creative muscles.
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Darling Hammond concludes her commentary in the Flat world and Education with 5 key elements crucial to the success of a hypothetical (and hopefully eventual) reform of education in the United States. Below, I will dive briefly into each of them, but first I want to take a moment to reflect on the process of reading The Flat World as a whole.
Firstly, it has been a thoroughly validating process. I definitely consider myself to be a social justice minded individual. Personality tests or self assessment books on rivers of motivation always point me in that direction. When in the classroom, many people want to complain about how difficult teaching is or talk about what heroes teachers are. While I agree that in general teachers are overworked and can have a large impact on children, I have always felt that there was more to be done. That despite bringing work home or lying awake at night thinking about lesson plans or giving up lunches to work as a mentor at our wellness center that it just wasn’t enough. That there were bigger issues. It is validating to hear those issues laid out. It is also a little frightening. That book is already seven years old and was building off decades long trends. And the data has not changed much in the last 7 years. I see change all around and I believe it is a step in the right direction but sometimes I wonder if it is enough. How much more can we squeeze out of the current education system without deeper and wider reform? These are questions I suppose only time can answer for now. The first element Hammond discusses is Meaningful Learning Goals. Something that really sticks out about this is another striking comparison to other education systems in th world. Successful educational systems tend to focus on fewer learning goals per year, but make each one deeper and more meaningful. They focus on a broader spectrum of habits of mind and leveraging those to push deeper into content. In America, we have cut back the number of standards since the No Child Left Behind days, but have not made sweeping pedagogical changes towards reasoning and inquiry. Some sites are doing it well, some organizations are championing the 4 C’s and student driven classrooms, but on the whole it is a bay step in the right direction My site is currently pushing into Inquiry learning in Math, but even with the standard number reduction from Common Core pacing is crowded. We seem to be in a catch-22. State testing measures problem solving and reasoning, but students can’t demonstrate those if they have not learned what a scale drawing is or how to build a probability model. There is a fine line between covering all the material and focusing too much on inquiry. Students cannot be expected to “discover” certain aspects of math. Another element Hammond brought up is accountability. This one leaves a bit of a bad taste in my mouth. No Child Left Behind was an example of accountability gone horribly wrong. It lacked the supportive element Hammond describes in other systems, such as Finland, Singapore, and Korea. Accountability cannot just be punitive, it needs to go both ways. Schools need to be accountable for growth in performance but the system needs to be accountable for providing the resources and environment to support that growth. If schools are underperforming, train educators to be better and reform curriculum. Examine financial policies or clean house if need be. Don’t strip funding away from the students who need it most. That is “hands-off” accountability and there is a reason why it is not present in high achieving systems. I believe the element of accountability goes hand in hand with strong professional support. In fact, they are two sides of the same coin. The best systems in the world invest in the professionals who run that system. Teachers endure massive pdagogical swings every decade. From inquiry based to rigor based and back again. Most teachers who don’t like Common Core make comments like “We’ve tried this before and it was no good” or “It’ll be around for a few years and we will move away from it again.” That is indicative of a larger problem. We abandon curriculum and pedagogy without training teachers to succeed with it. They are hanging onto the swinging pendulum of curriculum. It is common for districts to update curriculum every 7 years, not a bad thing, but certainly something that requires a continuous cycle of training to keep professionals on their toes. The logistics of improving professional support is complicated and not an issue I’m qualified to tackle, but it is abundantly clear it is one of the most essential for truly changing the core of American education. International Context
Internationally, the American education system has seriously underperformed other comparable countries. According to TIMSS, America ranks at #11 for 4th grade student performance and #8 for 8th grade student performance of all countries that participated in TIMSS and TIMSS Advanced. While scores have shown long term improvement over the last twenty years, scores plateaued heavily during No Child Left Behind and have not measurably improved from 2011. As Darling-Hammond also illustrates, countries that currently outperform America have varying styles of education. This suggest there are many factors such as culture and economy that go well beyond the walls of the classroom. Thus, non-academic factors, such as a growth mindset, merit exploration. Another point of interest from the TIMSS study is that the bottom 25% of students are the ones who are experiencing the most drop off in their scores. The upper 25% has continued to grow steadily to preserve the overall average, but the inequity in mathematics education is apparent. National Context National data supports the findings of TIMSS. In fact, NAEP shows scores actually dropped between 2013 and 2015. The scores are higher than in 1990, but have not been measurably improving yet with the implementation of Common Core. NAEP data is also consistent with the data from TIMSS showing that the bottom 25% of students are falling off rather than improving and that minorities continue to struggle in the American education system. Boaler and Sengupta-Irving (2016) found that low achieving students in math and science tend to wind up in low pay and skills oriented jobs. The development of Common Core began in 2009 as an equity issue. States all had varying standards and varying definitions of proficiency. This was one of the driving forces behind the development of the Common Core State Standards which would begin to be ratified and adopted starting in 2011. The Common Core standards put a strong emphasis on deep, conceptual learning and less emphasis on formulaic thinking and skills. This complements the problem solving structure of PrBL. The grit developed from a growth mindset also enables students to go deeper with concepts and curriculum. In 2001, the Partnership for 21st Century Skills (P21) was formed. P21 is an organization focused on promoting the 4 C’s, Life and Career Skills, and Technology Skills for students. This framework for students also synergizes well with PrBL and a growth mindset. PrBL frequently uses technology to enable more authentic problems, relies on students to use agency and collaboration to tackle larger tasks, and introduces or prepares students for future opportunities in college and career. State Context In California specifically, the data is less optimistic. In mathematics, for grades 6-8 in 2016, less than 40% of students meet or exceed academic standards. More than 25% in each grade level fall into the Standard Not Met band. When examining the CAASPP’s three mathematical claims, the outlook is worse. In Concepts and Procedures, more than 75% of students between grades 6-8 are Near or Below Standard. In Problem Solving and Modeling & Data Analysis, 80% of students between grades 6-8 are Near or Below Standard. Finally, Communicating Reasoning also has 80% or more students between grades 6-8 at Near or Below Standard. While the data is not acceptable in any category, Problem Solving and Communicating Reasoning are the worst for students between grades 6-8. Drilling down into at-risk minorities makes the data spread even less favourable. Problem-Based Learning A study in Problem-Based Learning (PrBL) in Mathematics may provide information toward improving student performance. In the study, 271 students were given several PrBL units, to see if this instructional mode would reveal any previously unidentified academic potential. Findings from the study suggest that well-designed PrBL can reveal unseen potential in students. (Gallagher, 2013). This potentially can address the disparity of the bottom 25% as noted in TIMSS and NAEP. PrBL also breaks away from more traditional forms of instructions and instead focuses on open ended problem solving. This lines up with the CAASPP’s increased focus on claims and reasoning. Boaler and Sengupta-Irving (2016) also found that increasing student agency and collaboration in heterogeneous groups improved engagement and achievement in mathematics with middle school students. The researchers also noted that students responded with more enjoyment to mathematics when they were given responsibility and collaborative opportunities. Mindset Self-concept is another factor that studies have shown to impact student achievement. Pinxten, Marsh, De Frain,Van Den Noortgate, Van Damme (2013) found that positive self-beliefs about math competencies had a positive effect on math achievement and a negative effect on perceived effort expenditure. Math enjoyment was also found to have a smaller positive effect on math achievement.The study focused on over 4,000 students between third and seventh grade. This further emphasizes the need not only for a pedagogical shift, but a mindset shift in education. Parker, Marsh, Ciarroch, Marshall, & Abduljabbar (2013) found in a longitudinal study of Australian youth that self-efficacy in math served as in indicator for future achievement. Specifically, math self-efficacy could be a strong predictor for university and post-graduate studies entry in STEM fields. This directly speaks to the long term importance of improving math self-efficacy. Growth mindset can be referred to as a specific type of self-concept. Dweck, in a 2014 continuation of her original work on growth mindset, found that high school students with a growth mindset were more likely to recover from receiving poor grades. Dweck also found that growth mindset predicted higher academic achievement via grades and SAT scores. This improvement was attributed to growth mindset students’ use of deeper learning strategies. Not only that, but girls and minorities seem to benefit more from a growth mindset, which helps level the playing field that has been skewed against them for decades. (Dweck, 2008). Claro et al. (2016) found that growth mindset also can reduce the negative academic impact of poverty on students in education. In the study, researchers also ran a reverse causation and found that growth mindset is not just apparent in successful students. In short, growth mindset causing success is not due to confirmation bias of successful students. Research by Yeager et al. (2012) has also shown that this growth mindset can lead to greater resiliency when facing mathematical challenges and, thus, can lead to higher rates of course completion. Beyond just improving performance on international testing metrics, growth mindset can create long term impacts by getting students farther in education. Local Context and Response The study district has slightly more favorable data than the state averages, with just over 30% of students in the Standard Met or Standard Exceeding Band in the Mathematics domain. study school has slightly more favorable data than the rest of study district, but not enough to be significant. However, study district still has more than 50% in the Nearly Met or Not Met band, so there is still a problem to address. Students need to continue to improve in their their ability to Problem Solve and Communicate Reasoning. study district has partnered with the New Tech Network to further implement 21st Century Skills in support of the Common Core. The study school is a Project Based Learning and Problem Based Learning School. Teachers have been to trainings and conferences provided by the New Tech Network and worked with consultants to develop authentic and rigorous PBL and PrBL units. The study school is currently examining how to engage students in cognitively complex tasks via training on Marzano’s The Highly Engaged Classroom. In sixth grade, all students complete projects to inform them about growth mindsets and to begin to develop them. All intervention classes have growth mindset components to their curriculum. Developing a growth mindset is a lifelong task, so growth mindset development needs to be a focus in the classroom at all stages of a student’s education. Problem Based Learning in Mathematics need to continue to develop. In mathematics, students need to learn how to think and write like mathematicians, improve in Problem Solving and Communicating Reasoning. Developing a growth mindset is a lifelong task, so growth mindset development needs to be a focus in the classroom at all stages of a student’s education. Problem Based Learning in Mathematics need to continue to develop. In mathematics, students need to learn how to think and write like mathematicians, improve in Problem Solving and Communicating Reasoning. Completing this Literature Review and Introduction had a dramatic impact on the direction of my paper. Initially, I had wanted to focus on standardized testing because it was a reliable and unbiased measure, at least in respect to me as a researcher. However, this lit review showed me that was a pretty well drawn out area of research and my particular population did not add much of significance. However, this prompted me to look beyond standardized testing into Claims data. This gave me a new direction. Students nationwide struggle in demonstrating their reasoning and problem solving. This lines up well with the PrBL at my school site and my personal desire to instill a growth mindset in students. Growth mindsets can build confidence and efficacy, which research shows are good predictors for future academic success. This also gave me direction on how to properly introduce a growth mindset. It has become a buzzword in education. So much so that Dweck has written several editorials about the dangers of the growth mindset movement she pioneered. Being well informed and prepared to implement my research question properly gives my study a stronger chance to make an impact on my students! My driving question focuses on the relationship between growth mindsets and performance levels on performance tasks. Below are the international, national, state and local contexts for math performance.
Internationally, the American education system has seriously underperformed other comparable countries. According to TIMSS, America ranks at #11 for 4th grade student performance and #8 for 8th grade student performance of all countries that participated in TIMSS and TIMSS Advanced. While scores have shown long term improvement over the last twenty years, scores plateaued heavily during No Child Left Behind and have not measurably improved from 2011. As Darling-Hammond also illustrates, countries that currently outperform America have varying styles of education. This suggest there are many factors such as culture and economy that go well beyond the walls of the classroom. Thus, non-academic factors, such as a growth mindset, merit exploration. Another point of interest from the TIMSS study is that the bottom 25% of students are the ones who are experiencing the most drop off in their scores. The upper 25% has continued to grow steadily to preserve the overall average, but the inequity in mathematics education is apparent. National data paints a similar picture. NAEP shows scores actually dropped between 2013 and 2015. The scores are better than 1990, but have not been measurably improving yet with the implementation of Common Core. NAEP data is also consistent with the data from TIMSS showing that the bottom 25% of students are falling off rather than improving and that minorities continue to struggle in the American education system. Math education is becoming even more of an equity issue. In California specifically, the data gets worse. In mathematics, for grades 6-8 in 2016, less than 40% of students meet or exceed academic standards. More than 25% in fall into the Standard Not Met band In the Concepts and Procedures claim, more than 75% of students between grades 6-8 are Near or Below Standard. In Problem Solving and Modeling & Data Analysis, 80% of students between grades 6-8 are Near or Below Standard. Finally, Communicating Reasoning also has 80% or more students between grades 6-8 at Near or Below Standard. While the data is not acceptable in any category, Problem Solving and Communicating Reasoning are the worst for students between grades 6-8. Again diving deeper into the data show minorities are suffering. The development of Common Core began in 2009 as an equity issue. States all had varying standards and varying definitions of proficiency. This was one of the driving forces behind the development of the Common Core State Standards which would begin to be ratified and adopted starting in 2011. The Common Core standards put a strong emphasis on deep, conceptual learning and less emphasis on formulaic thinking and skills. This complements the problem solving structure of PrBL. The grit developed from a growth mindset also enables students to go deeper with concepts and curriculum. In 2001, the Partnership for 21st Century Skills (P21) was formed. P21 is an organization focused on prom oting the 4 C’s, Life and Career Skills, and Technology Skills for students. This framework for students also synergizes well with PrBL and a growth mindset. PrBL frequently uses technology to enable more authentic problems, relies on students to use agency and collaboration to tackle larger tasks, and introduces or prepares students for future opportunities in college and career. In the context of Common Core and given the low scores in the Problem Solving and Reasoning claims, it is clear that a change is necessary. Growth mindset research has been going on almost a decade and can consistently point to improving achievement. PrBL has been found to foster "unseen potential" in students. These are two possible factors to explore when looking at the equity issue of math achievement. |
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