Developing Expert Learners

A Roadmap for Growing Confident and Competent Students

Michael McDowell

• Publisher: Corwin
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781544337135
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education Teaching Methods

Building upon the groundwork from Rigorous PBL by Design, this resource provides practices that strategically support students as they move from novices to experts in core academics. This book

• Provides an actionable framework for developing student expertise
• Offers practical guidance for creating a culture that cultivates expertise and builds student efficacy
• Gives a unit and lesson template that clarifies the steps students must take to build, deepen, and apply core content knowledge and skills
• Ensures your students’ progress in their learning through a process for selecting instructional, feedback, and learning strategies
• Includes strategies for improving your professional expertise individually and collectively

Chapter 1 Guiding Actions for Expertise and Efficacy

Take a moment and ponder the following findings from Graham Nuthall’s (2007) research on student learning:

• Eighty percent of what is happening in the classroom between and among students is largely hidden from teachers.
• Eighty percent of the information that students receive is from their peers.
• Eighty percent of that information received from peers is incorrect.

Just these three facts alone should cause educators to pause and think about what is happening in their classrooms on a daily basis. This is one of the reasons why formative assessment practices are so critical to the teaching and learning in a classroom. A teacher must constantly find out what students know and are able to do and then respond in the moment to effectively intervene. Moreover, a teacher must work with students to ensure each student is giving each other accurate information (Wiliam, 2011).

Research from Robert Marzano (2017), Hattie and Donoghue (2016), Hattie and Timperley (2007), and Fisher, Frey, and Hattie (2016) have all illustrated that, though almost every strategy makes an impact on learning, there are several strategies that have the highest probability of working at different levels of complexity (i.e., surface, deep, and transfer). That is, there are certain “best fit” strategies that seem to work best for learners when they are moving across each level of complexity (see Figure 1.1).

Figure 1.1 Best Fit Impact Model

Simultaneously, there are several strategies that are foundational or are “anchor” strategies that have a high impact across levels of complexity. For example, a student’s relationship with a teacher is essential at all levels of understanding. Moreover, clarity of learning expectations and developing assessment capabilities are foundational skills that serve as a catalyst for current and future learning. Figure 1.1 provides a sampling of developing expertise-based strategies that teachers could use to support students in their learning journey.

If it is the case that the majority of the classroom is hidden from teachers, peer-to-peer information is prolific and inaccurate, and certain instructional, facilitative, and learning strategies are best used at the right level of learning, then teachers need new ways to design, implement, and manage learning in the classroom. In this chapter, we’ll discuss the 5Cs Guiding Actions that enable educators to illuminate student learning, build students’ capacity to build their own efficacy, and effectively intervene to develop student expertise. In short, this is accomplished by efficiently designing units and lessons, establishing practices to effectively intervene during class, and creating a classroom culture that enables all students to move from novices to experts.

The 5Cs: Guiding Actions for Developing Student Expertise

The 5Cs provide educators with a framework for how teachers and students should evaluate student learning in their classroom. Each guiding action is described in detail in Figure 1.2.

Clarify

When students clearly understand what the learning expectations are for them, their current performance, and what next steps they need to take, they have a much better chance of making decisions that will improve their own learning and thus take a greater level of responsibility over their learning. Moreover, when students have clarity over their learning, they tend to show substantial progress in their academic achievement. John Hattie’s Visible Learning (2009) research, which has a cumulative sample size of over 500+ million students, shows that students can gain two years’ worth of academic growth over one year’s time when the following is true:

Figure 1.2 Students’ and Teachers’ Roles in Promoting the 5Cs

• They know where they are going in their learning (learning goals and success criteria);
• They know where they are currently in their performance; and
• They have a clear sense of next steps to move forward in their learning.

Moreover, when students know what is expected of them and understand the gap between those expectations and their current performance, feedback is far more effective (Hattie & Timperley, 2007). This is key, as the right type of feedback essentially doubles the rate of learning (Wiliam, 2011). We will discuss the right type of feedback in the next several chapters.

As such, the ability to clarify is a precursor to the high effect of feedback, the development of efficacy, and, in general, increased achievement. When students understand the expectations for their learning, they can more easily see the gap between those expectations and their own current performance. Then they may more readily understand why they need feedback and are presumably more apt to take and use the feedback to alleviate the discrepancy between expectations and current performance.

Challenge

In an interesting study in 2008, Muller looked into the efficacy of science videos on student learning. The research found that students outperformed their peers when they had to consciously think about their previous beliefs and understandings compared to new knowledge and ideas. In this study, Mueller argued that if previous ideas (that were often incomplete or incorrect) were not reviewed or challenged, new knowledge was not learned, and previous ideas—regardless of accuracy—were reinforced! As such, it is paramount that current thinking is analyzed, evaluated, and challenged against new ideas.

James Nottingham, in his 2017 book The Learning Challenge, called this dissonance between current understanding and aspiring knowledge a “cognitive wobble,” referring to the notion of the struggle students have with determining whether new ideas can connect with previous ideas or if previous ideas must be replaced with new ideas. The cognitive wobble can be caused by a number of different factors including the following:

• Confronting conflicting ideas (e.g., Idea I: Robin Hood steals from rich to give to the poor and is a hero; Idea 2: Stealing is bad.)
• Understanding and expanding our understanding of concepts (e.g., What is a prime number? What is justice?)
• Challenging prior knowledge (e.g., Students observe wind blowing through the trees and think that wind comes from trees.)
• Exploring paradoxes (e.g., To establish power, one must give power away.)
• Exploring the strengths and limitation of models and metaphors (e.g., Thinking of organizations like cellular organisms promotes the idea of unity and working together but may limit the notion and interest of conflict as an important aspect of organizational growth.)

The commonality here is that students must bring their prior knowledge and preconceived notions to their conscious mind and present them to others, against established criteria, and be ready and open to feedback and changing their mind. This is easier said than done. As Stephen Brookfield (1989) states, “Analyzing assumptions, challenging previously accepted and internalized beliefs and values, considering the validity of alternative behaviors or social forms—all these acts are at times uncomfortable and all involve pain” (125). Such is the nature of learning. Figure 1.3 illustrates two examples of requiring students to identify what they think and test that thinking against new knowledge or understanding.

Students must bring their prior knowledge and preconceived notions to their conscious mind and present them to others, against established criteria, and be ready and open to feedback and changing their mind.

A key aspect of leveraging challenge is to encourage students to move through...