Measuring Human Return

Understand and Assess What Really Matters for Deeper Learning

Joanne J. McEachen, Matthew Kane

• Publisher: Corwin
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781544330808
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Éducation
• Subtopic: Leadership dans l'éducation

Measure what matters for deeper learning

Getting at the heart of what matters for students is key to deeper learning that connects with their lives, but what good is knowing what matters without also understanding how to bring it to life? What does it really take to know who students are, what they are truly learning, and why? Measuring Human Return solves this dilemma with a comprehensive, systematic process for measuring deeper learning outcomes. Educators will learn to assess students' self-understanding, knowledge, competencies, and connections through vignettes, case studies, learning experiences and tools. The book helps readers:

• Develop key system capabilities to build the foundation for sustainable engagement, measurement, and change
• Discover five comprehensive "frames" for measuring deeper learning
• Engage in the process of collaborative inquiry
• Commit to the central, active role of learners by engaging them as partners in every aspect of their learning

Discover how to take an authentic, formative, and inquiry-driven approach to measuring the outcomes that drive deeper learning.

The book really hits the mark. The best thing about it is the in-depth discussion of systems. It is with great pleasure that I read and re-read this book. It delivers a good combination of big vision with specific strategies and techniques.
Jeff Beaudry, Professor, Educational Leadership;
University of Southern Maine; Portland, ME This is just what we need in our district. This engaging book will help Change Teams support their systems to effectively measure deeper learning. Readers will be drawn in by great examples from around the globe of educators putting students first. This energizing book calls us to take action for all of our students today and for our future.
Charisse Berner, Director of Teaching and Learning, Curriculum;
Bellingham Public Schools; Bellingham, WA

Part I Capable Systems of Change

Chapter 1 From Surface to Deep

Deeper Learning in a Changing World

We all should celebrate our humanity. The depths of understanding and connection it allows for are bottomless, and the capacity it gives us for making a collective difference in others’ lives and in the world exceeds that of anyone acting alone. Any individual can rise to great heights, but the depths we can reach together are greater.

Learning that reflects our humanity should be celebrated, too. We’re talking about learning that’s concerned not only with what we know but also with who we are, what we can do, and how our self-understanding, knowledge, and competencies come together to connect us at incredible depths of meaning, fulfillment, and contribution. Developing the outcomes that help us make a real and sustainable difference, now and in the future—that’s deeper learning, and it’s cause for celebration.

We realize that this isn’t the sort of language traditionally used to describe education and its outcomes. It should be—it describes the full range of outcomes that actually matter for learners, now and throughout their lives. For us and for the students, educators, families, and communities with whom we continue to learn and partner, and, we would argue, for all of us, the outcomes that actually matter are those related to self-understanding, knowledge, competency, and connection. These deeper learning outcomes are the outcomes that are universally consistent with meaning and fulfillment, and they’re the outcomes that help us connect with and contribute to our local and global communities. These outcomes are important, so education should develop them—all of them, and not just in mission or principle but through authentic and intentional practice.

When learning is deeper, we as educators can feel it. But in order to truly know whether students are developing any intended learning outcome, we have to measure it, too. Measurement provides an overall understanding of learning or development in relation to intended outcomes. When determined validly, individual measurements reflect the breadth of available evidence, synthesized to arrive at a fully informed decision or understanding. Assessment provides those individual points of evidence that combine to inform the measurement process. In this way, measurement relies on the strength and diversity of assessments that get at the heart of whatever we’re trying to measure. Although the shortfalls of standardized assessments are well documented (Chappuis, Commodore, & Stiggins, 2017; Meier & Knoester, 2017), one of the most significant shortfalls concerns the comprehensiveness of what they can assess. Ultimately, they inform an incomplete picture of student performance, one that fails to account for who students are as individuals, what they can and hope to accomplish both as individuals and collectively, and what it really takes for every learner to be a successful and engaged citizen of the world. Focusing solely on narrowing measures of student success, in turn, narrows teaching and learning, limiting assessment practice along with students’ opportunities for success.

The thinking and practice emerging to fill the gaps left by traditional teaching and learning are extraordinary. Powerful movements, including personalized (Kallick & Zmuda, 2017), project based (Larmer, Mergandoller, & Boss, 2015), 21st century (Bellanca & Brandt, 2010), social and emotional (Merrell & Gueldner, 2010), and culturally responsive (Hammond, 2015) learning, as a whole, respond to the importance of learning that’s meaningful to the lives and identities of students and the importance of the outcomes that truly matter in today’s rapidly changing and increasingly global communities. Individual interests and needs should shape each student’s engagement with academic content, which requires educators to truly know and value every single learner as an individual. At the same time, personalized learning is only as valuable as the outcomes it develops, and so educators are working to determine the outcomes that matter and how to bring them to life. These complementary frameworks and approaches are shifting practice and making a difference for students, educators, and communities worldwide.

Deeper learning, as defined and explored in this book, is the collective aim of the movements mentioned above and the necessary aim of education because it’s the global aim of humanity: to live in ways that are meaningful and fulfilling. This humanistic aim, as well as the framework of deeper learning outcomes, is only beginning to be explored in the context of education, but the people involved are developing, sharing, and spreading deeper learning and practice at an exciting pace. At The Learner First (thelearnerfirst.com), as founder and CEO (Joanne) and director of research and writing (Matthew), we the authors partner with school districts across America to identify, implement, and measure what’s important for individual learners, cultivating cultures in which learning is continuous, centered on, and driven by students. Deeper learning doesn’t happen in isolation—an inquiry-driven change team process connecting the different levels of our school systems illuminates the full picture of our students, our systems, and their needs, ensuring that what’s important for learners is assessed, measured, and acted on. Our work with Michael Fullan, Joanne Quinn, and the New Pedagogies for Deep Learning (NPDL) global partnership currently engages some fifteen hundred schools in seven countries (Australia, Canada, Finland, the Netherlands, New Zealand, the United States, and Uruguay) in developing and measuring deeper learning competencies, or the “6Cs”—character, citizenship, collaboration, communication, creativity, and critical thinking (Fullan, Quinn, & McEachen, 2017). What we’re learning in partnership with these diverse districts and groups of schools informs our framework for making deeper learning a reality, wherever and whoever you are.

This book reflects the work of students, teachers, and other leaders throughout the world who are driving real outcomes for learners through a recognition of and commitment to depth. While we said that deeper learning is learning worth celebrating, it may be more appropriate to say that deeper learning is a celebration—the excitement displayed by students and their learning partners at the intersection of self-understanding, knowledge, competency, and connection could be called nothing less. This book continues the celebration by sharing the experiences of those who are embracing deeper learning.

In Part I, we introduce concepts that’ll set the stage for the learning to come, examine the personal and systemic shifts that can bring deeper learning to life, and take an initial look at the power of change teams to spread deeper learning within school systems and beyond.

A Comprehensive Measurement Framework

The measurement and assessment of deeper learning require significant changes at all levels of our educational system, from the classroom level to the national level. Within the US educational system, each level represents a system in and of itself—a complex and connected body working, at its best, clearly and cohesively toward shared outcomes or ends. Whether you’re a teacher, a principal, a district superintendent, or a higher administrator, with deeper learning, there’s room for you to grow while still meeting your system’s requirements and demands, no matter what those requirements are. In fact, deeper learning will help you meet them while also helping your learners achieve in exciting new ways. We should tell you up front that pursuing deeper learning isn’t something you “do” here or there or every once in a while or as an add-on in addition to other pursuits. It’s a true organizational culture, enhancing what you’re already doing and enabling what you’ve always wanted to do. Anyone can lead this work by example—wherever you can, go deeper, and spread that depth throughout your system. Deeper learning begins with you.

It starts with shifts in thinking. Paving the way for deeper learning requires that you do away with certain biases and assumptions about the relationships between students, teachers, school and wider-system leaders, learning, and school systems. It requires a real understanding of your system and your students, as well as of how your system and everyone within it can best meet the needs of each individual learner (not the other way around). The assumption-shatterers described later in this chapter will lead to deeper and more meaningful system-level focuses, namely, the five system capabilities:

1. Understanding your system
2. Engaging learners, parents, and communities as real partners
3. Identifying and measuring what’s important
4. Leading for deep and sustainable change
5. Creating a culture of learning, belonging, and high expectations for all

We’ll explain how anyone—truly, anyone—can strengthen these capabilities to foster deeper outcomes for learners.

All systems are capable of deepening learning—capable systems deepen learning for all. Since system-wide depth is the ultimate goal, educators need an impetus or vehicle for spreading learning within and beyond their system. Our recommended vehicles are change teams, formed within—and, ideally, between—schools, districts, and wider systems to bring stakeholders together to share practices, challenges, and ways forward at every point in the learning journey. Whether you start with a single district or even a single school, a change team is important because deeper learning is a partnership—between and among students, teachers, parents, school and wider-system leaders, community members, and all other learning partners committed to collectively improving students’ outcomes. Throughout this book, we’ll draw on the experiences of change teams in Burlington-Edison School District (in Washington State), focusing on how you can apply the lessons from their and others’ deeper learning journeys in your own individual context.

When you share the idea of working to ensure deeper learning, you’ll likely meet with questions such as “Why?” or “Why now?” from various learning partners. We suggest you respond with another question: “What outcomes are important for our learners?” In most school systems, certain outcomes that learning partners believe are important aren’t being measured or intentionally developed. If you suspect that’s the case in your system too, you can address the situation head-on by telling your learning partners, “We haven’t been focusing on what’s important, but now we will.”

When asked what outcomes are important for learners, your learning partners will no doubt point to self-understanding, knowledge, competency, and connection—the very outcomes that determine humans’ desire and ability to contribute to the lives of others and their communities in meaningful and fulfilling ways. Developing these outcomes means developing learners’ capacity to use their learning to make a positive and sustainable difference in the world. Measuring these outcomes, then, is measuring human return.

It’s one thing to identify these outcomes or even make them the explicit goals of your educational system, but it’s another thing entirely to measure them. Measuring an outcome helps you focus on and design methods of developing that outcome, and it’s the only way to know what methods prove successful. If you don’t know what’s working, you won’t improve your practice, and if you don’t improve your practice, you won’t improve learners’ outcomes. You have to approach deeper learning with purpose and intention, and you have to continuously monitor your progress in bringing its outcomes to life. Measurement accomplishes all that and more. It gives you the language you need to (1) talk about deeper learning and how deeper learning can develop and (2) build the capacity to assess and develop it at any level of your school system. Furthermore it shows you what and how you need to assess in order to gather the evidence that measurement requires. This book will provide you with the measures, additional tools, and processes for bringing deeper learning to life no matter your role, location, or relation to your school system, along with a framework for authentic measurement practice comprising the five frames of measurement:

1. Engagement
2. Development
3. Clarity
4. Inquiry
5. Depth

We’ll explore each of these frames of measurement using examples from individual schools and wider school systems that are moving toward deeper learning.

Collectively, your learning partners already know what’s important for every learner. Your school or wider system simply needs to come together around what matters and then act on what you find. From there, you’ll have the opportunity to identify, develop, build clarity around, and use measures of deeper learning aligned to learners and their needs.

Although measurement will be your lever for sustainable, student-centered shifts throughout your system, it operates within a wider inquiry process (adapted from Timperley, 2011) designed to focus all decisions on learners and their outcomes, transform the roles of students and other learning partners, and deepen instructional and other system-level practices. “Inquiry” describes the ubiquitous, continuous process of assessment, design, implementation, measurement, and reflection and change pervading every level of a deeper learning system and framing all activity within it. To present it another way, we like to think of inquiry as the process of designing and implementing assessments that support the development and measurement of learning, reflecting along the way, and changing practice as necessary. In the inquiry narrative, assessments are both evidence and solutions. They evidence where learners currently are with their learning and what they need in order to progress...