“Today in America,”
says assessment guru Dylan Wiliam in his latest book, “the biggest problem with
education is not that it is bad. It is that it variable. In hundreds of
thousands of classrooms in America, students are getting an education that is
as good as any in the world. But in hundreds of thousands of others, they are
not.” Wiliam argues that these recent initiatives in U.S. schools are not the best
ways to solve the problem of variability:
-
Recruiting
“smarter” people as teachers (they aren’t necessarily effective with kids);
-
Focusing
on firing “bad” teachers (although of course the very worst need to go);
-
Using
infrequent classroom observations (“Good teachers have bad days and bad
teachers have good days,” says Wiliam);
-
Using
test scores to evaluate teachers (“Every teacher builds on the foundations laid
by those who taught their students previously.”);
-
Merit
pay for the “best” teachers (there aren’t reliable ways to identify them);
-
Reducing
class size (except in the lower grades, if effective teachers are available);
-
Copying
the practices of other countries (many of their ideas don’t travel well);
-
Expanding
school choice (there are several challenges and scaling up is problematic).
So what does work?
Wiliam believes two approaches will bring more good teaching to more students
more of the time, with particular benefits for the least advantaged:
• A knowledge-rich
curriculum – Students enter school with significant differences in
vocabulary, processing power, and working memory. However, says Wiliam, “The
differences in people’s intelligence and differences in the capacities of their
short-term working memories (which undoubtedly exist) matter very little if
they have the same extensive knowledge. Education can’t do much for
intelligence or working memory, but it can have a massive impact on long-term
memory.” That’s why a curriculum rich in knowledge closes achievement gaps.
“The big mistake
we have made in the United States, and indeed in many other countries,” Wiliam
continues, “is to assume that if we want students to be able to think, then our
curriculum should give our students lots of practice in thinking. This is a
mistake because what our students need is more to think with. The main purpose of curriculum is to build up the content of
long-term memory so that when students are asked to think, they are able to
think in more powerful ways because what is in their long-term memories makes
their short-term memories more powerful. That is why curriculum matters.”
Wiliam lists
these desiderata for a high-quality curriculum: (a) it’s well aligned with the
aims of K-12 education; (b) it has a carefully structured sequence for building
knowledge (for example, it’s easier for students to understand how to find the
area of a triangle if they’ve first learned how to find the area of a
parallelogram); (c) the pacing of knowledge acquisition avoids overloading
short-term memory; (d) material is distributed over weeks, months, and years
with review built in; and (e) students have frequent opportunities for
self-testing so knowledge is firmly embedded in long-term memory.
• Improving the
teachers we have – “Schools and districts need to focus on the idea that
all teachers need to get better,” says Wiliam, “not because they’re not good
enough but because they can be even better. Moving the focus from evaluation to
improvement also changes working relationships in a building. Where teachers
are in competition, either because they are seeking scarce bonuses or to avoid
sanctions, then they are unlikely to help each other. In contrast, when it is
expected that all teachers improve, cooperation is encouraged and even
expected.”
Teacher teamwork has the greatest potential to improve
teaching and learning, says Wiliam, so the most important job of school leaders
is fostering a professional environment that supports frequent team
collaboration. Foundational conditions include: order and discipline; addressing
teachers’ basic concerns; time and resources for professional development; a
culture of trust and respect; a “press” for student achievement; and
reorienting teacher evaluation to focus on improving instructional practices.
For teacher
team meetings to have the greatest benefit for students, Wiliam believes they
need to be tightly structured and spend most of the time looking at evidence of
student learning (from classroom assessments or samples of student work). He
and his colleagues have developed the following steps for once-a-month 75-minute
team meetings (with one member serving as timekeeper and facilitator). The
focus is always on looking at student work and assessment evidence and thinking
of the best ways to adapt instruction to meet students’ needs in real time. Here’s
the structure:
-
The
teacher responsible for running the meeting outlines the meeting’s aims,
including the student learning intentions and criteria for success (5 minutes).
-
The team
does a warm-up activity, perhaps sharing something a student said that made
them smile, something a colleague did to support their work, something they’re
looking forward to, or something that’s bugging them (5 minutes).
-
Each
teacher reports on an instructional change they promised to try in their classrooms
at the previous meeting with evidence of how it went, and colleagues share ideas
and suggestions (25 minutes).
-
The team
discusses a new article, book chapter, or video on formative assessment (20
minutes).
-
Each
teacher shares a classroom practice they are going to implement over the coming
month (15 minutes).
-
The team
wraps up by reviewing whether the meeting’s goals were met – and if not, what
action needs to be taken (5 minutes).
Wiliam says this protocol
has been dramatically successful in improving teaching and learning in hundreds
of schools across the U.S.
Educators often
voice two concerns about structuring team meetings this way. First, will having
the same sequence be monotonous? Not so, says Wiliam; a familiar structure with
different content keeps things on track and saves time that might be taken up repeatedly
inventing new structures. Second, don’t teachers need an outside facilitator to
stay on task? “Our experience,” says Wiliam, “is that teachers really can do it
for themselves.” He points to three reasons for not depending on teacher
coaches as facilitators: (a) pulling good teachers out of the classroom to
serve as coaches often results in a net loss of a school’s instructional
capacity; (b) coaching positions are often the first to be cut in hard budget
times; and (c) coaches don’t always have credibility. “Even when teachers come
from the district,” says Wiliam, “as soon as they stop teaching and become
coaches, many teachers regard the coaches as being out of touch with the realities
of teaching.”
What makes this meeting structure so successful? First,
says Wiliam, “focusing on classroom assessment seems to be a smart place to
begin the conversation with teachers… All teachers in America would probably
agree that it is part of their day job to find out whether students have
learned what they have been taught.” Second, research points to the power of formative
(on-the-spot) assessments to improve teaching and learning by adjusting
instruction minute-by-minute and day-by-day, and that is always the heart of
these teacher meetings. And third, says Wiliam, “when we develop teachers’
ability to use real-time assessment to adapt their instruction to their
students’ learning needs, those skills can be applied in all their teaching.”
Boosting these skills involves changing teachers’ daily
practice, which can be challenging. Wiliam believes this “is most likely to be
achieved through regular meetings where teachers promise to their peers what
they are going to try out in their classrooms and are held accountable for
making those changes.”
Creating the Schools Our Children Need by Dylan Wiliam (Learning Sciences
International, 2018); Wiliam can be reached at dylanwiliam@mac.com.
(Please Note: The summary above is reprinted with permission from issue #820 of
The Marshall Memo, an excellent resource for educators.)
(Please Note: The summary above is reprinted with permission from issue #820 of
The Marshall Memo, an excellent resource for educators.)
