"Learning Loss" - Wrong and Right Solutions

        In this online article, Harvey Silver and Jay McTighe worry that “lost learning” is an unfortunate way to define the challenge schools face as they reopen for in-person instruction. By framing the challenge as instructional time lost, there’s a tendency to think the solution is rapidly covering the curriculum that students missed – which has two downsides. “At the classroom level,” say Silver and McTighe, “this solution could take the form of cutting out any of those time-consuming learning activities such as discussions, debates, hands-on science investigations, art creation, and authentic performance tasks and projects” – instead “trying to blitz through lots of factual information.” 

        Rather than focusing on the content that wasn’t covered during remote and hybrid instruction, they propose two more-productive approaches: 

        • Prioritizing the curriculum on outcomes that matter the most – A simple but effective way to accomplish this is preceding the title of each curriculum unit with the words, A study in… Several examples: 

        - The calendar – A study in systems 

        - Linear equations – A study in mathematical modeling 

        - Media literacy – A study in critical thinking 

        - Any sport – A study in technique 

        - Argumentation – A study in craftsmanship 

Preceding a unit title with those three words, say Silver and McTighe, “establishes a conceptual lens to focus learning on transferable ideas, rather than isolated facts or discrete skills.” 

        It’s also helpful to frame the unit around Essential Questions. For the five units above, here are some possibilities: 

        - How is the calendar a system? What makes a system a system? 

        - How can mathematics model or represent change? What are the limits of a mathematical model? 

        - Can I trust this source? How do I know what to believe in what I read, hear, and view? 

        - Why does technique matter? How can I achieve maximum power without losing control? 

        - What makes an argument convincing? How do you craft a persuasive argument? 

Well-framed Essential Questions are open-ended, stimulate thinking, discussions, and debate, and raise additional questions. 

        • Engaging learners in deeper learning that will endure – “To learn deeply,” say Silver and McTighe, “students need to interact with content, e.g., by linking new information with prior knowledge, wrestling with questions and problems, considering different points of view, and trying to apply their learning to novel situations.” The most important skills are comparing, conceptualizing, reading for understanding, predicting and hypothesizing, perspective-taking, and exercising empathy. 

        A kindergarten example: challenging students to predict how high they can stack blocks before a tower falls down, then having them try different hypotheses and see what works best, and note the success factors. “This focus on cause and effect will become a yearlong inquiry for students,” say Silver and McTighe, “as they learn to use it to examine scientific phenomena, characters’ behavior in stories, and even their own attitudes and motivations as learners.” (The full article, linked below, includes a middle-school unit on genetically modified food and a high-school unit comparing the educational philosophies of Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. DuBois.) 

        This two-part approach to curriculum is not just “a stopgap measure tied to current anxieties about learning loss,” conclude Silver and McTighe: “Framing content around big ideas and actively engaging students in powerful forms of thinking is good practice – in any year, under any conditions.” 

“Learning Loss: Are We Defining the Problem Correctly?” by Harvey Silver and Jay McTighe on McTighe’s website, May 7, 2021; McTighe can be reached at jmctigh@aol.com.

Please Note: This summary is reprinted with permission from issue #886 of The Marshall Memo, an excellent resource for educators.