Learning Progression

Using Learning Progression Research in Classroom Settings

in
Day: 
Fri

Learning-progression research creates new possibilities for improving teaching practice while creating new challenges. Five projects exchange views focusing on problems of teaching practice.

Date/Time: 
10:30 am - 12:30 pm
Session Type: 
PI-organized Discussion
Presenters: 
Charles Anderson
Marianne Wiser
Kristin Gunckel
Nancy Songer
Brian Reiser

This session includes five projects engaged in design research to develop learning progression–based frameworks, assessments, and teaching practices/materials. The session focuses on five problems of practice that all of the projects face—where learning progression research creates new possibilities for improving current teaching practice while creating new challenges.

  1. Framing scientific knowledge and goals for teaching
  2. Formative and summative assessment
  3. Scaffolding students’ scientific practices fused to core science content
  4. Issues of equity and diversity
  5. Contributing to the research knowledge base and supporting tools and resources

Each of these issues provides challenges as well as new possibilities—learning progression–based teaching practices can be more complex and difficult to enact; they can be at odds with current practice; they can require teachers to take new and difficult perspectives. Each participating project chooses one or two issues that they consider especially challenging and discuss the challenges that they face in the context of their project, including specific examples of more and less successful efforts.

First Name: 
William Fisher
LinkedIn URL: 
http://www.linkedin.com/in/livingcapitalmetrics
Professional Title: 
Research Associate
Organization/Institution: 
University of California, Berkeley
About Me (Bio): 
Prior to joining the BEAR Center at UC Berkeley, Dr. Fisher was Chief Science Officer with Avatar International in Orlando, Florida, a Senior Scientist with MetaMetrics, Inc. in Durham, North Carolina, and Professor of Research in the LSU School of Medicine in New Orleans, Louisiana. He has Ph.D. and M.A. degrees from the University of Chicago, where he was a Spencer Foundation Dissertation Research Fellow. With over 25 years' experience, Fisher's current research interests range from philosophical and historical issues in science and measurement to special education under IDEA to the practical implementation of learning progressions in math and science education.
URL: 
http://ssrn.com/author=1090685
http://livingcapitalmetrics.wordpress.com
http://www.livingcapitalmetrics.com
Assessment, Discourse, Learning Progression, Special Education, Standards

Evaluating and Improving a Learning Trajectory for Linear Measurement in Elementary Grades 2 and 3: A Longitudinal Study

Submitted by Jeffrey Barrett on Tue, 04/24/2012 - 8:47pm
in
Author(s): 
Clements, Douglas
Barrett, Jeffrey
Sarama, Julie
Cullen, Craig
McCool, Jenni
Witkowski-Rumsey, Chepina
Klanderman, David
Contact Info: 
jbarrett@ilstu.edu
Publication Type: 
Journal
Publication Date: 
In Press
Access Link: 
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10986065.2012.625075

We examined children’s development of strategic and conceptual knowledge for linear measurement.
We conducted teaching experiments with eight students in grades 2 and 3, based on our hypothetical
learning trajectory for length to check its coherence and to strengthen the domain-specific model for
learning and teaching.We checked the hierarchical structure of the trajectory by generating formative
instructional task loops with each student and examining the consistency between our predictions
and students’ ways of reasoning. We found that attending to intervals as countable units was not
an adequate instructional support for progress into the Consistent Length Measurer level; rather,
students must integrate spaces, hash marks, and number labels on rulers all at once. The findings have
implications for teaching measure-related topics, delineating a typical developmental transition from
inconsistent to consistent counting strategies for length measuring. We present the revised trajectory
and recommend steps to extend and validate the trajectory.

First Name: 
Su-Tuan Lulee
About Me (Bio): 
I am a doctoral student in Distance Education at Athabasca University, Canada.
Assessment, Discourse, Educational Technology, Learning Progression, Universal Design

Change Thinking for Global Science: Fostering and Evaluating Inquiry Thinking About the Ecological Impacts of Climate Change

Submitted by Vanessa Peters on Tue, 12/07/2010 - 7:00pm
in
Presenter(s): 
Nancy Butler Songer
Philip Myers
James H. Beach
Vanessa L. Peters
Contact Info: 
vlpeters@umich.edu
Year: 
2010
Month: 
December
File: 
application/pdf icon
Songer_ChangeThinking.pdf
Access Link: 
http://www.essentialscience.umich.edu/

Project Summary

During the lifetimes of our current middle and high school students, it is likely that our planet will undergo more anthropogenic change than it has during all of human history to date. The project is utilizing a learning progression approach for the systematic design of coordinated curriculum, tool, and assessment products focused on climate change biology. This work will provide an empirical and theoretical basis for critical concept development about the impacts of climate change on living systems.

Research Questions

  1. Which scientic content and reasoning skills are essential for 7-10th graders' complex reasoning and modeling of the ecological impacts of climate change? How are these manifested in content and inquiry reasoning progressions?
  2. What dynamic visualization and modeling resources support the development of deep thinking about the ecological impacts of climate change?
  3. What scaolding and instructional activities support the development of deep thinking about the ecological impacts of climate change, including both content (ecological impacts) and complex reasoning components (science practices) of this knowledge, within cohorts of 7-10th graders?

 

First Name: 
Lisa Kenyon
Professional Title: 
Assistant Professor
Organization/Institution: 
Wright State University
Learning Progression
First Name: 
Neil Heffernan
Professional Title: 
Associate Professor and CoDirector of Learning Sciences Grad. Program
Organization/Institution: 
Worcester Polytechnic Institute
About Me (Bio): 
Dr. Neil Heffernan graduated summa cum laude from Amherst College in History and Computer Science. Neil taught mathematics to eighth grade students in Baltimore City as part of Teach for America, a program that selectively recruits top candidates to teach in inner-city schools. Neil then decided to do something easier and get a PhD in building intelligent tutoring systems. Neil enrolled in Carnegie Mellon University's Computer Science Department to do multi-disciplinary research in cognitive science and computer science to create educational software that leads to higher student achievement. For his dissertation, Neil built the first intelligent tutoring system that incorporated a model of tutorial dialog. This system was shown to lead to higher student learning, by getting students to think more deeply about problems. It is based upon detailed studies of students, which produced basic cognitive science research results on the nature of human thinking and learning. This technology was patented and licensed to Carnegie Learning Inc. which has sold tutors to 1,000+ high schools across the US. Neil is now a tenured professor at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, where he is focused on creating "cognitive models", computer simulations of student thinking and learning, which are then used to design educational materials, practices and technologies. Neil and his colleagues are working in close collaboration with the Worcester Public Schools, teams of teachers and WPI graduate students to create the next generation of intelligent tutoring systems. Neil’s current system, called ASSISTments is used by 6,000+ middle school student as part of their normal math class. He has gotten awards from the Worcester school system and the Massachusetts of School Committees for his work helping schools. Neil has written over 40 strictly peer-reviewed publications. Neil is one of the most successful grant writers at WPI. Since coming to WPI, Neil has received over a dozen grants (3 from NSF including the prestigious CAREER award, 3 from the US Dept of Education, as well as grants from the Office of Naval Research, the US Army, the Massachusetts Technology Transfer Center and the Spencer Foundation) worth over 9 million dollars. Recently, Neil’s work was cited in the National Educational Technology Plan. Neil started the learning sciences and technologies program and has seen to grow to include three more faculty members and now have a PhD program that he is the executive director of.
URL: 
http://www.assistments.org/
http://nth.wpi.edu/BioSketch.htm
http://web.cs.wpi.edu/~nth/
Assessment, Cognitive Science, Cyberlearning, Educational Technology, Implementation, Learning Progression, Mathematics, Professional Development, Statistics, Technology, Systems Reform, Teacher Practice
First Name: 
Jillianne Code
Professional Title: 
Postdoctoral Research Fellow
Organization/Institution: 
Harvard University
URL: 
http://www.virtualassessment.org
http://www.jillcode.com
21st Century Skills, Assessment, Classroom Practice, Cognitive Science, Cyberlearning, Educational Technology, Learning Progression
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