Recently, I attended the DR K-12 PI meeting in Washington, D.C., and was surprised to hear so much controversial discussion surrounding the development and use of learning progressions. In my work at Michigan State University, I have been immersed in learning about what learning progressions are, how they can be used by teachers and teacher educators, and their potential to positively impact students’ learning—all in science education. For the most part, the conversations I have been a part of (up until this point) have always cast learning progressions in a positive light. However, I have started to wonder about their potential drawbacks and limitations.

To be upfront, I am much enamored of the research that shows how learning progressions can be used by teachers to pinpoint students’ understanding of various science concepts and to assess their own teaching strategies and behaviors. The development of learning progressions for various science topics and concepts seems to be a promising way to help teachers, especially those with little science background or who teach multiple science topics, learn about how students think, and point to productive directions that teachers would want to move students towards (the same can be said about teacher learning progressions). However, I heard many conversations where participants asked questions about whether there is even such a “thing” as a learning progression—that is, are there really patterns and stages for how students think about particular scientific ideas (or how teachers learn how to enact specific teaching strategies or methods)? Does the notion of learning progressions even make sense, or is there something else that would more accurately represent students’ thinking/teachers’ practice? If so, what might that look like? 

I look forward to continued conversations on this matter and hope to hear from others who have been pondering similar questions.