Brain overload - Summary of conference

This conference was a very welcome reality check for me.  I now have more of a grasp on the magnitude of what I don't know.  I will try to find links for the items I wish to read further.  After about 4 full days of pretty intense discussions and readings my brain is in a fog. Example: I left a bottle of water in my purse and forgot to take off my shoes through security at the airport...TSA asked if I was testing them.

Things to read later:
How People Learn, National Research Council (2000)
How Students Learn, National Research Council (2005)
Knowing What Students Know, National Research Council (2001)
The Opportunity Equation (2009)
Teaching Scientific Inquiry, Richard Duschl, NSF Conference, Sense Publishers (2005)
The Psychology of Learning: A Brief History, (Bruner, 2004)
Scientific Inquiry Practices (Abd-el-Khalick, et al. 2004 and  Grandy & Duschl, 2007)
SENCERizing Preservice K-8 Teacher Education: The Role of Scientific Practices
Science Education in 3-Part Harmony

I will add to the list later, this was just from my Monday/Tuesday notes.

Wednesday conference

I know it's Thursday morning and I would have preferred to do this last night, but the fabulous presentation at dinner went over (but it was well worth it!) and I was tired.

Summary of Wednesday:

Richard Duschl - "Diagnostic Assessments & Assessment Conversations"

Encouraging 3-part harmony of conceptual, epistemic, and social components are all crucial for creating a community of collaborative thinkers who understand and apply science concepts.

• Science is a group and social task, not individual task (social)
• Two most powerful interventions: adaptive instruction (conceptual) and dialogic teaching with student groupings (social)
• Good teachers are teachers who give good feedback; students should give feedback, too! (can be conceptual, epistemic, and social)
• Questioning cycle: Making students’ thinking explicit
• assessments to capture performance, gauge progress: embedded, benchmark, performance 
• evidence centered design for those creating assessment

o   What are the skills and understandings to be assessed? – domain model

o   What is the evidence that would justify particular inferences about a student? Student model

o   How could that evidence be generated? (task design)

o   How would the evidence be evaluated? (scoring

o   Gitomer & Duschl, NSSE, 2007

o   Developing Learning Performances (IQWST) Joe Krajcik University of Michigan

I was again impressed with my own lack of understanding of the powerful role of allowing students to be in control of data, analysis, and feedback.  This is a level of teaching mastery which I have only personally observed in 2 classrooms and not even at the level discussed today.  What is preventing that level of 

teaching/learning?

Doug Clark, Vanderbilt University

“Digital Games, Simulations, and Science Learning: What Does Research Demonstrate Across NRC Strands of Science Proficiency?”

 Go to sites.google.com/site/nsela2011 to see a list of numerous sites that have FANTASTIC simulations.  Again, it highlighted all that I haven't learned about science education - this time through argument driven inquiry.

Tuesday conference

Today featured two great scholars.  Richard Duschl focused on reforming how we view science education and also intro'ed our two day look at Ready, Set, Science!  Richard Lehrer presented how students can and should be active in inventing and critiquing methods of data collection and presentation.

Richard Duschl, "Overview of NRC Synthesis Reports Taking Science to School and Ready, Set, Science!"

·         Game changing in assessment – students now just held accountable for knowing/identifying anymore, now it is reasoning and application

·         Reforming how we view science education – vertical pathways from middle to high school to use higher level reasoning and critical thinking can’t just happen in one year; need science discourse/argumentation from students over years of education

·        need for core standards so there is a global, cohesive, vertically aligned science education 

·     not all students need to do the same activity in the same way to get the same data and express it in the same way – scientists don't do this, so why do we do it cookie cutter in "perfect" scenarios?

We also spent time with a book study of Ready, Set, Science! and looked at analyzing samples of student work for the level of their understanding.

And there are always the references made during the lecture to follow up on later, such as the work of:

      Mark Wilson and Construct Maps
Richard Lehrer (next presenter) and the Vanderbilt Project

Richard Lehrer, "Data Modeling"

   ·         contexts for statistical investigations

o   repeated measures

o   manufactured objects

o   natural objects

·         process of students taking time to invent and share displays for data and observations (size, shape, what is misleading? Pros? Cons?)

·         “display board reasoning” – what do you get from data that you can’t get from simple observations (trends, patterns, predictions, outliers)

·         Tinkerplots – easily manipulated software for creating various plots of data

·         Lessons will be posted on data modeling website:           

o   www.modelingdata.org username: guest / password: modeling

Team time: We also had some valuable team time to discuss the conference so far and listen to other people's reactions, responses, and their situations in their districts.  I'm looking forward to more of that tomorrow as well.  I want to know if they have similar issues in their district as we do.

Time for homework, reading a few chapters from Ready, Set, Science!  Tomorrow's going to be a long day 7am -8 pm.

Monday conference

Today was a morning of great ideas and information on innovation/creativity and on PLCs.  The afternoon was free to explore the surrounding areas.  I went a bit far away but now I can check touring the Biltmore estate off my list of architectural sites.

From this morning I have more things to read and research that what I will post here.  Here are just some nuggets that were of interest for me.

Alan McCormack “Developing Imagination: A Key Ingredient at All Levels of Course Reform” - spoke about the key role of developing imagination and creativity in order to solve scientific and engineering problems.  The following ideas are to foster creativity and innovations:

• Visual-Spatial Thinking in the Science Classroom
• Droodles by Roger Price - TV series clip - oodles of droodles
• Fleamarket Finds - Find the weirdest items at a flea market that you have no idea the purpose and have students make guesses which they justify with the properties of the item.  Example: What is this?
• Invention Dissections - Collect old, broken appliances and allow students to deconstruct them and discuss how they think it works.  Make up new inventions to solve problems (learning station.)

Joyce Tugel "The Role of Leaders in Professional Learning: Practical Strategies and Approaches for Science Teaching” 

• "Make Thinking Visible" - emphasize this in science (perfect for notebooks, also a strategy reading teachers use)
• effective professional development -  Teachers need understanding of content they teach: “Adult literacy” and also focus on building teachers’ understanding of how students learn content  
• PLC book study
• Windows of Intentionality - teaching intentionally matrix

  	Don’t know why	Know why
  Can’t teach it	Miracle	Theory
  Can teach it	Magic	Intentionality

• Additive professional development (just one more thing to do) vs transformative professional development (changing teaching methods, integrating) – time and structure built in to engage with each other as a professional community. 
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

1st evening of NSELA 2011

This is my first time attending NSELA's annual summer leadership conference and I feel right at home!  Everyone that I spoke with tonight was so interesting.  It's a small-ish group of passionate science leaders, whether they are teachers, instructional coaches, supervisors/coordinators, professors, etc.  Unlike CAST, it is nice that the size is not thousands of teachers but only about a hundred.  I'm looking forward to the week, but I can't imagine the ideas, information, and questions I will leave with.  Just from a 2 hour cocktail reception, I already have several things to research.   And here is one thing that was new to me.  For the high school biology teacher/leader, this is pretty cool.  article pdf

using student drawings

Interesting site.http://www.picturingtolearn.org/index.html  Wish it had elementary understandings. I like the idea though for sure.  Easy to do if teachers faithfully use science interactive notebook reflections.

Met-Life Survey of the American Teacher

Met-Life published their survey  of the American Teacher in March 2011 that highlights two main parts:

• Part 1:   Clearing the Path examines the importance  of being college- and career-ready, what  this level of preparation includes, and what it may take to get there.  (Do I hear CCRS?  In Texas, we have things called "Career and College Readiness Standards" which were developed by a joint effort between businesses and teachers to emphasis and make an official list of qualities and skills that students will need to succeed in careers and college. http://www.txccrs.org/ )

• 'Part 2: Teaching Diverse Learners looks at differences in student needs, how teachers address them and how well students feel their needs are being met.

Here are just some details I found interesting and they are just in the order that I came across them reading the report.  The data was collected via survey and it measures perceptions of teachers, students, parents, and businesses.

1. The surveyed Fortune 1000 executives valued teamwork over independent work.  Whereas teachers, students, and parents polled slightly leaned more towards valuing independent work than teamwork.-- My reaction: D'uh.  In school, students MUST learn how to work together and how to solve problems they have with their classmates.  Teacher should be facilitator.  However, social skills aren't in state standards, nor are they tested. Communication and problem solving are essential for the workplace, but are many times lacking in the classroom. Easy fix, just use cooperatives structures (see Kagan or his 52 structures.) 

2.  Priorities for college and career preparedness emphasize higher order skills over challenging content - Again: D'uh.  I personally think this is an issue of control.  In teaching challenging content, the teacher has more control over the direction of the class and what all students are doing.  But once higher order skills are involved, the teacher switches roles from director to facilitator and that can be scary for the many control freaks (I used to be one of them) out there.

3.  "Parents and executives show the strongest support for 'giving schools more ability to remove teachers who are not serving students well,' with 75% of parents  and 83% of executives saying this must be done as one of the highest priorities in education." - As an educator, I actually agree with this view.  If you are not effective as a teacher, then it should be possible to remove that person from the classroom fairly quickly (i.e. sooner than the 3-5 YEARS that it seems to take now.)  I would like to know more about evaluations in the business world and how they conduct performance evaluations - my hunch is it is MUCH different that those I've experienced as an educator.  I think sometimes we're too "sugar-coated" and political.

4. "Parents who have low incomes themselves (a household income of less than $35,000) are among those most likely to consider [strengthening programs and resources to help diverse learners is of critical importance] a top priority (76%), as are parents who are African-American (73%)." - Just interesting.  I wonder if they have any specific feelings or comments on how they feel that the school isn't reaching their kids or what kinds of resources they would support.

5. "Two factors that do distinguish teachers’ views on  their ability to differentiate instruction are the subject areas they teach and their schools’ college-going culture" - Having come from a district whose superintendent uses the phrase, "All means all!" I am no stranger to differentiated instruction and how it is really a never ending journey rather than a destination.  Unfortunately, science teachers were not mentioned as a group on their views of DI, they are lumped in with 'other' subjects.  I am curious about the science teachers perceptions on their ability to differentiate.

Again, I'm left with a feeling after reading this report of, okay, now what?  How do we make our students more successful and globally competitive in math and science?