AISHnet Survey - Academy for International School Heads

Topic Curriculum & PD 

Academy of International School Heads 

AISHnet Survey 

Query As summer quickly approaches, we are preparing next year's faculty orientation program. As 

part of our objective of developing a Professional Learning Community, we will present teachers with a list 

of provocative, cutting edge or future focused articles, videos or book chapters from which to choose 

from. They will read/view one of these over the summer and are expected to share their insights and 

learning with colleagues in disparate and like groups during orientation week. 

We are in the process of compiling articles and chapters and I would be grateful if you would share any 

that you have found to be thought provoking around any of the following topics: 

Authentic/project based learning/assessment 

Twenty first century skills 

Brain research 

Standards based assessment 

Alternative scheduling models 

Grading 

Personalized learning 

Online learning 

Technology integration 

Schools of the future 

Other topics? 

Date May 2011 

Query Submitted and collated by Arnie Bieber, IS Prague 

Total number of responses 

Individual responses 

PD Resources 

The Shallows. What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains. by Nicholas Carr. (Finalist for the 2011 Pulitzer 

Prize in General Nonfiction) 

21st Century Skills, Rethinking How Students Learn, (Essays by John Barell, Linda Darling‐Hammond, Chris 

Dede, Rebecca DuFour, Richard DuFour, Douglas Fisher, Robin J. Fogarty, Nancy Frey, Howard Gardner, 

Andy Hargreaves, David W. Johnson, Roger T. Johnson, Cheryl Lemke, Jay McTighe, Alan November, Bob 

Pearlman, Brian M. Pete, Douglas Reeves, Will Richardson, Elliott Seif) 

Ken Robinson 

AISHnet survey www.AcademyISH.org 

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o How School Kills Creativity, (Video) 

http://www.ted.com/talks/ken_robinson_says_schools_kill_creativity.html 

o Changing Education Paradigms, (Video) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDZFcDGpL4U 

Punished by Rewards: The Trouble with Gold Stars, Incentive Plans, A's, Praise, and Other Bribes (Boston: 

Houghton Mifflin) 

The Human Side of School Change: Reform, Resistance, and the Real Life Problems of Innovation (Jossey‐ 

Bass Education Series) 

Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard, Chip Heath and Dan Heath 

De‐Schooling Society, Ivan Illich– ("Personalized Learning" and/or "Schools of the Future") 

Teaching with the Brain in Mind, Eric Jensen (outstanding for providing teachers with latest brain 

research and implications for the classroom) 

Teaching Digital Natives, Mark Prensky 

The Shallows, Nicholas Carr —What the Internet is Doing to our Brains (Very insightful—and it gives you 

reason to pause and consider just what we are doing in our rush to bring cutting edge (dulling edge?) 

technology into our schools.) 

How to Grade for Learning, Ken O’Conner 

Formative Assessment and Standards‐Based Grading, Marzano 

Active Learning through Formative Assessment, Shirley Clarke 

Breaking Free ‐ from myths about teaching and learning, Zamuda 

Intellectual Character – What It Is, Why It Matters, and How to Get It, Ron Ritchhart 

Making Learning Whole – How Seven Principles of Teaching can Transform Education, David Perkins 

Making Thinking Visible – How to Promote Engagement, Understanding and Independence for All Learners, 

Ritchhart, Church and Morrison 

Mindset, Carol Dweck 

Focus, Mike Schmoker (standards‐based education and assessment) 

Curriculum 21, (edited by Heidi Hayes Jacobs, especially the article by Jamie Cloud on Education for 

Sustainability.) 

How to learn? From mistakes, Diane Laufenberg: 

http://www.ted.com/talks/diana_laufenberg_3_ways_to_teach.html 

free webinar by Robert Marzano: 

http://www.marzanoresearch.com/Professional_Development/events.aspx?event=59 

This school does ONLY flip teaching and the web site is a wealth of information (including technology 

needed). http://www.flippedhighschool.com/ 

CSCNEPA. (2007). Developing a 21st century school curriculum for all Australian students. Deakin, ACT: 

CSCNEPA. 

Comparing Frameworks for 21st Century Skills, Dede, C. (2010).. In J. Bellanca, & R. Brandt, 

21st Century Skills: Rethinking How Students Learn (pp. 51‐75). Bloomington, IN: Solution Tree Press. 

Friedman, T. (2005). The World is Flat. London: Allen Lane. 

Five Minds for the Future, Gardner, H. (2010). In J. Bellenca, & R. Brandt, 21st Century Skills: Rethinking 

How Students Learn (pp. 9‐31). Bloomington, IN: Solution Tree Press. 

Teaching in the knowledge society: Education in the age of insecurity, Hargreaves, A. (2003). New York: 

Teachers College Press. 


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The Fourth Way: The Inspiring Future for Educational Change, Hargreaves, A., & Shirley, D. (2009). 

Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin. 

A Well‐Rounded Education for a Flat World, Hersh, R. (2009). Educational Leadership , 67 (1), pp. 51‐53. 

Global Competence: The Knowledge and Skills Our Students Need, Jackson, A. (2009). Retrieved December 

2010, from Asia Society: http://asiasociety.org/education‐learning/partnership‐global‐learning/making‐ 

case/global‐competence‐knowledge‐and‐skills‐ou 

A New Essential Curriculum for a New Time, Jacobs, H. H. (2010a). In H. H. Jacobs, Curriculum 21: Essential 

Education for a Changing World (pp. 7‐17). Alexandria, VA: ASCD. 

Curriculum 21: Essential Education for a Changing World, Jacobs, H. H. (2010b). Introduction. In H. H. 

Jacobs, (pp. 1‐6). Alexandria, VA: ASCD. 

The 21st Century Skills Movement. Educational Leadership , 67 (1), p. 11 Johnson, P. (2009). 

College Learning for the New Global Century, National Leadership Council for Liberal Education America’s 

Promise. (2008). Washington, DC: Association of American Colleges and Universities. 

Framework for 21st Century Learning. Partnership for 21st Century Skills. (2009). Retrieved November 

2010, from Partnership for 21st Century Skills: http://www.p21.org/ 

A curriculum for the future: Subjects consider the challenge. QCA. (2005). London: QCA. 

International Handbook of Education and Development: Preparing Schools, Students and Nations for the 

Twenty First Century, Ramirez, F. (1997). The Nation State, Citizenship and Educational Change: 

Institutionalization and Globalization. In W. Cummings, & N. McGinn, (pp. 47‐62). New York: Pergamon 

Press. 

Educating for Global Competency, Reimers, F. (2010). In J. Cohen, & M. Malin, 

International Perspectives on the Goals of Universal Basic and Secondary Education (pp. 183‐202). New 

York: Routledge. 

Definition and Selection of Competencies, Salganik, D., & Rychen, L. (2005). (DeSeCo). Retrieved October 

2010, from OECD: http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/47/61/35070367.pdf 

Needed: Global Villagers, Zhao, Y. (2009, Sept). Educational Leadership , 67 (1), pp. 60‐65. 

Creativity in schools http://www.ted.com/talks/ken_robinson_says_schools_kill_creativity.html 

Assessment for learning http://www.gtce.org.uk/tla/rft/expert_view/dylan_wiliam/ 

Disrupting Class, Clayton M. Christensen, (Professor at the Harvard Business School. It is published by 

McGraw Hill. Howard Gardner’s comment about the book—“After a barrage of business books that 

purport to “fix” American education, at last a book that speaks thoughtfully and imaginatively about what 

genuinely individualized education can be like and how to bring it about”. ) 

21 st Century Skills, (James Bellanca and Ron Brandt editors) which is a collection of articles written by a 

lot of the big name gurus which I’m considering for summer reading here. The advantage is that we can 

assign a few articles or all. 

DIY U: Edupunks, Edupreneurs, etc. by Kamenentz. Short read, interesting trends in higher ed that will 

impact or at least ripple down somehow to high schools and down the line. 

Parker, W.C. & Camicia, S.P. (2009). Cognitive Praxis in Today’s ‘International Education' Movement: A 

case study of Intents and Affinities. Theory of Research in Social Education, 37(1), 42‐74. 

Begler, E. (2011). It's the Real Thing! Isn't it? In search of 'Genuine' International Education. In S. Carber 

(Editor), Internationalizing Schools (chapter 2), Woodbridge, UK: John Catt Publishing. (In press, release: 

Summer, 2011). 


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Bingham, T. and Conner, M. (2010) The new social learning: A guide to transforming organizations. ASTD 

& Berrett‐Koehler; 1st edition. ISBN‐10: 9781605097022 ISBN‐13: 978‐1605097022 ASIN: 

1605097020 

Li, Charlene.(2010). Open leadership: How technology can transform the way you lead. Jossey‐Bass. ISBN‐ 

10: 9780470597262 ISBN‐13: 978‐0470597262 

Pink, D. (2011 ) Drive: The surprising truth about what motivates us. Riverhead Trade; Reprint edition 

(April 5, 2011) ISBN‐10: 1594484805 ISBN‐13: 978‐1594484803 

Woodill, G. (2010). The mobile learning edge: Tools and technology for developing your teams. McGraw‐ 

Hill: ISBN‐10: 007173676X ISBN‐13: 979‐0071736753 


4

1:1 Laptops in the Classroom—Where Are We Now? 


Vol. 9 No. 6 

http://isminc.com/index.php?view=article&catid=1005%3Avol-9-no-6…ent&print=1&layout=default&page=&option=com_content&Itemid=1218 

22/3/11 4:28 PM 

Access Denied For more than a decade now, we have heard the battle cry: “Give every student a 

laptop to improve learning, engagement, test scores, graduation rates…” you 

name it. And many schools and school districts have adopted 1:1 laptop 

programs, giving students a tool to explore and have access to the wider world 

beyond their own community. Indeed, access to the world of information and 

instant communication via the Internet is one of the key pieces in the 21st 

Century School concept. But where are we, for real? What has happened in the 

classrooms that have adopted a 1:1 laptop program? 

Thierry Karsenti of the Université de Montreal Faculty of Education conducted a study in the Eastern 

Townships School Board (Quebec, Canada), where the 1:1 laptop program has been operating for eight 

years in the 3rd through 11th grades. The study included interviews with 2,432 students, 272 teachers, 14 

interventionists, and three administrators. You can download the highlights of the study here. 

In his synopsis, Karsenti lists the 12 main benefits of the 1:1 laptop program as: 

1. Facilitation of work for both teachers and students; 

2. Greater access to current, high-quality information; 

3. Greater student motivation; 

4. Greater student attentiveness; 

5. Development of student autonomy; 

6. Increased interaction among students, teachers and parents; 

7. Individualized, differentiated learning; 

8. Engaging, interactive and meaningful learning using multimedia support; 

9. Development of ICT skills; 

10. Universal access; 

11. The breakdown of barriers between the school and society; 

12. More opportunities for students in the future. 

The laptop, used as a teaching tool, Karsenti found, had a positive impact on concentration, motivation, test 

scores, and the graduation rate. The dropout rate fell from 39.4% in 2004-05 to 22.7% in 2008-09 and the 

ETSB’s ranking shot from 66 to 23rd, as published in an article on Physorg.com. 

But the research does not totally credit the laptop. He finds that teachers can’t surrender to the technology, 

or students will lose interest and migrate to the more common distractions like Facebook. 

eSchool News recently featured a roundup of the latest research in “One-to-One Computing Programs Only 

as Effective as Their Teachers.” 

Page 1 of 3


22/3/11 4:28 PM 

The article asserts that indeed, the success of a 1:1 laptop program rests in the preparation and teaching 

strategies of the teacher in the classroom, pulling together findings from a variety of sources, including The 

Journal of Technology, Learning, and Assessment, published by the Boston College Lynch School of 

Education, January 2010 special edition devoted to the 1:1 laptop issue. 

Researchers Damien Bebell and Laura O’Dwyer assert that the downfall of 1:1 laptop programs is the 

assumption that simply giving a student a laptop is the magic bullet because there is little focus on the 

education process. 

“[The program] refers to the level at which technology is available to students and teachers; by definition, it 

says nothing about actual educational practices,” they write in “Educational Outcomes and Research from 

1:1 Computing Programs.” 

Bebell, with Rachel Kay, conducted a study of five Western Massachusetts public and private middle 

schools that participated in the Berkshire Wireless Learning Initiative. What they found was that the 1:1 

laptop program had positive educational effects, but educational practices changed as well. Teachers had 

to change their methods of instruction. 

“One of the central project outcomes of the study was the documentation of fundamental changes in 

teaching, particularly teaching strategies, curriculum delivery, and classroom management,” write Bebell and 

Kay. “Without question, the 1:1 program had major impacts across many aspects of teaching for the 

majority of teacher participants.” 

In the Philadelphia area, Lower Merion High School has been conducting a 1:1 program, while nearby 

Harriton High School is three-years in. In January, the Lower Merion School District’s Supervisor of 

Instruction Technology told the School Board that education delivery and practices in those schools were 

allowing students to reach new levels of learning.” 

As reported by the Ardmore-Merion-Wynnewood Patch Hilt noted that the district uses a method called 

SAMR (Substitution, Augmentation, Modification, and Redefinition), which firsts asks teachers to substitute 

technology for resources or established instructional practices. The goal, though, is to next use the 

technology to augment lessons to provide additional advantages and then modify lessons based on the 

advanced technology available through the program. Ultimately, 1:1 computing should redefine educational 

practices. Teachers become the moderators and facilitators of a wider world of learning. 

Lower Merion Spanish Teacher Allison Mellett and Biology teacher Elliott Burch have embraced 1:1 

computing for their classes. Burch, for example, asked students to demonstrate animal behaviors by 

producing claymation movies using their laptops’ built-in cameras and iMovie software rather than write 

written reports. Mellet has a virtual classroom model—students download class assignments and upload 

their completed work. Her classroom is completely paperless. 

The concept is in line with the 21st Century Schools concept, which is the hot topic in education reform 

right now. 

A teacher at the Wichern-Schule in Hamburg, Germany, Torsten Otto agrees that it is up to the teacher and 

his/her practices for the 1:1 computing model to fulfill its promise. 

“In our 1-to-1 program … we put a big emphasis on project-based learning; otherwise, the laptop is no 

more than an expensive notepad. Research needs to show the effects of this different style of teaching in 

terms of student engagement, motivation, and so-called 21st-century skills,” Otto said in the eSchool News 

story. 

In Lower Merion, four students lauded the program at the School Board meeting. Harriton Senior Daniel 

Carp said “ I keep everything I need for school on my computer. I can connect with students and teachers, 

and any pressing question I might have can be answered with a quick e-mail.” 

But a survey of parents and students show that not everyone is enamored with 1:1 computing and the 

laptop program. The Merionite, Lower Merion student newspaper, conducted a student survey that showed 


Page 2 of 3


22/3/11 4:28 PM 

47% of the 555 students responding said the laptop program was making them less likely to pay attention, 

and 54% of teachers said students were distracted rather than 27% who said they were mostly focused. 

Pam Livingston, author of 1-to-1 Learning: Laptop Programs, believes, that for a program to work, teacher 

professional development and preparation, well in advance, is essential. 

“Programs that have worked have started with a plan that was well thought out and formulated by a vision 

committee that involved stakeholders,” Livingston told eSchool News. “They have nearly given all laptops to 

teachers first, sometimes a full year ahead, so teachers can use the laptops and begin developing curricular 

possibilities.” 

Lausanne Collegiate School in Memphis, TN, hosts an annual Laptop Institute for teachers, technology 

integrationists, technology support personnel, and administrators to gather for keynotes and workshops and 

discuss using laptops and tablets as tools for learning. Last year, over 500 attended, representing 32 

states, 14 countries, 120 schools and school districts—with over half K-12 teachers. The mission? “To 

facilitate the growth of laptop technologies in education by creating a community of learners among 

administrators, technology personnel, and teachers in schools that currently use or are considering use of 

laptops in the classroom,” according to The Laptop Institute Web site. 

(http://www.laptopinstitute.com/about). You can register now for the 2011 Institute, July 10-13. 

ISM is offering a new workshop this summer if you would like to join the conversation about 21st Century 

Schools. Get details and register for 21st Century Schools: Troublesome or Transformative? here. 

Copyright© 2000-2011 isminc.com 

All Rights Reserved. 


copyright notice 

Page 3 of 3

Can a Lecture Be Experiential? 

While in graduate school, I had an interesting conversation with Dr. Jasper Hunt my 

professor at Minnesota State University, Mankato. We were filling out conference proposal 

forms for an experiential education conference. He commented about the "check box" on 

the application form requesting us to identify which portion of the presentation would be 

experiential and which portion would be lecture based. Jasper shared that he felt this was 

counter productive to defining a quality presentation. He argued that a good lecture CAN 

be experiential. 

I have reflected many times on that comment when attending (or delivering) a lecture or 

lesson. Recently this topic came up in my work with both classroom teachers and 

corporate trainers who struggle with the need to cover a great deal of curricular content in 

a short time while in a structured classroom or boardroom setting. These educators 

struggle to balance their need to cover the content and their desire to teach more 

experientially in order to engage learners and create lasting lessons. 

This past summer I attended two different keynote lectures at educational conferences 

that were very engaging and created lasting impressions with me. I reflected on that 

conversation with Jasper and wondered: What was it that made those lectures engaging? 

Would they be considered “experiential”? 

When I compared the presenters’ actions with the principles of experiential education, I 

found the educators did incorporate many tenets of experiential education and brainfriendly 

teaching strategies. And they did so in what might not usually be considered an 

experiential format for teaching: a giant lecture hall and a power point presentation. 

Here is what I noticed: 

Emotional Engagement: 

When the speaker is knowledgeable and passionate about their subject it comes through 

regardless of the format of their lesson. This kind of energy is contagious and can’t help 

but initiate some sense of relevancy and buy in from audience members. When Dr. Hunt 

lectured on the subject of experiential education philosophy or ethics, his interest and 

passion around the subject were obvious and infectious. I remember being drawn in by his 

enthusiasm and class time flying by. 

Recently I worked with a group of high school teachers who are trying to teach more 

experientially in an atmosphere with a strong emphasis on test scores. I challenged them 

to reflect on what it was that first ignited their passion around the subject area. If they 

are in touch with that passion and find a way to communicate it, they will find a 

way to stimulate some of that same passion in their students. 

Relevancy and transference to real life: 

The speakers infused personal stories that the audience could relate to, both about 

themselves and others. They also asked audience members to reflect on a related personal 

experience of their own.

Social engagement, the use of metaphor, creating relevancy, instigating 

reflection, differentiating instruction (using different methods of imparting 

information): 

The speakers used humor that was relevant to the audience. They used visual aids (photo, 

cartoon,) to illustrate a concept and relate it to the audience’s experience. One speaker 

asked audience members to reflect on or share an experience related to the subject with 

someone sitting nearby or at their table. 

When they used a power point there were VERY FEW WORDS. The power point served as a 

place marker, prompt, or visual aid to underscore a point. 

They were intentional in the way they started and ended the presentation. Beginning with 

a reflective question, interesting story, or provocative statement to engage the group, and 

then sharing a quote or giving the group a personal challenge to end the lecture. In these 

cases, they were taking advantage of the brain based learning principle of the “primacyregency” 

effect—the idea that people remember most the very beginning of a learning 

experience and the very end. (Sousa, 2006). 

This reflection brought me to the conclusion that with careful planning, intention, and most 

importantly real interest and passion around a subject an educator can engage learners 

experientially through a lecture. 

Please share your thoughts and experiences as both a learner and educator on this 

subject! 

References: 

Sousa, David. How the Brain Learns. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press, 2006.

November 2005 | Volume 63 | Number 3 

Assessment to Promote Learning Pages 19-24 

Classroom Assessment: Minute by Minute, Day by Day 

Siobhan Leahy, Christine Lyon, Marnie Thompson and Dylan Wiliam 

In classrooms that use assessment to support learning, teachers continually 

adapt instruction to meet student needs. 

There is intuitive appeal in using assessment to support instruction: 

assessment for learning rather than assessment of learning. We have to test 

our students for many reasons. Obviously, such testing should be useful in 

guiding teaching. Many schools formally test students at the end of a marking 

period—that is, every 6 to 10 weeks—but the information from such tests is 

hard to use, for two reasons. 

First, only a small amount of testing time can be allotted to each standard or 

skill covered in the marking period. Consequently, the test is better for 

monitoring overall levels of achievement than for diagnosing specific 

weaknesses. 

Second, the information arrives too late to be useful. We can use the results 

to make broad adjustments to curriculum, such as reteaching or spending 

more time on a unit, or identifying teachers who appear to be especially 

successful at teaching particular units. But if educators are serious about 

using assessment to improve instruction, then we need more fine-grained 

assessments, and we need to use the information they yield to modify 

instruction as we teach. 

Changing Gears 

What we need is a shift from quality control in learning to quality 

assurance. Traditional approaches to instruction and assessment involve 

teaching some given material, and then, at the end of teaching, working out 

who has and hasn't learned it—akin to a quality control approach in 

manufacturing. In contrast, assessment for learning involves adjusting 

teaching as needed while the learning is still taking place—a quality assurance 

approach. Quality assurance also involves a shift of attention from teaching to 

learning. The emphasis is on what the students are getting out of the 

process rather than on what teachers are putting into it, reminiscent 

of the old joke that schools are places where children go to watch teachers 

work. 

In a classroom that uses assessment to support learning, the divide between 

instruction and assessment blurs. Everything students do—such as conversing

in groups, completing seatwork, answering and asking questions, working on 

projects, handing in homework assignments, even sitting silently and looking 

confused—is a potential source of information about how much they 

understand. The teacher who consciously uses assessment to support 

learning takes in this information, analyzes it, and makes 

instructional decisions that address the understandings and 

misunderstandings that these assessments reveal. The amount of 

information can be overwhelming—one teacher likened it to “negotiating a 

swiftly flowing river”—so a key part of using assessment for learning is 

figuring out how to hone in on a manageable range of alternatives. 

Research indicates that using assessment for learning improves student 

achievement. About seven years ago, Paul Black and one of us, Dylan Wiliam, 

found that students taught by teachers who used assessment for 

learning achieved in six or seven months what would otherwise 

have taken a year (1998). More important, these improvements appeared 

to be consistent across countries (including Canada, England, Israel, Portugal, 

and the United States), as well as across age brackets and content areas. We 

also found, after working with teachers in England, that these gains in 

achievement could be sustained over extended periods of time. The gains 

even held up when we measured student achievement with externally 

mandated standardized tests (see Wiliam, Lee, Harrison, & Black, 2004). 

Using this research and these ideas as a starting point, we and other 

colleagues at Educational Testing Service (ETS) have been working for the 

last two years with elementary, middle, and high school teachers in Arizona, 

Delaware, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New Mexico, and 

Pennsylvania. We have deepened our understanding of how assessment for 

learning can work in U.S. classrooms, and we have learned from teachers 

about the challenges of integrating assessment into classroom instruction. 

Our Work with Teachers 

In 2003 and 2004, we explored a number of ways of introducing teachers to 

the key ideas of assessment for learning. In one model, we held a three-day 

workshop during the summer in which we introduced teachers to the main 

ideas of assessment for learning and the research that shows that it works. 

We then shared specific techniques that teachers could use in their 

classrooms to bring assessment to life. During the subsequent school year, 

we met monthly with these teachers, both to learn from them what really 

worked in their classrooms and to offer suggestions about ways in which they 

might develop their practice. We also observed their classroom practices to 

gauge the extent to which they were implementing assessment-for-learning 

techniques and to determine the effects that these techniques were having on 

student learning. In other models, we spaced out the three days of the 

summer institute over several months (for example, one day in March, one in

April, and one in May) so that teachers could try out some of the techniques 

in their classes between meetings. 

As we expected, different teachers found different techniques useful; 

what worked for some did not work for others. This confirmed for us 

that there could be no one-size-fits-all package. However, we did find 

a set of five broad strategies to be equally powerful for teachers of all 

content areas and at all grade levels: 

• Clarifying and sharing learning intentions and criteria for 

success. 

• Engineering effective classroom discussions, questions, and 

learning tasks. 

• Providing feedback that moves learners forward. 

• Activating students as the owners of their own learning. 

• Activating students as instructional resources for one another. 

We think of these strategies as nonnegotiable in that they define the territory 

of assessment for learning. More important, we know from the research and 

from our work with teachers that these strategies are desirable things to do in 

any classroom. 

However, the way in which a teacher might implement one of these strategies 

with a particular class or at a particular time requires careful thought. A selfassessment 

technique that works for students learning math in the middle 

grades may not work in a 2nd grade writing lesson. Moreover, what works for 

one 7th grade pre-algebra class may not work for the 7th grade pre-algebra 

class down the hall because of differences in the students or teachers. 

Given this variability, it is important to offer teachers a range of techniques 

for each strategy, making them responsible for deciding which techniques 

they will use and allowing them time and freedom to customize these 

techniques to meet the needs of their students. 

Teachers have tried out, adapted, and invented dozens of techniques, 

reporting on the results in meetings and interviews (to date, we have 

cataloged more than 50 techniques, and we expect the list to expand to more 

than 100 in the coming year). Many of these techniques require only subtle 

changes in practice, yet research on the underlying strategies suggests that 

they have a high “gearing”—meaning that these small changes in practice can 

leverage large gains in student learning (see Black & Wiliam, 1998; Wiliam, 

2005). Further, the teaching practices that support these strategies are lowtech, 

low-cost, and usually feasible for individual teachers to implement. In 

this way, they differ dramatically from large-scale interventions, such as class 

size reduction or curriculum overhauls. We offer here a brief sampling of 

techniques for implementing each of the five assessment-for-learning 

strategies.

Clarify and Share Intentions and Criteria 

Low achievement is often the result of students failing to 

understand what teachers require of them (Black & Wiliam, 1998). 

Many teachers address this issue by posting the state standard or learning 

objective in a prominent place at the start of the lesson, but such an 

approach is rarely successful because the standards are not written in 

student-friendly language. 

Teachers in our various projects have explored many ways of making their 

learning objectives and their criteria for success transparent to students. One 

common method involves circulating work samples, such as lab 

reports, that a previous year's class completed, in view of prompting 

a discussion about quality. Students decide which reports are good and 

analyze what's good about the good ones and what's lacking in the weaker 

ones. Teachers have also found that by choosing the samples carefully, they 

can tune the task to the capabilities of the class. Initially, a teacher might 

choose four or five samples at very different quality levels to get students to 

focus on broad criteria for quality. As students grow more skilled, however, 

teachers can challenge them with a number of samples of similar quality to 

force the students to become more critical and reflective. 

Engineer Effective Classroom Discussion 

Many teachers spend a considerable proportion of their instructional time in 

whole-class discussion or question-and-answer sessions, but these sessions 

tend to rehearse existing knowledge rather than create new knowledge for 

students. Moreover, teachers generally listen for the “correct” answer instead 

of listening for what they can learn about the students' thinking; as Davis 

(1997) says, they listen evaluatively rather than interpretively. The teachers 

with whom we have worked have tried to address this issue by 

asking students questions that either prompt students to think or 

provide teachers with information that they can use to adjust 

instruction to meet learning needs. 

As a result of this focus, teachers have become aware of the need to carefully 

plan the questions that they use in class. Many of our teachers now spend 

more time planning instruction than grading student work, a practice that 

emphasizes the shift from quality control to quality assurance. By thinking 

more carefully about the questions they ask in class, teachers can 

check on students' understanding while the students are still in the 

class rather than after they have left, as is the case with grading. 

Some questions are designed as “range-finding” questions to reveal what 

students know at the beginning of an instructional sequence. For example, a 

high school biology teacher might ask the class how much water taken up by 

the roots of a corn plant is lost through transpiration. Many students believe 

that transpiration is “bad” and that plants try to minimize the amount of water

lost in this process, whereas, in fact, the “lost” water plays an important role 

in transporting nutrients around the plant. 

A middle school mathematics teacher might ask students to indicate how 

many fractions they can find between 1/6 and 1/7. Some students will think 

there aren't any; others may suggest an answer that, although in some way 

understandable, is an incorrect use of mathematical notation, such as 1 over 

6½. The important feature of such range-finding items is that they can help a 

teacher judge where to begin instruction. 

Of course, teachers can use the same item in a number of ways, depending 

on the context. They could use the question about fractions at the end of a 

sequence of instruction on equivalent fractions to see whether students have 

grasped the main idea. A middle school science teacher might ask students at 

the end of a laboratory experiment, “What was the dependent variable in 

today's lab?” A social studies teacher, at the end of a project on World War II, 

might ask students to state their views about which year the war began and 

give reasons supporting their choice. 

Teachers can also use questions to check on student understanding 

before continuing the lesson. We call this a “hinge point” in the 

lesson because the lesson can go in different directions, depending 

on student responses. By explicitly integrating these hinge points into 

instruction, teachers can make their teaching more responsive to their 

students' needs in real time. 

However, no matter how good the hinge-point question, the traditional model 

of classroom questioning presents two additional problems. The first is lack of 

engagement. If the classroom rule dictates that students raise their hands to 

answer questions, then students can disengage from the classroom by 

keeping their hands down. For this reason, many of our teachers have 

instituted the idea of “no hands up, except to ask a question.” The teacher 

can either decide whom to call on to answer a question or use some 

randomizing device, such as a beaker of Popsicle sticks with the students' 

names written on them. This way, all students know that they need to stay 

engaged because the teacher could call on any one of them. One teacher we 

worked with reported that her students love the fairness of this approach and 

that her shyer students are showing greater confidence as a result of being 

invited to participate in this way. Other teachers have said that some students 

think it's unfair that they don't get a chance to show off when they know the 

answer. 

The second problem with traditional questioning is that the teacher gets to 

hear only one student's thinking. To gauge the understanding of the whole 

class, the teacher needs to get responses from all the students in real time. 

One way to do this is to have all students write their answers on individual 

dry-erase boards, which they hold up at the teacher's request. The teacher

can then scan responses for novel solutions as well as misconceptions. This 

technique would be particularly helpful with the fraction question we cited. 

Another approach is to give each student a set of four cards labeled A, B, C, 

and D, and ask the question in multiple-choice format. If the question is well 

designed, the teacher can quickly judge the different levels of understanding 

in the class. If all students answer correctly, the teacher can move on. If no 

one answers correctly, the teacher might choose to reteach the concept. If 

some students answer correctly and some answer incorrectly, the teacher can 

use that knowledge to engineer a whole-class discussion on the concept or 

match up the students for peer teaching. Hinge-point questions provide a 

window into students' thinking and, at the same time, give the teacher some 

ideas about how to take the students' learning forward. 

Provide Feedback That Moves Learners Forward 

After the lesson, of course, comes grading. The problem with giving a student 

a grade and a supportive comment is that these practices don't cause further 

learning. Before they began thinking about assessment for learning, none of 

the teachers with whom we worked believed that their students spent as long 

considering teacher feedback as it had taken the teachers to provide that 

feedback. Indeed, the research shows that when students receive a 

grade and a comment, they ignore the comment (see Butler, 1988). 

The first thing they look at is the grade, and the second thing they 

look at is their neighbor's grade. 

To be effective, feedback needs to cause thinking. Grades don't do that. 

Scores don't do that. And comments like “Good job” don't do that either. 

What does cause thinking is a comment that addresses what the student 

needs to do to improve, linked to rubrics where appropriate. Of course, it's 

difficult to give insightful comments when the assignment asked for 20 

calculations or 20 historical dates, but even in these cases, feedback can 

cause thinking. For example, one approach that many of our teachers have 

found productive is to say to a student, “Five of these 20 answers are 

incorrect. Find them and fix them!” 

Some of our teachers worried about the extra time needed to provide useful 

feedback. But once students engaged in self-assessment and peer 

assessment, the teachers were able to be more selective about which 

elements of student work they looked at, and they could focus on giving 

feedback that peers were unable to provide. 

Teachers also worried about the reactions of administrators and parents. 

Some teachers needed waivers from principals to vary school policy (for 

example, to give comments rather than grades on interim assessments). Most 

principals were happy to permit these changes once teachers explained their 

reasons. Parents were also supportive. Some even said they found comments

more useful than grades because the comments provided them with guidance 

on how to help their children. 

Activate Students as Owners of Their Learning 

Developing assessment for learning in one's classroom involves altering the 

implicit contract between teacher and students by creating shared 

responsibility for learning. One simple technique is to distribute green and red 

“traffic light” cards, which students “flash” to indicate their level of 

understanding (green = understand, red = don't understand). A teacher who 

uses this technique with her 9th grade algebra classes told us that one day 

she moved on too quickly, without scanning the students' cards. A student 

picked up her own card as well as her neighbors' cards, waved them in the air, 

and pointed at them wildly, with the red side facing the teacher. The teacher 

considered this ample proof that this student was taking ownership of her 

learning. 

Students also take ownership of their learning when they assess their own 

work, using agreed-on criteria for success. Teachers can provide students 

with a rubric written in student-friendly language, or the class can develop 

the rubric with the teacher's guidance (for examples, see Black, Harrison, Lee, 

Marshall, & Wiliam, 2003). The teachers we have worked with report that 

students' self-assessments are generally accurate, and students say that 

assessing their own work helped them understand the material in a new way. 

Activate Students as Instructional Resources for One 

Another 

Getting students started with self-assessment can be challenging. Many 

teachers provide students with rubrics but find that the students seem unable 

to use the rubrics to focus and improve their work. For many students, using 

a rubric to assess their own work is just too difficult. But as most teachers 

know, students from kindergarten to 12th grade are much better at spotting 

errors in other students' work than in their own work. For that reason, peer 

assessment and feedback can be an important part of effective 

instruction. Students who get feedback are not the only 

beneficiaries. Students who give feedback also benefit, sometimes 

more than the recipients. As they assess the work of a peer, they are 

forced to engage in understanding the rubric, but in the context of someone 

else's work, which is less emotionally charged. Also, students often 

communicate more effectively with one another than the teacher does, and 

the recipients of the feedback tend to be more engaged when the feedback 

comes from a peer. When the teacher gives feedback, students often just “sit 

there and take it” until the ordeal is over. 

Using peer and self-assessment techniques frees up teacher time to plan 

better instruction or work more intensively with small groups of students. It's 

also a highly effective teaching strategy. One cautionary note is in order,

however. In our view, students should not be giving another student 

a grade that will be reported to parents or administrators. Peer 

assessment should be focused on improvement, not on grading. 

Using Evidence of Learning to Adapt 

Instruction 

One final strategy binds the others together: Assessment 

information should be used to adapt instruction to meet student 

needs. 

As teachers listen to student responses to a hinge-point question or note the 

prevalence of red or green cards, they can make on-the-fly decisions to 

review material or to pair up those who understand the concept with those 

who don't for some peer tutoring. Using the evidence they have elicited, 

teachers can make instructional decisions that they otherwise could not have 

made. 

At the end of the lesson, many of the teachers with whom we work use “exit 

passes.” Students are given index cards and must turn in their responses to a 

question posed by the teacher before they can leave the classroom. 

Sometimes this will be a “big idea” question, to check on the students' grasp 

of the content of the lesson. At other times, it will be a range-finding question, 

to help the teacher judge where to begin the next day's instruction. 

Teachers using assessment for learning continually look for ways in which 

they can generate evidence of student learning, and they use this evidence to 

adapt their instruction to better meet their students' learning needs. They 

share the responsibility for learning with the learners; students know that 

they are responsible for alerting the teacher when they do not understand. 

Teachers design their instruction to yield evidence about student 

achievement; for example, they carefully craft hinge-point questions 

to create “moments of contingency,” in which the direction of the 

instruction will depend on student responses. Teachers provide 

feedback that engages students, make time in class for students to work on 

improvement, and activate students as instructional resources for one another. 

All this sounds like a lot of work, but according to our teachers, it 

doesn't take any more time than the practices they used to engage 

in. And these techniques are far more effective. Teachers tell us that 

they are enjoying their teaching more. 

Supporting Teacher Change 

None of these ideas is new, and a large and growing research base shows 

that implementing them yields substantial improvement in student learning.

So why are these strategies and techniques not practiced more widely? The 

answer is that knowing about these techniques and strategies is one thing; 

figuring out how to make them work in your own classroom is something else. 

That's why we're currently developing a set of tools and workshops to support 

teachers in developing a deep and practical understanding of assessment for 

learning, primarily through the vehicle of school-based teacher learning 

communities. After we introduce teachers to the basic principles of 

assessment for learning, we encourage them to try out two or three 

techniques in their own classrooms and to meet with other colleagues 

regularly—ideally every month—to discuss their experiences and see what the 

other teachers are doing (see Black, Harrison, Lee, Marshall, & Wiliam, 2003, 

2004). Teachers are accountable because they know they will have to share 

their experiences with their colleagues. However, each teacher is also in 

control of what he or she tries out. Over time, the teacher learning 

community develops a shared language that enables teachers to talk to one 

another about what they are doing. Teachers build individual and collective 

skill and confidence in assessment for learning. Colleagues help them decide 

when it is time to move on to the next challenge as well as point out potential 

pitfalls. 

In many ways, the teacher learning community approach is similar 

to the larger assessment-for-learning approach. Both focus on 

where learners are now, where they want to go, and how we can 

help them get there. 

References 

Black, P., Harrison, C., Lee, C., Marshall, B., & Wiliam, D. (2003). Assessment 

for learning: Putting it into practice. Buckingham, UK: Open University Press. 

Black, P., Harrison, C., Lee, C., Marshall, B., & Wiliam, D. (2004). Working 

inside the black box: Assessment for learning in the classroom. Phi Delta 

Kappan, 86(1), 8–21. 

Black, P., & Wiliam, D. (1998). Inside the black box: Raising standards 

through classroom assessment. Phi Delta Kappan, 80(2), 139–147. 

Butler, R. (1988). Enhancing and undermining intrinsic motivation. British 

Journal of Educational Psychology, 58, 1–14. 

Davis, B. (1997). Listening for differences: An evolving conception of 

mathematics teaching. Journal for Research in Mathematics Education, 28(3), 

355–376. 

Wiliam, D. (2005). Keeping learning on track: Formative assessment and the 

regulation of learning. In M. Coupland, J. Anderson, & T. Spencer (Eds.), 

Making mathematics vital: Proceedings of the twentieth biennial conference of

the Australian Association of Mathematics Teachers (pp. 26–40). Adelaide, 

Australia: Australian Association of Mathematics Teachers. 

Wiliam, D., Lee, C., Harrison, C., & Black, P. J. (2004). Teachers developing 

assessment for learning: Impact on student achievement. Assessment in 

Education: Principles, Policy & Practice, 11(1), 49–65. 

Siobhan Leahy, Christine Lyon, Marnie Thompson, and Dylan Wiliam 

(dwiliam@ets.org) work in the Learning and Teaching Research Center, 

Educational Testing Service, Rosedale Rd., Princeton, NJ 08541.

Connecting Our 21st Century Students 

One Teacher's Journey 

by Michelle Speight 

Teachers are constantly reflecting on and changing their practices to better meet the 

needs of today's dynamic students. And what we're finding in school districts across 

North America is that our 21st century children need alternate forms of instruction, ways 

to share resources, and opportunities for collaboration. 

I began to understand this instructional reality when my 2nd and 3rd grade students had 

difficulty grasping the differences and similarities between themselves and the Inuit 

people of the Arctic. Our resources were few and outdated, and my own knowledge was 

limited. It became clear that I was not meeting the needs of these children. Their 

questions were thoughtful and relevant, but when we couldn't find answers to those 

questions, my information-driven, 21st century children became frustrated. 

It was through countless e-mails that I ultimately made connections with three 

classrooms in Alaska, Nunavut, and the Northwest Territories. As a result of those initial 

connections, we began exchanging weekly e-mails with Inuit students. I didn't realize it 

at the time, but my students and I were embarking on an incredible telecollaborative 

project: The Arctic and Alberta: How We Are Different . . . How We Are the Same. (See 

the result of our work at 

http://projects.cbe.ab.ca/ict/2learn/mmspeight/arctic/arcticandalberta.) 

Meeting Others, Solving Problems 

Telecollaboration is an inquiry-based approach to online education that often involves 

students from several different locations using networked technologies. Many 

telecollaborative projects are curriculum-based and involve the coordination of one or 

more teachers. A typical project requires students to solve problems using traditional and 

networked resources. Students also correspond, reflect, and collaborate with other 

students to complete the learning activities. Students become "experts" on a topic, in 

part by learning from real experts such as museum curators, authors, and scientists. The 

project usually results in the creation of a Web site that showcases the students' learning 

journeys. 

Our project gave students opportunities to consider the varied opinions and perspectives 

of the Inuit people. Our students made real connections and were then prepared to 

compare and contrast their culture with that of the Inuit people. Mikala, a 2nd grader, 

said this about her telecollaboration experience: 

In our Arctic project we made little igloos and we made one big 

igloo, which wasn't such a success because it kept on falling

over. We made it out of milk jugs. We made a Web site and we 

put on some projects that we did and we also e-mailed people 

in Nunavut. My e-pal was about 8 years old. His name was 

Swen. I learned that it was a tough life getting to school on 

winter days because it was snowy there. I also learned that he 

didn't have a lot of toys and that they had to kill some of their 

food. His dad hunted caribou and Swen went hunting with his 

dad t o catch caribou. 

When you talk to someone who is actually from the Arctic you 

know it's true because they have actually experienced it. They 

have even had stories told to them by their elders. It was more 

fun talking to someone than just reading a book. 

The Telecollaboration Solution 

With the proper framework, a telecollaboration project can help you meet the educational 

needs of your students. Here are some questions to consider as you create your project: 

Does the telecollaborative learning environment enhance inquiry-based discussion 

in our classroom? When planning such a project, teachers should consider the 

essential questions they want students to explore. Then, teachers can ensure that 

students have learning experiences that give them opportunities to question and 

inquire. Ultimately, such a project should help students develop autonomy and 

lifelong learning skills. 

Does the project help students develop an ability to work in a self-directed 

manner? Give students a list of resources that they can access on their own. 

Encourage students to think about their learning styles as they determine which 

Web sites they want to explore as part of their investigation. This will help 

students develop the ability to think about how they think, which, in turn, will 

influence how they approach future learning situations. 

Is the project critical to helping students achieve content standards?You have to 

decide if designing and implementing a telecollaborative project is truly worth it. 

If your students can achieve the same learning goals through other kinds of 

projects, a telecollaboration may not be an immediate necessity. Consider also 

whether the project truly matches your objectives. You wouldn't want to create 

such a project to help students attain basic computer skills, for example. On the 

other hand, telecollaboration can be an excellent way to differentiate your 

instruction to meet the specific learning needs of individual students or groups of 

students. 

Am I reinventing the wheel? When you and your students are ready to embark on 

a telecollaboration for the first time, consider joining an existing project. Those 

teachers who have built their own projects the hard way, by trial and error, are a

wonderful resource. There are many telecollaborative project sites (see box) that 

teachers can review or join. 

Nurturing the 21st Century Student 

As educators, we often reflect on whether we are choosing the instructional approaches 

that best serve our 21st century students. Are Internet-based learning projects the 

answer to providing our students with opportunities to construct and apply knowledge? 

Are they worth it? 

Real-life experiences provide the best answers to these questions. In our most recent 

North American-wide project, called Museum Connections 

(http://projects.cbe.ab.ca/ict/2learn/mmspeight/museumconnections), children in my 

class had the opportunity to connect with students in Chicago, Ill. At one point in the 

project, the students swapped digital snapshots of one another. Daniel, the only African 

American student in our school, broke into tears when he received his photographs. "Miss 

Speight, they have dark skin like me!" he exclaimed. "They have dark skin like me!" 

It's moments like these that underscore the importance of giving our students 

opportunities to meaningfully construct knowledge through global collaborative projects. 

In these moments, it becomes clear that such projects are, indeed, worth it.

Making Connecting Easier 

Interested in providing your students with real-world global perspectives? The 

following resources will help you plan your telecollaborative journey. 

Judi Harris' Virtual Architecture site at http://virtual- 

architecture.wm.edu/index.html is an excellent practical resource for 

developing the first steps toward curriculum-based telecollaborative 

projects. The site provides an excellent pathway through the 

telecollaboration process. It highlights how to choose your curricular 

goals, as well as how to choose the structure and determine the details 

of your project. I highly recommend this resource to beginning 

participants. 

Global SchoolNet at http://www.gsn.org provides numerous teacher 

resources, project competitions, and an excellent project directory with 

over 500 projects listed by grade level, date, complexity of project, 

technology used, and curriculum area. 

KidLink at http://www.kidlink.org/KIDPROJ/projects.html offers an 

extensive list of global perspective projects you can join, along with 

resources for teachers. It also includes excellent discussion boards for 

interested participants. 

iEARN at http://www.iearn.org is a nonprofit global network that enables 

students to join collaborative educational projects that both enhance 

learning and attempt to make a difference in the world by focusing on 

social action. 

OzProjects at http://ozprojects.edna.edu.au is an Australian-based site 

focusing on curriculum-based learning projects that connect students 

from many nations. 

Telus 2 Learn at http://www.2learn.ca is a Canadian project site that 

features a project registry, the opportunity to join projects, and a wealth 

of online teacher and student resources, many of which are available in 

both English and French. (Note: This is a provincially based site. A 

nationwide project site is available at 

http://www.schoolnet.ca/grassroots.) 

Michelle Speight (MMSpeight@cbe.ab.ca) is a 4th grade teacher in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. In addition 

to working with her own students, Speight is a Telus Lead Teacher and works directly with teachers and

administrators around North America. Several of Speight's students' projects have earned international 

online learning awards. 

Copyright © 2004 by Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development

Demystifying the Adolescent Brain 

Laurence Steinberg 

April 2011 | Volume 68 | Number 7 

The Transition Years Pages 42-46 

Adolescents can be mature one moment and frustratingly immature the next. The nature of brain development 

helps explain why. In addition to being a transitional time in physical, intellectual, emotional, and social development, 

adolescence is a time of important changes in the structure and function of the brain. Scientists are beginning to 

understand how the psychological changes of adolescence are linked to brain maturation. Before the development of brain 

imaging technology, scientists could only speculate about the workings of the adolescent brain. Now, however, with the 

same scanners that are used to identify tumors and torn ligaments, researchers can see inside the adolescent's brain and 

watch what happens when teenagers think. We now know that, other than the first three years of life, no period of 

development is characterized by more dramatic brain changes than adolescence. 

What We've Learned from fMRI 

It used to be thought that improved intellectual functioning in adolescence would be reflected in larger brain 

size. However, the brain has reached its adult size by age 10, making it impossible that changes in thinking 

during adolescence are the result of sheer increases in the brain's size or volume. 

Since 2000, there's been an explosion in research on adolescent brain development, and our understanding of 

brain maturation has grown at breathtaking speed. Major contributions to our understanding have come from 

studies using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). This technique enables researchers to take 

pictures of individuals' brains and compare anatomy (brain structure) and activity (brain function). Some 

aspects of brain development in adolescence are reflected in changes in brain structure (for instance, certain 

parts of the brain are relatively smaller in childhood than in adolescence, whereas other parts are relatively 

larger). Other aspects of brain development are reflected in changes in brain function (for instance, adolescents 

may use different parts of the brain than children do when performing the same task). 

In addition, greater inter connectedness among various regions of the brain allows for better communication 

between parts associated with different functions. For example, connections between regions of the brain 

responsible for logical reasoning become better connected with those responsible for experiencing intense 

emotions; "cross-talk" between these regions enables better impulse control and self-regulation. That's one 

reason that older teenagers are so much better than younger ones at controlling their emotions. 

You may have had an MRI exam to diagnose the underlying cause of some sort of pain. Although the 

technology used in this sort of imaging is the same as that used by neuroscientists who study brain 

development, the "f" in fMRI refers to the use of the test to examine how the brain functions, and not just its 

anatomy. Researchers use fMRI to examine patterns of brain activity while individuals perform a specific task 

(for example, recalling a list of words, viewing photos of one's friends, or listening to music). Participants in an 

fMRI study are asked to perform tasks on a computer while they lie inside a brain scanner. With this setup, it's 

possible to study both how patterns of brain activity differ during different tasks (for example, when we actively 

read as opposed to being read to) and whether people of different ages show different patterns of brain activity 

while performing the same task. Many of the most important brain changes that take place during adolescence 

are not in the brain's structure, but in how the brain works. At Temple University, we're studying how patterns 

of brain activity vary when individuals perform tasks either alone or with their friends watching them, and 

whether the ways in which the presence of friends changes brain activity differs between teenagers and adults. 

We've found that the mere presence of peers activates adolescents' reward centers— but not those of adults. 

This may make teenagers more inclined to take risks when they're with their friends because they're more 

likely to focus on the rewards of a risky choice than on the potential costs. 

A Primer on Brain Maturation 

Synapse Formation: The human brain contains approximately 100 billion neurons, cells that carry information 

by transmitting electrical charges within the brain by means of chemicals called neurotransmitters. Neurons do 

not actually touch; there's a miniscule gap between them called a synapse. When the electrical charge travels 

through a neuron, it stimulates the release of neurotransmitters, chemicals that carry the signal across the 

synapse from one neuron to the next. Anytime we perceive something (for example, feel an itch); move 

something (scratch the itch); or process information (wonder where the itch came from), this process of 

electrical transmission is involved. A key process in early brain development is the development of 

connections— synapses—between neurons. By age 2, a single neuron may have 10,000 connections to other 

neurons. The formation of some synapses is genetically programmed, but others are formed through 

experience. The rate of synapse formation peaks at about age 1 and slows down in early childhood, but the 

development of new synapses continues throughout life as we learn new skills, build memories, acquire 

knowledge, and adapt to changing circumstances. 1

Synaptic Pruning: Initially, the brain produces many more connections among cells than it will use. The number 

of synapses in the brain of a 1-year-old is about twice the number in the adult brain. However, soon after birth, 

unused and unnecessary synapses start to be eliminated, a process called synaptic pruning. As a general rule, 

we tend to assume that "more is better," but that's not the case here. Imagine a meadow between two patches 

of forest. Hundreds of lightly trodden paths connect one side to the other (the unpruned brain). Over time, 

people discover that one path is more direct than others. More people begin using this path more often, so it 

becomes wider and deeper. Because the other paths are not used anymore, the grass grows back and those 

paths disappear. That's what synaptic pruning is like. 

The elimination of synapses continues through adolescence and is normal and necessary to development and 

functioning. Just as pruning a rose bush—cutting off weak and misshapen branches—produces a healthier plant 

with larger flowers, so synaptic pruning enhances the brain's functioning. It makes the brain more efficient by 

transforming an unwieldy network of small pathways into a better organized system of superhighways. 

In general, the development of synapses is characterized by a period of growth (when more and more synapses 

are created) followed by a period of decline (when more and more synapses are pruned). Although synaptic 

pruning takes place throughout infancy, childhood, and adolescence, different regions of the brain are pruned at 

different points in development. As a rule, the brain regions in which pruning is taking place at a particular 

point in development are the regions associated with the greatest changes in cognitive functioning during that 

stage. 

Myelination: Initially, neurons are "nude," but in the course of development, white fatty tissue called myelin 

encases the projections of neurons that interconnect them, a process called myelination. Myelin, which acts like 

plastic insulation around an electrical wire, increases the speed of neural impulses and so improves information 

transmission. Myelination occurs in waves, beginning in the prenatal period and continuing into adulthood. As 

with synaptic pruning, examining where myelination occurs most dramatically at a particular point in 

development provides clues about the aspects of cognitive functioning that are changing most at that stage. 

What This Means for the Adolescent Brain 

More Advanced Reasoning… During adolescence, the brain is remodeled through synaptic pruning and 

myelination in particular brain regions. The most important part of the brain to be pruned in adolescence is the 

prefrontal cortex, the region of the brain directly behind your forehead, which is most important for 

sophisticated thinking abilities, such as planning, thinking ahead, and weighing risks and rewards. There's also 

continued myelination of the prefrontal cortex and its connections to other parts of the brain throughout 

adolescence, which leads to many cognitive advances, including improvements in our ability to regulate our 

emotions and coordinate our thoughts and feelings. Maturation of the prefrontal cortex is not complete until the 

mid-20s, a much later point in development than scientists had once thought. 

Imaging studies have also shown important changes in the functioning of the prefrontal cortex in adolescence. 

Patterns of activation within the prefrontal cortex typically become more focused. For instance, in experiments 

in which participants are presented with a rapid succession of images and asked to push a button when a 

certain image appears but refrain from pushing it when a different image appears, adolescents are less likely 

than children to activate prefrontal regions that are not relevant to performing the task well. In addition, 

individuals become more likely to use multiple parts of the brain simultaneously and coordinate activity among 

prefrontal regions and other areas of the brain, such as the limbic system, a region that's important for our 

experience of reward and punishment and for processing emotional and social information, such as reading 

someone's facial expression or judging what a person thinks of us. 

But More Risk Taking: At the same time that the adolescent brain is maturing in ways that enable teenagers to 

become more capable of reasoned thinking, it's also changing in ways that make them do risky things. 

Do you remember how good your first passionate kiss felt? How much you loved the music that was popular 

when you were a teenager? How hard you laughed with your high school friends? Things that feel good feel 

better during adolescence. Scientists now understand why. 

A chemical substance in the brain called dopamine is responsible for the feeling of pleasure. When something 

enjoyable happens, we experience what some scientists have called a "dopamine squirt," which leads to the 

sensation of pleasure. It makes us want whatever elicited the squirt because the feeling of pleasure it produces 

is so strong. (Some stimuli produce so much pleasure that we get a dopamine squirt just anticipating the 

experience.) 

We now know there's a rapid increase in dopamine activity in early adolescence— in fact, there's more 

dopamine activity in the brain's reward center in early adolescence than at any other time of life. Because 

things feel especially pleasurable during early adolescence, young adolescents go out of their way to seek 

rewarding experiences. At all ages we seek out things that make us feel good, of course. But the drive to do 

this is much more intense in early adolescence than before or after.

The urge to seek out rewarding and pleasurable experiences is a mixed blessing. On the plus side, it's part of 

what makes it so much fun to be a teenager. But sometimes this drive is so intense that adolescents can exhibit 

a sort of reward tunnel vision. They're so driven to seek pleasure that they may not pay attention to the 

associated risks. To teenagers, driving fast, having unprotected sex, and drinking alcohol feel so good that 

thoughts about a speeding ticket (or worse), an unwanted pregnancy, or being grounded for coming home 

smelling of beer may not even make it onto their radar screen. This combination of advanced (but not yet 

totally mature) reasoning and heightened sensation-seeking explains why otherwise intelligent adolescents 

often do surprisingly foolish things. More important, the fact that teenagers' ability to control their impulses is 

immature at the same time that their interest in sensation seeking is stronger than ever makes them 

vulnerable to making mistakes. Early adolescence is like starting a car without having a skilled driver behind 

the wheel. 

What This Means for Adolescent Behavior 

Although scientists agree about the ways in which the structure and function of the brain change during 

adolescence, the implications of these changes for adolescent development are still the subject of a great deal 

of ongoing research and considerable speculation. I'm often asked when adolescents begin to think like adults. 

This is hard to answer on the basis of brain science alone because it depends on which aspects of thinking 

you're concerned about. 

Both Mature and Immature: Psychologists draw a distinction between "cold" cognition (when we think about 

something that doesn't have much emotional content, like how to solve an algebra problem) and "hot" 

cognition (when we think about something that can make us feel exuberant or excited, angry or depressed, like 

whether to go joyriding with friends or throw a punch at someone who insulted a girlfriend). The systems of the 

brain responsible for cold cognition are mature by the time most individuals are 16. But the systems that 

control hot cognition aren't—they're still developing well into the 20s. That's why teenagers who get straight As 

in algebra can also do really dumb things when out with their buddies. 

Teachers sometimes are surprised by the inconsistency in students' behavior, especially during the middle 

school years. Understanding the nature of brain development in adolescence helps explain why adolescents can 

vacillate so often between mature and immature behavior. When it comes to more basic abilities, such as those 

involving memory, attention, and logical reasoning, especially under optimal conditions, the average 15-yearold 

is just as mature as the average adult. But research on brain maturation indicates that relatively more 

sophisticated cognitive abilities, such as thinking ahead, envisioning the consequences of a decision, balancing 

risks and rewards, or controlling impulses, are still developing at that age. 

The Need to Practice Autonomy: It's important to keep in mind that the brain is very malleable, or "plastic," 

and that its development is affected by experience as well as biology. Both synaptic pruning and myelination 

are influenced by experience, such that repeated activation of a specific collection of neurons as a result of 

engaging in a particular behavior will actually strengthen the connections among those neurons, which, in turn, 

will make them function more efficiently. This is one reason that practicing the same task over and over again 

makes that task easier to perform each time. 

Although research on brain plasticity during adolescence is just in its infancy, many scientists believe that the 

maturation of the brain systems responsible for thinking ahead and controlling impulses is influenced by the 

sorts of experiences young people have, including their experiences in the classroom. Given the welldocumented 

finding that practicing something will strengthen the brain circuits that control that behavior, it's 

important that, as educators, we provide adolescents with opportunities to practice things like planning, 

anticipating the consequences of a decision, and regulating their own behavior. Although it can be frustrating to 

teachers and parents when young adolescents push for more autonomy, we need to respond by gradually 

granting them more control. Assignments that require teenagers to think ahead, make a plan, and carry it out 

may stimulate the maturation of brain systems that enable more mature self-regulation. 

Initially, adolescents who haven't been given many opportunities to develop these capabilities may not always 

succeed. But be patient. Over time, with practice, as synapses are pruned and neural circuits myelinated, 

adolescents' ability to exercise mature control over their own behavior will improve. 

Endnote 

1 

Steinberg, L., Vandell, D., & Bornstein, M. (2011). Development: Infancy through adolescence. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth. 

Laurence Steinberg is the Distinguished University Professor of Psychology at Temple University, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and the 

author of You and Your Adolescent: The Essential Guide for Ages 10 to 25 (Simon and Schuster, 2011); 

laurence.steinberg@temple.edu.

Do Your Homework 

Bambi Betts 

October 2010 

If there is anything about the place called school that can evoke a strong emotion from just about everyone, its 

homework. Should we, shouldn’t we? If so, when, how much, what kind? Should we assess it? Should it ‘count’? 

Dozens of research studies have revealed just about every conclusion we can think of. It has become an equity 

policy, a form of punishment, a weapon, a major tool (often the only one) for ‘teaching’ independent learning, the 

subject of hours of debate at faculty and parent meetings. 

Homework, at its core, is a concept - the notion of continuing the learning begun at school beyond the formal 

school day. It is not a separate, stand-alone practice, rather one of the strategies in the repertoire of instructional 

methods, ideally completely aligned with the learning principles and practices at the school. Homework is simply a 

tool we use to extend learning for those who may benefit from it when kids are outside of the care of the school. 

All our practices at school, including homework, are driven by an underlying ‘philosophy’ – which hopefully by now 

is described as a set of learning principles or axioms rather than a set of beliefs (Don’t know many successful 

organizations which are built on just beliefs and faith) 

The learning principles that would mostly likely be the drivers for any homework policy would be: 

• Durable learning requires some independent, unguided learning opportunities. 

• All learners learn differently and at different paces. 

• The more we practice something the better we are likely to understand it or do it. 

• Feedback is an essential ingredient for learning. 

Unfortunately the homework practices in some schools seem to be based more on premises like these: (which are 

not particularly about learning) 

• Everyone must do homework (and frequently the same work or same amount)because everyone else 

does (the equity assumption) 

• We have to give the kids homework because the parents expect it.(the parents rule assumption) 

• Kids have to learn to work on their own (…starting at 5 years old) 

• Kids must have some consequence for not doing it. (it's not about learning, just doing it) 

• Turning homework in is the biggest single indicator that a learner is becoming independent and 

responsible. (for the record - turning or not turning in homework accounts for 10-50% of how students 

are ultimately ‘graded’) 

• It’s OK for a kid to practice a skill the wrong way as long as he does the work. 

Before we even consider what homework should actually look like, let’s remind ourselves that it is not an isolated 

activity. Effective homework relies on two essential classroom practices: 

1. Making it clear and explicit to learners WHAT we intend them to learn. If in fact we are meant to be 

learning something EVERYDAY at school then it should not be too difficult to make this clear to learners. 

We are becoming quite skilled, even with younger children, at this excellent practice of stating the 

learning goal, framing it as a question – being CLEAR about what we can expect to learn. 

2. Engaging kids in authentic tasks – embedding the learning in contexts in which that learning actually 

‘lives’. If schoolwork is disconnected, decontextualized and non-authentic, then so will homework be - a 

true crime.

Based on these two practices and the appropriate learning principles, a homework ‘policy’ could be simply this: 

The purpose of ‘homework’ is to encourage thinking about learning and improving the skills of independent 

learning. Each day, learners, together with their teacher, will think about one or more of the following. More 

mature learners will be guided to answers these questions themselves. For less mature learners, teachers will be 

directive, working toward each learner eventually self-directing his work at home. Their work that evening, if any, 

will depend on the responses. 

• Is there anything you feel that you need to practice on your own that will help you feel more secure in the 

learning you are working on right now? 

• Is there anything we have been learning that you find interesting and would like to spend some more time 

on tonight/this week? 

• Is there anything you need to prepare to be able to continue to learn tomorrow? 

• Do some thinking about what we have been learning today. Bring any questions or new ideas with you 

tomorrow. 

When we modify practice, it is helpful to be clear about what will change and what will not. The practical changes 

we would plan for with such a policy would be: 

• Home work would be fully differentiated – both with regard to what and when. Perhaps clusters of kids 

would choose or be guided toward the same task, just as during differentiation in the classroom. Not all 

students necessarily would have homework every day – this is not an equity issue, rather a learning one. 

• It would be student –driven as much as possible, increasingly so as students acquire the skill. Consider a 

10 year old learning to play football. Does he limit himself to what the coach told him to practice? Over 

time, with increasingly less guidance, he learns what he NEEDS to practice. 

• All ‘practice-related’ tasks would be based on authentic work,(see Fred Newmann’s work for a 

description) 

• There would be daily classroom time to capture the learning results from the homework. I used to call 

that time ‘capturing our learning’ – 5-10 minutes each day to explore what was learned, what 

misunderstandings happened, what new ideas and questions kids came up with. Part 2 of our ‘capturing’ 

session was ‘so what’ – ‘what’s next, generally recorded in a ‘Home learning log’.

MEASURING RESULTS 

Maximizing the Power 

of Formative Assessments 

When teachers work together to create assessments for all 

students in the same course or grade, the results can be astounding. 

Formative assessment, 

done well, represents 

one of the most powerful 

instructional tools available 

to a teacher or a school for 

promoting student achievement. 

Teachers and schools 

can use formative assessment 

to identify student understanding, 

clarify what comes 

next in their learning, trigger 

and become part of an effective 

system of intervention 

for struggling students, inform 

and improve the instructional 

practice of individual 

teachers or teams, help 

students track their own 

progress toward attainment 

of standards, motivate students by building confidence 

in themselves as learners, fuel continuous improvement 

processes across faculties, and, thus, drive 

a school’s transformation. 

Common assessments — those created collaboratively 

by teams of teachers who teach the same course 

or grade level — also represent a powerful tool in effective 

assessment in professional learning communi- 

■ RICK STIGGINS is founder and executive director of the ETS 

Assessment Training Institute, Portland, Oregon. RICK DuFOUR 

is an education author and consultant on the implementation of the 

professional learning community concept in districts and schools. 

By Rick Stiggins and Rick DuFour 

ties. Put the two together 

and the result can redefine 

the role of assessment in 

school improvement. 

But this synergy can be 

achieved only if certain conditions 

are satisfied. Three 

specific questions: How can 

common formative assessments 

contribute to productive 

instructional decision 

making? How can we make 

sure those assessments are of 

high quality? How can we 

ensure they are used in ways 

that benefit student learning? 

Our driving purpose is 

to maximize the positive impact 

of common assessments 

used to promote both student and teacher success. 

ASSESSMENT AND INSTRUCTIONAL 

DECISION MAKING 

If assessment is, at least in part, the process of gathering 

information to inform instructional decisions, 

then the starting place for the creation of any particular 

assessment is seeking clear answers to some key 

questions (Stiggins 2008): 

• What is (are) the instructional decision(s) to be 

made? 

• Who will be making the decision(s)? 

640 PHI DELTA KAPPAN Photo: JIunlimited/Stockxpert

• What information will help them make good 

decisions? 

Answers will differ depending on the assessment’s 

purpose. To be truly productive, a local district assessment 

system must provide different kinds of information 

to various decision makers in different forms and 

at different times. 

THREE LEVELS OF ASSESSMENTS 

Consider how assessments provide information for 

three different levels — the classroom level, the program 

level, and the institutional or accountability levels. 

Classroom assessments. At the classroom level, 

students, teachers, and sometimes parents need information 

about what comes next in the learning process 

and continuous evidence about a student’s location in 

that learning progression. 

Teachers should have arrayed clearly focused and 

appropriate achievement standards into learning progressions 

to unfold within and across grade levels over 

time. These curriculum maps chart the learner’s route 

to ultimate academic success. A balanced classroom 

assessment environment uses some assessments in a 

formative manner to support learning and some in a 

summative way to verify it, as at grading time. 

To know what comes next in the learning, one 

must know where the students are now in their learning. 

Formative classroom assessments must provide 

an answer about where a student is located in his or 

her learning, not once a year or every few weeks, but 

continuously while the learning is happening. Effective 

classroom assessments clarify each student’s journey 

up the scaffolding leading to each standard. It is never 

the case that, first, a student cannot meet a standard 

and then, all at once, he or she can. Over time, the 

student masters progressive levels of prerequisite 

learning that accumulate to mastery of the standard. 

Ongoing classroom assessment must track that 

progress in order to know, at any point in time, what 

comes next in the learning. Such continuous, ongoing 

assessment is essential to a balanced classroom assessment 

system. 

This attention to each student does not require that 

every assessment be unique to each student or classroom. 

While the realities of day-to-day classroom instructional 

decision making will require some unique 

assessments, assessments at this level can also be developed 

and used commonly across classrooms to 

identify and help struggling students. 

School-level assessments. At the school level, 

teacher teams, teacher leaders, principals, and curriculum 

personnel need periodic, but frequent, evidence 

that is comparable across classrooms. Such information 

will reveal whether students are mastering 

standards. 

In this case, teachers use frequent interim benchmark 

or short-cycle assessments to identify components 

of an instructional program that are working effectively 

and those that need improvement. These assessments 

will be common across classrooms as instructional 

programs are adopted and implemented 

for schools. 

In professional learning communities, collaborative 

teams of teachers create common assessments for 

three formative purposes. First, team-developed common 

assessments help identify curricular areas that 

need attention because many students are struggling. 

Second, they help each team member clarify strengths 

and weaknesses in his or her teaching and create a forum 

for teachers to learn from one another. Third, interim 

common assessments identify students who 

aren’t mastering the intended standards and need 

timely and systematic interventions. 

Institutional-level assessments. Finally, superintendents, 

school boards, and legislators need annual 

summaries of whether students are meeting required 

standards. This information will come from standardized 

accountability tests. 

Once again, assessments serve formative or summative 

purposes. Summative applications are most 

common at this level: Did the students achieve the 

standard by the deadline? Yes or no? Pass or fail? Proficient 

or not proficient? Schools are required to administer 

annual standardized assessments to all students 

in certain grade levels revealing the proportion 

of students mastering standards so as to evaluate the 

overall institutional impact. But these kinds of common 

assessments can also serve formative purposes if 

they’re designed and analyzed to reveal how each student 

did in mastering each standard. As at the school 

level, these permit teachers to identify standards 

where students struggle and to use that information 

for program improvement. 

Note the differences. Thus, all three levels of assessment 

are important because they can serve multiple 

purposes, including formative. The classroom 

level continuously asks, how goes the journey to competence 

for each student? The program level asks, how 

can we improve our programs and our teaching and 

which students require more time and support for 

their learning? And the institutional level asks, are 

schools as effective as they need to be? No single as- 

MAY 2009 641

sessment can answer all of these questions. A productive, 

multi-level assessment system is needed to ensure 

that all users are served so all instructional decisions 

can be made well. 

Similarly, different users are served at the three levels. 

The classroom assessment serves students as they decide 

whether success is within reach for them and discover 

how to approach that learning productively. It informs 

teachers and students as they track what comes next in 

the learning, figure out how to promote that learning, 

identify what feedback is likely to support learning, and 

determine how to judge the sufficiency of each student’s 

progress. At the school level, faculty teams use results to 

clarify program areas needing attention, to examine the 

relative effectiveness of each member’s instructional 

strategies for each essential standard, and to identify students 

who need immediate intervention to acquire the 

642 PHI DELTA KAPPAN 

The Story of Snow Creek 

intended knowledge and skills. At the institutional level, 

matters of leadership effectiveness, instructional policy, 

resource allocation, and other such broad program variables 

come under the microscope. An effective balanced 

assessment system will meet the needs of all of these 

formative users and uses. 

In other words, all parts of the system must contribute 

for schools to be truly effective. If assessment 

isn’t working effectively day to day in the classroom 

— that is, if poor decisions are being made because of 

misinformation due to inept assessment — then the 

program or institutional levels of assessment can’t 

compensate. They don’t provide the right kinds of information. 

By the same token, an individual teacher’s 

classroom assessment doesn’t provide the data needed 

to compare and evaluate either programs or strengths 

and weaknesses in his or her teaching. Frequent com- 

Snow Creek Elementary School is a small rural school in Franklin County, Virginia, 

with more than half of its students eligible for free and reduced lunch. Snow Creek students 

traditionally had been assigned to an individual classroom teacher who was solely responsible 

for monitoring each student’s learning and responding when a student experienced 

difficulty. In the spring of 2004, only 40% of Snow Creek’s students met the 

reading proficiency on the Virginia state assessment; the state average was 71%. 

In the 2004-05 school year, principal Bernice Cobbs assigned teachers to collaborative 

teams. Each team was asked to develop frequent common formative assessments, 

to monitor each student’s learning of each essential skill on a frequent 

and timely basis, and to identify immediately students experiencing difficulty. Finally, 

the school created a schedule to provide systematic interventions at each grade 

level to ensure that struggling students received additional time and intensive support for learning each day 

in ways that did not pull them from the classroom during new direct instruction. During that intervention 

period, classroom teachers were joined by special education teachers and assistants, a Title I specialist, two 

part-time tutors hired using state remedial funds, and often, principal Cobbs. All students of a particular 

grade level were divided among this army of professionals. Students experiencing difficulty were assigned 

to work with the teacher or teachers whose students had demonstrated the best results on the common assessment. 

Another staff member would lead students who had demonstrated high proficiency in an enrichment 

activity. Yet another might supervise a different group of students during a teacher read aloud or silent 

sustained reading, and still another might supervise students at independent learning centers. Groups were 

fluid, with students moving from group to group as they demonstrated proficiency. 

In less than two years, Snow Creek had become a Title I Distinguished school. Students surpassed the 

state performance in every subject area and every grade level. The same group of students that had only 

40% of its members demonstrate proficiency in 3rd-grade reading had 96% of those students achieve proficient 

status by 5th grade. Math proficiency for the same cohort jumped from 70% to 100%. 

At Snow Creek, common assessments were used not only to monitor the program, but also to respond 

to each student’s immediate learning needs in a coordinated and systematic way. Frequent assessments informed 

both teachers and students of problems and helped to resolve the problems in ways that had a dramatic 

positive impact on student learning.

mon classroom assessments, however, can provide a 

teacher with that information. So clearly, students 

benefit when we seek the synergy of classroom and interim 

assessments and use those assessments to identify 

specific standards students are struggling to learn 

and teachers are struggling to teach. 

THE STRUCTURAL FOUNDATIONS OF 

PRODUCTIVE ASSESSMENT 

To build a balanced and effective assessment system 

to work productively at all levels, four essential 

conditions must be satisfied. 

Condition #1: Clear learning targets. Effective 

assessment requires a framework of clear learning targets 

that are: 

• Centered on the best thinking about the most 

important learnings of the field of study; 

• Integrated into learning progressions within and 

across grades; 

• Within developmental reach of students; 

• Manageable given the resources and time to teach 

and learn them; and 

• Mastered by teachers charged with helping 

students achieve them. 

If these criteria aren’t met, then the quality of assessments 

across levels and, therefore, the effectiveness 

of instruction will suffer. So the starting place for 

the development of a balanced assessment system is 

verifying the quality of the learning targets to be assessed. 

Condition #2: A commitment to standards-based 

instruction. Clarity of expectations can affect student 

achievement positively only when teachers define their 

mission as one of ensuring that all students learn. Without 

that commitment, assessments remain merely tools 

for grading, sorting, selecting, and ranking students, 

and teachers will have little reason to explore ways of 

improving their instructional effectiveness. 

Condition #3: High-quality assessment. Whether 

intended for use in one or many classrooms, assessments 

must be designed to provide a high-fidelity representation 

of the valued learning targets. This requires 

that the assessment’s authors: 

• Select a proper assessment method appropriate for 

the learning target being assessed; 

• Build each assessment from quality ingredients, 

whether multiple-choice test items, performance 

or essay tasks, or scoring guides and rubrics; 

• Include enough sample items to gather evidence 

sufficient for a confident conclusion about 

achievement; 

• Anticipate and eliminate all relevant sources of 

bias that can distort results; and 

• Communicate results effectively to the intended 

users. 

Condition 4: Effective communication. All of the 

work to develop quality assessments is wasted if teachers 

don’t have a process for delivering assessment results 

in a timely and understandable form. 

For effective communication, both teachers and 

students must learn the results of assessments as early 

as reasonable. Results should focus on attributes of 

the student’s work, not on attributes of the student as 

a learner. The results must be descriptive rather than 

judgmental, informing the learner how to do better 

the next time. Results must arrive in a timely manner 

and be clearly and completely understood. Finally, the 

recipient of the message must be able to act on the 

message. 

For these conditions to be satisfied, all involved 

must agree from the outset on the achievement target 

to be assessed and communicated, and the symbols 

used to convey the information from the message 

sender to the receiver must carry a common meaning 

for both. 

MAXIMIZING THE POWER OF COMMON 

FORMATIVE ASSESSMENTS 

With these four universal keys to productive assessment 

in mind, consider the potential power of common 

assessments developed by collaborative teams of 

teachers within the context of professional learning 

communities. 

Common assessments can serve multiple purposes. 

Classroom assessments that aid day-to-day instructional 

decisions can be unique to a classroom or 

they can be created by a team of teachers and used 

commonly across classrooms. When they are common 

and intended for formative use, teachers can 

pool their collective wisdom in making sound instructional 

decisions based on results. They can identify 

what has and hasn’t worked and which students 

are struggling and which are not. This enables them 

to bring their collective expertise to bear on behalf of 

student success. Common assessments can establish 

where each student is now in the learning progression 

and where students are collectively across classrooms, 

thus serving the information needs of both teachers 

and students. 

Common assessments can contribute to learning 

target clarity. Before a team can develop a common 

MAY 2009 643

assessment, members must first clarify the specific 

knowledge and understanding, reasoning proficiencies, 

performance skills, and product development capabilities 

each student is to master. To create a common 

assessment, team members must build shared 

knowledge of relevant state standards, district curriculum 

guides, state assessment frameworks, and the 

expectations of the teachers in the next course or 

grade level in order to clarify the intended learning for 

students. Rather than interpreting standards in isolation, 

team members ensure that they share similar interpretations 

of standards and are assigning similar 

priorities to each. 

Deconstructing standards into the scaffolding students 

will climb to arrive at the intended learning is 

best done, not by individuals working in isolation but 

by teams and professional interaction within a professional 

learning community. 

Common assessments can contribute to assessment 

quality. The team structure provides a powerful 

format by which teachers can learn how to create 

high-quality assessments. A team working with the 

benefit of clearly defined learning targets and enhanced 

assessment literacy is in a position to create 

high-quality assessments that foster student learning. 

To illustrate, a team can apply the keys to quality 

in developing performance assessments. Team members 

must agree on criteria for assessing student work 

and then practice applying those criteria until they 

can score the work consistently (that is, until they establish 

inter-rater reliability). This dialogue fosters 

both greater clarity of the learning standard to be 

644 PHI DELTA KAPPAN 

achieved and higher quality assessments. 

Common assessments can enhance communication. 

Clarity regarding achievement expectations and 

the methods for gathering evidence of student learning 

can help a team create a common vision. Furthermore, 

if teachers transform those learning targets into 

student-friendly terms and share them with their students 

from the beginning of instruction, evidence of 

learning can be more quickly and easily communicated 

to and understood by students. As a result, students 

and teachers can collaborate in pinpointing 

what comes next in the learning and acting on that 

information. 

STUDENT-INVOLVED COMMON ASSESSMENT 

FOR LEARNING 

While we tend to think of assessment as something 

adults do to students to verify their learning, students 

also assess themselves. This reality also can feed into 

the productive use of common formative assessments. 

For example, if the learning process starts with student-friendly 

versions of learning targets, students 

can become partners in creating and using practice assessments. 

Practice events can focus student attention 

on the keys to success and show students their 

progress as they move toward mastering standards. 

This understanding of learning targets and practice 

with such assessments enables students to become 

partners in interpreting results of common assessments 

and brainstorming how to respond when results 

show that students struggle across classrooms to 

master certain standards. Throughout this phase, to 

the extent that students are involved in the practice 

assessment and record-keeping processes, they will 

develop the conceptual understanding and vocabulary 

needed to communicate effectively with others 

about their achievement and improvement over time. 

Such involvement has been linked to profound gains 

in student learning (Hattie and Timperley 2007). 

In the final analysis, the ultimate test of effective 

assessment is simple — does it provide teachers and 

students with the information they need to ensure 

that all students learn at higher levels. K 

REFERENCES 

Hattie, John, and Helen Timperley. “The Power of 

Feedback.” Review of Educational Research 77, no. 1 

(2007): 81-112. 

Stiggins, Richard J. Assessment Manifesto: A Call for 

the Development of Balanced Assessment Systems. 

Princeton, N.J.: Educational Testing Service, 2008.

September 2010 | Volume 68 | Number 1 

Giving Students Meaningful Work Pages 82‐84 

High Expectations for All by Robert J. Marzano 

The idea of communicating high expectations for all students burst onto the K–12 education scene in the late 1960s. An 

important study indicated that teachers form expectations about their students' chances for academic success and then 

interact with students on the basis of those expectations. 1 That is, teachers treat their "high-expectancy" students 

differently from their "low-expectancy" students. Students quickly recognize this differential treatment and begin to act 

in accordance with the expectations that the treatment implies. 

Having high expectations for all students is, of course, a good and noble goal. Two problems arise here, however. First, 

expectations are subtle and difficult to change. Teachers may be unaware that they have low expectations for some 

students; even when they become aware, they may have difficulty changing their expectations because their beliefs and 

biases have developed over the years. Second, what actually communicates expectations to students is teacher 

behavior. If teachers consciously work to change their biases but don't change their behavior toward those students 

from whom they have tended to expect less, their change of attitude will have little effect on student achievement. 

A Four-Step Process 

In working with teachers on this issue, we have found it helpful to think of communicating high expectations as an 

instructional strategy that involves four steps. 

Step 1: Identify students for whom you have low expectations. 

Do this as early in the school year or the course as possible, because once you form expectations, it's hard to change 

them. Teachers might simply scan their class rosters and mentally place students into two categories—"I expect them to 

do well" and "I don't expect them to do well." This is not an easy task because it requires teachers to admit that they 

have formed negative expectations about some students. 

Step 2: Identify similarities in students. 

This is the most difficult part of the strategy because none of us likes to acknowledge that we automatically form 

conclusions about certain types of people. For example, a teacher might find that the students for whom she has low 

expectations all tend to look a certain way, speak a certain way, or come from a certain ethnic group. Research has 

demonstrated that such characteristics are commonly the basis for early expectations about students. 2 

If teachers do find patterns in their expectations, it does not necessarily mean that they are racists or bigots. To some 

extent, all adults have preconceived notions regarding different groups of people, simply because they are influenced by 

the biases of the people who raised them and the people with whom they interacted as children and by their personal 

experiences growing up. A bigot or a racist knowingly or unknowingly behaves in accordance with such notions. 

However, an individual who actively seeks to behave in a manner that is not controlled by biased patterns of thoughts 

or behaviors is anything but a bigot. 

Step 3: Identify differential treatment of low-expectancy students. 

In practice, teachers' behaviors toward students are much more important than their expectations: Students cannot 

know what teachers are thinking, but they do observe how teachers behave—and they make inferences on the basis of 

these behaviors. 

In general, there are two ways that teachers treat low-expectancy students differently. One involves the general 

affective tone established between teacher and student. With low-expectancy students, teachers tend to make less eye 

contact, smile less, make less physical contact, and engage in less playful or light dialogue.

The second way involves the type and quality of interactions regarding academic content. Teachers tend to call on lowexpectancy 

students less often, ask less challenging questions, delve into their answers less deeply, and reward them 

for less rigorous responses. Teachers can determine their differential treatment of low-expectancy students simply by 

noting and recording their behavior toward those students. 

Step 4: Treat low-expectancy and high-expectancy students the same. 

It is fairly easy to establish a positive affective tone with all students. Teachers simply make sure that they exhibit the 

same positive behaviors to all students—smiling, involving students in good-natured discussions, and engaging in 

appropriate physical contact. All students will typically respond well to this type of behavior. 

Providing equal treatment is more difficult when it comes to academic interactions, however, particularly when 

questioning students. Students for whom teachers have low expectations become accustomed to the teacher asking 

them fewer and less challenging questions than other students. When teachers change this behavior, some students 

might feel uncomfortable. They will probably need to go through this uncomfortable phase, however, to arrive at a place 

where they will risk putting forth new ideas and asking questions that disclose their confusion about certain topics. 

Because this is the goal— for all students to embrace complex and challenging issues and for the teacher to 

acknowledge and respect their ideas. 

Out in the Open 

Addressing the issue of low expectations and differential treatment is a powerful strategy to enhance the achievement 

of those students who traditionally do not do well in the K–12 system. One of the more challenging aspects of effective 

teaching is confronting one's own expectations openly and productively. 

Endnotes 

1 Rosenthal, R., & Jacobs, L. (1968). Pygmalion in the classroom. New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston. 

2 Dusek, J. B., & Gail, J. (1983). The bases of teacher expectations: A meta-analysis. Journal of Educational Psychology, 

75(3), 327–346. 

Robert J. Marzano is cofounder and CEO of Marzano Research Laboratory in Denver, Colorado. He is the author of The Art 

and Science of Teaching (ASCD, 2007) and coauthor, with Mark W. Haystead, of Making Standards Useful in the 

Classroom (ASCD, 2008). To contact Marzano or participate in a study regarding a specific instructional strategy, visit 

www.marzanoresearch.com. Copyright © 2010 by ASCD

A Knowledge Base for the Teaching Profession: 

What Would It Look Like and How Can We Get One? 

by James Hiebert, Ronald Gallimore, and James W. Stigler 

To improve classroom teaching in a steady, lasting way, the teaching 

profession needs a knowledge base that grows and improves. In spite 

of the continuing efforts of researchers, archived research knowledge 

has had little effect on the improvement of practice in the average 

classroom. We explore the possibility of building a useful 

knowledge base for teaching by beginning with practitioners’ knowledge. 

We outline key features of this knowledge and identify the requirements 

for this knowledge to be transformed into a professional 

knowledge base for teaching. By reviewing educational history, we 

offer an incomplete explanation for why the United States has no 

countrywide system that meets these requirements. We conclude 

by wondering if U.S. researchers and teachers can make different 

choices in the future to enable a system for building and sustaining a 

professional knowledge base for teaching. 

Improving classroom teaching is receiving renewed attention 

as the nation searches for ways to increase students’ learning 

(Lampert, 2001; National Commission on Mathematics and Science 

Teaching for the 21st Century, 2000; National Commission 

on Teaching and America’s Future, 1996; Stigler & Hiebert, 

1999). One result of the new focus on teaching has been a stronger 

emphasis on providing teachers with opportunities for high quality 

professional development. 

There is a growing consensus that professional development 

yields the best results when it is long-term, school-based, collaborative, 

focused on students’ learning, and linked to curricula 

(Darling-Hammond & Sykes, 1999; Garet, Porter, Desimone, 

Birman, & Yoon, 2001; Joyce, Wolf, & Calhoun, 1993; Loucks- 

Horsley, Hewson, Love, & Stiles, 1998; National Staff Development 

Council, 2001). In such programs, teachers examine student 

work, develop performance assessments and standards-based report 

cards, and jointly plan, teach, and revise lessons. Teachers, 

who traditionally have worked in isolation, report favorably on 

programs that bring them in close contact with colleagues in active 

work on improving practice (Garet et al., 2001). 

However, as teachers collaborate to improve education, an old 

problem is revealed in a new light. Teachers rarely draw from a 

shared knowledge base to improve their practice. They do not 

routinely locate and translate research-based knowledge to inform 

their efforts (Grimmett & MacKinnon, 1992; Huberman, 

1989; Richardson & Placier, 2001). As teachers begin to exam- 

Educational Researcher, Vol. 31, No. 5, pp. 3–15 

ine their students’ learning of the curriculum, for example, they 

rarely search the research archives to help them interpret their 

students’ conceptions and misconceptions, plot their students’ 

learning trajectories, or devise alternative teaching practices that 

are more effective in helping their students master the curriculum. 

Although special programs have demonstrated that, with 

carefully designed support, teachers can use specific research information 

for improving their practice (Carpenter, Fennema, 

Franke, Levi, & Empson, 1999), there is a persistent concern 

that educational research has too little influence on improving 

classroom teaching and learning (National Educational Research 

Policies and Priorities Board, 1999). 

Efforts to broaden the impact of research for teachers have taken 

a variety of forms, including government produced summaries of 

“what works” in the classroom, interpretations of research for 

schools and districts wishing to improve, and prescriptions for effective 

teaching (Berliner & Casanova, 1993; Joyce et al., 1993; 

Rosenshine, 1986; U.S. Department of Education, 1987). Helpful 

as some of these efforts have been, educators recognize that 

translating research into forms useful for teachers is a continuing, 

stubborn problem (Huberman, 1985; Lagemann, 1996; Kennedy, 

1999; Raths & McAninch, 1999; Shavelson, 1988). 

A variety of proposals have been advanced to solve the translation 

problem. Some exhort researchers to find new and more innovative 

ways to represent their knowledge; others focus on better 

ways to engage teachers in the adaptation of research knowledge 

for their classrooms (Anderson & Biddle, 1991; National Research 

Council, 1999). Variations on this approach include Willinsky’s 

(2001) suggestion to provide the public, including teachers, 

with easier direct access to research, for example, through Internet 

technologies. 

Most approaches for bringing research to teachers assume that 

researchers’ knowledge is the best foundation upon which to build 

a professional knowledge base because of its generalizable and 

trustworthy (scientific) character. A significant alternative view 

claims that the knowledge teachers use is of a very different kind 

than usually produced by educational researchers (Cochran-Smith 

& Lytle, 1990, 1993; Doyle, 1997; Eisner, 1995; Huberman, 

1985; Kennedy, 1999; Leinhardt, 1990). Called “craft” knowledge 

by some, it is characterized more by its concreteness and contextual 

richness than its generalizability and context independence. 

From this point of view, bridging the gap between traditional research 

knowledge and teachers’ practice is an inherently difficult, 

perhaps intractable, problem. 

In this article, we recognize the inherent difficulties of translating 

traditional research knowledge into forms teachers can use 

to improve their practice, and we recognize the value of teachers’ 

JUNE/JULY 2002 3

craft knowledge. We now ask whether it is possible to build this 

personal craft knowledge into a trustworthy knowledge base that 

can be accessed and shared widely in the profession. Is there a 

road that could lead from teachers’ classrooms to a shared, reliable, 

professional knowledge base for teaching? This pathway, already 

explored by some (Clark, 2001; Hargreaves, 1998; Munby, 

Russell, & Martin, 2001; Olson & Bruner, 1996; Richardson, 

1994), still can be viewed skeptically because practitioners’ knowledge 

is highly personal and, under current conditions, lacks the 

public vetting of researchers’ knowledge. But, given its origins 

in practice and the fact that everyday millions of teachers produce 

knowledge of teaching, it is worth examining what would 

be needed to transform teachers’ knowledge into a professional 

knowledge base for teaching. What would the road look like? 

We begin by taking a closer look at practitioner knowledge— 

the kinds of knowledge practitioners generate through active participation 

and reflection on their own practice. We examine two 

cases that illustrate the personal, unshared knowledge that many 

teachers acquire to improve their practice. We continue by identifying 

several characteristics that this practitioner knowledge 

must take on for it to become a professional knowledge base for 

teaching. In brief, we propose that professional knowledge must 

be public, it must be represented in a form that enables it to be 

accumulated and shared with other members of the profession, 

and it must be continually verified and improved. 

We then address the issue of how practitioner knowledge can 

be transformed into a knowledge base for teaching by considering 

a research and development system, outside of the United 

States, that generates, accumulates, and shares knowledge for 

teaching. We argue that such a system is not alien to the United 

States, either in principle or in practice, for at least two reasons. 

First, this system builds on key features of the new kinds of professional 

development that are being recommended and implemented 

in the United States. Second, the processes the system 

requires are already in place in many local sites and are being deployed 

by various innovative movements and programs. But why 

are these just local phenomena in the United States, rather than 

a national system? We relate a story from American educational 

history that explains, in part, why the United States moved toward 

a different system in the last century and why the system 

we envision is not a part of American educational culture. We 

conclude by wondering if U.S. educators can make different 

choices in the future to enable a system for building and sustaining 

a professional knowledge base for teaching. 

Practitioner Knowledge: Two Examples 

Teachers are not always learning. Often it takes all of their energy 

just to get through the day. But all teachers learn some of 

the time, and some teachers learn much of the time. When teachers 

do learn from their experience, what do they learn and how 

is this knowledge organized? We explore these questions by analyzing 

two cases of teacher learning. 

A Literacy Case 

Children work through hundreds of stories on their way to competent 

readership. Each provides a unique interpretive challenge 

and a multitude of ways apprentice readers can relate what is new 

in the text to what they already know. Providing many opportu- 

4 

EDUCATIONAL RESEARCHER 

nities to relate the known to the new, to develop new ideas and 

understandings, is the major goal and work of reading comprehension 

lessons. To effectively conduct such lessons, teachers 

must be prepared for all combinations and permutations of children 

and texts—an overwhelming body of teaching knowledge. 

A case in point is Grace Omura’s attempt to use the familiar 

folk tale Billy Goats Gruff in a reading comprehension lesson 

(Tharp & Gallimore, 1989, chap. 10). The story is a cautionary 

folk tale that involves three goat brothers who are successively 

challenged by a wicked troll. When the youngest and smallest 

goat attempts to cross a bridge to reach grass on the other side of 

a stream, he avoids being eaten by the troll who is persuaded to 

wait for the next, larger brother goat. The ploy works for the second 

brother as well. When the third and very large brother goat 

crosses the bridge and is challenged, the troll discovers his greedy 

appetite to be a fatal flaw. 

A dedicated young teacher, Grace worked with her coach, 

Stephanie Dalton, to make her lessons more challenging and 

helpful for her Native Hawaiian students by using responsive interactions 

that stretch student thinking about text and by reducing 

her use of “known-answer” questions. She and Stephanie met 

regularly to review videos of Grace’s lessons. After watching part 

of a lesson video, Grace stopped the tape and noted how unhappy 

she was with the lesson. The problem, she believed, was 

the story: It is very “shallow,” she said. As a result, the children 

often made “off the wall” comments and did not comprehend 

what they were reading. However, some student reactions were 

intriguing. To illustrate, she directed Stephanie’s attention to a 

child on the video who suggested the troll’s greediness might 

evoke punishment. Grace recognized that the child’s comment 

represents an interesting reaction to the story but during the lesson 

she did not know how to build on it. 

Stephanie realized that Grace was focusing only on students’ 

comments that conformed to a common interpretation of Billy 

Goats Gruff as a cautionary tale about the consequences of greediness. 

Stephanie suggested there are other interpretations of the 

story. In fact, Stephanie pointed out, perhaps the child Grace 

mentioned was thinking about the context of the troll’s behavior 

and was opening up a richer interpretation of the animal’s behavior 

that could relate to the students’ personal experiences and 

background knowledge: 

Stephanie: . . . it could relate to some bigger concepts in the 

story. In fact, [you could begin] the investigation 

of the character of the troll in terms of why is he 

acting this way. One reason may be that he is plain 

hungry. Another reason might be that he is [being 

territorial] and they are invading his place. And 

[there are] other things that you know about animal 

behavior that make them operate in certain 

ways. . . . [the troll] is so strong and so adamant in 

his position and so assured of himself and he is the 

guy that ends up with nothing in the end. 

Stephanie suggested that Grace could draw a parallel between 

these animals and the experiences of the children in her group. 

Stephanie (continuing): . . . especially those from families 

with older children . . . where the older ones use

[the troll’s] strategy [and] the younger ones come 

out on top. 

Grace: Oh, how interesting . . . 

The coaching session continued. The tape was started again. 

Grace and Stephanie watched a long sequence in which the students 

discuss what trolls really are. Are they monsters? Are they real? 

Kanani: Hawaii doesn’t have any trolls. 

Grace: Hawaii doesn’t have any trolls? Oh. Is there a real . . . 

are there real live trolls? 

Children: No. They not. They like giants. 

Grace: They’re like giants? 

Sheida: When the—you know, when the dinosaurs, when 

they alive, trolls was alive. 

Grace: Oh, so dinosaurs and trolls were alive at the same time? 

Kanani: Trolls and dragons. 

Grace: Trolls and dragons were alive at the same time? 

Tosufa: And the trolls . . . 

Louise: Dragons . . . we don’t have any dragons. 

Grace: Do we have any trolls? 

Tosufa: No. The trolls was stepping one little bit and he fell 

in the tar. 

Grace: So let’s get this straight. Are trolls like us? 

The students are responding to the texts and her questions 

with rich ideas, but as the tape rolled Grace repeatedly noticed 

instances in which she did not know how to respond to what, in 

hindsight, seemed like rich opportunities. She stopped the tape. 

Grace: Oh my God. What I am going to do with all this information. 

. . . I did not expect to get myself in this direction. 

I’m really amazed with what these kids give 

me. I didn’t expect that much. . . . I think that’s my 

one problem. . . . I’m not experienced enough to make 

the most out of the situation while I’m in it right then. 

[I get a lot out of watching my tapes with you] but I 

really need your feedback. Because there’s tons I 

would have missed, really, without you. . . . [I’m beginning 

to] feel more comfortable . . . because each 

time I read the story I see a little bit more. Maybe I’m 

reading it slower and slower as I go down the line with 

these kids or maybe I’m [letting the children have 

more time for] figuring things out. 

Over the next few months, Grace and Stephanie reviewed additional 

lesson videos allowing themselves multiple observation 

and replication opportunities with different stories and lessons. 

Grace gradually discovered the value of detailed, particular story 

knowledge as well as knowledge about student experiences and 

possible “takes” on other stories. With this knowledge and added 

experience, she moved closer to her goal of helping students 

build a deeper understanding of what they read by relating it to 

their experiences and knowledge. 

A Mathematics Case1 Ms. D. is a veteran first-grade teacher working in a racially and 

economically diverse school in the upper Midwest. She always 

has been a good teacher, with a certain charisma, but never had 

studied teaching in a detailed or systematic way. One summer 

she enrolled in a workshop offered by the developers of Cognitively 

Guided Instruction (CGI) (Carpenter et al., 1999). The 

workshop was on children’s methods for solving addition and 

subtraction problems. 

“What can I learn about adding and subtracting?” wondered 

Ms. D. “It’s pretty easy to teach. I just have the children do some 

counting activities and then show them how to add and subtract 

on simple problems, like 1 + 2 = __ and 3 − 1 = __ . After that, 

it’s mostly a matter of practice.” She was surprised to learn that 

addition and subtraction are quite complex, especially if you look 

at them through children’s eyes. She found that many children 

learn to add and subtract by counting in increasingly sophisticated 

ways. More than that, she learned there are a variety of addition 

and subtraction problems and the methods children use 

depend, in part, on the kind of problem they are solving. 

Ms. D. learned all of this information well, but what distinguished 

her from some of the other teachers in the workshop was 

that Ms. D. became very curious about how her students would 

solve different kinds of addition and subtraction problems and 

what mathematical relationships she could help her students 

construct as they thought about the strategies they were using. 

Over the next few years, Ms. D. studied her students intensively. 

She posed problems like those presented during the workshop 

and observed how her students solved them. She became interested 

in the details of their solution strategies. 

One day early in the year Ms. D. posed the following problem 

to her first graders: “Jenny had 4 pieces of gum and Esther 

had 7 pieces of gum. How many pieces did they have together?” 

After students had worked a few minutes, the class discussed what 

they found. 

Ms. D.: Luis, how did you solve that problem? 

Luis: I counted the blocks. 

Ms. D.: But how did you count them? 

Luis: I counted Jenny’s pieces 1, 2, 3, 4 and then I counted 

the other girl’s 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11. 

Ms. D.: Thanks, Luis. Sarah, how did you do it? 

Sarah: I counted in my head. 

Ms. D.: OK. Do you remember what numbers you said? 

Sarah: I started at 5 and said 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11. 

Ms. D.: How did you know to stop at 11? 

Sarah: I don’t know. I guess I just counted seven times and 

stopped. 

Ms. D.: How did you keep track that you counted seven 

times? 

Sarah: I don’t know. 

JUNE/JULY 2002 5

Ms. D: Did anyone else do it Sarah’s way? I’m trying to figure 

out how she kept track of seven when she was 

counting. 

Juan: I did it like that. Sometimes I keep track on my fingers 

and sometimes I just keep track in my head. 

Ms. D.: OK. I’m going to keep thinking about that. Did anyone 

else do it a different way? 

Rasheed: I started at 8 and went 8, 9, 10, 11. 

Mira: I knew that 4 and 6 was 10 so 4 and 7 would be 11. 

As she watched her students solve simple addition and subtraction 

problems, listened to their descriptions, and discussed what 

she was hearing with her colleagues, Ms. D began learning a good 

deal about how her students solved these problems. She learned 

that many of her students moved through a progression of methods 

for solving the same kind of problem. For addition problems, 

the progression looked much like the sequence of methods presented 

by students in the classroom episode presented above. 

Ms. D. learned that the methods themselves contained important 

properties of numbers and operations. For example, the fact 

that Sarah’s method and Rasheed’s method both produced the 

correct answer was an early encounter with commutativity, a form 

of this property that Ms. D. had not thought of before. The question 

of whether this would always work became a rich question 

for students to explore. Mira’s method contained a decomposition 

and recomposition of numbers that Ms. D. began to recognize 

as an essential character of numbers, especially as students 

began adding and subtracting two- and three-digit numbers. 

From Practitioner Knowledge to Professional 

Knowledge 

What do these cases have in common? And what more would be 

needed to constitute a professional knowledge base for teaching? 

In this section we note the features of practitioner knowledge, 

then propose what more is needed to create a professional knowledge 

base. 

Features of Practitioner Knowledge 

Practitioner knowledge, of the type represented in the two cases, 

has both strengths and weaknesses. As Olson and Bruner (1996) 

note, it has been common to focus on the limitations of practitioner 

knowledge but, as we alluded to earlier, there is a growing 

awareness of the richness of this knowledge (Clandinin & 

Connelly, 1991; Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 1993; Doyle, 1997; 

Elbaz, 1991; Leinhardt, 1990; Schon, 1983). We begin by identifying 

three features that make practitioner knowledge useful 

and valuable for teachers. 

Practitioner Knowledge Is Linked With Practice 

Practitioner knowledge is useful for practice precisely because 

it develops in response to specific problems of practice. Grace, 

for example, was motivated by a problem: Her comprehension 

lessons, she observed, did not engage her students in sufficiently 

deep analysis of the Billy Goats Gruff story. The knowledge 

she developed as she worked to make progress on this 

problem is directly usable by other teachers if they are trying to 

use the same story in the same way. Grace’s knowledge can be 

6 


applied directly, without translation, albeit to a restricted number 

of situations. 

In addition to addressing problems of practice, knowledge 

linked with practice is grounded in the context in which teachers 

work. The processes that yield knowledge of this sort are collaborative 

and involve teachers in the following activities: 

• Elaborating the problem and developing a shared language 

for describing the problem, 

• Analyzing classroom practice in light of the problem, 

• Envisioning alternatives, or hypothesizing solutions to the 

problem, 

• Testing alternatives in the classroom, and reflecting on their 

effects, and 

• Recording what is learned in a way that is shareable with 

other practitioners. 

By engaging in this work, teachers create knowledge that is 

linked to practice in two ways: first, its creation is motivated by 

problems of practice; and second, each new bit of knowledge is 

connected to the processes of teaching and learning that actually 

occur in classrooms. 

Practitioner Knowledge Is Detailed, Concrete, and Specific 

A consequence of generating knowledge linked with practice is 

that it is detailed, concrete, and specific. Although Grace’s knowledge 

might apply to teaching comprehension more generally, it 

is directly related to, and instantiated by, the teaching of Billy 

Goats Gruff. It is important to note that this differs from the 

knowledge typically produced by researchers—knowledge that is 

more abstract because it is designed to apply to a wider variety of 

potential problems. 

Some might see the concreteness and specificity as a negative 

feature of practitioner knowledge. What if other teachers do not 

use the story Billy Goats Gruff; does that mean they have nothing 

to learn from Grace? Yes and no. It depends on what they 

need to learn. For now, we simply make the point that if other 

teachers do use Billy Goats Gruff, the kind of information they 

can get from Grace is exactly what they need to improve their 

teaching of this story. 

Practitioner Knowledge Is Integrated 

Another characteristic of knowledge that is linked with practice 

is that it is integrated and organized around problems of practice. 

Whereas researchers often are interested in making distinctions 

among types of knowledge, practitioners often are interested in 

making connections. Researchers have identified many kinds of 

teacher knowledge—content knowledge, pedagogical knowledge, 

and pedagogical content knowledge (Shulman, 1986). There 

also is knowledge of students—what they know and how they 

learn. In practitioner knowledge, all of these types of knowledge 

are intertwined, organized not according to type but according 

to the problem the knowledge is intended to address. Although 

it might be possible to analyze Grace’s knowledge deficiency as 

one of content knowledge or knowledge of what students think 

on first reading of Billy Goats Gruff, it is not helpful to do so if 

the goal is to improve the teaching of Billy Goats Gruff. Knowledge 

types traditionally separated must be tightly integrated to 

teach Billy Goats Gruff more effectively.

Additional Requirements for Practitioner Knowledge to 

Become Professional Knowledge 

Our description of practitioner knowledge is intended to highlight 

the uniquely positive features of such knowledge. However, 

as we already noted, there are shortcomings to practitioner 

knowledge that have prevented it from becoming a knowledge 

base for the teaching profession. In this section we discuss what 

is missing from practitioner knowledge; later we will discuss how 

these limitations might be addressed to enable the construction 

of a knowledge base for teaching. 

Professional Knowledge Must Be Public 

Karl Popper (1972), the philosopher and historian of science, described 

three worlds of knowledge: World 1, knowledge of physical 

and real-world objects and experiences; World 2, individuals’ 

knowledge and skills; and World 3, shared ideas treatable as public 

objects that can be stored and accumulated. 2 Mostly, American 

teachers live in Popper’s Worlds 1 and 2. They interact with 

their students and the curriculum 

in World 1, and they create 

knowledge for themselves 

in World 2. But building a profession’s 

knowledge for teaching 

requires that teachers live 

in World 3 as well. They must 

operate in a system that allows 

them to treat ideas for teaching 

as objects that can be shared 

and examined publicly, that 

can be stored and accumulated 

and passed along to the next 

generation (Snow, 2001). 

For knowledge to be public 

it must be represented in such 

a way that it can be communicated 

among colleagues. 

Collaboration—a process considered central to successful professional 

development programs—ensures that what is discovered 

will be communicable because it is discovered in the context 

of group discussion. Collaboration, then, becomes essential 

for the development of professional knowledge, not because collaborations 

provide teachers with social support groups but because 

collaborations force their participants to make their knowledge 

public and understood by colleagues. The insights Ms. D. 

acquired about her own students, regardless of how powerful, 

will not contribute to the profession’s knowledge until they are 

made public and examined by others. In a sense, what Grace 

learned was public because she shared it with Stephanie; they 

both could describe and understand what they were learning. 

But professional knowledge must also be public in a more expanded 

sense: It must be created with the intent of public examination, 

with the goal of making it shareable among teachers, 

open for discussion, verification, and refutation or modification. 

Professional Knowledge Must Be Storable and Shareable 

Even public knowledge will wither if there is no means of accumulating 

and sharing it with others. Practitioner knowledge exists 

in a particular time and place. Its life might be extended 

[Teachers] must operate 

in a system that allows 

them to treat ideas for 

teaching as objects that 

can be shared and 

examined publicly . . . 

briefly as it is shared locally with a small number of colleagues. 

But this is not sufficient to create the foundation of a professional 

knowledge base. Teachers must have a means of storing knowledge 

in a form that it can be accessed and used by others if it is 

to take on a life of its own and exist in Popper’s World 3. 

Other professions have created ways to accumulate and share 

knowledge. In medicine there is a case literature; a physician can 

read the latest reports from other physicians who have tried and 

refined new ways of treating specific illnesses. Lawyers have the 

case law; they can follow the interpretations of laws as they evolve 

through court decisions. Teaching, unfortunately, has yet to develop 

a professional knowledge system. Think of Grace. The 

story of Grace and Stephanie was published, making it rare indeed. 

Yet it still was not widely available to other practitioners. 

In thinking about the accumulation and sharing of knowledge 

for teaching, we are left with a number of questions: How can 

knowledge of teaching be represented so that others can understand 

it? What is the best medium for storing this knowledge? 

And, how can it be indexed so 

that other practitioners can find 

what they need? 

Representing professional 

knowledge. In general, knowledge 

for teaching is most useful 

when it is represented through 

theories with examples. Theories 

offer abstract knowledge that 

transcend particular classrooms 

and contexts and ensure that 

the knowledge rises above idiosyncratic 

technique. In this 

sense, theories are a hallmark 

of professional knowledge 

(Yinger, 1999). Examples, on 

the other hand, keep the theories 

grounded in practice and reveal the meaning of verbal 

propositions. Although teachers readily can provide examples, it 

is not obvious that they can transform their classroom-based 

knowledge into theories of teaching. 

What is required to construct theories of teaching? We propose 

that useful theories, in this context, are teachers’ hypotheses or 

predictions regarding the relationships between classroom practices 

and students’ learning, along with explanations for observed 

connections. Why was this instructional activity created to support 

this kind of learning? In what way was students’ thinking expected 

to change over the course of the lesson, and why did such 

change (not) occur? These hypotheses or rationales begin transforming 

knowledge gained in one classroom into a form that can 

help other teachers think about how this practice might work in 

their contexts. Local hypotheses gradually develop into theories 

that can be tested and refined across a range of contexts. 

Researchers’ knowledge of teaching, in contrast to teachers’ 

knowledge, traditionally has been generated with the intent of 

building abstract, propositional knowledge. A common approach 

has been to isolate a few features of teaching and study their effects 

on students’ learning over a range of contexts (Brophy & 

Good, 1986). The promise of this and other research approaches 

JUNE/JULY 2002 7

is that the knowledge rises above particular classrooms but, as we 

noted earlier, translating the knowledge into a useful form for 

teachers has been an enduring problem. 

The central question becomes, then, how can teachers represent 

the knowledge they acquire in a more principled and abstract 

form than in the past, while retaining its practical character? A key 

enabling condition is to identify a unit of analysis and improvement 

that allows teachers to simplify teaching for study. Teaching 

is such a complex activity that it must be parsed in some way 

to study it and to share what is learned. Isolating features of 

teaching, as has been common in the research community, is not 

an option. Teachers usually do not have the resources to conduct 

controlled studies across classrooms. More than that, the knowledge 

produced by these studies often is not immediately useful 

for teachers because it is the interaction among the features of 

teaching, not their effects in isolation, that give teaching its 

meaning and character. 

One possible unit of analysis is a natural one for teachers— 

daily lessons. In each classroom lesson, the relevant factors for 

students’ learning are woven together—goals for students’ learning, 

attention to students’ thinking, analyses of curriculum and 

pedagogy, and so on. Analyzing lessons requires focusing on the 

interactions among the many elements that make up the flow of 

teaching. And lessons are small enough units that the complexity 

of teaching can be reduced to a manageable size. Because most 

teachers plan and teach through daily lessons, this way of parsing 

teaching also fits a familiar form that teachers can use. So, a 

promising approach for teachers is to develop and test hypotheses 

and local theories about the way in which particular lessons 

facilitate (and undermine) students’ learning. 

Why would teachers want to represent their knowledge in 

more generalizable forms? As teachers collaborate to assist each 

other in solving problems of practice, and as they mentor younger 

teachers, this kind of local theorizing can be useful, and even necessary. 

It provides a principled way to move what was learned in 

one context or classroom into another. Collaboration and mentoring 

provide settings in which representing knowledge in more 

general forms is genuinely beneficial. 

Choosing a medium for storing professional knowledge. If teachers 

wish to record their knowledge for others to use, the most 

common medium has been words on paper. Written records preserve 

ideas and allow them to be accessed by others. They can be 

handed across time and space. With the advent of video technologies, 

however, the possibilities have expanded. Knowledge 

now can be stored in the form of observable examples that make 

teaching visible. 

If lessons are the units for representing and storing knowledge of 

teaching, video technologies provide an especially useful medium. 

Lessons can be videotaped, digitized, indexed, and stored in a way 

that allows easy access and digestible size. Videos provide concrete 

examples of instructional practices that avoid much of the ambiguity 

of written descriptions. Because the U.S. educational community 

lacks a shared language for describing teaching, key phrases 

such as “problem solving” or “language experience” often mean 

different things to different teachers. Videotapes of lessons can illustrate 

concretely what a teacher has in mind. 

Indexing professional knowledge. The most natural indexing 

framework for teachers is the curriculum. If teachers share the 

8 


same curriculum and are expected to teach the same topics, the 

profession’s knowledge can be indexed with the curriculum. From 

this perspective, it is clear that a shared curriculum is a key enabler 

for a system that supports the building of a profession’s 

knowledge for teaching. A shared curriculum provides a compelling 

reason to move personal knowledge into the public world; 

what one teacher knows about teaching a particular topic is likely 

to help another teacher faced with teaching the same topic. The 

problems that teachers encounter and the solutions provided by 

the creation of new knowledge are more likely to be shared across 

locations and time. Teachers have a genuine interest in trying out 

new ideas that address problems that are real for them. And, 

knowledge that becomes part of the professional base can be indexed 

and accessed by topics that all teachers will teach. 

A fact that might strike some readers as ironic is that the more 

detailed and specific the knowledge, the more likely it is to be retrievable. 

This is because specific knowledge can be linked to specific 

curricular topics. Returning to the example of Billy Goats 

Gruff, the knowledge that Grace develops about the story will be 

evoked each time she uses it with her class. And, if she wanted to 

access other teachers’ insights on the story, she could search by 

story title through books and the Internet, join a journal group 

who exchange ideas about stories for young children, and so on. 

Similar possibilities exist for Ms. D. and her colleagues around the 

country who are teaching beginning addition and subtraction. 

Archiving such detailed knowledge in a multimedia database 

that is widely and easily accessible to teachers is now possible 

with new and emerging technologies. Imagine large digital libraries 

linking video examples of teaching, images of students’ 

work, and commentary by teachers and researchers, all integrated 

around shared topics, and even shared lessons—and imagine further 

that all those resources are linked to specific curricula a teacher 

is responsible to teach. Teachers faced with teaching particular 

topics and particular lessons could have immediate access via the 

Internet to a range of ideas accompanied by vivid examples of alternative 

practices. 

Professional Knowledge Requires a Mechanism for 

Verification and Improvement 

A final characteristic of professional knowledge is that it must be 

accurate, verifiable, and continually improving. There is no guarantee 

that the knowledge generated at local sites is correct or even 

useful. Teachers working together or a teacher working with his 

or her students might generate knowledge that turns out to undermine 

rather than improve teaching effectiveness. Local knowledge 

is immediate and concrete but almost always incomplete 

and sometimes blind and insular. 

Consider the case of Benson Elementary School where most 

of the staff believed that kindergarten teachers should emphasize 

developmental learning and “readiness” skills (Goldenberg 

& Gallimore, 1991). Although the teachers felt that such an emphasis 

was best for children in general, most believed it was essential 

for their low-income, mostly Spanish-speaking students 

who were considered unready for literacy instruction in kindergarten. 

This local “readiness” theory was compounded by an 

overwhelming prevalence of phonic and syllable instruction in 

first-grade reading. As a result, children’s lack of progress in firstgrade 

reading did not challenge local theories and practices; it

supported them in the eyes of Benson faculty and administrators. 

Because children were not “getting it” (i.e., sounds, blending, and 

the syllables), teachers assumed that children needed more, and 

more creative, instruction in sounds, blending, and the syllables. 

It was such a fundamental local issue with respect to children’s 

reading achievement that the foremost, but implicit, question 

was, “How can we get these children to learn the syllables?” Indeed, 

teachers were unbelievably creative in designing games and 

activities intended to help children learn the syllables. But they 

were asking the wrong question—the real issue was not learning 

the syllables: It was learning to read. Exclusive reliance on local 

knowledge and understandings precluded introduction of outside 

knowledge about how best to promote literacy development 

(Goldenberg & Gallimore, 1991, p. 11). Changes began when 

new ideas and practices were introduced, producing significant 

gains in early grades reading achievement for the school as a whole. 

How does a system designed to build a profession’s knowledge 

for teaching deal with quality control? How does it correct 

the Benson cases before they influence the base of knowledge 

from which other teachers draw? One solution is expertise. If the 

Benson teachers had access to appropriate expertise, they might 

have tried some different approaches before moving too far down 

the narrow path they chose. 

A second solution to quality control is continual evaluation of 

practices as they are shared among teachers and tested out in different 

local contexts. With the diversity of contexts in the United 

States, this becomes an essential aspect of knowledge verification 

and improvement. Return again to the story of Grace and 

Stephanie. They were learning to teach Native Hawaiian students 

in the Kamehameha Early Education Project (KEEP) laboratory 

school (Tharp & Gallimore, 1989). Although internal 

(Gallimore, Tharp, Sloat, Klein, & Troy, 1982) and external 

(Calfee et al., 1981) evaluations indicated the reading program 

was effective for Native Hawaiian students, there was no evidence 

it would work as well in other contexts. To explore that question, 

Vogt, Jordan, and Tharp (1987) transposed the program to Rough 

Rock Demonstration School on the Navajo Reservation in Arizona. 

By trying out the program and collecting feedback, it was 

found that some features of the program required modification to 

fit the local context and some features worked well across contexts. 

Repeated observations over multiple trials can, over time, yield 

trustworthy knowledge. This includes knowledge of practices 

that must be modified to fit local contexts and practices that are 

effective across many contexts. Repeated observations over multiple 

trials is, in fact, how individual teachers have long learned 

to teach—by observing their own practice and revising it using 

students’ feedback. But, to ensure improvement, the insularity 

of local contexts must be surmounted. Recommended practices 

must be tried and observed in many contexts and the results accumulated 

and shared over time and location. 

A familiar case can be used here as an analogy to make the 

point. Most readers have driven through farming land and noticed 

signs posted next to, say, a cornfield labeling the field as a 

test site for a particular strain of corn. As part of the massive agricultural 

extension system in the United States, the results of 

growing this strain of corn in these conditions is fed into a huge 

database, reviewed and indexed by extension agents, and made 

available to other farmers who are hoping to improve their yields. 

There have been many such test fields every year during the past 

century. Repeated observations over multiple trials have yielded, 

over time, the knowledge that supports continuously improving 

crop yields and that turned the agricultural profession in the 

United States into one of the most scientifically advanced and 

productive in the world. 3 Although educating students is, in 

many ways, unlike growing corn, the image of continuously improving 

practice over time by accumulating and sharing relevant 

information is instructive. 

Japanese Lesson Study: Turning Practitioner Knowledge 

Into Professional Knowledge 

We began this article with a question: What would be required to 

build a professional knowledge base for teaching from practitioner 

knowledge rather than from researcher knowledge? We 

have outlined a number of characteristics that practitioner knowledge 

would need to acquire for such a transformation to occur. 

Now we want to outline a vision for a system that could support 

such a transformation. We will rely heavily on the example of lesson 

study from Japan, one of the only large-scale systems we are 

aware of that intentionally facilitates this kind of transformation. 

Many Japanese elementary school teachers participate, throughout 

their careers, in a continuing in-service program built around 

the lesson study group (Fernandez, Chokshi, Cannon, & Yoshida, 

in press; Lewis & Tsuchida, 1997, 1998; Shimahara, 1998; 

Shimahara & Sakai, 1995; Takemura & Shimizu, 1993; Yoshida, 

1999). Small groups of teachers meet regularly, once a week for 

several hours, to collaboratively plan, implement, evaluate, and 

revise lessons. Many groups focus on only a few lessons over the 

year with the aim of perfecting these. They begin the process of 

improving the targeted lessons by setting clear learning goals and 

then reading about what other teachers have done, what ideas are 

recommended by researchers and reformers, and what has been 

reported on students’ learning of this topic. Often, they solicit 

university researchers to serve as consultants to their group. Researchers 

add perspective to the group’s deliberations, bring in 

the experiences of other groups they have worked with, and help 

locate research information that refines the group’s problems and 

hypotheses. 

The teachers in the lesson study group design the lesson(s) 

of interest, one group member tries out the lesson(s) while the 

others observe and evaluate what works and what does not work, 

and they revise the lesson(s). Teachers often base their changes 

on specific misunderstandings evidenced by students as the lesson 

progresses. Maybe they change the wording of the opening 

problem, or the kinds of follow-up questions they ask, or maybe 

they use the information about the methods the students are 

likely to invent to change the order in which methods are presented 

during the whole-class discussion. Then, they try out the 

lesson(s) again, perhaps with other teachers watching. This process 

of repeated observations across multiple trials might go on for 

several months. When the replacement lessons are ready, complete 

with development and test information, they are shared 

with other teachers and other schools. 

Lesson study groups generate knowledge that shares key features 

with practitioners’ knowledge as revealed in the earlier examples. 

The group members work on a problem that is directly 

linked to their practice. For example, teachers might spend most 

JUNE/JULY 2002 9

of a 2-hour session discussing the pros and cons of a particular 

opening problem for the lesson. In a case described by Yoshida 

(1999), a lengthy discussion among first-grade teachers revolved 

around the best number combination to introduce subtraction 

across 10 (e.g., 12 − 7, 13 − 7, 11 − 6, etc.). Also, the lesson study 

groups typically focus on how the knowledge can be made most 

comprehensible by the students. Thus, in the Yoshida case, the 

discussion examined the methods students might use to solve 

each problem, recognizing that different number combinations 

will trigger different methods. This kind of detailed knowledge 

building sounds strikingly similar to that being constructed by 

the teachers in the earlier examples, similar even in content to 

that engaged by Ms. D. 

Targeting very few lessons in the study process also creates 

the time and opportunity to generate knowledge that integrates 

traditionally separate components. Indeed, choosing the lesson 

as the unit of analysis and improvement makes this necessary. 

Successful lessons must attend to all of the features that work together 

to create significant learning opportunities for students. 

Teachers must know the content that will be developed, the students’ 

knowledge as they enter the lesson and how their thinking 

will change over the course of the lesson, how these changes 

fit within the broader curriculum, what instructional moves might 

best facilitate the desired changes, and so on. The lesson provides 

a unit of practice in which the knowledge of teachers gets integrated 

into a useful form. 

Lesson study also provides mechanisms for teachers to move 

squarely into Popper’s World 3—developing knowledge that is 

intended for public discussion and examination. The process begins 

within the lesson study group, moves outward to include all 

teachers in the school, and expands to include teachers in other 

schools and districts as they review the materials. The knowledge 

gained from the yearlong experience also is represented and 

stored in a form useful for their colleagues. The report of a lesson 

study group’s effort contains descriptions of the learning 

goals, the rationale for the lesson design, descriptions of activities, 

anticipated responses of students, and suggested responses 

by the teacher. These reports are theories linked with examples. 

Hypotheses about how to help students reach particular learning 

goals are linked to actual lessons and students; practical suggestions 

are linked to the teachers’ theoretical analysis of the learning 

goals and ways in which students might achieve them. 

In summary, this countrywide lesson study process generates 

practitioner knowledge but within a system containing features 

identified earlier as essential for transforming such knowledge 

into a professional knowledge base. 

Could a System for Building Professional Knowledge 

From Practitioner Knowledge Be Created in the 

United States? 

The images evoked by accounts of a countrywide system for 

creating, advancing, and improving professional knowledge for 

teaching prompt a mixed response. It is encouraging to see that 

countrywide systems exist but, at the same time, substantial cultural 

features argue against assuming that they simply can be 

copied elsewhere. There are reasons for both optimism and skepticism 

that the school and teaching cultures of the United States 

10 


will evolve to be anything like the new, national research and development 

system we can imagine. 

Reasons for Optimism 

There are several reasons to believe that a sustainable U.S. research 

and development system could be developed for building 

a professional knowledge base for teaching from the knowledge 

generated by classroom teachers. First, settings in which teachers 

generate knowledge, such as lesson study, are not alien to U.S. 

teachers and schools. The examples described at the beginning 

of the article, and countless others (e.g., Elmore, Peterson, & 

McCarthy, 1996; Stein, Silver, & Smith, 1998), share many of 

the features and implementation demands with the lesson study 

process. These local examples offer “proof of concept” evidence 

that a profession’s knowledge for teaching can be generated in 

the U.S. context. 

A second reason for optimism is that when local U.S. programs 

of this kind have been studied, they seem to produce the 

outcomes that are, in the end, of most importance—improved 

student learning. Returning to our earlier examples, Grace and 

Stephanie were working in a laboratory school whose mission 

was the development of an effective reading program that could 

be adopted by public schools. Although the context was constrained 

in many ways, researchers and teachers worked together 

in the lab school trying out different approaches, learning from 

mistakes, refining program elements in small steps, and sharing responsibility 

and risk over time. Lessons were planned, taught, critiqued, 

refined, and re-taught in a recursive process that stretched 

out to more than 5 years before a stable and effective program 

evolved (Tharp & Gallimore, 1982) and was disseminated to a 

number of schools throughout Hawaii. 

Ms. D. and her colleagues have been studied in considerable 

detail. The authors of CGI collected data about the influence of 

knowledge like that constructed by Ms. D on students’ learning. 

Early evidence showed that teachers’ knowledge of whether their 

own students could solve various mathematical problems was 

significantly correlated with student achievement (Carpenter, 

Fennema, Peterson, & Carey, 1988). A controlled experiment 

then demonstrated that experimental teachers, such as Ms. D., 

listened to their students more and knew more about their students’ 

problem-solving processes and the students, in turn, exceeded 

students in control classes in number fact knowledge, 

problem solving, reported understanding, and reported confidence 

in their problem-solving abilities (Carpenter, Fennema, 

Peterson, Chiang, & Loef, 1989). Follow-up studies of teachers 

involved in CGI then showed that the continuing construction of 

detailed knowledge of their students’ thinking is what distinguished 

teachers who continued to develop new knowledge from 

those who based their teaching on the knowledge acquired during 

their early years of participation (Franke, Carpenter, Fennema, 

Ansell, & Behrend, 1998; Franke, Carpenter, Levi, & Fennema, 

2001). Teachers who focused on, say, how students counted to 

find an answer, not just whether they counted, were teachers who 

recognized that they could generate useful knowledge for teaching 

and share it with others. 

Although these examples might “prove the concept,” they provide 

no guidance on how to scale to a national or even a regional 

system. Even here, however, there is reason for optimism. The

conditions required to support, on a national scale, the system 

we propose have been evolving and expanding during the past 

decades. The teacher-as-researcher movement has oriented teachers 

to studying their own practice, thereby making it more public 

and testing its effectiveness (Berthoff, 1987; Burnaford, Fischer, 

& Hobson, 1996; Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 1993, 1999). During 

the same time that the movement has been increasing educators’ 

awareness of the richness of teachers’ personal knowledge, 

it also has focused attention on the kind of teacher learning that 

is required to teach more effectively. These salutary achievements, 

and the concomitant attention to professional development, 

have demonstrated that the same structural conditions needed 

for a sustainable research and development system are needed 

for building professional knowledge: Long-term, site-based collaborations 

among teachers focused on students’ learning and 

linked to curricula (Cohen & Hill, 1998; Cohen & Barnes, 

1993; Darling-Hammond & Sykes, 1999; Garet et al., 2001; 

Loucks-Horsley et al., 1998). 

These developments improve the chances that a system like 

the one we are proposing can be gradually built in the United 

States. They are yielding knowledge that matches the first three 

of the six characteristics (linked to practice, detailed/concrete/ 

specific, and integrated), and they have begun the movement 

toward making the knowledge public, stored, and shared. A significant 

amplification of these in-progress gains can come from 

emerging technologies (National Commission on Mathematics 

and Science Teaching for the 21st Century, 2000). 

Indeed, a final reason for optimism is that Internet accessible 

digital libraries of lesson videos with teacher commentary could 

provide tools and resources needed to address at least two challenges 

faced by teachers as they transform personal knowledge 

into a professional knowledge base. One challenge is to envision 

alternatives to current practice. Earlier we mentioned expertise 

as one source of new ideas, but easily accessible digital video libraries 

that contain examples of other teachers teaching similar 

topics can provide another source. 

A second challenge for teachers is communicating what they 

have learned by trying out a particular lesson or teaching approach 

and coordinating multiple trials of similar lessons across 

different sites. Again, web-based video libraries can help. Lesson 

videos provide enough detail that multiple trials can be conducted 

with each test site enacting the same approach. In other 

words, the rich visual definitions of practice, accompanied by 

teacher commentary, allow better replications of practice than 

before. With new technologies supporting the new system, each 

test site could submit video cases of their replication efforts offering 

a means for assessing fidelity of implementation of intended 

practices. These uses of technology, and others yet to be 

imagined, offer the hope of gradually developing consensus of 

classroom practices associated with different levels and kinds of 

students’ learning in different contexts. In working toward this 

goal, much can be learned from the research community, which 

has made great progress in building structures and processes for 

verifying quality and accuracy of knowledge. 

Reasons for Skepticism 

If local U.S. efforts sometimes produce useful knowledge of 

teaching, why have these efforts remained local? Why have they 

not been scaled-up and connected to form a national research 

and development system for building professional knowledge for 

teaching? We believe the answer to these questions lies in American 

education history, a review of which causes us to be as skeptical 

of change as we are optimistic. 

A Story From the Past 

To understand how the United States created an educational research 

and development system that is both underused and hinders 

a more useful system from developing, we visit the University 

of Chicago at the beginning of the 20th century. John Dewey 

and his laboratory school colleagues were planting the seeds of a 

school-based, teacher-engaged system of building professional 

knowledge (Cremin, 1964; Tanner, 1997). But Dewey was soon 

succeeded at the University of Chicago by Charles Judd. Judd, 

wishing to bring a recognized science to education, reached out 

to psychology. Edward Thorndike had been developing a science 

of behavior that borrowed methods from physical sciences, 

with an emphasis on measuring, isolating variables, and comparing 

quantitative outcomes. Given the recognized success of 

the physical sciences, Thorndike’s program fit the bill and Judd 

and Thorndike ushered in a new era in educational knowledge 

building (Lagemann, 1989, 1996). Their approach bestowed on 

education the higher research-oriented status many universities 

were demanding for this new field. 

The “objective” methods of Thorndike, with their precisely 

measured outcomes, became the accepted standard for educational 

research. The approach fit well with the increasingly popular 

notions of efficiency and division of labor for improving 

productivity (Darling-Hammond, 1997). For education, all of 

this had at least two significant consequences. First, the methods 

produced exactly the kind of knowledge that many teachers find 

difficult to apply to their particular contexts. The knowledge often 

is represented in forms that are relatively abstract, ignore contextual 

influences, and isolate aspects of practice that cannot easily 

be reintegrated with interacting features of classrooms. Second, 

the approach to improvement meant the emergence of two professional 

communities—school practitioners and university researchers. 

Professional knowledge building became the province of 

researchers; applying the knowledge was left to the practitioners. 

The more integrative approach practiced by Dewey and colleagues 

that focused on collaborative work in classrooms has 

been kept alive in pockets around the United States and is reflected 

in initiatives such as school and teacher inquiry groups 

(Ball & Cohen, 1999; Clark, 2001; Schaefer, 1967) as well as the 

examples presented earlier. But these are not the norm. Most 

teachers who continually develop knowledge about their own 

practice have seldom accumulated and shared their knowledge. 

They have learned from each other only in the most haphazard 

way. As much as they might benefit from the knowledge of their 

colleagues, most teachers have not accessed what others know 

and must start over, creating this knowledge anew. Later in his 

career, Dewey noted that one of the saddest things about American 

education is that 

. . . the successes of [excellent teachers] tend to be born and die 

with them: beneficial consequences extend only to those pupils 

who have personal contact with the gifted teachers. No one can 

measure the waste and loss that have come from the fact that the 

JUNE/JULY 2002 11

12 

contributions of such men and women in the past have been thus 

confined. (1929, p. 10) 

In short there is no question that the views of Judd and 

Thorndike, rather than those of Dewey, shaped the face of American 

education and educational research. Lagemann writes, “I 

have often argued to students, only in part to be perverse, that one 

cannot understand the history of education in the United States 

during the twentieth century unless one realizes that Edward L. 

Thorndike won and John Dewey lost” (1989, p. 185). 

Lessons From the Past 

For an alternative system to win acceptance, it is important to 

clarify what went wrong in the past. Some have presumed that 

the costs of the past are due to 

pursuing a science of education. 

Making education a science, 

from this view, leads necessarily 

to the choices of the past. This 

is a misinterpretation. In our 

view, it is a mistake to interpret 

Thorndike’s victory as one of 

scientific approaches over nonscientific 

approaches. Accepting 

the scientific versus nonscientific 

explanation leaves those 

who propose alternatives to the 

Judd and Thorndike legacy in 

the unappealing and unfounded 

position of advocating nonscientific 

approaches to study and 

improve education. 

A more appropriate reading, 

in our opinion, is that Thorndike 

and colleagues successfully promoted 

some scientific methods 

over others. Experimental, comparative 

methods that rely on 

controlling and isolating variables 

became the methods of 

choice. But these are not the only 

scientific methods that yield dependable, trustworthy knowledge. 

Observation and replication across multiple trials can produce 

equally rigorous tests of quality and can, over time, produce dependable 

knowledge as well, a claim that is illustrated by the examples 

we presented earlier. Put more dramatically, the United 

States can have a radically different research and development system 

in education without rejecting scientific methods (cf. Eisner, 

1997; Mayer, 2000). 

An important parenthetical note is that we have focused our 

review on traditional quantitative methods of research. Some 

have argued that the use of qualitative methods would solve the 

problems we identify (Bolster, 1983). Clearly, the growing number 

of case studies and ethnographies report information closer 

to the kind of knowledge that teachers hold—context-sensitive, 

particular, richly descriptive knowledge. But researchers’ knowledge 

gathered through applying qualitative methods does not 

solve the larger problem. There often remains a difference in pur- 


Over time, the 

observations and 

replications of teachers in 

the schools would 

become a common 

pathway through which 

promising ideas were 

tested and refined before 

they found their way into 

the nation’s classrooms. 

pose between researchers and teachers (Wong, 1995) and there 

remains the task of building a reliable knowledge base that is 

tested across different contexts. 

To oversimplify this brief review, past decisions led to the creation 

of two communities. The research community has worked 

toward the goal of building a professional knowledge base and 

has developed an infrastructure for recording, sharing, and accumulating 

knowledge. But the problems framed and the methods 

preferred have produced knowledge represented in forms 

that make it difficult for teachers to use. The teaching community 

works toward the goal of improving practice at an individual 

level and many individual teachers gradually learn from repeated 

observations over many trials. But no infrastructure encourages, 

or even enables, them to record, 

share, and accumulate the 

knowledge they construct. Educators 

live with two professional 

communities struggling 

to bridge the chasm and build 

a knowledge base that is relevant 

for classroom practice. 

Thorndike’s victory came at a 

considerable cost. 

The question remains: Is it 

possible to create one community 

working toward the goal of 

building a profession’s knowledge 

for teaching using an infrastructure 

that enables this work 

and using methods that generate 

useful and trustworthy knowledge 

for teaching? 

A Glimpse Into the Future 

If a new system were to emerge, 

it would institutionalize, in a 

cultural sense, a new set of professional 

development opportunities 

for teachers and a new 

means of producing and verifying 

professional knowledge. In 

this new space, teachers would be able to employ the methods of 

replication and observation across multiple trials to produce rigorous 

tests of quality and effects. Sometimes they would test 

practices developed by other teachers, and sometimes they would 

test ideas generated in the research community. Over time, the 

observations and replications of teachers in the schools would become 

a common pathway through which promising ideas were 

tested and refined before they found their way into the nation’s 

classrooms. And, as intentions became reality in classrooms, a 

new kind of knowledge about improving classroom practice 

would emerge, a knowledge that would accumulate into a professional 

knowledge base for teaching and support long-term 

continuing improvement in teaching. 

Among the most crucial replications would be those that address 

the many diversities of U.S. society. The system envisioned 

here would intentionally subject new ideas to replication and observation 

across many regions and communities. Discrepancies

would be contested and resolved as hypotheses were developed 

to account for them and new trials were undertaken to test the 

hypotheses further. Some aspects of practice would likely survive 

testing across contexts, with modification, whereas other aspects 

would be found to be context dependent. 

To be successful in the U.S. context, the research and development 

system needs to incorporate the expertise and unique 

skills of both teachers and researchers. Both communities would 

need to reorient their professional goals and values. Teachers 

would need to change their view that teaching is a personal and 

private activity and adopt the more risky but rewarding view that 

teaching is a professional activity that can be continuously improved 

if it is made public and examined openly. Researchers 

would need to move from undervaluing the knowledge teachers 

acquire in their own classrooms to recognizing the potential of 

personal knowledge as it becomes transformed into professional 

knowledge. 

Researchers and teachers could work side-by-side as authentic 

partners in the new system, each gaining from the others’ expertise. 

Teachers, for example, would use the wealth of their experience 

to test difficult-to-implement but promising new ideas and 

then, based on their own and the researchers’ observations, new 

hypotheses could be constructed for future tests. Researchers, in 

turn, would have greater access to investigational contexts and 

populations, and gain a rich source of new ideas and hypotheses. 

They would get ideas from teachers that could be turned into 

testable hypotheses, much as clinicians make discoveries that are 

exploited by biomedical scientists to create new generalized knowledge. 

Rather than being made redundant or obsolete, the work 

of researchers could become more relevant with a system in place 

to digest and transform their general findings into professional 

knowledge for teaching. 

One reason to think this new system might happen is the confluence 

of events at the end of the last century and the beginning 

of the new one. Schools, districts, and states are under great pressure 

to improve performance. The federal government in 2001 

expanded its role in public education with new legislation to motivate 

annual student performance testing, teacher improvement 

programs, and a plan to identify under-performing schools. The 

groundswell of support and interest in new forms of professional 

development make a new research and development system a 

more realistic goal. With the convergence of these and other efforts 

to change the culture of schools to places where teachers 

learn as well as students and the emergence of enabling technologies, 

there are unique opportunities to build a new system 

for generating professional knowledge for teaching. 

However, we must close by underlining two formidable barriers 

that face the evolution of a new research and development 

system. One barrier, noted above, is the natural cultural conservatism 

of both public schools and research universities. Social institutions 

are products of cultural context, and once established 

as enduring systems, a source of their own persistence. The culture 

of educational research and development is no more immune 

to these laws than the culture of public schools, itself oft-noted as 

highly resistant to change (Sarason, 1971; Fullan, 1993, 2000a, 

2000b). More than a century of behavioral and social research 

teaches that culture changes slowly, on the margins, and in response 

to significant environmental shifts (Edgerton, 1992). 

This is no less true of institutional cultures than of any other 

kind, and to change them requires patience and perseverance. 

A second barrier is the proclivity of Americans to look for 

quick solutions. The history of American education includes a 

graveyard of good ideas condemned by pressure for fast results. 

The research and development system we envision could easily 

become another victim because it clearly is not a quick fix, the 

desire for which is soaked deeply into American cultural beliefs 

about educational reform (Elmore & McLaughlin, 1988). 

Can our society learn to value small improvements, small 

changes in practices as a means to larger ends? The coach of the 

20th Century, John Wooden of the University of California Los 

Angeles, who always described his work as teaching, offers this 

prescription for the quick fix addiction: 

When you improve a little each day, eventually big things 

occur. . . . Not tomorrow, not the next day, but eventually a big 

gain is made. Don’t look for the big, quick improvement. Seek the 

small improvement one day at a time. That’s the only way it 

happens—and when it happens, it lasts. (Wooden, 1997, p. 143) 

NOTES 

We thank Christopher Clark, Claude Goldenberg, James Raths, the editors, 

and an anonymous reviewer for their comments on an earlier draft 

of this article. 

1 Ms. D. and her students are fictional characters, created from descriptions 

of teachers who participated in Cognitively Guided Instruction 

(Carpenter, Fennema, Franke, Levi, & Empson, 1999; Fennema, 

Carpenter, Franke, & Carey, 1992; Fennema, Franke, Carpenter, & 

Carey, 1993; Franke, Carpenter, Levi, & Fennema, 2001). 

2 See Bereiter’s and Scardamalia’s (1996) definitions and interpretations 

of these worlds for students’ classroom activities. 

3 A more complete description of the U.S. agricultural extension system 

and the way in which it models a large-scale system of continuous 

improvement can be found in Wilson and Daviss (1994). 

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AUTHORS 

JAMES HIEBERT is the Robert J. Barkley Professor, School of Education, 

University of Delaware, Newark, DE 19716; hiebert@udel.edu. 

His research interests include mathematics learning, teaching, and teacher 

education. 

RONALD GALLIMORE is a professor of Psychological Studies in Education 

at UCLA Departments of Psychiatry & Biobehavioral Sciences 

and Education, 760 Westwood Plaza, University of California, Los Angeles, 

Westwood, CA 90095; ronaldg@ucla.edu. His research interests 

include behavior and cultural change theory and research and teaching 

research and improvement. 

JAMES W. STIGLER is a professor of Psychology at UCLA and Director 

of LESSONLAB, 3330 Ocean Park Blvd, Santa Monica, CA 90405; 

jims@lessonlab.com. His research interests focus on cultural influences 

on teaching and teacher learning, and on how teachers can learn from 

classroom video. 

Manuscript received March 5, 2002 

Revisions received April 6, 2002 

Accepted April 10, 2002 

JUNE/JULY 2002 15

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3/3/11 1:26 PM 

January 29, 2011 

Black? White? Asian? More 

Young Americans Choose All of 

the Above 

By SUSAN SAULNY 

COLLEGE PARK, Md. — In another time or place, the game of “What Are 

You?” that was played one night last fall at the University of Maryland 

might have been mean, or menacing: Laura Wood’s peers were picking apart 

her every feature in an effort to guess her race. 

“How many mixtures do you have?” one young man asked above the chatter 

of about 50 students. With her tan skin and curly brown hair, Ms. Wood’s 

ancestry could have spanned the globe. 

“I’m mixed with two things,” she said politely. 

“Are you mulatto?” asked Paul Skym, another student, using a word once 

tinged with shame that is enjoying a comeback in some young circles. When 

Ms. Wood confirmed that she is indeed black and white, Mr. Skym, who is 

Asian and white, boasted, “Now that’s what I’m talking about!” in 

affirmation of their mutual mixed lineage. 

Then the group of friends — formally, the Multiracial and Biracial Student 

Association — erupted into laughter and cheers, a routine show of their 

mixed-race pride. 

The crop of students moving through college right now includes the largest 

group of mixed-race people ever to come of age in the United States, and 

they are only the vanguard: the country is in the midst of a demographic 

shift driven by immigration and intermarriage. 

One in seven new marriages is between spouses of different races or 

ethnicities, according to data from 2008 and 2009 that was analyzed by the 

Pew Research Center. Multiracial and multiethnic Americans (usually 

grouped together as “mixed race”) are one of the country’s fastest-growing 

Page 1 of 8


3/3/11 1:26 PM 

grouped together as “mixed race”) are one of the country’s fastest-growing 

demographic groups. And experts expect the racial results of the 2010 

census, which will start to be released next month, to show the trend 

continuing or accelerating. 

Many young adults of mixed backgrounds are rejecting the color lines that 

have defined Americans for generations in favor of a much more fluid sense 

of identity. Ask Michelle López-Mullins, a 20-year-old junior and the 

president of the Multiracial and Biracial Student Association, how she marks 

her race on forms like the census, and she says, “It depends on the day, and 

it depends on the options.” 

They are also using the strength in their growing numbers to affirm roots 

that were once portrayed as tragic or pitiable. 

“I think it’s really important to acknowledge who you are and everything 

that makes you that,” said Ms. Wood, the 19-year-old vice president of the 

group. “If someone tries to call me black I say, ‘yes — and white.’ People 

have the right not to acknowledge everything, but don’t do it because society 

tells you that you can’t.” 

No one knows quite how the growth of the multiracial population will 

change the country. Optimists say the blending of the races is a step toward 

transcending race, to a place where America is free of bigotry, prejudice and 

programs like affirmative action. 

Pessimists say that a more powerful multiracial movement will lead to more 

stratification and come at the expense of the number and influence of other 

minority groups, particularly African-Americans. 

And some sociologists say that grouping all multiracial people together 

glosses over differences in circumstances between someone who is, say, 

black and Latino, and someone who is Asian and white. (Among interracial 

couples, white-Asian pairings tend to be better educated and have higher 

incomes, according to Reynolds Farley, a professor emeritus at the 

University of Michigan.) 

Along those lines, it is telling that the rates of intermarriage are lowest 

between blacks and whites, indicative of the enduring economic and social 

distance between them. 

Prof. Rainier Spencer, director of the Afro-American Studies Program at the 

University of Nevada, Las Vegas, and the author of “Reproducing Race: The 

Paradox of Generation Mix,” says he believes that there is too much 

“emotional investment” in the notion of multiracialism as a panacea for the 

nation’s age-old divisions. “The mixed-race identity is not a transcendence 


Page 2 of 8


3/3/11 1:26 PM 

nation’s age-old divisions. “The mixed-race identity is not a transcendence 

of race, it’s a new tribe,” he said. “A new Balkanization of race.” 

But for many of the University of Maryland students, that is not the point. 

They are asserting their freedom to identify as they choose. 

“All society is trying to tear you apart and make you pick a side,” Ms. Wood 

said. “I want us to have a say.” 

The Way We Were 

Americans mostly think of themselves in singular racial terms. Witness 

President Obama’s answer to the race question on the 2010 census: 

Although his mother was white and his father was black, Mr. Obama 

checked only one box, black, even though he could have checked both races. 

Some proportion of the country’s population has been mixed-race since the 

first white settlers had children with Native Americans. What has changed is 

how mixed-race Americans are defined and counted. 

Long ago, the nation saw itself in more hues than black and white: the 1890 

census included categories for racial mixtures such as quadroon (one-fourth 

black) and octoroon (one-eighth black). With the exception of one survey 

from 1850 to 1920, the census included a mulatto category, which was for 

people who had any perceptible trace of African blood. 

But by the 1930 census, terms for mixed-race people had all disappeared, 

replaced by the so-called one-drop rule, an antebellum convention that held 

that anyone with a trace of African ancestry was only black. (Similarly, 

people who were “white and Indian” were generally to be counted as 

Indian.) 

It was the census enumerator who decided. 

By the 1970s, Americans were expected to designate themselves as members 

of one officially recognized racial group: black, white, American Indian, 

Japanese, Chinese, Filipino, Hawaiian, Korean or “other,” an option used 

frequently by people of Hispanic origin. (The census recognizes Hispanic as 

an ethnicity, not a race.) 

Starting with the 2000 census, Americans were allowed to mark one or 

more races. 

The multiracial option came after years of complaints and lobbying, mostly 

by the white mothers of biracial children who objected to their children 

being allowed to check only one race. In 2000, seven million people — about 


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3/3/11 1:26 PM 

being allowed to check only one race. In 2000, seven million people — about 

2.4 percent of the population — reported being more than one race. 

According to estimates from the Census Bureau, the mixed-race population 

has grown by roughly 35 percent since 2000. 

And many researchers think the census and other surveys undercount the 

mixed population. 

The 2010 mixed-race statistics will be released, state by state, over the first 

half of the year. 

“There could be some big surprises,” said Jeffrey S. Passel, a senior 

demographer at the Pew Hispanic Center, meaning that the number of 

mixed-race Americans could be high. “There’s not only less stigma to being 

in these groups, there’s even positive cachet.” 

Moving Forward 

The faces of mixed-race America are not just on college campuses. They are 

in politics, business and sports. And the ethnically ambiguous are especially 

ubiquitous in movies, television shows and advertising. There are news, 

social networking and dating Web sites focusing on the mixed-race 

audience, and even consumer products like shampoo. There are mixed-race 

film festivals and conferences. And student groups like the one at Maryland, 

offering peer support and activism, are more common. 

Such a club would not have existed a generation ago — when the question at 

the center of the “What Are You?” game would have been a provocation 

rather than an icebreaker. 

“It’s kind of a taking-back in a way, taking the reins,” Ms. López-Mullins 

said. “We don’t always have to let it get us down,” she added, referring to 

the question multiracial people have heard for generations. 

“The No. 1 reason why we exist is to give people who feel like they don’t 

want to choose a side, that don’t want to label themselves based on other 

people’s interpretations of who they are, to give them a place, that safe 

space,” she said. Ms. López-Mullins is Chinese and Peruvian on one side, 

and white and American Indian on the other. 

That safe space did not exist amid the neo-Classical style buildings of the 

campus when Warren Kelley enrolled in 1974. Though his mother is 

Japanese and his father is African-American, he had basically one choice 

when it came to his racial identity. “I was black and proud to be black,” Dr. 

Kelley said. “There was no notion that I might be multiracial. Or that the 


Page 4 of 8


Kelley said. “There was no notion that I might be multiracial. Or that the 

public discourse on college campuses recognized the multiracial 

community.” 


3/3/11 1:26 PM 

Almost 40 years later, Dr. Kelley is the assistant vice president for student 

affairs at the university and faculty adviser to the multiracial club, and he is 

often in awe of the change on this campus. 

When the multiracial group was founded in 2002, Dr. Kelley said, “There 

was an instant audience.” 

They did not just want to hold parties. The group sponsored an annual 

weeklong program of discussions intended to raise awareness of multiracial 

identities — called Mixed Madness — and conceived a new class on the 

experience of mixed-race Asian-Americans that was made part of the 

curriculum last year. 

“Even if someone had formed a mixed-race group in the ’70s, would I have 

joined?” Dr. Kelley said. “I don’t know. My multiracial identity wasn’t 

prominent at the time. I don’t think I even conceptualized the idea.” 

By the 2000 census, Dr. Kelley’s notion of his racial identity had evolved to 

include his mother’s Asian heritage; he modified his race officially on the 

form. After a lifetime of checking black, he checked Asian and black. 

(Dr. Kelley’s mother was born in Kyoto. She met her future husband, a black 

soldier from Alabama, while he was serving in the Pacific during World War 

II.) 

Checking both races was not an easy choice, Dr. Kelley said, “as a black man, 

with all that means in terms of pride in that heritage as well as reasons to 

give back and be part of progress forward.” 

“As I moved into adulthood and got a professional job, I started to respect 

my parents more and see the amount of my mom’s culture that’s reflected in 

me,” he said. “Society itself also moved.” 

Finding Camaraderie 

In fall 2009, a question tugged at Sabrina Garcia, then a freshman at 

Maryland, a public university with 26,500 undergraduates: “Where will I fit 

in?” recalled Ms. Garcia, who is Palestinian and Salvadoran. 

“I considered the Latina student union, but I’m only half,” she said. “I didn’t 

want to feel like I was hiding any part of me. I went to an M.B.S.A. meeting 

and it was really great. I really feel like part of a group that understands.” 

Page 5 of 8


The group holds weekly meetings, in addition to hosting movie nights, 

dinners, parties and, occasionally, posts broadcasts on YouTube. 

Not all of its 100 or so members consider themselves mixed race, and the 

club welcomes everyone. 


3/3/11 1:26 PM 

At a meeting in the fall, David Banda, who is Hispanic, and Julicia Coleman, 

who is black, came just to unwind among supportive listeners. They 

discussed the frustrations of being an interracial couple, even today, 

especially back in their hometown, Upper Marlboro, Md. 

“When we go back home, let’s say for a weekend or to the mall, they see us 

walking and I get this look, you know, sort of giving me the idea: ‘Why are 

you with her? You’re not black, so she should be with a black person.’ Or 

comments,” Mr. Banda, 20, said at a meeting of the group. “Even some of 

my friends tell me, ‘Why don’t you date a Hispanic girl?’ ” 

Mr. Banda and Ms. Coleman are thinking about having children someday. 

“One of the main reasons I joined is to see the struggles mixed people go 

through,” he said, “so we can be prepared when that time comes.” 

And despite the growth of the mixed-race population, there are struggles. 

Ian Winchester, a junior who is part Ghanaian, part Scottish-Norwegian, 

said he felt lucky and torn being biracial. His Scottish grandfather was keen 

on dressing him in kilts as a boy. The other side of the family would put him 

in a dashiki. “I do feel empowered being biracial,” he said. “The ability to 

question your identity — identity in general — is really a gift.” 

But, he continued, “I don’t even like to identify myself as a race anymore. 

My family has been pulling me in two directions about what I am. I just 

want to be a person.” 

Similarly, Ms. López-Mullins sees herself largely in nonracial terms. 

“I hadn’t even learned the word ‘Hispanic’ until I came home from school 

one day and asked my dad what I should refer to him as, to express what I 

am,” she said. “Growing up with my parents, I never thought we were 

different from any other family.” 

But it was not long before Ms. López-Mullins came to detest what was the 

most common question put to her in grade school, even from friends. “What 

are you?” they asked, and “Where are you from?” They were fascinated by 

her father, a Latino with Asian roots, and her mother with the long blond 

hair, who was mostly European in ancestry, although mixed with some 

Page 6 of 8


hair, who was mostly European in ancestry, although mixed with some 

Cherokee and Shawnee. 

“I was always having to explain where my parents are from because just 

saying ‘I’m from Takoma Park, Maryland,’ was not enough,” she said. 

“Saying ‘I’m an American’ wasn’t enough.” 

“Now when people ask what I am, I say, ‘How much time do you have?’ ” 

she said. “Race will not automatically tell you my story.” 


3/3/11 1:26 PM 

What box does she check on forms like the census? “Hispanic, white, Asian 

American, Native American,” she said. “I’m pretty much checking 

everything.” 

At one meeting of the Multiracial and Biracial Student Association, Ms. 

Wood shared a story about surprises and coming to terms with them. “Until 

I was 8 years old, I thought I was white,” she told the group. “My mother 

and aunt sat me down and said the guy I’d been calling Dad was not my 

father. I started crying. And she said, ‘Your real father is black.’ ” 

Ms. Wood’s mother, Catherine Bandele, who is white, and her biological 

father split up before she was born. Facing economic troubles and resistance 

from her family about raising a mixed-race child, Ms. Bandele gave her 

daughter up for adoption to a couple who had requested a biracial baby. But 

after two weeks, she changed her mind. “I had to fight to get her back, but I 

got her,” Ms. Bandele said. “And we’re so proud of Laura.” 

Eventually Ms. Wood’s closest relatives softened, embracing her. 

But more distant relatives never came around. “They can’t see past the color 

of my skin and accept me even though I share DNA with them,” she said. “It 

hurts a lot because I don’t even know my father’s side of the family.” 

Ms. Wood has searched the Internet for her father, to no avail. 

“Being in M.B.S.A., it really helps with that,” she said. “Finding a group of 

people who can accept you for who you are and being able to accept 

yourself, to just be able to look in the mirror and say, ‘I’m O.K. just the way I 

am!’ — honestly, I feel that it’s a blessing.” 

“It took a long time,” she said. 

Now Ms. Wood is one of the group’s foremost advocates. 

Over dinner with Ms. López-Mullins one night, she wondered: “What if 

Obama had checked white? There would have been an uproar because he’s 

Page 7 of 8


3/3/11 1:26 PM 

Obama had checked white? There would have been an uproar because he’s 

the first ‘black president,’ even though he’s mixed. I would like to have a 

conversation with him about why he did that.” 

Absent that opportunity, Ms. Wood took her concerns about what Mr. 

Obama checked to a meeting of the campus chapter of the N.A.A.C.P. last 

year. Vicky Key, a past president of the Multiracial and Biracial Student 

Association, who is Greek and black, joined her. The question for discussion 

was whether Mr. Obama is the first black president or the first multiracial 

president. 

Ms. Key, a senior, remembered someone answering the question without 

much discussion: “One-drop rule, he’s black.” 

“But we were like, ‘Wait!’ ” she said. “That’s offensive to us. We sat there 

and tried to advocate, but they said, ‘No, he’s black and that’s it.’ Then 

someone said, ‘Stop taking away our black president.’ I didn’t understand 

where they were coming from, and they didn’t understand me.” 

Whether Mr. Obama is considered black or multiracial, there is a wider 

debate among mixed-race people about what the long-term goals of their 

advocacy should be, both on campus and off. 

“I don’t want a color-blind society at all,” Ms. Wood said. “I just want both 

my races to be acknowledged.” 

Ms. López-Mullins countered, “I want mine not to matter.” 


Page 8 of 8

JRTE, 41(3), 331–358 

A Comparison of Traditional 

Homework to Computer-Supported 

Homework 

Michael Mendicino 

West Virginia University 

Leena Razzaq and Neil T. Heffernan 

Worcester Polytechnic Institute 

Abstract 

This study compared learning for fifth grade students in two math homework conditions. 

The paper-and-pencil condition represented traditional homework, with review of problems 

in class the following day. The Web-based homework condition provided immediate 

feedback in the form of hints on demand and step-by-step scaffolding. We analyzed the results 

for students who completed both the paper-and-pencil and the Web-based conditions. 

In this group of 28 students, students learned significantly more when given computer 

feedback than when doing traditional paper-and-pencil homework, with an effect size of 

.61. The implications of this study are that, given the large effect size, it may be worth 

the cost and effort to give Web-based homework when students have access to the needed 

equipment, such as in schools that have implemented one-to-one computing programs. 

(Keywords: online homework, intelligent tutoring systems, online tutoring, homework.) 

Web-based homework assistance is already popular in colleges. Blackboard 

(www.blackboard.com), WebAssign, (www.webassign.com), MasteringPhysics 

(www.masteringphysics.com), and WebWorK (http://webwork.rochester. 

edu) are all systems that have thousands of student users at the college level, 

but K–12 Web-based homework assistance lags behind. Systems such as Study 

Island (www.studyisland.com) and PowerSchool (www.powerschool.com) are 

gaining popularity with K–12 teachers, and it seems likely that the use of Webbased 

homework assistance for K–12 will increase as the digital divide between 

students narrows, teachers become more comfortable with the technology, and 

teachers gain access to systems that are low cost or free. The important question 

is, do such systems help students learn more than traditional paper-and-pencil 

homework? 

With recent advances in educational technology, teachers now have a multitude 

of tools to assist and enhance student learning and motivation. New intelligent 

tutoring systems that guide students through math problems much the 

same way human tutors do have been successful in helping students learn math 

in the classroom. Some systems attempt to imitate a human tutor by reproducing 

the interactive dialogue patterns and strategies that were likely to be used 

by a human tutor, whereas others provide immediate feedback by highlighting 

each step attempted in either red or green to indicate a right or wrong answer. 

They may also provide hint sequences to students asking for help. 

Journal of Research on Technology in Education 331

A U.S. Congress–mandated study (Dynarski et al., 2007) reported that 

classrooms using selected math and reading educational software products did 

not differ significantly on standardized tests when compared to classrooms that 

did not use the products. This study has caused some to call into question the 

utility of educational software, which might suggest that we should stop wasting 

time producing computer-based systems. However, the Dynarski study looked 

at computers used during the school day and not as a homework-delivery 

system. 

In this study, we attempt to determine if fifth grade students can learn more 

by doing their math homework with a Web-based intelligent tutoring system 

than when doing traditional paper-and-pencil homework. We conducted this 

experiment using the ASSISTment System, a Web-based system that provides 

both interactive scaffolding and hints on demand. We will review studies of 

Web-based homework assistance systems before describing the ASSISTment 

system used in this evaluation. 

LiTerATure review 

The Use of Web-based Systems for Homework 

Web-based systems that allow students to do their homework online such as 

Blackboard, WebCT (www.webct.com), Homework Service (https://hw.utexas. 

edu/bur/overview.html), and WebWorK are becoming more widely used in 

higher education. At the K–12 level, systems such as Study Island and Power- 

School are gaining popularity among teachers. 

Some states in the United States, including Maine, Indiana, Michigan, and 

Virginia, have begun to implement one-to-one computing (Bonifaz & Zucker, 

2004) in schools where each child gets his/her own laptop to use during school 

hours and often to take home. For instance, the Maine Learning Technology 

Initiative (2002–2004) supplied every seventh and eighth grade student 

in Maine and their teachers with laptop computers, and 40% of the middle 

schools allow students to take their laptops home. Although few research studies 

on the effects of one-to-one computing on teaching and learning have been 

reported, teachers report that students in one-to-one computing programs are 

more engaged and motivated and interact better with teachers (Bebell, 2005; 

Silvernail, & Lane, 2004). At the same time, recommendations for abandoning 

one-to-one computing programs citing the high cost, potential access to 

inappropriate material, and lack of proven impact on student achievement (Hu, 

2007; Vascellaro, 2006) have been widely published. Still, the number of U.S. 

schools adopting one-to-one computing programs continues to increase every 

year, according to a survey of the largest 2,500 school districts in the United 

States conducted by the Hayes Connection and cited in the New York Times 

by Hu (2007). The opportunities for students to do their homework online 

increase as the digital divide narrows and more states become committed to 

one-to-one computing. One important question is, do students learn more by 

using computers to do their homework than by doing traditional paper-andpencil 

homework? 

332 Spring 2009: Volume 41 Number 3

Some advantages of homework-assistance systems are immediate feedback 

to students and automatic grading and recording of grades for instructors. 

Automatic grading saves time for teachers who would like to grade all of their 

students’ paper-and-pencil homework carefully by hand but do not have time. 

In turn, this can prompt students to take homework more seriously because 

they know it will be graded and the grade will be recorded. With these systems, 

students can often get immediate feedback on their answers and work and 

sometimes help toward solving problems. 

Although these Web-based homework-assistance systems can provide benefits, 

they can have disadvantages, as well. Many of these systems do not take 

students’ work into consideration when they require students to enter a single 

answer for each problem. Students may be less organized because they do less 

scrap work on paper and try to do more math in their heads. Teachers may 

be less able to figure out exactly where students are having difficulties without 

seeing their work. Finally, because these systems often do not consider student 

work, cheating may be easier among students because they could possibly get 

the answers from their friends without having to show how they arrived at 

them. 

Web-based Homework Versus Paper-and-Pencil Homework 

Previous research has shown positive results for using Web-based homework 

assistance instead of traditional paper-and-pencil homework. MasteringPhysics, 

a Web-based physics homework tutor developed at MIT, uses mastery learning 

to help students reach mastery when solving physics homework problems. Students 

can ask for hints on problems and receive feedback on common student 

errors. Some hints will ask the student a question that behaves like a “scaffolding 

question” in the ASSISTment system (described in the next section). 

Warnakulasooriya & Pritchard (2005) found that twice as many students could 

complete a set of problems in a given time with the help provided by MasteringPhysics 

when compared to students who worked on the problems without 

help (administered by MasteringPhysics but without hints or feedback). 

The Andes system is an intelligent tutoring system that provides support for 

problem solving for physics homework. Students using Andes complete whole 

derivations step by step and receive feedback after each step. Students can also 

request hints for each step to find out where their errors are (What’s Wrong 

Help) or to find out what to do next (Next Step Help). VanLehn et al. (2005) 

presented evidence from introductory physics courses taught at the U.S. Naval 

Academy from 1999 to 2003 that students who used Andes for homework got 

significantly higher exam scores than students in control groups who did paperand-pencil 

homework. Other studies of Web-based physics homework versus 

paper-and-pencil homework did not find significant differences between the 

two homework conditions (Bonham, Deardorff, & Beichner, 2003; Pascarella, 

2002). The Andes studies seem to be the most closely related to our comparison 

of ASSISTments and paper-and-pencil homework, and this study attempts to 

replicate Andes’ positive results. 


The ASSISTment System 

Assistance and assessment are integrated in a Web-based system called the 

ASSISTment System, which offers instruction to students while providing a 

detailed evaluation of their abilities to teachers. Each time students work on the 

Web site, the system “learns” more about their abilities. The ASSISTment System 

is being built to identify the difficulties individual students––and the class 

as a whole––are having, and teachers will be able to use this detailed feedback 

to tailor their instruction to focus on those difficulties. Unlike other assessment 

systems, the ASSISTment system also provides students with intelligent tutoring 

assistance while assessment information is collected. Our hypothesis is that AS- 

SISTments can do a better job of getting students to learn from homework than 

traditional paper-and-pencil homework by providing immediate feedback on 

answers and tutoring for items that students get wrong. Teachers can also assess 

their students’ knowledge limitations better by noting the amount and nature 

of the assistance students need to finish their homework. The ASSISTment 

system was developed using grants from the U.S. Department of Education and 

the National Science Foundation and will be freely available for use by teachers 

and students. 

The ASSISTment System provides students with two types of tutoring assistance, 

scaffolds and hints, when they answer a question incorrectly. With scaffolds, 

the student who answers an ASSISTment incorrectly receives the message, 

“Hmm, no. Let me break this down for you,” and is immediately presented 

with a scaffolding question that the student must answer correctly in order to 

continue and receive the next scaffolding question. The scaffolding questions 

break the problem into steps, and students must answer the scaffolding questions 

before returning to the original question; that is, the student is forced 

to work through the problem. With hints, the student may request a hint by 

pressing the hint button. Students may request more hints until they reach the 

“bottom-out” hint, which will typically give them the answer to the question. 

When students log in to the ASSISTment system, they are presented with 

math problems. Figure 1 shows a screenshot of an ASSISTment problem with 

three scaffolding questions. Solving this problem involved understanding congruence, 

perimeter, and equation solving. If the student had answered correctly, 

she would have moved on to a new problem. However, she incorrectly answered 

23, and the system responded with, “Hmm, no. Let me break this down for 

you.” It then presented the student with some questions that would help to 

isolate the skills with which she had difficulty and to tutor her so that she could 

figure out the correct actions. The tutor began by asking a scaffolding question 

that isolated the step involving congruence. Eventually she got the scaffolding 

question correct (by answering “AC”) and then was given a question about perimeter. 

The figure shows that the student selected ½ * 8 * x as the formula for 

perimeter, and the system responded with a “buggy message” letting the student 

know she seems to be confusing perimeter with area. The student requested two 

hint messages, as shown at the bottom of the screen. The tutoring ends with a 

final question, which is actually the original question asked again. The student 

then will go on to do another math problem and will again get tutoring if she 

gets it wrong. 


Figure 1. An ASSISTment showing three scaffolding questions. 


The design of the ASSISTment system was informed by earlier systems such 

as Cognitive Tutors (Anderson et al., 1995) and Ms. Lindquist (Heffernan & 

Koedinger, 2002). These systems use “model-tracing” architectures that were 

invented by researchers at Carnegie Mellon University (Anderson, Boyle & 

Reiser, 1985; Anderson & Pelletier, 1991) and used extensively to build tutors. 

Each tutor is constructed around a cognitive model of the problem-solving 

knowledge students have and the knowledge needed to solve each problem. The 

model reflects the ACT-R theory of skill knowledge (Anderson, 1993), which 

assumes that problem-solving skills can be modeled as a set of independent production 

rules. Production rules are if–then rules that represent different pieces 

of knowledge. 

Ms. Lindquist, developed by Heffernan and Koedinger (2002), is an intelligent 

tutoring system that uses dialog to help students write algebra expressions. 

Ms. Lindquist models both student behavior and tutorial behavior by combining 

a cognitive model of student behavior with a tutorial model of strategies 

observed in a human tutor. The cognitive student model has a set of production 

rules that model the problem-solving skills needed to write algebraic expressions, 

whereas the tutorial model is based on the observation of an experienced 

human tutor during a tutoring session and tries to capture tutorial strategies 

that were observed to be effective. Ms. Lindquist was the first intelligent tutor 

that had both a model of student thinking and a model of tutorial planning 

and is different from typical Cognitive Tutors in that it takes its cues more from 

the dialogues that human tutors have with students and is more flexible. For 

example, it can acknowledge that part of an answer is correct and then engage 

a student in a “sub-dialogue” to help him or her improve the incorrect path. It 

“breaks” problems down for students by asking questions and rephrasing questions 

but does not give students answers. 

The ASSISTment system also breaks problems down for students in the way 

that Cognitive Tutors and Ms. Lindquist do, but it is not rule based. Koedinger 

et al. (2004) introduced example-tracing tutors that mimic Cognitive Tutors 

but are limited to the scope of a single problem. The ASSISTment system uses 

a further simplified example-tracing tutor called an ASSISTment that allows 

only a linear progression through a problem, which makes content creation 

easier and more accessible to nonprogrammers. Previous results show that our 

example-tracing-based system can reduce the time required to build a single 

hour of content from 100–1,000 hours to 10–30 hours (Razzaq et al., 2008). 

During the design stage of the ASSISTment system, middle school math 

teachers were involved in the process (Razzaq et al., 2005). Heffernan and 

Razzaq met with these teachers weekly to do “knowledge elicitation” interviews, 

during which the teachers helped design the pedagogical content of the 

ASSISTment system. The knowledge elicitation interviews started by showing 

the teacher a problem and then asking a series of questions: “How would you 

tutor a student to solve the problem? How would you break the problem down? 

What hints would you give the student? What kinds of errors are expected, and 

what would you say when a student made an expected error?” They videotaped 

these interviews and used the recordings to fill out an “ASSISTment design 


Table 1. Participants in the Study 

Class A Class B Class C Class D Total 

Male students 13 12 9 12 46 

Female students 10 13 13 10 46 

Students with Internet at home 12 15 17 10 54 

form,” which they used to implement the ASSISTment. Teachers gave their 

opinions on the first draft of the ASSISTment and were asked to edit it. They 

also videotaped these review sessions and revised the design form as needed. 

When the teacher was satisfied, they released the ASSISTment for use. 

Initial studies of the ASSISTment system (Razzaq et al., 2005) found that 

students were learning eighth grade math while using the system once every 

two weeks during their regular math classes. The purpose of this study was to 

determine if using the ASSISTment system for Web-based homework assistance 

is more useful (produces more learning) than traditional paper-and-pencil 

homework. 

MeTHod 

Setting and Participants 

The setting for this study was 4 fifth grade classrooms and students’ home 

computers. The school was located in a small town in a rural county and was a 

sample of convenience. Approximately 350 students were enrolled in the school 

at the time of the study, with at least 50% receiving free or reduced lunch. All 

four classes were typical elementary classes with a mix of below-average, average, 

and above-average students. Teachers gave a total of 92 students (54 with 

Internet access at home) this homework assignment, depending on their access. 

The breakdown of the participants is shown in Table 1. 

Content 

We used two problem sets in both the Web-based homework and the paperand-pencil 

homework assignments, each consisting of 10 problems. One problem 

set consisted of Number Sense problems, and the other was a mix of problems. 

The Number Sense problem set included problems for which students 

had to demonstrate understanding of numbers, ways of representing numbers, 

and relationships among numbers and number systems. The Mixed problem 

set included problems in the algebra, geometry, data analysis, and probability 

domains. Students had to demonstrate understanding of patterns, relations, and 

functions; describe spatial relationships using coordinate geometry and other 

representational systems; develop and evaluate inferences and predictions that 

are based on models; and apply and demonstrate an understanding of basic 

concepts of probability. (See Appendix B for the problems in both homework 

sets.) Students in the classes had prior learning experience with the homework 

material during the course of the school year. However, as the experiment took 

place at the end of the school year, it was not recent experience and was more of 

a review. 


The worksheets that students completed for paper-and-pencil homework 

assignments were identical to the Web-based homework assignment problems, 

with the same formats (i.e., multiple choice or short answer). This was possible 

because each class did the Number Sense or Mixed problem set for computer 

homework and the opposite problem set for paper-and-pencil homework. 

This will be explained in detail in the Experimental Design section below. The 

pretest and posttest items were “morphs” of the Number Sense and Mixed 

problem sets and were designed to have different surface features, such as names 

and numbers, while keeping the same deep features or knowledge requirements, 

such as analyzing patterns. Finally, the same hints used in the problem sets on 

the Web-based tutor were used while going over paper-and-pencil homework 

problems in class to ensure that each class had the same instruction. 

Experimental Design 

We used a counterbalanced experimental design in which students in two 

classrooms participated in the Web-based homework condition first, whereas 

students in the other two classrooms participated in the paper-and-pencil condition 

first. All students participated in both Web-based and paper-and-pencil 

conditions, and all students received pretests and posttests for each condition in 

which they participated. 

In the Web-based first group, one class received a pretest for the Number 

Sense problem set, and the other class received a pretest for the Mixed problem 

set. Students then received a homework assignment consisting of 10 problems 

in their respective problem sets on the Web-based system. After completing the 

Web-based homework, the students received posttests in class the next day. We 

then reversed the groups, with the Number Sense group receiving the Mixed 

pretest and the Mixed group receiving the Number Sense pretest. Both groups 

then received a paper-and-pencil homework assignment that consisted of 10 

problems on a worksheet for their respective problem sets. They completed 

posttests the following day. The paper-and-pencil first group participated in 

the same overall experimental design. (See Table 2 for the overall experimental 

design.) 

Our design counterbalances the content (number sense vs. mixed) as well as 

the order of condition (Web-based vs. paper and pencil) so that we can draw 

valid inferences that any gains students make will not be attributed to these outside 

factors. 

Procedures 

On day one of the experiment, students in all four classes received the appropriate 

pretest (two classes were administered the Number Sense pretest, and 

two were administered the Mixed pretest). (See Appendix A for sample pre- and 

posttests.) Thus, for both conditions, Web-based homework and paper-andpencil 

homework, one class was completing the Number Sense assignment 

while the other class completed the Mixed assignment. 

After completing the pretest, each class in the paper-and-pencil homework 

condition received worksheets with 10 problems to complete for homework. 


Day Web-based first group Paper-and-Pencil First Group 

Class A Class B Class C Class D 

Mon. Pretest Number 

Sense 

Intro to 

ASSISTments 

Web-based 

assignment 

Tues. Posttest Number 

Sense 

wed. Pretest Mixed 

Paper-and-pencil 

assignment 

Thurs. Review assignment 

Posttest Mixed 

Table 2. experimental design 

Pretest Mixed 

Intro to 

ASSISTments 

Web-based 

assignment 

Pretest Mixed 


assignment 

Posttest Mixed Review assignment 

Pretest 

Number Sense 

Paper-and- 

pencil 

assignment 

Review 

assignment 

Posttest 

Number Sense 


Pretest Number 

Sense 

Intro to 

ASSISTments 

Web-based 

assignment 

Posttest Number 

Sense 

Pretest Number 

Sense 


assignment 

Review 

assignment 

Posttest Number 

Sense 

Pretest Mixed 

Intro to 

ASSISTments 

Web-based 

assignment 


(See Appendix B for sample worksheet problems.) They instructed the students 

to bring the worksheets to school the following day so that they could 

go over them and answer any questions they had. Students in each class in the 

Web-based homework condition completed their pretests and then were taken 

to the media room, where they learned how to log in to and use the ASSISTment 

system. They all received a school identifier, which was the same for all 

students, then received an individual screen name consisting of their first name 

and last initial. After each student logged in to the system, they were shown 

how to select their teachers’ names and how to select their homework for the 

evening. They also learned how to select and work on a demonstration problem 

to familiarize themselves with the system and how problems were presented. 

The demonstration problems were not a part of their homework problems. (See 

Appendix C for sample computer/ASSISTment problems.) 

On day 2, the students in the paper-and-pencil condition received the 

answers to their worksheet problems and then had the opportunity to ask 

questions for review. (We are aware that our homework review procedure is 

susceptible to the fact that some students are more assertive than others when 


% with Internet 17/24 

70.8% 

% with Internet that 

completed WBH 


completed PPH 


completed both 

Table 3. Group and individual Class Completion rates 

Class A Class 

B 

13/17 

76% 

15/17 

88% 

12/17 

70% 

12/23 

52% 

6/12 

50% 

9/12 

75% 

6/12 

50% 

Class 

C 

10/22 

45% 

7/10 

70% 

7/10 

70% 

7/10 

70% 

Class 

D 

15/24 

62.5% 

3/15 

20% 

12/15 

80% 

3/15 

20% 

All 

Classes 

54/93 

58% 

29/54 

53.7% 

43/54 

79.6% 

28/54 

52% 

Exclude 

Class D 

39/69 

56.5% 

26/39 

67% 

31/39 

79% 

25/39 

64% 

asking questions, but we argue that our design is reasonable, as we have tried 

to replicate what happens in typical classrooms when going over homework.) 

When answering questions the teacher used the exact hints used in the computer-hints 

condition to ensure uniformity across groups. (See Appendix D for 

sample hints.) The review was limited to 10 minutes per group. 

We designed the procedures used for the homework review to simulate a typical 

review that math teachers would use. For example, in a typical math class 

the teacher will usually go over the answers for the homework assignment and 

then ask students if they have any questions. If they do, the teacher will put the 

problems on the board for students to see or from time to time have students 

do problems on the board so the teacher can see where the students are having 

difficulty. The reviews usually last approximately 10 minutes. For this study we 

attempted to simulate those procedures as closely as possible, but with a few exceptions. 

For example, we went over the answers to the homework assignment, 

and then asked students if they had any questions. However, in lieu of doing 

the problems on the board, we chose to use overheads with the exact hints used 

in the ASSISTment problems. We did this because we wanted to ensure that 

each group received the same review. 

The students then completed posttests. The two classes in the computer 

condition received posttests on day 2. Days 3 and 4 followed the same procedures 

as days 1 and 2, but the groups were reversed. That is, the two classes in 

the Web-based condition switched with the two classes in the paper-and-pencil 

condition, and the two classes that did number-sense problems switched with 

the two classes doing mixed problems. 

Results 

There were a total of 93 students in the four classes. Of the 93 students, 5 

were absent during all or part of the study, another 6 missed part of the study 

due to activities in which they were involved outside of the classroom, and 6 

students were nonreaders. These students did not participate in the study, which 

left a total of 76 students. Only 54 of those students, however, had Internet 

available at home and could participate fully in the study. Of these 54 students, 

31 students (57%) started the Web-based homework, but 2 of them reported 


Pair Gain1Compter 

1 Gain2PPH 


Paired Samples Statistics 

Mean N 

2.32 

1.14 

28 

28 

Paired Samples Correlations 

Std. 

Deviation 

2.195 

1.533 

N Correlation Sig. 

1 & Gain2PPH 28 -.322 .094 


1 Gain2PPH 

Mean 

1.179 

Std. 

Devi- 

ation 

Paired Samples Test 

Paired Differences 

Std. 

Error 

Mean 

95% Confidence 

Interval of the Dif- 

Std. 

Error 

Mean 

Figure 2. Results on Web-based homework and paper-and-pencil homework 

for students who completed both 

technical difficulties and were not able to complete the assignment. Another 

student in this group did not complete his paper-and-pencil homework. 

Consequently, we analyzed the remaining 28 students (52%) when comparing 

Web-based homework to paper-and-pencil homework. 

These percentages may be somewhat misleading because in Class D only 3 

out of 15 students who had Internet did the assignment at home as instructed, 

but 10 of the 15 students completed the assignment in the morning on computers 

at the school. Because those 10 students did not actually do the Webbased 

assignment at home, we chose to count those students as not having completed 

the Web-based homework assignment. This class had a substitute teacher 

that day, and we speculate that the substitute may not have impressed upon 

the children the importance of doing the assignment at home, which may have 

accounted for the lower than expected participation rate in this class. When 

we exclude Class D from the above analysis, the participation rates increase, as 

shown in Table 3. 

For the following analyses, t-tests were run on the Web-based gain scores 

from pretest to posttest and on the paper-and-pencil gain scores from pretest 

Journal of Research on Technology in Education 341 

ference 

Lower Upper 

415 

290 

t df 

Sig. (2- 

tailed) 

-.322 .577 -.006 2.363 2.041 27 .051

Number of Students 

Gain Score 

Figure 3. Results on Web-based homework and paper-and-pencil homework 

for students who completed both. 

to posttest. There was learning in both conditions; however, when comparing 

the effect of Web-based homework and paper-and-pencil homework, including 

only those students who completed both the Web-based homework and the paper-and-pencil 

homework, there was a statistically reliable difference in favor of 

the Web-based homework condition. The paired t-test, t(27) = 2.04, p = 0.051, 

showed an effect size of .61 (see Figure 2). The 95% confidence interval for this 

effect size of .61 is (0.08–1.15). The mean gain for the Web-based homework 

group was 2.32 points out of 10 points, and for the paper-and-pencil homework 

group the gain was 1.14 points out of 10 points. 

As shown in Figure 3, our analysis is not sensitive to one or two students. The 

weighted sum of gain scores, if we disregard negative scores, is 72 (Web-based 

homework) versus 36 (paper-and-pencil homework). 

Implications 

In this study, students learned significantly more with Web-based homework 

than with paper-and-pencil homework, and the effect size we reported of .61 

is large compared to other possible interventions shown in an in-depth study 

of the effect sizes of more than 100 classroom innovations accumulated from 

thousands of studies (Hattie, 1999). In the absence of one-to-one computing 

programs, teachers could use Web-based homework-assistance systems in their 

school computer labs or assign them for homework to students who have Internet 

access at home, access to school computers after school, or access to computers 

at the local library. The implications of this study could be important to 

policy makers, particularly considering the popularity of one-to-one computing 

initiatives (Hu, 2007) and claims that laptops can now be produced for prices 

342 Spring 2009: Volume 41 Number 3 

Type 

wbh 

pph

as low as $200 each (Bray, 2007). The cost of an intervention is of concern at a 

time when school budgets are already stretched thin, so policy makers need to 

see programs that can increase learning dramatically at low costs. In this study, 

we showed an intervention that led to a dramatic increase in student learning 

at a relatively low cost. For example, the Maine Learning Technology Initiative 

(2002–2004) was able to supply laptops to all of their seventh and eighth grade 

students for $300 per student per year, which is about one third of the cost of 

reducing class size. The cost of one-to-one computing programs could drop 

further, considering the new smaller and less expensive laptops being developed 

(Bray, 2007), and when excluding the growing number of students who already 

have computers at home. 

Caveats are in order, of course. Our study looked at the impact of learning 

at home, not in the classroom, so this intervention would help kids learn from 

their homework, not learn more effectively during class time. Other studies 

have documented large gain scores when comparing traditional clsssroom 

instruction to computer-based tutoring (Kulik & Kulik, 1991; Razzaq, Mendicino 

& Heffernan, in press), so it is perhaps not a leap to assume the computer 

would also help learning when doing homework. Our study was also short 

term, and we were not able to do a retention test afterward due to a lack of 

time, as this study took place at the end of the school year. 

Our study was limited to fifth graders working on their math homework. We 

do not know if our results would generalize to students in other grades or other 

subjects. One limitation of the ASSISTment system is that it is not able to grade 

open responses or essay-type questions, and teachers are limited to multiplechoice 

or short-answer questions. Currently, this would limit us to tutoring subjects 

like math and science, and we do not know if our results would generalize 

to subjects such as English or history. 

In this study, we were also limited by the number of students who did not 

have Internet at home. As the digital divide narrows and more K–12 students 

have access to computers and Internet at home, more teachers can take advantage 

of the promise of Web-based homework-assistance systems. With this 

paper, we believe we have taken a step toward justifying the cost of providing 

students with the means to do their homework via the Web. 

ConCLuSion 

By using a system such as the ASSISTment system, students can learn more 

than they would by doing their homework with paper and pencil. Students get 

immediate feedback on their answers and help when they need it. In addition 

to better learning results, teachers can take advantage of the convenience of 

having homework automatically graded and recorded. Students can also benefit 

from Web-based homework because they may take their homework more seriously 

when they know it will be graded. 

With the ASSISTment system, teachers can also pinpoint exactly where 

students are having difficulties and get reports on which skills to address in class 

for individual students or the class as a whole (Feng, Heffernan & Koedinger, 

2006), thus allowing teachers to address shortcomings. Content is relatively 


easy to develop in the ASSISTment system and can be created in a fraction of 

the time needed to develop content in other intelligent tutoring systems (Razzaq 

et al., 2008). 

For future studies, we would like to determine if the results of this study have 

external validity. We would run the study with more students who have had 

more experience with the system. We would also like to find out if the results 

generalize for students in other grades and over longer periods of time. 

Contributors 

Michael Mendicino is a doctoral student in the Department of Technology, 

Learning, and Culture at West Virginia University. He specializes in instruction 

for students with mild learning disabilities. (Address: PO Box 6122, 506 

Allen Hall, West Virginia University, Morgantown, WV, 26506-6122, Phone: 

304.293.3879, e-mail: mmendic1@mix.wvu.edu.) 

Leena Razzaq is a PhD student in the Department of Computer Science at 

Worcester Polytechnic Institute. She is interested in studying how different 

tutoring strategies in intelligent tutoring systems affect students of varying abilities. 

(Address: Department of Computer Science, Fuller Labs 312, Worcester 

Polytechnic Institute, 100 Institute Road, Worcester, MA 01609-2280, USA, 

Fax: 508.831.5776, e-mail: leenar@cs.wpi.edu) 

Neil T. Heffernan is an assistant professor of computer science at Worcester 

Polytechnic Institute. Heffernan holds a PhD in computer science and specializes 

in building intelligent tutoring systems. (Address: Department of Computer 

Science, Fuller Labs 237, Worcester Polytechnic Institute, 100 Institute Road, 

Worcester, MA 01609-2280, USA, Phone: 508.831.5569, Fax: 508.831.5776, 

e-mail: nth@cs.wpi.edu) 

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APPendix A: Mixed PreTeST & nuMber SenSe PreTeST 

Name_______________________ Teacher_____________________ 

1. 

Turf Coverage 

Pounds Square Yards of Coverage 

6 200 

10 300 

14 400 

18 500 

The table above shows the number of pounds of turf needed to cover a given 

area. Based on the pattern in the table, how many pounds of turf are needed to 

cover 800 square yards? 

2. 2X + 2 = 14 

What value of X makes the equation shown above true? 

o 

A) X = 6 


o 

o 

o 

B) X = 8 

C) X = 10 

D) X = 12 

3. The radius of a circle is 18 inches. What is the diameter of the circle? 

4. Mrs. Chipps wrote five numbers on the white board in her room. 

After class, one of the numbers was erased. The four numbers left are shown 

below. 

20 32 44 12 ? 

If the median of the five numbers that Mrs. Chipps wrote on the board was 20, 

which of the following could be true? 

o A) The number that was erased was greater than 44 

o B) The mode of the five numbers Mrs. Chipps wrote on the board was 

31 

o C) The number that was erased was less than or equal to 20 

o D) The mean of the five numbers Mrs. Chipps wrote on the board was 

56 

5. Mr. Lamb drew an equilateral triangle. Which of the following statements is 

true about the triangle? 

o A) At least two angles are obtuse 

o B) At least one angle measures 90 degrees 

o C) All of the angles are less than 90 degrees 

o D) All of the angles have different measurements 

6. 

What is the area of the triangle shown above? 

2 

o A) 220 cm 

2 

o B) 156 cm 

2 

o C) 125 cm 

2 

o D) 225 cm 

7. 

Input 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 

Output 6 10 14 18 22 26 30 


Shelby created the input-output table shown above. Which of the following 

rules is true for all values of Shelby’s input-output table? 

o A) Input + 5 = output 

o B) Input times 5 = output 

o C) (Input times 4) + 2 

o D) (Input times 4) + 3 

8. Joe is 22 years older than Bob. If Joe is 43 years old now, how old is Bob? 

o A) 12 years old 

o B) 18 years old 

o C) 65 years old 

o D) 21 years old 

9. 

On the coordinate grid above, which point is located at (7, 5)? 

o A 

o B 

o C 

o D 

10. 

What are the coordinates of point C? 

number Sense Pretest 

Name__________________________ Teacher_________________ 

1. Which of the following is closest to the product of 397.8 * 10.3? 


o 

o 

o 

o 

A) 3,000 

B) 30,000 

C) 400 

D) 4,000 

2. Which of the following shows the numbers in order from least to greatest? 

o A) 0.452, 0.51, 0.432 

o B) 0.452, 0.432, 0.51 

o C) 0.432, 0.51, 0.452 

o D) 0.432, 0.452, 0.51 

3. 

-4 -3 -2 -1 0 1 2 

Jeffrey is plotting points on the number line above. Between which two numbers 

should Jeffery plot -3 ½? 

4. What is 15/60 as a percent? 

5. Write 10/25 as a decimal. 

6. What is the value of the following expression? 

7 * 6 + 3 

7. Destinee has a total of 12 fish in her aquarium. Exactly 9 of the fish are goldfish. 

What percent of the fish in the aquarium are goldfish? 

o A) 70% 

o B) 55% 

o C) 75% 

o D) 25% 

8. 

David made the circle shown below using gray and white triangles. What fractional 

part of the whole design is made up of gray triangles? Write your answer 

as a fraction. 


9. Kendra is going on vacation. She packed the following clothes in her suitcase. 

How many different outfit combinations will Kendra have to choose from 

during vacation? 

Suitcase for vacation 

Tops Pants 

T-shirt 

Sweatshirt 

10. 

Khaki pants 

Sweatpants 

Jeans 

What is the distance between point C and point D on the number line shown 

below? C d 

APPendix b: HoMework ProbLeM SeTS 

Homework/Mix Problems 

name:__________________ Teacher:__________________ 

date:______________ 

1. 

40 80 120 160 

The table above shows the number of pounds of fertilizer needed to cover a 

given area. Based on the pattern in the table, how many pounds of fertilizer are 

needed to cover 600 square yards? 

2. 2x + 2 = 10 

What value of x makes the equation shown above true? 

o A) x = 4 

o B) x = 6 

o C) x = 8 

o D) x = 12 

3. The radius of a circle is 14 inches. What is the diameter of the circle? 

4. Mr. Young wrote five numbers on the board in his classroom. After class, 

one of the numbers was erased. Four of the five numbers are shown below. 


18 25 30 17 ? 

If the median of the five numbers that Mr. Young wrote on the board was 18, 


o 

o 

o 

o 

A) The number that was erased was greater than 30. 

B) The mode of the five numbers Mr. Young wrote on the board was 

24. 

C) The mean of the five numbers Mr. Young wrote on the board was 

22.6. 

D) The number that was erased was less than or equal to 18. 

5. Mr. Donato drew an equilateral triangle. Which of the following statements 

is true about the triangle? 

o A) At least one angle is obtuse. 

o B) All of the angles are acute. 

o C) At least one angle measures 90 degrees. 

o D) All of the angles have different measurements. 

6. 

What is the area of the triangle shown above? 

2 

o A) 126 cm 

2 

o B) 210 cm 

2 

o C) 252 cm 

2 

o D) 420 cm 

7. 

Bridget created the input-output table shown above. Which of the following 

rules is true for all values in Bridget’s input-output table? 

o A) Input + 3 = Output 

o B) Input * 3 = Output 

o C) (Input * 2) + 1 = Output 

o D) (Input * 2) + 2 = Output 

8. Sam is 37 years older than Dennis. If Sam is 55 years old now, how old is 

Dennis? 

o 

A) 12 years old 


9. 

o 

o 

o 

B) 18 years old 

C) 28 years old 

D) 92 years old 

On the coordinate grid above, which point is plotted at (4, 3)? 

o A 

o B 

o C 

o D 

o E. 

o F. 

10. 

What are the coordinates of Point A? 

o A) (6, 10) 

o B) (5, 9) 

o C) (9, 6) 

o D) (6, 9) 

Homework/number Sense Problems 

Name:_________________ Teacher: __________________ 

Date:___________ 

1. Which of the following is closest to the product 298.7 * 10.1? 

o 

A) 300 


o 

o 

o 

B) 2,000 

C) 3,000 

D) 20,000 

2. Which of the following shows the numbers in order from least to greatest? 

o A) 0.765, 0.82, 0.791 

o B) 0.765, 0.791, 0.82 

o C) 0.791, 0.82, 0.765 

o D) 0.791, 0.765, 0.82 

3. 

Marta is plotting points on the number line above. Between which two numbers 

should Marta plot -2½? 

o A) 1 and 2 

o B) 2 and 3 

o C) -2 and -1 

o D) -3 and -2 

4. Write 12/30 as a percent. 


6. What is the value of the following expression? 

3 + 6 * 4 

7. Judith has a total of 8 fish in her aquarium. Exactly 6 of the fish are guppies. 

What percent of the fish in the aquarium are guppies? 

o A) 48% 

o B) 60% 

o C) 68% 

o D) 75% 

8. 


Shing made the design shown above using gray square tiles and white square 

tiles. What fractional part of the whole design is made up of gray tiles? Write 

your answer as a fraction. 

9. 

Rae is making a salad. The choices for the ingredients are shown in the chart 

above. What is the total number of different salads she can make using one lettuce, 

one vegetable, and one dressing? 

10. 

What is the distance between point A and point B on the number line shown 

above? 

APPendix C: SAMPLe CoMPuTer ProbLeMS 

“2005_5_gr6” (Problem ID: 12330) [MA – 2005 – SPRING – 5] 

Which of the following is closer to the product 298.7 * 10.1? 

A) 300 

B) 2,000 

C) 3,000 

D) 20,000 

“2005_23_gr6” (Problem ID: 12395) [MA – 2005 – SPRING – 23] 

Which of the following shows the members from least to greatest? 

A) 0.765, 0.82, 0.791 

B) 0.765, 0.791. 0.82 

C) 0.791, 0.82, 0.765 

D) 0.791, 0.765, 0.82 

3. “2005_20_gr6” (Problem ID: 23332) [MA – 2005 – SPRING – 20] 



should Marta plot -2 ½? 

o A) 1 and 2 

o B) 2 and 3 

o C) -2 and -1 

o D) -3 and -2 

2. “2005_6_gr6” (Problem ID: 12341) [MA - 2005 - SPRING - 6] 

2x + 2 = 10 

What value of x makes the equation shown above true? 

o A) x = 4 

o B) x = 6 

o C) x = 8 

o D) x = 12 

3. “2005_12_gr6” (Problem ID: 12361) [MA - 2005 - SPRING - 12] 

The radius of a circle is 14 inches. What is the diameter of the circle? 

4. “2005_15_gr6” (Problem ID: 12366) 

Mr. Young wrote five numbers on the board in his classroom. After class, one 

of the numbers was erased. Four of the five numbers are shown below. 

18 25 30 17 ? 

If the median of the five numbers that Mr. Young wrote on the board was 18, 


o A) The number that was erased was greater than 30. 

o B) The mode of the five numbers Mr. Young wrote on the board was 

24. 

o C) The mean of the five numbers Mr. Young wrote on the board was 

22.6. 

o D) The number that was erased was less than or equal to 18. 

APPendix d: SAMPLe HinTS 

3.) 


should Marta plot -2 1 / 2 ? 


Answers: 

A) 1 and 2 

B) 2 and 3 

C) -2 and -1 

D) -3 and -2 

-2 1 / 2 should be 2 1 / 2 units away from zero. What side of zero should -2 1 / 2 be on? 

Answers: 

the left side 

the right side 

Hint 1: 

The numbers to the right of zero on the number line are positive and are greater 

than zero. The numbers to the left of zero on the number line are negative and 

are less than zero. 

Hint 2: 

Marta should plot -2 1 / 2 on the left side of zero because it’s negative. Between 

which two numbers should Marta plot -21/2? 

Answers: (Interface Type: RADIO_BUTTON) 

A) 1 and 2 

B) 2 and 3 

C) -2 and -1 

D) -3 and -2 

Hint 1: 

Marta should plot -2 1 / 2 on the left side of zero, between two negative numbers. 

Hint 2: 

-2 1 / 2 should be 2 1 / 2 units away from zero. Is that to the left of -2 or to the right 

of -2? 

Hint 3: 

-2 1 / 2 should be plotted between -3 and -2. Choose D. 

4. Write 12/30 as a percent. 

Answers: 

40% 

40 

First, it will help to reduce the fraction to tenths. What is 12/30 reduced? 


Answers: 

3/10 

4/10 

4/5 

6/12 

Hint 1: 

What is a common factor between 12 and 30 that will give you 10 in the denominator? 

Hint 2: 

The common factor is 3. Divide 12 and 30 by 3. 

Hint 3: 

12/30 = 4/10 

Hint 4: 

Choose 4/10. 

Good. What is 4/10 in percent? 

Answers: 

0.4% 

0.04% 

4% 

40% 

Hint 1: 

There are several ways to change a fraction to a percent. One way is to divide 

the numerator by the denominator and move the decimal point 2 places to the 

right. 

Hint 2: 

What is 4 divided by 10? 

Hint 3: 

40% 

4/10 = 0.4. Now move the decimal point 2 places to the right. 

Hint 4: 

0.4 = 40%. Choose 40%. 


Answers: 

0.6 

First, it will help to reduce the fraction. What is 15/25 reduced? 


Answers: 

3/5 

Hint 1: 

What is the greatest common factor between 15 and 25? 

Hint 2: 

The greatest common factor is 5. Divide 15 and 25 by 5. 

Hint 3: 

15/25 = 3/5 

Hint 4: 

Type in 3/5 

Good. What is 3/5 in decimal? 

Answers: 

0.6 

Hint 1: 

One way to change a fraction to a decimal is to divide the numerator by the 

denominator, but it is easier to convert this fraction to tenths first. 

Hint 2: 

3/5 * 2/2 = 6/10. To divide by 10, move the decimal point one place to the left. 

(Since there is no decimal point, think of 6 as 6.0 and move the decimal point 

one place to the left.) 

Hint 3: 

6/10 = 0.6 or 0.60 

Hint 4: 

Type in 0.6. 


Preparing Creative and Critical Thinkers 

Donald J. Treffinger 

Teachers can help students become 21st-century problem solvers by introducing them to a broad range of 

thinking tools. 

If you doubt that we live in a world of accelerating change, just consider the everyday life experiences of millions of children and 

teenagers today: 

They can view live images from every corner of the world and talk with or exchange video images with other young 

people who live many time zones away. 

They have more technology in their classrooms (and in many cases, in their backpacks) than existed in the workplaces 

of their parents 20 years ago. 

They will study subjects that were unknown when their teachers and parents were students, and they may well enter 

careers that do not exist today. 

In contrast with most of their parents, more of today's young people will routinely come into contact with other people 

of diverse backgrounds and experiences. They will grow up to interact, collaborate, and compete with others around the 

globe. 

Once upon a time, educators might have said to their students, "If you'll pay close attention to what I'm going to teach you, 

you'll learn everything you need to know for a successful life." It's doubtful that this message was ever entirely true, but it's 

certainly not true today. We don't know all the information that today's students will need or all the answers to the questions 

they will face. Indeed, increasingly, we don't even know the questions. 

These realities mean that we must empower students to become creative thinkers, critical thinkers, and problem solvers—people 

who are continually learning and who can apply their new knowledge to complex, novel, open-ended challenges; people who will 

proceed confidently and competently into the new horizons of life and work. 

In education, we routinely teach students how to use various sets of cognitive tools to make academic work easier, more 

efficient, or more productive: for example, research methods, note-taking strategies, or ways to remember and organize 

information. In teaching thinking, we need to give students cognitive tools and teach them to use these tools systematically to 

solve real-life problems and to manage change. These tools apply to two essential categories: creative thinking and critical 

thinking. 

Creative Thinking, Critical Thinking 

What is creative thinking? What is critical thinking? We often view these terms as opposites that are poles apart and 

incompatible. We stereotype the creative thinker as wild and zany, thriving on off-the-wall, impractical ideas; in contrast, we 

envision the critical thinker as serious, deep, analytical, and impersonal. Consider instead a different view—that these two ways 

of thinking are complementary and equally important. They need to work together in harmony to address perceived dilemmas, 

paradoxes, opportunities, challenges, or concerns (Treffinger, Isaksen, & Stead-Dorval, 2006). 

Creative thinking involves searching for meaningful new connections by generating many unusual, original, and varied 

possibilities, as well as details that expand or enrich possibilities. Critical thinking, on the other hand, involves examining 

possibilities carefully, fairly, and constructively—focusing your thoughts and actions by organizing and analyzing possibilities, 

refining and developing the most promising possibilities, ranking or prioritizing options, and choosing certain options. 

Generating many possibilities is not enough by itself to help you solve a problem. Similarly, if you rely on focusing alone, you 

may have too few possibilities from which to choose. Effective problem solvers must think both creatively and critically, 

generating options and focusing their thinking. 

Both generating and focusing involve learning and applying certain guidelines (attitudes and habits of mind that support 

effective thinking) and tools. Let's first look at the guidelines for generating and focusing, and then consider a number of specific 

tools. 

Habits of the Mind for Generating Ideas 

Individuals or groups use generating tools to produce many, varied, or unusual possibilities; to develop new and interesting 

combinations of possibilities; or to add detail to new possibilities. When using these tools, it is important to follow four broad 

guidelines, or ground rules (Treffinger, Isaksen, & Stead-Dorval, 2006): 

Defer judgment. When generating options, productive thinkers separate generating from judging. They direct their 

effort and energy to producing possibilities that can be judged later. 

Seek quantity. The more options a person or group generates, the greater the likelihood that at least some of those 

possibilities will be intriguing and potentially useful. 

Encourage all possibilities. Even possibilities that seem wild or silly might serve as a springboard for someone to make 

an original and powerful new connection. 

Look for combinations. It is often possible to increase the quantity and quality of options by building on the thinking of 

others or by seeing new combinations that may be stronger than any of their parts.

Brainstorming is probably the most widely known generating tool (but often the most misunderstood and misused tool, too). 

Many people use the term brainstorming as a synonym for a general conversation, discussion, or exchange of views. It is more 

accurate, however, to view brainstorming as a specific tool in which a person or a group follows the four guidelines described 

above to search for many possible responses to an open-ended task or question. As illustrated in Figure 1, there are also several 

other tools for generating options (Treffinger, Nassab, et al., 2006). 

Habits of the Mind for Focusing Ideas 

Focusing tools help individuals or groups analyze, organize, refine, develop, prioritize, evaluate, or select options from the set of 

possibilities they have at hand. When using these tools, problem solvers should again follow four broad guidelines or ground 

rules (Treffinger, Isaksen, & Stead-Dorval, 2006): 

Use affirmative judgment. When focusing their thinking, productive thinkers examine options carefully but 

constructively, placing more emphasis on screening, supporting, or selecting options than on criticizing them. 

Be deliberate. Effective focusing takes into consideration the purpose of focusing. Is it to select a single solution, to 

rank order or prioritize several options, to examine ideas carefully with very detailed criteria, to refine or strengthen 

options, or to create a sequence of steps or actions? Each of these purposes might be best served by a specific focusing 

tool. 

Consider novelty. If the stated goal is to find a novel or original solution or response, then it is important to focus 

deliberately on that dimension when evaluating possible solutions, and not simply to fall back on the easiest or most 

familiar options within a list. 

Stay on course. When focusing, it is important to keep the goals and purposes of the task clearly in sight and to ensure 

that you evaluate the options in relation to their relevance and importance for the goal. 

The Problem Solver's Basic Toolbox 

At the Center for Creative Learning, we have developed a Creative Problem Solver's Basic Toolbox of generating and focusing 

tools (see fig. 1 for the toolbox and links to examples of each tool). 

Figure 1. The Creative Problem Solver's Basic Toolbox 

Tools for Generating Possibilities (Creative Thinking) Tools for Focusing Possibilities (Critical Thinking) 

Brainstorming. Generating many, varied, or unusual options for an 

open-ended task or question. 

Force-Fitting. Using two objects or words that seem unrelated to the 

task or problem, or to each other, to create new possibilities or 

connections. 

Attribute Listing. Using the core elements or attributes of a task or 

challenge as a springboard for generating novel directions or 

improvements. 

SCAMPER. Applying a checklist of action words or phrases (ideaspurring 

questions) to evoke or trigger new or varied possibilities. 

Morphological Matrix. Identifying the key parameters of a task, 

generating possibilities for each parameter, and investigating possible 

combinations (mixing and matching). 

Hits and Hot Spots. Selecting promising or intriguing possibilities 

(identifying hits) and clustering, categorizing, organizing, or 

compressing them in meaningful ways (finding hot spots). 

ALoU: Refining and Developing. Using a deliberate, constructive 

approach to strengthening or improving options, by considering 

advantages, limitations (and ways to overcome them), and unique 

features. 

PCA: Paired Comparison Analysis. Setting priorities or ranking 

options through a systematic analysis of all possible combinations. 

Sequencing: SML. Organizing and focusing options by considering 

short, medium, or long-term actions. 

Evaluation Matrix. Using specific criteria to systematically evaluate 

each of several options or possibilities to guide judgment and 

selection of options. 

Source: Copyright 2008 by the Center for Creative Learning. Used with permission. 

Teachers can incorporate instruction in creative and critical thinking into the curriculum in a number of ways, either singly or in 

combination. I recommend that teachers follow several guidelines. 

Introduce the tools directly, using engaging, open-ended questions from everyday life. Be clear that the purpose of such out-ofcontext 

work is to gain confidence and skill in using the tool, so everyone will be successful when using it in context. 

Next, provide opportunities to apply the tools in lessons or activities related to specific content areas. Any of the generating and 

focusing tools can be used to help students master a variety of specific content standards in many areas (see Treffinger, 2007; 

Treffinger et al., 2004a, 2004b, 2004c). 

Kopcak (2007), for example, describes using the Brainstorming, Hits and Hot Spots, and Paired Comparison Analysis tools with 

high school seniors as they worked on the Virginia learning standard "The student will write documented research papers." The 

students began with a stack of blank sticky notes on which they wrote possible topics (one per sticky note). After covering a 

chalkboard with sticky notes, the class paused to discuss the characteristics of a good research topic. The students used the Hits 

and Hot Spots focusing tool to select promising topics and organize them into categories based on theme or overarching topic; 

they used the Paired Comparison Analysis focusing tool to narrow down the most appealing options. 

Other examples of applications of the tools in content areas include

Attribute Listing. Understanding the important elements or parts of a topic being studied (for example, the major 

attributes of a country or civilization in social studies, the major elements of a story, or the characteristics of the main 

characters in a novel). 

Brainstorming. Identifying varied or unusual ways to make people aware of the importance of voting. Generating many 

possible math problems that could be constructed from a given set of data, events, or circumstances. Listing many 

ways to promote recycling or conservation. 

Evaluation Matrix. Evaluating choices or possible courses of action faced by people or groups in literature or social 

studies units (for example, in a film the students have viewed or a story they have read). Judging and choosing one of 

several possible themes, plots, or endings for a story or dramatic scene. 

Sequencing: SML. Investigating career preparation (for instance, "If you want to become a ____, the steps or stages in 

your preparation should include …"). Understanding and ordering the stages or chronology in an event or process (for 

example, the steps in an experiment or the sequence of certain measurements to be taken on a set of data). 

Be deliberate about applying the basic tools in several different content areas, to help students learn how to transfer their 

learning about the tools across contexts. As you work with the tools, be explicit about metacognitive skills. Ask, "What is the 

tool? How did you use it? When and why would you use it in other situations?" 

Beware of presenting too much newness at once. When you are working with new content, start with familiar tools. When you 

are introducing new tools, start with familiar content. Don't try to teach all the tools at once. 

When students are comfortable with the basic generating and focusing tools, teachers may guide them in applying these tools 

through the Creative Problem Solving framework, a model for attaining clarity about tasks, defining problems in a constructive 

way, generating possible solutions, preparing for action and successful implementation of solutions, and dealing with change. 

For more information about the Creative Problem Solving framework, see the resources at the Center for Creative Learning. 

It is also important to engage students in finding and solving real-life problems or challenges within the classroom, the school, 

or the community. Two widely known enrichment programs can provide engaging opportunities for students to apply creative 

problem solving. 

Preparing Students for a Changing World 

By helping students learn and apply the attitudes and practical tools of effective problem solvers, teachers can enhance student 

learning in powerful ways that extend beyond memorization and recall. Even when teachers are compelled to place great 

emphasis on basic learning and doing well on standardized tests—indeed, particularly at such times—it remains important to 

balance the emphasis between process and content in teaching and learning. Students who are competent in not only the basics 

of content areas but also the basics of productive and creative thinking will be lifelong learners, knowledge creators, and 

problem solvers who can live and work effectively in a world of constant change. 

References 

Kopcak, T. (2007). Applying thinking tools to high school seniors' research papers. Creative Learning Today, 15(3), 3. 

Treffinger, D. J. (2007). Applying CPS tools in school: Thinking in action. Creative Learning Today, 15(3), 2. 

Treffinger, D. J., Isaksen, S. G., & Stead-Dorval, K. B. (2006). Creative problem solving: An introduction (4th ed.). 

Waco, TX: Prufrock Press. 

Treffinger, D. J., & Nassab, C. A. (2005). Thinking tool guides (Rev. ed.). Sarasota, FL: Center for Creative Learning. 

Treffinger, D. J., Nassab, C. A., Schoonover, P. F., Selby, E. C., Shepardson, C. A., Wittig, C. V., & Young, G. C. 

(2004a). Thinking with standards: Preparing for the future (Elementary ed.). Waco, TX: Prufrock Press. 


(2004b). Thinking with standards: Preparing for the future (Middle ed.). Waco, TX: Prufrock Press. 


(2004c). Thinking with standards: Preparing for the future (Secondary ed.). Waco, TX: Prufrock Press. 


(2006). The CPS Kit. Waco, TX: Prufrock Press.

Examples of Basic Problem-Solving Tools 

Unless otherwise noted, the following examples of each of the tools are adapted from Treffinger and Nassab (2005) or 

Treffinger et al. (2006). 

Brainstorming 

In a class that was preparing to study the countries of North America, the teacher posed the following task for the students to 

think about, using the Brainstorming tool: List many questions about the countries we will be studying. Try to list some 

questions that will help us look at the countries in a different way and some unusual or original questions. 

In just 10 minutes, the class generated more than 60 questions. Some of the questions might be described as common (for 

example, Where is the country located? or What is its population?). Other questions were much more original (What are some 

controversial or highly debated issues in this country? or How has the country's economy been affected by digital technology in 

the last five years?). The teacher later categorized or clustered the students' questions into groups and used them as starting 

points for projects in which small groups of students sought information about particular countries and reported their findings. 

Force-Fitting 

A group of students made Force-Fitting card decks by gluing pictures of everyday objects on large index cards (one picture per 

card). They used their Force-Fitting cards to generate some new and unusual ideas for improving the furniture in their 

classroom. They started by exploring ways to improve the room's straight, hard, metal and formed-plastic chairs. The students 

selected three cards randomly from their deck: a table lamp with a flexible, goose-neck frame; a fancy diamond necklace; and 

a telescope. Then, they used the three objects to think of new ways to improve their chairs. The telescope led them to consider 

making the chair's legs adjustable. The flexible lamp immediately led them to think about mounting a similar lamp on the top of 

the chair's back to provide a convenient and adjustable light source. They also stretched their thinking beyond this first, rather 

obvious connection and soon turned to the flexible neck of the lamp, which led them to consider modifying the back of the chair 

so that its position could be moved (from left to right, or from straight to a reclining position). The fancy diamond necklace 

made them think about decorating the outside of the chair's frame so that each student could personalize his or her own chair. 

This card also suggested creating a chair that was ornate and fancy and might even be elevated like a throne, which could be 

used to recognize certain students for special occasions or accomplishments. The students liked the idea of earning the right to 

use the "Diamond Chair" as a special privilege. 

Attribute Listing 

Steve used the Attribute Listing tool to explore ways to improve how he presented his science project. He identified three key 

attributes or parts of his presentation—visual display, oral presentation, and written report. Then, he generated ways to 

improve or modify each of those parts. Below is Steve's list of possible changes for his task: 

Visual Display. Make larger, use a trifold out of cardboard, use bright colors, use computer to make written parts and 

drawings, add some charts and graphs, use some pictures or cartoons to get attention, include something that moves, 

use an overhead projector, add lights, add something people can touch or use. 

Oral Presentation. Use music in background, use sound effects, use Power Point, dress up in a lab coat, wear a necktie, 

use props. 

Written Report. Put in notebook, make colorful cover, do it on the computer, add some more graphs and charts, 

include some photographs, use color and highlight parts, use more labels, use more variety in the words, add a 

glossary of terms. 

SCAMPER 

Using the acronym SCAMPER, students look for new possibilities by applying the following checklist of action words or phrases: 

S - Substitute 

C - Combine 

A - Adapt 

M - Magnify or Minify 

P - Put to other uses 

E - Eliminate 

R - Reverse or Rearrange 

One group of students, working on a unit on inventions, chose to study the telephone. They used the SCAMPER tool to identify 

many, varied, and unusual ways the telephone might be modified and improved. Then, they searched through many stores and 

catalogs, located examples of modifications and extensions of the basic idea of the telephone, and considered what SCAMPER 

words and questions might have led to those modifications. For example, combine might have been used to create a telephone 

that also had a video screen. Magnify (or make larger) might have stimulated the thinking of the makers of a phone with giant 

touch-tone buttons on its keypad. Minify (or make smaller) might have paved the way for many of today's tiny cell phones. 

Combine or put to other uses might have led one clever group to a wristwatch that included a cell phone—and a TV remote! The 

students concluded their project by hypothesizing new changes and developments that might be produced in the future. 

Morphological Matrix

In one class studying the elements of character, the teacher provided the following Morphological Matrix: 

The teacher asked students to use the last four digits of their phone numbers to randomly obtain one item from each column. 

Students then combined the four items to create sentences describing how the basic elements of character are used in 

everyday life. 

For example, the four digits 5881 yielded the following items: college, business, prepared, and peace. The students combined 

these items to produce the sentence, 

Most college students are preparing to enter business fields and want to find peace within their lives. 

The four digits 4352 yielded the items high school, mall, citizenship, and conflict. The students combined these items to 

produce the sentence, 

When high school students exhibit good citizenship they will not encounter conflict in the mall. 

Students developed the sentences individually and then worked in pairs to combine their sentences or to choose the best one 

for a presentation to the whole class. Later, they wrote reflections on the activity. 

(Example contributed by Jennine Jackson, Teacher of the Gifted, Amphitheater School District, Tucson, Arizona, and Affiliate 

Director of the Arizona Future Problem Solving Program International) 

Hits and Hot Spots 

In a high school science class, the students worked on designing appropriate zoo habitats for several endangered species. The 

students selected an animal, conducted research on the animal, and then generated lists of questions they had about the 

animal and its habitat. They used Hits and Hot Spots to identify the most important questions and to identify four major 

clusters to guide their subsequent research and planning. 

Another class used the Hits and Hot Spots tool to plan a school party. First, they used generating tools to come up with a list of 

more than 80 possibilities. Using the Hits and Hot Spots tool, they grouped (or clustered) their Hits into the following five Hot 

Spots: Activities, Refreshments, Place, Time, and Cost. They decided to host an after-school party in the cafeteria. They could 

afford soda and popcorn. Dancing was the favorite activity. Several students volunteered to bring in their CDs and supply the 

music. 

ALoU: Refining and Developing 

One group of students generated ideas on how to improve communication between the deaf and the hearing members of the 

school community. The group decided to take a closer look at one of the ideas: Show a ‘word-of-the-day’ in sign language 

during the morning TV announcements. Ask teachers and students to use it. They used the ALoU (Advantages, Limitations [and 

ways to overcome them], and Unique features) tool to improve and strengthen this idea. Their work is shown below. 

Advantages 

Easy to manage and do within our time limits 

Fun for everyone

People would actually be learning sign language a little at a time 

Seeing and using sign language would become more accepted in school 

No cost involved 

Very visible 

Limitations (and how to overcome them) 

How to ensure that it would get used? 

1. Let teachers know the words ahead of time so they can include ways to use them in daily/weekly plans. 

2. Make it a contest, like a spelling bee each month. 

How to get participants to take it seriously? 

1. Do a "hush day" to help people get a firsthand understanding of the need for all to communicate. 

2. Bring in or create a school presentation using words and sign language to demonstrate the importance of 

diversity. 

Unique Features 

Our deaf population might be able to communicate with all others in the school without the need for an interpreter. 

Sign language might be seen as a language just like other foreign languages and be taught as a subject. 

PCA: Paired Comparison Analysis 

The PCA tool can be used whenever students have a set of appealing options to rank or prioritize. One class used the PCA tool 

to help decide which of several possible field trips they preferred to take, knowing that time and budget limitations might make 

only one field trip possible for the group that year. Five options were generally appealing to many of the class members: the 

zoo, a concert by the local symphony orchestra, the nearby Inventor's Hall of Fame and Invention Center, a local newspaper 

office, and a theme park. 

The class discussed several important criteria to consider in evaluating the options, including cost, time required, personal 

appeal and interest, relating the trip to other class activities and studies, learning value, and possibility of students visiting the 

site at another time with friends, family, or other groups. Each student in the class then completed a PCA sheet. The trip to the 

hall of fame/invention center was the highest ranking option, followed by the concert and the trip to the newspaper office. 

The students prepared a proposal about their choices and were rewarded by winning approval for trips to both the invention 

center and the symphony concert! 

Sequencing: SML 

A group of middle school students decided to plan and conduct a campaign in their school to make students aware of the 

importance of community service by young people. They wanted to build interest by sharing information about a particular 

service project in their community for which the students could volunteer. They used the Sequencing (SML) tool to arrange a 

number of possible action steps in a workable and appropriate order. 

In the short term (and before they contacted any other agencies or the student body), the students needed to 

understand community service better themselves. They listed questions to ask representatives from one or more 

community agencies. 

Next, they researched agencies in their community that needed volunteers and would be receptive to middle school 

students as well as interesting to the students. 

As a medium-range step, the group prepared and rehearsed the kind of interview they would do with representatives 

from the agencies, contacted one agency, conducted their interviews, and began doing some volunteer work 

themselves. 

The students' long-term steps involved creating an appealing presentation that incorporated information from their 

interviews and personal experiences to inform other students and to stimulate their involvement. 

The presentation was highly successful, and more than 25 other students in the school became involved in volunteer work in 

the community. 

Evaluation Matrix 

Cindy's grandmother lives alone in an apartment. She wanted a pet. The family decided to buy her a dog. However, there were 

rules about having pets in the apartment building. Also, Grandma didn't have a lot of money to spend on a pet. The family 

selected the five dogs that they wanted to consider, and writing the name of each breed dog in each row of the matrix under 

the options column heading. Thinking about Grandma and where she lived, the family decided to use the following criteria: 

Which dog can Grandma best afford? 

Which dog will be the most quiet? 

Which dog will be the easiest for Grandma to care for by herself (walk, bathe, groom, and so on)? 

Which dog will be protective when needed? 

Which dog will be the friendliest companion to grandma? 

The family wrote a word or phrase to represent each criterion as column headings in the matrix. They decided to use a 1–5 

rating scale, with 1 as the lowest rating and 5 as the highest rating. They evaluated each option against each criterion and 

totaled the ratings for each option. They looked at the results and noticed that there was little difference among the ratings of

the dogs. Each dog had strengths and weaknesses. After talking to Grandma, the family decided to get her a Lab, a quiet and 

friendly dog. 

Options for Breeds Fits Gram's budget Most quiet Ease of care Protectiveness Friendliness 

Labrador retriever 3 5 3 2 5 18 

Toy poodle 3 2 3 3 4 15 

Pit bull 4 2 3 5 1 15 

Siberian husky 3 3 2 3 3 14 

Jack Russell terrier 3 2 4 3 2 14 

In another setting, a group of students used the Evaluation Matrix as a tool to help them select books to check out from the 

library. Some of the criteria they considered included the relevance of the theme or topic to personal interests, usefulness for 

preparing a report (related to a class assignment), length of book, size of print, number of illustrations, quality of illustrations, 

and difficulty of the book. With these criteria and an Evaluation Matrix Worksheet, the students went to the library, browsed for 

a while, selected several possible books to check out, and then used the Evaluation Matrix to help focus their choices. Later, 

after completing their reading, they discussed how they used the tool and considered the extent to which it helped them make 

a good choice. Most students found that it was a helpful tool that they would use again when choosing among many 

possibilities. 

Enrichment Programs That Foster Creativity and Problem Solving 

Future Problem Solving Program 

Future Problem Solving Program International (FPSPI) is a nonprofit educational corporation administering creative problemsolving 

activities for students in grades K-12. More than 250,000 students in several countries participate annually in 

competitive and noncompetitive activities in creative problem-solving. Students or teams may participate in the junior division 

(grades 4–6); the middle division (grades 7–9); or the senior division (grades 10–12). FPSPI selects five topics each year, and 

students participate in team problem solving, community problem solving, or scenario writing. The topics for 2008–09 are 

Olympic Games, cyber conflict, space junk, counterfeit economy, and pandemic. 

Destination ImagiNation 

The Destination ImagiNation flagship program is a process-based program that helps young people build lifelong skills in 

creative and critical thinking, teamwork, time management, and problem solving. Up to seven participants work together as a 

team for 8–12 weeks to create their solution to a team challenge, which can have a theatrical, structural, improvisational, 

scientific, or technical focus. Teams also learn and practice quick-thinking skills for the Instant Challenge portion of the 

program. 

Donald J. Treffinger is President of the Center for Creative Learning, Sarasota, Florida; 941-342-9928. 

Total

BY JAMES W. STIGLER AND JAMES HIEBERT 

Editor’s note: The discussions of Japanese and American 

teaching styles in this article are based on a videotape 

study of cl a s s r oom teaching conducted by Pr o fe s s o r 

Stigler in conjunction with the T h i r d Inter n a t i o n a l 

Mathematics and Science Study , 1994-95. The videotape 

study is described in the accompanying article. 

FOR MANY people, family dinners are everyday events. 

They participate in these events without realizing the 

many aspects that are taken for granted. Everyone comes 

to the table and begins eating at about the same time. 

James W.Stigler is a professor of psychology at UCLA and 

c o - a u t h o r , with Harold W. S t eve n s o n , of The Learn i n g 

Gap:Why Our Schools Are Failing and What We Can Learn 

f rom Japanese and Chinese Education ( S u m m i t , 1 9 9 2 ) . 

James Hiebert is H.Rodney Sharp Professor of Education 

at the Univ e rsity of Delaw a re , N ewa rk . Stigler and 

Hiebert’s new book, from which this article is excerpted, 

is called The Teaching Gap. It will be published this sum - 

mer by Free Pr e s s , and the selection here is re p ri n t e d 

with the publ i s h e r ’s perm i s s i o n . F u r ther info rm a t i o n 

about the TIMSS video study on which this ar t i cle is 

based, and about the ne w TIMSS-R video study of math - 

ematics and science teaching in se ven countries, can be 

found at the author s ’ website www. l e s s o n l a b. c o m / 

timss-r). 

WINTER 1998 

AMERICAN FEDERATION OF TEACHERS 

TE AC H I N G 

IS A 

CU LT U R A L 

AC T I V I T Y 

T h e re are no menu s ; the food is brought to the table in 

containers and everyone eats the same things.The food is 

then parceled out by passing the containers around the 

table,with everyone dishing up their own portions.Adults 

often help children with this task. Conversation usually is 

o p e n , with no set age n d a . Comments from eve ryone are 

welcome,and children and adults participate as conversational 

partners. 

Family dinner is a cultural activity. Cultural activities are 

re p resented in cultural scri p t s , ge n e ralized know l e d ge 

about the event that resides in the heads of participants. 

These scripts not only guide behavior, they also tell participants 

what to expect. Within a culture, these scripts are 

widely shared, and therefore they are hard to see. Family 

dinner is such a familiar activity that it sounds strange to 

point out all of its customary fe a t u re s . We ra re ly think 

about how it might be different from the way it is.But, we 

certainly would notice if a feature were violated:We’d be 

surprised at a family dinner, for example, to be offered a 

menu or presented with a check at the end of the meal. 

C u l t u ral scripts are learned implicitly, t h rough observation 

and participation—not by deliberate study. This diffe 

rentiates cultural activities from other endeavo rs .Ta ke , 

for ex a m p l e , the activity of learning to use a computer. 

For older A m e ri c a n s , using the computer is usually not a 

c u l t u ral activity.We learned how to use the computer by 

c o n s c i o u s ly wo rking on our skills—by reading manu a l s ,

taking notes, getting help from ex p e rt s , and pra c t i c i n g . 

Using computers is an interesting example because it is 

rapidly becoming a cultural activity. Children, for example, 

l e a rn natura l ly, by hanging around computers . But there 

still are those for whom learning about computers has the 

distinctly noncultural trait of intentionally and deliberately 

and self-consciously working through the activity. 

Te a ch i n g , in our view, is a cultural activity. 1 It is more 

l i ke eating fa m i ly dinners than using the computer. T h i s 

may be surprising because teaching is rarely thought of in 

this way. Some people think that teaching is an innate 

s k i l l , something you are born with. O t h e rs think that 

t e a ch e rs learn to teach by enrolling in teach e r - t ra i n i n g 

programs. We believe that neither is the best description. 

Teaching, like other cultural activities, is learned through 

i n fo rmal participation over long periods of time. It is 

something one learns to do by growing up in a culture 

rather than by formal study. 

Although most people have not studied to be teachers, 

most people have been students. People within a culture 

share a mental picture of what teaching is like.We call this 

mental picture a script. The script is, in fact, a mental version 

of the teaching patterns we describe briefly in the acc 

o m p a nying art i cl e . The diffe rence is that the pattern s 

we re observable in the videotapes; s c ripts are mental 

models of these patterns.We believe that the existence of 

s c ripts provides an explanation for the fact that the lessons 

within a country fo l l owed distinctive pattern s .T h e 

lessons were designed and taught by teachers who share 

the same scripts. 

It is not hard to see where the scripts come from or 

why they are widely shared.A cultural script for teaching 

begins forming early, sometimes even before children get 

to school. Playing school is a favorite preschool game.As 

children move through twelve years and more of school, 

t h ey fo rm scripts for teach i n g .A ny adult pro b ably could 

enter a cl a s s room tomorrow and act like a teacher because 

all of us share this cultural script.In fact,one of the 

reasons that classrooms run as smoothly as they do is because 

students and teachers have the same script in their 

heads; they know what to expect and what roles to play. 

TE ACHING IS a complex system created by the intera ctions 

of the teach e r, the students, the curri c u l u m , t h e 

local setting, and other fa c t o rs that influence what happens 

in the cl a s s ro o m .The way one component wo rk s — 

s ay the curriculum—depends on the other components in 

the system, s u ch as the teaching methods being used. To 

s ay that teaching is a cultural activity reveals an additional 

t ru t h : C u l t u ral activities, s u ch as teach i n g , do not appear 

f u l l - bl own but rather evo l ve over long periods of time in 

ways that are consistent with the stable web of beliefs and 

assumptions that are part of the culture . The scripts fo r 

t e a ching in each country appear to rest on a re l a t i ve ly 

small and tacit set of core beliefs about the nature of the 

s u b j e c t , h ow students learn , and the role that a teach e r 

should play in the cl a s s ro o m . 2 These beliefs, often implicit, 

s e rve to maintain the stability of cultural systems ove r 

t i m e . Just as fe a t u res of teaching need to be understood in 

t e rms of the underlying systems in which they are embedd 

e d ,so too these systems of teach i n g ,because they are cult 

u ra l ,must be understood in relation to the cultural beliefs 

AMERICAN EDUCATOR 

WINTER 1998 


2 

and assumptions that surround them. 

A good way of looking at these issues is to compare 

American teachers’use of the overhead projector with the 

use of the chalkboard by Japanese teachers.Many teachers 

in the U. S . h ave replaced the ch a l k b o a rd with the ove rhead 

projector, whereas Japanese teachers have not. One 

can see this diffe rence in terms of the diffe rent instru ctional 

systems in which the visual aids are used. In U. S . 

cl a s s rooms visual aids function to guide and control students’ 

attention. Seen in this light, the overhead projector 

is pre fe rred because it gi ves teach e rs a high degree of 

c o n t rol over what students are attending to. Within the 

Japanese system of teach i n g , visual aids serve a diffe re n t 

f u n c t i o n .T h ey are not used to control attention but to 

provide a cumulative record of the lesson’s activities and 

their re s u l t s . Japanese teach e rs do not use the ove r h e a d 

projector because it is not possible to fit the cumulative 

record on an overhead transparency. 

To dig deeper, we must ask why Japanese teachers want 

a cumu l a t i ve re c o rd of the lesson to be ava i l able to students 

and why U.S. teachers want to control students’ att 

e n t i o n . To answer these questions, we need to situate 

these two systems of teaching in the context of cultura l 

beliefs about how students learn and the role the teacher 

can play in this process. 

As we pursue deeper comparisons of teach i n g , we 

focus on Japan and the U. S . because this comparison is 

m o re dramatic than the comparison between U. S . a n d 

G e rman teach e rs , a n d , t h e re fo re , i l l u s t rates well the ro l e 

that beliefs can play in ge n e rating and maintaining cultural 

scripts for teaching. 

THE T Y P I C A L U. S . lesson is consistent with the belief 

that school mathematics is a set of pro c e d u re s .A lthough 

teach e rs may believe that there are other things 

that must be added to these procedures to get the complete 

definition of mathematics, many act as if it is a subject 

that is useful for students,in the end,as a set of procedures 

for solving problems. 

As noted in the accompanying article, we asked teachers 

who participated in the videotape study to identify the 

“main thing” they wanted students to learn from the less 

o n . Sixty-one percent of U. S . t e a ch e rs described s k i l l s : 

They wanted the students to be able to perform a procedure, 

solve a particular kind of problem, and so on. 

M a ny U. S . t e a ch e rs also seem to believe that learn i n g 

terms and practicing skills are not very exciting. We have 

wa t ched them trying to jazz up the lesson and incre a s e 

students’ interest in non-mathematical ways: by being ent 

e rt a i n i n g ; by interrupting the lesson to talk about other 

things,like last night’s local rock concert;or by setting the 

mathematics pro blem in a re a l - l i fe or intriguing contex t , 

s u ch as measuring the circ u m fe rence of a baske t b a l l . 

Teachers act as if the interest must come from outside the 

mathematics. 

Japanese lessons appear to be generated by different beliefs 

about the subject.Teachers act as if mathematics is a 

set of relationships between concepts, fa c t s , and pro c ed 

u re s . These relationships are revealed by deve l o p i n g 

methods to solve problems, studying the methods, working 

toward increasingly efficient methods, and talking explicitly 

about the relationships of interest.

In response to the same question, 73 percent of Japanese 

teach e rs said the main thing they wanted their students 

to learn from the lesson was to think about things 

in a new way, such as seeing new relationships between 

mathematical ideas. 

Japanese teach e rs also act as if mathematics is inhere n t ly 

i n t e re s t i n g ;and they believe that students will be intere s t e d 

in ex p l o ring mathematics by developing new methods fo r 

solving pro bl e m s .The teach e rs seem less concerned ab o u t 

m o t i vating the topics in non-mathematical way s . 

If one believes that mathematics is mostly a set of proc 

e d u res and the goal is to help students become pro ficient 

in executing the procedures, as many U.S. teachers 

seem to believe, then it would be understandable also to 

believe that mathematics is learned best by mastering the 

m a t e rial incre m e n t a l ly, piece by piece. This view of skilll 

e a rning has a long history in the U. S . 3 P ro c e d u res are 

learned by practicing them many times, with subsequent 

exe rcises being slightly more difficult than the exe rc i s e s 

that preceded them. P ractice should be re l a t i ve ly erro r - 

free, with high levels of success at each point. Confusion 

and fru s t ration should be minimized; t h ey are signs that 

the earlier material was not mastered.The more exercises, 

the more smoothly learning will proceed. 

Suppose students are studying how to add and subtract 

f ractions with unlike denominators , s u ch as 2/3 + 4/7. 

These beliefs about learning would say that students 

should fi rst master adding fractions with like denominators,such 

as 1/5 + 2/5;then be shown how to add simple 

f ractions with unlike denominators , s u ch as 1/2 + 1/4, 

being warned about the common error of adding the denominators 

(to minimize this error), before practicing the 

more difficult problems, such as 2/3 + 4/7. 

Japanese teachers appear to hold a different set of beliefs 

about learning and pro b ably would plan a diffe re n t 

kind of lesson for adding fractions.They seem to believe 

that students learn best by first struggling to solve mathematics 

pro bl e m s , then participating in discussions ab o u t 

how to solve them, and then hearing about the pros and 

cons of different methods and the relationships between 

them. Frustration and confusion are taken to be a natural 

p a rt of the process because each person must stru g g l e 

with a situation or problem first in order to make sense of 

the info rmation he or she hears later. C o n s t ructing connections 

between methods and problems is thought to require 

time to explore and invent, to make mistakes, to reflect, 

and to receive the needed information at the appropriate 

time. 4 

What kind of lesson on adding and subtracting fractions 

with unlike denominators would these beliefs generate? A 

t e a ch e r ’s manual in a popular Japanese textbook seri e s 

gives us a clue. 5 It alerts teachers that the error students 

a re most like ly to make is to add the denominators . S t udents 

will learn to understand the process more fully, says 

the manual, if they are allowed to make this mistake and 

then examine the consequences. Some suggestions are 

given for how to help students reflect on the inconsistencies 

they will encounter if they add, for example, 1/2 and 

1/4, and get 2/6. Teachers are to begin the lesson with a 

problem like this and then compare the different methods 

that students develop to solve the pro bl e m . O bv i o u s ly, 

struggling and making mistakes and then seeing why they 


WINTER 1998 


3 

Japanese teachers often 

choose a challenging 

p roblem to begin the lesson. 

a re mistakes is believed to be an essential part of the 

learning process. 

GIVEN THE differences between the U.S. and Japan in 

the apparent beliefs about the subject and learning,it 

is not surprising that there seem to be marked differences 

in beliefs about the role of the teach e r. U. S . t e a ch e rs appear 

to feel re s p o n s i ble for shaping the task into pieces 

that are manageable for most students,providing all the info 

rmation needed to complete the task, and assigning 

plenty of practice.Providing sufficient information means, 

in many cases, demonstrating how to complete a task just 

l i ke those assigned for pra c t i c e . Te a ch e rs act as though 

confusion and fru s t ration are signs that they have not 

done their job.When they notice confusion, they quickly 

assist students by providing whatever information it takes 

to get the students back on track. 

We have seen the fo l l owing event happen over and 

over.Teachers assign students seatwork problems and circulate 

around the room,tutoring and monitoring students’ 

progress. Several students ask, in quick succession, about 

the same pro bl e m . Te a ch e rs interrupt the class and say, 

“Number 23 may be a little confusing. Remember to put 

all the x-terms on one side of the equation and all the yterms 

on the other, and then solve for y. That should give 

the answer.”Teachers in the U.S.try hard to reduce confusion 

by presenting full info rmation about how to solve 

problems. 

Te a ch e rs also take responsibility for keeping students 

engaged and attentive.Given their beliefs about the nature 

of mathematics and how it is learned,moment-by-moment 

attention is cru c i a l . If students are wa t ching the teach e r 

d e m o n s t rate a pro c e d u re , t h ey need to attend to each 

s t e p . If their attention wa n d e rs , t h ey will be lost when 

they try to execute the procedure on their own.Now we 

h ave a deeper explanation for the frequent use of the 

overhead projector by U.S. teachers.The projector’s capability 

of focusing attention fits well with the teachers’ belief 

about teaching mathematics. 

In addition to using the overhead projector, U.S. teachers 

use a variety of other techniques to hold students’ attention.They 

pump up student interest by increasing the 

pace of the activities; by praising students for their work 

and behavior; by the cuteness or real-lifeness of tasks;and 

by their own power of persuasion through their enthusiasm, 

humor, and “coolness.”

Japanese teach e rs appare n t ly believe that they are responsible 

for different aspects of classroom activity.They 

often choose a challenging problem to begin the lesson, 

and they help students understand and re p resent the 

problem so they can begin working on a solution.While 

students are wo rk i n g , the teach e rs monitor the solution 

methods in order to organize the follow-up discussion in 

which students share solutions.The teachers also encourage 

students to keep struggling in the face of diffi c u l t y, 

sometimes offe ring hints to support students’ p ro gre s s . 

R a re ly do teach e rs show students, m i dway through the 

lesson, how to solve the problem. 

Japanese teach e rs lead class discussion, asking questions 

about the solution methods presented, pointing out 

i m p o rtant fe a t u res of students’ m e t h o d s , and pre s e n t i n g 

methods themselve s . Because the teach e rs seem to bel 

i eve that learning mathematics means constructing re l ationships 

between facts,procedures,and ideas,they try to 

c reate a visual re c o rd of these diffe rent methods as the 

lesson proceeds. Apparently, it is not as important for students 

to attend at each moment of the lesson as it is for 

them to be able to go back and think again about earlier 

events and connections between the different parts of the 

lesson.This presents a further explanation of why Japanese 

teachers prefer the chalkboard to the overhead projector—indeed 

of why they cannot use the projector. 

AS A CONSEQU E N C E of their apparent beliefs ab o u t the 

subject, learning, and the teacher’s role, teachers appear 

to hold a set of beliefs about individual diffe re n c e s 

among students. U. S . t e a ch e rs ge n e ra l ly believe that individual 

diffe rences are an obstacle to effe c t i ve teach i n g . 6 

Meeting each student’s needs means, i d e a l ly, d i ag n o s i n g 

each student’s level of performance and providing different 

instruction for different levels.This is not easy to do in 

a large class.As the range of differences increases,the difficulties 

of teaching incre a s e . In simple term s , this is the 

reason for tracking students into separate classes by ability 

or past performance.It is also the reason for reform effo 

rts directed towa rd reducing class size. This belief say s 

that the tutoring situation is best,academically, because ins 

t ruction can be tailored specifi c a l ly for each student or 

small group of students. 

Japanese teach e rs view individual diffe rences as a natural 

ch a ra c t e ristic of a gro u p .T h ey view diffe rences as a res 

o u rce in the mathematics cl a s s , a re s o u rce both for students 

and teach e rs . 7 Individual diffe rences are benefi c i a l 

for the class because they produce a ra n ge of ideas and solution 

methods that provides the material for students’ d i scussion 

and re fl e c t i o n . The va riety of altern a t i ve methods 

a l l ows students to compare them and construct connections 

among them. It is believed that all students benefi t 

f rom the va riety of ideas ge n e rated by their peers . In addit 

i o n ,t a i l o ring instruction to specific students is seen as unfa 

i r ly limiting and as pre - j u d ging what students are capabl e 

of learn i n g : All students should have the opportunity to 

l e a rn the same materi a l . 

For the Japanese teacher, the differences within a group 

are beneficial because they allow a teacher to plan a lesson 

more completely. Japanese teach e rs plan lessons by 

using the info rmation that they and other teach e rs have 

p rev i o u s ly re c o rded about students’ l i ke ly responses to 


WINTER 1998 


4 

particular problems and questions. If the student group is 

sufficiently large,the teachers can be quite sure that these 

same responses will be given by these students.The teachers 

then plan the nature of the discussion that is likely to 

o c c u r. The ra n ge of responses also provides the ve h i cl e 

t e a ch e rs use to meet the needs of diffe rent students. 

Te a ch e rs expect that diffe rent students will unders t a n d 

different methods and will think about the material at different 

levels of sophistication.Not all students will be prepared 

to learn the same things from each lesson, and the 

d i ffe rent methods that are shared allow each student to 

learn some things. 

Another set of beliefs pertains to the significance of the 

cl a s s room lesson. L e s s o n s , of cours e , a re the most common 

form of teaching around the world.Students’ lives in 

most schools are organized around a series of forty-five to 

s i x t y - m i nute periods that they move through in the 

course of a day. But different beliefs about teaching lead to 

treating lessons in quite different ways. 

In Ja p a n , cl a s s room lessons hold a pri v i l e ged place in 

the activities of the school. It would be exaggerating only 

a little to say that lessons are sacre d .T h ey are tre a t e d 

much as we treat lectures in university courses or even religious 

services.A great deal of attention is given to their 

development. 8 They are planned as complete experiences, 

as stories with a begi n n i n g , a middle, and an end. T h e i r 

meaning is found in the connections between the parts.If 

you stay for only the beginning, or leave before the end, 

you miss the point. If lessons like this are going to succ 

e e d , t h ey must be cohere n t . The pieces must relate to 

each other in clear ways.And they must flow, free from int 

e rruptions and unrelated activities. N ow we know why 

Japanese lessons are never interrupted from the outside— 

not by announcements from the public address system, 

not by lunch-count monitors, not by anyone. 

It is quite easy to see how the beliefs about mathemati 

c s , l e a rn i n g , and the role of the teacher lead to tre a t i n g 

lessons in this way. Mathematics is made up of re l a t i o nships 

between ideas, facts, and procedures. To understand 

these re l a t i o n s h i p s , students must analyze mathematical 

problems and the different methods that can be used to 

solve them. Students must struggle with problems first in 

o rder to make sense of later discussions about how to 

s o l ve them and to understand the summary comments 

made by the teacher. So, the lesson must tell a tightly conn 

e c t e d , c o h e rent story ; the teacher must build a visibl e 

re c o rd of the pieces as they unfold so connections between 

them can be drawn;and the lesson cannot be sidetracked 

or broken by interruptions. 

In the United States,lessons are treated diffe re n t ly.This is 

not surprising gi ven the diffe rent beliefs about mathemati 

c s ,l e a rn i n g , and the teach e r.The activities within a lesson 

a re more modular with fewer connections between them. 

P ractice time might be devoted to the pro c e d u res demons 

t rated today, ye s t e rd ay, or last we e k . Because it is believe d 

that learning a pro c e d u re depends large ly on pra c t i c i n g 

the pro c e d u re ,t e m p o ra ry interru p t i o n s ,s u ch as outside int 

rusions or unrelated activities, will not ruin the lesson. 

These distractions might be annoy i n g ,but they just re d u c e 

the number of practice exe rcises for that day.It may not be 

s u r p ri s i n g , t h e n , that we found that more than one-fo u rt h 

of the U. S .lessons we re interrupted in some way.

CULTURAL ACTIVITIES are highly stable over time,and 

they are not easily changed, for two reasons: First,cult 

u ral activities are systems; and systems, e s p e c i a l ly comp 

l ex ones such as teach i n g , can be ve ry difficult to 

change.The second reason is that they are embedded in a 

wider culture, often in ways not readily apparent to memb 

e rs of the culture . If we want to improve teach i n g , we 

must recognize and deal with both its systemic and its cultural 

aspects. 

Teaching systems,like other complex systems, are composed 

of elements that interact and reinforce one another; 

the whole is greater than the sum of the parts.One immediate 

implication of this fact is that it will be diffi c u l t , i f 

not impossible, to improve teaching by changing individual 

elements or features. In a system, all the features reinforce 

each other. If one feature is changed,the system will 

rush to “ repair the damage ,” perhaps by modifying the 

n ew fe a t u re so it functions like the old one did. If all 

t e a ch e rs in the U. S . s t a rted using the ch a l k b o a rd tomorrow, 

rather than the overhead pro j e c t o r, t e a ching wo u l d 

not change much.The chalkboard simply would be used 

to fill the visual aids slot in the teachers’system,and therefore 

would be used just as the overhead projector is—to 

catch and hold students’ attention. 

This point is missed in many popular attempts to reform 

teaching in the U.S.These reforms start with indicat 

o rs , l i ke those we present in the accompanying art i cl e , 

and try to improve teaching by influencing the level of 

the indicator. For example,having found that Japanese and 

German students encounter more advanced mathematics, 

reformers might propose that we present more challenging 

content in our schools. Or, because Japanese teachers 

sw i t ch back and fo rth between cl a s swo rk and seatwo rk 

m o re often than A m e rican teach e rs do, re fo rm e rs might 

propose lessons with shorter classwork and seatwork segm 

e n t s . G e rman and Japanese students do pro o f s , so perhaps 

we should include proofs in our lessons.Educational 

reforms in this country often have been driven by an effort 

to change our performance on quantifiable indicators 

like these. 

Because teaching is a complex system, these attempts 

to change it generally don’t work. It has now been documented 

in several studies that teachers who are asked to 

ch a n ge fe a t u res of their teaching often modify the fe at 

u res to fit within their pre - existing system instead of 

changing the system itself.The system assimilates individual 

changes and swallows them up.Thus,although surface 

features appear to change, the fundamental nature of the 

i n s t ruction does not. When this happens, anticipated imp 

rovements in student learning fail to materi a l i z e , a n d 

everyone wonders why. 9 

AWELL-KNOWN example comes from the “New Math” 

reforms of the 1960s.A major thrust of these reforms 

was ch a n ging the tex t b o o k s . Because most mathematics 

t e a ch e rs re ly quite heav i ly on the tex t b o o k , one might 

think that changing the textbook would change teaching. 

In 1975,after the changes had time to take effect,the National 

A d v i s o ry Committee on Mathematical Education 

commissioned a study of school mathematics instruction. 

The committee concluded that in elementary sch o o l s , 

“Teachers are essentially teaching the same way they were 


WINTER 1998 


5 

taught in school.Almost none of the concepts,methods,or 

big ideas of modern mathematics have appeared.” 10 Even 

textbooks can get swamped by the system. 

A more recent and personal illustration of the stability of 

systems of teaching occurred when one of us was part i c ipating 

with a group of A m e rican teach e rs analyzing videotapes 

of Japanese mathematics instru c t i o n .A fo u rt h - gra d e 

t e a cher decided to shift from his traditional appro a ch to 

m o re of a pro blem-solving appro a ch as shown in the 

Japanese lessons. Instead of asking short - a n swer questions, 

he began his next lesson by presenting a pro blem and asking 

students to spend ten minutes wo rking on a solution. 

Although the teacher ch a n ged his behavior to corre s p o n d 

with the teacher in the videotape, the students, not hav i n g 

wa t ched the video and not having thought about their 

own part i c i p a t i o n , failed to respond like the students on 

the tape.T h ey played their traditional roles and waited to 

be shown how to solve the pro bl e m . The lesson did not 

s u c c e e d .E ven students are part of the system. 

Systems of teaching are much more than the things the 

t e a cher does. T h ey include the physical setting of the 

classroom; the goals of the teacher; the materials, including 

textbooks and district or state objective s ; the ro l e s 

played by the students; the way the school day is scheduled;and 

other factors that influence how teachers teach. 

Changing any one of these individual features is unlikely 

to have the intended effect. 

TRYING TO i m p rove teaching by ch a n ging individual 

fe a t u res usually makes little diffe re n c e , p o s i t i ve or 

negative. But it can backfire and leave things worse than 

b e fo re . When one or two fe a t u res are ch a n ge d , and the 

system tries to run as before, it can operate in a disabled 

state.Geoffrey Saxe and his colleagues at UCLA found that 

when elementary school teach e rs we re asked to teach 

fractions by implementing an innovative curriculum,some 

did so with higher student achievement than a comparison 

traditional program, and some did so with lower student 

achievement. 11 The difference was that the successful 

t e a ch e rs we re provided with info rmation and assistance 

that,in our words,helped them improve their system. The 

less successful teach e rs did not re c e i ve such assistance 

and tried to operate their conventional system with the 

new curriculum.This was not a good fit and did not promote 

students’ l e a rn i n g . The point here is that trying to 

improve by changing individual features is not just ineffective;it 

is downright risky. 

B o m b a rding teach e rs with waves of ineffe c t i ve re fo rm s 

can have another dow n s i d e :Te a ch e rs can grow we a ry.T h ey 

a re asked over and over to ch a n ge the way they do x, y, or z. 

E ven when they try to accommodate the re fo rm e rs and 

adopt a new fe a t u re or two , nothing mu ch happens.T h ey 

do not notice mu ch improvement in students’ l e a rn i n g .A lthough 

it may feel to teach e rs as though they are ch a n gi n g , 

the basic system is running essentially as it did befo re .A lways 

ch a n gi n g ,and yet staying the same, is a discouragi n g 

state of affa i rs . It can lead to a defeatist kind of cynicism. 

“Not another re fo rm ,” s ays the ve t e ran teach e r.“ I ’ll just wa i t 

this one out.” Q u i ck fi xes that focus on ch a n ging individual 

fe a t u res leave behind a skeptical teaching corps. 

The fact that teaching is cultural further complicates and 

impedes effo rts to ch a n ge it.The widely shared cultural be-

The more widely shared 

a belief is, the less likely 

it is to be questioned, 

or even noticed. 

liefs and expectations that underlie teaching are so fully int 

e grated into teach e rs ’ wo r l d v i ews that they fail to see 

them as mu t abl e . The more widely shared a belief is, t h e 

less like ly it is to be questioned, or even noticed.This tends 

to naturalize the most common aspects of teach i n g , to the 

point that teach e rs fail to see altern a t i ves to what they are 

doing in the cl a s s ro o m , thinking that this is just the way 

things are . E ven if someone wanted to ch a n ge , things that 

seem this natural are perc e i ved as unch a n ge abl e . It is no 

wonder that the way we teach has not ch a n ged mu ch fo r 

m a ny ye a rs . Is it impossible to ch a n ge? We don’t think so. 

But we must be sure that our effo rts to improve are approp 

riate for ch a n ging c u l t u ra l a c t i v i t i e s . If teaching we re a 

n o n c u l t u ral activity, then we could try to improve it simply 

by providing better info rmation in teach e rs ’ m a nu a l s , o r 

asking ex p e rts to demonstrate better tech n i q u e s ,or distri buting 

written recommendations on more effe c t i ve teaching 

methods. N o t i c e : This is ex a c t ly what we have been 

d o i n g .We have been acting as though teaching is a noncult 

u ral activity. 

If we took seri o u s ly the notion that teaching is a cultura l 

a c t i v i t y, we would begin the improvement process by becoming 

more awa re of the cultural scripts that we are 

u s i n g . This re q u i res comparing scri p t s , seeing that other 

s c ripts are possibl e , and noticing things about our ow n 

s c ript that we had never seen befo re . Becoming more 

awa re of the scripts we use helps us see that they come 

f rom choices we make . The choices may be unders t a n dabl 

e , but still they are ch o i c e s , a n d , once awa re of them, 

other choices can be made. 

Improving cultural scripts for teaching is a dramatically 

different approach than improving the skills of individual 

teachers. But it is the approach called for if teaching is a 

c u l t u ral activity. No matter how good our teach e rs are , 

they will only be as effective as the script they are using. 

To improve teaching over the long run, we must improve 

the script. 

( N o t e : In the three chapters that conclude The Te a ch i n g 

G a p , Stigler and Hiebert discuss how teachers can become 

awa r e of the cultural scripts that influence their 

teaching and take steps to alter them. The author s ’s u ggestions 

have a good deal in common with ideas 

about pr o fessional development discussed in the ar t icles 

by Catherine Lewis and Ineko Tsuchida and by A nt 

h o ny A l va ra d o , which fo l l ow. ) 

E n d n o t e s 


WINTER 1998 


6 

1 Ronald Gallimore makes many of these same points in a 1996 

ch a p t e r, “ C l a s s rooms are just another cultural activity.” In D. L . 

Speece & B.K. Keogh (Eds.), Research on classroom ecologies:Im - 

plications for inclusion of children with learning disabilities (pp. 

229-250). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum. 

2 The same categories of core beliefs have been suggested by other 

re s e a rch e rs . S e e , for ex a m p l e , G ri ffi n , S . , & Case, R . ( 1 9 9 7 ) .“ R e - 

thinking the primary school math curriculum:An approach based 

on cognitive science.” Issues in Education, 3(1),1-49;Thompson,A. 

G. ( 1 9 9 2 ) . Te a ch e rs ’ beliefs and conceptions: A synthesis of res 

e a rch . In D. A . G rouws (Ed.), Handbook of r e s e a rch on mathematics 

teaching and learning (pp. 127-146). New York: Macmillan. 

3 T h e re is a strong A m e rican tradition in behav i o rist psych o l o gy, a 

psychology that addresses,most directly, issues of skill learning.Beh 

av i o ri s m , or connectionism, was developed most fully by E. L . 

Thorndike in the early 1900s and elaborated in different ways by B. 

F. Skinner and R. M. Gagne. 

4 The psychology of learning that underlies this approach is familiar 

in the U. S . , but it is not the psych o l o gy that has taken hold in 

eve ry d ay teaching in the U. S . S e e , for ex a m p l e , the writings of J. 

Dewey and J. Piaget and numerous recent works that have elaborated 

these ideas. 

5 Kyo s h i yo shidosho: S h o g a k ko sansu 5 nen (Te a c h e r ’s guidebook: 

Elementary mathematics 5th-grade) (1991). Gakkotosho:Tokyo. 

6 One item on the questionnaire gi ven to U. S . e i g h t h - grade mathematics 

teachers in the TIMSS sample asked them to select,among 

sixteen choices, those that limited their effectiveness in the classroom.The 

second most frequent choice,just behind lack of student 

interest, was the range of abilities among students in the same class 

(selected by 45 percent of the respondents).See also a survey of its 

members by the American Federation of Teachers, reported in the 

Spring 1996 (Volume 20,Number 1) issue of American Educator , 

pages 18-21. 

7 See the following article for an analysis of how the variety of student 

responses in a Japanese cl a s s room benefits the whole cl a s s : 

Hatano, G.,& Inagaki,K.(1991).“Sharing cognition through collective 

comprehension activity.” In Resnick,L.B. Levine, J.M. & Teasley, 

S . D. ( E d s . ) , Pe rs p e c t i ves on socially shared cognition ( p p . 3 3 1 - 

348).Washington, DC:APA. 

8 L ew i s , C . , & T s u ch i d a , I . ( 1 9 9 7 ) . “Planned educational ch a n ge in 

Japan:The case of elementary science instruction.” Journal of Edu - 

cational Polic y, 12, 313-331; Sasaki,Akira (1997) Jugyo kenkyu no 

kadai to jissen (Issues and implementation of lesson study ) . 

Kioiku kaihatsu kenkyujo: Tokyo. 

9 Cohen, D. (1996).“Standards-based school reform: Policy, practice, 

and perfo rm a n c e .” In Ladd, H F. ( E d . ) . , Holding schools accountabl 

e : Pe r fo rmance-based r e fo rm in education. Wa s h i n g t o n , D C : 

Brookings Institution;Guthrie, J.W. (Ed.) (1990). Educational and 

Policy Analysis, 12 (3), Special Issue. 

10 Conference Board of the Mathematical Sciences (1975). Overview 

and analysis of school mathematics, K-12. p.77 Washington,DC: 

Author. 

11 S a xe , G. B . , G e a r h a rt , M . , & Daw s o n , V. ( 1 9 9 6 ) . “When can educational 

reforms make a difference? The influence of curriculum and 

t e a cher pro fessional development pro grams on ch i l d re n ’s understanding 

fractions.” Unpublished paper.

The TIMSS Videotape Study 

BY JAMES W. STIGLER AND JAMES HIEBERT 

THE VIDEO study that we conducted as a part of the 

Third International Mathematics and Science Study 

(TIMSS) collected samples of classroom instruction from 

231 eighth-grade math cl a s s rooms in Germ a ny, Ja p a n , 

and the United States. It was the first time anyone had 

videotaped classroom instruction from nationally representative 

samples of teachers. 

The study was a test run to allow us to see whether 

s u ch a study would be fe a s i ble on a large scale. In the 

m e a n t i m e , we hoped to get insight into what actually 

goes on inside the eighth-grade math cl a s s rooms in 

these three countries. It is relatively easy to gather data 

about classroom input by looking at curricula and textbooks 

and to get an idea about results from test scores. 

However, the classes themselves have been a black box; 

we have had little or no information about the process 

of teach i n g . Once coded and analy z e d , the videotapes 

opened a new window on classroom practice. Furtherm 

o re , t h ey revealed some fascinating national diffe rences 

in a number of areas, including the following: 

■ The way the lessons are structured and delivered 

■The kind of mathematics taught 

■The kind of thinking students engage in during the lessons 

■ The way teachers view reform 

P ro c e d u re s 

We videotaped each classroom one time,on a date convenient 

for the teacher. In order to discourage teachers 

from making special preparations for the videotaped less 

o n , we issued instructions telling them that our go a l 

was to capture a typical lesson and that we wa n t e d 

them to show us ex a c t ly what they would have done 

had we not been videotaping. 

In addition to the data from the videotapes, we collected 

responses to a questionnaire and some supplem 

e n t a ry materi a l s — for ex a m p l e , copies of tex t b o o k 

p ages or wo rk s h e e t s . The questionnaire asked teach e rs 

to describe the goal of the lesson, its place within the 

current sequence of lessons,how typical the lesson was, 

and whether teachers had used methods recommended 

by current reforms. 

Lessons: Structure and Delivery 

1. Lesson Goals 

To evaluate a cl a s s room mathematics lesson, you mu s t 

first know what the teacher was trying to accomplish. 

We asked teachers,on the questionnaire,to tell us what 

t h ey “ wanted students to learn ” f rom the lessons we 

videotaped.Most of the answers fell into one of two categories: 

100 

80 

60 

40 

20 

0 

FIGURE 1 

Teachers’ descriptions of the lesson goal 

Skills—These answe rs focused on students being 

able to do something:perform a procedure,solve a 

specific type of problem. 

Thinking—These answe rs focused on students 

being able to u n d e r stand mathematical concepts 

or ideas. 

As the graph indicates, Japanese teachers focused on 

thinking and unders t a n d i n g ; G e rman and U. S . t e a ch e rs 

on skills.These different goals led Japanese teachers to 

construct their lessons in a different way from U.S. and 

German teachers. 

2. Lesson Scripts 


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7 

55 

25 

61 

Germany Japan U.S. 

The videotaped lessons revealed a clear distinction bet 

ween the “ s c ript”—the underlying pattern or template—used 

by Japanese teachers as they create a lesson 

and the scripts used by German and U.S.teachers.These 

d i ffe rent scripts fo l l ow from the diffe rent instru c t i o n a l 

goals, and they are probably based on different assumptions 

about the role of problem solving in the lesson,the 

way students learn from instru c t i o n , and what the 

proper role of the teacher should be. 

U.S. and German lessons tend to have two phases. In 

the first or acquisition phase, the teacher demonstrates 

and/or explains how to solve a sample problem.The explanation 

might be purely procedural (this is what most 

often happens in the U.S.) or it might include developing 

concepts (this is more often the case in Germany). 

S t i l l , the goal in both countries is to teach students a 

method of solving the sample problem.In the second or 

application phase, students practice solving similar examples 

on their own while the teacher helps individual 

students who are having difficulty. 

Japanese lessons ge n e ra l ly fo l l ow a diffe rent scri p t . 

31 

73 

Skills Thinking 

22

P ro blem solving comes fi rs t , fo l l owed by a time in 

which students share the methods for solving the problem 

that they have found on their own or in small 

gro u p s . So while students in U. S . and German cl a s srooms 

are expected to fo l l ow the teacher as she leads 

them through the solution of a sample problem or problems, 

Japanese students have a different job.They must 

invent their own solutions and then reflect together on 

those solutions in an attempt to increase their understanding 

of various ways to approach a problem. 

3. Cohere n c e 

Students are more likely to make sense of a lesson that is 

coherent.When we compared U.S.lessons with those in 

G e rm a ny and Ja p a n , we found the A m e rican to be less 

coherent by several criteria. First,American lessons contained 

signifi c a n t ly more topics than Japanese lessons, 

and significantly more topic segments than both Japanese 

and German lessons. 

3 

2 

1 

0 

1.6 1.6 

FIGURE 2 

1.3 1.2 

Topics 

Topic Segments 

1.9 2.3 


Mean number of topics and 

topic segments per lesson 

S e c o n d , when ch a n ging from one topic or segment to 

a n o t h e r,A m e rican teach e rs we re less like ly than Ja p a n e s e 

t e a ch e rs to make a transition linking the diffe rent part s 

of the lesson. 

T h i rd, A m e rican teach e rs devoted signifi c a n t ly more 

time during the lesson to irre l evant dive rsions such as 

discussing last night’s ro ck concert or an upcoming fi e l d 

t rip than German or Japanese teach e rs . Depending when 

these dive rsions occur, t h ey can we a ken the cohere n c e 

of the lesson. 

Finally, American lessons were more frequently interrupted 

by outside events, such as PA announcements or 

visitors.Lessons were halted by such interruptions in 28 

percent of American lessons, 13 percent of German lessons, 

and zero percent of Japanese lessons. 

4. Homework During the Lesson 

Another cross-national diffe rence revealed by the videotaped 

lessons was in the role of homewo rk .The gra p h 

b e l ow shows the perc e n t age of lessons in which students 

rev i ewed and shared homewo rk in class and the perc e n tage 

in which they wo rked on their homewo rk for the next 

day. 

60 

40 

20 


WINTER 1998 


8 

0 

FIGURE 3 

Work on Homework 

Share Homework 

Percentage of lessons in which class worked 

on or shared homework 

Japanese students never wo rked on the next day ’s 

homework during class and rarely shared homework results.Both 

German and American students shared homework 

frequently, but only American students commonly 

spent time in class wo rking on the next day ’s homework.When 

we calculated the total percentage of time 

during the lesson that was devoted to assigning, working 

on, or sharing homework we got a similar result: Only 2 

p e rcent of lesson time in Japan invo l ved homewo rk in 

any way, compared with 8 percent in Germany and 11 

percent in the United States. 

The Kind of Mathematics Ta u g h t 

1. Level of the Mathematics 

Although it is not possibl e ,a pri o ri ,to say that one mathematical 

topic is more complex than another, looking at 

w h e re a topic appears in mathematics curricula aro u n d 

the world shows how advanced the topic is ge n e ra l ly cons 

i d e red to be. This is what ex p e rts from fo rty-one count 

ries did in order to establish a TIMSS math fra m ewo rk . 

12 

10 

8 

6 

4 

2 

38 

0 

10 

FIGURE 4 

25 


37 


Average grade-level content of lessons

When we coded our videotapes, we used the T I M S S 

f ra m ewo rk and we re thus able to compare the topics 

taught with the international ave rage . By intern a t i o n a l 

standards,the mathematical content of U.S. lessons was, 

on ave rage , at a seve n t h - grade leve l , w h e reas Germ a n 

and Japanese lessons fell in the high eighth-grade or low 

ninth-grade levels. 

2. Nature of the Mathematics 

The videotaped lessons also revealed that the nature of 

the content differed across countries. For example,most 

mathematics lessons include some mixture of concepts 

and the application of those concepts to solving pro bl 

e m s . H ow concepts are pre s e n t e d , h oweve r, va ries a 

great deal. T h ey might simply be stated, as in “ t h e 

P y t h ago rean theorem states that a 2 + b 2 = c 2 ” or they 

might be developed and derived over the course of the 

l e s s o n . The graph shows the perc e n t age of topics in 

e a ch lesson that contained concepts that we re deve loped 

and the percent that were only stated. 

Although constructing proofs and reasoning deductively 

a re important aspects of mathematics, A m e rican students 

lacked opportunities to engage in these kinds of 

activities.None of the U.S.lessons that we videotaped included 

pro o f s , w h e reas 10 percent of German lessons 

and 53 percent of the Japanese lessons included proofs. 

100 

80 

60 

40 

20 

0 

23 

77 

FIGURE 5 

Average percentage of topics per lesson 

containing concepts that were stated 

and concepts that were developed 

3. Quality of Mathematical Content 

As part of the video study, we asked an independent 

group of American college mathematics teachers to evaluate 

the quality of mathematical content in a representat 

i ve selection of the video lessons. Basing their judgments 

on detailed written descri p t i o n s , t h ey ex a m i n e d 

t h i rty lessons from each country. In order to decre a s e 

the likelihood of bias, we deleted information that might 

identify the country in which a lesson took place. T h e 

gro u p ’s judgments are summarized in the fo l l ow i n g 

graph. 

17 

83 

78 


Stated Developed 

22 

100 

80 

60 

40 

20 


WINTER 1998 


9 

0 

FIGURE 6 

Percentage of lessons with content 

of low, medium, or high quality 

W h e reas 39 percent of the Japanese lessons and 28 

p e rcent of the German lessons re c e i ved the highest ra ti 

n g , none of the U. S . lessons re c e i ved the highest ra t i n g . 

F u rt h e rm o re ,89 percent of U. S .lessons re c e i ved the lowest 

ra t i n g ,c o m p a red with 11 percent of Japanese lessons. 

Students’ Thinking 

1. Tasks During Seatwork 

When we examined the kind of work students engaged 

in during the lesson, we found a strong resemblance between 

Germany and the U.S.Three types of work were 

coded in the video study: 

■ Practicing routine procedures 

Low Medium High 

■ Applying concepts to novel situations 

■ Inventing new solution methods/thinking 

100 

80 

60 

40 

20 

0 

34 38 

28 

11 

51 

FIGURE 7 

39 

89 


89 

6 4 

41 

15 

44 

Practice Procedure 

Apply Concept 

Invent/Think 

11 

96 

Average percentage of seatwork time 

spent working on three kinds of tasks 

0 

4 1 

Germany Japan U.S.

Approximately 90 percent of student working time in 

G e rm a ny and the U. S . was spent in practicing ro u t i n e 

procedures, compared with 41 percent in Japan. Japanese 

students spent nearly half their time inventing new 

solutions and attempting to grapple with mathematical 

concepts. 

2. Alternative Methods for Solving Pro b l e m s 

We also we re interested in the frequency with which 

students were exposed to alternative methods of solving 

p ro bl e m s . We distinguished two types of altern a t i ve 

methods—those presented by the teach e r, and those 

generated by the students. 

As shown on the graph below, 42 percent of Japanese 

lessons contained student-ge n e rated altern a t i ve methods, 

more than twice as many as German (14 percent) 

or U. S . ( o n ly 8 percent) lessons. The perc e n t age of 

teacher-presented alternative methods did not differ significantly 

in the three countries. 

50 

40 

30 

20 

10 

0 

12 14 

FIGURE 8 

Percentage of lessons including 

teacher-presented and student-generated 

alternative solution methods 

Teachers’ View of Reform 

U.S. teachers believe that they are implementing current 

reform ideas in their classrooms.When asked specifically 

to evaluate their videotaped lesson, almost three-fourths 

of the American teachers rated it as reasonably in accord 

“a lot” or “a fair amount” with current ideas about the 

teaching and learning of mathematics.They were more 

than twice as likely to respond this way than either the 

Japanese or the German teachers. 

7 

42 

19 


Teacher 

Student 

8 

80 

60 

40 

20 


WINTER 1998 


10 

0 

0 

63 

37 

0 

FIGURE 9 

26 

Not at All 

A Little 

A Fair Amount 

A Lot 

Teachers’ ratings of their videotaped lessons 

in terms of current ideas 

Teachers who said that the videotaped lesson was in 

accord with current ideas about the teaching and learning 

of mathematics we re asked to justify their responses.Although 

the range and variety of responses to 

this question were great, the vast majority of American 

teachers’ responses pointed to surface features, such as 

the use of real-world problems, manipulatives, or cooperative 

learning, rather than to the deeper characteristics 

of instruction such as the depth of understanding developed 

by their students. 

The findings of the video study suggest that wri t t e n 

reports that are disseminated to teachers may have little 

impact on practices in the cl a s s ro o m . One reason fo r 

this may be that teachers do not have widely shared und 

e rstanding of what such terms as “ p ro blem solving” 

m e a n , leading to idiosyncratic interpretations in the 

cl a s s ro o m . Video examples of high-quality instru c t i o n 

tied to descriptions of what quality instruction should 

look like may help, in the future, to solve this problem. 

Of course,not all teachers in these three countries follow 

the “script” sketched here, and not all lessons take 

the forms we have described. But what is striking,viewing 

the videotapes, is how many of the lessons display 

common national—or perhaps we should say cultural— 

patterns. 

60 

14 

0 

7 

23 

43 


27

EDUCATIONAL LEADERSHIP-September 2003 

The Key to Classroom Management 

By using research-based strategies combining appropriate levels of 

dominance and cooperation and an awareness of student needs, 

teachers can build positive classroom dynamics. 

Robert J. Marzano and Jana S. Marzano 

Today, we know more about teaching than we ever have before. Research has 

shown us that teachers' actions in their classrooms have twice the impact on 

student achievement as do school policies regarding curriculum, assessment, 

staff collegiality, and community involvement (Marzano, 2003a). We also know 

that one of the classroom teacher's most important jobs is managing the 

classroom effectively. 

A comprehensive literature review by Wang, Haertel, and Walberg (1993) 

amply demonstrates the importance of effective classroom management. These 

researchers analyzed 86 chapters from annual research reviews, 44 handbook 

chapters, 20 government and commissioned reports, and 11 journal articles to 

produce a list of 228 variables affecting student achievement. They combined 

the results of these analyses with the findings from 134 separate metaanalyses. 

Of all the variables, classroom management had the largest effect on 

student achievement. This makes intuitive sense—students cannot learn in a 

chaotic, poorly managed classroom. 

Research not only supports the importance of classroom management, but it 

also sheds light on the dynamics of classroom management. Stage and Quiroz's 

meta-analysis (1997) shows the importance of there being a balance between 

teacher actions that provide clear consequences for unacceptable behavior and 

teacher actions that recognize and reward acceptable behavior. Other 

researchers (Emmer, Evertson, & Worsham, 2003; Evertson, Emmer, & 

Worsham, 2003) have identified important components of classroom 

management, including beginning the school year with a positive emphasis on 

management; arranging the room in a way conducive to effective 

management; and identifying and implementing rules and operating 

procedures. 

In a recent meta-analysis of more than 100 studies (Marzano, 2003b), we 

found that the quality of teacher-student relationships is the keystone for all 

other aspects of classroom management. In fact, our meta-analysis indicates 

that on average, teachers who had high-quality relationships with their 

students had 31 percent fewer discipline problems, rule violations, and related 

problems over a year's time than did teachers who did not have high-quality 

relationships with their students. 

What are the characteristics of effective teacher-student relationships? Let's 

first consider what they are not. Effective teacher-student relationships have

nothing to do with the teacher's personality or even with whether the students 

view the teacher as a friend. Rather, the most effective teacher-student 

relationships are characterized by specific teacher behaviors: exhibiting 

appropriate levels of dominance; exhibiting appropriate levels of cooperation; 

and being aware of high-needs students. 

Appropriate Levels of Dominance 

Wubbels and his colleagues (Wubbels, Brekelmans, van Tartwijk, & Admiral, 

1999; Wubbels & Levy, 1993) identify appropriate dominance as an important 

characteristic of effective teacher-student relationships. In contrast to the more 

negative connotation of the term dominance as forceful control or command 

over others, they define dominance as the teacher's ability to provide clear 

purpose and strong guidance regarding both academics and student behavior. 

Studies indicate that when asked about their preferences for teacher behavior, 

students typically express a desire for this type of teacher-student interaction. 

For example, in a study that involved interviews with more than 700 students 

in grades 4–7, students articulated a clear preference for strong teacher 

guidance and control rather than more permissive types of teacher behavior 

(Chiu & Tulley, 1997). Teachers can exhibit appropriate dominance by 

establishing clear behavior expectations and learning goals and by exhibiting 

assertive behavior. 

Establish Clear Expectations and Consequences 

Teachers can establish clear expectations for behavior in two ways: by 

establishing clear rules and procedures, and by providing consequences for 

student behavior. 

The seminal research of the 1980s (Emmer, 1984; Emmer, Sanford, Evertson, 

Clements, & Martin, 1981; Evertson & Emmer, 1982) points to the importance 

of establishing rules and procedures for general classroom behavior, group 

work, seat work, transitions and interruptions, use of materials and equipment, 

and beginning and ending the period or the day. Ideally, the class should 

establish these rules and procedures through discussion and mutual consent by 

teacher and students (Glasser, 1969, 1990). 

Along with well-designed and clearly communicated rules and procedures, the 

teacher must acknowledge students' behavior, reinforcing acceptable behavior 

and providing negative consequences for unacceptable behavior. Stage and 

Quiroz's research (1997) is instructive. They found that teachers build effective 

relationships through such strategies as the following: 

Using a wide variety of verbal and physical reactions to students' 

misbehavior, such as moving closer to offending students and using a 

physical cue, such as a finger to the lips, to point out inappropriate 

behavior.

Cuing the class about expected behaviors through prearranged signals, 

such as raising a hand to indicate that all students should take their 

seats. 

Providing tangible recognition of appropriate behavior—with tokens or 

chits, for example. 

Employing group contingency policies that hold the entire group 

responsible for behavioral expectations. 

Employing home contingency techniques that involve rewards and 

sanctions at home. 

Establish Clear Learning Goals 

Teachers can also exhibit appropriate levels of dominance by providing clarity 

about the content and expectations of an upcoming instructional unit. 

Important teacher actions to achieve this end include 

Establishing and communicating learning goals at the beginning of a unit 

of instruction. 

Providing feedback on those goals. 

Continually and systematically revisiting the goals. 

Providing summative feedback regarding the goals. 

The use of rubrics can help teachers establish clear goals. To illustrate, assume 

that a teacher has identified the learning goal "understanding and using 

fractions" as important for a given unit. That teacher might present students 

with the following rubric: 

4 points. You understand the characteristics of fractions along with 

the different types. You can accurately describe how fractions are 

related to decimals and percentages. You can convert fractions to 

decimals and can explain how and why the process works. You can 

use fractions to understand and solve different types of problems. 

3 points. You understand the basic characteristics of fractions. You 

know how fractions are related to decimals and percentages. You can 

convert fractions to decimals. 

2 points. You have a basic understanding of the following, but have 

some small misunderstandings about one or more: the 

characteristics of fractions; the relationships among fractions, 

decimals, and percentages; how to convert fractions to decimals. 

1 point. You have some major problems or misunderstandings with 

one or more of the following: the characteristics of fractions; the 

relationships among fractions, decimals, and percentages; how to 


0 points. You may have heard of the following before, but you do not 

understand what they mean: the characteristics of fractions; the

elationships among fractions, decimals, and percentages; how to 


The clarity of purpose provided by this rubric communicates to students that 

their teacher can provide proper guidance and direction in academic content. 

Exhibit Assertive Behavior 

Teachers can also communicate appropriate levels of dominance by exhibiting 

assertive behavior. According to Emmer and colleagues, assertive behavior is 

the ability to stand up for one's legitimate rights in ways that make it 

less likely that others will ignore or circumvent them. (2003, p. 146) 

Assertive behavior differs significantly from both passive behavior and 

aggressive behavior. These researchers explain that teachers display assertive 

behavior in the classroom when they 

Use assertive body language by maintaining an erect posture, facing the 

offending student but keeping enough distance so as not to appear 

threatening and matching the facial expression with the content of the 

message being presented to students. 

Use an appropriate tone of voice, speaking clearly and deliberately in a 

pitch that is slightly but not greatly elevated from normal classroom 

speech, avoiding any display of emotions in the voice. 

Persist until students respond with the appropriate behavior. Do not 

ignore an inappropriate behavior; do not be diverted by a student 

denying, arguing, or blaming, but listen to legitimate explanations. 

Appropriate Levels of Cooperation 

Cooperation is characterized by a concern for the needs and opinions of others. 

Although not the antithesis of dominance, cooperation certainly occupies a 

different realm. Whereas dominance focuses on the teacher as the driving force 

in the classroom, cooperation focuses on the students and teacher functioning 

as a team. The interaction of these two dynamics—dominance and 

cooperation—is a central force in effective teacher-student relationships. 

Several strategies can foster appropriate levels of cooperation. 

Provide Flexible Learning Goals 

Just as teachers can communicate appropriate levels of dominance by providing 

clear learning goals, they can also convey appropriate levels of cooperation by 

providing flexible learning goals. Giving students the opportunity to set their 

own objectives at the beginning of a unit or asking students what they would 

like to learn conveys a sense of cooperation. Assume, for example, that a 

teacher has identified the topic of fractions as the focus of a unit of instruction 

and has provided students with a rubric. The teacher could then ask students to 

identify some aspect of fractions or a related topic that they would particularly 

like to study. Giving students this kind of choice, in addition to increasing their

understanding of the topic, conveys the message that the teacher cares about 

and tries to accommodate students' interests. 

Take a Personal Interest in Students 

Probably the most obvious way to communicate appropriate levels of 

cooperation is to take a personal interest in each student in the class. As 

McCombs and Whisler (1997) note, all students appreciate personal attention 

from the teacher. Although busy teachers—particularly those at the secondary 

level—do not have the time for extensive interaction with all students, some 

teacher actions can communicate personal interest and concern without taking 

up much time. Teachers can 

Talk informally with students before, during, and after class about their 

interests. 

Greet students outside of school—for instance, at extracurricular events 

or at the store. 

Single out a few students each day in the lunchroom and talk with them. 

Be aware of and comment on important events in students' lives, such as 

participation in sports, drama, or other extracurricular activities. 

Compliment students on important achievements in and outside of 

school. 

Meet students at the door as they come into class; greet each one by 

name. 

Use Equitable and Positive Classroom Behaviors 

Programs like Teacher Expectations and Student Achievement emphasize the 

importance of the subtle ways in which teachers can communicate their interest 

in students (Kerman, Kimball, & Martin, 1980). This program recommends 

many practical strategies that emphasize equitable and positive classroom 

interactions with all students. Teachers should, for example, 

Make eye contact with each student. Teachers can make eye contact by 

scanning the entire room as they speak and by freely moving about all 

sections of the room. 

Deliberately move toward and stand close to each student during the 

class period. Make sure that the seating arrangement allows the teacher 

and students clear and easy ways to move around the room. 

Attribute the ownership of ideas to the students who initiated them. For 

instance, in a discussion a teacher might say, "Cecilia just added to Aida's 

idea by saying that . . . ." 

Allow and encourage all students to participate in class discussions and 

interactions. Make sure to call on students who do not commonly 

participate, not just those who respond most frequently.

Provide appropriate wait time for all students to respond to questions, 

regardless of their past performance or your perception of their abilities. 

Awareness of High-Needs Students 

Classroom teachers meet daily with a broad cross-section of students. In 

general, 12–22 percent of all students in school suffer from mental, emotional, 

or behavioral disorders, and relatively few receive mental health services 

(Adelman & Taylor, 2002). The Association of School Counselors notes that 18 

percent of students have special needs and require extraordinary interventions 

and treatments that go beyond the typical resources available to the classroom 

(Dunn & Baker, 2002). 

Although the classroom teacher is certainly not in a position to directly address 

such severe problems, teachers with effective classroom management skills are 

aware of high-needs students and have a repertoire of specific techniques for 

meeting some of their needs (Marzano, 2003b). Figure 1 (p. 10) summarizes 

five categories of high-needs students and suggests classroom strategies for 

each category and subcategory. 

Passive students fall into two subcategories: those who fear relationships 

and those who fear failure. Teachers can build strong relationships with 

these students by refraining from criticism, rewarding small successes, 

and creating a classroom climate in which students feel safe from 

aggressive people. 

The category of aggressive students comprises three subcategories: 

hostile, oppositional, and covert. Hostile students often have poor anger 

control, low capacity for empathy, and an inability to see the 

consequences of their actions. Oppositional students exhibit milder forms 

of behavior problems, but they consistently resist following rules, argue 

with adults, use harsh language, and tend to annoy others. Students in 

the covert subcategory may be quite pleasant at times, but they are often 

nearby when trouble starts and they never quite do what authority 

figures ask of them. Strategies for helping aggressive students include 

creating behavior contracts and providing immediate rewards and 

consequences. Most of all, teachers must keep in mind that aggressive 

students, although they may appear highly resistant to behavior change, 

are still children who are experiencing a significant amount of fear and 

pain. 

Students with attention problems fall into two categories: hyperactive and 

inattentive. These students may respond well when teachers contract 

with them to manage behaviors; teach them basic concentration, study, 

and thinking skills; help them divide tasks into manageable parts; reward 

their successes; and assign them a peer tutor. 

Students in the perfectionist category are driven to succeed at 

unattainable levels. They are self-critical, have low self-esteem, and feel 

inferior. Teachers can often help these students by encouraging them to

develop more realistic standards, helping them to accept mistakes, and 

giving them opportunities to tutor other students. 

Socially inept students have difficulty making and keeping friends. They 

may stand too close and touch others in annoying ways, talk too much, 

and misread others' comments. Teachers can help these students by 

counseling them about social behaviors. 

Figure 1. Categories of High-Needs Students 

Category Definitions 

Source 

& 

Passive 

Aggressive 

Behavior that avoids the 

domination of others or 

the pain of negative 

experiences. The child 

attempts to protect self 

from criticism, ridicule, or 

rejection, possibly 

reacting to abuse and 

neglect. Can have a 

biochemical basis, such as 

anxiety. 

Behavior that overpowers, 

dominates, harms, or 

controls others without 

regard for their wellbeing. 

The child has often 

taken aggressive people 

as role models. Has had 

minimal or ineffective 

limits set on behavior. Is 

possibly reacting to abuse 

and neglect. Condition 

may have a biochemical 

basis, such as depression. 

Characteristics Suggestions 

Fear of relationships: Avoids 

connection with others, is shy, 

doesn't initiate conversations, 

attempts to be invisible. 

Fear of failure: Gives up 

easily, is convinced he or she 

can't succeed, is easily 

frustrated, uses negative selftalk. 

Hostile: Rages, threatens, or 

intimidates others. Can be 

verbally or physically abusive 

to people, animals, or objects. 

Oppositional: Does opposite 

of what is asked. Demands 

that others agree or give in. 

Resists verbally or nonverbally. 

Covert: Appears to agree but 

then does the opposite of what 

is asked. Often acts innocent 

while setting up problems for 

others. 

Provide safe adult and peer 

interactions and protection 

from aggressive people. 

Provide assertiveness and 

positive self-talk training. 

Reward small successes 

quickly. Withhold criticism. 

Describe the student's 

behavior clearly. Contract 

with the student to reward 

corrected behavior and set 

up consequences for 

uncorrected behavior. Be 

consistent and provide 

immediate rewards and 

consequences. Encourage 

and acknowledge 

extracurricular activities in 

and out of school. Give 

student responsibilities to 

help teacher or other 

students to foster 

successful experiences.

Attention 

problems 

Perfectionist 

Socially 

inept 

Behavior that 

demonstrates either motor 

or attentional difficulties 

resulting from a 

neurological disorder. The 

child's symptoms may be 

exacerbated by family or 

social stressors or 

biochemical conditions, 

such as anxiety, 

depression, 

disorders. 

or bipolar 

Behavior that is geared 

toward avoiding the 

embarrassment and 

assumed shame of making 

mistakes. The child fears 

what will happen if errors 

are discovered. Has 

unrealistically high 

expectations of self. Has 

possibly received criticism 

or lack of acceptance 

while making mistakes 

during the process of 

learning. 

Behavior that is based on 

the misinterpretation of 

nonverbal signals of 

others. The child 

misunderstands facial 

expressions and body 

language. Hasn't received 

adequate training in these 

areas and has poor role 

modeling. 

Hyperactive: Has difficulty 

with motor control, both 

physically and verbally. 

Fidgets, leaves seat frequently, 

interrupts, talks excessively. 

Inattentive: Has difficulty 

staying focused and following 

through on projects. Has 

difficulty with listening, 

remembering, and organizing. 

Tends to focus too much on 

the small details of projects. 

Will avoid projects if unsure of 

outcome. Focuses on results 

and not relationships. Is selfcritical. 

Attempts to make friends but 

is inept and unsuccessful. Is 

forced to be alone. Is often 

teased for unusual behavior, 

appearance, or lack of social 

skills. 

Contract with the student to 

manage behaviors. Teach 

basic concentration, study, 

and thinking skills. 

Separate student in a quiet 

work area. Help the student 

list each step of a task. 

Reward successes; assign a 

peer tutor. 

Ask the student to make 

mistakes on purpose, then 

show acceptance. Have the 

student 

students. 

tutor other 

Teach the student to keep 

the appropriate physical 

distance from others. Teach 

the meaning of facial 

expressions, such as anger 

and hurt. Make suggestions 

regarding hygiene, dress, 

mannerisms, and posture. 

Source: Marzano, R.J. (2003). What works in schools: Translating research into action 

(pp. 104–105). Alexandria, VA: ASCD.

School may be the only place where many students who face extreme 

challenges can get their needs addressed. The reality of today's schools often 

demands that classroom teachers address these severe issues, even though 

this task is not always considered a part of their regular job. 

In a study of classroom strategies (see Brophy, 1996; Brophy & McCaslin, 

1992), researchers examined how effective classroom teachers interacted with 

specific types of students. The study found that the most effective classroom 

managers did not treat all students the same; they tended to employ different 

strategies with different types of students. In contrast, ineffective classroom 

managers did not appear sensitive to the diverse needs of students. Although 

Brophy did not couch his findings in terms of teacher-student relationships, the 

link is clear. An awareness of the five general categories of high-needs students 

and appropriate actions for each can help teachers build strong relationships 

with diverse students. 

Don't Leave Relationships to Chance 

Teacher-student relationships provide an essential foundation for effective 

classroom management—and classroom management is a key to high student 

achievement. Teacher-student relationships should not be left to chance or 

dictated by the personalities of those involved. Instead, by using strategies 

supported by research, teachers can influence the dynamics of their classrooms 

and build strong teacher-student relationships that will support student 

learning. 

References 

Adelman, H. S., & Taylor, L. (2002). School counselors and school reform: New 

directions. Professional School Counseling, 5(4), 235–248. 

Brophy, J. E. (1996). Teaching problem students. New York: Guilford. 

Brophy, J. E., & McCaslin, N. (1992). Teachers' reports of how they perceive 

and cope with problem students. Elementary School Journal, 93, 3–68. 

Chiu, L. H., & Tulley, M. (1997). Student preferences of teacher discipline 

styles. Journal of Instructional Psychology, 24(3), 168–175. 

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management that works. Alexandria, VA: ASCD. 

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Robert J. Marzano is a senior scholar at Mid-continent Research for Education and Learning in 

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220-1151; janamarzan@aol.com.

Never Work Harder Than Your Students 

& Other Principles of Great Teaching 

by Robyn R. Jackson 

The Mastery Self-Assessment 

What Is the Master Teacher Mindset? 

The master teacher mindset is really a disposition toward teaching. It is a way of thinking about instruction, about 

students, about learning, and about teaching in general that makes teaching fluid, efficient, and effective. Many of 

us think that in order to be a good teacher, we need to have all the answers. We focus our time and energy 

accumulating strategies and skills, hoping that if we have a big enough bag of tricks, we will be prepared to face 

whatever happens in the classroom. The master teacher mindset means knowing that having all the answers isn't 

nearly as important as knowing what questions to ask. It means knowing that if you ask the right question the 

question itself will lead you to the information that you need to examine in order to find the answer. Good questions 

reveal what information is relevant, when information is sufficient, and how that information should be used 

appropriately. 

The master teacher mindset also means knowing how to ask students the right questions, the kind of questions that 

lead to deeper thinking, increased motivation, and more student ownership over their own work. Master teachers 

spend more time refining their inquiry skills and their own curiosity than they do collecting strategies and skills. 

Most of us experience a problem and quickly rush to find a solution. Developing a master teacher mindset means 

knowing that defining the problem correctly makes it more likely that you will find the appropriate solution. Master 

teachers spend more time thinking about why the problem is occurring than they do trying to find solutions. They 

examine the problem from all sides. The master teacher mindset means being willing to own your own contribution 

to the problem but at the same time, being reluctant to cast blame on others because you know that casting blame 

is not nearly as useful as looking for causes. Master teachers are willing to confront the brutal facts of their reality 

and account for those facts when developing a solution. 

Ultimately, master teachers don't just magically develop the master teacher mindset. Teaching requires a vast body 

of knowledge. We have to know pedagogy, but also must be experts in our subject area or areas. This huge body of 

knowledge can be an overwhelming hodgepodge of largely disconnected facts, unless we have a system for 

organizing the information. Master teachers learn how to organize their teaching knowledge into meaningful 

patterns and from these patterns develop a set of key instructional principles. Their entire instructional practice is 

governed by this small set of core principles and they rigorously select strategies and teaching approaches based on 

these principles rather than become enamored with every new strategy or technique that becomes in vogue. 

I call these principles the mastery principles and the rest of this book is devoted to helping you learn to apply them 

to your own teaching practice. 

The mastery principles are 

1. Master teachers start where their students are. 

2. Master teachers know where their students are going. 

3. Master teachers expect to get their students to their goal. 

4. Master teachers support their students along the way. 

5. Master teachers use feedback to help them and their 

students get better. 

6. Master teachers focus on quality rather than quantity. 

7. Master teachers never work harder than their students.

Self-Assessment 

Mastery cannot be measured in the number of years you've been teaching. It is measured by how well you apply 

the mastery principles to your teaching. Thus, the first step to moving toward mastery is to assess how well you are 

currently applying the mastery principles to your own practice by taking the quiz on the following pages. Answer 

each question as honestly as you can; think not about what you would like to do, but about what you are currently 

doing in your own practice. There are no right or wrong answers. 

Use the scoring sheet on page 8 to keep track of your answers. Next to each number, write your answer to that 

question in the box provided. When you are finished answering the questions, use the scoring sheet to give yourself 

two scores. First, calculate an overall score. Then, give yourself an average score for each mastery principle. Your 

overall score will be between 49 and 196. Your average score for each principle will be between 1 and 4. 

1. Which of the following statements is most true for you? 

a. I tend to look at my class as a whole and think of my students in terms of their group 

characteristics. 

b. I see my class as a group of groups and cluster certain students together. 

c. I see each of my students as individuals. 

d. I pay attention to the individual needs of my students but also notice how those needs and 

individual characteristics interact in the entire group. 

2. Which of the following best represents what you do when you are faced with a new curriculum? 

a. I use the lesson plans included in the curriculum guide. 

b. I figure out how I will cover all of the material in each unit and start creating lesson plans. 

c. I look at the assessment at the end of each unit and back map my plans from there. 

d. I use the assessment to figure out what the need-to-knows are and determine how well students 

need to know each objective. Then I plan the assessments and learning activities based on each 

objective. 

3. When a student does poorly on a test you think 

a. The student did not study hard enough. 

b. It was a poorly designed test and I will need to make a better one next time. 

c. The student did not understand the material. I will need to remediate so that he or she will do better 

on the next test. 

d. I need to work with the student more carefully to ensure that he or she does better on the 

reassessment. 

4. When you examine data, you 

a. Consider all available data before making an instructional decision. 

b. Examine only the whole class data before making an instructional decision. 

c. Examine both whole class data and individual student data when making an instructional decision. 

d. Examine only the data that gives me the best feedback that will help me reach my goals and 

deliberately ignore the rest when making an instructional decision. 


a. I am still learning my discipline and I try to stay at least one step ahead of my students. 

b. I understand my discipline well enough to teach it although there are times when I get stumped as 

to how to explain something to a student. 

c. For the most part I understand my discipline and have more than one way of explaining the major 

concepts to students. 

d. I understand my discipline and take time not only to explain the concepts and skills to my students 

but also to show them how to learn my subject on their own. 


a. I follow the curriculum guide step by step and try to cover everything. 

b. I follow the curriculum guide as well as I can but I realize that I cannot get to everything. 

c. I pick and choose what I want to teach from the curriculum guide and try to cover those things that 

I think are most important. 

d. I assess the curriculum guide and divide it into those things students absolutely need to know in 

order to master the learning objectives and those that are nice to know.


a. I am working much harder than my students. 

b. I am working somewhat harder than my students. 

c. I am working about as hard as my students. 

d. I am doing my work as the students do their work. 

8. When faced with a discipline problem in the classroom, what do you do? 

a. Look for a solution. 

b. Try a variety of solutions to see which one works best. 

c. Think about what may be causing the problem and select a solution that fits the situation. 

d. Look for patterns and develop a solution that will address not only the surface problem, but the 

underlying causes revealed by the pattern. 

9. When you look at the curriculum standards, what is the first thing you do? 

a. Try to figure out how I am going to teach them all in the time I have. 

b. Try to figure out which assignments and activities will best help my students achieve the standards. 

c. Try to figure out what assessments I will use so that I will know when my students have mastered 

the standards. 

d. Try to figure out whether the standard is asking students to master content or a process. 

10. What causes your success or failure in the classroom? 

a. It depends. Some days things go well. Other days, they just don't. You really can never tell how 

things will go. 

b. It depends on how difficult the teaching task was. If it is an easy teaching task, I am likely to be 

successful. But, the harder the teaching task, the less likely I am to be successful. 

c. It depends on how good of a teacher I am. When things go well, it is because I am good at that part 

of teaching. If things go poorly, then it means that I do not have that teaching skill. 

d. It depends on my effort. If things go well, it is because I worked really hard at making sure that 

things went well. If things go poorly, then it means that I have to work harder to make sure things 

go better the next time. 

11. When you grade students' papers, you 

a. Write a great deal of comments on their papers to point out where they went wrong. 

b. Mark student errors but write few if any comments. The final grade is what matters to students. 

c. Make a few marks and write summary comments at the end to give students an overall assessment 

of their performance. 

d. Mark student errors and write only comments that will coach students towards better performance 

next time. 

12. When a student seems to misunderstand a concept, you 

a. Press ahead and hope that the student will understand later. 

b. Try to meet with the student after school or during lunch to clear up his confusion. 

c. Give the student an alternate reading or supplementary materials to help clear up his confusion. 

d. Try to understand why the student is getting confused and then work to clear up his confusion. 

13. When it comes to homework, you 

a. Assign homework just about every night. I think it is important that students have homework. 

b. Use homework as a way to cover those things I just can't cover in class. 

c. Use homework to help students develop good study habits. 

d. Use homework to provide students with independent practice for those things we have learned in 

class. 


a. I keep track of my students' grades. If students wants to know how they are doing in my class, they 

can ask me or wait for the progress report or the report card. 

b. I keep track of my students' grades but I regularly post their grades online so that they can also 

keep track of how they are doing. 

c. I keep track of my students' grades but I post them regularly and also show students how they can 

track their own grades and figure out their course average.

d. I keep track of my students' grades but I also require that they track their own data. In fact, 

analyzing their own achievement data is a part of how we regularly run class. 

15. When it comes to "soft" skills such as how to study or organize their notebooks, you 

a. Expect my students to know how to do those things already. It is not my job to teach them how to 

study or organize their notebooks. 

b. Require that my students use specific skills in my classroom. I give them a quiz on the chapters I 

assign for homework to make sure that they study and conduct notebook checks to make sure that 

they keep their notebooks organized. 

c. Show my students how to gain these skills. For instance, I give students a study guide and I have a 

system for how notebooks should be organized. 

d. First look at how students are studying and organizing their notebooks, and then show them how to 

improve what they are already doing. 

16. When you write objectives, you usually 

a. Try to state them using the wording favored by the district. 

b. Figure out what activities I want my students to complete and list them. 

c. Figure out what concepts or skills I want my students to master. 

d. Figure out what I want students to learn and then how I can communicate that in a way that 

students will understand. 

17. You believe that 

a. All students can achieve at high levels if they have supportive parents, a strong educational 

foundation, and have the innate intellectual skills they need. 

b. All students can achieve at high levels if they are motivated to do so. 

c. All students can achieve at high levels if they are given the proper support in school. 

d. All students can achieve at high levels and can actually get even smarter if they are taught how to 

exert effective effort. 

18. After you have graded a set of papers, you 

a. Record the grades in my grade book. 

b. Record the grades and look to see which students passed and which students failed. 

c. Record the grades and get a general sense of how the class is doing as a whole. 

d. Record the grades and, based on student performance, figure out how I need to adjust my 

instruction going forward. 

19. When a student has demonstrated that he or she has mastered the objectives of my unit already, you 

a. Give the student an A. 

b. Ask the student to help some of the other students in the class who haven't gotten it yet. 

c. Try to find an enrichment activity for the student that can be done while the rest of the class works 

through the unit. 

d. Take what I am already teaching and introduce more complexity and ambiguity into the concepts 

and skills to keep the student challenged. 


a. I stick to the curriculum guide. 

b. I stick mostly to the curriculum guide but I do include a few assignments that are just for fun. 

c. I use the curriculum as a guide but I add in assignments that cover material that I think is important 

or enjoyable. 

d. I choose what I teach based on what assignments will best help my students master the objectives 

stated in the curriculum guide. 


a. I try to give my students as much help as I can but sometimes I wonder if I am really doing the 

work for them. 

b. I try to limit the amount of help I give my students because they are going to have to learn how to 

learn on their own. They won't have the same supports once they get to the next level. 

c. I try to balance helping my students with teaching them to be independent, but there are some 

times when my students seem unable to figure things out on their own.

d. I only give my students just enough help so that they can figure out how to do things on their own. 

22. When your students come to class without the "soft" skills that they need to be successful, you 

a. Talk to their counselors to make sure that they are properly placed in my class. 

b. Try to teach students the skills the students need even if it means that I don't always get through 

my entire curriculum. 

c. Look for ways to help students acquire those skills that are most necessary while trying to get 

through as much of my curriculum as I can. 

d. Look for ways I can show students how to capitalize on the skills that they do have in order to 

acquire the skills that they don't have. 

23. When it comes to assessments, you 

a. Use the ones included in the curriculum guide. 

b. Write my own usually after I have taught the unit. 

c. Write the assessment after I have planned the unit once I have a sense of what material I will be 

able to cover. 

d. Write the assessment prior to planning the unit. 

24. When you look at data, you 

a. Select which data I will pay attention to. I tend to focus on the data I know and understand and 

disregard the rest. 

b. Look at all of the data but sometimes make excuses for the information that is unfavorable. 

c. Average the data. As long as most of the students are doing OK or my averages are high enough, 

then I am fine. 

d. Consider all of the data important and consistently analyze the information in terms of individual 

student progress rather than averages. 

25. During class discussions, your typical response to students' answers can best be described as 

a. Praise: I want to encourage them to participate so I praise them even if the answer is not exactly 

right. 

b. Evaluative: I want to encourage them to participate, but I also want them to know when they have 

given the wrong answer. 

c. Corrective: If they give the wrong answer, I want to show them where they went wrong so that they 

will know how to give a better answer next time. 

d. Coaching: If students give the wrong answer, I want them to figure out how to arrive at the right 

answer. 

26. You decide how to help a struggling student 

a. Once the student has failed the marking period. 

b. Once the student has shown that he or she is failing at the interim report. 

c. At the first sign the student is struggling (usually a failed quiz or test). 

d. Before the student begins to struggle. 

27. When teaching a new skill or concept, you 

a. Try to cover it as best I can given the time I have. 

b. Make sure that my students know it well enough to pass the test. 

c. Make sure that students know it in their sleep. 

d. Decide whether students need to know it to the level of automaticity or controlled processing. 


a. Sometimes I am so busy trying to deal with my students' outside problems that I have a hard time 

getting to the curriculum I am supposed to teach. 

b. I cannot solve all of my students' problems, so I just ignore them and focus on what I can do in the 

classroom to help them learn. 

c. I recognize that my students' outside problems do influence what they do in my classroom, so I try 

to find a balance between helping them solve their problems and mastering the curriculum. 

d. I recognize that it is not my job to solve all of my students' problems, so I focus on finding ways to 

help them develop the skills they need to solve their own problems.

29. When students do not meet your idea of what makes a good student, you 

a. Question whether the student is motivated. 

b. Question whether the student is academically capable. 

c. Question what I can do to get the student to meet my expectations. 

d. Question whether my expectations fail to consider alternate ways of demonstrating mastery or 

motivation. 

30. You communicate the learning objectives to students by 

a. Posting them on the board each day. 

b. Posting them on the board and reading them to students at the beginning of class. 

c. Posting them on the board, announcing them to students at the beginning of class, and listing them 

in my syllabus or in letters home to parents. 

d. Posting them in class, explaining them to students either verbally or in writing, and listing them in 

my syllabus and in parent communications. 

31. How would you characterize yourself? 

a. I am an optimist. I believe that all my students will learn. 

b. I am a realist. I know that some students will not learn because of the various constraints they face. 

c. I am a pragmatist. I believe that all students can learn, but they may not all be able to learn from 

me. 

d. I am a visionary. I believe that all students can learn and that it is my job to figure out how to best 

make sure they learn in my class. 

32. When you notice that a lesson is not working, you 

a. Press on anyway and hope that things will get better. 

b. Switch tactics and try something else. 

c. Use more explanatory devices or other instructional strategies to help students become engaged 

and to facilitate more student understanding. 

d. Pay attention to the feedback I am getting from students and make adjustments to the lesson to 

better meet students' learning needs. 

33. When planning your lessons, you can predict where students may become confused based on 

a. What material seems to have the most explanation in the curriculum guide. 

b. What material was confusing to my students in the past. 

c. What I know about my subject and the common misconceptions that exist. 

d. What I know about my subject and where students are in their conceptual development. 

34. In order for students to learn a new skill, you believe that 

a. They need to study hard and memorize it. 

b. They need to practice it from start to finish so that they can learn the entire process well. 

c. They need to build on their emerging skills until they have learned to practice the entire process. 

d. They need multiple opportunities to practice parts of the skill over time and master them, as well as 

opportunities to practice the full-length performance. 


a. I haven't had a chance to establish routines for everything yet. 

b. I use routines to keep students in line. I find that if we have routines, students are better behaved. 

c. I use routines to help our class go more smoothly and maximize students' time on task. When there 

are routines, students can spend more time on learning and less time on logistics. 

d. I use routines to help students take on more of the work in the classroom. 

36. When you reward students, you 

a. Decide on a list of rewards and give them to students when they meet some criteria. 

b. Don't typically reward students. Learning is reward enough. 

c. Try to find rewards that I think will motivate students to keep up the good work. 

d. Pay attention to what students value and find a way to connect what they value to what they should 

be doing in the classroom. 

37. How do you differentiate instruction? 

a. I group my students into high, medium, and low ability groups and plan three different lessons 

based on students' abilities.

. I group my students in high, medium, and low ability groups and plan three different versions of the 

same lesson. 

c. I focus on planning lessons that accommodate students' multiple intelligences. 

d. I plan one lesson that starts at the standard and make adjustments to that lesson designed to help 

all students meet or exceed the standard. 


a. Although I hold very strong beliefs about the value of what I do in the classroom, I am often so 

overwhelmed or pressed for time that my teaching practice often does not reflect those things that I 

really believe are important. 

b. I used to hold strong beliefs about the value of what I do in the classroom, but over time and after 

so many challenges, I am not so sure I believe the same way any more. 

c. I still believe in the value of what I do in the classroom although my beliefs are tempered by the 

reality I face each day. 

d. I believe that what I do is important and that belief only grows stronger the more I interact with my 

students. 

39. In your class, an "A" grade means that a student 

a. Is passing my class. 

b. Is smart or potentially gifted. 

c. Has worked hard. 

d. Has mastered the objectives of the course. 

40. If a student fails a test, you 

a. Record the grade. 

b. Offer the student extra credit opportunities to make up for the low grade. 

c. Figure out why the student failed and offer remediation. 

d. Institute some corrective action and allow the student the opportunity to retake the test. 

41. When you evaluate your lesson plans each year, you 

a. Figure out how I can cover the material better next time. 

b. Figure out how I can combine activities or shorten the amount of time I spend on activities so that I 

can make better use of my time next time. 

c. Figure out how I can teach the assignments differently and more effectively so that my students can 

better master the objectives. 

d. Figure out what things I can stop doing so that I have more time to help my students master what is 

really important. 

42. When students do not fulfill their classroom responsibilities, you 

a. Create new rules or responsibilities. 

b. Punish students. 

c. Find a system of rewards to motivate them. 

d. Hold students accountable by applying logical consequences. 


a. I feel that culture has no place in my curriculum. 

b. I don't change my basic curriculum, but I do try to include material such as stories or interesting 

facts and acknowledge the contributions from other cultures. 

c. I adjust my curriculum so that it includes multiple cultural perspectives. 

d. I alter my curriculum so that it can capitalize on my students' backgrounds, experiences, and 

preferences. 

44. When creating learning objectives, how do you make them concrete? 

a. I state them in kid-friendly language so that my students can understand them. 

b. I try to figure out what the goal really means and what activities or assignments will best fit each 

goal. 

c. I try to figure out how the goal will be assessed and make sure that all the assignments and 

activities I chose are a good match for the objective. 

d. I try to figure out what mastery of the goal will look like and what steps students will have to take in 

order to achieve mastery.


a. I believe that if I have the right strategies and resources, I can handle any teaching task I face. 

b. I believe that there are just some teaching tasks that I am not prepared to handle. 

c. I believe that most teaching tasks can be handled, but some are so difficult that I do not have the 

time or the resources to handle them effectively. 

d. I believe that there are some teaching tasks that are more difficult than others but that I can handle 

any teaching task if I realistically assess the situation and maintain unwavering faith that I will 

prevail. 

46. You judge students' progress based on 

a. Their overall average in my class. 

b. Their individual grades on tests, quizzes, and assignments. 

c. Formative and summative assessment grades. 

d. Various data sources such as formative and summative assessments, assignments, class 

discussions, and performance tasks. 

47. What do you do when a student begins to struggle in your class? 

a. I tutor the student one-on-one after school or during lunch. 

b. I tell the student to come see me after school or during lunch. If the student chooses to come in, I 

will provide remediation. If not, then the student has chosen to fail. 

c. I try to figure out why the student is having difficulty and provide him or her with help both in class 

and outside of class. 

d. I implement a pre-determined intervention designed to quickly get the student back on track. 

48. When selecting what assignments you will give to students, the most important factor for you is 

a. What I can reasonably accomplish in the time I have. 

b. What I enjoy doing and will be enjoyable for my students. 

c. What makes the most sense given my students, my own teaching preferences, and the amount of 

time and resources I have. 

d. What will most efficiently and effectively help my students master my learning objectives. 

49. If a student is working on an in-class assignment and comes to me for help on a particular question, you 

a. Give the student the right answer. I don't want the student to struggle. 

b. Tell the student to ask another student or look up the answer. 

c. Give the student progressive minimal cues. 

d. Show the student how to find the answer himself.

Scoring Sheet 

Give yourself one point for every A answer, two points for every B, three points for every C, and four points for 

every D. 

Principle 

1 

Principle 

2 

Principle 

3 

Principle 

4 

Principle 

5 

Principle 

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 

8 9 10 11 12 13 14 

15 16 17 18 19 20 21 

22 23 24 25 26 27 28 

29 30 31 32 33 34 35 

36 37 38 39 40 41 42 

43 44 45 46 47 48 49 

Principle 

Total 

Principle 

Average 

Principle 

Total 

Principle 

Average 

Give Yourself an Overall Score 

Principle 

Total 

Principle 

Average 

Principle 

Total 

Principle 

Average 

Principle 

Total 

Principle 

Average 

6 

Principle 

Total 

Principle 

Average 

Principle 

7 

Principle 

Total 

Principle 

Average 

Row 

Totals 

Overall 

Total 

177–196 Points: Master Teacher 

Good teaching for master teachers is fluid and automatic. They invest most of their time up front on planning and 

thinking through their teaching situation. Master teachers unpack the standards and set learning goals for students 

that represent minimum rather than maximum performance. Not only do they make conscious decisions about what 

students need to know and how well they need to know it, they decide early on what evidence of student mastery 

they will collect and use this feedback to inform their instructional decisions while helping students move toward 

reaching their learning targets. They incorporate supports into their instructional practice to catch students before 

they fail and appropriately balance the work of learning between themselves and their students. They recognize the 

currencies students bring with them to the classroom and help students use these currencies to acquire classroom 

capital. At the same time, master teachers base their expectations not on what their students can do, but on what 

they can do to help their students. 

138–176 Points: Practitioner 

Most veteran teachers score in the practitioner range. They have been teaching for a few years and make conscious 

choices about what they do in the classroom based on experience. They unpack the standards of their curriculum 

and have a pretty clear understanding of their learning goals, but they do not always break down these learning 

goals into concrete steps toward mastery. Practitioners align their assessments and learning activities to their 

learning goals most of the time and use this feedback to adjust their own instructional practice. However, they may 

not always provide students with the growth-oriented feedback they need to improve their own performance. 

Practitioners intervene with struggling students but may not always intervene before students begin to fail. And, 

although they confront the brutal facts of their reality, their faith is based on outside factors rather than on what 

they can do to change things. While practitioners recognize and appreciate the currencies students bring with them 

to the classroom, their focus is on helping students acquire new currencies rather than on showing them how to use 

the currencies they have already. As a result, in their attempts to balance the work between themselves and the 

students, they still rescue students when things become too uncomfortable.

98–137 Points: Apprentice 

Good teaching for apprentices is based on having the right strategy. They take time to understand curriculum 

objectives and how they can cover those objectives in the limited time they have. Because apprentices realize that 

some rules can be broken, they often pick and choose what activities they will use for each unit and decide early on 

what assessments they will use. However, they do not always use assessment results to inform future instructional 

decisions. Apprentice teachers make some attempts at differentiating instruction but base their instructional 

strategies on "high," "on-level," and "low" students rather than on individual student needs. They recognize that 

students have different abilities and values but attempt to get students to exchange their values for those that are 

accepted in the classroom. When students do not adopt these values or otherwise do not meet their expectations, 

apprentices may lose faith and in many cases become disillusioned. 

97–49 Points: Novice 

There are two types of novices. Some teachers are novices because they have just started teaching and are still 

learning the ropes. Other novices have actually been teaching for some time, but still approach teaching with a 

novice mindset. Good teaching for both types of novices requires careful thought and planning. They look for rules 

or recipes to guide their practice. Many times they are so overwhelmed that they rely on the objectives and 

activities provided by the curriculum guide without really understanding what they mean. Novices work very hard to 

get through the curriculum by focusing on coverage and task completion. They have a limited number of 

explanatory devices and depend on remediation to help students who are very far behind. Novices use assessments 

to evaluate student performance and often use the tests that come with the curriculum guide. If they do create a 

test, they typically do so after they have taught the unit. Their understanding of who their students are is based on 

generalizations and stereotypes and their expectations for students are based on their perceptions of what they 

believe students can do. Because of these expectations, novices typically work very hard, doing the lion's share of 

the work in the classroom. 

Give Yourself a Score for Each Principle 

Now that you have given yourself an overall score, give yourself a score for each principle. To calculate your score, 

begin by totaling the number of points in each column of the scoring sheet. Then, divide that number by 7 for your 

average score. Record your average score for each principle.

EDUCATIONAL LEADERSHIP 

October 2007 | Volume 65 | Number 2 

Early Intervention at Every Age Pages 34-39 

The Perils and Promises of Praise 

Carol S. Dweck 

The wrong kind of praise creates self-defeating behavior. The right kind motivates students to 

learn. 

We often hear these days that we've produced a generation of young people who can't get 

through the day without an award. They expect success because they're special, not because 

they've worked hard. 

Is this true? Have we inadvertently done something to hold back our students? 

I think educators commonly hold two beliefs that do just that. Many believe that (1) praising 

students' intelligence builds their confidence and motivation to learn, and (2) students' inherent 

intelligence is the major cause of their achievement in school. Our research has shown that the 

first belief is false and that the second can be harmful—even for the most competent students. 

As a psychologist, I have studied student motivation for more than 35 years. My graduate 

students and I have looked at thousands of children, asking why some enjoy learning, even when 

it's hard, and why they are resilient in the face of obstacles. We have learned a great deal. 

Research shows us how to praise students in ways that yield motivation and resilience. In 

addition, specific interventions can reverse a student's slide into failure during the vulnerable 

period of adolescence. 

Fixed or Malleable? 

Praise is intricately connected to how students view their intelligence. Some students believe that 

their intellectual ability is a fixed trait. They have a certain amount of intelligence, and that's that. 

Students with this fixed mind-set become excessively concerned with how smart they are, 

seeking tasks that will prove their intelligence and avoiding ones that might not (Dweck, 1999, 

2006). The desire to learn takes a backseat. 

Other students believe that their intellectual ability is something they can develop through effort 

and education. They don't necessarily believe that anyone can become an Einstein or a Mozart, 

but they do understand that even Einstein and Mozart had to put in years of effort to become who 

they were. When students believe that they can develop their intelligence, they focus on doing 

just that. Not worrying about how smart they will appear, they take on challenges and stick to 

them (Dweck, 1999, 2006).

More and more research in psychology and neuroscience supports the growth mind-set. We are 

discovering that the brain has more plasticity over time than we ever imagined (Doidge, 2007); 

that fundamental aspects of intelligence can be enhanced through learning (Sternberg, 2005); and 

that dedication and persistence in the face of obstacles are key ingredients in outstanding 

achievement (Ericsson, Charness, Feltovich, & Hoffman, 2006). 

Alfred Binet (1909/1973), the inventor of the IQ test, had a strong growth mind-set. He believed 

that education could transform the basic capacity to learn. Far from intending to measure fixed 

intelligence, he meant his test to be a tool for identifying students who were not profiting from 

the public school curriculum so that other courses of study could be devised to foster their 

intellectual growth. 

The Two Faces of Effort 

The fixed and growth mind-sets create two different psychological worlds. In the fixed mind-set, 

students care first and foremost about how they'll be judged: smart or not smart. Repeatedly, 

students with this mind-set reject opportunities to learn if they might make mistakes (Hong, 

Chiu, Dweck, Lin, & Wan, 1999; Mueller & Dweck, 1998). When they do make mistakes or 

reveal deficiencies, rather than correct them, they try to hide them (Nussbaum & Dweck, 2007). 

They are also afraid of effort because effort makes them feel dumb. They believe that if you have 

the ability, you shouldn't need effort (Blackwell, Trzesniewski, & Dweck, 2007), that ability 

should bring success all by itself. This is one of the worst beliefs that students can hold. It can 

cause many bright students to stop working in school when the curriculum becomes challenging. 

Finally, students in the fixed mind-set don't recover well from setbacks. When they hit a setback 

in school, they decrease their efforts and consider cheating (Blackwell et al., 2007). The idea of 

fixed intelligence does not offer them viable ways to improve. 

Let's get inside the head of a student with a fixed mind-set as he sits in his classroom, confronted 

with algebra for the first time. Up until then, he has breezed through math. Even when he barely 

paid attention in class and skimped on his homework, he always got As. But this is different. It's 

hard. The student feels anxious and thinks, “What if I'm not as good at math as I thought? What 

if other kids understand it and I don't?” At some level, he realizes that he has two choices: try 

hard, or turn off. His interest in math begins to wane, and his attention wanders. He tells himself, 

“Who cares about this stuff? It's for nerds. I could do it if I wanted to, but it's so boring. You 

don't see CEOs and sports stars solving for x and y.” 

By contrast, in the growth mind-set, students care about learning. When they make a mistake or 

exhibit a deficiency, they correct it (Blackwell et al., 2007; Nussbaum & Dweck, 2007). For 

them, effort is a positive thing: It ignites their intelligence and causes it to grow. In the face of 

failure, these students escalate their efforts and look for new learning strategies. 

Let's look at another student—one who has a growth mind-set—having her first encounter with 

algebra. She finds it new, hard, and confusing, unlike anything else she has ever learned. But 

she's determined to understand it. She listens to everything the teacher says, asks the teacher

questions after class, and takes her textbook home and reads the chapter over twice. As she 

begins to get it, she feels exhilarated. A new world of math opens up for her. 

It is not surprising, then, that when we have followed students over challenging school 

transitions or courses, we find that those with growth mind-sets outperform their classmates with 

fixed mind-sets—even when they entered with equal skills and knowledge. A growth mind-set 

fosters the growth of ability over time (Blackwell et al., 2007; Mangels, Butterfield, Lamb, 

Good, & Dweck, 2006; see also Grant & Dweck, 2003). 

The Effects of Praise 

Many educators have hoped to maximize students' confidence in their abilities, their enjoyment 

of learning, and their ability to thrive in school by praising their intelligence. We've studied the 

effects of this kind of praise in children as young as 4 years old and as old as adolescence, in 

students in inner-city and rural settings, and in students of different ethnicities—and we've 

consistently found the same thing (Cimpian, Arce, Markman, & Dweck, 2007; Kamins & 

Dweck, 1999; Mueller & Dweck, 1998): Praising students' intelligence gives them a short burst 

of pride, followed by a long string of negative consequences. 

In many of our studies (see Mueller & Dweck, 1998), 5th grade students worked on a task, and 

after the first set of problems, the teacher praised some of them for their intelligence (“You must 

be smart at these problems”) and others for their effort (“You must have worked hard at these 

problems”). We then assessed the students' mind-sets. In one study, we asked students to agree 

or disagree with mind-set statements, such as, “Your intelligence is something basic about you 

that you can't really change.” Students praised for intelligence agreed with statements like these 

more than students praised for effort did. In another study, we asked students to define 

intelligence. Students praised for intelligence made significantly more references to innate, fixed 

capacity, whereas the students praised for effort made more references to skills, knowledge, and 

areas they could change through effort and learning. Thus, we found that praise for intelligence 

tended to put students in a fixed mind-set (intelligence is fixed, and you have it), whereas praise 

for effort tended to put them in a growth mind-set (you're developing these skills because you're 

working hard). 

We then offered students a chance to work on either a challenging task that they could learn from 

or an easy one that ensured error-free performance. Most of those praised for intelligence wanted 

the easy task, whereas most of those praised for effort wanted the challenging task and the 

opportunity to learn. 

Next, the students worked on some challenging problems. As a group, students who had been 

praised for their intelligence lost their confidence in their ability and their enjoyment of the task 

as soon as they began to struggle with the problem. If success meant they were smart, then 

struggling meant they were not. The whole point of intelligence praise is to boost confidence and 

motivation, but both were gone in a flash. Only the effort-praised kids remained, on the whole, 

confident and eager.

When the problems were made somewhat easier again, students praised for intelligence did 

poorly, having lost their confidence and motivation. As a group, they did worse than they had 

done initially on these same types of problems. The students praised for effort showed excellent 

performance and continued to improve. 

Finally, when asked to report their scores (anonymously), almost 40 percent of the intelligencepraised 

students lied. Apparently, their egos were so wrapped up in their performance that they 

couldn't admit mistakes. Only about 10 percent of the effort-praised students saw fit to falsify 

their results. 

Praising students for their intelligence, then, hands them not motivation and resilience but a fixed 

mind-set with all its vulnerability. In contrast, effort or “process” praise (praise for engagement, 

perseverance, strategies, improvement, and the like) fosters hardy motivation. It tells students 

what they've done to be successful and what they need to do to be successful again in the future. 

Process praise sounds like this: 

You really studied for your English test, and your improvement shows it. You read the 

material over several times, outlined it, and tested yourself on it. That really worked! 

I like the way you tried all kinds of strategies on that math problem until you finally got 

it. 

It was a long, hard assignment, but you stuck to it and got it done. You stayed at your 

desk, kept up your concentration, and kept working. That's great! 

I like that you took on that challenging project for your science class. It will take a lot of 

work—doing the research, designing the machine, buying the parts, and building it. 

You're going to learn a lot of great things. 

What about a student who gets an A without trying? I would say, “All right, that was too easy for 

you. Let's do something more challenging that you can learn from.” We don't want to make 

something done quickly and easily the basis for our admiration. 

What about a student who works hard and doesn't do well? I would say, “I liked the effort you 

put in. Let's work together some more and figure out what you don't understand.” Process praise 

keeps students focused, not on something called ability that they may or may not have and that 

magically creates success or failure, but on processes they can all engage in to learn. 

Motivated to Learn 

Finding that a growth mind-set creates motivation and resilience—and leads to higher 

achievement—we sought to develop an intervention that would teach this mind-set to students. 

We decided to aim our intervention at students who were making the transition to 7th grade 

because this is a time of great vulnerability. School often gets more difficult in 7th grade, grading 

becomes more stringent, and the environment becomes more impersonal. Many students take 

stock of themselves and their intellectual abilities at this time and decide whether they want to be 

involved with school. Not surprisingly, it is often a time of disengagement and plunging 

achievement.

We performed our intervention in a New York City junior high school in which many students 

were struggling with the transition and were showing plummeting grades. If students learned a 

growth mind-set, we reasoned, they might be able to meet this challenge with increased, rather 

than decreased, effort. We therefore developed an eight-session workshop in which both the 

control group and the growth-mind-set group learned study skills, time management techniques, 

and memory strategies (Blackwell et al., 2007). However, in the growth-mind-set intervention, 

students also learned about their brains and what they could do to make their intelligence grow. 

They learned that the brain is like a muscle—the more they exercise it, the stronger it becomes. 

They learned that every time they try hard and learn something new, their brain forms new 

connections that, over time, make them smarter. They learned that intellectual development is 

not the natural unfolding of intelligence, but rather the formation of new connections brought 

about through effort and learning. 

Students were riveted by this information. The idea that their intellectual growth was largely in 

their hands fascinated them. In fact, even the most disruptive students suddenly sat still and took 

notice, with the most unruly boy of the lot looking up at us and saying, “You mean I don't have 

to be dumb?” 

Indeed, the growth-mind-set message appeared to unleash students' motivation. Although both 

groups had experienced a steep decline in their math grades during their first months of junior 

high, those receiving the growth-mind-set intervention showed a significant rebound. Their math 

grades improved. Those in the control group, despite their excellent study skills intervention, 

continued their decline. 

What's more, the teachers—who were unaware that the intervention workshops differed— 

singled out three times as many students in the growth-mindset intervention as showing marked 

changes in motivation. These students had a heightened desire to work hard and learn. One 

striking example was the boy who thought he was dumb. Before this experience, he had never 

put in any extra effort and often didn't turn his homework in on time. As a result of the training, 

he worked for hours one evening to finish an assignment early so that his teacher could review it 

and give him a chance to revise it. He earned a B+ on the assignment (he had been getting Cs 

and lower previously). 

Other researchers have obtained similar findings with a growth-mind-set intervention. Working 

with junior high school students, Good, Aronson, and Inzlicht (2003) found an increase in math 

and English achievement test scores; working with college students, Aronson, Fried, and Good 

(2002) found an increase in students' valuing of academics, their enjoyment of schoolwork, and 

their grade point averages. 

To facilitate delivery of the growth-mind-set workshop to students, we developed an interactive 

computer-based version of the intervention called Brainology. Students work through six 

modules, learning about the brain, visiting virtual brain labs, doing virtual brain experiments, 

seeing how the brain changes with learning, and learning how they can make their brains work 

better and grow smarter.

We tested our initial version in 20 New York City schools, with encouraging results. Almost all 

students (anonymously polled) reported changes in their study habits and motivation to learn 

resulting directly from their learning of the growth mind-set. One student noted that as a result of 

the animation she had seen about the brain, she could actually “picture the neurons growing 

bigger as they make more connections.” One student referred to the value of effort: “If you do 

not give up and you keep studying, you can find your way through.” 

Adolescents often see school as a place where they perform for teachers who then judge them. 

The growth mind-set changes that perspective and makes school a place where students 

vigorously engage in learning for their own benefit. 

Going Forward 

Our research shows that educators cannot hand students confidence on a silver platter by praising 

their intelligence. Instead, we can help them gain the tools they need to maintain their confidence 

in learning by keeping them focused on the process of achievement. 

Maybe we have produced a generation of students who are more dependent, fragile, and entitled 

than previous generations. If so, it's time for us to adopt a growth mind-set and learn from our 

mistakes. It's time to deliver interventions that will truly boost students' motivation, resilience, 

and learning. 

References 

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American college students by shaping theories of intelligence. Journal of Experimental Social 

Psychology, 38, 113–125. 

Binet, A. (1909/1973). Les idées modernes sur les enfants [Modern ideas on children]. Paris: 

Flamarion. (Original work published 1909) 

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achievement across an adolescent transition: A longitudinal study and an intervention. Child 

Development, 78, 246–263. 

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children's motivation. Psychological Science, 18, 314–316. 

Doidge, N. (2007). The brain that changes itself: Stories of personal triumph from the frontiers 

of brain science. New York: Viking. 

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Philadelphia: Taylor and Francis/Psychology Press. 

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Ericsson, K. A., Charness, N., Feltovich, P. J., & Hoffman, R. R. (Eds.). (2006). The Cambridge 

handbook of expertise and expert performance. New York: Cambridge University Press. 

Good, C., Aronson, J., & Inzlicht, M. (2003). Improving adolescents' standardized test 

performance: An intervention to reduce the effects of stereotype threat. Journal of Applied 

Developmental Psychology, 24, 645–662. 

Grant, H., & Dweck, C. S. (2003). Clarifying achievement goals and their impact. Journal of 

Personality and Social Psychology, 85, 541–553. 

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and coping: A meaning system approach. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 77, 

588–599. 

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contingent self-worth and coping. Developmental Psychology, 35, 835–847. 

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about intelligence influence learning success? A social-cognitive-neuroscience model. Social, 

Cognitive, and Affective Neuroscience, 1, 75–86. 

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performance. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 75, 33–52. 

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The handbook of competence and motivation (pp. 15–30). New York: Guilford Press. 

Carol S. Dweck is the Lewis and Virginia Eaton Professor of Psychology at Stanford University 

and the author of Mindset: The New Psychology of Success (Random House, 2006).

The Adolescent Brain: 

A work in Progress 

Pat Wolfe, Ed.D. 

Article appeared in Tri-Association Newsletter, Vol XX No. 3 Spring 

2009 

One day your child is cheerful, loving and obedient, comes to you for advice, dresses in clothing 

you picked out together, and gives you a kiss on the cheek before turning in for the night at 

10:00 pm. Homework is done without nagging and you walk out of the parent/teacher conference 

beaming with pride. 

Then somewhere between ten and twelve, a strange thing happens. Almost overnight it appears 

someone has unzipped your child and put someone else inside; you are living with a stranger. No 

longer could this child be called sweet and loving; surly and antagonistic would be better 

descriptors. Gone are the days when you are asked for advice, and when you chance to offer it, 

you can be certain it will be ignored. This kid comes to breakfast in the morning dressed in an 

outfit to which you would like to pin a note stating, “What this person is wearing to school today 

is not my idea of good taste!” Your teen spends hours on the computer, but homework doesn't 

get done and you now dread school conferences. 

It doesn't take a brain scientist to tell you that living with an adolescent can be a frustrating 

experience. However, brain scientists are beginning to shed light on why these teens are the way 

they are. Interestingly, the new information focuses not only on the oft-blamed raging hormones, 

but on what’s going on above the neck as well. Many of the new insights into the adolescent 

brain, have been gained using recently developed brain-imaging techniques that allow scientists 

to obtain a look at what is going on inside the brain. What they are seeing is that the teen years 

are a time of significant change in the activity, anatomy and neurochemistry of the brain. 

What changes are going on in there? 

Scientists have known for some time that the brain grows by expanding and pruning the 

connections between cells, keeping the connections that are used the most and getting rid of the 

unused ones. They have also known that one of the most active periods of reorganization occurs 

early in life. Around two years of age, a huge build up of neural connections occurs in the child’s 

brain. This is followed by a massive pruning, which allows the strongest and most efficient 

connections to function more effectively. The often-erratic behavior of the child during this period 

reflects the changes taking place in the brain. The phrase, “the terrible twos” sums up the 

challenges parents face in dealing with the young child. Until quite recently, scientists assumed 

that the period of growth and winnowing away occurs only in early childhood and that most, if 

not all, of the major changes in brain organization and development occurred before adolescence. 

This view seemed reasonable in the light of the fact that the brain reaches its full size by puberty. 

The conventional wisdom has been that the adolescent brain is fully developed and functions 

similarly to an adult brain. This turns out–as many middle-school teachers and parents already 

suspected–not to be the case. Instead it appears that very complex changes take place in the 

brain during adolescence and that the brain is not fully “installed” until perhaps age twenty. The 

brain is still developing during the teen years!

The growth spurt and pruning 

In what parts of the adolescent brain are the greatest changes occurring? A central area of focus 

has been the part of the brain located behind the forehead called the frontal lobes. A long-range 

study by Jay Giedd and his colleagues at the National Institutes of Mental Health (NIMH.) has 

involved using functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) to scan the brains of nearly 1000 

healthy children and adolescents aged 3 to 18. Giedd discovered that just prior to puberty, 

between ages 9 and 10, the frontal lobes undergo a second wave of reorganization and growth. 

This growth appears to represents millions of new synapses (connections between the brain cells) 

that process information. Then around age 11 a massive pruning of these connections takes 

place, which isn’t complete until early adulthood. Although it may seem like the more synapses, 

the better, the brain actually consolidates learning by pruning away connections. The brain is 

getting rid of the least-used pathways, a method for ensuring that the most useful synapses are 

maintained which in turn allows the brain to operate more efficiently. 

Myelination during adolescence 

In addition to the winnowing of connections in the frontal lobes of the adolescent brain, another 

developmental factor is also at play. One of the final steps in developing an adult brain is the 

coating of nerves with a fatty material called myelin. This myelin sheath wraps around the axons 

of brain cells (neurons) and allows electrical impulses to travel faster and more efficiently. Before 

neurons receive their myelin sheath, they are considered immature and don't function well, but 

after myelination, the neurons are mature and ready to fulfill their designated functions more 

efficiently. This is one reason why a toddler is less coordinated than a 9-year-old. Myelin develops 

in the more primitive areas of the brain first, and then gradually moves to the higher level 

functioning areas. It is not surprising then to find that the frontal lobes mature last. Researchers 

at the University of California at Los Angeles compared scans of young adults, 23 - 30, with those 

of teens, 12 - 16, looking for signs of myelin which would imply more mature, efficient 

connections. As expected, the frontal lobes in teens showed less myelination than in the young 

adults. This is the last part of the brain to mature: full myelination is probably not reached until 

around age 20. 

The CEO of the brain 

Why are these changes in the frontal lobes significant? The frontal lobes–specifically the area 

right behind the forehead called the prefrontal or orbit frontal cortex–have been called the CEO of 

the brain. It is in this part of the brain that executive decisions are made and it seems to mediate 

ethical/moral behavior. In fact, this part of the brain has been dubbed “the area of sober second 

thought.” Persons with damage to this part of the brain often know what they are supposed to do 

but are unable to do it. The prefrontal cortex is responsible for many functions such as the ability 

to make sound judgments, goal and priority setting, planning and organization of multiple tasks, 

impulse inhibition, self-control, and emotional control. These functions are practically a laundry 

list of characteristics that adolescents often lack. Researchers suspect that an unfinished 

prefrontal cortex with its excess of synapses and unfinished myelination contributes to the 

adolescent’s deficits in these areas. Their brains simply aren’t ready to take on the role of the 

CEO, resulting in a lack of reasoned thinking and performance. 

Emotion holds sway 

There is yet another part of the brain that is going through change during the adolescent years. 

Deep in the center of the brain are a group of structures–sometimes called the limbic area–that 

mediate emotion. One of the major structures of this area is the amygdale, a small almondshaped 

structure that plays a major role in instinctive emotional reactions, including the “fight or 

flight” response. This is the structure that engages and allows us to react quickly when we are 

faced with a dangerous situation. It takes precedence over thoughtful reflection–which you don’t 

want when faced with a car speeding toward you or a snarling dog leaping at you! 

A team led by Dr. Deborah Yurgelun-Todd at Harvard’s McLean Hospital has used functional 

Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) to compare the activity of adolescent brains to those of

adults. They found that when processing emotion, adolescents have lower activity in their frontal 

lobes and more activity in the amygdale than adults. Yurgelun-Todd asked teenagers and adults 

to view photographs of people’s faces contorted with fear and to identify the emotion being 

expressed. Adults had no difficulty correctly identifying the emotion; many teens, however, were 

unsuccessful. The images produced by the fMRI during this task showed activity in both the 

prefrontal cortex and the amygdale the adult brains. The adolescent brains, on the other hand, 

showed almost no activity in the prefrontal cortex and a great deal of activity in the amygdale 

and surrounding emotional centers. 

The results of this study suggest two things. One, that adolescents many not be nearly as good 

as we think they are at reading social signals such as facial expressions–even though they seem 

to do almost nothing but socialize. This may explain why adolescents often pay little attention to 

adults’ warnings about inappropriate or risk-taking behavior. They may be misunderstanding the 

emotions of adults, which can lead to miscommunication in terms of what the teen thinks the 

adult is feeling. 

The second thing the research suggests is that in the teen brain, the emotional center often holds 

sway over the rational prefrontal cortex. Realizing that the prefrontal cortex allows reflection 

while the amygdale is designed for reaction, we can begin to understand the often irrational and 

overly emotional reactions of teens. Our oft asked question when teens engage in irrational 

behavior, “What were you thinking?” is difficult for teens to answer because in many cases they 

weren’t thinking reflectively, they were impulsively reacting. The good news is that as they grow 

older, their brain activity tends to shift to the frontal lobes and, theoretically, this results in more 

reasoned judgment and performance. 

Substance abuse and the adolescent brain 

Now that it has become clear that, in contrast to previously held assumptions, there is a 

tremendous amount of change taking place in the teen brain, we need to look at the probability 

that alcohol and perhaps other drugs impact both brains and behavior differently in adolescents 

and adults. The shaping and fine-tuning of the frontal lobes is, at least in part, mediated by 

experience. This raises the possibility that drug abuse could alter normal development of the 

brain. This is an area of critical importance. Current estimates suggest that roughly 50% of high 

school seniors consume alcohol at least once a month while 17% regularly smoke cigarettes and 

nearly 50% have smoked some marijuana. (Kann et al, 2000: Johnston et al., 2001). 

Alcohol's effects on the brain 

Much of the research on the effects of alcohol has been conducted using animal studies. In 

studies of rats, Markwiese et al. (1998) found that alcohol disrupts the activity of an area of the 

brain essential for memory and learning, the hippocampus, and that this area is much more 

vulnerable to alcohol-induced learning impairments in adolescent rats than adult rats. Rats are 

not humans. However, there is some evidence that the human hippocampus reacts in a similar 

manner. A recent study by De Bellis et al. (2000) found that hippocampal volumes were smaller 

in those who abused alcohol during adolescence and that the longer one abused alcohol, the 

smaller the hippocampus became. 

Research by Sandra Brown and colleagues at the University of California, San Diego has produced 

the first concrete evidence that heavy, on-going alcohol use by adolescents can impair brain 

functioning. They found several differences in memory function between alcohol dependent and 

non-drinking adolescents, none of who used any other drugs. In the study, the 15 and 16 yearolds 

who had drunk heavily (more than 100 lifetime alcohol use episodes) scored lower on verbal 

and nonverbal retention of information. 

Additional research by Brown and Tappert (2000) is trying to answer is whether or not heavy 

drinking at 15 is more dangerous for the brain than at 20. Their preliminary hypothesis is that 

drinking may be more dangerous because the finishing touches on brain development 

(myelination and pruning) haven’t been completed and alcohol may interrupt or disturb these 

refining processes. Brown and Tappert point out that more studies will be needed to produce a

definitive answer, but at least their work is an important step toward confirming what many 

scientists have suspected for some time: teenagers who drink may be exposing their brains to 

the toxic effects of alcohol during a critical time in brain development. 

Nicotine 

Not only are the frontal lobes of adolescents going through major changes, the molecular and 

chemical systems are being re-shifted as well. Many substances appear to have a heightened 

effect on teens. Researchers at Duke University found that adolescent brains respond more 

intensely to nicotine than do adult brains. In rat brains, the levels of dopamine receptors in the 

pleasure center (the nucleus accumbens) of the brain increase dramatically between 25-40 days– 

the rat's adolescent phase (Spears, 2000). These receptors play a huge role in the pleasure 

producing properties of drugs. It is not yet clear if the adolescent brain evidences this same 

increase, but many researchers think it is highly probable. 

Adolescent sleep patterns are different 

A common complaint of parents of teenagers is that their kids insist they can’t fall asleep until 

midnight but every morning means yelling at them to get out of bed to get to school on time. 

And parents aren’t the only ones with complaints about adolescents’ sleep habits. Teachers of 

early morning classes complain that their students seem to be in class in body only, frequently 

nodding off or at the least, drowsy and difficult to teach. It may not the teens fault; biology may 

be behind their sleep problems. Recent research has shown that here is yet another area where 

adolescents’ brains move to the beat of a different drummer. 

Our sleep cycles are determined by what is called circadian rhythms, a sort of internal biological 

clock that determines not only how much sleep we need but also when we become sleepy at 

night and when we awaken in the morning. Sleep researcher Mary Carskadon, in her sleep 

laboratory at Brown University’s Bradley Hospital, has discovered that teenagers need more sleep 

than they did as children and that their circadian rhythms appear to be set later than those of 

children or adults. 

The conventional wisdom has been that young children need 10 hours sleep and that as we 

become adults, the need decreases to 8 hours. Teenagers have been included in the adult group. 

Carskadon has shown that teens, far from needing less sleep than they did as children, need 

more. In order to function well and remain alert during the day, they need 9 hours and 15 

minutes, possibly because the hormones that are critical to growth and sexual maturation are 

released mostly during sleep. One survey of the sleep patterns of 3000 teenagers showed that 

the majority slept only about 7 hours a night, with more than a quarter averaging 6 1⁄2 hours or 

less on school nights. Given that sleep is a time when brain cells replenish themselves and when 

connections made during the day are strengthened, sleep deprivation can have a major negative 

effect on learning and memory. 

A second finding from Carskadon's research is that these teens’ biological clocks appear to be set 

later than those of children or adults. They do not get sleepy as early as they did when they were 

preadolescents and therefore tend to stay up later at night and sleep later in the morning. Most 

teenagers’ brains aren't ready to wake up until 8 or 9 in the morning, well past the time when the 

first bells has sounded at most high schools. Teens who have to get up before their internal clock 

buzzes, miss out on an important phase of REM sleep that is important for memory and learning. 

Armed with this research, some school districts are experimenting with later school starts at the 

secondary level and the initial results are positive. (The results a school starts time study 

involving seventeen districts in the Minneapolis/St. Paul area can be found on the Internet at 

http://cehd.umn.edu/CAREI/Reports/docs/SST-2001ES.pdf 

Changing the start time is difficult in many communities for various reasons, so what can 

teenagers do to cope? The National Sleep foundation offers the following advice:

1. Stay away from caffeine and nicotine after noon. Also avoid alcohol, which can disrupt 

sleep. 

2. Heavy studying or computer games before bed are arousing as is trying to sleep with a 

computer or TV flickering in the room. 

3. Avoid bright light in the evening, but open blinds or turn on lights as soon as the 

morning alarm sounds to start the body’s awakening cycle. 

4. Sleeping more than two or three hours later on weekends than weekdays can disrupt 

the body clock even more, making getting up on Monday morning harder. 

Some cautions and implications 

Not all scientists agree with the research on the adolescent brain. Giedd’s theory that brain 

changes are responsible for the often-erratic behavior we see in teens is speculative. The theory 

is controversial because the roots of behavior are complex and cannot be easily explained by 

relatively superficial changes in the brain. However, if the theory turns out to be true, it would 

underscore the importance of providing careful guidance through adolescence, which isn’t a bad 

idea in any case. Giedd states, “...unlike infants whose brain activity is completely determined by 

their parents and environment, the teens may actually be able to control how their own brains 

are wired and sculpted.” Adolescents are laying down neural foundations for the rest of their 

lives. As parents and teachers, we have an opportunity and an obligation to educate adolescents 

about what is going on in their brains and the role they play determining the structure and 

functioning of their brains for the rest of their lives. 

References: 

Brownlee, S. (August 9, 1999). Inside the Teen Brain. US News and World Report. 

Brown, Sandra A.; Tapert, Susan F.; Granholm, E.; & Delis, D. (February 2000). Neurocognitive Functioning of Adolescents: Effects 

of Protracted Alcohol Use. Clinical and Experimental Research, 24 (2), 164-171. 

Carskadon, M. (1999). When Worlds Collide: Adolescent Need for Sleep Versus Societal Demands", in Adolescent Sleep Needs 

and School Starting Times, editor Kyla Wahlstom, Phi Delta Kappa Educational Foundation, 1999. 

De Bellis M.D., Clark D.B., Beers S.R., Soloff P.H., Boring A.M., Hall J., Kersh A., & Keshavan M.S. (2000). Hippocampal Volume 

in Adolescent-onset Alcohol Use Disorders. American Journal of Psychiatry 157, 737-744. 

Dement, W. C. (1999). The Promise of Sleep. Delacourt Publishers, New York, New York. 

Giedd, J., Blumenthal, J., Jeffries, N., Castellanos, F., Liu, H., Ijdenbos, A., Paus, T., Evans, A., & Rapoport, J. (1999). Brain 

Development during Childhood and Adolescence: A longitudinal MRI study. Nature Neuroscience, 2 (10), 861-863. 

Gudrais, E. H (2001) Modern Myelination: The Brain at Midlife, Harvard Magazine, 103: 5, page 9. 

Johnston, L.D., O'Malley, P.M., & Bachman, J.G. (2001). The Monitoring of the Future National Survey Results on Adolescent Drug 

Use: Overview of Key Findings, 2000. Bethesda, MD: National Institute on Drug Abuse, 1-56. 

Kann, L., Kinchen, S.A., Williams, B.I., Ross, J.G., Lowry, R., Grunbaum, J.A. & Kolbe, L.J. (2000). Youth Risk Behavior 

Surveillance in the United States, 1999. Centers for Disease Control MMWR Surveillance Summaries, 49(SS-5), 1-96. 

Kelly, J.A. (1997). Substance Abuse and Mental Health Care. Managed Care, Access, and Clinical Outcomes. American 

Association of Occupational Health Nurses Journal. 

Markwiese B.J., Acheson S.K., Levin E.D., Wilson W.A., & Swartzwelder H.S. (1998) Differential Effects of Ethanol on Memory in 

Adolescent and Adult Rats. 

Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research, 22, 416-421. 

Restak, Richard. (2002). The Secret Life of the brain. Dana Press and Joseph Henry Press. 

Spear, L.P. (2000) The Adolescent Brain and Age-related Behavioral mManifestations. Neuroscience and Behavioral Review, 24: 

417-463. 

Wahlstrom, K.L. & Freeman, C.M. (1997). School Start Time Study: Preliminary Report of Findings. Minneapolis, MN: Center for 

Applied Research and Educational Improvement. 

Wolfson, A.R., & Carskadon, M.A. (1996). Early School Start Times Affect Sleep and Daytime Functioning in Adolescents. Sleep 

Research, 25, 117. 

Yurgelun-Todd, D. (2002) Frontline interview “Inside the Teen Brain” on PBS.org. Full interview available on the web at 

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/ frontline/shows/teenbrain/interviews/todd 

Pat Wolfe is a former teacher of Kindergarten through 12th grade, 

county office administrator, and adjunct university professor. Over the 

past 20 years, as an educational consultant, she has conducted 

workshops for thousands of administrators, teachers, boards of 

education and parents in schools and districts throughout the United 

States and in over 50 countries internationally. Her major area of 

expertise is the application of brain research to educational practice. 

Her entertaining and interactive presentation style makes learning 

about the brain enjoyable as well as practical. She is an award-winning 

author and has appeared on numerous videotape series, satellite 

broadcasts, radio shows, and television programs. Dr. Wolfe is a native 

of Missouri. She completed her undergraduate work in Oklahoma and 

her postgraduate studies in California. She presently resides in Napa, 

California. 

Pat Wolfe, EdD 

email: wolfe@napanet.net

Use Online Video in Your Classroom 

How teachers can bring the best of YouTube to your 

students. By Jennifer Hillner 

It's one thing to talk about Mount St. Helens erupting in science class. It's another 

thing altogether to watch a video of the mountain's summit exploding into dust. 

Teachers all across the country are finding that judiciously chosen videos help 

students engage more deeply with the subject matter, and recall the information 

they've learned longer. 

"A lot of students these days expect information to be presented in a flashy, 

entertaining way, so videos can help draw them in," says Larry Sanger, executive 

director of WatchKnow (www.watchknow.com), a site that collects educationrelated 

videos. 

Though YouTube (www.youtube.com) is blocked in many classrooms because of 

inappropriate materials on the site, there are many valuable (and downloadable) 

videos that do further learning. 

The site lists an ever-growing collection of excellent educational content, everything 

from President Obama's weekly addresses to algebraic demonstrations. Here are a 

few ways to separate the wheat from the chaff: 

Limit your searches to respected sources. Most established newspapers, 

museums, libraries, radio stations, and institutions have specific channels on 

YouTube where they collect their content. Just search by the name of the 

outlet on YouTube (say, PBS), and that organization's channel will pop up. 

From there, you can search exclusively within PBS's content. 

Check out the K–12 education group on YouTube 

(http://www.youtube.com/group/K12). Teachers and students upload movies 

on this group, which has hundreds of videos on subjects ranging from 

making angel puppets to footage from a 2004 expedition to the Titanic. 

Go to teacher-specific sites. TeacherTube (http://www.teachertube.com/) 

and WatchKnow aggregate thousands of videos from educators, YouTube, 

and the rest of the Web. In essence, they are clearinghouses of educational 

videos that cover most school subjects, categorized by subject and education 

level. WatchKnow has a review panel of educators and educational video 

experts that vet videos from first-time submitters before posting. 

Your YouTube Primer 

When choosing clips for the classroom, keep them short. This gives you time to 

discuss what you've just shown and its significance to the larger lesson. Patrick 

Greaney, who just finished tenth grade, still remembers a photosynthesis video he

watched in class at Whittier Regional Vocational Technical High School, in Haverhill, 

Massachusetts, that featured a catchy tune. "The song stuck in my head and made 

me remember the process better," he recalls. Once you've identified a video, there 

are several ways to bring it to the classroom. 

Register with YouTube. Set up a video playlist or a collection of favorites, 

then click them to stream the videos from a laptop. Just remember that 

YouTube videos are often removed without notice, so the clip you watched at 

home last night may not be there the next morning. Also, your school or 

school district might block access to the site. 

In classrooms where YouTube is blocked, download the video. Convert it to 

your playback format of choice (mp4, FLV, HD, AVI, MPEG, 3GP, iPhone, PSP, 

mp3, GIF) and store it on your laptop or PDA, which lets you access it at any 

time, even if it's removed from the site. YouTube doesn't typically offer a way 

to download and save most videos directly, but if you use Firefox, you can 

use the free DownloadHelper extension, which makes most videos 

downloadable and convertible to several formats. 

Add the word kick to the URL before youtube. The URL kickyoutube.com will 

load with a KickYouTube toolbar that lets you download the file. Many Web 

sites can help you download videos, including Zamzar, YouTube Robot, and 

PodTube. According to YouTube's terms of use, you're not supposed to 

download unless you see a download link. 

Although the fair use clause in the Copyright Law of the United States allows the 

use of works without permission for teaching, the user must adhere to some key 

regulations that can be vague and confusing. One thing is clear, though: Any 

material first published after 1978 is copyright protected. You can find the U.S. 

Copyright Office's educational-use guidelines in Circular 21. The University System 

of Georgia links to a fair use checklist; you can also email the video's maker for 

permission. 

In the end, it's worth the effort. Great content is just a few clicks away. 

Jennifer Hillner is a freelance writer in New Hampshire who specializes in 

technology. 

This article was also published in the October 2009 issue of Edutopia 

magazine as "Plugged In".

What Does It Mean to Be a Good Teacher? 

The Importance of Appropriate Goal Setting 

Mike Anderson 

Isn't it interesting that, as an education community, we cannot reach any real consensus about what it means to be a 

good teacher? Is it someone who is rigorous and pushes her students unbelievably hard? Is it someone whom the 

kids and parents all love? Is it someone who integrates technology (or art or music or movement) into his teaching? Is 

it someone who always finishes the curricular objectives for the year? 

At one school where I taught, the only kind of public teacher recognition went to teachers who endured the whole 

year without taking a sick day, so maybe a good teacher is simply someone who shows up to school reliably. Or, 

perhaps we adhere to that old colloquial adage: we cannot define a good teacher, but we know one when we see 

one. 

It's telling that the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation set aside $45 million to study how to measure teacher 

effectiveness (Anderson, 2009). Our profession is so complex and, with so many ways to measure our effectiveness, 

narrowing down what defines a good teacher can be overwhelming. 

So, let's start to explore how we can actually get better, because feeling better about ourselves as teachers is vitally 

important, but if that perception is not grounded in reality, it will not do our students nearly as much good. Let's also 

acknowledge that many books and resources are available on how to improve our teaching (e.g., Danielson, 1996), 

and that topic is not a major focus of this book. Instead, we are going to explore one particular skill that can help all of 

us, regardless of whether we teach high school physics, middle school art, or self-contained 1st grade: good goal 

setting. 

First, it's important to make sure we are clear about what kind of goal setting we mean here. We are talking about 

clear, meaningful, observable goals—ones that we know will matter to us and our students, versus the often stale, 

bland, and forced goal setting of a supervision and evaluation meeting—you know, the one where an administrator 

makes you come up with a goal for the next year. We dutifully type up the form, usually putting down some goal that 

we were probably going to work on anyway (or that we already do—let's be honest) that can't really be measured 

easily (e.g., "My goal is to make science lessons more inquiry-based so that students have more academic 

engagement."). I myself never found these kinds of goal-setting activities particularly useful and could never 

remember what my official professional goal for a year was come December. 

We are also not talking about goals handed to us from somebody else based on district plans or standardized test 

results. Again, I have found that these goals can have a limited practical use. Goals of this kind are often based on 

the previous year's data from different children who may or may not have similar learning needs as our current 

students. These kinds of goals are often meant to apply to a large set of teachers with varying skill sets and needs, 

so the goals set by the district may or may not apply to what we personally need to work on to get better as a teacher. 

The goal setting I am talking about here has to do with the everyday, on-the-spot, real-life, and meaningful goal 

setting that we should be doing on our own in the course of trying to best reach our students and improve our own 

skill sets. It often happens quickly and does not need to involve immense amounts of paperwork, professional 

conferences, or lots of time. In the following section, we will explore how to observe our students and collect data to 

set specific and meaningful goals for our teaching.

All too often, teachers' goals tend to be vague and fuzzy. "I want to be the best teacher I can be" is one I've heard a 

lot. Another common one is "I'm going to try my best." You might be wondering what the problem is with wanting to 

try our best or be the best we can be. Aren't these noble goals? 

The problem with these goals is that they are undefined, impossible to measure, and impossible to achieve. What do 

we really mean when we say we want to "be the best teacher we can be" or even "try our best"? What does that look 

like? What will we do to move closer to attaining these goals? More important, can we attain these goals? I would 

argue that we cannot. No matter how hard we try or how well we do, we can always find ways things could have gone 

better, so setting a goal of "being our best" or "trying our best" is guaranteeing failure. 

Setting Practical Goals 

So, how do we set good goals—ones that will help us get better and help us see our successes clearly? We can use 

a simple process based on the same kind of learning cycle that we encourage students to use in science: (1) observe 

and collect data, (2) form a hypothesis, (3) set a goal and try it out, and (4) assess through observation and data 

collection. Let's examine each of these steps. 

1. Observe and Collect Data 

After a lesson, at the end of the day, or at the end of a unit, we reflect on what went well and what could have been 

better and begin to make plans for adjustments and changes. "Hmm, I noticed that students really seemed to 

understand the Pythagorean theorem when they were in small groups, but then when they went to try it on their own, 

many of them really struggled." Or "The class was so quiet and focused before lunch, but when they came back from 

recess, they were so wound up that they couldn't focus on the science lesson." 

These kinds of observations are a great starting point for a possible new goal. We have noticed something that could 

use some improvement, and then questions inevitably arise: "Do students see things the same way I do? Are my 

hunches on-target? How many students are exhibiting what I think I'm seeing?" 

Now it's time to collect some data to bring our observations beyond the "I think I'm noticing..." point. The most helpful 

data are often the kind that can be gathered simply and quickly. 

2. Form a Hypothesis 

Once we have noticed a problem, collected some data, and fleshed out a few questions, we can move on to the next 

step, which is to look at the results of the data and come up with a few ideas for how we can work on the problem. 

Then we can set some specific and measurable goals for tackling it. 

3. Set a Goal and Try It Out 

Now that we have some ideas, we can choose one that seems likely to work and give it a try. 

4. Assess Through Observation and Data Collection 

When we try our new idea, we must collect more data by observing our students so that we can determine whether it 

worked. This step may be the most important part of the whole process, because it is where we get to boost our 

sense of efficacy. 

Ensure That Goal Setting Is Grounded in Student Needs but Focused on Your Actions

Consider what might happen if our goal is for all students to get a 100 percent on an upcoming math test. First, that 

goal may be unrealistic unless we create a test that is so easy that it does not really assess new learning. Second, 

we are on dangerous ground when our goal setting involves variables that we cannot control. 

Sure, it would be great if all of our students completely mastered the content on the math test, but we cannot control 

how well they study or how much sleep they get the night before the exam. We cannot control whether they are 

distracted by personal life events. So, it may be simply an unattainable dream to have all students ace a math test. 

Our goals should reflect our actions, not the actions of others. 

References 

Anderson, N. (2009, November 20). Gates Foundation gives $335 million to raise teacher effectiveness. The 

Washington Post. Retrieved from http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp- 

dyn/content/article/2009/11/19/AR2009111902211.html. 

Danielson, C. (1996). Enhancing professional practice. Alexandria, VA: ASCD.

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