Dylan will argue that the main reason that most system-wide educational reforms have failed is that they have ignored (1) the importance of teacher quality for student progress; (2) the fact that teacher quality is highly variable; and (3) that teacher quality has differential impact on different students. Teacher quality can be improved by replacing teachers with better ones, but this is slow, and of limited impact. This suggests that the future economic prosperity of each country requires improving the quality of the teachers already working in its schools. We can help teachers develop their practice in a number of ways; some of these will benefit students, and some will not. Developments with the biggest impact appear to be those that involve changes in practice, which will require new kinds of teacher learning, new models of professional development, and new models of leadership.
Objective:
By the end of this session, participants will understand the various approaches that have been used to measure the differences between teachers in their effectiveness, and understand the magnitude of teacher effects relative to student progress. Participants will also understand why various attempts to identify the characteristics of effective teachers have been unsuccessful, so that evaluating teachers is likely to be an ineffective approach to improving education. Participants will also understand how to apply cost-effective analysis to potential mechanisms for improving teacher quality, and learn why changing practice in classrooms, though challenging, is likely to provide the greatest improvements in student achievement.
The idea of making students’ learning and thinking visible originated at Project Zero, Harvard Graduate School of Education, and has captured the interest of schools and teachers worldwide. In particular, the use of thinking routines as valuable tools for scaffolding and supporting learning has become a core practice in many schools. This year, we will publish The Power of Making Thinking Visible. In this masterclass we will explore six powers of making thinking visible and examine some of the new routines that are a part of this new book. These include routines for engaging students with others, engaging them with ideas, and engaging them in action. We will explore how teachers move beyond the use of routines as good activities to their establishment as patterns of thinking. What do classrooms look like when such patterns take hold? In this interactive masterclass, participants will have a chance to learn how teachers are working with thinking routines to transform their classrooms into cultures of thinking, and to use the routines themselves to see how they work as tools for all learners.
Participants will learn:
– How to make students’ thinking visible through the use of routines
– How routines can be used as formative assessment tools.
– How routines are constructed to facilitate thinking and address learning challenges
– The kinds of thinking students must do to build understanding
– How to use routines in different content areas and grade levels.
Entrenched beliefs are often a barrier to quality implementation in schools. In addition to collective efficacy, other mindframes can serve to either impede or support school improvement initiatives. In this session, participants will consider belief systems that inspire powerful impact in schools and explore leadership practices that can be employed to help teams develop different ways of thinking. Participants will examine ways to tap into mastery as the main source of collective efficacy and consider how to improve the quality of peer observation as an efficacy shaping source.
Participants will:
– Identify opportunities and challenges in regard to achieving quality implementation in educational settings;
– Distinguish between four interrelated dimensions of scale (in relation to scaling change initiatives in schools);
– Describe a process through which quality implementation occurs in schools;
– Consider ways in which collective efficacy beliefs serve to either impede or strengthen quality implementation of evidence-based practices in educational settings;
– Name the sources of collective efficacy;
– Identify leadership practices to employ to help foster the development of positive mindframes amongst the school faculty;
– Identify key features of mastery environments and key areas of focus for creating mastery experiences in teams.
– Identify strategies for establishing a culture that enables observational learning;
– Name 2-3 professional learning structures/protocols that include observational learning as a key component;
– Identify six factors that increase the impact of vicarious experiences as efficacy shaping sources for teams;
– Identify ways to strengthen these six factors before-during- or after observations.
Large ships are hard to turn, but there are strategies that definitely flip the rudder and maintain the new course. Want your school to move toward differentiated practices? Evidenced-based grading? Block-scheduling? Data-driven decision-making? A new literacy or math program?
Think of the exciting new directions your school could pursue if only your staff shared your excitement! Unfortunately, new building and district initiatives can be dead on arrival if teachers are cynical, fearful overworked, or suffering from low morale.
Based on work with NASSP, ASCD affiliates, and in hundreds of school systems in the U.S. and around the world, this candid and compelling masterclass provides new insights and dozens of practical strategies that help teachers and their leaders embrace new initiatives and changes in policy and practice, even if educators are hesitant or going into it “kicking and screaming.” Join us for a candid and inspiring look at how to get an entire faculty to set sail for the new horizon ahead.
The future of education will require new school models, new approaches for teaching and learning, and innovative leaders who can create the conditions for meaningful change.
In this interactive design session, participants will dive into the essential components of learner-centered education, and engage in collaborative activities to empathize, ideate, and develop prototypes that will accelerate the shift to effective and empowering learning experiences for all students.
What does it take for us to truly create learner-centered environments and experiences for learners? In particular, what competencies do adults need to successfully work in LC environments? Participants will have an opportunity to explore these questions as well as learn from the efforts of pioneering learner-centered practitioners.
They will have the opportunity to explore the implications of this shift on how educators are prepared, including an introduction to a three-part program framework and the research and reasoning behind each element of the program. There will be opportunities to explore what it means to create such professional training or professional development opportunities in their own contexts.
There is now a large and growing evidence base that helping teachers develop their use of minute-to-minute and day-by-day assessment is one of, if not the most powerful ways to improve student learning. However, adopting formative assessment, or assessment for learning as it is sometimes called, involves far more than adding a few “quick fixes” to teachers’ classroom repertoires. It involves a fundamental shift in focus, from what the teacher is putting in to the process to what the students are getting out of it. In this interactive one-day masterclass, participants will learn:
• Why we need to increase educational achievement, what’s been tried, and why it hasn’t worked;
• Why formative assessment needs to be the priority for every school;
• What formative assessment is (and isn’t);
• Practical techniques for implementing formative assessment; and
• How to sustain the development of formative assessment with teacher learning communities.
During the masterclass, we will focus on the practical and concrete ways educators can create a culture of thinking in their schools and classrooms, foster the kinds of thinking opportunities that lead to deep understanding of content, and how to look for evidence of student thinking and understanding. This masterclass offers a unique opportunity to explore the cultural forces of: interactions, modeling, environment, routines, language, opportunities, time, and expectations. Throughout the masterclass, participants will use a variety of thinking routines to facilitate their own learning and explore how each of these can be used to create more thoughtful classrooms.
Participants will explore and build their understanding around:
– What is a culture of thinking? What does it look like and feel like?
– The role messaging plays in both understanding and shaping of group culture
– How can we assess, understand and shape the culture of our classrooms and schools to most effectively build a culture of thinking?
– How can the cultural forces that exist in each classroom support and further develop a culture of thinking?
– How can educators use thinking routines to structure, scaffold, and support students’ thinking?
This full day session provides the foundation for understanding collective efficacy, its impact on student achievement, and the consequences associated with collective teacher efficacy. Since ‘Collective Teacher Efficacy’ topped John Hattie’s Visible Learning list of factors that matter the most in raising student achievement, school leaders (both formal and informal) are asking themselves: How can we foster a sense of collective efficacy in schools? In this session, participants will consider how to harness the power of teacher teams by identifying four research-based, efficacy enhancing leadership practices.
Participants will also examine how leaders and teams can utilize these practices in their daily-routines.
Participants will:
– Differentiate between self-efficacy, teacher efficacy, and collective teacher efficacy;
– Identify characteristics of efficacious teams;
– Explain the effect size research and identify where different influences rank in relation to collective teacher efficacy;
– Know the positive and negative consequences associated with collective teacher efficacy;
– Understand sources that influence a team’s beliefs about their ability to impact student results;
– Identify four research-based leadership practices that can be employed to foster collective teacher efficacy;
– Identify specific ways to strengthen collaboration in professional learning communities;
– Propose ways to empower teachers;
– Differentiate between mastery and performance goals and explain the relationship between mastery goal-orientations and collective efficacy;
– Determine a structure for helping teams interpret results (know thy collective impact).
This paradigm shift from teacher-centered to learner-centered is changing how we see learners and their critical role in their own learning now and throughout their lives. Authentic, learner-centered experiences empower learners to develop skills and content knowledge aligned with desired learning outcomes.
In this masterclass we will explore the characteristics of learner-centered experiences. Based on these characteristics we will examine student work and leverage examples to create or revise projects to ensure they are designed to speak curiosity, ignite passion, and unleash genius.
We cannot create new systems within the paradigms that created the current system. Nowhere is this more true than in conversations about how we assess the outcomes of learning for young people, and hold schools and educators accountable.
This masterclass is an opportunity to explore the outcomes that 21st century schools need to produce for young people and their communities, and to dig into the new ways in which we can think about collecting and considering “evidence” about outcomes in ways that reflect progress and innovation across multiple fields of discipline.
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