The revolution will be gradual, but the revolution is inevitable
We have made a strong effort to offer a textbook that is practical and based on educational research. Because we consume a wide variety of information sources intended to influence educators and policymakers, we recognize that some may see our approach as too traditional and cautious. There are certainly many interesting ideas floating about that are intriguing, but as yet unproven. There are also ideas we fear may be influential that we regard as flawed. We admit that education policy is only partially determined by the science of learning and that other factors control how basic principles are implemented or considered practical to implement. What follows is an effort to be less cautious and more opinionated about how we see educational technology and educational practice evolving in the near future. We first identify a key observation we believe will be the core issue in reform, describe an existing model offering tactics for addressing this issue, and then summarize one proposal for how major educational reform incorporating these tactics will play out.
Each of us learns as an individual. This simple statement is logical, but also the way those who understand learning from a cognitive perspective describing learning. Whatever happens external to each individual - the experiences each encounters, the learning activities each is asked to execute - what each individual does cognitively is self initiated and controlled. Some of the most intriguing proposals for change in educational practice seek to address students as individuals. Of course, education typtically occurs within a group context. There are advantages to a group-based approach. For example, students learn to function as members of a group and individuals do learn from observing and interacting with peers. There are also disadvantages to a group-based approach. It is difficult to tailor instruction to individual needs and interests. Many educators make an effort, possibly describing their efforts as differentiation, but the reality is that such efforts are crude. Of the various efforts to integrate technology we describe, the potential of technology to individualize learning experiences may be most important. Educational reform can mean very different things to different people, but we propose here that individualization is likely to be the most beneficial.
One additional note on individualization. Multiple variables have been argued to justify individualized learning experiences. A short list might include differences in aptitude, background knowledge, learning styles, and learning preferences. While we do not intend to review this list in detail, we believe that the most credible research supports a focus on aptitude and background knowledge differences, but not learning styles. The tactics we identify next are consistent with this position. Simply put, learners will master new content at a rate determined by what they already know that is relevant to that content and their aptitude. Allowing for this difference in rate will improve learning efficiency and success.
Learning for mastery. What follows here is a model for individualization based on ideas that have actually been around for some time, but have been impractical to implement without technology. We then conclude by describing how some see schools changing to focus on a more individualized approach.
First, we offer a brief historical context. We do this for a couple of reasons. First, good ideas are good ideas even if most have forgotten or never knew these ideas existed. Second, good ideas are not always practical to implement at the time they are proposed. In this case, technology may allow the implementation of ideas that were originally impractical.
In the mid 1980s, Bloom (1984) described what he called the 2 sigma problem. The core idea in this paper was that the likely optimal outcome in instruction would be similar to the outcome of a student working with a quality tutor - his paper referenced research comparing the benefits of having a tutor to group instruction (the 2 sigma reference is to the statistical difference in performance). At the level of the individual, the tutor can identify the present level of understanding, offer explanations based on this level, respond immediately with feedback and explanations to student efforts to use new information or experiences, extend the time devoted to instruction, recognize learning preferences, and offer personalized encouragement. The advantages of a tutor are not theoretical, but would be impractical to deploy for all students. The cost would be prohibitive. Attempting to come close to the benefits of a tutor by providing similar experiences and analysis through other means might thus be a useful way to think about how to improve instruction.
Bloom's analysis followed up an earlier innovation promoted by Bloom and others. Bloom (1968) and Keller (1968) proposed instructional tactics described as mastery learning. I am not going to explain their instructional models here because I offer this description in the online content associated with Chapter 4. Keller and Bloom had different ideas concerning how individual needs could be met. Bloom's proposal, learning for mastery, was more group based with students evaluated as failing to demonstrate satisfactory performance on formative tasks regrouped for additional instruction. Keller's personalized system of instruction relied on tutors to work with individual students and while probably less well known is closest to the way technology is used to address individual needs (see Kahn Academy as an example).
Note that the idea in Bloom's two sigma problem is not to replace the teacher but to approximate some aspects of individualization that teachers working with a large number of students find difficult to provide. Such changes would reform education not by engaging students in radically different learning tasks, but by providing a way to provide experiences long known to be valuable.
Moving toward schools that work differently.
We believe that there is a reasonable research base for change, but acknowledge that moving eductational practice in a new direction will rely more on changes in policies and political perspectives than on new research findings.
Because it seems to so many that K-12 educational practice changes so little, explaining why this time it will be different may be necessary. We borrow heavily from Horn and Staker (2015) in making our argument and we hope that our interpretation of the arguments made by these authors are accurate.
In Blended: Using disruptive innovation to improve schools, Horn and Staker offer an external perspective on K-12 education and educational change. Those of us who are educators often react to such an external analysis with skepticism claiming education is different and drawing analogies to factors in the realm of business is ill-advised. Whatever your personal opinion, I would suggest that you recognize that decisions about public education are not made entirely by educators. Whether "outsiders" have an accurate understanding or not, it is the children of outsiders we are educating and it is the outsiders who are paying the bills and setting broad policies as part of the political process. If nothing more, educators need to understand the arguments and analyses made by influential "outsiders" just as we would expect outsiders to carefully consider arguments and analyses offered by educators.
Horn and Staker propose that education remains static because what happens in classrooms is controlled by a complicated set of interdependencies that are difficult to address. It seems there are so many factors that cannot be teased apart. Put another way - a given teacher feels boxed in by many factors such that it is diffcult to address any given factor because some other factor then serves as a road block. Some examples? There are:
- temporal dependencies - what has happened to students before the present, what will be expected of the students in the future
- lateral dependencies - what has happened elsewhere - e.g., writing in a content area depends on what has been or will be taught in English.
- physical dependencies - an extended time frame for a project may be limited by space availability and the scheduling of students for other activities.
The authors propose that the learning and motivational advantages of individual learning will allow a break from these dependencies. There will be gradual inroads into tradition that result from a co-evolving series of opportunities for students and improvement in educational technology. In fact, the authors propose that the process has already begun.
The authors suggest that the initial foothold moving education toward technology-supported innovation has and will continue to occur in areas of "nonconsumption". This strange term pretty much translates as "no competition". If some students would like to take German, but your school has no German teacher, there is not competition for an online German course. If the parents of students who are already being home schooled decide to have their children work with resources from the Kahn Academy, this is no competition for the traditional school. When credit recovery is necessary (students who cannot be given credit for coursework because of performance, absenteeism, etc.) and students are enrolled in an online course because it would be far too expensive for a school to provide instruction, there is no competition. So advanced courses, unique courses, courses for those not wanting to attend traditional schools, experiences for students younger than would be provided for by traditional schools, and similar circumstances have resulted in learning experiences and incentives for the improvement of such learning experiences. Assuming satisfactory experiences, there becomes a potential for trying similar tactics in more traditional settings.
A couple of other trends at the level of individual teachers have also created some momentum. For example, some educators at all levels have begun to do what is described as "flipping their classrooms". Typically, this practice involves the creation of video content of presentations that are to be viewed outside of the classroom so that class time can be devoted to other activities. Such activities might include working with a subset of the class who need more individual attention or using the additional classroom time for projects or discussion.
Once the use of technology as a reasonable way to present content can be accepted, it is a short move to the acceptance of content not prepared by the classroom teacher to be experienced by individual students. So, classroom teachers might search out video content from the Kahn Academy or a similar source to meet a presentation or remediation requirement. I am not certain that such programs and commercial alternatives have been thoroughly evaluated, but the programs have established that individualized instruction can be delivered in a way that is cost effective. These modifications are accepted because they fit within a traditional framework and they are not threatening to the individual teachers who decide to use them. However, what they also accomplish is the introduction of systems suited to the needs of individual students and the attention necessary to encourage the efforts of content providers.
What is likely to follow is unclear, but newer approaches will likely be built on certain characteristics:
- more flexible content - in addition to individualized, mastery systems, there will likely be more options for learning specific concepts to address individual interests (My note - interests are not the same as learning styles)
- teachers will increase their role as facilitator - more attention to monitoring progress (as data provided by the online systems), time spend coaching and counseling individual students
- application opportunities - educators will provide application opportunities in parallel with this change in the instruction of traditional content. Tactics such as collaborative problem-based and project-based learning seem most likely.
What Horn and Staker describe is a transition to what they describe as a more blended environment. This model - core content delivered via online mastery systems facilitated by educators or adult supervisors in combination with parallel collaborative learning experiences - is already being offered in some schools (mostly charter schools at this point).
Addendum:
Late in 2015, research was made public I thought required the modification of this page. Researchers from the Center for Research on Education Outcomes, Mathematica Policy Research, and the Center on Reinventing Public Education summarized their work evaluating the relative performance of K-12 students enrolled in a total online learning experience. It is difficult to evaluate the performance of online students using what are regarded as quality research methodology. Expectations for the ideal research would include large numbers of participants from multiple locations and the assignment of participants to treatment conditions in a random manner. This recent study does not rely on random assignment, but uses sophisticated statistical methods to control for predictable sources of potential group biases.
The study investigated performance in reading and math and concluded that online students performed at a significantly lower level than students enrolled in traditional education settings. The researchers went further to point to the lack of engagement with students and reliance on parents to supervise as areas of weakness. Note this research involved students learning online only and not what I describe above as a hybrid or blended model.
This research is available (Center for Research on Education Outcomes, 2015), but I think it important for the work to go through the formal publication process to determine if experts find significant limitations in the studies.
References
Bloom, B. (1968). "Mastery Learning." Evaluation Comment 1(2). - Learning for mastery
Bloom, B.S. (1984). The 2 sigma problem: The search for methods of group instruction as effective as one-to-one tutoring. Educational Researcher, 13 (6), 4-16.
Center for Research on Education Outcomes (2015). Online charter school study 2015. Available online –http://credo.stanford.edu/pdfs/OnlineCharterStudyFinal2015.pdf
Horn, M. B., & Staker, H. (2015). Blended: Using disruptive innovation to improve schools. John Wiley & Sons.
Keller, F. S. (1968). ""Good-bye, teacher..."." Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis 1(1): 79-89.