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Chapter 7: Managing Classrooms for Change
Because classrooms are complex systems that are affected by many factors, there is no cookbook approach to classroom management or one approach to managing change that works in all situations. If teachers are going to be successful, they need training and hands-on experience in facing the fast-paced problem solving that is required in the classroom. It is also important to broaden the definition of classroom management for student-centered classrooms in order to maximize the benefits of access to technology.
Getting to know, understand, and build relationships with students is the first step. In effective classrooms, teachers move away from controlling students to focus on their own ability to create and implement learning environments that engage students. Students are more likely to be engaged if the learning is personalized to include what a particular student learns, how a student learns, and when and where a student learns. Technology is a great facilitator. Creating innovative opportunities for students to learn can engage them in new ways.
A teacher’s skills in organization, problem solving, and communication and his or her understanding of students make a difference. The quality of the content and the depth of the interaction students have with it matter most for engagement.
Classroom teachers are the key
A 2005 OECD report says, “Raising teacher quality is perhaps the policy direction most likely to lead to substantial gains in school performance.” While the technology revolution is creating a paradigm shift in education, change is never easy. Most teachers are used to the teacher’s role as a content expert who imparts wisdom and to students being passive recipients of information. Because this model may be the only one a teacher has experienced, and the teacher has most likely been successful within this model, it may be difficult for him or her to understand the need to shift to a new model. It is difficult to move toward a new reality without really understanding what it will look like.
Although the role of teachers in a modern classroom may be different from that in a traditional classroom, teachers remain vital to students’ success and play a variety
of roles. At times they focus on the individual learning needs of each student, and at other times they are content experts with just-in-time direct instruction. The biggest difference is that students begin to drive their own learning using digital tools and become collaborators in the process of learning.
Teachers must learn to empower students to make decisions and to learn to guide them as they develop appropriate learning strategies. There are a number of digital tools that help facilitate this new role of students. The classroom learning- management system, along with blogs, wikis, and social-networking tools, provides dynamic platforms for communication and collaboration in and outside the
school. Uninterrupted access to the Internet allows students to find primary sources of information and other dynamic content that can replace the antiquated and static content of textbooks. Online formative and summative assessments give teachers the tools to make data-driven decisions about instruction, as well as provide students with real-time data with which to begin assessing their own understanding of content and their own learning needs.
Good teachers have always played a key role in students’ success. It is obvious that teachers continue to play a key role in the ubiquitous-technology classroom, but the current thinking about what constitutes a good teacher may be insufficient. Although there are many definitions of teacher quality, there is a growing consensus regarding the characteristics a good teacher possesses.
The No Child Left Behind Act identifies the three qualities most commonly associated with teacher quality as education, certification, and subject-matter knowledge.
Several years of teaching experience also plays a major role in teacher quality and student achievement. Several years of teaching experience, a teaching degree, and appropriate content knowledge, however, do not guarantee that teachers will be able to facilitate the student-centered, personalized digital learning environment. In this new, ubiquitous-technology classroom, teachers must also be flexible, willing to change, and able to create learning environments that allow each student to achieve their individual learning goals.
Alignment of curriculum to standards
Successful students and schools are most often measured by how well students do on state standardized tests. It makes sense, then, that schools have a way to ensure that students are learning the content that will be tested on the state exam. Aligning a school’s curriculum to the state’s standards and benchmarks is an important first step in increasing student achievement. State standards and benchmarks are not a curriculum. State standards provide an age-specific framework of big ideas and concepts believed to be important in a subject area.
The associated benchmarks identify the specific concepts and skills necessary to demonstrate mastery of the content. A school’s curriculum, however, brings to life the concepts and skills that are identified in the state standards and benchmarks. A common process used to align a school’s curriculum with the state’s standards and benchmarks is to start by extracting the key concepts and skills embedded in the document. Once the concepts and skills are extracted, they can be sequenced in a way that takes into account variables within the school and classroom.
These variables may include things such as students’ prior knowledge and readiness, the school calendar, the class schedule, and alignment with instruction in other content areas.
Many schools look for shortcuts to this process and purchase content that has been organized on the basis of typical class offerings and has aligned this class content to a particular state’s standards and benchmarks. Textbook companies have been doing this for years. As districts continue to move to digital solutions, a diverse group of other content providers has emerged. This content is not inherently good or bad. Purchasing aligned content can provide great resources. Aligned content, however, is not a curriculum, and should not be implemented as such.
Using a textbook as the curriculum is no longer acceptable. Some policy makers and community leaders may believe they can “teacher proof” the curriculum if they have the perfect resources. The problem with this thinking is that classrooms are complex, living systems, not assembly lines, and there is not one method or particular content that is going to make students achieve.
Impact of curriculum
Aligning the curriculum to your state standards and benchmarks and/or the National Common Core Standards is an important first step to increasing student achievement, but it is only the first step. For the curriculum to have the greatest impact, it should meet the needs of the individual learner and be tied to ongoing formative and summative assessments.
Individualization and personalization are two methods that are used to meet the individual student’s needs. An individualized curriculum is one that is tailored by the teacher to assessments of individual students’ interests and abilities. With a personalized curriculum, the student takes an active role in the “personalization” of his or her own learning. The difference, then, between individualization and personalization is in the locus of control. Is the curriculum and instruction actively controlled by the teacher or by the student?
Technology is making both individualization and personalization much more manageable. Teachers are now finding ways to individualize the curriculum for each student in ways that would be too cumbersome without technology. A traditional curriculum is delivered to all the students in the class at the same time and in the same way, without regard for what a student already knows and can do.
Some students find the content too challenging because they do not have the appropriate knowledge or skills to embrace this new learning. Other students find the content boring or superficial because they have already mastered this learning. With universal access to technology, students can easily be assessed, start individualized instruction at their current level of understanding, and progress through the curriculum at a pace that is suited to their individual needs. In this way the learning needs of all the students are met and they are all maximizing their learning potential. When teachers allow students to personalize their own learning, the role of the teacher really begins to shift. Students can follow their own interests, pre-assess their knowledge and skills, and then follow their own learning paths in order to maximize their learning in themost efficient ways.
Regardless of whether an individualized or a personalized method is being employed, it is important to have a variety of strategies for assessing the impact of curriculum and for maximizing learning. Students’ and teachers’ learning to making informed decisions based on credible data generated by assessments is essential to continuous improvement and is no longer separate from the learning process, but rather an integral part of it.
Traditional assessments are summative in nature. This means that the assessment is used at the end of a unit of instruction to determine whether a student has met a particular standard. State standardized tests are also summative in nature. Summative assessments have their place but are of limited use in the ongoing learning process.
Formative assessment, on the other hand, takes place continuously. The intent of this type of assessment is to inform the teacher and students of gaps between what students know and can do and what they are expected to know and be able to do. The great benefit of formative assessments is that students are provided with continuous and immediate feedback that can be acted upon. Technology can be used to incorporate assessment into instruction in novel ways that enable the teacher and student to monitor day-today progress accurately. Most learning software, whether it is a game, a simulation, or a worksheet, provides the student with instant feedback. Assessment data are also instantly accessible to the teacher to use as they guide the learning.
Clickers and text polling are another way technology is providing instant feedback in the classroom. This kind of assessment supports the learning process instead of only assessing the learning outcome. Technology and curriculum integration
Technology is present in almost every educational environment in the country, but it is often integrated into instruction only in superficial ways. According to the Project RED research, only 1 percent of technology-rich schools are implementing technology properly. Even in one-to-one technology environments, students often use their computers only for word processing or to conduct simple Internet searches for information. These are first-order changes, such as typing instead of writing.
A learning platform that supports innovative curricular resources offers so much more opportunity for learning. And second-order changes support students to learn more efficiently and effectively. There are a number of ways that technology can play a meaningful role in the curriculum and be integrated into instruction seamlessly. Content can be in a digital format, technology can be used to deliver content, and a wide variety of digital tools can be used to deepen the learning experience and achieve academic goals.
