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Science education has long been recognized as one of the U.S’s most difficult subjects. Even though we have been trying to reform and improve science education for over 100 years, the U.S. still sits somewhere in the lower half of industrialized countries in science literacy. A group of science educators are developing a new method of teaching science called “learning progressions” and think that it could be the answer to getting all students literate in science.
To compete economically and be a part of the 21st century, it is necessary that the U.S. improve its science literacy. Our democracy demands that the whole population understand science, not just the few who work in the field. Complex decisions about climate change, the environment, public health, and other related issues require a good understanding of science.
The Center on Continuous Instructional Improvement (CCII) brought together a panel of science educators to review the potential of learning progressions. The Center put together a report, Learning Progressions in Science – An Evidence Based Approach to Reform, to address 1) the current status on learning progressions in science 2) the basic ingredients of learning progressions, 3) the current debates about learning progressions in science, and 4) the work that must be done to realize the potential of learning progressions.
This is briefly what CCII found:
· Learning progressions in science are empirically grounded and testable hypotheses about how students’ understanding of, and ability to use, core scientific concepts and explanations and related scientific practices grow and become more sophisticated over time, with appropriate instruction.
· These hypotheses describe the pathways students are likely to follow to the mastery of core concepts.
· The learning progressions are based on research about how students’ learning actually progresses – as opposed to selecting sequences of topics and learning experiences based only on logical analysis of current disciplinary knowledge and on personal experiences in teaching.
While the initial work on learning progressions is promising, it is also very limited. There are not enough examples in enough science fields to make general claims. If learning progressions were to play a central role in moving education toward adaptive instruction, there would be five benefits:
· They should provide a more understandable basis for setting standards, with tighter and clearer ties to the instruction that would enable students to meet them;
· They would provide reference points for assessments that report in terms of levels of progress (and problems) and signal to teachers where their students are, when they need intervention, and what kinds of intervention or ongoing support they need;
· They would inform the design of curricula that are efficiently aligned with what student need to progress
· They would provide a more stable conception of the goals and required sequences of instruction as a basis for designing both pre- and in- service teacher education; and,
· The empirical evidence on the relationship between students’ instructional experiences and the resources made available to them, and the rates at which they move along the progressions, gathered during their development and ongoing validation, can form the basis for a fairer set of expectations for what students and teachers should be able to accomplish and thus a fairer basis for designing accountability systems and requirements.
Learning progressions are empirically-grounded hypotheses. They can be tested and become more sophisticated with further use. Learning progressions have five essential components:
1. Learning targets or clear end points that are defined by societal aspirations and analysis of the central concepts and themes in a discipline;
2. Progress variables that identify the critical dimensions of understanding and skill that are being developed over time;
3. Levels of achievement or stages of progress that define significant intermediate steps in conceptual/skill development that most children might be expected to pass through on the path to attaining the desired proficiency;
4. Learning performances which are the operational definitions of what children’s understanding and skills would look like at each of these stages of progress, and which provide the specifications for the development of assessments and activities which would locate where students are in their progress; and,
5. Assessments that measure student understanding of the key concepts of practices and can track their developmental progress over time.
There are researchers, education scientists, developers of assessments, teachers in education programs, and curriculum developers who are interested in researching learning progressions. Many of these professionals believe that if enough research is invested it could bring about better student learning for all students, better assessments, standards, and curricula in the field of science. The CCII panel agreed that learning progressions had great potential for making a strong contribution to education. They recommended the 12 steps below as challenges for researchers, developers, policymakers, and education professionals:
· Share the available learning progressions
· Validate the learning progressions
· Create existence proofs
· Identify the core science ideas to be studied
· Invest in development of progressions for the central concepts for K-12 science
· Initiate work on the integration and connections among progressions
· Invest in the development of assessment tools based on learning progressions for use by teachers and schools.
· Encourage collaboration between science education researchers, assessment experts, and cognitive scientists
· Support more research on science learning
· Study development of students from different cultural backgrounds and with differing initial skill levels.
· Increase funding for the development and validation of learning progressions
· Encourage states revising their standards to consider the evidence on learning progressions
The twelve bullet points above indicate the amount of work that needs to be done to bring learning progressions into K-12 education. But despite the amount of work, it is plain to the panel that there is a great deal of potential in the concept of learning progressions. In order to teach science for all students it is necessary to do the research to fully understand the tools needed. Learning progressions would put us on the road to start solving the perpetual need for reform in science education.
