I believe that learning progressions is a very good strategy at reforming educational practices in the United States. Growing up I was always discouraged by the fact that the things that you learn from year to year seem to have a disconnect and do not seem to progress to any higher order of knowing. I was discouraged that in high school I did not have a biology course every year, building upon the knowledge of the previous year.
I believe that it would take a slightly eutopian scenario for it to be utilized across the nation. The success of the development of standard learning progressions for all students in the United States has many stumbling blocks. Firstly, every state does not have identical standards. In fact, every school in a state probably does not follow the standards exactly the same in terms of curriculum construction. Even if a state with good standards set a well organized learning progression plan for its students, how many students migrate to and from that state. These students would possibly go to states with different learning progression plans. Students might come to a state with a learning progression strategy and have never participated in one. These students would consequently need to assimilate to the learning progression.
Another stumbling block I see in the learning progression idea is the fact that to accomplish this over the course of K-12 every teacher must be on board. I do not have any experience in the politics of the teaching world, but I would imagine that there is not significant dialogue between middle and high school teachers nor is there likely significant dialogue from teachers in adjacent years. This is a key element in the success of learning progressions in my opinion. I would almost like to see a system where a teacher has a class for two or three years in order to promote this progression. This way, the teacher knows there students and what level they are at educational. This could eliminate the first two or three months that a teacher takes to determine this at the beginning of the year. It would also allow the teacher to know what has been covered and what can be layered over this previous knowledge and skill acquisition.
I really like the Atlas of Science Literacy concept. Firstly, it is a nice guide for state standards, acting as a sort of national standard for science education. I really like the stratification that is done in these atlases, with conceptual ideas outlined year by year that progress to the acquisition of an overall big idea that students should understand. If there is not teacher dialogue among teachers of different years in a school, this atlas would serve as a guide of what concepts a student should come in the classroom with. Although that Atlas is great, again, there would have to be participation at all levels to utilize this tool.
Teacher cooperation is something that I have thought about since entering the program. Even trying to implement inquiry in the classroom can be difficult if every teacher before taught in the traditional teacher-centered style. It can take weeks to get the students use to doing the more open style activities, and then when they leave your class at the end of the year and go back to a teacher-centered environment… what was the point? If you can’t get all of the teachers on board, maybe you can at least get some of the science teachers to work with you in starting/continuing with a more aligned curriculum.
What do you think about a national curriculum or standards?