I’m not really sure where I stand with regards to learning progressions. They seem like a somewhat natural evolution of thinking when one chooses depth over breadth as far as content is concerned. In this respect, I am all for them. I think covering a lot of topics in a cursory manner is really not the way to go. I recognize the point that Stevens, Delgado and Krajcik make when they refer to the hypothesis that helping students make connections between the few key ideas “will help them develop an integrated knowledge structure that allows them to apply their knowledge to a range of new situations” (p. 707). While this idea seems somewhat cognitive in its view of transfer, I still see strong value in the need to focus on a few key ideas. From a situated perspective, focusing on fewer topics could allow for authentic activity to be a larger part of the classroom and should allow for more opportunities for meaningful discourse. While not focusing on a learning progression, the classroom that Brown et al. created in their article titled “Distributed Expertise In the Classroom,” seems like it could only be created with recognition of the importance of depth over breadth.
One area that concerned me was the focus on multiple-choice assessments to determine a student’s level in a learning progression. Our course has really made me think about the utility of multiple choice tests and what they are truly testing. Assessment is a really tricky topic. I need to read more and consider it more because I think I know when I do not agree with something, but I really don’t necessarily know when I do agree with something. I continually struggle with assessment in the classes I teach. I did appreciate that the assessments used “ordered multiple choice” items, which attempted to place a student along the learning progression instead of just having a hodgepodge of answer choices. However, I still worry about truly knowing where a student stands with his or her thinking just based on a multiple choice test, especially the students who do not seem to fit into one level of the LP. Steedle and Shavelson recognized this and noted the problems students have with systematic reasoning when they state “it would likely be beneficial to introduce students to a rich variety of problem contexts and to discuss their similarities, differences, and common underlying principles” (p. 713).
As a final point, I could certainly see the evidence of thinking about learning progressions and focusing on just a few key science ideas when looking at the draft framework made available this past summer that will eventually be used to update the National Science Education Standards. It will definitely be interesting to see how that document evolves as they take the public comments into consideration and make revisions.
Mark,
I agree with you about the assessments, it is very difficult to determine what kind of assessment is appropriate for the students to really understand their level. for LPs, I liked the idea of looking at big ideas rather than separate topics, but I dont know how LPs should be determined, and if multiple choice tests are
enough for that. as you mentioned it would be interesting to see how updated standards are going to be.
Mark
I agree with the assessment dilemma. I think the main issue is that we want some sort of standardized test that is fast and cheap. And fast and cheap is probably not going to give useful data to teachers, although it may give great statistics to manipulate into a headline! Perhaps if we are going to teach these big, but nuanced ideas, we need to give more varied and nuanced assessments that involve deep answers rather than bubble sheets.