So I started my readings for this week with the Chapter from Taking Science to School, which made me think, “These are great! Why aren’t learning progressions more widely and effectively use?” Then I got to reading the journal articles and the editorial and I figured out why…..Learning progressions are a pretty new idea and consequently don’t have very much published research yet. Also, there isn’t much agreement yet about what a learning progression can encompass (just what levels students are at or including curriculum, assessment and instruction). The Wilson article definitely indicated that assessment and maybe instruction can be closely linked with learning progressions. He indicated in principle 2 that “the framework for the assessments and the framework for the curriculum and instruction must be one and the same” (page 721). This is part of his BEAR assessment system for evaluating learning progressions. One question that I had after reading this article was whether inquiry can work with learning progressions. Wilson clearly stated in order for assessments to be useful for teachers, “open-ended tasks, if used, must be quickly, readily, and reliably scorable” (page 721). From my understanding, much of good inquiry is specific to the situation and a lot of the assessments involved are open-ended. To me, it seems then that inquiry doesn’t fit with Wilson’s description of learning progressions.
The other articles from the week were helpful in seeing the ways that learning progressions are developed and evaluated. The Steedle article pointed out some of the issues that remain to be worked out regarding the alignment between a students level and what assessments indicate the level is. Their assessment was only accurate at certain levels, so it seems that the tools for evaluating learning progressions have a ways to go until they are reliable.
From the optional articles, I read the Stevens, et.al. piece about developing a learning progression for the nature of matter. It was interesting to see how they set their lower and upper anchors, then filled in from there. They seemed to have success developing a learning progression, although I would be interested to see how their LP does when evaluated with some of the current tools for LPs. I suspect their the LP presented in this paper will probably undergo many more modifications before its acceptable as a viable explanation of the levels of understanding for the nature of matter.
Overall, I felt like I learned a lot about learning progression and I’m kind of excited to see what progress is made with them over the next couple of years. They’re definitely something that I think states should be looking to incorporate into their standards, and I would definitely agree to teach within a learning progression curriculum. I do still have some questions about them, but these articles were a good start.
Tags: BARB
I agree that learning progressions have the potential to be useful in classrooms in the future. I think they are going to be a popular form of assessment once more work has been done with them. I think in years to come, the nature of matter as discussed in the Stevens et al. paper will have modifications made to it and be an acceptable form of assessment. As far as your inquiry question, I think as learning progressions become more widely used there will be a clear way to apply them to inquiry because I think the use of inquiry in teaching will also rise.
I think inquiry could be incorporated into learning progressions – I think the idea is that we should be able to come up with a learning progression for anything that can be learned. Scientific inquiry is such a huge topic and would encompass so many things that the LP would be very complex, like Wilson’s Figure 10 (p727). You would have to develop it in pieces first (address each of the inquiry skills individually) then try to bring them together to map out a complete learning progression. I think it will be a very long time before any learning progression will be ready to be used in the classroom in a way that would influence how we teach.
I think inquiry could be incorporated into learning progressions – I think the idea is that we should be able to come up with a learning progression for anything that can be learned. Scientific inquiry is such a huge topic and would encompass so many things that the LP would be very complex, like Wilson’s Figure 10 (p727). You would have to develop it in pieces first (address each of the inquiry skills individually) then try to bring them together to map out a complete learning progression. I think it will be a very long time before any learning progression will be ready to be used in the classroom in a way that would influence how we teach.
I agree with you that learning progressions may have the potential to become a very useful tool when it comes to new ideas for curriculum. That being said I feel to date there are too many unknowns and flaws. I agree that inquiry based learning doesn’t fit with a LP. I feel that inquiry is essential to keep students focus and motivated on a task, and without this motivation I don’t think students will accommodate as much information as they could. Also I think there needs to me more research done on the assessment aspect. If students fall into a multitude of levels within a given subject how do they get scored? I think that is the major flaw to date. With every student being different within a given classroom a standardized assessment I feel is extremely hard with not impossible to accomplish.