Monthly Archives: November 2010

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28
Nov 10

Learning Progressions

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.

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28
Nov 10

Week 14 – Learning Progressions

Before this week, I had never read anything about learning progressions, so the only insight that I have into what they entail comes from this week’s readings. With that being said, there is one thing that each author seemed to mention at the start of their work: learning progressions are relatively new in the education field, but they have been utilized in other areas for years. What has led to this increase in research in recent years? And why has it taken so long for the field of education research to consider the possible significance of utilizing learning progressions in a classroom setting?

Through their research, Steedle and Shavelson illustrated the difficulty in developing standardized learning progressions. In the research they performed, they aimed to classify students into different levels of understandings – with level 4 being the most knowledgeable students in the group. If the learning progression is reflective of the standardized assessments provided, I would assume that students in level 4 would have enough knowledge base to understand the content being assessed. However, this was not the case. I thought it to be very interesting that these students with the highest level of understanding still possessed misconceptions. This study by Steedle and Shavelson illustrates that a multitude of variables goes into the successful application of a learning progression in the classroom. If one thing is clear to me after reading this article, it is that much more research needs to be done before learning progressions can be utilized to their fullest potential in a classroom setting.

The article by Duncan further reinforced by assumption that more research needs to be done on learning progressions. Much like Steedle and Shavelson, Duncan discussed the variability that comes into effect when applying learning progressions to the classroom. The variations between classrooms have the potential to be quite drastic, only further increasing the difficulty in successfully using learning progressions. One point that I found interesting was the idea that LPs may function more like theoretical constructs in that they cannot be specifically applied to one finite situation. If this is the case, do we have enough research about how students learn to be able to successfully apply something like this to a classroom?

I found the article written by Wilson to be a bit confusing. His aim at simplifying learning progressions by developing construct maps was something that didn’t make too much sense to me. This may be because of my lack of knowledge about learning progressions, but I’m not sure. Although I found this article to be confusing, I did like the point that Wilson made about assessment. He basically stated that assessments need to be created for learning progressions instead of molding learning progressions to fit the designed assessments. I think that this is one of the major flaws of our current school system. Currently, curriculum is developed to fit with standardized assessments, which I believe can greatly hinder learning in the classroom.

The article that I found most interesting and most applicable to my current understanding of learning is the article by Songer et al. This article stated that learning progressions (content and inquiry progressions) cannot be analyzed empirically; instead, they lend themselves to the development of products with the potential to be analyzed empirically. As Duncan stated, LPs may just be theoretical constructs, and thus, they would not be able to be analyzed empricially. If assessments could be developed to properly analyze the content, I believe that learning progressions could become a very effective tool to monitor student learning. 

Based on all of the readings for this week, I have come to the conclusion that LPs function (at least for the moment) as research tools. Researchers have not yet established a specific way to utilize them in a classroom effectively. As mentioned in Taking Science to School, LPs have led to the creation of standards that have developed into national standards. Although the learning progressions have led to the development of national standards, I believe that they may have very different impacts in different classroom environments. Anderson showed that the implications of learning progressions may also differ depending upon the grade level. Learning becomes a more complex process as students age and the knowledge becomes more complex.

With all this being said, I enjoyed learning more about a topic with which I was totally unfamiliar. As more research continues to be done, it will be very interesting to see how learning progressions can be utilized as tools in a classroom environment. 

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28
Nov 10

Learning Progressions

Learning Progressions is a topic that I have not heard much about until reading the articles from this week.  I do like the overall idea that students can build on the information that they learn, and develop a more comprehensive understanding.  If I understood the articles correctly, I took away that learning progressions are almost like a trajectory the students can follow to arrive at a level of understanding that someone defines as appropriate. The theoretical significance of a “learning progression” is to develop an idea that could lead students to become scientifically literate.  In the Journal of Research in Science Teaching, the Editorial by Duncan et al., highlighted many interesting, and what I would even deem controversial, aspects of learning progressions.  The first being what role does the teacher and other instructional interventions play in the success of a learning progression?  On page 608 Duncan et al. stated, “The question of how intimately linked curriculum and instruction are to progression also remains open.  On one hand, we noted in our definition that LPs are not developmentally inevitable and depend on targeted instruction; on the other hand, LPs are essentially theoretical constructs that are not intended to be tied to a specific instructional intervention.  The articles in this issue differ in regard to the emphasis they place on instruction and whether or not instructional interventions are necessary for the empirical validation of the progression.”  I wonder myself how greatly learning progressions depend on the work (ex. scaffolding and  other instructional measures) teachers perform to get their students to understand the material.  It also makes me wonder how else would the learner get to the next level?

On page 606-607 Duncan et al. also stated, “Second, these progressions are bounded by an upper anchor describing what students are expected to know and be able to do by the end of the progression; this anchor is informed by analyses of the domain as well as societal expectations.”  This being said, if the society standards are a major factor to the success of a learning progression, at what level in society would this be defined? Would it be by what the teacher deemed the society standard, or would it be at a higher level–state or national? 

I found the Steedle and Shavelson article titled Supporting Valid Interpretations of Learning Progression Level Diagnosis useful to have a better understanding of the complications with learning progressions.  Although learning progressions are theoretically a great idea, the assessment potentially used to validate the success of learning progression is tricky to perform.  Steedle and Shavelson pointed out that particular points of a learning progression do not always allow for a specific analysis.  After reading this article I felt a bit skeptic about learning progressions as a tool to be used in the classroom.  If specific analysis is too difficult to do with the learning progression, would this tool be somewhat unfair to be practiced in classrooms or even implemented on a standard basis?  

 

The question previously asked was further justified by what I read in the Mark Wilson article. As Wilson noted  on page 716 in the article titled Measuring Progressions: Assessment Structures Underlying a Learning Progression, “Devising means of measuring a student’s location within or along a learning progression is a crucial step in advancing the scientific study of learning progressions, and for finding educationally useful applications of the idea.”  The idea of a construct map, which would be a tool used to help researchers understand how assessment tools can be related to cognition.  I found Wilson to be easy to read, and I thought the metaphor provided to understand the relationship between learning progressions and assessment thoughtful and helpful.  On page 717 Wilson stated, “In order to illustrate certain aspects of the relationship between learning progressions and assessment, I will use a visual metaphor that superimposes images of construct maps on an image of a learning progression. This image of the learning progression is shown in Figure 1, where the successive layers of the ”thought clouds” are intended to represent the successive layers of sophistication of the student’s thinking, and the increase in the cloud’s size is intended to indicate that the thoughts become more sophisticated later in the sequence (e.g., they have wider applicability later in the sequence). The person in the picture is a someone (a science educator, a science education researcher, an assessment developer?) who is thinking about student thinking. In other circumstances (e.g., Wilson, 2005), I have called this person the ”measurer,” though not here, as the ideas being examined in the article are mainly at an early point in the development of assessments, focusing on the first of the building blocks. It is important to recall that this learning progression is in the researcher’s thoughts, and that it represents a hypothesis about the students’ thoughts that will be examined empirically, eventually.”  Overall, I thought Wilson provided a good building block for a tool that could be potentially used to give more grounding to an assessment. 

 

Finally, the Songer et al. article titled How and When Does Complex Reasoning Occur?  Empiracally Driven Development of a Learning Progression Focused on Complex Reasoning about Biodiversity was an article that showed the application of a three year learning progression.  I thought the overall goal of these researchers was attention-grabbing, because they were motivated by the fact that an American students are not on a competitive scientific level of understanding that international science learners are at.  I thought that Songer et al. made a good point that the definition of learning progressions is oversimplified. A learning progression is not strictly content knowledge, but there is a level of inquiry that is developing as well that must be included throughout the progression.  Songer et al. also raised a good point about the evaluation of a successful learning progression.  On page 611 they argued that neither the content or inquiry portion of a learning progression could be evaluated directly, but rather they are just resources that could be empirically evaluated.  

 

Overall, I excited to be able to discuss these articles in class next week.  I guess after completing these readings I am still at a loss for how the assessment and evaluation of learning progressions can take place (which seems to be the question that everyone is asking)? 

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28
Nov 10

Learning Progressions

I’m not sure how I feel about learning progressions.  There are a few things that I can’t comprehend how it would be plausible for use in a classroom.  Firstly, I cannot figure out how it would be productive if there were students of different levels within the same class. How would it be possible to account for the different levels and be attentive to all of them?  Secondly, I’m on the fence about the assessment of students issue and how they determine at what level the students are.  Based on the Steedle article, they assess the students based on ordered-multiple choice questions.  While I understand, as said in that article, that this allows more questions to be answered, but I normally don’t agree with multiple choice exams.  It is too easy to just choose an answer because you have no idea. With a multiple choice question that has 4 choices, that is a 25% chance of getting it right without actually knowing the answer or concept.  I guess this could be combatted by giving multiple questions of the same type to see if they are consistent with their answers.  I’m just not sure how that is an efficient gauge of their “level”.

 

 Overall, I’m just not really sure that I think that learning progressions is the way to go.  It seems it would be very difficult to actually apply it in a classroom and be able to keep track of every student, what level they are on, and teaching each of them based on that. Maybe someone else can give me some insight on this method that I’m not seeing that might change my mind.

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28
Nov 10

Learning Progressions

The more I read about Learning Progressions (LPs), the less sure I am of their feasibility in education.  At the beginning of my LP indoctrination, which began with Wilson’s JRST article (2009) and Corcoran et. al’s publication Learning Progressions in Science: An Evidence-based Approach to Reform (2009), I was completely sold on the idea of Learning Progressions.  As stated in Corcoran’s report on page 15, “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 (NRC, 2007). These hypotheses describe the pathways students are likely to follow to the mastery of core concepts. They 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.”  Adding Wilson’s ideas regarding the assessment of learning progressions, it seemed like the answer to our curriculum and standards problem.  It just seemed to make sense.

However, because of this class, I am becoming much more discriminating in my evaluation of peoples’ ideas and articles.  As I was rereading Wilson’s article (2009), I had to smile at the statement “The idea of a learning progression is one that is undergoing swift development at the current time. However, it is really just the latest manifestation of a much older idea, that of regularity in the development of students as they learn a certain body of knowledge or professional practice.” pg. 716.  This is often the case of education in which the language changes but the concepts and ideas are largely the same.  As I reread Wilson’s article, I was struck by the theoretical aspect of his idea.  He seemed to focus more on the “big idea” of learning progressions and left the details for others to decipher.  At least he was attempting to bring in the idea of assessment and how best to accomplish this aspect with learning progressions, even though I’m not so sure he really provided a concrete answer.

Yet many researchers are trying to decipher the details.  According to Duncan and Hmelo-Silver’s editorial, the purpose of the special JRST issue  was to “explain the motivation for developing LPs, propose a consensual definition of LPs, describe the ways in which these constructs are being developed and validated, and finally, discuss some of the unresolved questions regarding this emerging scholarship.” pg. 606.  A question that kept coming to mind as I was reading these various articles surrounded their comments about the expectation that LPs needed to be empirically validated.  My question is this: Is there common agreement on how to empirically test these learning progressions?  According to Duncan and Hmelo-Silver, there were three general approaches.  However, it seemed others were validating in ways not suggested in this editorial.  And how does one completely validate an LP?  According to Steedle and Shevelson (2009), “it is not feasible to develop learning progressions that can adequately describe all student’s understandings of problems dealing with Explaining Constant Speed” (pg. 713).  So is this true of a large number of LPs?  If this is the case, then what are the implications for LPs?  Could the big movement turn out to be a wrong turn?  I guess only time will tell.

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28
Nov 10

Learning Progressions

Prior to this week’s reading assignments, I had only heard about learning progressions and did not know a whole lot about them.  I found the articles for this week to contain a lot of information and slightly confused me so I am hopeful that my interpretation is somewhere near where it should be.  The main point that I got from the editorial was that learning progressions are meant to be a way to further link the standards, curriculum, and assessments.  This was a good article to start with since it was an overview of what learning progressions are and how they can be used.  There are a couple of main points that I want to focus on in the other articles.

One of the points that the Wilson article focuses on was that of the construct map.  When I first read it, I saw ‘concept’ and not ‘construct’ which made a difference in the tool being used.  I feel that these types of tools would be beneficial to apply in a classroom to aid student learning.  This could be used as either a tool for teachers to ‘visualize’ student learning or as a tool for students to visualize their own learning.  The first principle that Wilson discussed stood out to me as being important.  It was focused on developmental perspective.  I feel that this is a very important idea that must be considered while teaching.  As teachers we should be more focused on how students retain knowledge and further develop it as opposed to a standalone test and then never use the information again.  This focus on development and the progression that learning takes is a key aspect to understanding how students learn.  When the article began, I had the impression that they were expecting students to fit into a nice, neat level of learning and then take steps forward and on a higher level – which made me suspicious.  However, after further reading, I saw that they had bands for student learning that would allow them to be more between levels or even spread out across several which will show a more accurate representation of where students are as opposed to a single point.  The remainder of the article examines how assessment ties into learning progressions and the idea of construct maps.

The assessment and interpretation of construct maps and learning progressions was the focus of the Steedle and Shavelson article.  These authors report that it is difficult to propose a standardized learning progression or even a standardized way to evaluate where one is on the learning progression continuum.  They state that a student could have characteristics of both a novice in the field and as an expert.  To me, this shows that something is not accurate in how the progression is divided or we need to find a better way to classify answers.  I see that it could be possible to have answers in both categories for some individuals; however, this should be the minority of the cases.  There does not seem to be a good way to evaluate these progressions for the extremes.  Like a lot of testing, it is meant more to separate the middle ground rather than focus on one extreme or the other.

The final article that I read was by Stevens, Delgado and Krajcik that focused on learning progressions and the nature of matter.  One thing that these authors examined was the students’ abilities to apply science content from one class ahead into the next year.  This article focused more on the situated perspective of student learning.  They discussed the students need to have an ‘integrated knowledge structure’ which would allow them to apply knowledge in one context to that of another.  They are discussing the importance of learning the material from a more cognitive perspective as opposed to the situated perspective that they are witnessing now.

After reading these articles, I feel that learning progressions allow students to be evaluated individually but perhaps there are still difficulties in comparing one students learning to that of another.  I think they should remained focused on whether or not a student is progressing with respect to where they started rather than comparing them to their peers based on this information.  I am sure there are aspects of these articles that I missed, but those were the main points that I found in these articles.

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28
Nov 10

Learning Progressions

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. 

 

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27
Nov 10

Usefulness of Learning Progressions

While learning progressions are not a panacea for all of educations ills, I think it biggest use can be as a tool for reflective teacher development.  It affords a way of looking at content holistically and as big ideas  instead of as section 2.3 of the textbook.  Looking at your teaching content differently could foster a sense of renewal in veteran teachers and give newer teachers a larger focus as they struggle with the day to day responsibilities.  Learning progressions could foster conversations among teachers of the same content across grade levels, adding coherence to the curriculum.  I think the most useful aspect is the stating an upper level of understanding.  This could lead teachers to reach a level, that perhaps they themselves have never thought about.  My own personal view is that many classes are not rigorous enough.  This does not mean that there is not enough work, but that the concepts are not sufficiently developed beyond vocabulary and rote problem solving- but I could go on and on about that.

I also like the idea of the learning progressions being empirically grounded – working with real students in real classrooms with real teachers- WOW!  I want to learn more about how some researchers look at the effects of specific teaching practices on the students’ movement through the progression whereas other explicitly ignore the teaching in order to establish a “baseline” progression. 

Learning progressions can be used with either cognitive or situative or hybrid models of learning.  Perhaps they lean towards a cognitive grounding since, in the case of the long term variety progressions, the students will need to “carry over” the concepts.  However, learning progressions themselves are socially constructed around agreed upon concepts.  So I have talked myself into a circle as usual when I try to delineate between the two models.

Would we (educators and educational researchers) eventually have a learning progression for all content taught in schools?  Obviously not, but emphasizing some the big concepts could lead to a greater overall understanding about the way that scientists view the world.  For example, I have working with global climate change with my environmental class.  I have many skeptics who are asking a lot of questions that show to me that they do not understand the conservation of mass, evolution and how science is done with peer review.  Perhaps teachers working from learning progressions on these topics would be able to aid the students to decrease the fragmentary and incoherent knowledge that students tend to have an increase their ability and their reliance on basic science “rules” like those I stated above. 

Also, there probably isn’t a single learning progression for every topic that applies to every student.  I do not picture them as strict guidelines.  In fact the literature cites that a single learning progression represents a possible pathway, not the pathway.  

Learning progressions are another way to look at curriculum – another tool that does not preclude the need for a coherent theory of learning, engaging teaching strategies, deep content knowledge, etc. 

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24
Nov 10

LPs make me nervous

Sorry for all the “”, they are my attempt at sarcasm.  I know I should wait until I have more information to be this critical, but this is all I have to go on for now.

The “new thing” of Learning Progressions do not seem that novel to me.  They remind me of the AAAS Atlases and even of National and State Standards, but on steroids.  What I thought was a push towards more situated theories of learning in science education is obviously incorrect when it comes to Learning Progressions.  I guess one of the problems with situated theories is they do not produce products that can be widely adopted and that is what many educators, administrators, and policy makers are looking for.  It almost seems that, as complicated as they are, LPs are an “easy out” that may improve science education a little bit, but have so many drawbacks that by the time they are “successfully” implemented, we will have wasted a lot of time and resources that could be used for better improvements in science education.

The notion that we can sort multitudes of students into classes based on the sophistication of their ideas seems both impossible and a bit silly to me.  In their LP analysis Steedle and Shavelson found that the LP they were looking at did not accurately classify students according to the sophistication of their ideas.  There were problems in the LP levels established (students were scoring as having ideas belonging to both levels 1 and 3 and level 2 was unnecessary) and there were problems with student consistency (students did not answer consistently within their “expected” level and within these “expected” levels, students answered differently from each other).  Wilson’s notion of increasing levels of sophistication of knowledge (as shown by his figure 1 of ever-expanding thought bubbles of increasing applicability) does not fit my definition of learning or knowledge.  In fact, students’ initial “knowledge” of a topic may have more applicability than their “final product” it just may not be the “right kind of knowledge.”  The relative “size” of the thought bubbles is irrelevant; learning does not have to be an expansion, it is a constantly changing network of interactions and ideas. 

Also, all of the learning progressions discussed in this week’s readings are assessed using multiple choice tests, which may not even assess what level as student is at, but only at how well they perform on the assessment.  Take this question from Wilson’s article [p. 722]:

Which is the best explanation for why we experience different seasons (winter, summer, etc.) on Earth?

A.  The Earth’s orbit around the Sun makes us closer to the sun in summer and further away in winter. (Level 4)

B.  The Earth’s orbit around the Sun makes us face the Sun in the summer and away from the Sun in the winter. (Level 3)

C. The Earth’s tilt causes the Sun to shine more directly in summer than in winter. (Level 5)

D. The Earth’s tilt makes us closer to the Sun in the summer than in winter. (Level 4)

This assessment can only truly measure a student’s ability to memorize.  As seen by Heather in “A Private Universe,” a student could “correctly” answer this question but still have extreme misunderstandings about the topic. I agree with Dr. Hammer in his talk last week when he expressed that he would rather see a student with an incorrect idea but sound reasoning than a memorized answer and poor reasoning. 

Songer and Kelcey present a more agreeable view (to me at least) on LPs and acknowledge the importance of processes as well as content in the development of LPs. Also, they feel that LPs can’t be tested empirically, only the curricula designed around them.  Their article highlights the positive: at least LPs are at least better at discriminating the types of differences between students’ “knowledge” than traditional standardized test scores.   

Concluding remarks:  I am not a fan of LPs.  What I am unsure of however, is if they aren’t at least a bit better than what we have (or do not have) now.  Will the “simplification” or “structure” imposed upon learning a concept/process help teachers (I’m thinking mostly elementary teachers without a lot of science content background) teach science more than it will hinder learning?  Will the miss-assessment of students under LPs at least be somewhat less than traditional standardized testing?  I am less wary of those who use LPs simply as one method of understanding the phenomena rather than using them to prescribe curricula (including assessments) to students without additional research. 

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24
Nov 10

Learning progressions

I was not familiar with learning progressions before these readings this week, so I am glad to have a better understanding of them, especially teaching at the college level where it seems the cumulative effects of learning progressions could manifest themselves, so I have a better awareness of what might be looming on the very distant horizon. These readings this week also made me think about how learning progressions might exist at the college level.  Courses within students’ majors seem to be progressions, more or less cumulative, and subsequent courses build on prerequisites, but I think a problem lies in electives (which I teach).  They are very fragmented, and while it would be nice to tailor electives to students’ majors to make the content more relevant and meaningful, there are too many different majors within a class that this realistically would be very difficult.    

Anyway, on to the readings…  Taking Science to School describes learning progressions as learning over a span of time, say 6-8 years, and this learning is cumulative, logical, coherent, incremental, and factors in that knowledge and practice change over time.  In general, learning progressions seems to be more of a cognitive approach to learning, as they focus on the importance of teaching and instructional practices, taking skills and knowledge across contexts, and building on preexisting knowledge.  And, they are valued for one reason to make standards which can be generalized across populations of students and apply to all schools.  But an advantage of learning progressions is that they stress meaningfulness, and that knowledge and skills are meaningful together rather than separate and disjointed.  Plus, they utilize inquiry practices so that students are active constructors of knowledge, rather than just receivers of it. 

Anderson describes a framework that represents levels of learning, from the elementary to upper high school students, and how students progress through these levels, to become environmentally literate.  This is important, according to Anderson, so that students will be informed decision-makers in society.  I wondered how effective this would be or what challenges they would encounter, as learning progressions seemed much more feasible at the K-8 levels, as Taking Science to School described them, but much more challenging at the high school level.  There is variability in elementary schools, and while one school may present a coherent progression, it may be very different in a middle or high school.  Anderson’s description of learning progressions still seems to have more of a cognitive approach, but he acknowledges more conceptual ecology and influence of culture, and tying content to practice, plus states that traditional standards are much more focused on the acquisition of scientific knowledge, and so learning progressions are appearing now to me to still be on the cognitive end of the cognitive/situative spectrum, but closer to the situative side than traditional standards.

Duncan and Hmelo-Silver introduce the volume of JRST that is devoted to learning progressions.  They state that learning progressions are a new concept, but the idea of looking at learning over time is not new.  They summarize key characteristics of learning progressions: they focus on content and inquiry methods, have a beginning level based on individuals’ prior knowledge and an end goal in site at the end of the progression, with intermediate stages at which learning performances can be administered, and are the result of targeted instruction.  Duncan and Hmelo-Silver also mention some problems with learning progressions: that there is a lot of variability in them and the time spans over which they operate, the methods for validating progressions are not well defined, it is not clear how they will acknowledge or use the individual histories students bring with them, and assessment of learning in a learning progression is problematic. These are addressed at some level in the following articles. 

Steedle and Shavelson conducted a study to try to validate distinct levels within a learning progression by looking at whether multiple choice tests accurately tap students’ ideas which could be evidence for having achieved a certain level in a learning progression.  This was an interesting look at the development and utilization of a learning progression itself, and was a useful method for testing and reorganizing a learning progression model (removing levels, reordering levels).  But they conclude that their analysis worked for some but not all levels of the learning progression, and students may not fall at specific levels in a learning progression.  This study made me think about how new this idea is and how much research needs to be done first to best use and validate learning progressions, before assessment of the learning progression’s effects on learning could even be studied accurately.

Wilson proposes a way of using construct maps to conceptualize a learning progression.  These construct maps could be useful for developing learning progressions, and simplifying learning progressions, so that goals of the progression could be better aligned to assessments, rather than having assessments dictate how the learning progression should be designed.  Wilson uses a metaphor of levels of thought clouds to symbolize successively more complex thought in the learning progression.  I honestly was not a fan of this figure; it looked more to me like the person’s thoughts were diffusing out into space.  And I wondered about the use of this idea, if it was necessary, or if it oversimplified the learning progression.  The way other papers represent the levels of a learning progression with a hierarchical table format made perfect sense to me.  It seems that if it could be boiled down to a construct map like Wilson used, then the learning progression has been oversimplified.

Of the articles we could pick from, I read the Songer et al. article.  They start off with the impression that learning progressions are one answer to making American students more competitive on a global scale in terms of performance on standardized tests.    From our discussions of how important culture is to learning, it just seems that comparing learning and specific milestones across different cultures is an impossible goal.  Anyway, that criticism aside, I agreed with their emphasis on a new definition of learning progressions – that they involve not just learning more and more facts about science, but they require gaining more complex skills and processes to think about and find out information related to science.  Traditional standardized tests do not accurately measure complex reasoning skills, but a new instrument that they used does a better job, and this should be given serious consideration as it is important that assessments be better tied to the goals of the learning progression and evaluate complex thinking.  While I also agree with this, a criticism I had of the whole idea of the end goal of complex thinking in the learning progression and evaluating it is that “complex thinking” is loosely defined, and they seem to evaluate only one type of it.  For example, physically building a three-dimensional structure would require what I perceive to be complex thinking, but this could not be best assessed on a written exam. 

Overall, these articles were very informative and I feel like I have a better understanding of learning progressions.  They definitely look promising and are a much better approach to learning than the existing system of fragmented information, but there is much work to do, too.

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