Teaching for Understanding: Educating Students for Performance
Performance assessment is an expression of current unease with traditional education as well as an expression of hopefulness for the future of education. It asks students to perform, to exhibit what they know and what they can do with what they know in a real time dimension. To teach for performance is to believe in the capacity of students to create, to construct knowledge and to assign meaning to what they have learned and experienced.
Since 1983, critics of public education have argued that many American students do not possess the depth of knowledge or skills to assure either personal life success or national economic competitiveness. A particular concern of the critics has been the apparent inability of many students to engage in complex problem-solving activities and to apply school knowledge and skills to real-life problems in workplace settings. That American students fail to meet such expectations should not be surprising since the traditional measures of school outcomes, standardized achievement tests, have not required the application of knowledge in new settings.
If, as critics suggest, adult success in the 21st century is dependent on the ability to think effectively with clarity and power, to problem-solve, to collaborate, to communicate clearly with effect, to participate in civic affairs, and is dependent on the possession of an ethical core, then schools must do their work in new ways and the school assessment system should determine whether these goals have been achieved.
What teachers and schools face is a fundamental redefinition of what it means to be a student or a teacher and what it means to learn or to teach. Educators confront a paradigm shift in teaching and learning which is driven by the increasing anomalies of the current educational system. High drop-out rates, low skill and knowledge levels among many students, low levels of student engagement in school work, and poor international comparisons suggest that the current educational paradigm is weak or inappropriate. It will not be enough to do better what was done well in 1965 or 1985, but, rather, educators must learn to work with students and the subject matter in fundamentally different ways. This is the task confronting those who seek to improve our schools.
Educators understand that changes in student outcomes must be supported by parallel changes in curriculum and instruction. However, it is apparent that many of today's teachers are caught in the midst of a change for which they may not have been professionally prepared. Many teachers were educated in classrooms where the role of the student was to memorize information, conduct well-regulated experiments, perform mathematical calculations using a specific algorithm, and were then tested on their ability to repeat these tasks or remember specific facts. All of us- parents, teachers, retirees, business people, citizens, employees, students- face a scale of educational change for which our experiences have not prepared us. Our beliefs about "how schools ought to be" are in tension with new expectations of "what schools ought to accomplish."
The ideas which are central to an education which defines competence as the ability of the student to apply knowledge and skills to unfamiliar problems are not new. These ideas were found in traditional apprenticeship programs, were implicit in settings where daughters and sons learned life sustaining skills from parents, and they were central to the successes of all traditional peoples. Theorists in cognition, curriculum, and instruction are now providing the underlying rationale and language for discussing this fundamental change in teaching and learning which is at the heart of the current school improvement agenda. Constructivist theory provides a framework through which the emergent ideas about teaching, learning, and assessment can be unified.
Talbert, McLaughlin and Rowan (1993) summarize both the critique of American public schools as well as the goals of constructivist teaching:
The constructivist view of effective classroom instruction is often called 'teaching for understanding,' and research on this topic has become a priority for educational policy makers. The importance of this form of teaching lies in its potential to enhance the kinds of cognitive outcomes for students that the American educational system has heretofore been notoriously ineffective at producing. While American schools have been relatively successful in engendering basic-skills achievement, they have not done well in promoting students' success in tasks variously described as problem solving, critical analysis, higher-order thinking, or flexible understanding of academic subject matter- learning outcomes associated with teaching for understanding (p.47).
The difficulty and challenge confronting classroom professionals is that the reform strategies in curriculum, instruction and assessment organized around the theory of "constructivism" are informed by different assumptions and beliefs about the nature of knowledge and about the human capacity to learn than are traditional classroom practices. The tension which surrounds these changes in beliefs is illustrated by Marilyn Burns (1994) in a discussion of the curriculum standards developed by the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics:
For many teachers, the textbook and standardized tests give the "real" message about what should be taught in the classroom. Judging from the content of textbook lessons and standardized tests, the message is that children must develop proficiency in paper-and-pencil arithmetic calculations . . . The change from teaching standard algorithms to having children invent their own methods requires a major shift for many teachers. It requires first that teachers value and trust children's inventiveness and ability to make sense of numerical situations, rather than their diligence in following procedures. It requires a total commitment to making thinking and reasoning the cornerstone of mathematics instruction. It also requires teachers to be curious about children's ideas, to take delight in their thinking, and to encourage their creativity (pp. 472, 476).
Constructivism, then, is not merely an add-on or a fad; teaching for understanding strategies are rooted in new beliefs about teaching and learning. Teachers educated in an era of behaviorism, who have taught during times when coverage of the text was valued, and whose students demonstrated competence on standardized tests, now experience considerable professional dissonance. For example, the belief systems which support mathematics-as-rule-learning as opposed to mathematics-as-thinking-and-reasoning are fundamentally different. Therefore, it is unlikely that "teaching for understanding" will occur with the occasional use of hands-on activities or cooperative learning strategies if the teacher's belief system has not changed. Successful educational reform is dependent on professional understanding, consent, and advocacy. Professional practice and belief systems must be aligned.
The remainder of this paper will describe how constructivist beliefs about the nature of knowledge and about student cognition influence teaching and learning in "teaching for understanding" classrooms. Characteristics and qualities of teaching for understanding classrooms will be identified. The paper will conclude by suggesting that changing existing classroom practices will be difficult because of the holistic or systemic nature of the changes suggested.
The Theory of Constructivism
The central themes of constructivism come to education from sociology, psychology, and philosophy. The early work of Berger and Luckmann (1966) in sociology introduced the concept of the social construction of reality. These authors argued that each human being must inevitably develop or construct meaning.That is, each of us must "make meaning" or make sense of our own social world. Knowledge, then, is the result of the individual construction or "sense-making" of reality. In life, as in the classroom, each person receives information and looks at it in terms of her current understanding. For example, thirty children who hear a reading of a classic fairy tale will emerge with thirty distinct mental images. Madeline Grumet suggests that it is this construction, this "dance between the student's experience and knowledge, that separates education from training or indoctrination" (Kinchloe and Steinberg, 1993, p.308).
The contribution of Berger and Luckmann to the sociology of knowledge is a reminder that knowledge is socially constructed, that it is problematic and not given. However, most educators and non-educators tend to ascribe "givenness" to knowledge or information in the taken-for-granted, commonsensical manner in which subjects are taught. The authority of the textbook, a film, a news story, or an expert's interpretation of an event is seldom subjected to critical scrutiny. Often the skills necessary to engage in such scrutiny are neglected as well. Students tend to emerge from the schools with the unstated assumption that knowledge and human institutions are something other than the products of human activity or agency; they tend to view themselves as products of and not producers of knowledge and institutions.
Kinchloe and Steinberg put the social construction of reality into educational terms:
The frontier where the information of the discipline intersects with the understandings and experiences that individuals carry with them to school is the point where knowledge is created (constructed). The . . . teacher facilitates this interaction, helping students to reinterpret their lives and uncover new talents as a result of their encounter with school knowledge (p.301).
This description of meaning-making, of learning, redefines the role of student and teacher. According to Brophy (1992), this has significant implications for the way schools should function:
Current research, while building on findings indicating the vital role teachers play in stimulating student learning, also focuses on the role of the student. It recognizes that students do not merely passively receive or copy input from teachers, but instead actively mediate it by trying to make sense of it and to relate it to what they already know (or think they know) about the topic. Thus, students develop new knowledge through a process of active construction. In order to get beyond rote memorization to achieve true understanding, they need to develop and integrate a network of associations linking new input to preexisting knowledge and beliefs anchored in concrete experience. Thus, teaching involves inducing conceptual change in students, not infusing knowledge into a vacuum (p.5).
This view of the student as creator or constructor of knowledge has raised questions about the efficacy and efficiency of the constructivist model. Why should students reinvent what is already known? What is to be gained by this educational inefficiency? The best answer is that only the student can change information into personal understanding and that the substance of what passes for personal knowledge is the product of personal cognition and not memorization. Usable knowledge (i.e., the application of what is known to ill-structured real-world problems in new settings) requires the deep understanding born of personal struggle.
Brooks (1990) responds to the reinvention question as follows:
In an ideal educational setting, students will rediscover the wheel, reinvent long division, rediscover the horrors of war, and reinvent government . . . Constructivism doesn't say, as critics claim, that you can't teach people anything; it guides us in finding out how to teach them. Constructivism reminds us that order exists only in the minds of people, so when we as teachers impose our order on students, we rob them of the opportunity to create knowledge and understanding themselves. Our task, then, is to understand and nurture the learning and development of students. We must not do for them what they can and must do for themselves (pp.70-71).
In the rush to achieve coverage of the text, schools have opted for speed and efficiency thereby depriving students of the important steps which lead to deep personal understanding. The idea of constructivism presents a major conceptual challenge in that it requires educators to rethink both their assumptions about the nature of knowledge and about learning. Traditional and constructivist assumptions about knowledge and learning will be discussed in the sections which follow.
Beliefs About Knowledge
It can be argued that the work of schools is knowledge work: knowledge of what, knowledge of what for, knowledge of how to, knowledge of when to, knowledge of others, and knowledge of self. Beliefs about the "nature of knowledge" influence the roles, rules, and responsibilities of schools. Beliefs about knowledge are revealed in the way curriculum is organized, instruction is conducted, and assessment occurs. The struggle for reform in education can be understood as a challenge to the existing knowledge system. Reform strategies that are based on constructivist beliefs will require a change in how knowledge is understood.
Philip Jackson (1986) argues that schools have followed a "mimetic tradition" and that this tradition is what the public believes schools are all about (p.117). This dominant tradition in American education values the transmission of knowledge from teacher to student through an imitative process. Student classroom work can be described as memorization, repetition, recitation, and reproduction. These activities also define the instructional heart of the current back-to-basics movement.
Knowledge in the mimetic tradition possesses a number of specific qualities. According to Jackson, mimetic knowledge is identifiable prior to its transmission to the student; it is presented to the student by others, not discovered by the student. It can be passed from one person to another or from the text to the student and can be reproduced in identical form through transmission from teacher to student. Finally, knowledge in the mimetic tradition can be "judged right or wrong, accurate or inaccurate, correct or incorrect on the basis of a comparison with the teacher's own knowledge or with some other model found in a textbook or other instructional materials" (Jackson, p.118).
Assumptions about knowledge carried by the mimetic tradition of education have influenced the nature of curriculum, instruction, and assessment in very specific ways. Textbooks, with related instructional aids, have defined course content. In many classrooms the goal has been to reach the final chapter of the book by the end of the school year. Students read the text, answer questions at the end of the chapter, and come to believe that the correct answer is to be found in the book. It is assumed that what students need to know about a subject is contained in the text or can be shared by a teacher educated in the discipline. Classroom life is dominated by the teacher and text; students are engaged by questions from the teacher or the text and their answers can be judged as either correct or incorrect. Tests are characterized by multiple choice, short answer, true or false, and short essay questions. There is only a limited expectation in this tradition that students can or should engage in the personal construction of knowledge or meaning.
As indicated above, constructivist theory views knowledge in a distinctly different fashion. The model introduced by Jurgen Habermas (1979) is a useful tool in drawing comparisons between the mimetic tradition and the constructivist model. Habermas differentiates between knowledge systems on the basis of three qualities: cognitive interest, mode of inquiry, and the resultant human action. These qualities can be discerned by asking three parallel questions: What counts as knowledge? How do we come to know what we know and presume to be true? and, What is the endpoint or consequence of our knowledge?
School knowledge, i.e., that which counts and is valued, in the mimetic tradition is understood to be fixed, given, objective, and neutral. There are few genuine questions about knowledge as it is taught and learned in most classrooms. The creation of school knowledge remains the responsibility of the expert, the scientist, the mathematician, the historian, or the literary critic. The mimetic tradition permits teachers to be tellers, to be raconteurs of truth, to be interrogators, to be in charge of classroom life, to control the texts of learning, and to decide when knowledge is known.
In contrast, knowledge which counts and is valued in the constructivist tradition is problematic, emergent, and is viewed as lacking deep meaning for the student without the infusion of personal experience and personal prior knowledge. Personal meaning is brought to the text, to school information, by the student. For example, as a class in American History studies the 1930's, the student's personal understanding of that era will be informed and enriched by the family stories of a grandfather forced into the soup lines by unemployment.
The modes of inquiry or truth tests of mimetic knowledge are empiricism and the scientific method. Truth is revealed by the careful application of experimental models, by statistical analysis, by ascertaining the balance of historical data, by the consensual weight of literary criticism- in all cases by experts in the respective fields of study. There are few surprises in classrooms organized around the mimetic tradition. Student laboratory work is an exercise in replicating findings which are already known. There are recognized interpretations of works of art, shades of meaning in selected poems, social messages in classic novels, and the great historians have outlined the five causes and four major results of the Civil War. For students, the central truth test is: What does the book or expert say?
The mode of inquiry of the constructivist curriculum values the scientific methods of the traditional disciplines but also introduces the power of the "considered skepticism" of the student. The classroom process is characterized by a self-reflective, thoughtful critique of the text. Students learn to question the basis of knowledge, to recognize the social form of knowledge, and to interrogate the social system. The "givenness" of school knowledge is suspended as students and teachers appropriate the right to subject all texts, recorded and lived, to critical scrutiny.
Knowledge texts are set alongside the "truths" of personal experience that students and teachers bring to these texts. The meaning, the truth, emerges from those encounters as individuals make personal sense of the experience. Constructivism demystifies the text and the classroom; it recognizes students' prior knowledge and validates prior experience. The student whose grandfather survived the depression by visiting soup kitchens might well bring an affirming perspective to the social reforms of the 1930's. Constructivists recognize that curricula is not neutral, is not objective; it has a social form and is embedded in the social context from which it emerges. As an example, histories tend to reflect the interests of those who are privileged to write them. Nevertheless, constructivism does not reject the role of the expert or the investigator or the need for students to know the essentials of the discipline. However, it does affirm that what students bring to expert knowledge will, in the end, inform how expert knowledge will be understood by students.
Finally, the Habermas model asks: What are the consequences of knowing? What are the expected consequences of school knowledge? The mimetic tradition views the end point for students as remembering and reproducing the information that has been learned. Accuracy of remembering and reproduction are rewarded with high grades, but there is no expectation that students should be able to apply their knowledge in problem-solving circumstances. Meanings remain external and human agency remains passive since the goal has not been to have students reshape information or act on the social world. The goal of a constructivist model is for students to possess mastery of content, to understand the logic of the content, and, most significantly, to apply their knowledge in new and unfamiliar circumstances. It is understood that there may be multiple ways to solve a problem, that there may be multiple solutions to that problem, and that students ought to learn how to prepare solutions to problems for public exhibitions of their competence.
In summary, there are several distinct features which characterize a constructivist knowledge system. First, there is a recognition that there are multiple kinds of knowledge (Leinhardt, p.20). There are concepts and principles and processes and skills which are peculiar to each discipline. Therefore, the ability to think well or critically in one discipline does not mean that one can think with clarity or power in another. The rules of evidence and the logic of the content vary from literature, to biology, to geometry, to history, to chemistry, and to mathematics. The instructional task is one of transforming the linear, chapter by chapter mode of teaching, to a model in which the complexities and the power of the discipline are laid bare and understood through their application to ill-structured, real world problems.
Second, as a corollary to the existence of multiple kinds of knowledge, there is a new understanding of the power of prior student knowledge. Prior knowledge, what the student brings to the classroom, has the power to mediate school knowledge and determine how that student will make sense of new information. For example, Chinn and Brewer (1993) have investigated how students respond when they encounter scientific information that contradicts their personal theories about the physical world. Chinn and Brewer found that of the seven distinct forms of student response to contradictory data, only one response led to an acceptance of the new data and then to a change in the students' personal theory. This evidence indicates that understanding the power of prior student knowledge must be anticipated as schools attempt to move students from naive levels of understanding to discipline-based understanding.
Prior student knowledge can be identified only through classroom dialogue, casual conversation, personal reflection and metacognition; it is a time-intensive effort that recognizes students' power to produce knowledge. What students bring to the encounter with school knowledge mediates in a powerful way what they take from that encounter. Understanding is not a given nor is it static; it is the product of human agency.
A third feature of the constructivist perspective on knowledge concerns the social nature of knowledge. Leinhardt (1992) summarizes the constructivist assumption as follows:
First, learning is an active process of knowledge construction and sense-making by the student. Second, knowledge is a cultural artifact of human beings: we produce it, share it, and transform it as individuals and as groups. Third, knowledge is distributed among members of the group, and this distributed knowledge is greater than the knowledge possessed by any single member (p.23).
Not only is knowledge constructed in social groups through conversation, public reasoning, problem-solving, and collaborative projects, but it is also anticipated that the consequences of these activities- knowledge and understanding- will be taken into other social settings for application and evaluation.
Beliefs About Learning
Constructivist beliefs about the nature of knowledge have been accompanied by parallel changes in beliefs about human ability to think and learn. Cognitive pluralists argue that human beings' most distinctive feature is the ability to create and manipulate symbols- in mathematics, music, literature, science, dance, and visual arts (Eisner, 1992, p.317). Plurality of meaning (knowledge) and plurality of cognition (learning) are inextricably linked.
The power of the mimetic tradition in American education rests with the historical influence of behavioral psychology, exemplified primarily by the work of Thorndike and Skinner. The work of these theorists "described human behavior essentially by the stimulus-response relationship coupled with positive reinforcement of desired behavior and negative reinforcement of unwanted behavior" (Brooks and Brooks,1993, pp.25-26). Thus, learning has come to mean memorizing and repeating new information. Student accountability can be accomplished by using multiple-choice or short-answer questions; learning can be documented by assigning grades and establishing percentile scores.
Jean Piaget's work on cognitive structures has provided a popular explanation for the development of students' mental structures but it has not resulted in a different understanding of the capacity of the human mind. Piaget's theory of cognitive structures is essentially a hierarchy in which the student moves from a lower to higher order of thought with the "human as scientist" representing the ultimate state of cognitive growth.
Although the focus on developmental cognitive growth in schools has recognized a progression of complexity, it frequently does not recognize the plurality of intelligence. However, Howard Gardner (1983) has described the relationship between the plurality of meaning (knowledge) and the plurality of intelligence in his discussion of Piaget:
According to Piaget, a final stage of development comes into being during early adolescence. Now capable of 'formal operations,' the youth is able to reason about the world not only through actions or single symbols, but rather by figuring out the implications that obtain among a set of related propositions. The adolescent becomes able to think in a completely logical fashion: now resembling a working scientist, he can express hypotheses in propositions, test them, and revise the propositions in the light of the results of such experiments. These abilities in hand (or head), the youth has achieved the end-state of adult cognition. He is now capable of that form of logical-rational thought which is prized in the West and epitomized by mathematicians and scientists. Of course, the individual can go on to make further discoveries but will no longer undergo any further qualitative changes in his thinking ( p.19).
While Piaget's developmental cognitive structure has enriched the instructional process, that structure, according to Eisner, has also reinforced a narrow view of knowledge and intelligence which has limited other options (p.303). A cognitive structure with logical-mathematical intelligence as the goal, diminishes other areas of skill and creativity. According to Gardner (1991) the consequences of this cognitive tradition for instruction, curriculum, assessment, and for our understanding of student capacity are clear:
I contend that even when school appears to be successful, even when it elicits the performances for which it has apparently been designed, it typically fails to achieve its most important missions. Evidence for this startling claim comes from a by now overwhelming body of educational research that has been assembled over the last decades. These investigations document that even students who have been well trained and who exhibit all the overt signs of success-faithful attendance at good schools, high grades and high test scores, accolades from their teachers- typically do not display an adequate understanding of the materials and concepts with which they have been working ( p. 3).
According to Gardner and other critics, many successful students in the past have not possessed critical thinking, problem-solving, collaborative, and communication skills. More importantly, these students have had great difficulty applying their knowledge in new situations.
A knowledge system embracing multiple meanings and understandings requires a parallel view of learning and intelligence. Howard Gardner's conception of learning and knowledge provides a theoretical framework for the constructivist model of teaching and learning. Intelligence, according to Gardner, is something one does (Eisner, p.318). The seven intelligences identified by Gardner are not just talents, but they offer a range of socially acceptable ways of solving problems. In the constructivist view, then, not only are multiple correct answers to a given problem possible, but the human mind has the capacity to address a given problem from multiple perspectives. (See Howard Gardner's Multiple Intelligences, 1993, for a discussion of the seven intelligences.) In a "teaching for understanding" classroom students might exhibit their understanding of the content in a number of unique ways. Gardner's work suggests that a single indicator of student competence is not appropriate.
Gardner's theory of cognitive pluralism also provides a rationale for the emphasis on prior student knowledge in the constructivist knowledge framework. According to Gardner's research, by the age of five or six, children have developed robust "theories" of mind, matter, life, and self that are serviceable and powerful. While these explanations or theories may be naive and simplistic, they tend to be ignored by many teachers once formal education begins. These naive explanations of how the world works may not disappear as a consequence of school work. They merely go "underground" as students study and learn only to re-emerge in later life. Naive prior knowledge must be surfaced and put into direct tension with disciplinary knowledge if these naive explanatory structures are to be changed. (See Gardner, 1991, pp. 85-86,111 for a discussion of intuitive theory.)
Conclusions
Constructivist theory challenges the more traditional beliefs about knowledge and learning. "Teaching for understanding" will need to reflect the complex nature of knowledge, the important influences of prior student knowledge, and the social nature of knowledge formation. In addition, the fundamental characteristics of knowledge in the constructivist tradition- its emergent and problematic qualities, its social and subjective nature, and its dialectic with the social environment- will challenge classroom teachers to develop new classroom strategies and new forms of student assessment.
Can students be successful in an encounter with such a vibrant knowledge system? Eliot Eisner and Howard Gardner believe that not only will students succeed in a "teaching for understanding" classroom, but that they will thrive. More students will enjoy greater success in schools as their varied individual cognitive structures are valued and developed. The school will come to resemble the real social world where diverse approaches to solving complex problems are recognized.
The constructivist ideas about knowledge and learning discussed above offer a new model or paradigm for teaching and learning. A constellation of new beliefs and assumptions about teachers, students, and schools are carried by this idea system. The next section, Teaching for Understanding, will explore some of the consequences of constructivist theory for classroom life.
Teaching for Understanding
Teaching for understanding is neither magical nor mysterious; however, classrooms which nurture student understanding do possess distinctive qualities. What is meant by "understanding?" How does it differ from "knowing?" Perkins and Blythe (1994) draw the following distinction between knowing and understanding:
When a student knows something, the student can bring it forth upon demand- tell us the knowledge or demonstrate the skill. Understanding is a subtler matter, which goes beyond knowing . . . We have formulated a view of understanding consonant with both common sense and a number of sources in contemporary cognitive science . . . Understanding is a matter of being able to do a variety of thought-demanding things with a topic- like explaining, finding evidence and examples, generalizing, applying, analogizing, and representing a topic in a new way . . . In summary, understanding is being able to carry out a variety of "performances" that show one's understanding of a topic and, at the same time, advance it. We call such performances "understanding performances" or "performances of understanding" (pp.5-6).
Howard Gardner's view of understanding parallels the Perkins and Blythe definition in that he emphasizes the application of knowledge in new circumstances:
I consider an individual to have understood when he or she can take knowledge, concepts, skills and facts and apply them in new situations where they are appropriate. If students simply parrot back what they have been told or what they have read in a textbook, then we do not really know whether they understand (Steinberger, 1994, pp.26-27).
Since the focus of a constructivist classroom is on cognitive development, the teacher must have extensive knowledge of the subject being taught and of how students learn the subject. More specifically, teaching for understanding requires that the conceptual frames of the student in that subject be known so that strategies which produce change and growth can be developed. Research on teaching for understanding has produced a number of successful experimental programs which have yielded principles and practices which appear central to such an endeavor. Brophy (1992) has summarized nine common elements which have emerged from the research :
- The curriculum is designed to equip students with knowledge, skills, values, and dispositions useful both inside and outside of school.
- Instructional goals underscore developing student expertise within an application context and with emphasis on conceptual understanding and self-regulated use of skill
- The curriculum is designed to equip students with knowledge, skills, values, and dispositions useful both inside and outside of school.
- The content is organized around a limited set of powerful ideas (key understandings and principles).
- The teacher's role is not just to present information but also to develop strategies which will support and respond to students' learning.
- The students' role is not just to absorb or copy but to actively make sense and construct meaning.
- Activities and assignments feature authentic tasks that call for problem solving or critical thinking, not just memory or reproduction.
- Higher-order thinking skills are not taught as a separate skills curriculum. Instead, they are developed in the process of teaching subject-matter knowledge within application contexts that call for students to relate what they are learning to their lives outside of school by thinking critically or creatively about it or by using it to solve problems or make decisions.
- The teacher creates a social environment in the classroom that could be described as a learning community where dialogue promotes understanding (p.6).
Embedded in these nine principles is an approach to curriculum and instruction which reduces the breadth of coverage to allow for more in-depth teaching of selected content. Understanding rather than coverage is a central principle in teaching for understanding.
The Teaching for Understanding Project is an effort to create schools based on constructivist principles. Developed at the Harvard Graduate School of Education with the assistance of classroom teachers from the Boston area, it has created a four-part framework that provides language for teachers as they plan understanding-oriented classrooms (Perkins and Blythe, pp.6-7). The four key concepts include:
A generative topic or theme is one which is central to the discipline, is accessible to students, and can be connected to diverse topics inside and outside the discipline. In a study of biology, for example, the themes of health, growth, sickness, or ecological balance might be used to organize a unit of study which would reach beyond the boundaries of the biology textbook.
Several key understanding goals for each topic must be identified and stated. These goals serve to focus instruction.
Performances which support the understanding goals must be part of each unit from beginning to end.
Assessment is an integral part of instruction, not a summary statement of adequacy. The key factors are- shared and public criteria, regular feedback, and frequent reflection during the learning process.
This framework, reflecting constructivist beliefs about knowledge and cognition, assumes that teachers have a deep knowledge of their subject. It also requires "pedagogical content knowledge" (how to select, represent, and organize information, concepts and procedures in a subject area). It assumes knowledge of the learner and it presumes new strategies of classroom interaction (Talbert, McLaughlin and Rowan, pp.47-48). While it is obvious that good teachers have always used powerful activities in their teaching, they have not always expected students to demonstrate their understanding by going beyond what they already know. Nor have students always receive the ongoing assessment needed to learn from performances of understanding (Perkins and Blythe, p.7).
Another manifestation of constructivist beliefs about knowledge and cognition is found in the "authenticity" literature. Fred Newmann, Grant Wiggins, and others have developed the conceptual structure of authentic teaching, authentic student work, and authentic assessment. Authentic student work reflects the sort of mastery demonstrated by successful adults. Newmann and Archbald (1992) describe the distinction between real accomplishments and most of the work students do in schools:
Persons in diverse fields . . . face the primary challenge of producing, rather than reproducing, knowledge . . . To progress on this journey, students should set their sight on authentic expressions of knowedge and should hone their skills through guided practice in discourse, in manipulating objects, and in preparing for artistic and musical performances. In contrast, the conventional curriculum asks students only to identify discourse, things, and performances that others have produced . . . The production of knowledge must be based upon understanding of prior knowledge, but the mere production of that knowledge does not constitute authentic academic achievement (p.72).
Authentic teaching in support of authentic student work must have an integrity of its own. It is not enough to adopt innovative teaching techniques if the work does not allow or expect students to use their minds well or if the work has no meaning or value to students beyond achieving success in school (Newmann and Wehlage, p.8). Standards of instruction designed to produce authentic achievement have been developed by Newmann and Wehlage (pp.8-10). The standards include higher-order thinking, depth of knowledge, connectedness to the world, substantive conversation, and social support for student achievement .
Authentic student work possesses three qualities in Newmann's framework. First, it involves the production of knowledge in the form of discourse (conversation or writing), production of things (objects), or performance (as in music, dance, athletics, or other public demonstrations of competence). Second, authentic work relies on disciplined inquiry, i.e., the use of a prior knowledge base, in-depth understanding, and the integration and use of information in new ways. Finally, authentic student work has value beyond evaluation; it possesses aesthetic, utilitarian, or personal value for the student (Newmann and Archbald, pp.73-75).
Wiggins, in his work on assessment, argues that authentic classroom assessment must involve the following factors: engaging and worthy problems or questions of importance, faithful representation of real-life tests of adult life, non-routine and multistage tasks, tasks that require quality, obvious standards of quality, and interaction between student and the assessor (Wiggins, 1993, pp.206-207). Although a school test may always be a contrivance at some level, it should not feel like one. The ultimate value of authentic student work and assessment is that it enhances student engagement and motivation, it tends to sustain hard work, and it should cultivate high order thinking and problem solving.
This paper has reviewed the criticism of American education and has identified constructivist theory as a unifying theory which can provide the parameters for reconstructing teaching and learning. It has explored the changes required in teacher beliefs about knowledge and learning which must accompany the change from teaching in the mimetic tradition to teaching for understanding and performance. The "steady state paradigm" has been described and it has been acknowledged that all change occurs over against a system already in place (Dolan, pp.10-11). This discussion also recognizes that teachers' beliefs and values which guide, define, and inform professional behavior are deeply held and not easily altered.
It is also apparent that today's teachers are caught in the midst of a paradigm shift for which they are not to be blamed. Most adults have been educated in traditional curricula using familiar classroom strategies. Now, new expectations are held for the nation's students and are reflected in new modes of student assessment. It is clear that the professional preparation of many of the classroom professionals who work and teach in the schools has not prepared them to think about curriculum, instruction, and assessment in a way that is consonant with constructivist theory. They have not been prepared for the new role definitions for students and teachers which are implicit in that theoretical structure.
Idea systems are powerful; they control the way teachers view themselves, their students, and what it means to teach. They control the structures of schools and what the public expects schools to be like. They determine what educational research models are used, what problems are studied, and what solutions are proposed. The existing school paradigm dominates the substance of most educators' professional lives. It also defines the larger purposes of schooling and it influences how schools are viewed by the public (Kuhn, 1970).
The preceding discussion further suggests that traditional professional development strategies will probably not be effective in altering classroom practice. It will not be enough to merely graft new instructional techniques to existing curricula. The entire instructional process, from selecting the generative themes of the curriculum, to facilitating engaging classroom interaction that has real-world reference points, to ongoing assessment-for-improvement, must be restructured given the constructivist belief system.
Professional development, if it is to be consistent with constructivist beliefs about teaching and learning, can not be left to the vagaries of traditional inservice activities. A consistent professional development strategy would accept teacher learning as a process of construction, the existence of prior professional knowledge, and the existence of diverse knowledge structures. The strategy would recognize that conceptual change requires time and resources such as mentoring, peer coaching, and intensive reflective seminars. Finally, the strategy would encourage teacher experimentation by suspending threatening evaluative processes (for teachers and students) over the short term (Noble and Smith, 1994, p. 129).
Effective inservice activities must be long-term, must explore teachers' prior knowledge and experience, must utilize collaborative problem-solving teams, and must work toward the redefinition of student and teacher roles in the classroom. Work teams, organized around content areas and supported by professional content organizations, will need to identify the generative themes around which instruction will be organized. Teachers will feel considerable pressure to cover all of the traditional content as the public seeks to preserve education as it was.
The work of reforming teaching and learning strategies in the interest of promoting student understanding must also be supported by public policy. For example, continued use of standardized tests as the primary measure of student achievement will diminish the school's commitment to develop deep understanding among students. Public support must be built not only for instructional strategies which lead to higher levels of student competence but also for assessment strategies which will enable students to demonstrate their competence. Each of us- teachers, parents and members of the non-parent community- must come to understand that our traditional beliefs about how schools ought to be are in tension with new expectations of what schools in the 21st century must accomplish. Teaching for understanding as a vehicle for preparing students for performance will require the best of those who are committed to public education.
Author
The author of this paper is Ken Kickbusch, a (now retired) WEAC research consultant.
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Posted June, 1996