Building Equitable ClassroomsRachel LotanStanford School of EducationAugust, 2011

It’s all about ….

INTERACTION

At the classroom level,

At the classroom level,

Delegation of authority•Teacher delegates authority to students for

task completion and for holding each other accountable

•System of norms and roles supports delegation of authority

•Teacher holds groups and individuals accountable through feedback and assessment of group and individual products

At the individual level,

Barriers to productive interactions:•Status inequalities

▫Academic status: Who is best at….

▫Social/ peer status: Who is the popular/ best friend/ cool…

At the individual level,

At the individual level,

Conditions for productive groupworkGroupworthy tasks

Classroom organization: preparing students to work in groups

Formative and summative feedback/ assessments

Status treatments

Use of academic language: Let them in on the secret!

2010 – 11 “Teacher Talk” Instrument

•Categories:▫Science Procedures/Materials

▫Data (collect, observe, record)

▫Factual/Recall ▫Interpret/Analyze/Infer

▫Evaluate/Apply▫Connect (other lessons, to student’s lives)▫Class Procedure (manage, discipline)

Per Minute .39 .30 1.00 .30 .11 .22 .84

2011 – 12 “Teacher Talk” Focus: “How Do We Know?”

•How do scientists know that?•How do you/we know that?•Scientists didn't always know/understand_____.•Why do you think that?•Show me the data.•What is your evidence?•How would you know if you were wrong?•Here is the evidence to support _____.•How certain are we about that?•Do you have enough evidence? Why or why not?

2011 – 12 “Teacher Talk” Focus: “How Do We Know?”

•Kate: How is that measured?•Nicole: I’d love to see the error lines. I teach

my students to look at the uncertainty.•Chung: What makes us think now that it is

anthropogenic…?•Mike: Science is never settled, always building

new information, but there is an overwhelming scientific consensus that climate change is happening, and humans are the driving force. That doesn’t mean there aren’t a lot of unanswered questions and uncertainty.

Classrooms are equitable when…•All students have access to grade-

appropriate, intellectually challenging curriculum and to productive, equal-status interactions with peers and with the teacher

•Students and teachers recognize different intellectual abilities and define intelligence (“smarts”) as flexible/ incremental and multi-dimensional

Classrooms are equitable when…(cont.)

•All students have multiple opportunities and varied ways to demonstrate their intellectual competence/ way of being smart in the subject.

•The distribution of achievement measures is narrowed and clustered around an acceptable mean.