•A set of inter-related programs guided by a common framework for curriculum, instruction, assessment and learning that are pursued over a sustained period.

•Leads to improved student achievement vs. uncoordinated efforts each limited in scope and duration

Newman, F.M., Smith, B., Allensworth, E. Bryk, A.S. (2001) Instructional Program Coherence: What it is and why it should guide school improvement policy. Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, 23(4), 297-321.

Fred Newman et al:

INSTRUCTIONAL PROGRAM COHERENCE

3-D PDConnecting Standards Alignment and

Curriculum Coordination with High Student Achievement

ThroughCognitive Science

SOCIETY NOW DEMANDS:

HIGH ACADEMIC ACHIEVEMENT

SCIENTIFIC LITERACY FOR ALL STUDENTS: 21ST Century Skills

No longer:

•Narrow career or vocational preparation

•Weeding out students and focusing on elite

SCIENTIFIC LITERACY FOR THE 21ST CENTURY:

All students will:

1. a. Know the important

information and skills

b. Readily access and

comprehend new information

and skills

SCIENTIFIC LITERACY FOR THE 21ST CENTURY:

All students will:

2. a. Understand the basic concepts of science As evidenced by …

b. Problem solving, critical

thinking, & considered decision making that is flexible and transferable

SCIENTIFIC LITERACY FOR THE 21ST CENTURY:

All students will:

3. Direct their own choices and uses of information, skills, and concepts when addressing a question

To design a model for teaching and learning higher-order thinking,

use what

Cognitive Science

has learned over the past

15+ years about

the intellect and academic thinking

3-D PD:Focused on Higher-Order

Thinking (H.O.T.)

-

Focused on Classroom Practice

THE ESSENTIAL QUESTION BEING ASKED OF

EDUCATORS:

“ Why are our kids not learning at the rate that they should be despite decades of reforms and budget increases? “

TIME magazine, April 19, 2010 p. 42, “Is Cash the Answer?”

INSTRUCTION ASSESSMENT

CURRICULUM

What all students should know,

understand and be able to do.

How students are going to learn the curriculum

To what degree did students learn what we wanted them to know,

understand and be able to do?

THE THREE PARTS OF CLASSROOM PRACTICE

50+ YEARS OF DEVELOPMENT AND INNOVATION IN EDUCATION

Cooperative learning

Open-ended assessment

Project-based learning

Computer-aided instruction

Authentic assessment

State curriculum standards

Learning objectives

Inquiry-based learning

Peer assessment

Rubric design

Problem-based learning

… etc., etc., etc., etc., etc.,

So where are the

effects on student

learning ???

Cooperative learningProject-based learningComputer-aided instructionInquiry-based learningHands-On experimentationDifferentiated InstructionProblem-based learning… etc., etc., etc.,

Authentic assessmentOpen-ended assessment Peer assessmentRubric designFormative assessmentSummative assessment… etc., etc., etc.

Performance objectivesState curriculum standards

A PATTERN:

Curriculum ??Little but behaviorism for 100 years

Instruction:LOTS !

Assessment:LOTS !

THESIS

THE IMPROVEMENTS IN ASSESSMENT AND INSTRUCTION ARE STYMIED BY

A LACK OF PROGRESS ON CURRICULUM

THE ZERO-SUM PENDULUM SWING IN CURRICULUM

PROCESS: DO

ProceduralKnowledge

Discovery

Exploration

Hands-On

CONTENT: KNOW

Essential Basics

Cultural Literacy

Declarative Knowledge

Text

HIGH ACADEMIC ACHIEVEMENTmeans students…

KNOW the essential information

UNDERSTAND the basic concepts

CAN DO the essential skills

demonstrated byPROBLEM SOLVING AND CRITICAL

THINKING

The Holy Grail of High Student Achievement:

PROBLEM SOLVING AND CRITICAL THINKING

The Higher Thinking Processes:

Application, analysis, synthesis, judgment

=KNOWLEDGE TRANSFER

An operational definition

What do students learn when they study dinosaurs?

• Could use “ANCIENT EGYPT” as an example for the Social Studies. At K-12 workshop with 200 teachers many teachers responded with having had taught such a unit at some time in their career.

WHAT STAYS BEHIND ?

= specific contexts, exemplars, information

Gorgosaurus

Ferns and swamps

Big, bad, ugly, extinct

= topic, context, facts

WHAT MOVES ?

Form-and-functionInterdependence

Evolution These are transferable concepts

•definable (generalizations, maps, text)

•Universal

•timeless

HOW DOES IT TRAVEL?

HIGHER ORDER PROCESSES

ApplicationAnalysisSynthesisEvaluationCreativity

LOWER ORDER PROCESSESIdentificationComprehension up to… Compare and contrast

= static knowledge

Each is a different Method of combining transferable concepts to specific topics

Can you create an insightful question relating the following

topics to each concept?Topic

Light bulb

Tree

Aspirin

Skateboard

Concept Energy Transformation

Interdependence

Motion and Forces

Form and Function

On a scale of 1-5 how insightful would your questions be for each concept?

How deep can you go with it?

What transfers from prior knowledge?

What “stays behind” ? What is the new context?

How does it move?

KNOWLEDGE TRANSFER

TRANSFERABLE CONCEPTS

(“understand”)

TOPIC/CONTEXTINFORMATION

(“know”)

SKILLS AND PROCESSES

(“do”)

When confronted with a novel problem or question:

THE 3-D PARADIGM OF CURRICULUM

CONCEPT PROCESSES AND SKILLS

INCLUSIVE OF CONVENTIONAL PARADIGM

SPECIFICALLY DESIGNED TO GENERATE KNOWLEDGE TRANSFER

THE PATTERN OF LIFE-LONG LEARNING AND FLEXIBILITY

TOPIC INFORMATION

THE CONVENTIONAL PARADIGM OF CURRICULUM

PROCESSCONTENT

OCCASIONALLY GENERATES KNOWLEDGE TRANSFER

COMPREHENSION IS THE EFFECTIVE CEILING

3-D PD : I.

THERE ARE THREE TYPES OFLEARNING OUTCOMES:

a) topic/context information “KNOW”b) transferable concepts “UNDERSTAND”

c) skills and processes “DO”

II.THE HIGHER THINKING PROCESSES CAN ALL BE

OBJECTIVELY DEFINED (AND THEREFORE ASSESSED) AS DIFFERENT METHODS OF

COMBINING TRANSFERABLE CONCEPTS WITH SPECIFIC TOPIC AND CONTEXTUAL INFORMATION.

THESIS RESOLUTION:

BREAKING THE LOG-JAM

The improvements in student learning generated by a 3-D model of

curriculum will be compounded by the anticipated improvements in learning

flowing from the innovations in assessment and instruction that were

previously thwarted.

Sputnik launched. Soviet technology seen as a threat

WWII – BF Skinner Behaviorism and army training –Psychoanalysts (Freud) are run out

1939 1958

The National Defense Education Act- NSF charged with science and math education

1991

Novak publishes 12 year longitudinal study (Ithaca, NY) with results that strongly support cognitive-based learning

Nat’l Resource Council Report :

How People Learn supports the cognitive approach

1992

NSF conference in Colorado Springs -Schism between cognitive theorists and behaviorists – Results in backing of behaviorism = Inquiry

19621957

Behaviorism versus Cognition in American Education•Behaviorism denies existence of mind – only the brain exists•Cognition minimizes the importance of behavior – the mind controls behavior

Bloom’s taxonomy published

1955

Implementation Concerns

• Accountability for curriculum standards

• Origin of transferable concepts

• Meshing with current practice and initiatives

• Compelling, Practical, User-friendly for teacher

Educational concern:ACCOUNTABILITY FOR STANDARDS

Any and all curriculum standards can be analyzed and then categorized for their focus

on concept, information, or process/skill.

Curriculum is aligned with mandated standards as well as with cognitive

science and learning theory.

Assessment of students’ concept transfer, information command, and

skill/process abilities is objective.

STANDARDS

SPLINTER

AND

SPIRAL

CHUNK

AND

CONNECT

TWO OPTIONS FOR CURRICULUM MAPPING

STANDARD

STANDARD,

STANDARD

Objective

STANDARD Objective

Objective

CONCEPT,TOPIC,SKILL

3-D Curriculum Mapping

Step 1: Analyze each standard:

Which concept or skill would

be most useful for

understanding this standard?

What topic info. is required?

Step 2: Chunk the standards according to concept and skill:

• What is the concept load?

• What is the skill load?

• What topics, contexts, facts are required?

3-D Curriculum Mapping

Step 3: Organize the required concepts according to the cognitive development of students

CONCEPTS DIFFER COGNITIVELY IN THREE WAYS CHILD’S INTELLECT DEVELOPS IN THREE WAYS

GENERAL / SPECIFIC /

OBVIOUS SUBTLE

SIMPLE COMPLEX

CONCRETE ABSTRACT

3-D Curriculum Mapping

ADMINISTRATIVE SUPERVISION ??

•Each course has few concepts, skills, topics

•The concepts change rarely

•A one-page course curriculum summary is easily supervised.

•Assessments of concept transfer are objective

WHERE DO THE CONCEPTS AND THEIR GENERALIZATIONS COME FROM?

Concepts are presently woven throughout, unrecognized

Bona fide transferable concepts are identified as ideas that are effective for higher order thinking

Concepts are organized into taxonomies according to: GENERAL / OBVIOUS SPECIFIC / SUBTLE

SIMPLE COMPLEX

CONCRETE ABSTRACT

Teachers are provided with conceptual structures to work from. Skill structures are readily available.

describesdescribes

can be

are described with

always involve changes in

always include

change over

always take

of

NATURE OF MATTER

PROCESSES(CHANGES)

ENTITIES

THINGS SUBSTANCESWAVES

PROPERTIES

TIME

CONCEPT MAP – LANGUAGE OF SCIENCE

GENERALIZATIONS- Language of Science

1. The natural world is imagined as delineated into things and composed of substances which we think of as discrete entities and that we identify with names. What is it?

2. The entities that make up the natural world are described and differentiated in terms of their properties.

The changes that occur throughout the natural world are described in terms of property changes: What happened?

Educational concern:MESHING WITH CURRENT PRACTICES

AND INITIATIVES

e.g. Differentiated Instruction

Essential questions

UbD is streamlined

Any type of documentation can be modified

CURRICULUM NOW BECOMES PART OF DIFFERENTIATED

LEARNING

The transferable concept is commonto all students.

The topic accommodatesstudent interests and backgrounds. A variety topics within a classroom is ideal for practicing transfer of the concept.

The skills accommodatestudent strengths or are a focus for improvement.

The depth of conceptual understanding accommodatesto students by assigning more, less, or different generalizations for the same concept to focus their learning.

CREATING POTENT ESSENTIAL QUESTIONS

• Transferable concept or skill

e.g.• Governance• Motif• Composition• Rate• Symmetry• Metaphor

• Topic or context

e.g. • The Crusades• Stars• Speeding • Tool(s)• Mount

Rushmore

+

WHAT IS A PRACTICAL WAY TO TEACH TO DIFFERENCES?

LEARNING NEEDS LEARNING ACTIVITIES

student skill levels

student interests

student backgrounds

teacher strengths

school resources

parent/community focus

concept

topic (information)

context (geographical, seasonal, etc.)

activity format (discussion, hands-on, debate, etc.)

grouping size

time duration

?

MATCHINGDIFFERENCES DIFFERENCES

This is an INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY problem

for the teacherSolution:

Networked database of learning activities, units, courses and resources indexed and

accessed according to the educational criteria

Educational Concern:Practical and User-Friendly for Teachers

•Teachers recognize the power of conceptual transfer

•Standards are simplified, clarified and coordinated year-to- year through concept, topic, and skill master structures.

•Learning efficiency and effectiveness are greatly enhanced.

•Teacher creativity and individual strengths are reflected in the choice and orchestration of concept, topic, and skill.

•The Database provides rapid, easy, real-time, highly targeted access to learning activities and resources.

Curriculum is easily modified or elaborated.

Teacher discourse is focused on the concept – for both content knowledge and classroom practice Professional decisions now include curriculum as well as instruction

CONCEPTUAL “BACKBONE” PROVIDES TEACHER FLEXIBILITY

“Teaching with concepts also makes teaching more organized; knowledge more retrievable; and subject matter more relevant to learners, more connected, and more focused on meaning and utility. Rather than accumulating disjointed trivia, kids see cubbyholes to put things in.”

- Carol Ann Tomlinson

Differentiated Instruction

The curriculum cooperative: www.lessoncoop.org