DOCUMENT RESUME

ED 273 566 SP 026 402

AUTHOR Kaplan, George R.TITLE Items for an Agenda. Educational Research and the

Reports on Excellence.INSTITUTION American Educational Research Association,

Washington, D.C.SPONS AGENCY National Inst. of Education (ED), Washington, DC.PUB DATE Apr 85GRANT NIE-G-84-0004NOTE 34p.; For commissioned papers summarized by this

document, see ED 257 032, SP 026 403-404, and SP 026406-411.

PUB TYPE Information Analyses (070)

EDRS PRICE NFO1/PCO2 Plus Postage.DESCRIPTORS *Dropout Prevention; Educational Change; Educational

Legislation; Educational Policy; Elementary SecondaryEducation; Equal Education; *IntellectualDevelopment; Potential Dropouts; *TeacherEffectiveness; *Teaching (Occupation)

IDENTIFIERS *Excellence in Education

ABSTRACTThe critical issue discussed in this document is the

extent to which changes now occurring in the field of education--instate laws, administrative actions, and educational practice--areinformed by valid research and experiences. Questions are raisedabout the adequacy cf the informational base of the main reports one xcellence and reform, and the role of research in assistingpolicymakers and educators as they carry out legislative mandates toimprove the schools. To examine these issues, papers werecommissioned from authorities in three fields: (1) improving teacherincentives and the quality of teaching; (2) the case of dropouts as apossible mismatch between excellence and equity; and (3) teaching andlearning higher-order thinking skills in the schools. This reportsummarizes the nine authors' assessments of the applicability ofresearch in their specialities to the reports on reform and relevantactions around the country. In varying degrees this paperdemonstrates that the links between research, policy, and action inthe reform movement Have been less than ideal. (JD)

************************************************************************ Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made *

* from the original document. *

***********************************************************************

ev ITEMS FOR AIV AGENDAciLtr Educational Research

and theReports on Excellence

"PERMISSION TO REPRODUCE THISMATERIAL HAS BEEN GRANTED BY

RussellTO THE EDUCATIONAL RESOURCESINFORMATION CENTER (ERIC)."

U.S. DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATIONNATIONAL INSTITUTE OF EDUCATION

EDU ATIONAL RESOURCES INFORMATIONCENTER (ERIC)

This document has been reproduced asreceived from the person or organizationoriginating itMinor changes have been made to improvereproduction quality

Points ot view or opinions stateo in this docu..ment do not necessarily represent official NIEposition or policy.

American Educational Research AssociationWashington, DC

1985

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ITEMS FOR AN AGENDAEducational Research and the

Reports on Excellence

George R. Kaplan, Consultant/Writer

American Educational Research Association1230 Seventeenth Street, NW

Washington, DC 200361985

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Permission is hereby granted to reproduce thisreport, in whole or in part. Acknowledgment of itsoriginal publication by the American Educational Re-search Association is requested.

Single copies of the primary papers on which thisreport is based (listed in "Acknowledgments") areavailable on request (while supplies last) from theAmerican Educational Research Association, 1230Seventeenth Street, NW, Washington, DC 20036.

April 1985

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CONTENTS

Research and the Reform Reports 1

Options for Teachers and Teaching 2What and Who a Teacher Is 2Policies to Promote Excellence 5A Profession in Need of Systemic Reform 8

Reform and Equity: The Case of School Dropouts ... 11Perspectives on Dropout Prevention 12Strategies and Examples 14Egalitarianism, Schooling, and Testing 17

Higher-Order Skills in the Three R's 19Reading and Thinking 20Critical Thinking in Written Communication 22Reasoning in a Technological World 24Choices for the Schools 27

Acknowledgments

The primary content of "Items for an Agenda" comes from the follow-ing papers which the American Educational Research Association com-missioned as part of a U.S. Department of Education-supported granton research contributions for educational improvement:Ann L. Brown

"Teaching Students to Think as They Read: Implications for Curricu-lum Reform"

Philip A. Cusick"The Effects of School Reform on the Egalitarianism of the Schools"

Stephen F. Hamilton"Raising Standards and Reducing Dropout Rates: Implications ofResearch for Recent Secondary School Reform Proposals"

Vii ginia Koehler"Inside the Classroom"

Edward L. McDill, Gary Natriello, and Aaron M. Pallas"Raising Standards and Retaining Students: The Impact of the Re-form Recommendations on Potential Dropouts"

Milbrey McLaughlin"The Limits of Policies to Promote Teaching Excellence"

Frederick Reif"Teaching Higher-Order Thinking Skills for a Technological World:Needs and Opportunities"

Marlene Scardamalia"Higher Order Abilities: Written Communication"

Philip C. Schlechty"Restructuring the Teaching OccupationA Proposal"The American Educational Research Association is grateful to the

contributors of the manuscripts, to Lauren Resnick for her contribu-tions to the discussion of higher-order thinking skills, and to represen-tatives of the following national educational organizations who partici-pated in critical discussions of the subjects covered in this report:

American Association of School AdministratorsAmerican Federation of TeachersCouncil of Chief State School OfficersCouncil of Great City SchoolsNational Association of State Boards of EducationNational Education AssociationNational School Boards AssociationThis project was supported by funds from the Department of Educa-

tion (Grant No. NIE-G-84-0004). The authors and contributors are en-couraged to express their professional judgment. Thus, the reportdoes not necessarily represent positions or policies of the government,the organizations represented by the contributors to the project, or theAmerican Educational Research Association.

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Research and the Reform Reports

Reports on educational reform will not reform education. As mes-sengers of knowledge and insight, they can only signal needs andinform decision-makers of actionable choices. The job of prescribingand disciplining reform in all its diversity is up to the governors,legislatures, and school boards who wield political power. How theyinterpret the issues will be decisive in determining whether school-ing will attain excellence in America.

The process of change is off to a fast start throughout the country. Itpromises to be a bumpy and uneven business, though, with widevariability in practice and in the availability and application ofreliable information. Some of the most powerfully motivated promot-ers of change consistently overlook valid data and disregard institu-tional memory in their quest for higher educational quality. To ignorerelevant research findings is to risk costly misunderstanding aboutstudents, teachers, schools, and the links between schools and soci-ety that affect change where it must occurin the smallest units ofthe educational system.

As reform proceeds, there is a continuing gap between whatresearch can provide and what is happening or about to happen inseveral key areas. Reform-oriented policies and their implementa-tion in the schools may in time cause as many problems as they solveon two counts where there is already ambivalence and debate: (1)the matter of protecting and promoting equity during and after thesearch for excellence, and (2) the chronic sore spot of assessingaccurately whether and how policies promoting change are working.Yet these two issues affect nearly every facet of reform.

The catalogue of exhortations and recommendations in the reformreports is replete with policies and actions that could use markedlybetter information. In this document the American Educational Re-search Association spotlights three subjects in which already avail-able research data and analysis may assist planners of current andfuture efforts at reform for excellence: (1) improving teacher incen-tives and the quality of teaching, (2) the case of dropouts as a possiblemismatch between excellence and equity, and (3) the generallyneglected issue of teaching and learning higher-order thinking skillsin the schools.

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Options for Teachers and Teaching

Of the several bumper crops of reports on educational reform of1983-1984, none has found a readier market in state legislaturesthan teachers and teaching. Portrayed as constituting a near-disasterarea in education, the recruitment, performance, work habits, incen-tives, preparation, and quality of teachers have ignited attention andaction throughout the nation. Scarcely a week passes without legisla-tive or executive measures aimed at achieving excellence in theteaching profession and the services it provides school age children.Overdue and widely welcomed, the gathering force of reform inpedagogy has become a front-burner issue in education, especiallyin state capitals and among responsible c,clucators.

This burst of debate and activity, which accounted for more than700 pieces of state legislation in 1983 and 1984, is healthy, and itpromises, at least in the short term, to be productive. Less certain,how,wer, is the extent to which it is informed. The opening assump-tion that things are bad may be valid, but it frequently comes accom-panied by a mind-set against teachers that contributes little to adeeper appreciation of the real problems of their profession. Too, thecumulative effects of the changes in policy and practice that aremaking their way through legislatures and state agencies may be toconstrain or bureauciatize the role and status of teachers and teach-ing. In the long run, it is doubtful that any reform will work that doesnot, instead, ultimately enrich, enhance, expand and empower them.Moreover, unless such reform embraces the entire system of whichteaching is part, it is unlikely to have much chance of success.

Although educational research cannot tell policy-makers what todo, it has contributed sizeably to informing them of the phenomenaand problems of teaching. As reform moves from exhortations to lawsand practices, however, there is a continuing need for decision-makers to possess an even clearer sensitivity to certain intrinsicforces and factors affecting the realities of teaching. Central to anyimpending changes must be a firm appreciation of, among others,who and what the teacher is and does, the premises and limits ofpolicies to promote excellence in teaching, and the political-bureau-cratic-structural problems of the profession.

What and Who a Teacher Is

To understand what education is all about is to understand aboutteachers teaching children in classrooms. No reform can succeed, oreven proceed, unless decision-makers have firmly implanted thistruism in their approach to change. Yet, today's main prescriptions forreforming the profession (or art, craft, occupation, quasi-, semi-, ornon-profession) of teaching have come from outside the classroom.

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There seems little justification for the nearly total exclusion of practi-tioners in any field from policies and decisions that directly affectthem. Perhaps the problems of formal education, an experience inwhich all Americans have a strong investment, are so well known,like those of politics or sports, that professional counsel or involve-ment by insiders is extraneous. Whatever the reason, teachers havenever achieved any serious control over their own destiny, whiledoctors, lawyers, and countless others maintain a firm grasp on thebusiness of their businesses.

Public perceptions of teachers and teaching are a maze of contra-dictions Teachers are poorly paid, but they should be more profi-cient in their work. Classes are huge, but children should receivemore individual attention. Students should be kept under closerdisciplinary control while violence in the :arger society and ontelevision becomes epidemic. Student test scores have fallen or aredrifting, but "lay-ons," externally imposed demands (such as pro-grams dealing with the single-parent student) that have few links tosubstantive education, force teachers to reduce instructional time.The list continues. So will public confusion until firm, commonlyheld information regarding this vital profession gains acceptance.

A hypothetical want ad (by Linda Darling-Hammond of the RandCorporation) for a teacher sets forth the following requirements:

College graduate with academic major (master's degree preferred).Excellent communication and leadership skills required. Challengingopportunity to serve 150 clients daily, developing up to five differentproducts each day to meet their needs. This diversified job also allowsemployee to exercise typing, clerical, law enforcement, and socialwork skills between assignments and dfter hours. Adaptability helpful,since suppliers cannot always deliver goods and support services ontime. Typical work week 47 hours. Special nature of work precludesfringe benefits such as lunch and coffee breaks, but work has manyextrinsic rewards. Starting salary $12,769, with a guarantee of$24,000 atter only 14 years.

This thumbnail sketch is too close to the bone for comfort. Itnevertheless tells only part of the story. Although it is fashionable todenigrate teachers, "teacher-bashing" having become a favorite in-door sport of the 1980's, expectations for them in at least six basicareas are endless. By most accepted criteria, they are executives,managers, communicators, colleagues, inquirers, and clerks. Theirdaily responsibilities within each category range from the rational tothe ridiculous and back again. In each of the six, they performmanifold expanding functions. Unlike their approximate oppositenumbers in fields outside of education, they are considered to befully equipped and credentialled profescionals, ready to meet themost exacting demands of their profession, from their first day of

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work. Only seldom, and for brief periods, do they receive training toimprove or maintain their skills at externally prescribed levels. Butsociety expects them to make informed daily judgments that maybear heavily on the future of its children. What worked a generationago, in a classroom almost identical to today's, presumably shouldwork forever.

Beyond the illusory stability of the classroom, which only super-ficially has remained the same, lie new combinations of pressures tocomplicate the life of the teacher. Of these probably the most salientis the shift in the composition of students in the classroom. Newpopulations created by the obligations of laws concerning desegre-gation, mainstreaming children with handicapping conditions, andbilingual education have altered the demographic profiles of once-homogeneous classes. More students are staying in school longerthan in the past, while potential dropouts, especially in the highergrades, demand special attention. Specialists such as reading ex-perts, special educators, and speech pathologists draw students awayfrom the classroom throughout the day. Teachers must now competewith television and after-school employment, which is particularlyattractive and diverting for high school-age students.

This mixture of externally mandated factors bedevils some teach-ers, but the greatly underrated majority takes them in stride, at least atthe level of the elementary school. The literature on effective teach-ing reveals no fixed styles or instructional behaviors for good teach-ers. They work in low-income, urban mixed-income, suburban, andrural schools, and they come from a variety of cultural, social, andeducational backgrounds. They approach teaching in different ways,with but one characteristic in commonan emphasis on readingand mathematics. In general, however, good teachers tend to do thesame things well. They minimize noise and disruption. They accu-rately diagnose student skill levels and provide assignments appro-priate to them. They maximize educational while minimizing socialrelationships with the students. Their carefully constructed questionselicit relatively high rates of correct answers. Once a task is com-pleted, they provide immediate and thoughtful feedback. By mini-mizing time devoted to non-academic tasks, they are able to moveswiftly from activity to activity. Appreciating that what they do asteachers makes a difference in the learning of their students, theyexpect and usually get creditable performance.

These indicators of good teaching have wide, but far from univer-sal, applicability. They come from voluminous research in effectiveschools and classrooms and may vary depending on students, sub-ject matter, grade level, and diverse working conditions. As a generalrule, they form the underpinning of good inservice teacher trainingprograms for elementary education. But there is additional evidencethat cooperative learning and small group models are also effective,

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notably in the acquisition of sophisticated thought processes (see"Higher-Order Skills and the Three R's," below) and enhancingsocial attitudes. What comprises effective teaching behavior in sec-ondary school classrooms remains a matter for serious research.There is little available now.

The strongest influence on new teachers is their own past school-ing and teachers. In no other occupation does personal experience-1 2 to 14 years of elementary and secondary school and exposure tomany more teachershave such a powerful effect. Preservice pro-grams help to develop the instructional skills of new teachers, but thecooperating teachers preservice students encounter in practiceteaching have more effect than college courses, although the latterare usually helpful. As their training progresses, students become lessidealistic and more traditional, even custodial, in their view of theirjob. Experienced teachers are less concerned than newcomers aboutthe backgrounds of their students, preferring instead to let perfor-mance speak for itself. They tend, too, to become more global andefficient in their thought processes.

Research on these and related matters is only beginning. It mayprove important to both policy and practice. As states develop exam-inations for certification and criteria for evaluating beginning teach-ers, they should take into account these and other developmentaldiffe ences between beginning and experienced teachers. Settingsingle, or universal, standards may prove to be unwise policy.

Policies to Promote Excellence

The locus of reform in teaching is shifting from the mandates thatissue from legislative halls and governors' offices to the real world ofteachers in the classroom. As the move proceeds, there is causE forconcern over the suitability of some of the new policies that arerapidly making their way, Lore rapidly in manycases than their mostardent backers could have anticipated, into schools and classrooms.Do they truly result in effective service to students, which surely is acentral norm and motivating factor for teachers? Are they accuratelyattuned to conditions in the workplace, which often constitute thekey impediments to educational excellence? Are they creating suchcomplicated mini-systems and sets of values that standardization willbe impossible? Available evidence suggests that decision-makerswould be wise to examine a broad cluster of mutually reinforcingconditions that explain much about the current conditions of teach-ing and the quality of classroom practice. These may prove to exertdecisive influence over the execution of reform measures.

The institutional context of teaching offers strong clues to thepotential feasibility of certain strategies of reform. No two classes or

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schools function in precisely the same way. Within them, the teachetenjoys a disquieting autonomyisolated from colleagues nearly allday but the beneficiary (or victim) of the traditional norm of "non-interference." Although criteri.a for good teaching have gained wideacceptance (see "What and Who the Teacher Is," above), at its corethe job is a problem-solving activity that relies on the judgment anddiscretion of teachers in developing situationally effective responses.This built-in variability thus can be both problem and opportunity inthat it can signal uneven quality in classroom practice while con-stituting a key ingredient of effective teaching.

Unevenness epitomizes other "institutional" aspects of the teach-er's life in the classroom. Teachers have little professional status and aflat career structure that may offer intellectual and emotionalnumbness instead of the tangible incentives most fields can provide.Moreover, they have no voice in deciding whom they will teach.Public schools accept all who appear at the front door. There is norecall provision as in the case of automobiles. Prohibited in custom-ary practice from either selecting or dismissing pupils, teachers dailyface students of widely varying age, ability, behavior, and interest inclass work.

How teachers react to reform initiatives may turn on considera-tions that are often absent from or weakly represented in policydebates on reforming their business. Usually conducted by outsiders,these deliberations seldom pay more than lip service to the primarysources of satisfaction and reward for teachersservice to youngpeople and transmitting the knowledge of a particular discipline.Research attests that this type of internal incentive is even moreeffective than monetary rewards. But the reforms must yield positiveresults or teachers will resist or he indifferent to it. Change thatteachers feel competent and safe to undertake, even to the extent of"unfreezing" long-held routines ar J beliefs, has a good chance ofadoption. In the living world of bureaucracies, prokssional recogni-tion, and cost benefit, teachers will refer to their own "practicalityethic." Will a given reform initiative work, and is it likely to wearwell?

The planners of teacher reform have devoted only limited attentionto the superficially simple but loaded questions of the readiness andability of teachers to act on unfamiliar knowledge, promising prac-tice, or external mandates. The acquisition of new skills, and some-times of notably different attitudes or values, involves modifyingdeeply held views about "best practice" and relinquishing long-termbeliefs about instruction. The process may prove unsettling unlesscompetent, personalized technical assistance and sufficient time toabsorb new information and methods are available. Teachers areinitially unsympathetic to anything new that threatens to become aburdensome "lay-on" or which forces them to rearrange priorities.

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upational strut lure while c mating nrw roles. tesponsibdthes.and ',ward systems They tan help to bui kl caw( 1-ty in *hook ki support beginning lea hem Rowdy designed andadminrstered. they c an strenpfilrn lint between perfot mint e and11,1114~41111111 on mreit pay schemes and the prer-based assistanceand support required in mentor teaching systems. They donot allwadi that way. Some career ladders arr merely fancy dress formeld pay. Quotas and c ompeohon are often Assoc lolled withmovement up the ladder. The hierarch* a nature at ladders sparksconcern mei lime in grade. competition. and the nature ot theadded responsibohty that normally accompanies advancement.And thry do nat at count km the competent leacher in thr trencheswho *inn. only In achiew increased SIAS as a teacher and notincreased. possibly administialiye. responsibility.

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A t rifnmon thread in ll of thew polit ies and designs fin impn wingteat lung is an Mink it depe.tilent e on reliable, font turning systems

)r evaluating teat hers, lhey need and value informed commentarym the quality of their work, Evalua'ilm helps them to identify instruc-

tional pro( tit es %xi( irthy (if sharing with ci lleagues. It t an mitigate thediet ts f isolatum by offering leaf hers the informed feedback thatpeers 10ten supply in other fiekls. Creditable twaluatirm tan supportthe "( ounseling out" 10 teat hers ill-suited to the fiekl. Print ipals musth.we it in order to promote the ci mnum g a1 s UI effet tivelegislators, in yam( ul.1, demand and are ri hly entitled to account-ability.

It is no sec ret in the world of educational research that mostexisting methods for assessment consist of standard checklists andthat they are based on lintited observation of how a teacher performs.Ihey will not work for these reforms. Teacher evaluation is a casestudy in how policy objectives and expectations can outdistanceavailable prac tice and technology. It will not suffice for administra-tors to submit evaluation that stems from an "I know what I like" or"Keep up the good work" mentality.

Even if the shortcomings of the current reform initiatives in teach-ing were remedied, the extent to which they could promote signifi-c ant improvement is questionable. Singly and together, they gener-ally fail to summon up the incentives necessary for professionalgrowth, and they neglect altogether the institutional setting in whichimprovement is supposed to materialize. They are only partial re-sponses to complex, system-wide institutional problems at a timewhen piecemeal policies that attempt to mend this or that part of amajor problem will not help much. Effective policy solutions mustwork in multiple, reinforcing, and, above all, systemic ways.

A Profession in Need of Systemic Reform

The worst-kept secret in American education may be the unim-pressive academic abilities of the nation's newer teachers. Whilecapable, strongly motivated teachers traditionally have staffed ourschools, well-publicized recent research indicates that the assemblylines of teacher training are receiving and discharging less qualifiedsuccessors. The more academically able college graduates are notflocking to teaching, and those who do choose it are less likely to staythan those who showed fewer academic skills in college. Equallyominous is the growing rate of turnover of beginning teachers, mostmarkedly among academically able ones in such high demand areasas mathematics and science. To add to a disheartening picture,teaching is attracting a dramatically lower percentage of all collegegraduates than it did only 20 years ago. The decline is particularlypronounced among women and members of minority groups, for

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whom broader career options have opened. Large categories ofcollege-educated persons whom society once almost literallypushed into teachingwomen and minorities, upwardly mobilemen viewing teaching as a stepping stone to higher status positions,and values- rather than income-oriented personsare drawn toother pursu its.

Talented people who enter teaching today do so out of a positive,even courageous, attraction to it in th i. face of severe competitionfrom career fields that offer what teaching often does not: recogni-tion, advancement in status, and career growth. It has become ax-iomatic that fundamental arid significant alterations in the waysteachers are educated, evaluated, trained, motivated, and rewardedmust occur if teaching is to avoid becomng a redoubt for themediocre. Responding to these manifest needs, decision-makers areloosing a blizzard of laws, regulations, and new standards. But theyare doing so in a disjointed, piecemeal fashion. Policy changes inteacher education, for example, are coming about without referenceto necessary corresponding adjustments in such other sectors ascertification, compensation, and systems for evaluating and reward-ing teachers. Notably lacking is any larger sense among framers ofpublic policies that these are systemic matters; no single step orpolicy to improve the teaching profession can make long-range senseunless it is part of a larger design that integrates policies and actionsin all areas affecting teacher education.

Most fully developed professions control the main functions thataffect them and can usually speak with one reasonably authoritativevoice. This is patently not so in teacher preparation, where owners ofat least part of the action include, among others, the AmericanAssociation of Colleges for Teacher Education, the National Educa-tion Association, the American Federation of Teachers, and a host ofstate agencies. Their long-range goals show potential for compatibil-ity, even collaboration, but in their daily lives they often work atcross-purposes in a ceaseless battle to retain and expand their terrain.There is no discipline in their diversity.

The situation in five key domains of teaching as a career providesconvincing evidence of the effects of this fragmentation.

In generating and codifying knowledge, most of the nominallyresponsible colleges of education operate from a strait-jacket.Held in low esteem on most campuses, they have or ask for little ofthe autonomy that medical or law schools enjoy. Nearly all play itsafe by sticking close to the university-based liberal arts modelrather than branching out into more desirable but adventurous off-campus ties to schools, where teaching happens.

The twin functions of recruitment and selection, which the univer-sity, the school system, and sometimes state agencies control, vary

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markedly from those of the more established professions, where acommitment is a prerequisite to entry into training. Only 50-70percent of those who complete certification programs in teachingever make it to the classroom.

The transmission of knowledge, a crucial function in teachereducation, still lives, with justification, by the hoary maxims that"teachers teach as they were taught" and "teachers learn to teachby teaching." Without social context a neophyte teacher is at asingular disadvantage. The separation of the sites of formal (col-lege) and informal (school) instruction and socialization is a dys-functional element, even a major sore spot, in preparing newteachers. Beyond verbal or written exhortation, however, there arefew signs of efforts to ease it on a serious, permanent basis.

The enforcement of the profession's norms furnishes a clear case ofthe dysfunctional organization of teacher preparation. Administra-tors, the teachers' day-to-day supervisors, are not members of theprofession. Nor do they go by the same book as teacher educators,whose concerns are developmental and mainly professional. Tothe administrator, the teacher is both classroom instructor andbureaucratic employee. Value systems for the two are often con-tradictory.

The motivation and career potential of teachers present classicexamples of the case for integrating changes in teacher educationinto a systemic whole along with standards for evaluating teachersand methods for locating and acknowledging outstanding perfor-mance. Whether through career ladders, monetary bonuses, pre-mium training, or other means or combihations, new teachersmust feel themselves to be part of a process that respects and fullyrewards their efforts.

Out of the findings of recent research in these domains hasemerged a dilemma for agencies, institutions, and decision-makerscharged with staffing the nation's classrooms: Is collaboration amongthem sufficient, or should they go back to the drafting board and startfresh? There are challenges and perils in both. Collaboration custom-arily centers on governance while slighting content. To the main .institutions concerned with teacher educationpost-secondary in-stitutions, school systems, and teachers' organizationsit is not ahigh-priority item, a status that would surely vitiate any seriousattempt to establish it. Too, the understandable assumption of thepotential participants that enlightened self-interest is an appropriatefoundation upon which to build professional education may bemistaken. Moreover, there is reason to suspect that final blueprints forcollaboration would have to include roles for chief state schoolofficers, legislatures, and other increasingly active groups and agen-

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cies. These factors may comprise a prescription for failure or, at best,ineffectual performance.

Starting from scratc!' and creating a Utopian site-based system fortraining teachers where they work carries echoes of world govern-ment or other panaceas that have fizzled out. But the highly success-ful model in medical education in which Johns Hopkins MedicalSchool created new but lasting modes and standards nearly a centuryago, shows that dramatic ventures to train a profession can succeed,at least in a relatively uncomplicated era. At the core of the Hopkinsexperience was respect for careful research, detailed planning, suffi-cient time, and adequate initial financial backing. Whether thesewould be available to create new systems for teacher education in themid-1980's is unknown. The shortcomings of today's piecemealattempt dictate that responsible leaders make the effort.

Reform and Equity: The Case of School Dropouts

One of four of the roughly four million students who enter theninth grade every year do not graduate from high schoolon time orever. Although questions of definition, uneven availability of data,and statistical method may cloud the accuracy of this figure, mosteducational research scientists accept it, and some have even put it at28 percent for the past five years. If graduation from secondaryschool is the good thingfor society, the economy, and Americanyouththat popular wisdom holds it to be, then there is cause forconcern that so many of our youth do not make it.

Critics of the push for educational excellence of the mid-1980'scontend that this concern is nearly absent from the rising tide ofreports on reforming schooling. They assert that the elevation ofacademic standards, which is the centerpiece of the movement forreform, leads to insensitivity to issues of educational equity and thusimpairs the schooling of low-achieving students, particularly those oflow-income background. Spokespersons for reform through qualitycounter that increased demands on students through more rigorouscourse content and better use of time, among other means, will yieldgreater effort and higher levels of achievement and self-realization byall students.

Caught in this crossfire are the nation's potential dropouts, whosetalents and view of education have little to do with academic excel-lence or achievement. The majority suffer from no learning disabilitynor do most pose insurmountable threats to disciplinary stability inthe classroom. But society's expanding expectations for all studentsinclude successful completion of the high school grades, a goal thatmost low- or non-achievers have been unwilling or unable to meet

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even in a decade in which the requirements and standards of Ameri-can high schools have weakened perceptibly. What is to become ofthis youthful "population at risk" if excellence, rigor, and attendantvirtues become contagious in our schools?

The dilemma of equity and/versus/or excellence probably arousesmore passion than any other spinoff of the reform reports, andobjectivity is not always present in the research literature on thefamily of problems it has spawned. Good data and analysis ondropouts nevertheless are becoming available, and it is to this mate-rial that decision-makers should consider turning for broad perspec-tives and an awareness of the pitfalls that recent experience provides.

Perspectives on Dropout Prevention

The reasons American youth leave high school early stem fromthree principal sources: their educational experiences, family prob-lems, and economic factors. Although only one of these is a directconsequence of what happens to them in sch000l, it is by far the mostprevalent cause of early departure, and it is the only one that fallswithin the purview of pure educational reform. Simply put, whetherthey possess the requisite ability or not, many students cannot or willnot do the work. Poor grades, truancy, in-school delinquency, sus-pension, expulsionall are manifestations. While less marked statis-tically, the problems associated with teenage pregnancy and moth-erhood as well as of a student's family of origin, such as brokenhomes, often turn students away from school. The obligation manyfeel or must undertake to support this family or one of their own alsocan persuade students to drop out. For others, the attraction of apaying job in an expanding economy is greater than that of an almostpredictably dismal career in high school.

It is evident that the philosophers of educational reform intend thatsuch central themes as a more demanding curriculum, more rigoroususe of time, and high achievement should apply to all students in allschools at all levels. The consequent messages of the major reportsare clear (if not unanimous). All students should undertake a toughercore curriculum with fewer electives. Stricter policies on attendanceand the use of school time should be matched by firm, explicit, anddemanding requirements for homework. Grades must measure actu-al academic accomplishment and not motivation. Promotion shouldbe a direct result of adequate performance. Students should take testsof achievement at major points of transition.

Variations and expansions of these recommendations appearthroughout the documents on reform. In some particulars, they mayhave a salutary effect on possible dropouts, although the overallconclusion of studies on the potential positive impact of stiffening thecurriculum is that enrollment in the academic track contributes littleto student outcomes. It helps to raise the test scores of seniors, but

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those with low grade point averages who complete core require-ments show little discernible improvement. The data on the use oftime by secondary students yield a consistently positive, but modest,correlation between achievement and the time students spend onhomework. As a general rule, too, students respond well to teacherswhose demands are greater, although many teachers at the second-ary school level tend to have lower expectations and therefore setsofter standards for certain groups of students, notably racial andethnic minorities.

Despite these inconclusive exceptions, research on the prospectsfor low-achieving students of prospering academically in a reformregime points to frustration and failure manifested in increases inabsenteeism, truancy, school-related behavior problems, and, ulti-mately, the dropout rate. The reform movement's prescriptions for auniform set of core courses typically are at serious odds with well-documented findings that such "unidimensional" instructional struc-tures, when applied to lower-achieving students, lead to a series of"lowers": evaluations by teachers and peers, self-evaluation and,inevitably, performance. Because core courses tap ability along anarrow, academic range, lesser students deprived of a broader varietyof school experiences will be unable to display different kinds oftalents and competencies. This does not elevate their self-confi-dence.

Lengthening the school day and assigning more homework, two ofthe key planks in the platform of excellence, confront marginalstudents with potentially weighty conflicts. How can they reconciletime needed for meeting heavier school commitments with whatthey require for jobs and families? Time for one is time taken from theother, and quality in both is destined to suffer. Add the pressures ofdoing enough creditable work in both domains and trying to carveout an ever-dwindling slice of time for beneficial extra-curricularactivitiesand the result may be a confused and disillusioned youngperson.

The impact on future dropouts of mandating higher academicachievement may be deadly. Already accustomed to failure, manysuch students usually have reacted with apathy, absenteeism, andnegative activities, all of them precursors to dropping out, to stan-dards of school performance they consider unattainable. Recentexperience in subjecting analogous students to minimum competen-cy testing is illustrative. Students at risk, most of them from minorityracial/ethnic backgrounds, ,ail these tests in substantially highernumbers than do whites. Although no systematic evaluative studiesof the direct psychological effects of such failure on lower-abilitystudents are available, a prediction of close correlations with rates ofdropping out doubtless would not be far-fetched.

Schools with large dropout populations unsurprisingly share cer-

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tain characteristics. They are large. They have a high percentage ofminority students from urban settings that feature severe unemploy-ment, crime, poverty, and female-headed households. Adminktra-tion is poor. There is only weak cooperation between teachers andadministrators, and matters of control and discipline occupy a higherpriority than do instructional objectives. Teachers apply sanctionsand rules inconsistently. Conventional social norms receive littleattention.

Of these characteristics, size is one that researchers and practi-tioners assert may affect the others and the larger question of provid-ing better educational services to students of lower ability. In smallerschools, according to most available research, the conditions obtain-ing in the larger ones are nearly reversed. There is more order andstronger satisfaction with school life. Students achieve better. More ofthem participate in extra-curricular activities. Smaller schools aremore manageable. Smaller classes and greater flexibility in schedul-ing are the rule rather than the exception. Low student-adult ratiosprevail, and they are beneficial to everyone.

Closely linked to size as a modifiable characteristic of the schoolare the structure and content of the curriculum. Evaluations of drop-out and delinquency programs attest to the usefulness of learningapproaches tailored, to the extent possible, to individual aptitudesand interests. Self-designed and self-paced curricula integrating vo-cational and academic subjects with work experience show promisebecause they enable the disaffected student to perceive the relevanceof schooling to the workplace.

The climate of the school can be manipulated to deflect students atrisk into more productive learning habits and values. Clear rules andconsistent enforcement help to create a productive environment,while a system of sensible and equitable academic rewards, neces-sarily different from those that have alienated these students in thepast, can help to motivate them. Less easily attainable but an impor-tant contextual force is the development of an atmosphere in whichstudents, teachers, and administrators come to value rather thandeprecate achievement and intellectualism.

Strategies and Examples

Changing various organizational, instructional, and attitudinalqualities of schools thus can help to deter students from leaving early.But such revisions normally carry the process of deflection or re-orientation only part of the way. Research on reducing dropout ratesdemonstrates that policy-makers must be prepared to consider alter-native arrangements that depart radically from traditional forms. Thehigh school diploma may confer only a limited advantage in life andthe job marketindeed, leaving school before graduation actually

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reduces delinquent behaviorbut the personal and societal benefitsmay be significant. If graduating means gaining knowledge andacquiring self-worth, rather than merely building an adequate atten-dance record for 12 years, then programs to keep youth in school areworth the cost and effort.

A review of 17 dropout prevention programs indicates severalcommon characteristics. They use a variety of integrated strategiesrather than a single approach. They transfer potential dropouts fromtheir regular schools to different kinds of environments. Most aresmall, with administrators concentrating resources narrowly onsmall populations. Programs that recorded some success offered adifferent experience in learning from that which students had beenreceiving. In some instances, they combined potential dropouts withthose who had actually left school. Sharing a strong vocationalemphasis, these progra ins imparted practical, often job-related, skillsin school and encouraged students to apply academic learning toreal life situations. As part of the vocational emphasis, they stressedlearning outside of the classroom, often in connection with paidemployment. Confirming research findings, these alternative pro-grams were small, had low student-t.lacher ratios, and highlightedindividualized instruction. They also included strong counselingcomponents.

A prototypical example of an alternative educational program thatcombined most of these features was Project PATHE, which operatedin seven secondary schools in Charleston, South Carolina, between1980 and 1983. Designed to permit a comparison of the relativeefficacy of organizational change and individual treatment, ProjectPATHE attempted to create a system for shared decision-makingamong community agencies, students, teachers, administrators, andparents in managing the schools while carrying out an intensiveprogram of academic and counseling services for students at risk.Contrary to widespread perceptions about such enterprises, the com-ponent of governance worked, but the direct service phase had onlyuneven successmarginally effective for younger students (who didreceive stronger services) and ineffective for older, high school ageparticipants. There is other evidence, however, that the individual-ized service approach has potential at th ,. secondary school level.

The West German educational system treats the matter of dropoutprevention by appearing to avoid it altogether. Through an early andrelatively simple process of differentiation, which continues through-out every West German child's education, eaildren are labeled andticketed as early as the fifth grade and no later than the seventh, foreither the fast academic track, which leads the most talented quarterto college and a professional career, or technical secondary school,where another quarter prepare through grade 10 for commercial andtechnical occupations. Most of the remaining half who are judged

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unqualified for more demanding secondary school finish formalschooling with grade 9. There is little mobility, except downward,within this tracking system, although second chances for late devel-opers are technically possible, and flexible variations are creeping in.

Although its principal assumptions conflict with the democraticvalues of the United States, where second, third, and fourth chancesare available, the West German experience may provide some usefulelements of a model for future programs here. Schooling does notstop at 15 or 16, it is actually compulsory through age 18. An array offull-time vocational schooling and, most notably, a dual system ofpart-time vocational schooling combined with apprenticeship fill thetwo-year gap. Half of the 16-18 year-okls in West Germany partici-pate in this process, which offers preparation in 450 fields leading toover 20,000 specialized occupations. Employers, educational au-thorities, and unions cooperate in planning the apprenticeship. Bythe age of 18, young Germans thus are ready for certification asskilled workers with no loss in requisite academic subjects. They gainexperience in the workplace and receive such benefits as stipendsduring the apprenticeship, union wage scales on employment, andpaid vacations. More than half of the successful apprentices get jobswith the firms that trained them and, although the employmentpicture in West Germany is less promising than it was a decade ago,the rest have fr w difficulties finding something in their specialties. Atthe age of 20 at the latest (following a 15-month period of military oralternative service all males undertake between apprenticeship andcareer entry), young Germans usually know exactly v here they aregoing in life. There are few dropouts from a system that offers tangiblerewards of this order.

From an American standpoint, these arrangements are riddledwith major flaws. Above all others, they reinforce economic andsocial gaps by intentional segregation and all but permanent track-ing. Despite the class-related separation of more and less academ-ically able youth, however, West Germany's largely successful post-World War n educational history gives researchers cause for reflec-tion about once-unthinkable possibilities. If our weakest studentscan be taught to pass minimum competency tests and more demand-ing courses, how can these measures possibly improve the educationof the strongest?B,It if they fail, can we tolerate an increased dropoutrate that may affect different classes and races unequally? Put indifferent terms, such issues force American educational policy-makers to confront the rationalization of inequalities, in whateverguise they appear, in a democratic society. Perhaps they tolerate themalready. In the rather different area of teaching advanced reasoning inthe schools (see "Higher Order Skills in the Three R's," below), forexample, educators appear ready to concede that the distinctionbetween good and poor students will widen but that those of lower

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ability will still learn more and learn it better. To add to an unclearpicture, some research indicates that the costs of instructional group-ing to the lowest students' achievements and feelings about them-selves are not justified by the uncertain benefits of the practice.

The issue of grouping or tracking, which is as thorny and politicallyloaded as any that educational researchers face, is at the ideologicalheart of any program designed to lower the dropout rate. Invidiousthough it appears, differential treatment of potential dropouts isjustified if it mews these criteria: (1) The basis for differentiation mustbe accurate a, ,ppropriate; (2) the strength of the differentiationmust be no greater than required for effectiveness; (3) parents andstudents must understand the process of differentiation; and (4) theprobable consequences of assignment to the lowest group must befavorable and acceptable to those students and their parents.

At the center of post-secondary education in West Germany isvocational education, an honorable path which holds the prospect ofearly employment, further training, and a solid career for studentswho lack a strong academic bent. In the United States, vocationaleducation is both a relatively painless route to a high school diplomaand a time-killer that functions with fair success as a huge dropoutprevention program. Data showing that more future dropouts areenrolled in general education curricula may help spur improved andbetter focused vocational education programs. Effective efforts tolower the rate of dropouts also demonstrate the usefulness of "experi-ential" out-of-school learning programs, which do no harm to andmay promote the acquisition of academic skills.

Egalitarianism, Schooling, and Testing

The state of present knowledge on bringing educational reformabout suggests uncertainty over how to raise standards for uniformlyrather than selectively good effect. There is no philosophical consen-sus on how to avoid creating an ever-widening chasm betweeneducational haves and have-nots. Contrary to conventional wisdomthat narrowing social and educational gaps is a permanent nationalobligation, there i: well-documented cause for apprehension overthe possibility that the drive for educational excellence will recreatethe separations that characterized American education a generationago.

One overall effect of a reform movement that places a premium onsuch criteria as minimal competency tests for graduation, reducedelectives, and increased academic requirements may be a strikingexpansion of the power of schools to make sorting judgments aboutstudents. Applying these and similar criteria, according to someresearch, can lead to more hierarchical and bureaucratic structuresfrom state agencies to local schools and vice versa. Tightly controlled

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systems will make more explicit judgments about all students, but theleast likely beneficiaries will be the economically poorer students, ofwhom significant percentages will be Black and Hispanic.

The quest for excellence comes at a time when schools have beendemanding less of all students. Whatever the causesthe need formore pliant future workers, the egalitarianism of the social legislationof the 1960's, pressures to develop well-rounded citizens rather thanacademically trained drones, or othersthere is evidence that thereduction of requirements has affected the majority of students, notjust future dropouts. Most students are only marginally involved inacademic l:.arning. They spend few hours in school relative to timespent working and/or socializing, and they tend to avoid difficultclasswork. But committed as they are to being popular, egalitarian,and universal, the schools would be judged harshly if they labeled allstudents as potential early school-leavers. Any hint of such large-scale failure by their children could create major problems of cred-ibility and governance in the nation's 15,500 school districts.

The dimensions and character of th potential payoff for prospec-tive dropouts from an across-the-board heightening of standardsremain unclear and a subject meriting close investigation. Whathappens to those who stick it out? How do dropouts compare to highschool graduates who receive no further education? Are there anygreater rewards than for exiting early and into remunerative jobs? Theforms that curricular or other changes take will require carefulevaluation and monitoring, neither of which is yet firmly imbeddedin the various prescriptions for gaining excellence. To gain closerinsight into what happens to students as schools improve, administra-tors should consider assessing through a "full enrollment model,"that is, by including scores for students who have already droppedout. The latter could be estimated from earlier test scores and back-ground characteristics. The likely outcome of such a model would bethe reduction of aggregate scores which, however, would becomemore u.sponsive to concerns of both excellence and quality. It wouldthen be possible to assess the !rue effects of reform on students at risk.

Higher-Order Skills in the Three R's

Few of the disparities that exist between research and practice ineducation are as pronounced as the gap that all but isolates produc-tive research on higher-order thinking skills from the daily realities ofthe American classroom. At a time when knowledge is expandingwith breathtaking speed while acquiring once-unimaginable com-plexity, policies and actions calculated to improve the learning andteaching of advanced thought processes remain near the bottom of

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the in-boxes of most of education's decision-makers. Moreover, withlimited exceptions (Good lad, Boyer, and ECS-Cary), the principalreform reports of 1982-84 fail to highlight this looming issue. Yet themanner in which it develops may ultimately determine howoreven whethertoday's students are to function effectively in theirfuture jobs and social roles.

Since the mid-1950's, the field of cognitive sciencea still-evolv-ing interdisciplinary blend of human information processing, lin-guistics, and "artificial intelligence" (the study of computers de-signed to exhibit human-like intelligence)has permitted scholars toexplore the higher-order skills :nvolved in reading, writing and arith-metic in addition to the more mechanical procedures that werealready familiar. Research in reading is no longer limited to analyzingperception and oral reading; it now extends to the thought processesof understanding. Similarly, scholarship in writing has moved de-cisively beyond inquiry into grammar and handwriting into morecontemporary questions concerning the composition of thoughts.Research workers examining the teaching and learning of mathemat-ics and the sciences have made important strides in their examinationof the framing and solving of problems that lie beyond the technicalmathematical calculations their predecessors had long observed andanalyzed.

Central and common to research in higher-order thinking skills inall three fields is broad acceptance of profound change in traditionalviews of people as learners. Until only 30 or so years ago, the sum ofa person's competence was held to consist of action plus behavior.But now, surely more than ever in our history, information andthought processes may guide and dominate learning and action. Likeit or not, people must now construct their own knowledge. It is timelyand appropriate to ask whether organized education can yet providethe direct instruction that will enable people to do precicely that.Providentially, current research in all three realmsreading, writing,and mathematics/scienceis producing useful answers.

Reading and Thinking

In reading, students are learning that decoding print, i.e., translat-ing w:itten words into speech, is only an early phase of a largeractivity that is both interactive and constructive. Although much ofwhat is taught as reading in the later primary grades may actually becritical thinking and studying, most school systems still value remem-bered facts and fallacies acquired through outdated and outmodedinstructional methods. Instead of finding ways to integrate or com-bine content with the thinking processes required to gain genuinemastery, most current practice treats the two as distinct and indepen-

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dent entities. One scholar's observation of reading and instructionperiods in a sample of classrooms revealed that the teaching ofcomprehension had accounted for exactly 28 out of 4,469 minutes.Analysts of commercial reading instruction materials round thatteachers' guides and student materials concentrated on the develop-ment of phonics and word recognition to the nearly total exclusion ofhigher order skills in understanding meaning. It is unsurprising thattest scores in comprehension have declined alarmingly while profi-ciency in lower-level or mechanical skills have improved or re-mained stable.

Given the reluctance of most schoolsand the opposition of someparentsto infuse higher-range skills of comprehension into readinginstruction, it is understandable that most students, particularly thosefrom families that do not foster intellectual development, rarelypossess such abilities by the time they enter high school. Researchpoints emphatically to a need for revised reading curricula andinstruction that will encourage learners to acquire these abilities.Like thos- that are appropriate for writing and mathematics/science,successful techniques for nurturing the development of advancedcomprehension in reading fall within the broad scope of problem-solving. Skilled problem-solvers plan their approach to the problemat hand. They monitor their learning as they read. They apply strat-egies to foster learning. They evaluate what they absorb. Whenappropriate, they correct and revise their approach.

For reading, as for the other basic skills, there is no apparent needto devise courses or curricular materials in reasoning or comprehen-sion as such. In "regular" elementary-level reading classes (there islittle formal reading instruction after the sixth or seventh grade inmost systems), young readers can learn to reorganize poorly writtentexts, infer the meaning of difficult vocabulary from text, and spon-taneously bring to bear whatever background knowledge they pos-sess to help them to perform these tasks independently. According toconsiderable literature as well as intensive applied research, how-ever, there are right and wrong ways to achieve these admirablegoals. The wrong way is to separate higher order-oriented instructionfrom the actual context of the reading class by offering separate, finitedosages of school system-dictated, teacher-led work in the compos-ite skills. Although brief success occasione'ly results, there is littleproof that students continue to use their newly, perhaps temporarily,obtained skills in other settings. Teachers have long claimed thatstudents are reluctant to transfer their knowledge.

The introduction of advanced techniques and strategies, as stu-dents need them to understand texts, offers far more positive pros-pects for their attainment of helpful abilities to reason. Long-lastingand significant improvements have occurred in situations wherestudents exercise a high degree of personal responsibility for devel-

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aping these qualities, To make this happen. the tea her must bedispnsed to establish a supportive AmisAntr in whit h supervisionwarksally gives way ki %Koine t control and, in me. to assumption bystudents of all, or nearly all, rroinsibility for learning.

This (kws ma happen **err ight It talk for a It* id design andarrful strut luring. In one esample, t alled "ret iprt K teat hing," a

WM her and group ol students alternate in t ondut t mg a dialogue on a+pm ifk %MOM of test The adult teat her assigns a segment of thepassajor to be mad and either indit ak% that it is his or her turn to bethe tem her or assigns a student to teat h it. After all have read thesewnent silently the tem het Nuclei (Ir adult) for that unit summd .rites the t ontent, asks A question that a teacher or test might reason.ably ask, discusses and clarifies any tlifficulties, and finally makes aprediction about future content. All of these activities are embeckledin as natural a dialogue as possible, with the IPACher and the studentsgivine feedback to each other.

Certain underlying principles guide this piocess of "reciprocalkiath * The teacher must first demonstrate the desired activities in. omptelwnskmn, which should occur only in settings that are familiaras learning environmenh to the students. It is vital that studentsbecome sensitive to the nerd for these cognitive strategies of learningand that comments by teachers be consonant with actual levels ofstudent competence. Fundamental, too, to -reciprocal leaching" isthe oserridms assumption that students will assume full responsibil-ity once they have taken charge of their own learning. As the proce-dure unfolds, they perform ai an increasingly mature level. Some-times, their progress is fast, sometimes slow, but irrespective of therale, the leacher offers an opportunity for students to respond. bit bybit, al a slightly more challenging level. As they master one level, theteat her'X demands expand and students gradually accept for them-selves what had been the adult role, fully and independently. In anideal scenario the teacher fades into the background and becomes asympathetic coach to students who are now qualified and enfran-chised to take charge of their own learning from texts.

Neither "reciprocal teaching" nor variations of it can registerovernight miracles. Yet recent applications of this method of transfer-ring and obtaining superior reasoning skills in reading have led tomajor improvement in the comprehension scores of previously im-mature readers at the junior high school level after only three to sixweeks. Moreover, teachers wereeffective, enthusiastic, and disposedso apply the method to other disciplines. Substantial evidence indi-cates that the techniques of "reciprocal teaching" have succeededacross a broad range of ages and educational levels, including,among others, learning disabled college students, gifted third grad-ers, normal hieb schoolers, students of physics, and pupils in earlymathematics.

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The potential effects of this research and testing may thus extendbeyond higher order thinking skills in reading and into curriculumreform writ largeto changes in teaching practices, textbooks andother instructional materials, the assessment of students, school orga-nization and social climate and, not least, public perception.

Critical Thinking in Written Communication

Writing has received less attention than reading or mathematicsand science as a subject for research. Until the past decade, the mainefforts in the field centered on indicators of good writing and thedevelopmental trends that were influencing it. Only recently has asubstantial and credible body of data appeared on how the process ofwriting materializes. From this research it is evident that writing is theresult of an intricate set of cognitive and linguistic skills that allow theformulation, drafting, and revising of a piece of coherent text. Withthe growth of knowledge of how writers compose, revise, and editthat work, it has become feasible and appropriate to analyze theteaching of these procedures.

As in reading, the main focus of contemporary research in writingis on developing and anticipating ideas and on the processes ofplanning and revision that make this possible. National assessmentsand academic research confirm that these higher-order matters(rather than shortcomings in grammar, spelling, and sentence struc-ture) are the most prevalent and worrisome issues in writing. Howchildren become proficient writers tells much about their capacity toabsorb and employ critical thinking skills. Intimately tied to theiracquisition of higher-order thought processes are the performanceand sensitivity of their teachers. They must define and communicatemethods for students to move beyond mechanically correct butessentially lower-order writing to a level of written communicationthat embraces analyticai methodology.

In both structure and process, newer methods for orienting stu-dents to advanced reasoning in writing follow patterns, such as thoseof "reciprocal teaching," that work in reading as well. The centralobjective is to gain higher-order competence along a spectrum rang-ing from conversation to "knowledge telling" to "knowledge trans-forming." In order to become a capable or expert writer, the childwho comes to school proficient in oral language must adjust to thedifficult chores of learning how to sustain discourse without thenumerous varieties of support a conversational partner provides. Yetchildren possess natural endowments, and the ability of an effectiveinstructional system to aid them to capitalize on their gifts can helpcreate a proficient writer.

The continuum from "knowledge telling" to "knowledge trans-forming" is the main phase in reaching for expertness. Although

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often difficult, "knowledge telling" customarily is a rather uncompli-cated "think-say" exercise that can be rapid and become nearlyautomatic. Making maximum use of cues generated externally andfrom the production of language itself, it requires little more plan-ning, revision, or goal-setting than does ordinary conversation. Ser-viceable though it may be, however, "knowledge telling" does notusually respond to our culture's highest needs. Nevertheless, it con-tinues to be a basic means of written expression through a person'spost-secondary education and usually into a subsequent career.

The reworking and transforming of knowledge into expert writingdemands a distinctly more complicated approach. Current researchidentifies several mental activities that mature writers perform. Theyemploy such self-regulatory tactics as generating content while si-multaneously detecting problems ("alternating"), checking the ade-quacy of courses of action, and merging the results of these efforts. Atthe same time, their search for rdevant knowledge demands that they"elaborate constraints," that is, that they undertake a sophisticatedprocess of gaining access to difficult material that helps them toproduce a holistic analysis of a problem. Mature writers constructmental designs of text that combine near photographic, verbatim,and paraphrased representations with those of main point and pur-pose. They produce "integrated networks" which generate goals andcoordinate representations at all levels of sophistication.

Writing that embraces higher-level skills, or combines them withthose of less mature writing, can be a difficult, many-sided endeavor.Experts automatically check their work against their goals and viewdeficiencies as problems requiring solutions, often as major substan-tive revisions of text. They set goals, plan, and consider heavy-dutyproblem-solving to be a routine part of their work. They constructand elaborate intricate plots. Those who produce thoughtful andanalytical prose worry about readability. No more than scatteredindications of these concerns are visible in immature or lower-orderwriting.

Instruction in writing has begun to help children to do for them-selves what the highly supportive school writing environment hastraditionally done for them. Among the fruits of recent educationalresearch are methods to assist students to learn, adopt, and gainpersonal control over the ways of experts. In one such process, called"procedural facilitation," students undertake a simple three-stepsequence in which they first identify one self-regulatory function,such as planning or revision, that characterizes mature performance.Next, they describe it as explicitly as possible in terms of mentaloperations or functions. Finally, the teacher designs routines or sup-porting devices for simplifying this function. A tactic for revision, forexample, could be reduced to a finite chuice, e.g., "I'm getting awayfrom the main point" or "people will not understand what I mean

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here." The purpose of simplifying in this fashion is to allow childrento start performing the self-regulatory function with as little addition-al burden as possible on their capacities for mental processing.

The results of such methods as "procedural facilitation" have beengratifying. Sixth-grade students showed admirable progress in gain-ing higher-level competency after only 12 to 30 classroom sessionsof 45 minutes each in changing texts, planning for longer periods,making revisions of a higher order, internalizing and transferring newprocedures, developing independent (rather than teacher-depen-dent) abilities, and changing strategies.

Reasoning in a Technological World

In mathematics and science, even more perhaps than in otherdomains, the veritable "knowledge explosion" of the past generationis creating and transporting with it material that is increasinglycomplex, abstract, and symbolic. Moreover, this knowledge is ex-panding so rapidly that many persons risk professional obsolescenceunless they keep learning and updating themselves. Even the mosttalented learner can neither acquire nor store the sheer amount ofmathematical and scientific knowledge that threatens to engulf soci-ety. More than ever, higher-order reasoning skills are an imperativefor all who traffic in complex information and concepts in thesefields. In some specialized areas such as electrical engineering, thetraditional teaching of predominantly factual information is givingway to providing general principles and methods. But throughout theeducational system many teachers and most students have primitiveconceptions about how people apply their mental facilities, especial-ly in these fields. Regrettably, too many retain too little of the knowl-edge they have supposedly learned and which they must possess toascend to higher levels of performance.

According to recent cognitive science studies, much underlyingknowledge that accounts for good performance is often "tacit" oroutside the range of an individual's conscious awareness. Nativespeakers of a language, for example, are usually unable to spell outrules of correct grammar and formation of sentences. The rules aresimply tacitimplicitly understood to the speaker but largely im-mune to explanation or quantification by those who, usually uncon-sciously, observe them most religiously.

In contrast to these findings about knowledge are numerous recentstudies demonstrating that students often exhibit gross misconcep-tions about basic scientific concepts and principles that should longsince have become reliable tools of their intellectual repertoire.Moreover, preexisting conceptions and faulty information may im-pede their acquisition of higher-order thought processes. Adding tothe difficulty of conveying instruction in sophisticated thinking pro-

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cesses is the quality of implicitness of today's mainstream teaching,which mostly relies on presenting information, furnishing examples,and creating opportunities for practice. Such instruction customarilydoes not develop underlying thinking skills, which have many sidesand dimensions, and depend on subtle interactions among manyessential components.

The key proficiencies in thinking and reasoning that science andmathematics demand fall into four main categories: solving prob-lems, organizing knowledge, interpreting concepts, and improvingconceptions about thinking and learning. All four apply as well toreading and writing. Of the four, problem-solving occupies a centralplace as the indispensable skill for those engaged in or applying thebenefits and lessons of technology to the needs of the modern world.

The fundamental difficulty any complex problem poses is the needto make decisions judiciously. Inexperienced students tend to makehaphazard, intuitive, or speculative judgments when selecting possi-ble paths toward a solution. Research provides several ways to en-hance the student's chances of finding logical solutions. It is useful,for openers, to decompose a potential solution into successive stepsof manageable size. Most solutions consist of detailed sequentialsteps of an argument that lead from known information to a desiredgoal, and immature students often bog down in the details of thesesteps. A much more efficient technique is to outline a solution, fill indetails, and continue by successive approximations until all stageshave received detailed specification.

This method of "progressive refinement" has manifold applica-tions. In computer science, for example, the student may write aprogram by first making a rough flow chart and then graduallyelaborating it into progressively more detailed instructions. A prob-lem in mathematics or physics lends itself most readily to a clearsolution when the student sketches the outcome in qualitative orpictorial language, gradually refines it, and ultimately generates aprecise solution. Valuable hints to prevent students from gettingirremediably stuck may also come from heuristics, which are explicitgeneral rules providing advice about how to find a solution. Easilytaught and applied, a venture into heuristics can take the form of asimplified version of a problem which may trigger useful discern-ments about how to tackle a larger real problem.-learning how to search for solutions is only part of a student's

initiation into solving problems in mathematics and the sciences. Thestudent who cannot systematically characterize and describe a prob-lem, if necessary through symbols and pictorial representations, risksacquiring a serious miscomprehension of it and of making poten-tially costly errors in reaching a correct solution. At the other end ofthe process, the untrained problem-solver often fails to apply such

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obvious checking criteria as completeness, clarity, consistency, andsimplicity to a supposedly achieved solution. Lamentably, currentteaching practices perpetuate older value systems by centering onthe product rather than the process. An emphasis on formalism andprecision still pervades, to the detriment of broader, even inten-tionally vaguer and more conceptual approaches.

Paralleling and crucial to problem-solving in mathematics andscience, as in all academic fields, is the ability to organize knowl-edge, a matter that teachers too frequently slight in their preoccupa-tion with sating students with content that may become archaicbefore graduation. Countless students are also conspicuously defi-cient in interpreting concepts. In scientific and mathematical sub-jects, in particular, successful learners require clear, unambiguousdefinitions of larger ideas, but they must understand that such con-cepts also embrace ancillary knowlegeprocedures for interpreta-tion, close familiarity with standard properties, knowledge of impor-tant special cases, and sharp sensitivity to the conditions in which toapply the conceptsin order to make them flexibly usable.

Too often, the failure or reluctance of students to consider thoughtprocesses for using and extending their knowledge inhibits theirperformance. Clinging to long-held but usually mistaken notionsabout human thinking and learning, their criteria for "understand-ing" may be narrow, even inflexible. For example, students oftenregard mistakes as sources of embarrassment or as accidental hap-penings requiring rapid rectification and dismissal. Yet such mistakesmerit study in their own right and may turn into valuable sources ofenlightenment. Cognitive science reinforces this once-unthinkabletheory by demonstrating that mistakes are not freak occurrences.They happen almost predictably whenever humans carry out diffi-cult tasks, and it is helpful to devise methods for preventing, detect-ing, diagnosing, and correcting them. Just as diseases provide valu-able data and insights about normal physiological functioning,mistakes offer solid information about how the mind works.

Choices for the Schools

Equipping students with the skills and methods required for high-er-order reasoning in today's schools, even in many universities,confronts legislatures, school boards, teachers' organizations, parentgroups, administrators, and teachers with a constellation of new,largely unanticipated choices. Should these skills be taught sepa-rately, as is happening in some school systems, in classes or coursesdevoted solely to learning about "thinking?" Or are they better left inthe regular, if conservative, flow of instruction in subject matterclasses? How, or should, textbooks be changed to reflect the en-hanced need for transmitting critical skills? What are the implications

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for assessing the performance and possible adult futures of today'spupils? Are teacher training institutions prepared to make the bur-densome adjustments that may be required to install training forteaching higher order methods in their programs? Will a strongerfocus on bringing these skills into the classroom harm or ultimatelybenefit less accomplished learners?

Recent on-site experience prompted hy the findings of educationalresearch yields impressive data on one controlling aspect of higherorder reasoningteaching it in the classrooms. Such methods as"reciprocal teaching" (reading), "procedural facilitation" (writing),and "progressive refinement" (mathematics-science), among others,spotlight areas of potential success to exploit as well as pitfalls toshun. When merged with the perceptions gained from analogouswork in mathematics and science, a consistent pattern of desirablecriteria emerges. These include: (1) a careful and consistent educa-tional design that prizes well-planned and well-informed instruc-tion; (2) emphasis on inculcating higher-order skills in substantivecourses and not in settings devoted solely to technique; (3) drasticallyrevising testing methods geared to evaluating intellectual skills (espe-cially in mathematics, where computational achievements are val-ued more highly, by far, than the skills of analysis and comprehen-sion); (4) greater curricular selectivity so that students may give moretime to developing critical reasoning capabilities; (5) a reorientationin the preparation of teachers and in their perceptions once in theclassroom; (6) changes in the purpose and content of textbooks and.greater flexibility in selecting and purchasing them; and (7) ex-panded, more intelligent exploitation of the new information tech-nologies now available, provided that there is an improvement in thequality of software.

Educational research may eventually offer authoritative answers toother policy-level questions regarding higher-order reasoning skills.The material now available permits some tentative judgments, eventhough higher-order reasoning remains terra incognita in much ofAmerican education, and decision-makers appear reluctant to altertheir maps in this vital area. Teaching and learning thinking tech-niques may call for sea changes in how teachers allocateor arepermitted to allocatetime, traditionally a passion-arousing issue.Yet teaching higher-order thinking skills cannot become a fad thatcould backfire or an onerous "add-on" destined to bedevil teachersand students alike. It is becoming a high-priority imperative through-out education, and historic administrative rigidities should not inhibitits development. If higher-order reasoning skills are to enter thecurriculum, strongly held opinions on the use of time must shiftdramatically. Equally important would be an attitudinal changethroughout school systems on the need for greater explicitness andimagination in instruction, and, perhaps less readily acceptable, a

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broad willingness to take sensible chances, even a readiness to turnmistakes to the learner's advantage. Acquiring advanced thinkingskills seems to call for students to work more frequently and closelyin small groups, in which less-prepared or less capable students mayreceive credit for work they may not have done. In today's schooli,this intimacy could be deemed to foster activities by students that, bypresent ethical standards, schools have usually judged to be cheat-ing. Is it cheating when everyone learns more and learns it better?

The matter of testing, with its accompanying concern over issues ofequity, is still a no man's land in the world of higher-level reasoning asit is in teaching. Almost by traditional definition, tests of knowledge,aptitude, and competency highlight factual information. They havetwo principal functions: to provide accountability of and for allparticipants in the educational process, and to motivate students tostudy. Adaptation to an educational order in which thinking criticallyis valued as highly as mastery of factual material would be difficult. Itwould probably be unwise to test the level of a student's command ofan explicit process and inadvisable to abandon the generally healthyknowledge-centered assessments that are finally in place in the largemajority of states. There are no ready answers to the questions of howor whether to evaluate thinking skills. Nor can research yet providereliable data on their effects on poor students. Fragmentary evidencehints that good-poor chasms would widen but that the work of thosenearer the bottom would show improvement.

These issues will inevitably provoke controversy as schools andstates begin treating the "basics" as something less than ends untothemselves. As they turn, whether incrementally or in one greatsurge, to viewing higher-order skills as the "basics" of the real world,they may encounter challenges unlike any they have known. Withtime and thoughtful spadework, most are comfortably surmountable.

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