The Problem:
In the current K-12 setting in U.S. schools, teachers often find themselves spread thin. Planning lessons and assessments, grading, maintaining communication with parents and colleagues, documenting behavioral and academic experiences with students, attending meetings, filling in grade books are all activities that compete for the teacher’s time. Further these activities are often driven by forces outside of the teacher’s control such as building, district and state initiatives. This creates a challenging and stressful work environment . Often the central purpose of a teacher’s career, to help students learn and grow as individuals who will contribute to society while living fulfilling lives, seems to get lost in daily procedures. What if there was another more intentional approach to meeting the central purpose of education?
Science as a Model:
Education need only look at science as a model for an intentional approach. In scientific research, scientists begin with a problem and translate that problem into a question they would like to find the answer to. Based on their knowledge in their field, and their review of previous research in the field they develop a hypothesis as a predicted answer to their question. They then design and conduct an experiment to answer this question in which they isolate all variables except for the independent variable they are manipulating, and the dependent variable they are measuring the impact on. They conduct statistical tests to determine the validity of their findings and publish their work for peer review. This review may result in insights into changes required in the initial experiment to improve validity, or it may be accepted as valid and spur other researchers on to continue work in the field.
This process of science has two critical features that have given it the power to completely transform our world. One is that it strives to objectively seek the truth. This objectivity means researchers strive to design pure tests that only measure the variables in question so their conclusions will not be muddied by external factors that would threaten validity,. This permits objective conclusions concerning whether or not their original hypothesis was supported. The second is that by publishing their work and findings they allow their knowledge to be acquired and expanded upon by others. These two factors combined have resulted in exponential growth of human knowledge and capabilities based on our factual understanding of the universe and the actions we take in that universe. Imagine if a similar process was applied to education… an educational science.
Practical Educational Science:
The idea of applying science to the k-12 environment has been broached before with the concept of action research. While valuable, action research is typically limited in scope to answering one question that a teacher, building or district may have. What is needed in education is more of a systemic change in how teachers work by applying a conscious scientific approach to the entire educational process.
The reality is that teachers are engaging in quasi scientific inquiries all the time in their classrooms. They begin with the question: How can I teach this content? In planning instruction, they are formulating a hypothesis that teaching content in a particular way will result in students learning the content. Next they implement a plan or measuring the effectiveness of their instruction by developing, administering and scoring an assessment on that unit of content. Finally, they report their findings by entering assessment scores in their grade book before moving on to the next unit. In this way teachers are following, in their educational activities, a procedure similar to that carried out by scientists in their research. What is needed in addition is for teachers to approach those activities with scientific rigor and intentionality.
To begin this intentionality teachers, like scientists, must first focus on the specific variables for which they want to measure outcomes. In education these variables are the learning goals. Learning goals are fundamental units of thinking and action in education. To be scientific we must be able to measure how well they are being attained. In order to be measurable, learning goals will need to be discrete so outcomes will not be conflated and consequently misinterpreted.
Often teachers score assignments, and assessments with an overall grade or score for that piece of student work. However, the teacher scored individual questions to generate that score. When the teacher scored those individual questions he was looking at information that may have been at the level of the learning goal and could have recorded that data to then be useful for the teacher and student to determine the next step in instruction. When the teacher instead combines the results of those individual questions into one score this is a mis-aggregation; information that was useful when discrete has lost its educational usefulness. The teacher and student get an overall score for an assignment or assessment, but have lost the ability to identify which specific learning goals have or have not been attained.
Recording student attainment of specific learning goals will be a major shift for teachers used to working in traditional grading models. Even in standards based grading models teachers teach to and assess standards or groups of standards. Standards are learning goals but they are usually too broad to measure attainment accurately. Instead, to be scientific, teachers must take a close look at standards, dissecting them into discrete learning goals that they can teach and assess. In their student management system or grade book, assignments and assessments are replaced with learning goals as the categories for which students receive scores.
Once learning goals have been established, the next step is to determine how to measure those learning goals. The goal of the assessment development process is to design a scientific measurement tool to test the effectiveness of instruction and it involves two parts. The first is to develop the measurement scale. This process involves developing rubrics with clear measurements of attainment laid out for each learning goal. Just like marks on a ruler, levels must be clearly defined and discernable from one another. The second is to develop or adapt an assessment activity that will elicit student responses, work, or performance sufficient to measure their attainment of the learning goal with the rubric.
Once the assessment has been administered, the scientific experiment has been carried out and it is time to analyse and record the results. The educator rates the student work using their created rubric, and records the data on student attainment of individual learning goals In a systematic way on a student management system or gradebook. There is a wide spectrum of stakeholder for such information including the student and teacher and all those who care or have the ability to affect the attainment of the learning goal. The findings can then be used to evaluate the educational program resulting in changes in curriculum, instruction, or assessment.
Summary:
Consider the critical difference between traditional grading practices and educational science. When an assessment task is administered and scored traditionally a student is given a grade that is not tied to a specific learning goal. Standards based grading takes it one step further by giving a grade based on a standard. However standards are still complicated, multifaceted structures making it difficult to pinpoint what a student has or has not learned. Taking a scientific approach to assessment by identifying discrete learning goals and measuring student attainment of those goals, we can pinpoint specific learning deficiencies therefore modify the educational process to improve student achievement.
Practical Educational science faces one significant challenge compared to true scientific research. Unlike true scientific research where experiments can be controlled, it is difficult to eliminate all factors affecting learning for an individual student. In this way educational science strikes a compromise. The dependent variable, the degree of student attainment of a learning goal, can be isolated through assessment design; however the independent variables cannot be isolated. Outcomes of assessments may be affected by instruction, intrinsic aspects of the learner, student attitudes towards instruction or the subject matter, aspects of the school, or home or even health could affect the outcomes of an assessment. Through analysis the educator will need to infer the most likely factors and address the ones they are capable of addressing. The fundamental difference between educational science and current aggregated practices in educational assessment is using the scientific approach the educator knows exactly what the student’s capabilities are and can respond in a more targeted manner.