During the 2012-2013 school year, I was fortunate to be one of 12 mathematics teachers around the country to participate in Global Skills for College Completion (GSCC) grant program funded through the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. It was an exciting opportunity to spend an entire year thinking about my teaching in a way I haven’t done since probably education school in my undergraduate studies. GSCC is a program that allows collegial sharing and observation without the threat/fears/stigma associated with professional evaluation.
What is GSCC?
Below is a snippet from the GSCC website (http://www.globalskillscc.org/about/) explaining the mission of the project:
“The goal of GSCC is to improve the historically low pass rates of developmental students, which is a serious impediment to increasing college completion rates. The GSCC process is deeply rooted in adult learning theory, which has been adapted to an online environment. The community of faculty, working independently and then in collaboration with others in their discipline, reflect on their classroom experience over the course of two semesters. Faculty use tags to describe and comment on practice. The tags create a unique set of pedagogical patterns that enable faculty to describe, visualize and explore adapting their pedagogy.
GSCC links pedagogical patterns and practices to formative student assessments thereby seeking to build a clear link between teaching and learning.”
Most educational reform projects and grant programs focus on one of two things: 1) Improving and/or leveling students or 2) Experimenting with new curriculum. Rarely, do we make the time to focus on the third leg of teaching – US and on our impact with our students. GSCC was extra attractive to me because it focused entirely on teaching and the impact it has on student achievement. The novel piece to the project was that impact was based on our own reflection and the input from our peers from around the country who were in the project.
How did GSCC work?
We were placed into coaching circles of 6 mathematics faculty. Our coach was another math faculty who had participated in the grant in the first year. Each week, we were required to log classroom activity from the developmental math course we were focusing on. This translated into writing a script of an entire class period – including the learning activities we used along with the assessment we used to gauge the learning in the lesson with actual student artifacts to support any claims. Each lesson had to be tagged (see below to understand what that involved). We then had to comment on 2 other faculty member’s log.
Along with weekly lesson posting and reviewing, we were required to post a video of classroom activity monthly and comment on our peer’s video posts. Finally, we participated in several discussion board threads throughout each semester regarding the program and what we were finding.
Tagging:
The novel part of this project was the tagging system that was developed through the first cohort of participants (we were the second cohort). Ten themes were identified comprised of 31 total tags of approaches prevalent in developmental classrooms. Tagging (identifying categories of practice using a common set of tags) deepened our ability to be mindful about our practice and it also gave us a common language for talking about what we and our peers were doing in our classrooms. As tags accumulated and pedagogical patterns came into focus, we were able to get a more accurate overall picture of our classroom teaching.
Conclusion:
Participating in this program was a luxury – for one solid year, I was able to think deeply about my teaching and get regular feedback and support from my peers. In addition, through the process of tagging my lessons (reflective practice), I was able to be very intentional in my planning with the hopes of “hitting” multiple tags each class period. Over the course of the year, not only did I engage deeply with 6 other math faculty from around the country on a regular basis, but I became a much more reflective practitioner. I found non-threatening ways to ask more of my students and as a result, saw students raise their level of involvement and understanding to new levels. Taking the time and effort to log my lessons resulted in my desire and need to create engaging and demanding lessons – something I should be doing all the time regardless of this program.
GSCC 2.0 Themes
We have identified 10 themes comprised by 31 tags of approaches prevalent in developmental classrooms. Tagging (identifying categories of practice using a common set of tags) deepens your ability to be mindful about your practice and gives us a common language for talking about what you and other faculty are actually doing in your class. The tags in GSCC were derived from analyzing classroom practices of community college developmental education math and English faculty. As the tags accumulate and pedagogical patterns come into focus, you have a more accurate overall picture of your class.
Theme I: Student Support-Individuals
Accessibility: Instructors take action to stay in touch with students both inside and outside of class. Instructors set reasonable office hours and make themselves available through the phone and email. This is be done with a manner and attitude that indicates it is not simply perfunctory but sincere. Teachers should also be willing and able to be available at times in addition to office hours in case students have classes during their office hours, and should be willing to be part of campus life and visible on campus to demonstrate their interest in the school and the students.
Caring: Instructors show students that they care about their success in the class by seeking to create a personal connection with individual students in the class. This could manifest itself through personal conversations, offering advice, email contacts, and sharing stories from the teachers’ own personal experience of overcoming barriers and embracing individual student stories.
Whole Person: Instructors get to know their students, taking into consideration students' real life experiences, self-concepts, cultural differences, learning challenges and the non-academic difficulties that can affect students' academic performance. Instructors express a willingness to give time to students and help students' academic life blend with their non-academic life.
College Transitions: Instructors make explicit attempt to teach students how to transition to college life, encourage productive behavior such as attendance, completion of assigned work, and respectful participation in class activities. Teachers assist students with social-emotional adjustment to college by helping them learn to integrate and balance the different aspects of their life and responsibilities into a unified whole, including work, family, and personal responsibilities. Students also need to learn how to be able to integrate the difficulties they face and not allow problems at home or in work to completely pre-empt their ability to come to school and do their work. Instructors highlight non-academic knowledge and skills needed for college-readiness inside and outside the class room and/or the college: study skills, time management, techniques to tackle test anxiety, highlight the importance of building study groups, familiarizing students with college services and facilities, guiding students where to seek advisement/mentoring/counseling, helping students to learn about college opportunities (internships, scholarships, training), the importance of building a study groups, etc. Finally instructors lead the students to an understanding of choice and the inevitable consequences of choices. Choice allows students to be "creators" of their own lives rather than victims and frames success as a series of choices over which students often have more control than they think. Additionally, illuminating the notion of "choice" allows instructors to model problem solving and resource research as well as the value of always having a Plan B.
Self-efficacy: Instructors express a desire to help students develop a positive self-perception around doing schoolwork.
Theme II: Classroom Climate Support
Instructors design activities to meet the varying needs of all students, devise ways to keep track of all students and their progress, and find ways to reach out to students not keeping up.
Enjoyment: Instructors and students believe the class should be enjoyable, including some fun activities/strategies such as games or discussion. Teachers seek to create a fun environment conducive to learning.
Comfort: Instructors attempt to create an open and supportive environment in which students feel comfortable in asking questions, making mistakes, and revealing their lack of knowledge or understanding. Instructors encourage students to participate in class by making the classroom a safe space. Instructors also extend this comfort level outside the classroom, making students feel comfortable in asking for help after class, taking advantage of office hours, etc. "Low-stakes" learning opportunities may be part of this strategy.
Theme III: Variety in Instruction
Mixed Learning Activities: Instructors use a mix of activities within the same class session, such as lecture, small group, pairs of students working together -- and so on, in contrast to just one instructional mode.
Variety in Presenting Information: Instructors use a variety of ways (visual, oral, aural, experiential, hands on etc.) to present the SAME information. For example, this may include multiple ways of problem solving for one problem. This can be done in the context of explaining learning styles to the class where different people learn in different ways, and helping students learn to understand their own learning styles. Teachers encourage students to work with the knowledge of their own learning styles as strengths in order to maximize their classroom experience.
Technology: Technology is used in a way that supports or advances effective teaching practice. Technology is not just used as a matter of fact – like an online syllabus that is exactly the same as a paper version. Rather, technology allows such things as opportunities for students to do different activities, get more rapid or in-depth feedback, engage in a more social interaction with peers, review a wider compendium of resources, ask question of other experts that have the potential to increase the effectiveness of the instructional design.
Contextualization: Instructors make sense of theoretical material by applying it to situations in either the real world or another academic context. Examples of this might be amortizing a mortgage, selecting the best cell phone plan, writing letters of application, and writing research papers. The emphasis is on how the content that's being learned is relevant and may be useful outside of this classroom. Additionally, instructors might contextualize course work by framing it to show how it fits into the Western Academic paradigm or fits into college work rather than high school work.
Theme IV: Challenge in Instruction
Higher-Order Thinking: Instructors use specific approaches to engage students in critical thinking, complex problem solving, analytical reasoning, abstract reasoning, and deductive or inductive thinking. Instructors have students defend and justify positions.
Reflection (meta-cognition): Instructors create opportunities for student to think about what, why, and how they are learning so that students can identify their own strengths and weaknesses and make adjustments to their learning strategies. Students are asked to make a cognitive analysis of the discipline they are trying to master and how this mastery may be obtained.
High Expectation: Instructors set high standards for the learning objectives, taking into consideration the current skill level of the students. Instructors develop ways to push students beyond their self-perceived limits.
Theme V: Organization in Instruction
Structure in Presentation: Instructors provide specific descriptions, tools, and representations to support student learning and understanding. These supportive structures highlight key concepts and common mistakes and misconceptions. Ideas are presented in a logical progression, with one idea naturally leading to next. Teachers provide guidance on how to complete assignments, perhaps modeling or demonstrating how to do so, or using a rubric to provide a specific example of "excellent" work to the students to demonstrate clarity. In terms of communication, the teacher breaks down complex ideas, pulls out the essential elements and articulates important points in a simple, understandable manner.
Connections: Instructors help students make connections between the topics/ideas within the course and their prior knowledge/experience. This may involve the instructor showing how concepts within the content area are related.
Time on Task: Faculty provide focused time for students to practice skills they are acquiring, through assignments in class, with the intention that time on task is critical to learning. Faculty may also help student understand that practice is critical to learning a new skill. Instructors create learning activities that maximize student attention to task, activities that are challenging enough to motivate students but not so challenging that students fail to engage the assignment.
Theme VI: Tailored Instruction
Scaffolding Learning: Faculty members provide descriptions, tools, and representations that progressively support (or “scaffold”) students as needed. This means, according to diagnostics of what skills students have and have not mastered, faculty set up a sequential set of activities that moves a student toward increasing level of sophistication. Scaffolding is removed as students show evidence of independent performance. The instructor can scaffold the learning through the sequence of materials and through activities. This is about “finding the optimal challenge” for students, not about minimizing their responsibility for their own learning.
Differentiated Instruction: Instructors design activities meeting the diverse needs of all students, keep track of all students and their progress, and find ways to reach out to those who are not keeping up as well as to those performing well.
Theme VII: Instructional Evaluation
Assessment: Instructors use assessment to gauge students' understanding against a specific standard, grade the student response, and review with this assessment with students to help them understand how well they are mastering the material. Instructors should also do this in a way that accounts for variables in student work including both ability and effort, and acknowledge when effort exceeds ability or vice versa. Instructors create an environment where students learn to self-assess or create the "inner teacher," acknowledging that this internalized assessment will enable the students to be successful outside of the classroom.
Feedback: Instructors review students' work and provide timely constructive feedback promptly in conversation or writing. This is also sometimes referred to as "formative feedback" because a grade is not involved. It resembles coaching.
Baseline of Student Knowledge: Instructors employ strategies to check initial placement. Instructors check for prerequisite knowledge and assess to understand what students know at the beginning of the course or the beginning of a unit or lesson, and then tailor lessons according to the students' previous understanding. This can also mean to help students realize they know more than they think, or to use their own knowledge and experience to find solutions/answers. In theory, instructors then use this information to differentiate teaching according to students' previous knowledge: "Meeting students where they are."
Theme VIII: Group Activities
Community Building: Instructors set up activities that require students to interact with each other for the purpose of building community and collaboration among students. Activities here are low-stakes or non-graded assignments.
Peer Engagement: Instructors create collaborative projects where peers work together in order to learn, whether the collaboration occurs over a part of the class, an entire class, or a project that occurs outside of class.
Theme IX: Instructor Personal Qualities
Passion for the Subject: Instructor conveys passion for subject matter, motivating and inspiring student engagement with the subject. Instructor’s show their passion by sharing their own content -related experiences and/or work with the class. In addition to having passion for their subject matter, teachers need to have passion for their teaching--students have to see that we not only love our discipline, but we love being in the classroom--and that we enjoy being there, doing our work.
Authenticity: The faculty member is herself or himself in the classroom, often using examples from the students' and instructor's lives, bringing a sense of authenticity that allows students to be themselves as well.
Presence: Instructors demonstrate attentiveness and sensitivity to what is happening in the class, to students' needs and their reactions. It is a way of acting in the moment, whereby the action that the instructor takes comes out of careful attending and sensitivity to the flow of classroom events.
Theme X: Instructor Skills
Mastery: Instructor knows the subject matter, understands intricacies about teaching in their subject or in general, and has strong abilities to create materials and activities to help students learn.
Adaptability: Instructors reflect on their teaching practices and student needs, changing their methods, timing, and activities, as needed. This might happen from class to class, or even within a class, when the instructor perceives that the current strategy is not working.
Persistence and Intentionality: Instructor demonstrates purpose with each lesson in multiple ways, thinking through how the lesson will move students forward at a specific time in the course. The instructor shows persistence, not giving up when initial attempts to convey concepts do not meet with success. The instructor also paces the class so that higher achieving students are able to move ahead.