Greater
Proficiency in Science
There is a lot of conversation about using data to guide instruction and individualized learning for students and classrooms. But, what about teacher’s learning? Unfortunately, the data suggests that most decisions about professional development for teachers are not based on instructional practice or other classroom evidence at all. Decisions about this at the school or district level tend to be applied to all teachers (as “one-size-fits-all” solutions) while teachers’ selections of professional learning activities generally are made by individual interests of teachers; not necessarily based on data or student outcomes.
Michigan’s new Policy for Professional Learning will change this. Michigan, like many other states, has recognized the need for a policy and guidelines to address professional development (PD) activities, and has adopted standards for professional learning. These standards call for decisions about professional learning to be guided by data and other evidence from classroom instruction.
To illustrate this approach, the Greater Proficiency in Science (GPS) project is one of a few that are trying to do something different by designing the professional learning around topics identified through analysis of students’ achievement data, classroom instructional practices, classroom instruction data, and academic research on teacher and student learning. This program, started in 2008, has worked with over 100 teachers to develop customized learning opportunities for participants that also address such broad policies as use of the GLCE’s and HSCE’s in instruction.
DESIGN-BASED PROFESSIONAL LEARNING The GPS program is based on a “Design Model” for professional learning. This is addressed in two ways. First, participants in the project learn about new instructional practices and content by designing new curriculum materials and lessons that they will use in their class. This model also incorporates design from the professional development facilitators, in that each new workshop was designed by looking at data that identified the problem topics and strategies that became the goals for the program.
Decisions about the design in this approach really come from three types of data sources. Student achievement data is the ultimate “driving force” in determining the goals, assuming that the intent of the professional learning activity is to help teachers support and improve student learning. Teacher knowledge and skills data not only addresses the goals, but also gives some considerations to the barriers that might inhibit the learning activity itself, or how educators make use of this in the classroom. Finally, contextual data
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Using Data to Guide Professional Learning
By Stephen Best, SIGPL Director
can provide details about what will or won’t work in a particular school, or with a specific teacher or topic.
DESIGNING PROFESSIONAL LEARNING PROGRAMS FOR GROUPS BASED ON DATA
Unless you have the luxury of coaching individual teachers to learn new information or skills, you will likely need to design a professional learning experience for a group of teachers. When seeking data to identify possible needs of the group, you need to make sure the data will fit most participant’s circumstances, and ideally, be relevant to all educators. For instance, in the GPS program, we tried to identify content specific needs in science by grade level. Item-level analysis of standardized tests (in this case, the MEAP science assessments at 5th and 8th grade) allowed us to see what specific standards or topics that seemed to be problematic across the state. Using the “Data 4 Student Success” website, instructional support staff at the intermediate school districts could identify for the group as a whole, and statewide, what topics seemed to be problematic for all students to understand. This became a starting point for the GPS program; it helped us identify 2-3 broad groups of topics or skills that were likely problematic topics in general for students to understand.
MAKING INDIVIDUAL PROFESSIONAL LEARNING CHOICES BASED ON DATA
Just because 60% of the students in the state seemed to struggle with problems focusing on scientific reasoning doesn’t mean that you will. This was the case in the GPS program, and so, for the next aspect of the program, teachers examined two sets of data to help make individual decisions about their focus for the year. The first was from the Survey of Enacted Curriculum, commonly known as the SEC, an instrument taken by each teacher at the beginning of their involvement in the program. The survey provides immediate results to teachers about how their instructional time (or their perception of their instructional time) is used in the classroom over the course of the year relative to the appropriate grade-level expectations for their class. The data doesn’t provide the reasons, but it did give teachers a sense of the topics they seemed to avoid, which were the ones they would then focus on in the GPS program.
After reviewing their teaching, the participants also looked at item- specific analyses for their own school from the Data Director web site. Because most of the schools participating were using this data gathering and reporting tool, they could look at the individual questions and standards identified as problematic for students
Spring/Summer 2011 | MACULJOURNAL
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