In Linda Darling-Hammond's 1999 book, The Right to Learn: A Blueprint for Creating Schools that Work, chapter 4 begins as follows:
Whatever our twentieth-century education system has produced, it is increasingly clear that it has not developed a widespread pedagogy for understanding, one that provides students with opportunities
* to test and apply their ideas,
* to look at concepts from many points of view, and
* to develop proficient performance.
Darling-Hammond identifies some places where this kind of teaching has and does predominate. She identifies exciting examples of school reform where teachers are pursuing this kind of teaching for understanding, and addressing issues of equity in education, at the same time.
What if the pursuit of high scores on state-mandated tests tied to standards that are a mile wide and an inch deep was displaced by the pursuit of school environments where students learn deep understanding of core ideas, and learn how to pursue deep understanding in new areas?
Darling-Hammond identifies schools like Wheeler Elementary in Louisville, KY; Keels Elementary in Columbia, SC; a few charter schools in Philadelphia; and the Foundations School in Chicago. What stands out to me in her description of these schools is that the reforms they carried out were primarily teacher-led.
At Wheeler, "Team teaching shared planning time, and participation in a shared management committee spur continual improvement. Parents are involved in decision making and classroom life. ... The kids enjoy coming to school. Their intrinsic motivation is very high." The number of students who are held back because they were not meeting standards for promotion to the next grade has decreased significantly.
At Keels, the students are primarily low-income students of color, the children of those who work at a nearby military base and therefore accustomed to moving from school to school when their parents are reassigned. "Faculty identified and introduced their own initiatives. These included cooperative learning in heterogeneous classes, whole-language instruction and hands-on work in mathematics and science, social studies projects such as studies of the stock market, computer-based learning applied to such programs as Writing to Read and Reading Recovery, parent education workshops and home visits, and after-school programs including tutoring and supervised homework sessions. Students are involved in peer teaching and in decision making about school discipline and extracurricular events."
Darling-Hammond does not just describe isolated instances of success in school reform, though. She synthesizes research about what works and what does not in terms of school reform. She systematically uncovers the conditions that must be created in order for learning as deep understanding to emerge. And she spells out the implications of each of those features of successful restructured schools for school policy. I especially found useful her discussions of the importance of an emphasis on authentic performance (vs. passing tests), opportunities for collaborative learning, and support for democratic learning.
If I have given you a taste of her writing that encourages you to seek out more of Linda Darling-Hammond's ideas, I will be pleased. She has several books published more recently, that I will be devouring with relish soon:
*
Preparing Teachers for a Changing World: What Teachers Should Learn and Be Able to Do (with John Bransford, Pamela LePage, and Karen Hammerness, 2007)
* Powerful Learning: What We Know About Teaching for Understanding (with Brigid Barron, P. David Pearson, and Alan H. Schoenfeld, 2008)
Some of you may be familiar with her ideas already. Let's discuss them.
How can teaching and learning for understanding become a key part of most American schools?
What have you seen that works?
If you think Darling-Hammond is off-track, how and why?
I invite your comments.