Complicating the World of Reading Assessment: Toward Better Assessments for Better Teaching

In this article, we share with readers our hopes, fears, and predictions for reading assessment in American schools at a critical policy juncture—the production of new assessments to measure achievement of the Common Core State Standards. It isn't just Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers and Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium in play. There is a new stream of progressive-minded pedagogical reform rekindling the fire for higher-order thinking, project-based learning, and learning that transfers to new and different situations and problems. This is a perfect storm—a genuine opportunity to change the course of assessment for accountability and classroom decision-making. Our hope is that readers will find our perspectives useful as we collectively avail ourselves of this unique opportunity.     

Practice Makes Practice: Learning to Teach in Teacher Education

In this article, we argue that teaching is and should be a central element to learning to teach, particularly as teacher education once again turns toward practice. From this perspective, we must elaborate how such a shift addresses the need to bridge the gap between knowledge for teaching and knowledge from teaching, between theory and practice, and among university courses and fieldwork. If the intent of such a shift is to fundamentally change the preparation of teachers, we argue that it requires teacher education programs to do more than increase the amount of time candidates spend in clinical field placements. It requires, we argue, that teacher educators engage in simultaneous innovation in three related, but distinct aspects of program design and implementation: organizational structures and policies, content and curriculum, and teacher education pedagogy. Without such dynamic engagement, the practice-turn will go the way of many past reforms in teacher education—it will be symbolic but not significant or meaningful.     

Is the environmental literacy of university students measurable?

We report the development and piloting of an evaluative instrument and process for monitoring the environmental literacy (EL) of undergraduate students in one large research-led university in New Zealand. The instrument addresses knowledge, affect and competencies in the general area of EL in line with this institution’s adoption of EL as a graduate attribute (or in a US context, a general-education learning outcome, and something to be fostered throughout a student’s education). The instrument and associated processes were designed to fit within conventional institutional mechanisms that manage student feedback on the quality of teaching. The instrument was tested with more than 600 students from more than eight programmes over the course of a year and its use stressed that students were anonymous within the survey. We conclude that evaluating (or in a US context, assessing) the extent to which students acquire EL is an achievable objective and is a reasonable expectation for any higher education institution that claims to foster this attribute.     

Teaching for deeper political learning: a design experiment

Is in-depth political learning possible in college-preparatory courses known for curricular breadth at an accelerated pace plus a high-stakes exam? A multidisciplinary research team conducted design-based implementation research (DBIR) for seven years across three school systems for the purpose of achieving deeper learning in an ‘advanced’ high school government and politics course. This article reports findings from the final year of research and development. The design centres on cyclical learning, projects (simulated political processes) and strategic use of texts as resources for learning the curriculum. Quantitative analysis shows comparable achievement to students in traditional classrooms on the high-stakes summative assessment despite the dramatic departure from test-prep instruction. Qualitative analyses focus on two of the design elements: learning from simulations and learning from text. The first allowed students to ‘experience’ political beliefs, institutions, and conflict, although simulated; the second required students to learn subject matter not only from simulations and teacher lectures but from texts, too. The discussion shows how these two in combination with cyclical learning required skilful attention to content selection. We conclude that when deeper learning is the goal, content selection cannot be elided or presumed, particularly with respect to the articulation of depth and breadth in curriculum and instruction.