Book On Education Reform Offers Alternative To 'Cemetery Model' Of Learning

Contact: Barbara McKenna (831.459.3521); mckenna@cats.ucsc.edu

Five Standards model addresses needs of bilingual, low--income, and other at--risk students

SANTA CRUZ--From hearing rooms on Capitol Hill to parent meetings in cafeterias across the country, debate continues on how to help more of America's students succeed in the classroom. According to Roland Tharp, director of the national Center for Research on Education, Diversity & Excellence (CREDE), academic excellence can be achieved by more students--including students traditionally at risk of academic failure. Like most education researchers, Tharp is advocating change but, unlike many, Tharp believes improvements will come not through curricular changes, but by restructuring classroom activities and teacher--student interaction.

Tharp is the co--author of the book Teaching Transformed: Achieving Excellence, Fairness, Inclusion and Harmony (2000, Westview Press), which outlines a classroom reform model that has been used successfully in schools across the country--from inner city schools in Florida to rural schools of Native American students in New Mexico to schools with predominantly Spanish--speaking students in California.

"When schools open this fall," Tharp says, "the overwhelming majority of students across the country will file into ordered rows, pick up their books, and face their teachers. They will be taught in one subject and then move on to the next, in a recurring pattern of teacher--led instruction and assessment." Tharp calls this approach--seated in rows, quietly and passively receiving knowledge--"the cemetery model."

This method has been in use since at least the time of the Civil War and numerous studies have shown that in such a classroom it is mainly students in the mainstream--culturally, economically, and academically--who succeed academically. But, Tharp says, there are ways to structure classroom activity so that all students can improve their learning, including those who are traditionally at risk of failing because of linguistic or cultural differences, poverty, or geographical isolation.

A leading education reformer and a professor of education at the University of California, Santa Cruz, Tharp has spent decades studying and developing effective standards for learning. Along with several colleagues, he has implemented and observed his approaches in schools throughout the country with great success. An advantage the standards have over curriculur reform is that they are applicable across grade levels, student populations, and subject matters.

Teaching Transformed, which is co--authored by Peggy Estrada, Stephanie Stoll Dalton, and Lois Yamauchi, presents real--life examples of transformed classrooms. In these classrooms students often work in small groups. Sometimes groups are formed based on skill level or language ability while others intentionally mix students of varied skills and different native languages. In classrooms with such structures, children tend to focus intently on their projects, share ideas, take on leadership roles, and achieve high levels of comprehension. While each group focuses on its assignment, the teacher sits with one group at a time, functioning as a facilitator rather than an authority.

At the core of this classroom model is what Tharp and his colleagues call "Five Standards for Effective Pedagogy." These standards are:

• Teachers and Students Producing Together
• Developing Language and Literacy Across the Curriculum
• Making Meaning: Connecting School to Students' Lives
• Teaching Complex Thinking
• Teaching through Conversation
  (see below for details on the Five Standards)

Teachers in classrooms across the country have successfully applied the Five Standards and researchers from CREDE have been working in close collaboration with demonstration schools in Wastonville, California, and Wai'anae, Hawaii, to comprehensively implement the Five Standards.

Teaching Transformed is receiving high praise from other experts in education. "In stark contrast to the dogmatic, reductionist, controlling, 'one--size--fits--all' curricular prescriptions that have gained so much favor in the field of education, these authors propose a pedagogy that actually respects the intellect of teachers and students, and that advocates building on their sociocultural resources in creating advanced, flexible, and diverse circumstances for learning," says Luis C. Moll, professor of education at the University of Arizona.

The book presents the authors' vision of an ideal classroom, reviews theory and research supporting their model, and offers a process for transforming any traditional classroom into one structured for the successful learning of a diversity of students. Along with theory, the book offers examples, guidelines, and other resources for creating a transformed classroom.

THE FIVE STANDARDS FOR EFFECTIVE PEDAGOGY

STANDARD 1: TEACHERS AND STUDENTS PRODUCING TOGETHER

The teacher:

• Designs instructional activities requiring student collaboration to accomplish a joint product in the time available.
• Arranges classroom furniture to accommodate students' individual and group needs to interact and work jointly for a product (students do not sit in rows, facing forward).
• Plans with students how to work in groups and moves from one activity to another, e.g., moving from large group introduction to small group activity to clean-up and dismissal.
• Places students in a variety of groupings-language, friendship, mixed academic ability, project, interest, size, etc. to promote interaction and productivity.
• Participates with students in joint productive activity.
• Monitors and supports student collaboration over products in positive ways.

STANDARD 2: DEVELOPING LANGUAGE AND LITERACY ACROSS THE CURRICULUM

The teacher:

• Designs activities that motivate students to use new language for everyday and academic purposes.
• Interacts with students to model appropriate everyday and academic speech in the language of instruction.
• Listens to student talk.
• Connects students' everyday talk to academic topics.
• Responds to student talk, questions at every opportunity, and makes "in-flight" changes during instruction that directly relate to students' comments.
• Provides frequent opportunity for students to interact with each other and the teacher during instructional activities.

STANDARD 3: MAKING MEANING: CONNECTING SCHOOL TO STUDENTS' LIVES

The teacher:

• Designs instructional activities based on what students already know from home, community, and school.
• Acquires knowledge of local norms and perspectives by talking to students, students' parents, community members, other insiders, and reading pertinent documents.
• Assists students to connect and apply their learning to knowledge and issues in home and community.
• Varies activities to include students' cultural preferences.
• Plans jointly with students to design community-based learning activities.
• Provides opportunities for parents and community members to participate in classroom instructional activities.

STANDARD 4: TEACHING COMPLEX THINKING

The teacher:

• Presents challenging standards for student performance.
• Designs instructional tasks that advance student understanding to more complex levels.
• Assists students to accomplish more complex understanding through the exercise of the other principles.
• Gives critical feedback about how student performance compares with the standard.

STANDARD 5: TEACHING THROUGH CONVERSATION

The teacher:

• Converses with students about academic topics using content lexicon and concepts in small group (3 to 7 students) on a regularly scheduled basis.
• Assures that student talk occurs more frequently than teacher talk in the speaking style students prefer.
• Guides conversation to focus on students' views, judgments, and rationales based on text evidence and other substantive support.
• Leads students to prepare a product that indicates the stated goal of that instructional conversation was achieved.

Ordering Information for Teaching Transformed

The Center for Research on Education, Diversity & Excellence is funded by a U.S. Department of Education, Office of Educational Research and Improvement grant. For more information on the Five Standards, contact CREDE at 831.459.3500; crede@cats.ucsc.edu

©2002 Center for Research on Education, Diversity & Excellence. All rights reserved.