Proofs and Evidence:
Effectiveness of the Five Standards for Effective Pedegogy

The research evidence for the Standards for Effective Pedagogy is of several types: experimental, quasi-experimental, qualitative, and consensus-based. By consensus based, we mean general agreement, based on the preponderance of all evidence, by the educational research and development community. We have described the process of achieving that consensus elsewhere (Tharp, 1999). The consensus is explanatory, that is, it expresses agreement that effective teaching is characterized by five basic principles (now known as the Five Standards for Effective Pedagogy, Dalton, 1998; Tharp, 1997; see the Appendix). The citation list used for extracting these standards includes hundreds of listings, and is steadily expanding (Tharp, 1989; 1991; 1994; 1997; Waxman, Padron & Knight, 1991).

However, establishing direct proofs and evidence of the effectiveness of the Five Standards, taken in whole or in part, is a somewhat different enterprise that requires examining the field from a different angle. The purpose of this brief report is to assemble the various proofs and evidence, including both existence proof and evidence of effectiveness.

Existence Proof

Classrooms operating by the CREDE Teaching Alive! Standards for Effective Pedagogy include classrooms at Santa Cruz High School, Santa Cruz, California; Half Moon Bay High School, Half Moon Bay, California; in Fenger Academy, a public high school in inner city Chicago (Lee, 1995), at Wai'anae High School, Wai’anae, Hawaii; and in elementary classrooms at Starlight Elementary School, Watsonville, California, and in schools of Cane Creek, Rolling Hills, Rudolph and Eastwood, Kentucky. They exist in a private school for the gifted, Satori School in Tucson, Arizona; and in a multilingual, multicultural public school, Hazeltine Elementary in Los Angeles Unified School District. They are in many schools for Native Americans, particularly in the Southwest Region School District of Alaska (Blum 1998; n.d.), at Rough Rock Demonstration School, Rough Rock, AZ (Dick, Estell, & McCarty, 1994; Begay et al,. 1995), and Zuni Middle School, Zuni, New Mexico (Tharp et. al 1999).

Proof of Effectiveness

The record for effectiveness comes from classrooms of several types. Some are largely unsupported efforts by individual teachers. Many more are from systematic programs of three general types. The first are hand-crafted small programs, often designed by educator/researcher teams, many in out-of-the-way villages or ghettos, in which schools of the common tradition were failing to teach local populations. Second, there are several long-term programs with systematic evaluation data, tending to focus on various combinations of the Five Standards, but not emphasizing them all. The third type includes the full Five Standard implementation, with evaluation/experimentation data of various depths.

1) Fine examples of individually created classrooms have been published, in Alaska by Lipka (1990), and in Florida by Lee and Fradd (1996a, 1996b), using substantial portions of the Five Standards. Classrooms with these standards foster higher student performance, compared to those without (Estrada, 1997).

2) Handcrafted programs that exemplify one or more of the Five Standards are far too numerous to list here; the interested reader can find exemplars in virtually any compendium of exemplary practices or any discipline’s new performance standards. More extensive lists of programs participating in the emerging consensus of standards for effective pedagogy can be found in Tharp (1989 1994; 1999); Yamauchi and Tharp (1995); Dalton (1998); and Dalton & Youpa (1998). Here there is space only to call attention to a few exemplars, illustrating a wide range of ages, subject matters, and cultural/linguistic groups. They include the Inuit science program based on community economic activity, reported by Lipka (1990); Carol D. Lee’s classrooms that are teaching literary criticism to African American adolescents (Lee 1993; 1995), as well as Sophie Haroutunian-Gordon’s (1991) teachers who work with similar populations in teaching high school through conversation. They can be seen in the classrooms of the research teachers working with Moll and Gonzalez in translating Mexican-heritage students’ families ‘funds of knowledge’ into classroom activities (Moll, Amanti, Neff & Gonzalez 1992); and in many Canadian schools for native students controlled by native communities (e.g., Gardner 1986; Harrison 1986).

3) Programs that emphasize some of the Five Standards include several well-known sustained research and development models. We mention here five programs notable for their clarity of program description, explanatory integrity, and effectiveness data. Each has contributed to the growing consensus that has produced the five standards for effective pedagogy, and each has developed detailed procedures for enacting them. While not developed specifically for culturally and linguistically diverse students, there is evidence of effectiveness across student populations. Cognitively Guided Instruction (Carpenter, Fennema, & Franke 1996) is a program that assists teachers to create elementary mathematics classes that are rich with the use of mathematics language, that are activity focused, and are characterized by ‘figuring-out’ how mathematics relates to the solving of problems. Complex instruction (Cohen & Lotan 1997; Bower 1997), features cognitively challenging activities, which require varied abilities, in a small-group, multiple-activity format. Cohen and Lotan’s recommendations for social organization and activity design are especially notable, and include all the Standards except for Standard V. By contrast, a focus on Standard V is central in Authentic Instruction, in which teachers help to construct knowledge through the use of disciplined inquiry (connecting students’ previous knowledge to their expressions of current material). Authentic Instruction also emphasizes contextualizing instruction in values and issues beyond the classroom (Newmann 1996; Newmann, Secada, & Wehlage 1995). Reciprocal Teaching employs small-group discussion as a basis for teaching reading, in which students conduct discussions that are not scripted, but employ consistent strategies, such as asking for assistance when stumped, regular summarization, and prediction (Palinscar 1984; Brown, Metz, & Campione 1996). The Fradd and Lee approach, Instructional Congruence (Lee & Fradd 1998) interweaves science and literacy teaching, but is a more general approach emphasizing contextualization, language and literacy development, and challenging instruction. Our characterizations of these programs are drawn from the emphases in their own program descriptions, but as teachers and schools adapt these programs according to their own locales and experiences, there are undoubtedly instances of each that do include all of the Five Standards.

Full Five Standard Implementation

The most extensive, long-term demonstration of Phase 5 has been that of the Kamehameha Early Education Program (KEEP), a program for at-risk K-3 Native Hawaiian students, operated from 1970 through 1988 with fidelity to its original self-description. Scores of publications have described that program (e.g., Tharp 1982; Au, et al. 1986; Tharp, et al. 1984). In the National Academy of Sciences report on educational programs for English-language learning minorities, KEEP was listed as the only available such study with true experimental design (August & Hakuta 1998: 87). Pronounced improvement in reading achievement (Tharp & Gallimore, 1989; Tharp 1982) and in student industriousness (Antill & Tharp 1976) resulted from the program. Through many years of upscaling into fifteen multicultural public schools of Hawaii, evaluation results remained above non-KEEP programs’ academic achievement. Those effects continued until too-rapid expansion and reduction of resources, had by 1992 cost the program its fidelity of implementation, and it was formally terminated in 1997 (Gallimore, Tharp, Sloat, Klein & Troy 1982; Calkins et al. 1989; Klein 1988; Klein & Calkins 1988; Tharp 1982; Yap, Estes & Nickel 1988).

As a test of the model in a different locus and population, the KEEP program was extended into Rough Rock Elementary School (Navajo), Arizona in 1984 (Jordan 1995; Vogt, Jordan & Tharp 1993). The program took root, "naturalized" in the Navajo locale (Sells 1994), and became RRENLAP (Dick, Estell, & McCarty 1994; Begay et al. 1995). The program now has a 10-year history. Its operations are fully congruent with the Five Standards and literacy in both English and Navajo are significantly higher than comparison groups.

Among other programs with published evaluation data are the Southwest Region School District of Alaska’s cross-curriculum high school programs (Blum, n. d.; 1998), and the middle school programs of the Center for Research in Education, Diversity & Excellence (Hilberg, et al. 1998).

Standard I: Joint Productive Activity: Teachers and Students Producing Together
Facilitate learning through joint productive activity among teacher and students

Standard II: Language Development: Developing Language and Literacy Across the Curriculum
Develop competence in the language and literacy of instruction across the curriculum

Standard III: Contextualization: Making Meaning by Connecting School to Students’ Lives
Contextualize teaching and curriculum in the experiences and skills of students’ home and community

Standard IV: Challenging Activities: Teaching Complex Thinking
Challenge students toward cognitive complexity

Standard V: Instructional Conversation: Teaching Through Conversation
Engage students through dialogue, especially the Instructional Conversation

REFERENCES

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