Learning Targets--Helping Students Aim for
Understanding in Today's Lesson
By
Connie M. Moss & Susan M. Brookhart
I highly recommend that you read this book. It will really help
your understanding of what Learning Targets are and their
importance.
*I found used copies on Amazon.com-very inexpensive to
purchase ISBN 978-1-4166-1441-8
This is the last chapter!!
Chapter 9—A Learning Target Theory of
Action and Educational Leadership:
Building A Culture of Evidence
*The role of
the educational leaders is to make schools and classrooms work better for all
students. One of the traditional ways educational leaders go about this work is
to observe teaching and learning at the classroom level and use that
information to improve their schools and districts. But what educational
leaders observe depends on what they look for.
*A Shared Theory of Action and a
Common Language
As a
cohesive theory of action, learning
targets bring increased clarity to the work that students, teachers, and
administrators do each day to raise student achievement and increase teacher
effectiveness. In a very real sense, they create a common language about
what educators look for and count as evidence of effective teaching and
meaningful student learning.
These shared
beliefs compel action-oriented and goal-directed collaboration wherein each
educator intentionally focuses his or her daily efforts on looking for and
addressing inconsistencies and ineffective practices. In fact, looking for what
works and what doesn’t— and doing
something about it—becomes everyone’s most important work. Once educators’
eyes begin to open, what they see astound them.
*Are We Looking For What Actually
Works?
Picture the
typical list of educational “best practices.” The lists are normally saturated
with descriptions of what teachers do—the instructional methods, strategies,
and techniques someone deemed “best.” Traditionally, principals use these lists
as “look-fors”: techniques administrators are supposed to see, describe, and
evaluate as they walk through a classroom or conduct a formal observation.
Ultimately, leaders are supposed to use the information they gather from their
observations as feedback to help teachers to improve the quality of their
instruction and raise student achievement.
The problem
with this setup is obvious. A traditional list of best-practice look-fors asks
the principal to gather frequent “snapshots” of teacher actions, including how
well the teacher differentiates the lesson, integrates technology, manages the
classroom, uses specific instructional strategies, and provides academic rigor.
Even when these forms and structures invite principals to describe what
students are doing, they are directed to look for something called “student
engagement”—a concept that has become so diluted and ubiquitous that it is
nearly meaningless. Ask a thousand principals to define student engagement, and
you will hear a thousand individual theories, most having something to do with
student being “on task.” Unfortunately, too few principals ask the jugular
question: “Engaged in what?” Students may be working feverishly on a task that
is meaningless.
Here’s the
bottom line: what principals “look for” in the classroom is exactly what they
see, and what they will continue to see. That’s because teachers will continue
to demonstrate the behaviors and practices that they know their principals are
looking for.
*What We Evaluate is What We
Perpetuate
What we evaluate is quite literally
where we place values—what we deem to have worth.
What members
of a district look for during classroom observations signifies what they value
and communicates the culture of their district. For that reason, what
educational leaders actually do, more than what they say, influences what is
accepted as strong evidence of student achievement. If the leadership team
focuses exclusively on data from standardized test scores and audits of
teachers’ actions and decisions, then instructional methods and standardized
test scores will continue to be the coin of the realm—the way everyone in the
building measures what is valued.
In too many
cases, classroom observations are audits of teacher performance. Information on
instructional decisions is valuable, and we are not discounting it. But details
about what the teacher is doing tell only half the story of what is and isn’t
working in the classroom. The rest of the story—the most significant part—is
told through what students are doing and the evidence they produce while they
are doing it.
If the
leadership team places increased value on what students are doing during a
lesson, then a transformational value system will begin to take root. Once the
leadership team adopts and communicates a learning target theory of action, it
can use every opportunity to learn more about what students are actually doing
during today’s lesson to increase their understanding, produce evidence of
their learning, and raise their achievement. Although educational leaders will
still observe teaching behaviors, they will do so from a decidedly different
point of view.
*Educational Leadership: The Catalyst
for Student Achievement
When
researchers examined the links between student achievement and educational
leadership practices, they found that leadership is second only to classroom
instruction among all school-related factors that contribute to student
learning. What’s more, the contribution of effective leadership is larges when
it is needed most. There are virtually no documented instances of turning a
troubled school around without intervention from talented leaders. Although
many factors must work in unison to transform an underperforming learning
environment, leadership is clearly the catalyst.
A learning
target theory of action can better equip educational leaders to exercise
vigilance over instruction and support an effective learning environment. It
makes them better able to conduct strategic observations, provide targeted
feedback to teachers, and forge strong learning partnerships between teachers
and students.
*The Role of Educational Leadership
Look beyond
the walls and test scores of an excellent school district or building, and you
will find excellent educational leadership. What we know about excellent
leaders is that they have significant effects on student learning, second only
to the effects of teacher expertise and quality of the curriculum. We know that
school leadership is most successful when it is focused on teaching and
learning. It makes sense, then, that effective leaders play a crucial role
in high-quality schools, because they spend more quality time in the classroom.
Lately, the
term data-driven decision maker has
added another layer to what we expect from an instructional leader. In today’s
standards-driven landscape of accountability, educational leaders are
encouraged to collect, organize, and analyze data using ways that would have
been impractical just a few years ago. Two important cautions regarding
data-driven decision making are worth mentioning here.
1.
Data from standardized tests are not educational goals. The
data we collect are not “ends,” or the reason for doing what we do as
educators. They are means—and not the sole means—that we use to improve student
achievement and increase teacher effectiveness. Standardized test scores are
the signposts we consult periodically during our journey. They are useful
markers that can tell us some things about our journey, but they are neither
the journey nor the destination. In
fact, if we think about standardized tests as large directional signposts, then
learning targets and success criteria are the mile makers that help students,
teachers, and principal’s figure out exactly where they are relative to where
they need to be and assess their progress minute by minute during today’s
lesson.
2. All data are not created equal. Standardized tests happen too infrequently to be the sole
data source of decisions about how to raise student achievement and improve
teacher effectiveness. The decisions
that matter most are the one made by the students themselves in partnership
with their teacher during each lesson. Standardized test scores always give
an incomplete picture of what is happening in the classroom. A learning target theory of action, on the
other hand, reveals exactly what is working during a lesson and what isn’t.
It provides living, breathing indicators that we can use to assess
collaborative, targeted, and goal-driven action.
*The Principal as a Formative Leader
Much
literature on successful leadership practices supports what we are learning
about formative leaders. It underscores our belief that consistent,
well-informed support from educational leaders in general, and the principal in
particular, can have a significant influence on student achievement.
Research tells us that when
principals engage in targeted professional development—specifically, in
interactions with teachers about improving what happens in the classroom—their
leadership is more likely to positively affect teaching and learning. In fact, developing principals’
ability to provide formative feedback to improve classroom practices can be
more important than deepening their specific content knowledge. This is
especially true in middle and secondary schools, where the realities of
multiple disciplines make it highly unlikely that a principal can provide
expert content support for each teacher and each subject. What’s more important is to develop principals who ensure
that strategic instructional practices that raise student achievement are embedded
in each lesson.
Principals
who are able to engage in formative and generative professional discourse with
teachers about how to refine teachers’ instructional practices to raise student
achievement are principals who see themselves as competent to do so. We refer
to this sense of confidence as positive self-efficacy,
and research tells us that leaders who measure high in positive self-efficacy
perform much better in leadership situations than do their less-confident
counterparts. What’s more, leaders with high levels of positive self-efficacy
tend to be part of leadership teams that exhibit high levels of positive
collective efficacy—confidence in one another’s competence and in team members’
combined ability to be successful. It’s no wonder that multiple researchers
point to positive self-efficacy as a key variable in understanding how leaders
evaluate themselves in dynamic educational environments. District practices,
including the kind of support that districts provide to principals, can
influence collective efficacy within a district.
*Achievement of What?
Aiming for
achievement means that you are looking for evidence of something. A learning
target theory of action makes that “something,” in today’s lesson and every
lesson, public and visible. In our work with schools, we have found that
educational leaders play a pivotal role in the conceptual shift promoted by
this theory of action. Formative leadership can move a district from a focus on
teacher-centered instructional objectives to a focus on learning targets an
success criteria that both students and adults use to understand, assess, and
advance their own learning. Indeed, our experience and the experiences of the
educational leaders we are privileged to work with tell us that this conceptual
shift is a game changer.
For this
conceptual shift to take root, three
layers of change must take place.
Layer 1: TO LEAD THEIR SCHOOLS USING
A LEARNING TARGET THEORY OF ACTION, ADMINISTRATORS MUST ASSUME THE ROLE OF THE
LEADING LEARNER. Our
theory of action promotes a learning-focused rather than an instruction-focused
school culture. In a learning-focused culture, the adults in the school see themselves
as intentional learners who view their buildings and classrooms as living
laboratories in which they increase their knowledge and skill to foster student
learning. The educational administrator functions as the principal learner, leading
the learning of students, teachers, administrators, staff, and members of the
school community. We use the term culture to describe the shared beliefs,
norms, and artifacts of a particular group of people. Learning targets promote
a cultural change from teacher-centered, evaluative beliefs and normative
practices to a collective theory of action that centers on what students
believe and know and uses what students are actually doing to learn as the
standards. That cultural change can’t happen in only one classroom in a
building.
**The culture of a building or
district doesn’t change without its leaders. Administrators need to lead by example,
provide feedback that feeds forward, see themselves as the leading leaders in
the district, and treat teachers as co-learners. That’s why our learning target
theory of action promotes a culture of collaborative learning in which
administrators, teachers, and students “co-labor”—work together—to raise
student achievement.
Layer 2: TO COMMIT TO A LEARNING TARGET THEORY OF
ACTION, ADMINISTRATORS NEED TO LOOK FOR AND ANALYZE WHAT STUDENTS ARE ACTUALLY
DOING AND LEARNING IN THEIR BUILDINGS’ CLASSROOMS. Evidence of student learning helps
leaders analyze what is working in their districts, lesson by lesson and for
specific teachers, groups of teachers, or buildings. As administrators sharpen
their focus on learning targets, they ramp up their own professional learning
and commitment by recognizing what students are being asked to do to learn and
produce evidence of their achievement. This focus contrasts with the more conventional
supervisor’s visit to a classroom to observe teaching behavior. During the
traditional observation, administrators audit “student engagement”—usually
defined as being busy and complying with a teacher’s requests.
*If school leaders want teachers to
adopt a learning target theory of action, they must intentionally learn
about it, commit to it, and model it themselves. They must
critique their own ability to use specific, learning-focused language to
describe what effectiveness, and provide feed-forward information to teachers
while they still have time to act on it. In this way, they help teachers set more
challenging short-term and long-range goals that benefit all students.
Layer 3: TO KNOW WHAT TO LOOK FOR AND
ANALYZE IN CLASSROOMS, ADMINISTRATORS NEED TO UNDERSTAND A LEARNING TARGET
THEORY OF ACTION AT A DEEP LEVEL THEMSELVES. To support a learning target theory of action,
administrators need to be especially skillful at observing students working and
interpreting what’s going on with their learning. Is what they are doing
leading to increased understanding and producing compelling evidence of that
understanding? As leading learners, school leaders should be partnering with
teachers to look for and share examples of expert teaching that positively
affects student learning. In other words, before educational leaders can
promote a learning target theory of action, they must make the shift
themselves, clarifying their own view of what they accept as evidence that all
students are learning and achieving to their potential.
As
I’ve said each week, this is a great book with a lot of examples, tables and
charts that I’m not including in the post. At the end of the book there is a “Action Tool” section. I highly recommend
that you purchase a copy of the book for further information and study.
I
hope you have learned as much as I have and will put Learning Targets into
practice.
Vicky
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