2. Acknowledgements
Bob Bain Vicki Haviland
Hyman Bass Pat Herbst
Tim Boerst Joe Krajcik
Tabbye Chavous Pamela Moss
Betsy Davis Annemarie Palincsar
Donald Freeman Cathy Reischl
Lauren McArthur Harris Lesley Rex
Teresa McMahon Laurie Sleep
2
3. The problem
• Calls for teacher educa;on to be more focused on prac;ce an
increasingly common refrain
• Some work underway to iden;fy focal prac;ces for teacher
educa;on, in general and in specific subject‐areas, and to
design TE around them
• But to date, we have not created a common language for
talking about the core elements of the work of teaching or
focused TE on that work in detail
• LiTle knowledge exists about what the challenges of this kind
of design work would be
3
5. Overview
1. A short exercise: What is challenging about
trying to iden;fy focal prac;ces for teacher
educa;on?
2. Five problems inherent in making prac;ce the
centerpiece of teacher educa;on
3. An example: Iden;fying “high‐leverage”
prac;ces at the University of Michigan
4. Addi;onal problems
5
6. Consider some of the foci of
pilot training:
• Conduc;ng a preflight inspec;on
• Glassy‐water approach and landing
• Normal and cross‐wind approach and landing
• Straight turns and climbing turns
• Effec;ve visual scanning
• Runway incursion avoidance
• Crossed control stalls
• S‐turns across a road
6
7. . . . or of medical training
e.g., Conduct a chest examina;on:
• Observe respiratory efforts and note presence/
absence of respiratory distress
• Confirm midline tracheal posi;on with gentle
palpa;on anteriorally
• Percuss the chest on lef and right
• Ascultate the chest using using the diaphragm
of the stethoscope on both right and lef sides
7
9. No equivalent in teaching
• Objec;ves for coursework and for student
teaching and other clinical experiences lack
similarly precise professionally‐determined and
agreed‐upon learning objec;ves
• Performance expecta;ons for graduates of
teacher educa;on underspecified and weakly
assessed
9
11. The challenge
Professionals working toward prac3ce‐focused teacher educa3on
would need to manage at least five inherent problems:
1. Specify and develop consensus around the core tasks and
ac;vi;es of teaching
2. Choose the elements of prac;ce most necessary for entrants
to the profession
3. Ar;culate those elements at an effec;ve grain‐size
4. Manage the general and subject‐specific aspects of teaching
prac;ce
5. Manage the context‐specific nature of prac;ce
11
13. 2. Choosing elements most important for
competent beginning prac0ce
• Given vast scope of teaching prac;ce and brevity
of professional training, what is most important?
• Are some aspects of prac;ce fundamental to
more advanced elements?
• Are there elements of prac;ce that are best or
only learned through formal training (rather than
experience)?
• What makes a “safe” beginner?
13
14. 3. Ar0cula0ng core prac0ces
at an effec0ve grain‐size
• How to decompose the intricate prac;ce of
teaching into parts that are small enough to be
learnable but are s;ll meaningful?
• Does it maTer if core prac;ces are of different
“grain‐sizes”?
• What to do about prac;ces that cut across
mul;ple elements of instruc;onal work?
14
15. 4. Managing the general and the subject‐
specific aspects of teaching
• How does the work of teaching differ from one
subject to the next?
• Are there prac;ces that all elementary teachers,
all secondary teachers, or all K‐12 teachers need
to be able to do, independent of their field?
• What are the subject‐specific prac;ces that are
most important for beginners?
• How can we manage with the lack of a common
K‐12 curriculum in the U.S.?
15
16. 5. Managing the context‐specific nature of
instruc0onal prac0ce
• How does context interact with a given teaching
prac;ce?
• How can we account for that interac;on in
teacher educa;on, par;cularly given the diversity
of instruc;onal contexts in the United States?
16
18. “High‐leverage” prac0ces
• Have significant power in teaching because they:
• Are central to the daily work of teaching
• Make much more likely that teaching will be
effec;ve for students’ learning
• Essen;al; if teachers cannot discharge them well,
they will face significant problems
• Fundamental to the development of more
complex prac;ce
18
19. Considera0ons for iden0fying
“high‐leverage” prac0ces
• Drew on research on teaching
• Drew on recent design work in teacher
educa;on, most of it in specific school subject‐
areas (Ball, Sleep, Boerst, & Bass, 2009; Franke &
Chan, 2009; Hatch & Grossman, 2009)
• Created and veTed our own list
19
20. Examples of considera0ons
Considera3ons central to the prac3ce of teaching:
• High probability of making a difference in
teaching quality and effec;veness
• Effec;ve in using and managing differences
among pupils
• Useful broadly across contexts and content
Considera3ons central to teacher educa3on:
• Can be assessed
• Can be taught to beginners
20
21. Iden0fying
high‐leverage prac0ces
• Used considera;ons to iden;fy list of 88 poten;al
HLPs
• Bundled or further decomposed items to achieve
a shorter list that highlights a range of crucial
features of the work of teaching
21
22. Examples of
high‐leverage prac0ces
• Explaining ideas and processes
• Choosing and using representa;ons, examples,
and models of core content
• Sepng up and managing small‐group work
• Recognizing and iden;fying common paTerns of
student thinking in a content domain
• Selec;ng and using specific methods to assess
students’ learning on an on‐going basis
• Conduc;ng a mee;ng with a parent or caregiver
22
23. Next steps
• Choose content for learning the HLPs, given that the
U.S. has no common curriculum
• Incorporate aTen;on to cross‐cupng issues such as
equity, language, and learning
• Determine the specific kinds of instruc;onal ac;vi;es
and clinical sepngs will help novices learn the HLPs?
• Designing assessments of novices’ ability to perform
the HLPs
• Valida;ng the HLPs (and assessments) against
students’ learning gains
23
