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Although professional development (PD) programs often use video, extraneous information during video viewing can distract teachers. We developed a discourse visualization tool, the Classroom Discou...

This chapter is concerned with the role of meaning and understanding in the acquisition of computational skill. Until quite recently, discussions of meaningfulness in arithmetic learning have been characterized by a confrontation between those who advocate learning algorithms and those who argue for learning basic concepts. This confrontation, however, is neither necessary nor fruitful. In fact, it serves to direct attention away from the ways in which understanding and procedural skill may mutually support and influence one another.

We employ Sfard’s (Thinking as communicating, 2008) “ritual towards exploration” idea to theorize the learning trajectory of two middle school teachers attending a professional development (PD) program designed around the 5 Practices for Orchestrating Productive Discussions and Accountable Talk. Data included four cycles of lesson recordings, including pre- and post-lesson interviews as well as recordings of all PD sessions. We operationalize ritual engagement in the teaching practices as rigid imitation of practices observed in the PD session and incoherence between teaching actions and underlying goals, whereas explorative engagement was characterized by flexibility and finer attunement of the practices to the context and to students’ needs. The development from ritual to explorative participation could be seen both in the practice of task selection and in the practice of orchestrating mathematical discussions. The change is exemplified on two lessons, recorded two months apart from each other.

It is nearly impossible today to discuss education without considering testing and evaluation. In the opening article of this volume, professors Baird, Andrich, Hopfenbeck and Stobart (2017) lay ou...

This chapter discusses how learning outcomes can be improved by focusing educational systems on developing expertise in reasoning. A small but growing body of international research suggests that a wide variety of students can develop expertise in argumentation, and by extension, expertise in reasoning. Studies show that argument-based classroom talk can lead to the acquisition and retention of general knowledge, beyond the topics taught through discussion. The chapter considers how teachers develop expertise in this form of teaching, often called “dialogic,” and outline some of the challenges to spreading dialogic teaching beyond elite classrooms. It looks at how systems build organizational expertise to support dialogic teaching and learning, which involves considering the social and institutional structures within which teachers work. Finally, in a discussion of future research in this field, the chapter calls for engaging all levels of the educational system in supporting practices that will grow powerful learning.

Students enter learning situations (informal and formal alike) with a wealth of knowledge, skill and expertise with which to engage in new learning experiences. However, in dialogic science discussions, many students do not call on these resources to engaging in discussion, and some students rarely participate. In this paper, we introduce a hybrid model of agency as a lens to examine the enablers and barriers to students' engagement in dialogic science discussions. We operationalize this model in the analysis of students' participation patterns in whole class discussions and their narratives about experiences in these discussions. The findings show that all students enact agency in discussion, but differences lie in the extent to which students perceive that they can enact agency. We find that social structures that help to create and perpetuate differences in students' sense that they can enact their agency. We discuss the implications of these findings on what teachers can do to support equitable participation in talk in the service of equitable opportunities for learning.

Contents. L.B. Resnick, Introduction. W. Kintsch, Learning from Text. I.L. Beck, M.G. McKeown, Expository Text for Young Readers: The Issue of Coherence. G. Leinhardt, Development of an Expert Explanation: An Analysis of a Sequence of Subtraction Lessons. R. Gelman, J.G. Greeno, On the Understanding of Competence: Principles for Understanding in a Domain. P. Nesher, Microworlds in Mathematical Education: A Pedagogical Realism. J.F. Voss, J. Blais, M.L. Means, T.R. Greene, E. Ahwesh, Informal Reasoning and Subject Matter Knowledge in the Solving of Economics Problems by Naive and Novice Individuals. M.T.H. Chi, M. Bassok, Learning from Examples Via Self- Explanations. J.H. Larkin, What Kind of Knowledge Transfers? C.A. Perfetti, There Are Generalized Abilities and One of Them Is Reading. A. Lesgold, J. Ivill-Friel, J. Bonar, Toward Intelligent Systems for Testing. C. Bereiter, M. Scardamalia, Intentional Learning as a Goal of Instruction. A.L. Brown, A.S. Palincsar, Guided, Cooperative, and Individual Knowledge Acquisition. A. Collins, J.S. Brown, S.E. Newman, Cognitive Apprenticeship: Teaching the Crafts of Reading, Writing, and Mathematics.

We now understand that human intelligence, once thought to be determined almost solely by heredity, is malleable. In developed countries, average intelligence test scores have increased substantially since the tests began to be administered 100 years ago. In school settings, however, intelligence is often still treated as a fixed attribute that limits many students' ability to learn. We argue that schools can and should create intelligence. A body of research has now shown that participating in certain forms of discussion-based instruction can lead to gains in performance, not only in the subject taught, but also in other, distant domains. This means that schools can actually ‘grow the mind.’ Here, we look at a few powerful examples of dialogic teaching and learning, and discuss some of the implications for the future of education.

An inquiry attempted to build an agenda for research that would result in _a cognitive theory of instruction capable of informing educational practice and extending the limits of knowledge about how people learn and develop. What would such a theory look like, how close are we to having one, and what directions must be followed to further its development are among the questions explored. A brief history is presented of psychological theories of instruction from the viewpoints of E. L. Thorndike, B. F. Skinner, Gestalt psychology, and Piaget. It is pointed out that a cognitive theory of instruction must be both descriptive (explaining why instruction works and why it does not) and prescriptive (suggesting what to do next time for better results). Within this framework, three components of such a theory of instruction are described and analyzed: (1) specification of capabilities to be acquired; (2) description of the acquisition processes; and (3) principles of intervention. (JD) *********************************************************************** Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made from the original document. ***********************************************************************

In this chapter, we describe the evolution of an intermediary organization, the Institute for Learning (IFL) at the University of Pittsburgh, devoted to improving teaching and learning in some of America's largest and most challenged school districts. Over the nearly 20 years of IFL's life, we have learned that design-based researchers have to move beyond classrooms and focus on entire school systems if they hope their innovations will scale and sustain. Specifically, we believe the best way to develop capacity for sustaining innovation is through the careful design of practices intended to provide an ongoing forum for mutual engagement among actors from various levels of the education system. These practices, we have found, provide a productive way for actors from different levels of the system to understand and support the local activity of other levels.

It is widely recognized today that a teacher’s surrounding professional community inevitably affects the kind of teaching that students are offered. However, until recently, it has been difficult to quantify and systematically study the nature of professional relationships in schools and districts. The articles in this special issue provide a much-needed collection of techniques to study the complex social interactions, or lack thereof, that shape teachers’ professional communities. We relate the interactions described in the articles to our own experience working with and in nested learning organizations. Our intent is to illustrate how policies and procedures at any level can either enable or constrain actions at adjacent levels.

This study investigates the influence of a school’s pre-existing social resources on the implementation of a comprehensive literacy-coaching program (Content-Focused Coaching [CFC]). Elementary schools were randomly assigned to receive a CFC-trained coach ( n = 15 schools) or to continue with the literacy coaching resources that are standard for the district ( n = 14 schools). Ninety-six fourth- and fifth-grade teachers participated in the study ( n = 63 CFC and n = 33 comparison). Survey results indicate that teachers in the CFC schools participated more frequently in the coaching activities that emphasized planning and reflecting on instruction, enacting instruction, and building knowledge of the theories underlying effective reading comprehension instruction compared to teachers in the comparison schools. After 1 year, teachers strongly believed that CFC coaching helped improve their instructional practice. Principal leadership was the key resource supporting implementation of the program positively predicting greater teacher participation in coaching activities and perceived usefulness of these activities along with coaches’ training in the CFC program and less experienced teachers. Unexpectedly, a school’s pre-existing culture of teacher collaboration negatively predicted teachers’ coaching experiences. CFC coach interviews contribute to understanding the interactions of social resources within schools that facilitated or hindered program implementation. Implications for the design and implementation of effective instructional coaching policies in districts are discussed.

The 21st century will require knowledge and skill well beyond the basic levels of reading and arithmetic that American schools know how to produce more or less reliably. Delivering a “thinking curriculum” to all American students requires major reform in the ways schools and districts organize their work. The transformation of the institution of schooling that will be needed to make this aspirational goal a real achievement is daunting. This article examines cognitive science, systems engineering, and social science concepts that are pointing toward a new foundation for policies and practices that may radically improve the proportion of students who can achieve true 21st-century skills.

Classroom discussion practices that can lead to reasoned participation by all students are presented and described by the authors. Their research emphasizes the careful orchestration of talk and tasks in academic learning. Parallels are drawn to the philosophical work on deliberative discourse and the fundamental goal of equipping all students to participate in academically productive talk. These practices, termed Accountable TalkSM, emphasize the forms and norms of discourse that support and promote equity and access to rigorous academic learning. They have been shown to result in academic achievement for diverse populations of students. The authors outline Accountable Talk as encompassing three broad dimensions: one, accountability to the learning community, in which participants listen to and build their contributions in response to those of others; two, accountability to accepted standards of reasoning, talk that emphasizes logical connections and the drawing of reasonable conclusions; and, three, accountability to knowledge, talk that is based explicitly on facts, written texts, or other public information. With more than fifteen years research into Accountable Talk applications across a wide range of classrooms and grade levels, the authors detail the challenges and limitations of contexts in which discourse norms are not shared by all members of the classroom community.

Psaltis, C., & Duveen, G. (2006). Social relations and cognitive development: The influence of conversation types and representations of gender. European Journal of Social Psychology. Psaltis, C., & Duveen, G. (in press). Conversation types and conservation: Forms of recogni tion and cognitive development. British Journal of Developmental Psychology. Rommetveit, R. (1990). On axiomatic features of a dialogue approach to language and mind. In I. Markovi & K Foppa (Eds.), The dynamics of dialogue (pp. 83-104). New York: Harvester. Schubauer-Leoni, M.-L., & Grossen, M. (1993). Negotiating the meaning of questions in didactic and experimental contracts. European Journal of Psychology of Education, 8, 451-471. Schubauer-Leoni, M.-L., & Perret-Clermont, A.-N. (1997). Social interactions and math ematics learning. In P. Bryant & T. Nunes (Eds.), Learning and teaching mathematics. An international perspective (pp. 265-283). Hove, England: Psychology Press. Tryphon, A., & Voneche,J. (1996). Piaget-Vygotsky: The social genesis of thought. Hove, England: Erlbaum and Psychology Press. Valsiner,J. (1992). Making of the future: Temporality and the constructive nature of human development. In G. Turkewitz & G. Devenney (Eds.), Time and timing in development (pp. 13-40). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. Valsiner, J. (1998). The guided mind. A sociogenetic approach to personality. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Valsiner,J. (2000). Culture and human development. London: Sage. Valsiner, J. (2003). Beyond social representations: A theory of enablement. Papers on Social Representations, 12, 7.1-7.16. Retrieved October 2, 2004, from http://www.psrjku.at. Verba, M., & Winnykamen, F. (1992). Expert-novice interaction: influence of partner status. European Journal of Psychology of Education, 7, 61-71. Zittoun, T., Duveen, G., Gillespie, A., Ivinson, G., & Psaltis, C. (2003). The use of symbolic resources in developmental transitions. Culture &Psychology, 9, 415-448. Zittoun, T., Cornish, F., Gillespie, A., & Psaltis, C. (in press). Disentangling triangles: The development of subject, other, object and sign. Human Development. Zittoun, T., & Perret-Clermont, A.-N. (in press). Four social psychological lenses for devel opmental psychology. Paper for a special issue of International Reviewv of Social Psychology, T. Leonova (Ed.). Zittoun, T., Perret-Clermont, A.-N., & Carugati, F. (1997). Note sur la notion de conflit sociocognitif [A note on the notion of socio-cognitive conflict]. Cahiers de Psychologie, 33, 27-30.

Standards-based education has now reached a stage where it is possible to evaluate its overall effectiveness. Several earlier papers in the special issue of Educational Measurement: Issues and Practice on “Test Scores and State Accountability” (Volume 24, Number 4) examined specific state policies and their effects on schools and students. This paper provides a context for understanding state accountability policies by briefly sketching the history of America's standards movement. It then situates the findings of the four special issue papers in the context of theories of how state policies exert their influence, focusing on school capacity building, governmental authority, and educator motivation. Broader forms of assessment may be needed to meet the goals of the standards effort. Several kinds of evidence that could better ground state decisions in knowledge of the actual functioning of schools and districts are suggested.

This study examined the quality of classroom talk and its relation to academic rigor in reading-comprehension lessons. Additionally, the study aimed to characterize effective questions to support rigorous reading comprehension lessons. The data for this study included 21 reading-comprehension lessons in several elementary and middle schools from three urban school districts. Quantitative analyses showed that students' demonstration of knowledge and thinking talk moves during the discussion had strong, positive relationships with the level of the rigor in the lesson. Qualitatively, the lesson transcripts were closely examined to find characteristics of teachers' questions that engage students in high-level thinking. This study also discussed implications for effective questioning in classroom.

The success of standards-based education systems depends on 2 elements: strong standards, and assessments that measure what the standards expect. States that have or adopt test-based accountability programs claim that their tests are aligned to their standards. But there has been up to now no independent methodology for checking alignment. This article describes and illustrates such a methodology and reports results on a sample of state tests. In general, although individual items align quite well with some standard, the tests as a whole are not well aligned. With few exceptions, the collections of items that make up the tests that we examined do not do a good job of assessing the full range of standards and objectives that states have laid out for their students. This misalignment can have serious consequences for instruction and for the validity of test results.

In this paper, we explore student dropout behavior in a Massively Open Online Course (MOOC). We use a survival model to measure the impact of three social factors that make predictions about attrition along the way for students who have participated in the course discussion forum.

For decades, research on children's literacy has been dominated by questions of how children learn to read. Especially among Anglophone scholars, cognitive and psycholinguistic research on reading has been the only approach to studying written language education. Echoing this, debates on methods of teaching children to read have long dominated the educational scene. This book presents an alternative view. In recent years, writing has emerged as a central aspect of becoming literate. Research in cognitive psychology has shown that writing is a highly complex activity involving a degree of planning unknown in everyday conversational uses of language. At the same time, developmental studies have revealed that when young children are asked to "write," they show a surprisingly sophisticated understanding of the representational constraints of alphabetic writing systems. They show this understanding long before they can read conventional writing on their own. The rich structure of meanings involved in the word text provided the glue that brought together a group of scholars from several disciplines in an international workshop held in Rome. Reflecting the state of the field at the time, the majority of the workshop participants were scholars working in languages other than English, especially the romance languages. Their work mirrors a linguistic and psychological research tradition that Anglophone scholars knew little of until recently. This volume provides English-language readers with updated versions of the papers presented at the meeting. The topics discussed at the workshop are represented in the chapters as follows: * the relationship between acquisition of language and familiarity with written texts; * the reciprocal "permeability" between spoken and written language; * the initial phases of text construction by children; and * the educational conditions that facilitate written language acquisition and writing practice.

A good deal of research has addressed the topic of naive physics knowledge, with a focus on the physics domain of classical mechanics. In particular, it has been proposed that novices enter into instruction with an existing, well-defined knowledge base that they have derived from their everyday experiences. Most relevant initial knowledge will be substance based, in the sense that it represents the novice's understanding of how material objects and other types of substances behave in the course of everyday life. Our position is that novices make every effort to assimilate new physics knowledge into their initial knowledge structures. Thus, abstract physics concepts will tend to be attributed with properties or behaviors of material substances. For example, force is considered by many novices to be a property of moving objects. Novices also appear to draw on their substance knowledge when they are asked to reason about other abstract concepts, such as light, heat, and electricity. Many researchers have exp...

This research investigates the rational quality of students' discussion of literary texts. An ideal model of dialogue contexts is presented and compared with 12 fourth-grader peer discussions of literature at 2 different periods during the course of 1 academic year. Six groups consisting of 3 students each were videotaped while they discussed a novel previously read aloud and discussed with their teacher in class. The collaborative reasoning capabilities of these students were analyzed using a graphical coding system coupled with an analysis of the literary content ofthe students' argumentation. The 2 analyses were matched with the dialogue contexts and used to identify some important features that foster productive dialogue in children's discussions of literature.

Recently, standards have become the currency of education reform efforts in the U.S. However, there is no international consensus on what constitutes “world-class” education. The New Standards Project has designed research to describe standards in other countries by using the case-study approach of ethnography to collect data (e.g., curricula, texts, exams, student work, and professional views). The review/analysis of the data is organized by a set of fundamental questions, the answers to which constitute a contextualized account of what students are expected to know and be able to do.

Many have argued for the importance of numeracy, yet little is known about the opportunities for numeracy presented to people in their daily lives. In this study, we analyzed and compared the characteristics of rational numbers in magazines written for children, teenagers, and adults. Our analysis indicates that difficult mathematical concepts that appear in the media, such as fractions, percents, and averages, are much more prevalent in adults' magazines than in those written for children and teenagers. Adults are often presented with rational numbers that are related to each other. Numbers in teenagers' texts do not appear to form a transition to those found in adults' texts, despite the fact that through formal schooling teenagers have covered all the mathematical concepts that are frequently found in adults' texts. Implications for preparing students for the numeracy demands of everyday life are discussed.