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The
Professional Development and Education Equity Branch designed Creating
Conditions for Powerful Learning in response to requests by DoDEA
educators to resume systemic staff development opportunities. The
structure of Creating Conditions for Powerful Learning offers modules
or courses of study based upon the latest research in curriculum standards
and instructional strategies. The content is correlated to desired
teacher performance competencies.
Presently seven courses of study
are offered: Feedback, Assessment, Standards-Based Lesson Design,
Questioning, Making Connections, Making Sense, and Creating New
Understanding. The purpose of Creating Conditions is to offer educators
the beginnings of on-going school based staff development focused
on the growth plan needs of the school. The intent of this program
is to build capacity within a school for on-going embedded staff
development. A summary of each course of study follows:
Feedback
This module identifies components of effective feedback, including
framing feedback with clear, public criteria for success, having
multiple sources of feedback, teaching students to self-assess,
and finding opportunities for students to refine and revise their
work based on feedback.
Assessment
Depending on their purpose for assessment, teachers will want to
use different assessments. This module examines how assessment can
be embedded in instruction to improve performance and allow students
to develop and demonstrate understanding. Participants explore and
develop performance tasks as a way of assessing student understanding.
Designing Standards-Based Units
for Understanding
Participants continue to explore the concept of "understanding"
by examining how to design units of learning for students. The unit
design uses a "backward design" process. The process identifies
the standard to be addressed, the big understanding and essential
questions for the unit, the evidence and process for assessing understanding,
and then the selection of appropriate learning activities.
Questioning for Understanding
This module helps teachers identify the levels of thinking they
would like to promote and the questions that generate that level
of thinking. It also explores how to improve the quality of the
interactions in the classroom. In addition to improving teacher
questions, the module examines ways to encourage students to ask
questions that enfranchise them into the discourse process.
Making Connections
When students access information, they connect new ideas and concepts
to what they already know. This module examines how teachers can
help students connect new information to prior knowledge and experiences,
enhance or create prior knowledge when little exists, and help students
set a purpose for learning. Using these conditions to teach students
to make connections focuses students as they approach new information.
Making Sense
In order to make sense of new information, students must interact
with the information in some way. This module examines the kind
of thinking that allows students to make sense out of new information.
When students represent information in another form, they begin
to understand ideas and concepts. Participants explore ways students
can represent information in order to make sense.
Creating New Understanding
The process of integrating old and new information to create a new
understanding is not a simple one. Learners resist changing prior
knowledge when new information conflicts with what was previously
understood. Using problem-based learning, this module examines ways
teachers can provide learning situations that are most conducive
to students being able to integrate old and new information and
apply information to demonstrate new understanding.
In addition to the above courses of study, a number of Study Group
Packets have been designed for teacher use to further enhance, extend
and support the learning initiated within the basic courses of study.
They are:
Metacognition (120 minutes)
Performance Tasks (120 minutes)
Looking at Student Work (120 minutes)
Rubrics (90 minutes)
Peer Observation & Cognitive Coaching (90 minutes)
History of Creating Conditions for Powerful Learning to date:
In February of 2000,
all of the schools on the island of Okinawa studied Feedback
as it pertained to teachers, students and administrators. To
further achieve the element of site-based staff development, in
the summer of 2000, 31 educators were trained as "trainers"
for their districts in the first four modules of Creating Conditions
for Powerful Learning. Various staff development opportunities occurred
in the school year 2000-2001 within Pacific, Europe and DDESS by
these in-school trainers. In the summer of 2001, Part 2 of Creating
Conditions for Powerful Learning, will occur for those educators
involved in the 2000 summer training. During the 2001 summer,
seven teams of five educators from the Pacific area will undergo
training in Feedback, Assessment, Designing Standards-Based Units
for Understanding, and Questioning for Understanding. These
teams will be responsible for replicating this training in their
schools based upon needs and school improvement plans.
Support Information
for Creating Conditions for Powerful Learning for those who have
studied one or more of the modules may be accessed via the following
links:
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