Читать книгу Instructional Agility - Cassandra Erkens - Страница 8

| INTRODUCTION

I was going to put my move to the test, to see if it was real. It had to be real if it worked on the greatest player to ever play the game.

—Allen Iverson

On March 12, 1997, as future Hall of Fame basketball player Allen Iverson’s rookie season in Philadelphia was drawing to a close, his 76ers were at home facing the reigning National Basketball Association champion Chicago Bulls. The Bulls were led by Michael Jordan, not just the best player in the league in 1997, but the player whom many considered to be the greatest basketball player of all time. Chicago would end the 1996–1997 season with sixty-nine wins and only thirteen losses, while Philadelphia would manage just twenty-two wins against sixty losses. The Bulls would go on to win not only the March 12 matchup 108–104 but also the 1996–1997 NBA championship.

However, for Iverson, the March 12 game was all about a moment, not who won or lost. During the second half of this closely fought game, Iverson would take a handoff on the left side of the court and dribble to the top of the three-point line; it was here he found himself one on one with none other than Michael Jordan. This was not the first time they had faced each other (this was their third meeting of the year), but this night was going to be different. Iverson would do something that few had ever done and that would cement his reputation as one of the most lethal offensive players in the NBA.

For those with little to no basketball acumen, here is some background on that moment, starting with a crossover dribble. The crossover dribble is effective because the offensive player makes no advanced decision to attack but simply reacts to what the defender does. In essence, the art of the crossover dribble is for the offensive player to make the defensive player think he or she is going in one direction, only to have him or her attack in the other. If the defensive player overcommits in one direction, the offensive player reacts, dribbles the ball to the opposite hand (crossover), and attacks the basket, trying to score or at least pass to another open teammate. The offensive player must, with some nimbleness, read the situation and immediately respond with quickness and agility; without the agility to adjust, the initial move (having the defender overcommit) is wasted since there will be time for the defender to recover.

The key is not just the ability to dribble the ball from one hand to the other—all NBA players can do that—but the ability to dribble with athletic agility and the ability to read the situation and make a real-time decision about when to pause, when to fake, and when to attack at maximum speed and intensity.

This athletic agility paid off during the game. When Iverson reached the top of the three-point line, he took two dribbles with his left hand, crossed to his right, sent the ball back through his legs to his left, dribbled once more on his left, and then attacked. Iverson dribble-faked to the left (Jordan moved with it), crossed to his right hand (Jordan recovered), paused, and then dribble-faked again to his left (this time Jordan overcommitted), crossed over back to his right (Jordan couldn’t recover), pulled up from twenty feet and hit the jump shot!

Now, being the greatest of all time, Michael Jordan almost recovered to block the shot (which few could do), but he didn’t. So, while Jordan was considered a smothering defender, Iverson was able to use his quickness and athletic agility to create the necessary space to hit the shot. Many pundits and former players still consider this moment to be the greatest crossover dribble in the history of the NBA.

Instructional Agility

There are, of course, many differences between what happens on a basketball court and what happens in classrooms, but both environments require real-time decisions. When teachers use emerging evidence to make real-time decisions during instruction within the context of the learning they expect, they are demonstrating instructional agility. In many ways, teachers’ best moves are tested every day against precise and exacting standards mixed with the social and political demands for the growth of all students toward proficiency. Limited time is the reality of all school systems. So, despite the fact that educators know learning is never final in the abstract, all school years come to an end. This means there is an inherent competition between students and the standards, not among students. Therefore, a teacher’s ability to be instructionally agile on behalf of each student is critical to support his or her continual learning.

Whether at the classroom or school level, teachers can realize assessment’s true power when emerging results determine what comes next in the learning. Assessment is the practice of gathering information about student learning; how educators use that information is what distinguishes formative from summative assessment. Teachers use assessment information formatively when it guides instructional decisions. At its most organic, intimate level, assessment information allows teachers to make those instructional decisions at a moment’s notice; that’s instructional agility.

Being athletically agile means one can move quickly and easily without interruption; being instructionally agile means essentially the same thing. Making quick yet thoughtful decisions about what comes next is the real power of assessment in the service of learning. Like basketball players, teachers know what they want to do but can’t necessarily forge ahead without assessing the possibilities. Certainly teachers with experience, and those who have intentionally created activities that lend themselves to quick instructional transitions, can plan ahead for anticipated responses. Understanding the typical errors students make can assist in preplanning the potential paths forward, but there is always the chance of an unanticipated outcome. Willingness paired with readiness, and precision paired with flexibility, allow teachers to develop the nimbleness required to maximize the impact of instruction.

Assessment and Standards-Based Learning

Since the late 1990s, education has seen an acceleration of research on formative assessment (Black, 2013) and the near unanimous conclusion that formative assessment and feedback are an essential part of improving student achievement (Ruiz-Primo & Li, 2013). While teachers have always used assessment to judge student performance, classroom assessment in the 2000s and beyond has seen an infusion of assessment for learning—assessment not used to judge, grade, or score, but assessment to identify what comes next.

The inertia of the standards movement throughout the 1990s brought about a renewed interest in formative assessment. As schools explored the most favorable courses of action for having students meet the identified standards, formative assessment emerged as the most effective and efficient manner through which to expedite learning. To be clear, the idea of formative assessment was not new; what was new was the impressive potential of formative assessment practices within the standards-based instructional paradigm.

Paul Black and Dylan Wiliam (1998) report that using assessment strategies to guide instruction through descriptive (rather than evaluative) feedback could bring about unrivaled achievement gains, with the lowest achievers benefitting the most. This pivotal moment accelerated the growth in formative assessment studies and produced an aligned position that when schools use assessment formatively, they can close the gap between where a student is and where the standards expect him or her to be (Chappuis, 2014; Heritage, 2010; Sadler, 1989). More than ever, educators now understand how they can carry out assessment during the instructional process to improve both teaching and learning (Shepard et al., 2005), and how it can create a more efficient, effective path to proficiency (Heritage, 2010; Popham, 2008).

Standards represent a clear vision or outcome for what students are to achieve at the end of the instructional experience, which means teachers can now create clearer pathways to proficiency. By unpacking standards (which means deconstructing standards by identifying the learning targets that form the instructional scaffolding necessary to achieve the entire standard), teachers create learning progressions that allow students to see, with much greater transparency, what it takes to reach expected performance levels. Of course, educators have always associated assessment with measurement, and certainly formative assessment is a kind of measurement. However, efforts to gather formative evidence lead educators to intentionally shift to qualitative assessment (descriptive information about misconceptions and next steps). This balances the already embedded quantitative purpose (numbers and data that represent certain levels of proficiency—these data often tell what and who, but not so much the why or what’s next).

Distracted by Data

Educators have, however, lost a little focus. While current assessment practices and tools demand a more sophisticated approach to classroom assessment, the shadow of the accountability movement has arguably diverted too much attention to quantifying every instructional moment. Teachers create formative assessment experiences that resemble a summative that “doesn’t count.” This happens when teachers use points on every assessment and make policies that make summative assessments worth more points and formative assessments worth fewer. Students perceive that those formative assessments, the important moments of practice, “don’t count” because teachers simply don’t add points in the gradebook. This distraction also occurs when every moment of assessment interrupts the learning progression. In other words, the teacher has to stop teaching in order to conduct a formative event. The impact of a teacher’s instruction will not reach its full potential through a series of events that intentionally disconnect assessment from instruction. The first half of the formative assessment equation is timing these assessments within the instructional flow.

The second half of the formative assessment equation is quality feedback that identifies what’s next for the student (Hattie, 2012). The research on effective feedback is rich, long-standing, and makes it clear that feedback in the absence of grades, scores, and levels is most impactful (Butler, 1988; Hattie & Timperley, 2007). In essence, grades and scores actually have the potential to neutralize the impact of educators’ feedback because students either determine feedback to be unnecessary (when they achieve a satisfactory result) or undesirable or overwhelming (when they achieve an unsatisfactory result). Without a productive student response, feedback ceases to be effective (Kluger & DeNisi; 1996; Wiliam, 2011).

To be sure, data play an essential role in guiding a teacher’s instructional decisions as well as determining the effectiveness of his or her instructional maneuvers and the overall general program when examined over time. The reference to data as a distraction is not a dismissal of the important process of tracking student learning. Individual classroom assessments, common assessments, interim benchmark assessments, and even large-scale assessments can provide data points useful for understanding the impact of instruction and can lead to maximizing the available instructional minutes. Data become a distraction when the accumulation of data—not the advancement of learning—is the motive behind planning the instructional activities. There is a place for data, but real-time teaching and learning are responsive to students in the moment, and teachers should not pause to update a spreadsheet.

Assessment as a Verb

At its most organic, assessment is a verb we can infuse within the overall instructional process. Rather than having to stop teaching to conduct a formative assessment (noun), teachers move seamlessly among the moments of instruction, assessment, and feedback; though the lines still exist, they are blurry. The assessment as noun perspective leaves teachers with what appears to be an irreconcilable dilemma: if I’m assessing my students day to day and minute by minute, when am I supposed to teach? Seeing assessment as a noun—as a tangible event—creates the illusion that assessment is synonymous with a stapled package of questions and that assessment and instruction are two separate experiences.

The assessment as verb perspective allows teachers to assess and teach within a fluid instructional cycle where the teacher need not stop to conduct anything. Much like coaches, teachers can keep learning on track in real time and allow for the necessary maneuvers and advice to improve performance at a moment’s notice. There is no moment when coaches are not assessing their athletes; they assess every serve, every tackle, every shot, and every rebound against the level of performance they desire (that is, the standard). In response, coaches provide immediate direction on how to close the gap between what the athlete displays and what they expect. Occasionally a coach will stop practice, however in most cases, he or she provides descriptive instructions during performance and expects the athlete to make the necessary adjustments on the fly. In other words, effective coaches are agile enough to know what needs to happen before the athletes’ next opportunity to perform.

Instructional Agility in Context

Instructional agility does not occur in a vacuum but rather in the context of sound assessment design and execution. In Essential Assessment: Six Tenets for Bringing Hope, Efficacy, and Achievement to the Classroom (Erkens, Schimmer, & Vagle, 2017), we outline a framework through which assessment practices can maximize both cognitive and affective outcomes for students. Instructional agility is one of these six tenets. Each tenet is contingent upon the other five, which means it is essential to understand how each of the other five tenets contributes to a teacher’s ability to be instructionally agile. Figure I.1 outlines the assessment framework.

Figure I.1: The six assessment tenets framework.

Visit go.SolutionTree.com/assessment for a free reproducible version of this figure.

At the center of all six tenets is the building of hope, efficacy, and achievement, which means students emerge from assessment experiences with increased achievement, an increased sense of efficacy, and an increased hopefulness for their potential success going forward. As well, the totality of any teacher’s assessment systems should develop and nurture a culture of learning rather than accumulating points or acquiring grades; grades become a reflection of learning rather than an acquired commodity.

From there, the tenets (and their subsequent practices) work synergistically to maximize the power of assessment within any classroom. For the purposes of this book, it is important to understand how each of the other five tenets contributes to instructional agility, as we have outlined in table I.1.

Table I.1: Instructional Agility and the Other Assessment Tenets

Assessment Tenet	Brief Explanation	Contribution to Instructional Agility
Assessment Purpose	Understanding assessment purpose means having a clear picture of how to use emerging assessment results.	The assessment’s purpose helps clarify what assessment results teachers should use as instruction occurs. Hesitation (or a mixed message) could interfere with the necessary instructional maneuvers and student engagement as students act on feedback they receive during instruction. If the teacher is unclear about the assessment’s purpose, he or she could lead students to care more about completing work than learning from their efforts and improving over time.
Assessment Architecture	Assessment is most effective when those responsible for its delivery purposefully plan it and intentionally sequence it in advance of instruction.	Planning with precision allows for maximum agility in response to emerging assessment evidence. By anticipating the most probable errors in thinking, teachers can plan their responses should those errors emerge. Identifying the most essential learning informs teachers when to make instructional moves to help students go deeper and learn more and what to revisit or let go.
Accurate Interpretation	Interpreting assessment results must be accurate, accessible, and reliable.	Instructional maneuvers are most efficient and effective when teachers accurately interpret assessment results. Clear next steps for individual students and instruction hinge on a teacher’s interpretation, which he or she has generated from students’ actions, dialogue, and work. Recognizing these moments is essential to accurately interpreting and providing the foundation for communicating those next steps.
Communication of Results	Communicating assessment results must generate productive responses from students and all stakeholders who support them.	Communicating results and next steps is essential for students to take immediate action. Opaque communication could cause an unnecessary delay in growth and achievement. Instructionally agile teachers focus on providing and facilitating next steps in learning. They must communicate this type of feedback in a way that inspires students to act and doesn’t shut them down or confuse them.
Student Investment	There is a symbiotic relationship between assessment and self-regulation.	The ultimate goal is for students to be instructionally agile on their own behalf. Through self- and peer assessment they can, at best, be a more readily available source of feedback and guidance for one another.

We explore each of these five tenets in more detail throughout the book. For now, it is important to know that it is the ways in which the tenets interconnect that maximize the power of the classroom assessment experience.

About the Book

We know that you, who are K–12 teachers, instructional coaches, and administrators, will be at varying places in your understanding and assessment practice implementation specific to instructional agility. Some of you might have a noun-like, event-based view of assessment, while others may be further along in intentionally thinking about instructional agility. In this book, we explore the granular use of classroom assessment for instructional purposes, which means moment-to-moment, flexible assessment that occurs at the classroom level. So while we include a few points around grades and scores, as well as interim or large-scale assessments, the primary focus of instructional agility centers on how teachers and students use assessment results within the classroom on a daily basis.

Chapters 1 and 2 are about the culture of learning required to support instructional agility at the classroom level. Chapters 3–6 highlight the specific maneuvers teachers must employ to be agile. Finally, chapter 7 and the “Instructional Agility Manifesto” offer considerations for the beliefs and structures necessary for teachers to engage in the work of instructional agility. Each chapter begins with an instructionally agile maneuver’s main ideas. These ideas include a brief synopsis of the research associated with the specific strategy. Next, we explain each maneuver at play or in action with more details. The maneuvers we offer apply to all grade levels and disciplines and may require minor adjustments for specific grade levels or content areas. The main ideas discuss the why, while the explanation is the how. From there, each chapter highlights strategies and tools teachers can use to be instructionally agile within that maneuver. Each chapter ends with a conclusion and a pause and ponder section, in which questions guide individual teachers and learning teams to consider potential next steps in implementation.

Assessment Is Teaching

Teaching without assessment is not teaching; it is delivering information or creating random, haphazard activities. It is only through assessment that teachers can discern the discrepancy between a student’s current understanding and the desirable performance level; it is only through assessment that teachers know what comes next for each student. The assessment as verb lens ensures teachers view assessment and instruction not as separate silos, but as two halves of the same whole.

Coaches are always assessing their athletes. Teaching through this lens of assessment is how teachers make real-time maneuvers to navigate instructional plans—whether that’s for the next five minutes or even five days—using observations, student work, and student actions to determine if what they are doing is working. Teaching through assessment requires precision in planning, which allows maximum agility in responding to the needs of all students. We invite you to join us as we dive deeply into exploring the concepts and actions of instructional agility.