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CHAPTER 1

Providing and Communicating Clear Learning Goals

Effective feedback begins with clearly defined and clearly communicated learning goals.

The desired mental states and processes for clear learning goals are that:

Students understand the progression of knowledge they are expected to master and where they are along that progression.

The importance of achieving these mental states and processes in students is almost self-evident. If students understand what they are to learn during a given lesson or unit, they are better able to determine how well they are doing and what they need to improve.

Note that this design area addresses concepts for which there are many misconceptions and diverse perspectives. Specifically, terms like proficiency scale, rubric, learning goal, learning objective, learning target, behavioral objective, and the like have different meanings. For a historical perspective on these terms, see Marzano and John S. Kendall (2007, 2008). I recommend that districts and schools operationally define these terms for themselves. As long as schools use the terms in an internally consistent manner, they will be on sound footing.

The following elements are important to providing clear goals.

Element 1: Providing Scales and Rubrics

Scales and rubrics are necessary if students are to understand the progression of knowledge they are expected to learn. The terms scales and rubrics are frequently interchangeable, but there are important distinctions. Rubrics tend to be specific to one task. For example, a teacher might design a rubric to examine student performance on a specific writing prompt like “Describe your favorite animal and what makes the animal special.” A scale is more general and describes a progression of knowledge or skill. For example, a scale might describe the progression of knowledge leading up to a clear understanding of the concept of buoyancy or the progression of knowledge leading up to an ability to convert fractions into decimals. Although rubrics have their place in the classroom, The New Art and Science of Teaching focuses on the use of proficiency scales, especially for academic content. Figure 1.1 (page 12) provides a sample scale.

Figure 1.1: Sample scale for generating claims, evidence, and reasoning at grade 8.

Figure 1.1 is a scale for the topic of generating claims, evidence, and reasoning at grade 8. While there are many ways to create scales and rubrics, I recommend the format in figure 1.1. It has five levels of proficiency, ranging from 0.0 to 4.0 with half-point scores. However, there are only three levels of explicit content at scores 2.0, 3.0, and 4.0. Score 3.0 is the desired level of proficiency students are to meet. Score 2.0 content is that which is foundational to score 3.0 content and is directly taught. Score 4.0 involves inferences and applications that go beyond score 3.0 content. Score 1.0 indicates partial success with help; score 0.0 indicates no success even with help. The half-point scores show the partial success necessary to achieve each score. (For a detailed discussion of proficiency scales, see Marzano, 2006, 2009a, 2010b.)

There are a variety of specific strategies that make the use of scales effective and efficient. These appear in table 1.1 along with brief descriptions.

Table 1.1: Strategies for Providing Scales and Rubrics

Strategy	Description
Clearly articulating learning goals	The teacher clarifies learning goals that state what students will know or be able to do at the end of a unit or set of lessons.
Creating scales or rubrics for learning goals	Learning goals are much more useful when embedded in a proficiency scale (also referred to as a performance scale). Teachers do this by articulating a learning target for score 3.0, a simpler learning goal for score 2.0, and a more complex learning goal for score 4.0.
Implementing routines for using targets and scales	The teacher uses routines to encourage students’ attentiveness to learning targets and proficiency scales. A routine could be as simple as reviewing a scale or learning target at the beginning of each class, or it could be more complex and require students to explain components of the target or scale.
Using teacher-created targets and scales	After designing scales with embedded learning targets, the teacher uses them as the basis for instruction. For example, at the beginning of the set of lessons focused on a particular scale, the teacher might spend a class period or two on each of the score 2.0 targets.
Creating student-friendly scales	The teacher asks students to translate scales into student-friendly language. After the teacher explains the target, as well as the simpler and more complex learning goals to students, students work in small groups to create their own wording for the 2.0, 3.0, and 4.0 learning goals.
Identifying individual student learning goals	The teacher asks students to identify a personal learning goal that interests them and that relates to the teacher-identified learning goals. Students record their personal learning goals.

Source: Adapted from Marzano Research, 2016ee.

Some of the strategies in table 1.1 focus on the creation of proficiency scales. For example, the strategy clearly articulating learning goals deals with the internal structure of a proficiency scale. In essence, a proficiency scale is a continuum of learning goals (also referred to as learning targets).

Other strategies deal with the use of proficiency scales for instructional purposes. For example, consider the strategy implementing routines for using targets and scales. One routine is to refer to learning goals on a daily basis and describe where the learning goals fit within the proficiency scale. A teacher might have the proficiency scale for a particular unit posted on the wall. Before she begins a lesson, she refers back to the scale and points to the precise element of the scale on which the current lesson will focus. She refers to the element of focus as “today’s learning target.” She then asks students to restate the learning target as an “I can” statement.

Some of the strategies deal with making proficiency scales more understandable to students. For example, the strategy creating student-friendly scales involves translating a scale into student-friendly language by having groups of students or the class as a whole rewrite score 2.0, score 3.0, and score 4.0 descriptors.

When the strategies in this element produce the desired effects, teachers will observe the following behaviors in students.

• Students can explain the proficiency scale in their own words.

• Students can explain what learning goal is being addressed in the current lesson.

• Students can describe how the current activity relates to the target goal.

• Students can explain the progression of content on the scale.

Element 2: Tracking Student Progress

With proficiency scales in place, the teacher can help provide each student with a clear sense of where he or she started relative to a topic and where he or she is currently. This is one of the most powerful uses of a proficiency scale because it allows students to see their growth along a continuum of knowledge. To illustrate, consider figure 1.2.

Figure 1.2: Student growth across five assessments on the same topic.

Figure 1.2 depicts an individual student’s progress on one topic for which there is a proficiency scale. The student began with a score of 1.5 but rose to a score of 3.5 over five assessments. Observing their growth on a topic is intrinsically motivating to students simply because people react positively to evidence that they are progressing (Hattie & Timperley, 2007).

Table 1.2 lists a number of strategies and activities that relate to element 2.

Table 1.2: Tracking Student Progress

Strategy	Description
Using formative scores	Using formative scores throughout a unit of instruction helps teachers and students monitor progress and adjust if necessary. This is different from summative scores, which represent a student’s status at the end of a particular point in time.
Designing assessments that generate formative scores	To design assessments that generate formative scores for a particular proficiency scale, a teacher develops items or tasks that correspond directly to content in levels 2.0, 3.0, and 4.0 of the scale.
Using individual score-level assessments	The teacher uses assessments that evaluate only one level of a scale (for example, only 2.0 content) to measure students’ knowledge or to allow students to progress at their own pace through the levels of a scale.
Using different types of assessments	To collect formative scores over time that pertain to a specific proficiency scale, the teacher uses obtrusive assessments (which interrupt the flow of classroom activity), unobtrusive assessments (which do not interrupt classroom activities), or student-generated assessments.
Generating summative scores	The teacher makes use of several different approaches to generating summative scores for a specific proficiency scale. Approaches range from using formative scores to assign a summative score to designing a specific assessment to assign a summative score. Where formative scores track students’ progress over time, a summative score indicates an individual student’s status at the end of a specific interval of time such as a grading period.
Charting student progress	The student sets a goal relative to a specific scale at the beginning of a unit or grading period and then tracks his or her scores on that scale. At the end of the unit or grading period, the teacher assigns a final, or summative, score to the student for the scale.
Charting class progress	The teacher tracks the entire class’ progress by showing what percentage of students scored at a proficient (3.0) level or above for a particular assessment.

Source: Adapted from Marzano Research, 2016ll.

Some of the strategies in table 1.2 involve making a distinction between the various uses of scores generated from a proficiency scale. To illustrate, consider the strategy using formative scores and the strategy generating summative scores. When using proficiency scales, these terms take on a clear meaning. Specifically, the time the teacher administers an assessment, as opposed to the assessment’s format, determines whether its score is formative or summative. To illustrate, reconsider figure 1.2. The first four scores in the figure are formative. They provide evidence to compute the final score—the summative score. In effect, a teacher can assign a summative score without actually using a specific summative assessment. (For a detailed discussion, see Marzano, 2006, 2010b.)

Some strategies expand the scope of what defines an assessment. Consider the strategy using different types of assessments. It describes three general types of assessments: (1) obtrusive assessments, (2) unobtrusive assessments, and (3) student-generated assessments. As their name implies, obtrusive assessments interrupt the flow of instruction. Teaching stops; assessment occurs. Typically, obtrusive assessments are pencil and paper in nature. Classroom teachers tend to use obtrusive assessments almost exclusively. Unobtrusive assessments do not interrupt the flow of instruction and commonly take the form of observations while students are working. Student-generated assessments are the most unique and potentially powerful form of assessment because students determine how they might demonstrate proficiency on a particular topic. Student-generated assessments help develop student agency because they give some decision-making power to those who are being assessed.

When the strategies in this element produce the desired effects, teachers will observe the following behaviors in students.

• Students can describe how they have progressed on a particular proficiency scale.

• Students periodically update their status on a proficiency scale.

• Students can describe what they need to do to get to the next level of performance.

Element 3: Celebrating Success

Providing scales (element 1) and tracking students’ progress (element 2) on those scales allow for the celebration of two types of success: status and growth. Status refers to a student’s score at a particular moment in time. Growth refers to the difference between the student’s current and first scores on the topic. A student grows when his or her scores on a scale rise over time.

Table 1.3 (page 16) lists the strategies for this element.

Table 1.3: Celebrating Success

Strategy	Description
Status celebration	The teacher celebrates each student’s status at any point in time, including at the end of a unit.
Knowledge gain celebration	The teacher celebrates knowledge gain, which is the difference between a student’s initial and final scores for a learning goal. To do this, the teacher recognizes the growth each student has made over the course of a unit.
Verbal feedback	The teacher emphasizes each student’s effort and growth by specifically explaining what a student did well on a task.

Source: Adapted from Marzano Research, 2016d.

The first two strategies in table 1.3 address formal ways of acknowledging students’ status and growth. The teacher might have celebrations, such as by ringing a bell, each time a student reaches score 3.0 on a proficiency scale. At the end of a unit, the teacher might also acknowledge all students who have increased their original score by 1.5 or more scale points. Students might simply stand and receive a round of applause from their classmates. Verbal feedback might involve private or public comments to students. The structure of a proficiency scale allows for multiple celebrations of both status and growth.

When the strategies in this element produce the desired effects, teachers will observe the following behaviors in students.

• Students demonstrate pride regarding their accomplishments in class.

• Students appear to strive for higher scores on a proficiency scale.

• Students say they enjoy celebrations.

Planning

The design question pertaining to providing and communicating clear goals and objectives is, How will I communicate clear learning goals that help students understand the progression of knowledge they are expected to master and where they are along that progression? The three elements that pertain to this design area provide specific guidance regarding this overall design question. Teachers can easily turn these elements into more focused planning questions.

• Element 1: How will I design scales or rubrics?

• Element 2: How will I track progress?

• Element 3: How will I celebrate success?

For a given unit, a teacher should think carefully about the content and select what is essential. This is not an easy task in an era of standards. It is a common practice for teachers to plan their instruction around a specific standard. For example, a fourth-grade science teacher might plan a unit of instruction around the following science standard:

Make observations and/or measurements to provide evidence of the effects of weathering or the rate of erosion by water, ice, wind, or vegetation. (Achieve, 2013, p. 35)

This single standard has a wide array of embedded content. In fact, the following content is implicit in this single standard (Marzano & Simms, 2014).

■ Students will be able to make observations.

■ Students will be able to make measurements.

■ Students will understand what evidence is and be able to provide evidence.

■ Students will understand what weathering is and will be able to recognize the effects of weathering.

■ Students will understand what erosion is and be able to recognize erosion.

■ Students will understand how water, ice, and wind affect erosion.

■ Students will understand how vegetation affects erosion. (p. 108)

The teacher’s first tasks relative to this design area are to unpack the standard, identify what is essential, and organize the content into a proficiency scale. Such a scale for this standard appears in figure 1.3.

Figure 1.3: Scale for weathering and erosion at grade 4.

With the scale in place, the stage is set for students to track their progress. As figure 1.2 (page 14) shows, the student began with a score of 1.5, indicating partial success at score 2.0. By the end of the unit, the student achieved a score of 3.5, indicating success at score 2.0 and 3.0 content and partial success with score 4.0 content. The student gained two full points on the proficiency scale.

Implications for Change

The New Art and Science of Teaching is a framework for change. Indeed, each of the ten design areas has implications for substantive change. The change that providing and communicating clear learning goals and objectives implies is the manner in which educators view content. The prevailing view is that classroom content directly equates with standards. A teacher receives standards from the state or district. These standards represent the content to teach. Unfortunately, such a process is almost impossible to execute. A historical perspective provides evidence for this assertion.

The modern standards movement began in 1989 at the first Education Summit in Charlottesville, Virginia, and has continued to evolve. (For a discussion, see Marzano & Kendall, 1996.) Every state now has its own set of standards, which the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) for English language arts (National Governors Association Center for Best Practices & Council of Chief State School Officers [NGA & CCSSO], 2010a) and mathematics (NGA & CCSSO, 2010b) and the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS Lead States, 2013) influence to some degree small or large.

After decades of evolution, one might think that standards in every subject area have been fine-tuned to a high degree of precision and focus. However, this is not the case. To illustrate, at the beginning of the 21st century, researchers estimated that it would take about 15,500 hours to teach all the standards identified for K–12 students, yet there were only about 9,000 hours of instructional time available to do so (see Marzano, 2007; Marzano & Kendall, 1996). In effect, it was impossible to teach the content in the standards in the time available.

The trend in the disparity between the amount of content the standards addressed and the time available to teach it persists. For example, Marzano, David C. Yanoski, Jan K. Hoegh, and Simms (2013) identify seventy-three standards statements for eighth-grade English language arts in the CCSS. As shown in the previous section, each of these standards contains a number of unique topics. Assuming an average of five topics per standards statement, there are 365 English language arts topics eighth-grade teachers are expected to address; obviously this is an impossible task within the confines of a 180-day school year.

Proficiency scales provide a solution to this problem. Individual teachers could take the initiative to unpack the standards they addressed in a unit and create one or more proficiency scales that focus on the important content. However, such a task is better addressed at the district level. That is, district curriculum experts working with teachers should create proficiency scales for each subject area at each grade level. Tammy Heflebower, Hoegh, and Phil Warrick (2014) articulate specific steps as to how a district might do this. Additionally, at Marzano Research, Julia Simms (2016) led a team identifying the essential topics (referred to as measurement topics) for English language arts, mathematics, and science. Figure 1.4 lists the topics for eighth-grade English language arts.

Source: Adapted from Simms, 2016.

Figure 1.4: Eighth-grade English language arts topics.

For each measurement topic, the team developed proficiency scales that districts and schools can customize by adding, altering, or deleting the text. To illustrate, figure 1.5 reports the proficiency scale for the topic of generating claims, evidence, and reasoning (GCER).

Figure 1.5: Critical concepts scale for generating claims, evidence, and reasoning at grade 8.

In all, about five-hundred proficiency scales like the one in figure 1.5 have been written for mathematics, English language arts, and science for grades K–12. This is a number that teachers could address in the time available. If district personnel wish to create their own, they should unpack their state standards and identify a small set of topics (fifteen to twenty-five) to focus on during instruction and assessment at each grade level for each content area. This rather straightforward effort solves a problem I believe is one of the most serious plaguing K–12 education: namely, a curriculum that is so bloated and cumbersome that it is impossible for teachers to teach well and, therefore, difficult for students to learn efficiently.