Welcome!
This site page provides resources for techniques described as
visible teaching for maintaining the best possible impacts on the
community as a teacher and for maintaining optimal teaching and
learning outcomes. Clicking on the map
below will bring the reader to the corresponding module,
termed mind
frames.
The
purpose of 'Visible Learning' is to create clear and
measurable outcomes from learning activity, and to be able to
demonstrate the overall impact of teaching, as it empowers
students to become successful in the larger life-contexts of the
economic milieu and global ecology.
(This
site is optimized for Landscape Orientation)
Each module
demonstrates best practices and provides resources for the
development of materials for the classroom.
This page also
can be commented on if you are signed in with Google+, and a
forum for professional development and collaboration is
presented as a part of this section.
Please feel free to log in with Google+
and add resources to the materials presented.
The Visible
Teaching Concept:
Mind
Frames for Facilitating Optimal Outcome and Impact.
If
you have visited the site before, please use the links in the
map. Otherwise, scroll down for instructions on how to use this
site.
(Clicking on an
area of the image, or links in the table below, will call up the
selected module)
Mind
Frames:
Frame
1:
Teachers believe that the essential task is to
evaluate the effects and outcomes of teaching on the student's
learning, achievement, and well-being
Frame
2:
Teachers are change agents and as such are
accountable for teacher, student, community, and school successes
and challenges.
Frame
3:
Instructors, as leaders want to communicate and
engage more about learning than they do teaching.
Frame
4:
Teacher leaders and innovators view assessment as a
means of receiving feedback about their impacts in the community.
Frame
5:
Instruction is a process of engaging in "Dialogue
and not Monologue".
Frame
6:
Instructors strive to engage with challenges and
develop solutions, and tend not to settle for "Doing the
best we can".
Frame
7:
Teachers consistently develop positive advising
relationships along with the learning of students and
professional engagement with colleagues.
Frame
8:
Teachers speak and inform about the language of
learning.
This site is designed as a collaboration
resource for the development of lesson plans and teaching
materials based on a series of templates. Please visit these
links to download the available templates, as they may help
in participating with this resource.
This site is
a collaboration resource, all of the lesson plans, templates,
and materials can be edited, copied, and then redeveloped with
new content embedded for teaching other standards and courses.
In order to do so, it is necessary to set-up a Google+
account, for more information please view this presentation:
As the presentation mentions, there are
these resources available, in addition to those from the Home
Page:
Please
feel free to sign-in with Google and comment and add to these
materials. Please write Corey@dxed.org to join the group of
collaborators, and add contacts to Google+ to connect for the
real-time chat and webinar capabilities.
Frame 1: Be Accountable
for Learning.
This at-a-glance resource describes a
standard of ethics for the practice of instructing. (click
for full version)
Fig. 1. Ethics Infographic (Hixson, 2014).
Stakeholders in the classroom all have a
reciprocal relationship within the larger community, town, city,
state, country, and global ecosystems. Connecting classrooms
to the larger community can help provide meaningful
experience as a part of the learning that happens inside the
classroom community. Understanding the need for striving, and
beneficial mistakes is emphasized in community
learning, as learners understand that the community is also a
helpful resource for correcting mistakes and exploring new
learning opportunities. The following exhibit from the
Meaningful
Learning manuscript details community learning.
Exhibit I. Meaningful Learning
Excerpt (Hixson, in press)
Meaningful Learning in the Community
Community
Learning
Other
than the analogous representations of identity through mass media
and the recognition of communally held stereotypes and intragroup
prototypes that demonstrate social identity, there is also the
communally recognized role that individuals inhabit as a part of
their work. Workplaces are social spaces where in The United
States individual achievement is recognized. The author should
also note that in The United States the idea of not having
knowledge about a skill or an area of expertise is considered
tantamount to inability, and that as an American the overall
sense of efficacy is reduced if an individual does not feel that
she or he knows about a subject that is relevant to the work
group (Shiraev & Levy, 2010). In the west, workplaces
recognize independent achievement and accomplishment according to
the same model of attribution theory described by Bernard Weiner
(2010), as cited previously. In the west classrooms also function
much the same way as our assessment systems and scores of
achievement are focused primarily on the awareness of content
knowledge and not necessarily the ecology of the knowledge as
written previously. Bernard Weiner (2010), cites the fear of
failure as the primary factor which regulates the decision to
motivate resources to accomplish a task, and later elaborates
that he had not thoroughly evaluated the idea of
meaningaccording
to failure-avoidant personalities who struggle in the modern
workplace. Having the ability to cope with failure is an
understated skill set in the west, and many education
institutions are finding that internships provide students with
opportunities to engage in the workplace that are more involved
and demanding of skills than the classroom environment. Being
trained in the workplace requires motivation toward belonging to
the workforce and understanding the communally held goals about
the work needed to accomplish. Sometimes experiences far outside
the comfort-zones of individuals can cause individuals to
facilitate peak experiences as the individual calculates whether
or not the impending success had been probable, in very realistic
terms this meant that veterans who had returned from armed
conflict found connections with the larger life context because
survival was difficult and success was not likely, but the
experience resolved successfully through some contact with
unknown larger factors; veterans who are trained about
transpersonal meaning
in the larger life-context may have been given more than adequate
means for coping with traumatic stress and post-traumatic stress
disorder because of perceived greater-context influences in the
personal dynamic (Osran, Smee, Weinberger & Sreenivisan,
2010). Having
the opportunity to perceive the risk of failure is imperative to
success
in terms of discovering intrinsically motivated desires to
achieve. Internships in the workplace for young people can be
incredibly challenging, but they offer a chance to learn a
different system of expectations and workplace skills that were
previously unknown, without the fear of incompetence. The
internship is an experience designed to bring young people into
the workplace to learn practical skills but it also provides an
opportunity to leave the classroom environment and engage in
achievement where success is not always probable. Internships are
discussed extensively in some web log community activity
and discussion entries online
(http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2015/04/15/teens-try-out-real-life-with-internships-for-academic-credit/)
in a lot of current education trends, and provide real-life
experience that contain value which is not easily measured with a
standard (MindShift, 2015).
MINDSHIFT.
(2015, April 15). Teens try out “real life”
An
online article describes the success of hands-on community
learning activities for young people. Internships are examined as
beneficial learning activities for students in the larger
community, that engage students in real life work experiences.
OSRAN,
H., SMEE, D., SREENIVISAN, S. &
WEINBERGER,
L. (2010). Living outside the wire:
Toward
a transpersonal resilience approach for oif/oef
veterans
transitioning to civilian life. The
Journal of
Transpersonal
Psychology, 42(2),
209-235.
The
authors examine the therapeutic potential of transpersonal
psychology in the treatment of veterans who experience Post
Traumatic Stress Disorder. The authors conclude that individuals
who suffer from PTSD benefit from the experience of connection
with the larger life-context and community.
In
a 4th edition textbook, the studies of cross cultural
psychology and processes of intergroup differentiation and
workplace motivation are examined; in a way that adapts
traditional western contrasting with eastern dynamics describing
the subject, toward an individual contrasting with collective
dynamic respectively, when describing cultural differences
between global societies.
WEINER,
B. (2010). The development of an attribution-
based
theory of motivation: A history of ideas.
Educational
Psychologist,
45(1),
28-36. Doi:
10.1080/00461520903433596
In
a capstone work, ten years of research concerning the attribution
theory of human motivation are examined, and new research
directions for the understanding of human motivation are
stipulated.
Frame 2: Schools as
Change Agents
This embedded resource demonstrates the
process of social change and the development of social capital
as it had occurred in Jefferson County, Colorado in the
year 2015.
Fig. 2. Social
Change in Jefferson County (Hixson, 2016).
Hixson,
S. (2016, April 10). Dynamics of social change in
Jefferson
County. [Multimedia
submission for course
OTL-505].
School of Education, Colorado State
University
Global Campus. Retrieved January 31, 2017
4.
I Measure Understanding Against High Expectations
Goodwin
& Hubbell (2013), create a fine argument for the necessity of
optimal challenge and the setting of expectations which are high
in the context of the expected performance of students. Having
high expectations that are clearly established can facilitate
deep learning and also be motivating for students who are engaged
in learning the standards set for the course, and by being
challenging enough students are asked to set goals which contain
some risk, but that are optimally attainable for success in the
course (Goodwin & Hubbell, 2013). Holding high expectations
also demonstrates to students that success is expected and
possible. Albert Bandura (1989), establishes that the perceived
sense of efficacy in social space creates a relationship between
perceived ability to accomplish a task and the value of the task
at hand. In terms of attribution theory the value placed upon the
accomplishment of a goal is related to the sense of perceived
risk according to an individual’s available skill set which
affects choices about whether to become motivated to achieve the
task (Weiner, 2010). Demonstrating high expectations of students
also demonstrates a belief in the efficacy that students have in
accomplishing the task, which motivates student performance.
Goodwin & Hubbell (2013), emphasize that performance in class
must be demonstrated according to the standards in the course and
also the learning goals set for the class, but do not address
whether or not students have a sense of efficacy in accomplishing
the task. Likert-scale assessments are often used to measure
confidence as a part of any self-report instrument designed to
measure understanding or confidence (Stangor, 2011). One study
was specifically designed to create an instrument for the measure
of student efficacy and confidence, that was based on a scale
(Silver, Smith & Greene, 2001). Goodwin & Hubbell (2013),
conveniently excuse the use of scales or self-evaluation and
establish that standards must be measured through either multiple
choice or open-ended essay questions. In my experience, this
established the need to re-examine the use of standardized
instruments created to measure student performance, because they
exclude student efficacy in the context of a framework that is
otherwise designed to inspire student confidence. In my work I
value the sense of efficacy reported on a scale designed to
measure confidence as an instrument more than I would value the
outcome of a content-related final exam, and this experience in
postgraduate education clearly illustrated the need to better
understand assessments created for education that could have
better established statistical validity, if they were more
closely related to other instruments created for scientific study
in human motivation and psychology.
Fig
1. Table of Contents (Goodwin & Hubbell, 2013).
Bandura,
A. (1989). Human agency in social cognitive
theory. American Psychologist, 44(9),
1175-1184.
Goodwin,
B. & Hubbell, E. (2013). The 12 touchstones
of good teaching: A checklist for staying
focused
every day. Alexandria,
VA: Association for Supervision & Curriculum
Development
Silver,
B., Smith, E. & Greene, B. (2001). A study strategies
self-efficacy instrument for use
with
community college students. Educational
and Psychological Measurement, 61(5),
849-
865.
Be Critical of Assessments and
Assessment Data.
In
previous coursework I had created a brief report based on the
statewide Colorado testing system. Although I found that the
system itself was able to process and collate big data
efficiently, the data itself showed problems with construct
validity. When designing and implementing assessments, it is
important to be sure that the outcome of the assessments are a
measure of student learning, and not some other factor. Click
here to read
the report online (Hixson, 2015b).
Frame 5:
Effective Feedback is Dialogue, not Monologue
"Teacher
Talk vs. Student Talk"
According
to a leading visible-learning handbook, Hattie (2012), stipulates
that instructors ought to measure the direction of learning.
Additionally, Shea & Bidjerano (2009;2010), stipulate that
functional communities of inquiry are most effective when the
instructor facilitates epistemic
engagement by
being both cognitively and socially present in the class and
consistently engaged with student learning. Instructors can
therefore benefit from measuring the impact of teaching and
analyzing the optimal time management strategy for student
interaction and discussion. For more information about the
Communities
of Inquiry
setting, please also read forward into the resources presented in
Mind
Frame 6
Coaching.
Peers
and mentors can benefit from having an effective plan containing
the expected outcomes of development.
The
Coaching
Resource Toolkit can benefit educators seeking to implement a
feedback strategy for professional development.
Asynchronous
peer-to-peer and instructor-student interactions can be built
into each course module and e-learning system. Please see the
associated
lesson plan example which was developed based on
computer-mediated student feedback and engagement.
Computer-mediated feedback can improve the quality and quantity
of in-class feedback engagement (Boling & Beatty, 2010).
Fig 6. E-Mail
Student Feedback Interaction Example (Hixson, 2015).
3. Feedback Examples and Peer-Review
Presented
here are some feedback strategies from other teachers.
Please see also the feedback discussion
group in Frame
3.
Boling, E. &
Beatty, J. (2010). Cognitive apprenticeship in computer-mediated
feedback: Creating a classroom environment to increase feedback
and learning. Journal of Educational Computing Research,
43(1), 47-65.
Hattie,
J. (2012). Visible
learning for teachers: Maximizing the impact on learning.
Thousand
Oaks, CA: Corwin.
Hixson,
S. (2015, November 22). Critical Thinking
Application
VII: Lesson Plan Templates.
[Multimedia
submission
for course OTL-541K]. School of
Education,
Colorado State University Global Campus.
Retrieved
January 31, 2017 from:
http://www.sites.google.com/site/dxededucation/course_templates
Hixson,
S. (2016a, July 25). Coaching work plan.
[Multimedia
submission for course OTL-515]. School of
Education,
Colorado State University Global Campus.
Functional
Communities of
Inquiry classrooms
allow the students to apply existing knowledge about learning in
order to develop shared epistemologies for the development of
new learning. Students first learn how to work in groups and
along with the guidance of the instructor can begin employing
strategies for learning that are modelled by the instructor,
other students, and the course materials, as well as existing
knowledge that connects to the students personal learning and
contribution to the learning group. Conradie (2014), briefly
describes constructivism, which in the article is termed
connectivism, and the importance of the Personal Learning
Environment.
2).
Communities of Inquiry.
Shea
& Bidjerano (2009; 2010), when investigating the efficacy of
e-learning found that instructors who are socially and
cognitively engaged in student learning groups, were able to
facilitate optimal epistemic
engagement and
facilitate better student learning outcomes.
A
great example of a functional Communities of Inquiry environment
is already being demonstrated in a California, USA school
system:
CONRADIE,
P. (2014). Supporting self-directed learning
by
connectivism and personal learning environments.
International
Journal of Information and Education
Technology,
4(3),
254-259. Doi:
10.7763/IJIET.2014.V4.408
SHEA,
P. & BIDJERANO, T. (2009). Community of
inquiry
as a theoretical framework to foster “epistemic
engagement”
and “cognitive presence” in online
education.
Computers
& Education, 52,
543-553.
In
the introductory article the authors present the thesis that
online learning environments function as self-regulating
communities of inquiry, which then foster epistemic engagement as
described by the authors’ synthesis of research.
SHEA,
P. & BIDJERANO, T. (2010). Learning presence:
Towards
a theory of self-efficacy, self-regulation, and
the
development of a communities of inquiry in online
and
blended learning environments. Computers
&
Education,
55,
1721-1731.
In
continuing research the authors include blended learning formats
on instruction in the communities of inquiry classroom
instruction model, and further develop the idea of community
epistemic engagement.
As
teachers and education developers, peer support and networking is
the greatest resource in terms of facilitating persistence and
the development of techniques for deliberate practice and
intentional learning. This group is offered by the Alliance for
Public School Technology Resources, a 501(c)(3) in Denver,
Colorado. The group is intended to support teachers through
collaboration, networking, and resource sharing. Please join us!
Click-through the image presented to visit meetup.com, join, and
review the details of the peer-support group like this example,
it may not still be online, but can be created this way.
Collaboration and Training
The functioning of
this group is supported by the research in the following
presentations:
Also, please be sure to peruse the research
available in the manuscript which is being developed for the
purposes of promoting communities of inquiry and blended
learning.
Frame 8:
Teaching about Teaching, and Communications.
In this section you will find resources related to
public speaking and presenting about teaching.
Cross Cultural Communications,
Leadership and Social Change Advocacy
Communication Guide for Leadership
Communication Guide and Overview
(Hixson, 2014).
Award Ceremonies and
Other Visible Presentations
The Laureate
Education Here for Good award creates
an example of highly visible ceremonies and presentations that
help to share the language of learning.
Source of Challenge: The Five Skills
of Effective Teaching
To
integrate the knowledge of each of these modules, termed
mind-frames; Hattie (2012), also stipulates five
skills that effective teachers consistently develop and maintain.
Now that the reader has had the opportunity to visit the
visible-learning concept, here are the skills which
help to coalesce the knowledge of the mind-frames and
demonstrate best-practices.
Think of teaching as delivering and
facilitating learning experiences. How best in your professional
work can you consistently improve:
Challenge
Commitment
Confidence
Clear
Student Expectations
Conceptual Understanding
Finding appropriate
sources of challenge can also be described
in terms of Vygotsky's Zone of Proximal Development,
where it becomes clear that learning is both
challenging and attainable through interaction with the larger
community. For a brief description of the theory please visit
this
summary on the Simply Psychology website (McLeod, 2010).
For current discussion of the idea please visit the
MindShift article (MindShift, 2014).
What motivates
commitment? In the discussion of student motivation in
Meaningful Learning it becomes clear that
stakeholders in learning tend to become more motivated when their
learning contributes to a sense of efficacy and belonging to a
larger community of learners. Also in other motivational
contexts, according to Hattie (2012), students tend to become
intrinsically motivated to learn through the establishment of
clear expectations for students and optimal environments for
engaging in the learning and meeting expectations, where the
impact of the learning activity can be measured and shown to be
effective in the community.
Confidence
may vary, in fact, in the system of assessment presented on this
web page student confidence can be expected to increase as the
student engages in the learning, and then briefly decrease as the
student becomes aware of knowledge beyond the surface of the
content that must be learned to succeed. In measuring confidence
the instructor then has a way to determine if students are
engaging their learning skills, and then a way of measuring the
student's perceived success as confidence levels increase.
Instructors who are both socially and cognitively present for the
students in a Communities of Inquiry setting tended to improve
social and cognitive engagement of students which then improves
the confidence of the student (Shea & Bidjerano 2009;2010).
The assessment system provided here then creates a way to measure
student engagement and the impact of instruction.
Student
expectations must be set at the beginning of the course, as
instructors elaborate the course rubrics and explain the utility
of the course standard, the student should be able to reflect in
a self-evaluation later in the course that the new skills
intended to be taught have been learned throughout the class
term. Goodwin & Hubbell (2013), also emphasize the need for
clear expectations and rubrics for learning that all stakeholders
in the classroom are accountable to, outside of interpersonal
expectations between students, instructors, and administrators.
The conceptual
understanding is described in the introductory video on this
site. Meaningful learning which can be measured contributes to
the student's larger life-context and conceptual framework for
learning, and applying knowledge, as well as problem solving, and
new skills for acquiring and organizing information. Conceptual
understanding then fits the content knowledge of the course
standard expected into the larger community and schemas for the
student understanding the course material and how the knowledge
contributes to her or his identity in the larger community.
touchstones
of good teaching: A checklist for staying
focused
every day. Denver,
CO: McREL
The
checklist format for teachers also presents an accurate formula
and technique for teaching class to a mutually agreed upon
standard. The text formalizes the process of breaking down agreed
upon education standards and presenting them to students through
the use of rubrics for grading that are objective and are not
influenced by factors other than the academic performance of the
student, according to clearly defined mutual expectations. The
checklist objectifies the teaching process in a way that is more
accurately operationalized for accountability measures.
HATTIE,
J. (2012). Visible learning for teachers:
Maximizing
impact on learning. Thousand Oaks, CA:
Corwin.
MINDSHIFT.
(2014, March 21). What's
the 'Sweet Spot' of difficulty for learning?
inquiry
as a theoretical framework to foster “epistemic
engagement”
and “cognitive presence” in online
education.
Computers
& Education, 52,
543-553.
In
the introductory article the authors present the thesis that
online learning environments function as self-regulating
communities of inquiry, which then foster epistemic engagement as
described by the authors’ synthesis of research.
SHEA,
P. & BIDJERANO, T. (2010). Learning presence:
Towards
a theory of self-efficacy, self-regulation, and
the
development of a communities of inquiry in online
and
blended learning environments. Computers
&
Education,
55,
1721-1731.
MCLEOD,
S. (2010). Zone of proximal development. [Web Log].
Simply
Psychology. Retrieved
February 5th, 2017 from:
