Students engage in creative inquiry, and teachers facilitate their learning in the technology-rich environment of classrooms participating in the Schools for Thought program.
We want to know if that's the right place for the eagles to live, but we think it is." "We want to know how high the tower is—'cause if they fall, they might kill themselves when they're a baby eaglet."
"We need to know if the tower prefabs are warm enough for the baby eagles to hatch."
Students in Kerry Sinclair's 5th grade Schools for Thought classroom are weighing the advantages and disadvantages of using various hacking towers to release young eagles into the wild. Working in groups, these students at Carter Lawrence Middle School in Nashville, Tennessee, will draft plans to save the threatened bald eagle. They must research the biology, behavior, and habitat of the species, as well as causes of their endangerment. This task mirrors similar work on recovery plans by conservationists; as a result of this work, the bald eagle is no longer listed as an endangered species.
Students search through CD-ROMs, books, articles, and the Internet for information on food, nesting, and current recovery plans. Using computers, they write, edit, revise, and publish group reports. In an interactive computer forum specially designed for classrooms, they continually discuss the underlying issues, building on one another's findings. They move from concerns of saving the national symbol of the United States to realizing that even flies are necessary to the food chain.
These students became interested in saving the species while planning a simulated rescue of a wounded bald eagle. A video adventure, Rescue at Boone's Meadow, had challenged them to figure out the fastest way to get the eagle to the veterinarian from a remote meadow. To answer the challenge, students had to make decisions based on their calculations of rate, time, distance, weight, and miles per gallon of gasoline. Because the mathematics is set in real life, students also faced broader considerations, such as the safety of the human rescuers and costs versus benefits of saving one eagle.
In each project, Schools for Thought students acquire, evaluate, organize, and interpret information, then communicate their findings to their peers and to an authentic audience of adults. Audience members ask questions to help the students learn even more. The teacher creates a climate of inquiry that fosters learning with understanding, rather than simply memorizing facts.
Creating a Model for Learning
The Jasper Woodbury mathematical problem-solving series, a videodisc-based program developed at Vanderbilt University (Cognition and Technology Group at Vanderbilt 1997).
Fostering Communities of Learners for teaching science and literacy, developed at the University of California at Berkeley (Brown and Campione 1994).
Computer-Supported Intentional Learning Environments (CSILE), a communal database that supports information sharing and knowledge building, developed at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (Scardamalia et al. 1994).
Educational Components of Schools for Thought
Animation, interaction, and involvement are the hallmarks of the Schools for Thought Project. Students construct their own meaning in many subject areas as they interact with videos, trade books, CD-ROMs, problem-solving models of instruction, computer databases, multimedia programs—and one another. Whether researching endangered species, serving in the community, or building their own books, students learn through projects related to real concerns. The following programs are components of Schools for Thought.
The Jasper Woodbury Program teaches mathematical problem solving through video dramas. Students must solve complex, realistic problems by setting goals, devising strategies, finding relevant information in the video, figuring out what mathematics to use, and then doing the math. Mathematics becomes an object of discussion and a practical link to the community. For example, in Blueprint for Success, students use geometry to design a neighborhood playground; in A Capital Idea, students use statistics and probability to design a recycling project to raise money for a Washington, D.C., trip.Jasper is distributed by Learning Inc., 10 Industrial Ave., Mahweh, NJ 07430-2262. Internet: (http://peabody.vanderbilt.edu/projects/funded/jasper/Jasperhome.html).
Fostering Communities of Learners engages students as researchers of important issues in fields such as biology and ecology. For example, students study why and how diseases like tuberculosis and AIDS spread. Groups of students work on different but interrelated parts of the problem, building expertise and sharing their learning during the research process. This distributed expertise model establishes a purpose for communicating with peers, as well as interdependence among students and teachers.
Using Computer-Supported Intentional Learning Environments (CSILE), students build a communal knowledge base, just as scientists use conferences and newsgroups to discuss their ideas. For example, students researching photosynthesis, medieval history, 18th century literature, or Cubism can use CSILE to elaborate their own ideas online. They can provide feedback to others; analyze text and graphics material; build graphic models; and link ideas across units and classrooms, communities, and even continents. Schools for Thought will soon combine databases of working scientists, curators in art galleries, the business community, and educational institutions.CSILE is distributed by Learning in Motion, 500 Seabright Ave., Suite 105, Santa Cruz, CA 95062-3481; (1-800) 560-5670; (http://CSILE.OISE.utoronto.ca). (see also Educational Leadership, November 1996, pp. 6-10).
The Little Planet Literacy Series, a multimedia program for beginning readers, evolved from Jasper and Schools for Thought. Animated video stories create a world where children love to read and write. These stories "anchor" student activities, such as sequencing, decoding words, and writing and recording their own books. A related math and science curriculum is being developed through a grant from the McDonnell Foundation.For further information, contact Little Planet Publishing, P.O. Box 158427, Nashville, TN 37215-8427; (1-800)974-2248; (http://www.littleplanet.com).
A forthcoming (fall 1997) multimedia book by the Schools for Thought collaborative will introduce educators to Schools for Thought. For publication information, contact Pio Po'e, Learning Technology Center, Box 45, Peabody College, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN 37203.
Before being integrated into Schools for Thought, each program was classroom tested and each showed clear benefits for students—including higher rates of achievement (Lamon et al. 1996).
In 1993, the three groups of researchers combined their programs in an effort to restructure middle school classrooms. They named the project Schools for Thought after John Bruer's book (1993). In Nashville, the Cognition and Technology Group at Vanderbilt initiated a pilot project in two inner-city, 6th grade classrooms. The project has now grown to 22 classrooms. Schools for Thought classrooms are under development across the continent, from California to Iowa to Ontario. The most notable site is Compton Drew Investigative Learning Center in St. Louis, where an entire magnet school with this philosophy has opened.
In 1996, Metropolitan Nashville Public Schools and Vanderbilt researchers expanded Schools for Thought into 1st grade classrooms, using the award-winning multimedia Little Planet Literacy Series.
The Learning Community
Schools for Thought recognizes that learners actively construct their own knowledge rather than passively receiving it from the teacher. They work in collaborative groups, using technology frequently. Teachers, students, and researchers are engaged in continuous learning about learning, based on principles that include the following:
The curriculum is rigorous and standards-based. Students choose their own research topics within a framework set by their teachers to facilitate understanding of important, consistent principles in the core content areas. For example, while studying habitats and endangered species, 6th graders learn about the rise and fall of ancient civilizations—studying cycles, adaptation, and change in both science and social studies—and about sampling and prediction, the mathematics scientists use in determining whether a species is endangered. At the same time, while reading the novel Hatchet, students explore issues of human survival and adaptation to adverse circumstances. The questions that arise in their inquiry require them to use basic skills, creative thinking, communication, and teamwork.
Students work together in groups for specific purposes. Several group structures—research groups, reciprocal teaching (Palincsar and Brown 1986), and cooperative learning "jigsaw" groups—are systematically integrated into the curriculum model (Brown and Campione 1996). For example, students in Sinclair's classroom generated questions on information needed to save the endangered bald eagle. Each group studied one aspect of the dilemma, using reciprocal teaching groups to read difficult materials and CSILE to explore issues. Then they shared their findings in jigsaw groups with students who had studied other aspects of the problem. Finally, the jigsaw groups created recovery plans for specific geographic areas, which required that each group member learn about all the other groups' research. Students cannot create this end product of their research—called the consequential task—without learning what other students and groups have studied. This deliberate combination of specialization and sharing facilitates both depth and breadth in students' learning.
The careful integration of process and content promotes creation of a true learning community. Many children in these classrooms state that learning how to collaborate is one of their greatest accomplishments. A visitor from the local chamber of commerce was impressed:They had to learn how to work together and how to listen. You could actually watch children listening to each other, thinking about what the other child said and incorporating that, then offering the next thought.
Feedback on student learning comes from many sources. Students share information with other students as much to find out what they still need to learn as to inform others. Students know they are individually accountable for their learning and work diligently to prepare for presentations and tests, often helping one another.
Teachers actively monitor student thinking. Teachers browse the student-created database and talk with research groups. Removal from the "sage on the stage" role gives teachers time to listen to individuals and groups of students, ask well-placed questions, provide information "just in time," or suggest resources.
Everyone is a part of the learning community. This community includes students, teachers, administrators, parents, business leaders, and members of the surrounding community. Students create and share authentic products, such as books and multimedia presentations. Corporate volunteers serve as authentic audiences for classroom presentations, experts in a specific topic or skill, mentors, and facilitators in problemsolving and team building.
Students use technology in authentic ways. Technology does not simply provide a modern format for practicing basic skills, as it does in many classrooms. Students use technology to gather information not found in their school libraries, and they write research reports. They create multimedia supports for oral presentations of their work, and they discuss their findings with other researchers in their classrooms and across the country.
Assessing the Impact of Schools for Thought
During the 1994-95 school year, researchers at Vanderbilt compared student achievement in Nashville's 6th grade Schools for Thought classrooms to those not using the approach. We examined performance on the Tennessee state-mandated standardized achievement test, on the Tennessee Comprehensive Assessment Program (TCAP), and on complex performance assessments of reading and writing. The performance assessments measured students' skill in reading to evaluate an advertise-ment and in writing for clarity of communication.
Analysis of the 10 subtests of the TCAP revealed that our students scored as well as, or significantly better than, the comparison classes on all of the subtests. Our students' scores for reading comprehension, overall reading skills, social studies, science, and study skills were significantly higher than the scores of comparison classes.
The complex performance assessments required students to use high-level critical thinking skills in reading and writing, competencies not tested by TCAP. Students wrote an essay on "If you could change something about your world, what would you change? Why? How?" They read and summarized a multiparagraph advertisement from the local newspaper, defined words in context, generated research questions to decide whether the claims were legitimate, and evaluated potential sources of information for their relevance.
On both performance assessments, Schools for Thought students scored significantly higher than did students in the comparison classrooms. Not only were our students doing as well or better than the other students on standardized achievement tests, but they were also acquiring critical thinking and problem-solving skills that the other students were not.
Preliminary assessment of the social impact of Schools for Thought, by Helen Bateman, used students' self-reports about safety, social skills, classroom behavior, and sense of community; students' problem-solving responses to stories about conflict; and school discipline records. Our students responded more positively on all items of the self-reports, created more win-win solutions to the conflict stories, and had fewer suspensions.
Excitement About Learning
We have learned that excitement about learning is contagious—an important factor in making massive changes in teaching and learning. Excited parents have been vital in spreading Schools for Thought to other schools in Nashville. During the pilot year, parents asked the superintendent to expand the program to the next grade so their children could continue with it.
Parents expressed surprise at the change in their children's attitudes toward school. At the dinner table, children talked about endangered species and Egypt. Two classes of students took their excitement about learning to new heights: To complete a book they were writing, they stayed two hours after school every day during the last week of school. Parents see their children transfer what they learn in class to other aspects of their lives. One student who had never spoken in public before chose a Boy Scout badge that required him to make a presentation.
Teachers excited about learning serve as important "living models" for their students. Their attitudes infect the students, underscoring Barth's (1990) claim that when teachers "engage in serious learning themselves, their students take learning more seriously" (p. 46). Also, when teachers collaborate with researchers, they model—for other teachers—the process that students are using in Schools for Thought classrooms (Bray 1996).
We continue to develop Schools for Thought. It is not a package, not a final product—it depends on continuous improvement in creating a learning community. The most important lesson we have all learned is that when teachers, students, and researchers collaborate to focus together on learning, everyone benefits.
References
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Barth, R. (1990). Improving Schools from Within. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
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Bray, M. (1996). "The Changing Role of Teachers as They Implement a Constructivist Approach to Learning." Unpublished manuscript. Nashville, Tenn.: Learning Technology Center, Vanderbilt University.
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Brown, A.L., and J.C. Campione. (1994). "Guided Discovery in a Community of Learners." In Classroom Lessons: Integrating Cognitive Theory and Classroom Practice, edited by K. McGilly. Cambridge: Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press/Bradford Books.
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Brown, A.L., and J.C. Campione. (1996). "Psychological Theory and the Design of Innovative Learning Environments: On Procedures, Principles, and Systems." In Innovations in Learning: New Environments for Education, edited by L. Schauble and R. Glaser. Mahwah, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum.
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Bruer, J.T. (1993). Schools for Thought. Cambridge: Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press.
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Cognition and Technology Group at Vanderbilt. (1997). The Jasper Project: Lessons in Curriculum, Instruction, Assessment, and Professional Development. Mahwah, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum.
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Lamon, M., T. Secules, A.J. Petrosino, R. Hackett, J.D. Bransford, and S.R. Goldman. (1996). "Schools for Thought: Overview of the Project and Lessons Learned from One of the Sites." In Innovation in Learning: New Environments for Education, edited by L. Schauble and R. Glaser. Mahwah, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum.
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Palincsar, A.S., and A.L. Brown. (1986). "Interactive Teaching to Promote Independent Learning from Text." The Reading Teacher 39, 8: 771-777.
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Scardamalia, M., C. Bereiter, and M. Lamon. (1994). "The CSILE Project: Trying to Bring the Classroom into World 3." In Classroom Lessons: Integrating Cognitive Theory and Classroom Practice, edited by K. McGilly. Cambridge: Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press/Bradford Books.
End Notes
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1 A hacking tower simulates the environment of a nest to encourage reintroduced eaglets to return to the area when they reach maturity.
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2 Collaborations in California, St. Louis, Toronto, and Iowa were funded by the J.S. McDonnell Foundation.
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3 First American National Bank supports corporate volunteers in Schools for Thought classrooms and broader initiatives to develop learning communities in Nashville.
