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Robinson's Weblog

These are the ramblings of an inquisitive educator, as recorded in a fancy Weblog. Her continuing mission: to explore strange new insights, to seek out new understandings and new methods of creating engaging learning experiences, and to go boldly where many other educators are headed as well. ​

Happy Reading!

Robinson’s Weblog #023:  For Goodness’ Sake, Will You Please FOCUS! Part Three: Tactical Decision-Making

7/31/2017

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The goal of U.S. K-12 science education articulated in A Framework for K-12 Science Education (National Research Council, 2012), and reflected in the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) gives science educators a clear picture of the end result we want to achieve with students. With a specific goal in hand, you are ready to devise an action plan for achieving it.

In Robinson’s Weblog #022: For Goodness’ Sake, Would You Please FOCUS! Part Two: The Action Plan (One Strategy, Many Tactics), I wrote that an action plan consists of a strategy and tactics. Together these provide the directions for achieving a goal. For any goal, you will have one strategy and many tactics. 

This weblog entry is about the second part of devising an action plan: choosing tactics. Tactical decision-making takes your strategy and sets forth the specific actions (activities and tasks) you will take to execute it. Some tactics are planned in advance and others involve decision-making in the moment.

Your tactical decisions will depend on many factors including the learner demographic and whether your learning environment is a traditional academic setting (school, classroom) or nontraditional setting (online environment, after-school program, homeschool or other outside-of-school location). 

As an educator, the scope of the tactical decisions you have to make on a daily basis depend on your overall strategy, which depends on your specific role in education. Depending on your role, you may have more or less responsibility for designing student learning experiences. Many educators facilitate student learning experiences using curriculum and/or instructional materials designed by others and some educators have roles that include a combination of design and facilitation. 

If facilitating student learning experiences is a part of your role, then the functions you perform include instructing, motivating, disciplining, encouraging and sharing information with students. In performing these functions, you are constantly deciding what tactics to use, when, and with whom. This requires knowledge of content and instructional methods, an understanding of how individual students learn best, and being aware of your students’ strengths and weaknesses at particular points in time. Some call this  “the art of teaching”, but I call this ability to effectively facilitate student learning experiences a superpower, which I wrote about in Robinson’s Weblog #005: For Goodness’ Sake, Will You Please Sit Down?  Part Two: Your Ego is not Your Amigo.

As a learning experience designer, I want to make sure that parents, classroom teachers, online instructors, and other educators can use my materials to easily facilitate learning experiences in their various learning environments. So, my starting point is to think about the students and how they will experience what I design.

I also have to think about the specific learning objectives and choose different tactics depending on the focus of each learning experience. While some knowledge and skills are best acquired through scientific investigation or engineering design projects, others are best acquired through reading an account of a scientific discovery, or through Socratic discussions, interactive games, etc.

Whether you are a learning experience designer, facilitator, or some combination of both; having an action plan keeps you focused on achieving the goal of science education with students.  Your action plan will have one strategy and many tactics. The key is to execute your strategy by deliberately choosing tactics that will achieve the goal.

The goal of science education articulates what students should gain from their learning experiences overall. My strategy for achieving the goal of science education is to use the NGSS to design integrative STEM learning experiences. I am now ready to make deliberate, tactical decisions in executing this strategy.

Since the NGSS were the result of working backward from this goal, I can continue working backwards from the grade banded expectations of NGSS to design learning experiences that progressively move student understanding and skill acquisition closer and closer to achieving it.
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Robinson’s Weblog #022:  For Goodness’ Sake, Will You Please FOCUS! Part Two: The Action Plan (One Strategy, Many Tactics)

7/20/2017

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The goal of U.S. K-12 science education is articulated in A Framework for K-12 Science Education (National Research Council, 2012), and it’s reflected in the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS).  In Robinson’s Weblog #021: For Goodness’ Sake, Would You Please FOCUS! Part One: The Goal, I wrote that the goal articulated in the Framework gives science educators a clear picture of the end result we want to achieve with students. With a clear goal in hand, you are ready to devise an action plan for achieving it.

An action plan consists of a strategy and tactics. Together these provide the directions for achieving a goal. For any goal, you will have one strategy and many tactics. While a strategy is a broad overview of how you will achieve your goal, tactics are the specific actions (activities and tasks) you will take to execute the strategy.

To devise an action plan for achieving the goal of science education, you’ll need a strategy that describes how you will do it. To come up with your strategy, simply ask yourself:  “How will I work to achieve the goal of science education with students?”

In my role as a learning experience designer, my answer is: “I will design learning experiences for students.” Depending on your role, you may have more or less responsibility for designing student learning experiences. Many educators facilitate learning experiences using curriculum and/or instructional materials designed by others and some educators have roles that include a combination of learning design and facilitation.

Your answer to the question (and consequently your strategy and tactics) will depend on your specific role in science education. But although there are different action plans for achieving it, the goal remains the same and is the focus at all times.

My basic strategy is to design learning experiences. But I’d like to make it a bit more specific.  I’ll do this by answering two follow-up questions:
  • What should students gain from their learning experiences at each stage of their science education?
  • How should I engage students in learning experiences?


Part one of the Framework articulates the goal for K-12 science education, which is the end result we want to achieve with all students by the end of the 12th grade.
Part two proceeds “backward” from that overarching goal and outlines what students are expected to know and be able to do at specific stages of their science education.
Part three directs how these ideas are to be integrated into any new science standards. Thus, the framework provided the guidelines for the development of the new science education standards that later came to be known as the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS).

In the NGSS, the knowledge and practices of the sciences and engineering that all students should learn — written as performance expectations — are organized by grade level for kindergarten through grade five, and as grade banded expectations at the middle school (6–8) and high school (9–12) levels.

The goal of science education articulates what students should  “gain” from their learning experiences overall. Since the NGSS were the result of working backward from this goal, I can continue working backwards from the grade banded expectations of NGSS to design learning experiences that progressively move student understanding and skill acquisition closer and closer to achieving it.

Because it was the result of working backward from the goal of science education, the NGSS provides the answer to the question: “What should students gain from their learning experiences at each stage of their science education?”

Yeah NGSS!

Now that I have an answer to the first question, I’ll move on to the second question: “How should I engage students in learning experiences?”

It’s no use turning to the NGSS for help with answering this second question, because the NGSS is a set of standards, which are expectations for what all students should know and be able to do —it is not curriculum, and does not dictate how the standards are taught. Curriculum and instructional choices are left to states, districts, schools, and teachers. So, while the NGSS tells me “what” students should know and be able to do, I’m stuck with the task of figuring out “how” to get students to know and do it. Thanks for nothing, NGSS. Just kidding!

So now what? I still need to answer the question: “How should I engage students in learning experiences?”

In Robinson’s Weblog #002: The One About Relevance Part One: Don’t Break Your Arm Patting Yourself on the Back, I wrote about how, when I was teaching college chemistry courses, I started making every lesson relevant to my students by connecting the chemistry content to life beyond the classroom. This made my students so much more interested in learning that many of them actually started looking forward to coming to chemistry class.

I was definitely onto something. But although my students were more interested in the chemistry content, they weren’t motivated to learn it. So I shouldn’t have been “breaking my arm patting myself on the back” because I was not using the relevance of real-world topics to its full potential.

That was before I stumbled upon the integrative STEM approach. Integrative STEM emphasizes the connections among the STEM areas and their application. Through intentionally integrating mathematics and technology/engineering education with science education, it empowers educators to go beyond teaching isolated science facts to helping students connect their developing scientific knowledge to the world around them.

In the integrative STEM approach, the application to the science content is simultaneous, not after the fact. So instead of students sitting through a boring lesson, and then applying what they learned; this approach engages students in a relevant occurrence or problem at the beginning of the learning module and uses it to frame their learning experiences. Now that’s a good way to motivate students to learn!

By using problem-, and project-based tasks that reflect real-world situations, the integrative STEM approach provides both interest and motivation for learning; thereby using the relevance of real-world topics to their full potential. Using the integrative STEM approach, I can go beyond getting students to recognize the relevance of science to their own lives to using relevance to actually motivate them to learn.

Because of this, integrative STEM is my answer to the question: “How should I engage students in learning experiences?”  Therefore, my overall strategy for achieving the goal of science education is to use the NGSS to design integrative STEM learning experiences for students.  

Having an overall strategy for achieving a goal gives you the clarity and focus you need for the next step in devising your action plan: choosing tactics. Tactical decision-making takes the strategy and sets forth the specific actions (activities and tasks) you will take to execute it.
I’ll explore this in my next weblog entry. Stay tuned!

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    Here, I chronicle my journey to create engaging integrative STEM learning experiences for students. These weblog entries include tales from the front line of classroom teaching and online instructional design. ​

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