January 11, 2022 • Blog
During the pandemic students learned a lot about resilience, their families, and their communities, but many did not make as much academic progress as usual. With many students behind grade-level expectations, schools could rely on a strong history of trying to address this type of challenge with remediation — or they could transform their approach toward accelerating learning.
Schools have historically addressed below grade-level student achievement by placing these learners into some form of remediation. Typical approaches to remediation focus on practicing the prior grade skills, rather than building knowledge, despite the fact that students’ prior knowledge is the primary driver of how well they can comprehend grade-level texts (Natalie Wexler, The Knowledge Gap). While well intentioned, remediation often means students who fall behind are never engaged deeply in the work of their grade, and as a result, when they move to the next grade, they are once again subjected to remediation. Remediation traps students in a cycle of low-quality instruction focused on below grade level work — and often the students who are behind grade-level are the very same students for whom low-quality instruction never worked for in the first place.
The goal of accelerating learning is also getting students to grade-level, but its strategies and mindsets differ from remediation. Acceleration requires that students consistently engage in grade-level materials, discussions, and collaborations, along with appropriate scaffolds that make the work accessible. Accelerating learning relies on high-quality instruction — instruction that is multidimensional, attends to students’ cultural, social, and emotional well-being, and is propelled forward by high expectations for achievement and growth.
Too often learning acceleration is delegated solely to literacy and mathematics classrooms. However, learning acceleration can drive instruction in all subjects and in the daily interactions teachers and leaders have with students and their families. Science classrooms are particularly well-matched for accelerating learning because science is a multidimensional discipline filled with opportunities for social emotional learning and for sustaining students’ cultural heritage and assets.
In a high-quality science classroom, students bring their ways of understanding the world and their knowledge base to explaining real-world phenomena, data, and observations. They leverage their literacy, mathematics, technological, and social skills — and grow them as needed — to meet the demands of the engaging investigations they are conducting. The collaborative nature of science learning means students reflect on their interactions and progress and work to bring more to the table. Because science is about bringing our ways of knowing and existing knowledge to bear on novel questions, it’s a natural place for students to bring their whole selves, including their cultural assets to the classroom.
Science classrooms have great potential for accelerating learning across the curriculum. But for this to be accomplished, science teachers need both high-quality instructional materials and high-quality professional learning. This professional learning needs to be connected and applicable to teachers’ context and instructional materials, needs to leverage effective adult-learning principles, and at this moment also needs to support teachers in shifting practice away from remediation and toward accelerating learning. There are high-quality science instructional materials available for adoption, and we can get them in the hands of teachers. But how can districts support teachers in getting the high-quality professional learning they need in their efforts to accelerate learning using these materials?
District professional learning providers (e.g., science coaches or curriculum coordinators) are at the heart of this effort to support teachers in accelerating learning, rather than keeping students behind with remediation. That means it is essential that these professional learning providers are extremely capable and armed with diverse professional learning materials that are based in research, usable, and impactful. Despite their critical importance, there are few professional learning opportunities for district professional learning providers, few high-quality professional learning materials ready for them to use, and little investment into their continued professional growth by many districts. Often district professional learning providers spend a great deal of time designing professional learning and preparing professional learning materials — when a more productive use of their time is directly working with teachers and leaders.
One promising approach to this problem is how the Professional Learning Providers Academy (PLPA) for Amplify Science has tackled districts’ need to accelerate learning. The PLPA supports professional learning providers in districts that use Amplify Science’s high-quality instructional materials. The PLPA prioritizes the continued professional growth of district professional learning providers — recognizing their crucial importance in onboarding teachers district-wide to the vision of accelerating learning and supporting teachers with the strategies and mindsets that accelerate learning. The PLPA also gives professional learning providers materials and supports specifically focused on the strategies and mindsets that teachers can use to accelerate learning. The professional learning materials are varied in content, modality, and length, so professional learning providers can easily tailor them to their district contexts and to the specific interests of their teachers.
Disrupting the cycle of remediation requires high-quality professional learning led by high-quality professional learning providers that supports teachers in using high-quality instructional materials — which results in students having high-quality instruction. The instructional materials matter. The professional learning matters. The people matter. But most importantly, these all play in concert with one another. They amplify one another. Together they accelerate student learning.
This post was co-authored by Jennifer Folsom (WestEd), Rebecca Abbott (Lawrence Hall of Science), and Leslie Stenger (Lawrence Hall of Science). Rebecca and Leslie are Professional Learning Specialists with the Learning Design Group at UC Berkeley’s Lawrence Hall of Science and are part of the Amplify Science Professional Learning Partnership.