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Ask an educator about what it’s like teaching a room full of students, and you’ll likely hear a similar refrain: No two kids learn the same way or grasp concepts at the exact same time.As a result, educators often say they resort to “teaching to the middle.”

More schools are starting to question whether traditional age-based classrooms are the best way to go, and to change the dynamic of teaching to the middle, they’re experimenting with competency-based learning, a system that moves kids along at different paces once they’ve shown they can grasp a key concept of a unit.

Kim Carter, executive director of QED Foundation, is a big supporter of competency-based learning.

“The choice is, do we want an education system that’s obsolete or do we want a system that is valued and creates value,” Carter said. The foundation offers training, coaching and consulting that focuses on student agency, as well as communities of collaboration both inside and outside school. Eventually, she says, that pace should be negotiated, with the student gradually taking over more responsibility for her learning.

Competency-based education is gaining momentum across the country. Already New Hampshire and Maine schools have transitioned to the model. Schools in Oregon, Iowa, Minnesota, and many other states are following suit. The Common Core State Standards are also pointing in the direction of requiring competency rather than just a passing grade. Though Carter says the language of the Common Core favors performance-based assessments — students will have to show what they can do — she thinks it’s unfortunate that a test will measure the learning, because at best, a test approximates meaningful assessment, but does not demonstrate real-world application of knowledge.

“The standardized tests that allow us to compare across states tell us nothing about the individual,” Carter said. “They were not designed to tell us anything about the individual; they are designed to measure the effectiveness of programs. That’s a very different thing.”

If learning becomes more personalized, tests should too. “The whole idea of competency is the ability to apply, document, and defend your learning,” Carter said. She proposes that schools use a common rubric to assess “uncommon learning.” In other words, she proposes teachers need to be strict in their expectations and required criteria, but more flexible in terms of how a student gets there. Students don’t all have to read the same book or create the same project, but they do have to demonstrate that they understand and can use the core competencies.

If a student gets 50 percent in a class in a traditional school, she fails and has to repeat the course or grade level until she scores higher, even if the score means that she understood half the material. Forcing her to repeat everything is inefficient and puts the student at a disadvantage for the rest of her academic career. In competency-based classrooms, students relearn and demonstrate competencies in only the areas that challenge them before moving forward.

“‘Batch and queue’” is horribly inefficient and destroys kids’ concept of self,” Carter said. “It’s like manufacturing, where you put everything through the same system and compare it to standards at the end. If it doesn’t match, put it through again.”

CHALLENGES TO IMPLEMENTATION

Shifting to a truly competency-based system means big changes for schools and would produce a ripple effect. “If you are truly going to go competency based and not just have a veneer of change, it will require retooling our systems,” said Carter.

Teacher training tailored to a competency-based education system is still one of the biggest hurdles. Many training courses have been the same for decades and don’t reflect some of the changing trends in education, Carter said. Successfully implementing a competency-based system is no easy feat — it means valuing what a child can demonstrate he knows, rather than assuming a correctly answered test question signifies he can apply that knowledge.

“Competency-based education is a huge shift, not just in terms of actual practices, or what we do in the classroom, or how we document what happens in the classroom, but a change in what we believe,” Carter said. And teachers need to act their way into believing, they can’t just be told to do it. She points to nursing or other higher education programs that ensure graduates have the basic skills and competencies before they can progress as good models to follow.

[RELATED READING: Five Big Changes to the Future of Teacher Education]

The other big barrier is teacher evaluations. Right now teachers are assessed by how well students do on a test. But understanding how well a student really knows the material should take more than that, just as teacher assessments should be based on more data points, Carter said. Teachers and students are trapped in the same system, one that is at odds with competency-based models.

“Our whole evaluation system is pretty young in the sense that we have only a few rudimentary means of assessing what students know,” Carter said.

Ultimately, teachers need to be trained and supported in the same way as students. And for both groups the standards have to mean something. Carter fears that if the education system continues as it has been, it will not only be obsolete, it will provide diplomas that have little validity.

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In the book Teaching 2030 by Barnett Berry and 12 classroom experts, the authors pinpoint specific skills educators will need to teach in the schools of tomorrow. They say teachers must be prepared to find and adapt new technologies to engage the digital generation, as well as work across traditional subject areas using project learning. They must be able to use data and evidence to inform their practice and know how to work in both virtual learning environments and brick-and-mortar schools. And they’ll need to collaborate with community-based organizations and work in schools that provide all kinds of other services for students and their families.

Along those lines, Berry has outlined five changes he believes need to be made to the future of teacher education.

1. INFORMED BY NEED. University-based education schools currently produce about 170,000 graduates every year — but only 70 percent of those actually enter teaching. One reason is the mismatch between production and market demand. In some “teacher surplus” states, universities graduate far too many teachers prepared for subjects and areas in low demand (such as elementary, physical education, social studies), while math, science, and special education vacancies continue to frustrate school leaders as well as parents. And because of the way education schools are funded, most universities offer just about every kind of teacher education major, irrespective of the local needs of area districts looking for new recruits. In the future, as long as we have the right policies in place, education schools should recruit and prepare those who are needed — and use the cost savings to recruit the right teachers who can teach the right subjects — as well as invest more in the right kind of pedagogical training.
2. INVESTMENTS IN CLINICAL TRAINING. Most university-based teacher education programs, unlike those in engineering, architecture, and nursing (and of course medicine), have few resources to prepare recruits in clinical, or real-life, contexts. Future teachers have had little opportunity to learn how to teach in schools under the tutelage of master teachers and college faculty who can closely supervise them and ensure they pass muster on rigorous (and more expensive) performance assessments. Teachers must also learn how to work effectively in both virtual networks as well as in community-based organizations that serve student learning in 24/7 venues. Policymakers must do their share by investing in the clinical training of future teachers, who can learn how to teach by interning in the places and with the people with whom they work in order to serve students effectively.
3. CHANGING THE CONTEXT OF CONTENT. Most education schools have taught teachers how to know things and think about things. But they’ve never had the chance to practice implementing high-level strategies, like communicating with parents and eliciting student thinking around subject areas. How do you teach someone to unpack a student’s thinking around specific subjects, in physics, social studies, literature? How do you build, create, and score assessments? How do you communicate student progress to not just parents but also policymakers? How do you give homework that’s meaningful? How do you help students, who are growing up on virtual reality games and Google figure out how to determine the accuracy of content and how to use it in solving problems? Universities must help future teachers understand and capitalize on the changing context of content in teaching diverse learners to meet high academic standards.
4. SEAMLESS CONNECTIONS BETWEEN PRE-SERVICE EDUCATION AND PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT. With an explosion of diverse students in chaotic school environments (and growing numbers of those with special needs or whose first language is not English), it’s that much more difficult for novice teachers to be fully prepared. The teacher education system needs to ensure that pre-service teachers learn crucial skills (see #3) in settings similar to those in which they will teach. They must go through performance assessments to determine their strengths and weaknesses, and this information must be used to craft plans for their future development as educators. With virtual communities like Teacher Leaders Network, and new outlets like the Teaching Channel, teachers can learn from each other, while ed schools and school districts can find ways to capitalize on these connections. Doing all of this will require that policymakers fuse the resources of universities and school districts in creating seamless connections between pre-service training and on-going professional development.
5. LEARNING AND LEADING IN HISTORICAL CONTEXT. In preparing all students to work in the global economy and participate in our complex, evolving democracy, public schools need to capitalize on the untapped potential of teacher leaders. Our education schools need to prepare this new generation of teacher leaders, who know how to spread their pedagogical expertise to colleagues and administrators and can communicate effectively with policymakers and parents. Doing so requires not just teachers who have technical skill in connecting good ideas with the right stakeholders and constituents, but who also have a deep understanding of how historical imperatives shape future prospects for the profession that makes all others possible. Educators who train teachers must cultivate a critical mass of teacher leaders, or teacherpreneurs, who continue to teach but have knowledge and skill to lead the transformation of teaching and learning.

Flickr: conbon33

If the way we teach and learn is changing, the way that teachers learn should be changing, too. What are schools of education doing to keep ahead?

Flickr:Mortsan

One of the many obstacles for educators when it comes to using technology in the classroom is training them on how exactly to do it. We know by now that simply handing out gadgets to teachers is not enough — they need to know how to maximize the potential and what best to use the technologies for.

With that in mind, Teachers College of San Joaquin will issue iPads (the iPad 2, to be clear) to every teacher-in-training starting next month. And they say it’s the first college of its kind to do so.

Dean Catherine Kearney says it’s crucial to prepare budding educators to keep up with and engage their students.

“I’m old enough to remember when computers hit the classroom and unfortunately as a teacher during that era, we weren’t provided with very much training, and in some classrooms they became very expensive plant stands.”

Not so with the iPad. The idea is to use it in both college and in K-12 classrooms. For example, with the Notorize app, which is for note taking and recording audio, educators can have their students read out loud for fluency, listen to and comment on it in the classroom, then bring the recordings back to college to analyze it with their teacher peers.

The iPads also make it easier for teachers-in-training to do things like Skype in to their classes and watch instructional videos.

Kearney says the amount of money saved on printing materials easily pays for the iPad, so there are no additional fees tacked on to the tuition.

“And when you think about college textbooks… they become obsolete almost by the time they’re printed,” she said. When you consider their cost — $130 to $200 and more each — the iPad investment makes sense.

And here’s what I was interested in: Why invest in a technology that changes so quickly?

“There will be another generation of the iPad and a generation of something we haven’t even imagined. Rather than tie to a single piece of technology, we’re working to stay with the newest and best tool,” she said.

“I’m of the generation that, you know, we hung onto something for 10 and 20 years. But that’s not the current generation, and our students and their students are used to things kind of rapidly moving to the next thing. The idea that new technology is always on the horizon should not prevent us from using the very best thing that’s available today.”

It’s also worth noting that Teachers College of San Joaquin trains teachers on “multiple pathways” and “linked learning” practices, which connects K-12 students to the world outside school perimeters. For instance, students studying the human circulatory system learn the content in class, then observe how it works by taking blood pressure on real patients in a hospital.

“Teacher candidates can understand how to translate academics into career readiness,” Kearney says. “They’re prepared to teach their courses in ways that prepare kids for the world of work and the world of school.”

But not every scientist or engineer should be a teacher, Anastasoff said at the Big Ideas Fest earlier this week.

“People figure it out for themselves after they try teaching,” she said. “It might be better for them to be an after-school aid or a technologist in education. Not everyone should teach.”

Consider the teaching profession like a long-term relationship, she suggested. You should date each other for a while before you commit to getting married.