Recently our institution has been spending a considerable amount of time exploring Charlotte Danielson's Framework for Teaching which is best explained directly on the her website: "The Framework for Teaching is a research-based set of components of instruction, aligned to the INTASC standards, and grounded in a constructivist view of learning and teaching."

While there is much to be gained by examining, Danielson's Four Domains of Good Teaching, there might be equally as much or more to be gained by exploring a corresponding Student Framework for Learning. Similar in structure to The Framework for Teaching, a learning framework might also have four domains expressed as questions:

• Is the content I am teaching essential and relevant?
• Am I addressing the skills my students need to be successful in life?
• Am I effectively assessing the learning that is taking place?
• Am I fostering the spirit of inquiry that will sustain learning in my students for a lifetime?

Is the content essential, relevant, and engaging?

In an AP class, the answer might be that the content is essential because of the test but the relevance and engagement for today's learners is questionable. Honestly answering this question will probably mean teachers have to give up content that they are comfortable, even passionate about and replace it with content and questions that are more significant for today's students but not necessarily well understood by the teacher..

For example, in a chemistry class where stoichiometry is taught for multiple days, should teachers replace a few days of stoichimotery in favor of more current topics like nanotechnology or global warming. Topics that might not be areas of expertise for the teacher and that will necessitate student and teacher becoming collaborators in research and learning. Likewise in English, should students submit 6 formal essays a semester or should that number be reduced as students learn to blog about topics of interest and cultivate an audience for their writings.

The NCTE's adoption of Toward A Definition of  21st-Century Literacies suggests the latter. In math rather than assigning the odd problems on page 127, should students be given opportunities to work with real numbers that describe social, political or environmental issues in the world at large? If we are to foster and encourage student learning, there will need to be significant curricular revision that keeps what is essential but adds what is relevant and engaging to students.

Am I addressing the skills my students need to be successful in life?

Not only is the content landscape changing, but the skill set is changing too. There are numerous interpretations of 21st century skill sets but all tend to boil down to 4 categories of skills and understandings that students need to develop:

• Inquiry, Research, and Information Literacy
• Digital Citizenship and Personal Learning Networks
• Communication and Collaboration in a Global World
• Creativity, Inventive and Critical Thinking, and Design

Developing skills in those categories demands teachers rethink their pedagogy in a way that makes students consumers, evaluators, and producers of information. It requires students be put in situations that allow them to solve authentic problems by generating well researched, clever, and creative solutions. It will demand a partnership with the library as well as interaction with peers and experts that come from across the globe. Technology should be intentionally embedded in the curriculum to support the acquisition of 21st century literacies. It is the tool that can transform the learning landscape so that it transcends traditional boundaries and makes learning social, networked, and continuous or 24-7.

Am I effectively assessing the learning that is taking place?

If learning is increasingly collaborative and student-centered and if an emphasis is placed on ensuring the development of skills and literacies, then assessment will need to change. Learning is a process not a product and assessment has traditionally focused on what is produced. Technology affords us a toolkit that can build a window on the learning process. Tools like DyKnow can make lecture interactive, providing a recording of the process by which students approach tasks, the questions that are arising in their thinking, and the understanding they currently possess. The collective set of  Web 2.0 tools provides teachers with a venue for watching the learning process as it is occurring. Google Notebooks lets us follow a research process. Wikis let us watch collaboration as it occurs. Should we shift our assessment to include the process and perhaps, in so doing, encourage students to take responsibility for their learning and to even take risks and push themselves to move out of their comfort zone because credit is given for the act of learning and not just for the final test. In fact, is a test an accurate measure of understanding and learning or is it more a measure of facts that could be googled and the ability to predict what might be asked?

Am I fostering the spirit of inquiry that will sustain learning in my students for a lifetime?

A student framework must promote that which sustains lifelong learning.
I think the valuable characteristics of learning are shown in the image below.

We must make schools places that foster the development of those attributes. It will require us to change. Perhaps the people most able to explain the changes necessary to foster student learning are the students themselves, particularly the set of students (who represent 4 continents) maintaining the blog entitled Students2oh.

In one post Anthony Chivetta writes:
"Twenty-first century education won't be defined by any new technology. It won't be defined by 1:1 laptop programs or tech-intensive projects. Twenty-first century education will, however, be defined by a fundamental shift in what we are teaching-a shift towards learner-centered education and creating creative thinkers. Today's world is no longer content with students who can simply apply the knowledge they learned in school: our generation will be asked to think and operate in ways that traditional education has not, and can not, prepare us for."

What is your framework for supporting student learning in this flattening, information-laden world that is filled with challenges and opportunities?

By Elizabeth Helfant

Elizabeth Helfant is the Upper School Coordinator of Instructional Technology at Mary Institute Country Day School, a JK-12 institution embarking on a 1:1 adventure. using Lenovo Tablet PCs and DyKnow.
 

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