Clemson University's Teacher Learning Progression Program

This chapter provides an overview of Clemson University's Teacher Learning Progression program, which offers participating middle school science, technology, engineering, and/or mathematics (STEM) teachers with personalized advanced credentials. In contrast to typical professional development (PD) approaches, this program identifies individualized pathways for PD based on teachers' unique interests and needs and offers PD options through the use of a “recommender system”—a system providing context-specific recommendations to guide teachers toward the identification of preferred PD pathways and content. In this chapter, the authors introduce the program and highlight (1) the data collection and instrumentation needed to make personalized PD recommendations, (2) the recommender system, and (3) the personalized advanced credential options. The authors also discuss lessons learned through initial stages of project implementation and consider future directions for the use of recommender systems to support teacher PD, considering both research and applied implications and settings.

Modelling the learning impacts of educational disruptions in the short and long run

In this paper, I propose a new framework for analysing the short and long-run effects of temporary educational disruptions on the learning progression of children. The framework integrates into a coherent model recent advances in the literature on learning acquisition (Kaffenberger, 2021; Kaffenberger and Pritchett, 2020b, 2021) and the literature on estimating the immediate costs of instructional disruptions (Neidhöfer et al., 2021). The integrated framework includes explicit modelling of continuous parental investments, filling a gap in the literature related to the Potential Pedagogical Function and other explicit models of learning progression and acquisition. In the same way, the model considers the role of economic resources as part of the resources employed by parents to mitigate the effects of a temporary shock in instruction., expanding the notion of attenuation capacity developed by Neidhöfer et al. (2021). Finally, I take this framework to the data to estimate the potential effects of the instructional disruption caused by the COVID-19 pandemic in Mexico. The estimates suggest that, for the Mexican cohort affected by the instructional disruption,the potential persistent loss in learning with respect to the counterfactual lies on average between 20% and 90% of the learning acquired during a usual school year, depending on the effectiveness of the remote learning policies implemented during 2020 and 2021.These results already consider the mitigating role of parental investments. Furthermore,my results suggest substantial variation between inhabitants from different regions of the country and inside inhabitants of the same region, being the South of the country the region where the losses are the largest.

Using the Four Stages of Learning to Assess, Set Goals, and Instruct

Teaching requires attention to individual student needs by providing both adequate challenge and sufficient support to help students successfully gain academic skills (Shurr et al., 2019). The learning stages framework divides typical learning into four distinct stages: acquisition, fluency, maintenance, and generalization (Collins, 2012; Haring & Eaton, 1978). Thinking in terms of the learning progression can help teachers assess student performance and determine how they can best be supported to progress. This article will lead readers through the process of using the four stages of learning as a framework for assessment (i.e., understanding where students are currently performing), goal setting (i.e., setting the instructional aim), and instruction (i.e., planning for and delivering instruction aligned to individual student needs) within the context of mathematics for students with a variety of disabilities and support needs.

The case for a sub-element ‘measuring matter’ within the Australian national numeracy learning progression

Australia has a National Numeracy Learning Progression (NNLP) that is strongly aligned with the Australian Curriculum: Mathematics. This article examines how a sub-element within this progression could be impacting students’ learning of Science. This sub-element is firmly based on Mathematics education research as to how students build their understanding of geometric measurement (the structure of length, area and volume). Mathematics educators subsequently researched children’s measurement of mass and included it within the same sub-element of the NNLP. The contexts in which mass and volume are measured in Mathematics are different to those used in teaching Science. This article presents two studies that used variation theory and task-based interviews of children in Years 5 and 6, to explore their thinking about mass and volume in a Science context. The findings suggest that mathematical constructs in geometric measurement could be constraining the development of scientific ideas about matter. This research has implications for furthering the development of the NNLP to encompass scientific aspects of measuring matter.

Designing a Learning Progression about Micro-Evolution to Inform Instruction and Assessment in Elementary Science

This paper gives an example of how to address the challenge of designing a learning progression that describes student thinking, with the necessary specificity to align instructional opportunities and assessment tools. We describe the Conceptual Underpinnings of Evolution project and the iterative process of developing a novel learning progression theory, while critically testing that theory using structured interview data analyzed with Rasch models. We investigate elementary students’ capacities for reasoning in biology, specifically focusing on microevolution as a strategic core idea for students between the ages of seven and nine. The learning progression theory informed the design of two instructional modules which aimed to build on students’ intuitions. The modules provided opportunities for students to engage in scientific practices framed to develop more adequate explanations about how organisms may change over time, in accordance with environmental changes. Aligning the learning progression, instructional activities, and structured interview assessment was critical for meeting two of our underlying assumptions: that students’ reasoning capacities rely on instructional opportunities; and that students’ assessment scores must be interpretable in terms of learning progression levels. We share both initial and late-stage versions of the learning progression and describe how item-level information and Rasch analyses helped both to specify the learning progression levels and to define the two underlying dimensions.

An empirically based practical learning progression for generalisation, an essential element of algebraic reasoning

Generalisation is a key feature of learning algebra, requiring all four proficiency strands of the Australian Curriculum: Mathematics (AC:M): Understanding, Fluency, Problem Solving and Reasoning. From a review of the literature, we propose a learning progression for algebraic generalisation consisting of five levels. Our learning progression is then elaborated and validated by reference to a large range of assessment tasks acquired from a previous project Reframing Mathematical Futures II (RMFII). In the RMFII project, Rasch modelling of the responses of over 5000 high school students (Years 7–10) to algebra tasks led to the development of a Learning Progression for Algebraic Reasoning (LPAR). Our learning progression in generalisation is more specific than the LPAR, more coherent regarding algebraic generalisation, and enabling teachers to locate students’ performances within the progression and to target their teaching. In addition, a selection of appropriate teaching resources and marking rubrics used in the RMFII project is provided for each level of the learning progression.