Getting to Revolution through
Evolution?
Janet L. Kolodner
College of Computing
Georgia Institute of Technology
6/21/2016
Premises
• Revolution requires addressing social and
systemic issues.
• How can the computer help?
– Not as a trojan horse, rather as a tool for social and
systemic change.
– Helping teachers experience deep learning and
integrated capabilities and content learning -themselves and among their students.
– Helping teachers form communities.
– Doing the same for administrators and parents and
politicians.
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• It’s not straightforward at all. We need to
identify a set of “catalysts” and design
with those in mind.
Getting to Revolution through
Evolution -- a Disclaimer ...
• I’m more pessimistic now that I was
when I wrote my title and abstract.
• I’m not so sure evolution is the
answer anymore.
• Let me tell you a story...
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I had a dream ...
• Kids would focus on making knowledge, not just
rote learning
• Kids would learn how to think, use resources,
formulate questions, make informed decisions,
make a good argument, explain rigorously,
communicate for understanding, read for
understanding, ... as a normal course of
education -- i.e., skills and capabilities will be as
important to learn as content
• Depth over breadth; focus on application of
what’s being learned (learning for transfer)
• Everyone would think of him/herself as a learner
and knowledge builder (including the teacher)
• Computers playing the roles for kids that it plays
for us as professionals -- making everyday
activities easier, making some possible
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In science, projects ...
– Begin with a personally-engaging real-world
challenge -- erosion, ecology, vehicle propulsion
– Early activities generate issues for investigation;
results are applied to addressing the challenge;
analysis of solutions in progress; iteration.
– Students design investigations and report results,
multiple resources used
– Public exhibits of solutions, methodologies, what
they have learned
– Technology integrated to make resource access,
visualization, record-keeping, reflection,
collaboration, … easier
– Focus on processes involved in getting to
solutions, not simply on solutions themselves
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Learning by Design™
• A project-based inquiry approach to
science education for middle school
• Students learn science concepts, skills,
and practices in the context of attempting
to achieve design challenges.
• Highly collaborative
• A variety of practices and scaffolding
tools are embedded in the approach to
promote the kinds of experiences and
reflection that promote transfer.
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LBD™ Units and Challenges
• Physical Science
– Apollo 13 – introduction to practices of design and
science
– Vehicles in Motion – motion and forces
– Machines that Help – simple machines and mechanical
advantage
• Earth Science
– Digging In -- launcher unit
– Managing Erosion – erosion and accretion
– Tunneling through Georgia – geology, rocks and
minerals, rock formations, underground water
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LBD’s Cycles
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A typical project cycle
• Challenge is presented
• Messing about to generate questions for inquiry
and discussion around a public whiteboard
• Investigation to address questions followed by a
poster session
• Design planning
• Pin-up session
• Construction & testing
• Gallery walk
• Additional investigation, demo, reading,
discussion of content, redesign
• Iteration over last three steps to solution
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LBD in Action
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Novel features of LBD
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• Ritualized classroom activities matched to
science practices
• Design diary pages matched to activities provide
scaffolding for performance and reflection
• Software scaffolding matched to activities and
presentations promotes summary and
interpretation
• Orchestration such that students need each
others' results
• Lots of presentations to promote good kinds of
reflection
• Highly iterative to promote explanation and
iterative refinement of conceptions and skills
• Launcher units introduce skills, practices, and
culture
Skills and capabilities learning
• With “ritualizing” to make skills sets
comfortable to carry out
– systematizes practices to make them
methodical; promotes habits
– situates practices in several contexts;
promoting adaptability
– engages students in public practice as
collaborators; affording noticing,
asking, discussion, productive
reflection
– provides framework to help teachers
focus and structure their facilitation
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Notice ...
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• It’s fun, students are engaged, it’s
learner-centered, collaborative
• Activity structures sequence
individual, small group, whole class
activities
• Structured to provide scaffolding for
student development and teacher
roles (educative)
• Computers might or might not be
central
We’ve made it work
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• Over 3000 students, 18 teachers in
past 4 years
• LBD students learn more content and
learn it more deeply
• LBD students collaborate better,
design experiments better, bring old
knowledge to bear better than
comparisons
• Average LBD students have
capabilities similar to comparison
honors students
But we can’t sustain it
• Teachers drop out after 3 years; they are
too tired, and the system doesn’t reward
them (There’s tremendous pressure from principals and
other teachers to shorten the units and cover more, highstakes testing adds more pressure.)
• Publishers don’t want to publish; they
don’t see a market, they want to know that
local standards in the biggest states are
addressed
• And this is without requiring computer
integration ...
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Integrating software ...
• Rigor in presentations goes up; level
of discussion in classrooms goes
way up
• But we can’t sustain that …
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– Computers aren’t available
– Those running school computer
systems won’t put our software on their
servers
– Teachers are worn out, no energy to
learn more
Solutions???
• Don’t think computers will be a
“trojan horse” for getting new ways
of educating into schools -- the
system doesn’t support it, and the
computers aren’t available
• Don’t think better pre-service training
(by itself) will help -- the system
doesn’t support the teachers once
they get into the classrooms
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Solutions??? (cont.)
• Is there infrastructure for creating
evolution?
– Not clear, evolution requires the “weak”
to die off, but the “weak” choices (the
quick fixes) are easiest and most
appealing to politicians and policy
makers
– I’ve seen in the South, by the way, that
some state and local governments
aren’t sure they want to support public
education
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What to do???
• We need to look for “catalysts” -technological and other interventions
that can help to change the social
and systemic structures in ways that
will make small changes propagate
• And then we have to keep on doing
what we’re doing, and in addition,
design learning environments (and
perhaps work environments) with
those catalysts in mind
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Where might the “catalysts”
focus?
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• On helping education policy makers
become attuned to their own knowledge
building
• On helping teachers create community
• On helping teachers, students, parents,
policy makers get to good resources
• On making materials we create easy to
integrate and use
• On engaging parents better in their
children’s education
• …
My challenge to you ...
• As you listen to everyone’s dreams,
think about what the “catalysts”
might be that would allow those
dreams to come to fruition -- they are all
good dreams, but they won’t happen without also
creating the social and systemic change that will
allow their practices to propagate.
• As people present potential
catalysts, what redesign would allow
them to function that way?
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