Leading Toward an Equity Pedagogy

Bay Area Coalition for Equitable Schools

Equity

• The work of eliminating systemic barriers to learning

• Eliminating the predictability of success or failures that currently correlates with any social or cultural factor, especially race, class and primary language

• Discovering and cultivating the unique gifts, talents and interests that every human being possesses

Local

State

National

Global

A Partnership for Learning

CommunityCentral Office

Schools

Student

Student WorkStudent

Motivation

Mind

Heart

Student Support

Teacher Parent/Family

• Teachers who refuse to make excuses for students who were not learning.

• There is an expectation that students would take challenging classes such as advanced math, science, and literature.

• Students are grouped in small classes and heterogeneously.

• Teachers who work with students to master a core curriculum and who matched teaching styles with learning needs.

High Achieving Schools: What do they look like?

The Challenges toHigh Student Achievement

• Underestimating what “disadvantaged” students are capable of doing.

• Organizing instruction around the belief that basic skills must be mastered before “advanced” skills can be taught.

• Failing to provide adequate support for learning new material.

• Postponing more challenging and interesting work for too long -- some times forever.

• Depriving students of a meaningful or motivating context for learning or using skills that are taught.

“ Small…will produce a sense of belonging almost immediately, but hugging is not the same as algebra. Rigor and care must be braided together, or we run the risk of creating small, nurturing environments that aren’t schools.”

Gerwetz, 2001

Small School Literature Shows That...

Essential Components of Learning

•In-depth learning

•Performance assessments

•Active Inquiry

7 Attributes of

High Achieving

Schools

•Common Focus

•Personalization

•Respect & Responsibility

•Time to Collaborate

•Performance-based

•Technology as tool

StudentAchievement

Source: Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

To Get to High and EQUITABLE Achievement the Literature

Adds that...

Essential Components of Learning

7 Attributes of

High Achieving

Schools

StudentAchievement

Equity Pedagogy•Learning to learn•Appreciation and respect•Building on strengths•Recognizing & building on home culture •Inquiry as a strategy for continuous improvement (race, culture, language and power)

Source: Banks, DelPitt, and others.

What is equity pedagogy?

• Focuses on instructional tools that facilitate deep learning.

• Highlights an appreciation for the intellectual accomplishments all young learners bring to school.

• Emphasizes building on student strengths rather than remediating deficits.

• Recognizes a student’s culture as an important element in teaching and learning.

• Uses inquiry as a strategy for continuous improvement in how teachers teach and how students learn

“What to Look for in a Classroom”

1. In his article, What to Look for in a Classroom, Alfie Kohn describes 2 types of settings. He identifies the “working with” classroom as the one we are striving for. – Describe a “working with” classroom you’ve

recently visited. – What teacher and student behaviors did you see

that supported student learning?

2. In groups: share your vision. Individuals should think about what descriptors they hear from colleagues. Capture your descriptors on poster paper

Six Instructional Tools

• Information Retention and Retrieval

• Scaffolding

• Meta-cognition and Self-Regulation

• Student Discourse and Talk Structures

• Reciprocal Teaching

• Cultural Competence

Meta-cognition

• The primary goal is helping low performing students “learn how to learn”.

• It centers on developing an awareness of the demands of a given task and the strategies that we employ to complete it.

• It also requires us to monitor and regulate learning, emotions, attention.

Student Discourse

• Student-to-student discussions should be the centerpiece of learning in the classroom.

• Learning is socially mediated; consequently students need ample opportunities to talk to the teacher and to each other in order to “make sense” of what they are learning.

• Talk also reveals the ways students are making meaning of information or developing misunderstandings about key concepts.

Cultural Competence

• Involves teachers understanding the socio-political context students exist in and how it shapes them as learners.

• Requires teachers have the ability to use students’ cultural capital as an instructional aid (how students make meaning).

• Requires teachers to facilitate the creation of a cross-racial, cross-cultural learning community in the classroom.

Reciprocal Teaching

• RT highlights four key strategies: Questioning,Clarifying,Summarizing,Predicting.

• Builds students capacity to know a subject deeply by “teaching it” to others.

• Capitalizes on the collective expertise of the group.

• Promotes authentic student discourse.

Information Retention

• Learning environments must feel emotionally safe for learning to take place.

• Cognitive growth occurs when students experience appropriate challenge and immediate feedback.

• Each student makes meaning of key ideas and skills based on experience, culture, sense and relevance.

• The brain has three stages of memory: short term, working memory, and long term memory. Helping students know how to use each is essential for learning.

Scaffolds

Scaffolds are forms of support provided be the teacher (or another student) to help students bridge the gap between their current abilities and the intended goal

Scaffolding and ZPD

• Learning only occurs when students are “stretched” beyond their current competency.

• The metaphor of “scaffolding” has been used to describe the support that enables a learner to complete a task that would otherwise be unattainable without assistance.

• Social interaction between a learner and an individual with additional expertise are necessary.

Zone of Proximal Development

• The task must have the right level of difficulty to promote learning.

• Too difficult a task will frustrate the learner and make learning impossible.

• Too easy a task results in not enough productive work to build dendrites.

Types of Scaffolding

Modeling• Give clear

examples • Show finished

work• Walk your

students through a process

Bridging • Connect ideas

and show inter-relationships

• Activate prior knowledge and experience

Types of Scaffolding

Contextualization• Provide

environments your students are familiar with that will help illuminate and clarify new concepts for them

• Use analogies and metaphors

Questioning• Ask higher order

questions (why? How? So what?)

• Open a window of doubt and possibility

• Ask “leading questions” to stretch thinking

Types of Scaffolding

Metacognitive Development

• Plan how to tackle problems

• Be consciously aware of processes

• Teach self-assessment strategies

• Decide on steps in solving problems

Text Presentation• Ask students to

present learned concepts in an alternative format

The Bottom Line on Small Schools

If all these new schools are is small and humane, that will not be enough. And if the opportunity to develop close relationships with students and know them well is not leveraged on behalf of improving opportunities for their intellectual development, achievement, and success, the promise of these new small school will be squandered.

Ancess, 1997

The Work of Instructional Leaders

• Instructional leaders focus on standards of practice and standards of performance.

• Instructional leaders ask hard questions about culture and practice.

• Instructional leaders foster ongoing opportunities for the collaboration, practice, and feedback that teachers need.

• Instructional leaders respond in productive ways to persistent practices and behaviors that raise concerns. They need the skill and fortitude to confront unproductive practice.

• Instructional leaders seek to develop the knowledge, skills, and competencies needed to contribute to teacher learning.

I learned that it was easy to enough to say, “when the rest of the work is done, we’ll focus on instruction”…I learned from hard experience that the moment when everything is “under control” just does not arrive. Knowing this, there has to be a constant balance between tending to the school’s maintenance and focusing on instruction. It cannot be one first and then the other, and it cannot be that instruction just has to wait.”

Mohr, 2000