A Hitchhiker's Guide to Thinking about Literacy, Learning Progressions, and Instruction

Abstract

Established in 1985, CPRE unites researchers f rom seven of the nation's leading research institutions in efforts to improve elementary and secondary education through practical research on policy, finance, school reform, and school governance. CPRE studies alternative approaches to education reform to determine how state and local policies can promote student learning. The Consortium's member institutions are the

Classroom Assessment: Continuing the Discussion

“…Indeed, there are contexts where different choices here would be appropriate, and, for example, one design tactic would be better in a formative context for the assessments and the other would likely be better in a summative context (see later for a discussion of these two terms). As Mosher and Heritage () note, “if curriculum is designed to support individualization by generally defining the order of learning experiences, with room for variations in the pace of learning, supported by assessment, it can honestly be said to represent the same expectations for all students” (Mosher & Heritage, ).…”

Making Assessment Work for Teachers

“…Both articles underscore the complexity of developing these progressions, which no doubt accounts for the current dearth of progressions available to guide curriculum development. Recognizing this situation, both articles rely on mathematics and science curriculum as their primary domains, though it may be added that Mosher and Heritage () advocated for clearly defined and ordered literacy curricula, suggesting that such curricula can provide many of the same benefits as have been claimed for the stronger hypotheses of learning progressions in other disciplines.…”

“…At the local level, it is possible that growing experience in iterative curriculum design will likely transfer from discipline to discipline, and that general principles and desiderata for curriculum progressions will become a shared part of school and district culture. If curriculum is designed to support individualization by generally defining the order of learning experiences, with room for variations in the pace of learning, supported by assessment, it can honestly be said to represent the same expectations for all students, while acknowledging that they will likely differ in how long they might take to meet them (Mosher & Heritage, ).…”

“…In this regard, they should not lead teachers to discrete assessment events, but rather to ways of shedding light on students’ emergent, partial, or even fragmentary understanding as they grapple with important ideas and analytic practices within the disciplines. Teachers need a nuanced view of how students are progressing so that they can inform their adaptive responses to students’ needs on a timely basis when they have the best chance of being effective (Mosher & Heritage, ).…”

“…What Shepard et al. are recommending is echoed by Mosher and Heritage () who also note that moving in this direction will require substantial investments and repeated, evidence‐based cycles of design, testing, and redesign. It will also involve serious consideration about the development of new institutional infrastructure to support continued collaboration among researchers, designers, and practitioners.…”