NESI Conversation 2 Doynit on School Reform

This second conversation with Dr. W.E. Doynit extends a series of short descriptions of how to accelerate learning dramatically by increasing learning efficiency rates with and without Tablet and other mobile PCs.

Each description adds a piece to the arrangement of decisive actions teachers and software developers consider when preparing and offering any lesson in which learning occurs.

Dr. Doynit represents educators who use the principles and practices described in this talk in real schools with real learners.

Doynit’s New Era School Initiative (NESI) represents the many real public and private schools that students attended to realize accelerated learning.

Topics: Three essential principles of school reform – instructional-failure-not-an-option, a learners’ view, and count something; as well as teachers’ backgrounds.

Tablet PC Education: Thank you, Dr. Doynit, for meeting with us again. I’d like to review in a continuing conversation over multiple meetings several issues that educators have with what you said in your first interview.

When you think of school reform, what do you consider the key principle that we must address?

Doynit: The necessary, key principle of school reform must include that teachers cannot allow student failure because of inadequate instruction.

Tablet PC Education: Whoa! Do you mean that, really, as an absolute?

Doynit: Yes. Let me ask you the obvious rhetorical and common sense questions:

If not an absolute, who would you as a teacher allow to fail because of the instruction you choose to offer?

And second, who and by what authority gives any teacher the right to decide who shall fail because of the instruction offered in any lesson in any class?

Compensatory programs exist in schools, because teachers use instructional practices that lead to inadequate learning.

The option of allowing teachers to use inadequate instruction seems, at best, unfair to students in their classes, regardless of why the inadequacy occurs.

More to the point of schooling and school reform, learning will not increase dramatically in schools until teachers practice the principle that “instructional failure is not an option.”

Tablet PC Education: What do you mean, “Instructional failure is not an option”? Does that mean that all students must perform the same way on everything in class?

Doynit: I mean that instruction should meet certain objective, observable, measurable standards, including that all students must learn from every lesson every school day. When that doesn’t happen, the lesson was inadequate for these students at that time, irrespective of how many times that same presentation might have brought other students to learning criteria.

Commercial education publishers have offered since the early 1940s student textbooks that reduce student failure dramatically when used in classrooms and tutoring sessions. I’ve seen them used in private preschools and some public school primary grades.

More pioneering efforts to practice this principle of failure-not-an-option in schools occurred in the 1960s. Through those efforts, scientists and practitioners codified more principles of learning.

They then used these principles to demonstrate how to increase learning in classrooms, sheltered workshops, and other learning venues.

More recently, a few software developers for Tablet PCs offer instruction that implements the principle that instructional failure need not be an option. Major education software publishers include more such programs on their ramps to the commercial market in the near and farther future.

Tablet PC Education: I’m having trouble with this. It sounds like you blame teachers for students failing in their classes. That’s a harsh accusation.

Doynit: I think of it as a stark description, not an accusation.

Educators know the validity of this description, even as we argue against it.

From the NESI view, teachers must continuously adjust instruction with whatever resources exist at the moment in order for all students to meet learning criteria for each lesson every school day.

Bonnie Cook (a real person) demonstrated this to me clearly as she taught 3 and a half to five year old preschool students (literally dirt poor) to read, write, add, subtract, multiply, and divide as well as use Standard English to discuss scientific principles such as atmospheric pressure.

Bonnie taught in a North Carolina falling down tobacco barn using the dust of the dirt floor to write and sticks and stones to manipulate.

She used thrown away school handouts to guide her instruction as she followed a tradition of field teaching that still appears today among some groups of migrant workers.

Bonnie obtained measurable learning increases in six weeks of instruction in 20 minute blocks totaling 120 minutes a day, including “recesses,” five days a week.

All of her students performed at or above the middle first to middle second grade levels in reading and multiple grades above that in math and science at the end of the six weeks. (Yes, even the 3 year old.)

Tablet PC Education: Is this what teachers call “teaching robots?”

Doynit: I’ll let teachers say what they mean.

Bonnie showed these children how to use basic academic principles to generalize beyond a specific problem. Some say she showed them how to decode these academic topics.

So have literally over a million other preschool through primary grade students learned from the same type of instruction in U.S. public schools. Uncounted more have decoded academic topics in missionary and other venues outside of the U.S.

At NESI, teachers try constantly to implement the principle that instructional failure is not an option.

If a student does not follow an identified learning path to meet learning criteria for a lesson, the teacher knows when and how to change instruction immediately for that student.

Through their constant monitoring of student learning and with Tablet software all NESI students demonstrate measurable increases in learning efficiency rates, as did Bonnie’s students.

And, yes, I agree with an inference of your question that not all teachers today accept the principle or even see it necessary to know that the principle exists and that it is used in some and available to other schools today.

Tablet PC Education: Besides the principle that instruction failure is not an option, do you have another key principle that teachers use in NESI and how can others use them also?

Doynit: Yes, two other primary principles: Use of a learners’ view, and Count something, always.

Our teachers use a learner’s view to plan learning processes to fit academic content of each lessson.

Teachers give priority to identifying likely learning steps students will follow, and then decide which instruction steps to take in order to make it more likely that students learn efficiently.

Each teacher knows the content of the lesson and then adjusts what she (most teachers are female) or he knows in order to make it available to each student.

They organize instruction to answer two generic questions learners implicitly ask about each lesson:

“What do I have to do?” and

“What will it cost me?”

Each teacher’s response to these questions consists of four elements. We call them Orders of Learning (OL). Perhaps we can address these in more detail in another meeting.

Suffice it to say for now, Orders of Learning provides a sequence of decision points for planning lessons congruent with scientific descriptions of how people learn. I have used it during many iterations in its evolution as a teaching and observation tool when monitoring teachers as well as evaluating learning material.

Thanks for posting earlier my notes about Orders of Learning on your blog.

Tablet PC Education: Check me. You’re saying that two essential parts of school reform include the principle that Instructional Failure is not an Option and the principle of using a learners’ view to organize instruction. And you see these as essential to accelerate learning. Yes?

Doynit: Yes. That’s a good summary of the necessary principles teachers use in NESI. We also include “Count something” as a primary principle.

And, yes, these are the three essential principles for accelerating learning, whether relationships happen by chance or by plan, with enthusiasm or dead-pan, and probably irrespective of venue and accompaning tools.

We try to include these principles in lesson planning and instruction. Everything else in NESI relates to these principles.

Tablet PC Education: Tell me more about count-something. That sounds simple enough, but what does it mean about learning and instruction?

Doynit: In short, counting something works from the behavioral principles that learning occurs in one step and that people pay attention to what is inspected, not necessarily to what is expected.

Technically, one-step-learning occurs when planners use a backward learning curve.

In this sense, a good lesson plan reduces trial and error behavior of the learner and instructor.

Counting something provides a way to focus attention on whether it takes one or more steps (or trials and errors) for each learner to reach criterion.

We suggest that teachers unfamiliar with using this principle to monitor their instruction start by counting time.

Have each learner start the stopwatch application on the Tablet PC or write down the clock time when the lesson begins and the clock time when they meet learning criterion. Yes, preschoolers can do this.

The objective is to monitor elapsed clock time. The shorter elapsed time it takes for learners to meet learning criteria, the more criteria they can meet in a class allotted an absolute number of seconds each school day.

Tablet PC Education: Let’s go over that counting principle in more detail another time. It sounds too simple to accelerate learning.

You must have some secrets that you’re not revealing in order to accelerate learning so dramatically. Is it the teachers, the curricula, what more besides these three principles?

Doynit: No secrets. Teachers know from their academic preparation the principles we use. As I’ve tried to indicate, these three principles serve as base references for everything else.

NESI teachers accept and operationalize these principles constantly. They are competent, informed, and disciplined instructors, learning analysts, and coaches.

Each one holds at least one academic degree in a discipline, such as in science, math, literature, an art, or philosophy.

Each one also has practical experience in another industry besides education.

Some still perform as artists, others consult with businesses, at least one aspires to a full time professional racing career, and others have collected trophies, ribbons and other recognition for winning in athletics, crafts, baking pies, needlepoint, and on-and-on. More than one owns a business.

These are well rounded people who bring their entrepreneurial experiences into classes through decisive, disciplined lessons.

Tablet PC Education: How did you find such people? And, what priority do you give to education credentials when you hire them?

Doynit: Most of our teachers applied without anyone from the NESI planning committee soliciting their applications. We have a waiting list of more than enough qualified teachers for several schools. All on our list have asked us to contact them when we have openings or decide to open another school. We’re now in the early stages of planning ways to work with them in their current positions.

We consider their initiation of contact with us as an important indication that they will likely also initiate other things in their life, including in classrooms.

We like working with people who initiate disciplined, repeatable activities.

Tablet PC Education: Let me interrupt you again. You have used the word discipline several times. What’s the significance of that word in NESI? And, how does it relate to selecting teachers for NESI?

Doynit: We use the word discipline to mean that someone intentionally establishes and consistently addresses personal priorities with a purpose beyond themselves.

In short, our teachers excel at learning and using what they learn. They learn something useful to their instruction most days.

And, they use that familiarity to show others how to learn what they know.

That brings me back to your other question: What part do education credentials play in selecting teachers.

We acknowledge their credentials, from temporary and emergency through national board certification, as indications of their likely familiarity with what other people in schooling know about conventional schooling practices.

However, we give priority to what they know in an academic or performance body of knowledge.

We want teachers to have academic majors from ranked institutions in math, science, literature, a performing or studio art, woodworking, automotive design, farming, agribusiness, engineering; you get the idea.

Meeting content standards takes priority over education credentials.

But what a person demonstrates to increase student learning rates takes highest priority.

And for that we pay reasonably well. We can talk about teacher pay another time. It’s a tertiary, not primary or secondary, principle for school reform.

Tablet PC Education: I see we’re out of time again. Thank you. We’ll address calculating learning efficiency next time.

References

Accelerated Learning Interview http://www.robertheiny.com/2009/02/accelerated-learning-interview.html

Accelerated Learning Interview Part 2 http://www.robertheiny.com/2009/02/accelerated-learning-interview-part-2.html

Accelerated Learning Interview Part 3 http://www.robertheiny.com/2009/03/accelerated-learning-interview-part-3.html

Accelerated Learning Interview Part4 http://www.robertheiny.com/2009/03/accelerated-learning-interview-part-4.html

Accelerated Learning K12 Mobile Learning: Press Release http://www.robertheiny.com/2009/02/accelerated-k12-mobile-learning-press.html

Order of Learning (in WIPTE comments Learning with Tablet PCs Research Agenda: From Facts to Pragmatics) http://www.robertheiny.com/2008/10/learning-with-tablet-pcs-research_28.html

Related Reading

Related Resources

Posted by The Tablet PC In Education Blog, March 30, 2009, 5:27 AM. (Retrieved April 18, 2010, 3:38 PM.) http://www.robertheiny.com/2009/03/new-era-school-initiative-nesi.html

Labels: Future Classrooms and Schools, Learning Efficiency, Lesson Plans, Mobile PC Educator, Mobile PC Learning, New Era School Initiative (NESI), Visions of Education

2 comments

1. robert h reed said…

I’ve just read the post a third time. Like most ideas that synthesize across multiple fields, your post took a while to break through the barriers in my mind that keep things “organized”.

The engineer in me has an instant affinity for the systems approach to learning (count something to get feedback so that we can alter approaches). My right-brained, holistic, liberal-minded educator self recoiled reflexively at the words “objective” and “measurement”. So I needed some time to let these initial reactions settle down before writing a response.

I believe this conflict in my head is key to understanding the issues at hand. A “liberal” educator might suppose that education should reach every student, and that there is no place for words like “objective” and “measurement” in a classroom stuffed full of individuals with different learning styles, backgrounds, cultures, economic status, etc etc. A more process-oriented educator might look at the classroom as a system and say that the system which passes the most students with the least amount of effort is the best, and if we lose students at the margins, then so be it – we are more productive given the resources at hand, and we are not “wasting” efforts by focusing on the few with the most difficulties.

By buying into the premise “no student shall fail”, you address the liberal concern for inclusiveness. Once that premise is adopted, THEN you deploy the systems thinking to set up processes that break learning down into steps, and measure how much time each learner takes to meet criterion-per-step. Learning what is inspected is another key concept here, and lends itself quite readily to technology outsourcing: each step could have some auto-checker built in so that the student learns from the program vs the instructor or peers whether he or she has mastered the criterion (see WIPTE 2006 paper Gunawardena on K-12 math instruction). I do believe the ordering of the premises is critical: address the need for all-inclusive instruction FIRST, then apply processes with feedback to help minimize trial-and-error instruction/learning.

The whole brain of Rob at this point is still uneasy, but satisfied at least that we are committing to teaching ALL students before we start measuring “stuff”. The only concern left is that the system of measurement prevent the widespread practice of teaching to the tool (or from our NCLB legacy, teaching to the test). I visualize a classroom where I am the teacher; each concept to be taught is broken down into steps, and I have a dashboard where I see how long it takes each student to meet criterion in real time. The more effective my teaching, the less time this should take, and the more time we have in the class for discussion. This seems a valid pay-off, and if teacher incentives focus on this efficiency (vs test scores), then perhaps we avoid some of the adverse linkages between what we want vs what we measure.

There is still the possibility that the teacher lets this time-based approach infect the students, and everyone games the system by getting to “criterion met” as soon as possible, with no consideration for methods (rampant cheating in business schools when the economy was hopping is a good example of this). I guess if the step designs are done well, and each step builds on the one previous, then gaming the system becomes more difficult than doing the actual step-by-step learning.

So, despite putting my hardened skeptic hat on, I see how your post suggests an approach to learning that is truly ground-breaking, perhaps the first real advance in combining the scientific principles of learning with systems thinking, using technology as the facilitating layer, in real time, in the classroom.

What next?

So then I re-read your post on WIPTE 2008, and the suggestion of a research project…. where do we/should we take that next??

-R

Ps – the biggest obstacle will be teachers who do not want relatively unbiased systems exposing their classroom methods to scrutiny that is currently impossible, and will be reflected of course by the actions of teacher unions to stop this sort of helpful “nonsense” dead in its tracks

4/14/2009 3:40 PM

The Tablet PC In Education Blog said…

Thanks, Rob, for sharing your insights about measuring learning efficiency. I appreciate your encouragement.

I’ll try to amplify your observations in future posts about ways to accelerate learning as through the thought experiment New Era School Initiative (NESI).

As for union cautions about exposing what happens in classrooms, I think that can be handled from the grassroots up, starting with one venture educator in a classroom. Yes?

Real world examples used to formulate NESI exist as working examples of how unions can take credit for increasing learning rates beyond results from conventional practice.

Since almost everything posted about NESI to date has already happened somewhere in a research or school setting, it seems that we might have at least one school person willing to implement a public school NESI charter program.

Does anyone have any suggestions of who might be open to exploring such a venture?

Ken Collura took a giant step in this direction, as have hundreds of other educators in more schools than counted around the globe influencing hundreds of millions of learning transactions.

I was just rereading the Fact Sheet from Villa Duchesne/Oak Hill School. They’re also laying a foundation someone could adapt for a public school NESI program.

I’d like to work with people to make a prototype public school NESI happen.

I’ll post something separately about progress since my comments at WIPTE 2008 about learning with Tablet PCs research agenda.

Thanks, again, Rob, for your stimulating and encouraging comment.