Moving From What to What If?

Teaching Critical Thinking with Authentic Inquiry and Assessments

John Barell

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781317331575
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Éducation
• Subtopic: Programmes d'enseignement

This practical book outlines how you can challenge students to grapple with complex problems and engage more meaningfully with information across the content areas, rather than rely solely on rote memorization and standardized testing to measure academic success. Author John Barell shares vignettes from effective middle and high school teachers around the country, analyzes what works and what doesn't when encouraging students to dig deeper, and offers practical strategies that you can try in your own classroom.

Topics include:

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• Guiding students to hone their skills in abstract reasoning, inquiry, creative problem solving, and critical thinking;

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• Designing your lessons and units for authentic achievement, to prepare students for success in their future careers and academic pursuits;

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• Using rigorous benchmark assessments to analyze students' progress in meaningful ways; and

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• Encouraging students to set learning goals and drive their own achievement.

Aligned with the Common Core and other standards, this book will help you teach students to become inquisitive, engaged citizens who wonder about the universe, stretch their imaginations, and solve problems by asking, What If?

Chapter 1
Teachers as Argonauts of Change

At the end of her social studies project involving bringing about change in her local community of Sandusky, OH, a student named Sabrina reflected on what it meant to convince civic leaders to do more to avoid traffic accidents:

At the end of the project, I learned that any citizen can make a change. This project has helped me realize that even students can improve a problem in a community, which was unexpected. I honestly never knew that students could make a change until the panel told my group that we should keep pushing this intersection problem to make it more successful. The panel has motivated me to make a change. (emphasis added)

How did her teacher, Tim Obergefell, help guide Sabrina and her classmates, working in teams on different civic problems, to reflect in this way on her role as a citizen?

What kinds of authentic learning experiences, focusing upon which 21st-century skills and dispositions, had he fostered within his class in order help Sabrina successfully navigate the complexities of social change within her community?

And how had working collaboratively with her classmates helped Sabrina achieve this much-desired sense of efficacy (agency), a disposition toward realizing you are in control of your own destiny and, with others, can be instrumental in effecting change for the good?

After this experience, Sabrina is light years removed from being the passive adolescent who slumps back in her chair feeling, “I’m not good at much. Life is what it is.”

Tim, his colleagues, her parents and classmates have helped Sabrina achieve a momentous goal of education—realizing you can make a difference, that you are in command of your own life, you write your own story.

This book is an attempt to understand how Tim and the other educators are helping their students achieve similar goals, to think through some of life’s most complex problems and issues and not merely come to class having memorized all the functions of local, state and federal government expecting to spout them back on Friday’s test.

That Which Unites Us

Having been an English teacher for several years, a teacher educator for over a quarter century, and subsequently a consultant to the American Museum of Natural History here in New York City I find myself in a fascinating position as an educator, that of seeking out commonalities amidst all life experiences.

I’m not sure if this passion for that which transcends strict subject matter boundaries arises from my own teaching, from being a generalist as a teacher educator or from some other source. In this role you tend to seek out what unites all of our educational endeavors, not what separates us into different, distinct categories. How is the biology teacher like the language, arts and math teachers?

Maybe it has to do with having grown up with another passion—that for Antarctic exploration—at a very early age, a driving inquiry that led me to meet America’s foremost polar explorer, Admiral Richard E. Byrd, and to sail south on his flagship, USS Glacier, during Operation Deep-Freeze.¹ It might have been this very early drive to ask hundreds of questions of scientists, sailors, historians and authors about the life in and history of Antarctica that led me toward being a person who is fascinated with different points of view, different perspectives on this captivating, mysterious land.

Or, it might be from engaging in the kind of research Hannah and Madie did on discovering new stars that we realize how interdisciplinary our problems are—they demand language, math, historical and scientific analysis.

So, whatever the source, I find myself wondering about that which unites us, as educators, as human beings in the search for meaning and understanding.

21st Century or World Class Skills and Capacities

Thus, this is a book that focuses upon the intellectual processes that we all engage in, in all walks of life as well as in education.

Socrates supposedly said, “The unexamined life is not worth living.” This means that one way of enhancing the meaningfulness of life is continually to reflect on what we have done and plan to do.

In the accounts written down by Plato, Socrates educated young people of Athens about the good life, appropriate ways of thinking and governing ourselves. In all his dialogues we can today read how he is challenging all of us to pose those questions that need to be considered to lead productive lives.

“I infect people,” Socrates said, “with the same perplexities I experience” (Arendt, 1977, p. 179) .

Hannah Arendt noted that Socrates’ commitment to opening the eyes of Athenian youth was, in fact, “the only way thinking can be taught” (ibid.), to share with them the fascinating mysteries and questions about living the good life.

Thus, today we are still learning how to challenge students to inquire, think critically, imaginatively, pose and resolve problems and reflect on these experiences. These are, indeed, “world class” skills.

We speak today of “21st century skills or capacities,” but to my mind our focus on inquiry, problem posing/resolving and critical/creative/reflective thought all emanate from Socrates and those whose recorded thoughts we have from so long ago. “How large is the earth?” asked Eratosthenes. Through ingenious problem solving he figured it out without a calculator, nor a computer, and was pretty close to accurate, some say within 1.6% (www.windows2universe.org/citizen_science/myw/w2u_eratosthenes_calc_earth_size.html, accessed June, 2015).

So, what’s changed? Well, today we have within our hands on a smart phone more computing power than NASA was able to load onto Apollo 11 on its mission to the moon in 1969.

That’s why 21st century skills are so important, because we have access to virtually unlimited amounts of information in seconds.

But what do we do with it?

Think about it productively as Socrates has taught us.

Participant School Mission Statements

Another reason for focusing so intently upon said skills is that we find them within most schools’ statements of their missions:

Students in all grades apply inquiry and learn to use information– communication technologies safely and effectively.

Our mission is equipping every student with the knowledge, skills, and character essential to being a responsible citizen of our community, our nation, and the world.

Incorporate 21st century competences, including self-assessment, goal setting, conferencing and collaboration into teaching and learning and develop tools to provide consistent and meaningful feedback in these areas.

Therefore, it has always made sense to this author to ask and answer the question, “How do we know they’re getting better?” about these various skills, now called “21st century capacities.”

We note again that the cognitive skills herein identified—inquiry, problem solving, critical/creative/reflective thought—are the same as in ancient Greece when Socrates held forth in Athens.

Living as Responsible Citizens

Being a “responsible citizen” calls for students to be proficient not only in reciting and then explaining the historical/cultural/philosophical roots of our Declaration of Independence (or Constitution), but also being able to analyze these for their strengths, flaws and ways of improvement. More significantly, perhaps, is the requirement to be able to analyze all data drawn from many websites, authors and so-called experts. Are they accurate, biased, representative?

This approach was brilliantly summarized in the Greenwich, CT, “Vision of a Graduate” wherein this district asserts that in addition to knowing stuff, possessing declarative knowledge, and, I assume, attaining deep understanding about content concepts, we want students to be able to:

Pose and pursue substantive questions

Critically interpret, evaluate, and synthesize information

Explore, define, and solve complex problems

Generate innovative, creative ideas and products

Communicate and collaborate with others

Conduct selves in ethical, responsible manner

Respect other cultures and points of view

Pursue unique interests, passions and curiosities . . .

(2006, adapted from: www.greenwichschools.org/page.cfm?p=8937, accessed December, 2015)

Very well said! Greenwich has given us a good summary of 21st century skills and capacities. Yes, Socrates would be pleased, but now we have our smart phones, our iPads, other tablets and virtually unlimited access to the wealth of knowledge beyond the agora, where Socrates held forth, visible from the rocky pathway leading up to the Parthenon in Athens.

But how do we know they’re getting better at any of these laudable goals? This is, in part, the rationale for Moving from What to What If?

Authentic Achievement

Another primary reason for undertaking this project is the conviction that productive curriculum development, instruction and achievement today will be characterized by what Fred Newmann and his associates called “authentic achievement.”

That is:

intellectual accomplishments that are worthwhile, significant, and meaningful, such as those undertaken by successful adults: scientists, musicians, business entrepreneurs, politicians, crafts people, attorneys, novelists, physicians, designers and so on. (1996, p. 26)

Toward these ends educators will challenge students to “organize, synthesize, interpret, explain, or evaluate complex information in addressing a concept, problem, or issue” (p. 29) .

Thus, my initial thrust has been to find educators at the secondary school level who exemplify these authentic problem-based, pedagogical principles and who are keenly interested in observing students’ growth in the 21st century skills and capacities described below.

Even before ever encountering Magdalena Jenni’s stark contrast between education in Germany—problem-based—and that in her host school—multiple-choice based—we were in search of those educators who were more in tune with how she learned back home.

Problem-based Learning

Significant for the content will be the curricular framework I have observed over the past decade and more, that is, problem-based learning. What I see in the several educators from different subjects are ways of challenging students to think, to analyze ill-structured, problematic, often open-ended situations; conduct purposeful, appropriate research; draw reasonable conclusions; and, upon occasion, respond to questions and feedback from instructors and peers.

What this means is that teaching and learning can and should be focused on confronting and engaging complex, ill-structured tasks that can be found in our lives beyond school:

learning should be organized around authentic problems and projects that are frequently encountered in non-school settings. (Bransford, 2000, p. 77)

In humanities these situations/scenarios may involve the need to identify a problem area within our community; analyze it; figure out how to go about resolving it using a wide array of resources; analyze data critically; pose significant questions of resource persons (those in authority); share your findings with local community members—e.g. directors of the local shopping mall, hospital personnel/athletic directors and the like. Propose solutions, receive feedback and modify as necessary.

In physics a problem might involve using basic principles to redesign a local elementary school playground.

In biology it might i...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• eResources
• Meet the Author
• Preface
• 1 Teachers as Argonauts of Change
• 2 Curricular Framework for Authentic Learning and Assessment
• 3 Developing Abstract Reasoning
• 4 Directing Goals toward Achievement
• 5 Enhancing Inquiry—The Essence of Life
• 6 Modeling—How We All Learn
• 7 Nurturing Imaginative Behavior
• Intermission
• 8 "Any Citizen Can Make a Change"
• 9 Playgrounds of the Mind
• 10 Critical Thinking about Social Issues
• 11 Reasoning about Nature
• 12 Independent Study
• 13 Rude Awakening for Professional Development
• Final Words
• Conclusion