Mindframes for Educators

In Visible Learning and The Science of How We Learn, Hattie (2013) writes that how teachers think is often more important than what they do. To maximize their effect, says Hattie, teachers have to view hard tasks as worthy challenges, and failure, both their own and that of their students, as an invitation to grow. To learn from errors, and to ensure teachers are continually aware of their impact on students' learning, Hattie (2012) suggests that teachers address the underlying mind frames that shape their thinking. Educators who develop the ways of thinking outlined below are more likely to have a major and sustained impact on student learning.

-Mindframes of teachers, school leaders and systems comes from Visible Learning for teachers by John Hattie (2012):

Mindframe 1: Educators believe that their fundamental task is to evaluate the effect of their teaching on students’ learning.

Teachers must become critical evaluators of their effect on students’ learning. When teachers view their students’ results as a major indicator of their effectiveness, they are far more likely to alter their approach to teaching and learning when it’s clear students aren't progressing.

Mindframe 2: Educators believe that success and failure in student learning is about what they as educators did or did not do.  

Efficacy, a teacher’s belief in his/her ability to produce a desired result, is more crucial for learning than any instructional strategy. Teachers must adopt the mindset that all students can learn and embrace the reciprocal relationship that exists between their effectiveness and students’ success or failure.

Developing and Sharing Success Criteria

In response to John Hattie's meta-analyses detailing what works best in education, the Mounds View Curriculum, Instruction and Assessment team developed a list of 10 core instructional practices proven to be highly effective. The developing and sharing of Success Criteria is number two on our list. When braided together, and effectively executed, these core practices will help collaborative teams meet our Equity Promise, which states that a student's race, class or disability will not be a predictor of his/her academic success.

For an in-depth description of best practice for each of these core practices, follow the links in the below list.

1.   Articulate student-friendly Learning Targets
2.   Share Success Criteria
3.   Formatively Assess students' understanding
4.   Adapt Instruction in response to formative checks for understanding
5.   Provide Actionable Feedback
6.   Actively Engage all students
7.   Ensure teaching and learning is Culturally Responsive
8.   Activate students as responsible for their and each others' learning
9.   Effectively integrate technology to enhance learning
10.  Develop students' Habits of Mind

Why is the sharing of Success Criteria with students so important?

Students are more likely to persist when they understand, and can describe, what the end goal for learning looks and feels like. Hattie says that learning targets without success criteria is "hopeless." Students operate with increased clarity around what is to be learned when their teachers effectively communicate learning intentions, and assign activities for students to compare successful end products (exemplars) to a kid-friendly rubric. Sharing targets and success criteria in this way, promotes self-directed learning, self-regulation, and self-assessment; characteristics of learners most likely to experience post-secondary success. 

Developing and Sharing Student-Friendly Learning Targets

John Hattie's Visible Learning meta analyses and subsequent books provide evidence-based clarity for what works best in education. In all, Hattie studied six areas that contribute to the learning of a student. His research included Student effects, Home Effects, School Effects, Curricula Effects, Teacher Effects, and Approaches to Teaching and Learning. Using his work as a guide, collaborative teams can now begin to adopt the instructional practices proven to maximize impact on students' learning. The below list of ten core instructional practices was derived in part from Hattie's work, and incorporates much of what Mounds View PLCs are doing, or must do, to meet our Equity Promise.

For an in-depth description of best practice for each of these core practices, follow each of the links in the below list.

1.   Articulate student-friendly Learning Targets
2.   Share Success Criteria
3.   Formatively Assess students' understanding
4.   Adapt Instruction in response to formative checks for understanding
5.   Provide Actionable Feedback
6.   Actively Engage all students
7.   Ensure teaching and learning is Culturally Responsive
8.   Activate students as responsible for their and each others' learning
9.   Effectively integrate technology to enhance learning
10.  Develop students' Habits of Mind

Why are learning targets so important?
When teacher teams view a content area standard as a destination for learning, they can then write and articulate a series of learning targets that become the map their students will follow. When each day's target for learning is measured through a formative assessment, the results become a student's GPS; an indicator of their current location in relation to their end destination. This approach to instruction, whereby learning is visible to students such that they know and are able to articulate what they're learning, as well as where their current level of performance is in comparison to the success criteria, is critical if teachers are to integrate the other eight core practices.

What are best practices for Developing and Sharing Learning Targets?

Brookhardt & Moss (2012) write that when meaningful learning occurs in a classroom, it is often the result of a teacher's well written, well communicated and effectively measured target for learning. Whereas a learning objective is written broadly and from a teacher's point-of-view (students will be able to...), Moss & Brookhardt (2012) write that a learning target is to describe, in language that students understand, a lesson-sized chunk of information, skills, and reasoning processes that students will come to know deeply and thoroughly.  

The targets most likely to illuminate learning for kids are those that state the condition(s) under which students will show what they know or can do, as well as the criteria for success. Teachers can use the below A,B,C,D criteria to determine the extent to which their daily target makes the next step of the learning journey visible to kids.

A - Audience - is the target written using language students can understand and from a student's point of view? What vocabulary might need to be learned as part of communicating this target?

B - Behavior -  what verbs (action words) will you use? Is the level of today's learning surface or deep? How are the verbs in your learning target classified in Bloom's taxonomy?

C - Condition - Have you stated the condition(s) under which students will show what they know or can do? 

D - Degree - Have you stated the degree to which students will show their understanding?