Learning modules marketing messages.docx

Assessment Development and MAC Marketing:
Modules themes and key messages for building the market
Went through all the module content to find the messages that resonate frm a
marketing/comm/messaging viewpoint. There’s a lot there:
1. Key messages from Assessment Systems that Support 21st
Century Learners
Learning and Innovation skills are essential to student success. These skills are the 4 Cs and
include: Creativity and Innovation, Critical Thinking and Problem Solving, Communication, and
Collaboration.
Information is doubling every 13 months but will soon be every 12 hours with the “internet of
things”. Having Information Literacy, Media Literacy, and ICT Literacy will arm our students with
the necessary functional and critical thinking skills to evaluate, use and share information.
The P21’s essential life and career skills include flexibility and adaptability, initiative and self-
direction, social and cross-cultural skills, productivity and accountability, and leadership and
responsibility.
21st century learners are critical thinkers, problem solvers, good communicators, good
collaborators, information and technology literate, flexible and adaptable, innovative and
creative, globally competent, and financially literate.
Problem solvers address real-life problems. They use their critical and creative skills to analyze
the problem, determine the cause of the problem and find solutions to resolve the problem.
They may even be problem creators. The individuals may see that by solving one problem, they
may create other problems and will have to address those as well.
Henri Matisse: a famous artist from the Impressionism period of art, “Creative people are
curious, flexible, persistent and independent with a tremendous spirit of adventure and a love
of play.“
Feedback when correct:
Feedback when incorrect:

The first decision we need to make when developing or using an assessment is to decide why
we are assessing. Are we assessing to promote more learning or to certify the learning?
If we are assessing so the student can see what is working or not and the student can make a
plan to improve before the final test or performance, this is also formative assessment, or
Assessment for Learning. If we are assessing to certify the learning, to judge the mastery level
of the achievement or product, then this is summative assessment or Assessment of Learning.
The next assessment implication of measuring is addressing what we are assessing. This
implication ranks equally with the first implication. We must measure the essential learning
targets that reflect what is important to learn.
Assessment is a powerful communication tool. The data from an assessment can empower a
student in moving forward in their learning or the data can hinder that progress.
What we expect students to learn must be doable and reachable with the student’s work and
effort.
When the brain makes good decisions that perpetuate the survival of the person, endorphins
flow through the brain giving the person a sense of euphoria, a sense of well-being and the
person then wants more of this to happen. When students have choice in what and how they
learn and they see that their choices result in success, they want to continue to learn.
The highest human priority is self-acceptance. Self-acceptance is related to self-worth.
People are wired for feedback. They want it about every 12 to 18 minutes. Because people are
so susceptible to feedback, quality feedback will propel students forward and bad feedback can
stymy or sink the student’s progress.
If students understand the descriptive feedback and know how to use the information to self-
assess their strengths and needs, they can then devise a plan for further learning and
achievement.
Students seeing relevance in what they are expected to learn is a necessity for deep and useful
learning.
Human beings are naturally curious. They are wired to discover. Having learning opportunities
that engender curiosity is motivating. When teachers design creative learning opportunities in
their classrooms they give students opportunities to be problem finders, not just problem
solvers.

Carol Dweck, a motivational researcher, says there are two mindsets when it comes to
intelligence. One either believes that intelligence is fixed or it is malleable. Both mindsets are
acquired through learning experiences. People who believe that intelligence is fixed believe
they are born with fixed amounts of intelligence; therefore they need to protect it. They need
frequent affirmation that they are smart and don’t want to take on too many challenges
because they might not succeed and people might think that they are not so smart. People
with a malleable view of intelligence believe that they get smart by doing.
Students acquire self-esteem when they are fully engaged in a task and are using their
resources fully. The learning targets need to be clear to the students.
What Does a Leader Do? Much of what leaders do falls into three areas: The leader establishes
and communicates a vision; the leader provides the necessary resources and the leader works
at removing the barriers that stand in the way of achieving the vision.
Assessment-literate leaders can help bring balance and quality to their local assessment system
through their roles as leaders in the organization.
Leaders ensure that the written curriculum drives lesson planning, classroom instruction and
classroom assessment.
If classroom practices can help or harm students, then it behooves leaders to know how to
observe a teacher’s classroom practices and be able to evaluate those practices for quality.
Policy drives practice. Policies need to be examined for their ability to either support or hinder
the establishment of quality assessment practices in every classroom.
Information is power. We can empower the learning community with ongoing information on
the development of quality organizational structures, the acquisition of assessment literacy at
every level, and the resulting improvement of student learning.
2. Key Messages From Understanding the Formative Assessment
Process
Formative assessment is a planned ongoing process used by all students and teachers during
learning and teaching to elicit and use evidence of student learning to improve student
understanding of intended disciplinary learning outcomes and support students to become
more self-directed learners.”
A quick review of that research shows practitioners that the impact can be quite significant.

Recent research studies show an impact of up to 1.5 to 1.8 standard deviations for students
who are engaged in the formative assessment process, with the highest gains for the lowest
achieving students.
Both assessment of learning (the certification of how students are doing at the end of a
learning cycle) as well as assessment for learning (that gives teachers and students
insight into learning during the learning process) need to be present in order for a
balanced assessment system to exist.
Dr. Rick Stiggins: “If we wish to maximize student achievement in the United States, we
must pay greater attention to the improvement of classroom assessment. Both
assessment of learning and assessment for learning are essential. But one is currently
in place, and the other is not, in many schools.”
Students ask:
Where am I going?
Where am I now?
What do I need to do to close the gap?
Teachers ask:
 Where are the learners going?
 Where are the learners now?
 What do I need to do to help the learner close the gap?
When planning, it is good for teachers to engage in both self- and peer-analysis.
Often times, research has shown, classroom feedback has more to do with "ego"
involving information that has proven to be ineffective and sometimes detrimental to
student achievement. WIliam reminds us that good feedback causes thinking...not
reacting emotionally. We want feedback that allows students to recognize what they
did well, where they need to improve, and what next steps they need to take to master
the learning target.
 Feedback from teachers provides necessary information to move students forward
 Feedback from peers helps students know how to provide necessary data and
feedback to others in a supportive environment, and
 Student self-assessment allows students to accurately look at their own work to
determine understanding and gain insight on how to improve.
John Hattie and Helen Timperly: “Effective teaching not only involves imparting

information and understandings to students (or providing constructive tasks,
environments, and learning), but also involves assessing and evaluating students’
understanding of this information, so that the next teaching act can be matched to the
present understanding of the students.”
3. Key Messages from Developing Appropriate Assessments
When thinking about developing any type of assessment for use within a classroom or
school setting, there are five areas that the developers of assessments need to keep in
mind. The five keys are 1) Establishing a clear purpose for the assessment, 2)
Determining the learning targets that are going to be assessed, 3) Ensuring that the
assessment is of sound design, 4) Effectively communicating the results of the
assessment to the interested parties, and 5) Most importantly, involving students within
the assessment process.
The first key to quality assessment is having a clear purpose. The essential questions
for Key 1 are: “Who is going to be using the information gathered from the assessment,
and for what purpose?”
Assessments serve a variety of users and uses, centering on student achievement on
many levels, and often require numerous ways of gathering evidence at different
points in time. Knowing the purpose and use of every assessment within a balanced
assessment system is essential.
In assessment for learning, students use the data to continue to improve their
learning, to assess where they are in the learning progression and where they need to
go. The data helps guide them to the next level and identify gaps and misconceptions
that might be holding them back.
Data from assessment of learning lets students know if they have learned enough
information at a given point in time and identifies which standards they have not yet
mastered.
This entire process requires a partnership between the teacher and the students in the
classroom. The teacher sets up the conditions for students to self-assess set goals and
become their own advocates.
Assessment for learning data helps teachers stay on topic, differentiate instruction
for students, vary their instructional strategies and make adjustments to teaching as
needed all during the learning process. It also provides teachers with valuable
information about when to move on in the curriculum and when to hold the target still

just for a while longer to get all learners to mastery.
Assessment of learning allows teachers to certify student attainment of standards
and communicate those results to all appropriate parties. These data can be used to
determine adequacy and effectiveness of programming.
The Key 1 Checklist: Clear Purpose can be used to clarify the purpose of your
assessment as you begin the development of quality classroom assessments.
The second key to quality assessment is determining clear learning targets. The
essential question for this key is, “How do clear learning targets guide our teaching and
assessing so that students are clear about what they need to know and are able to do?”
We need to remember that clear learning targets, derived from the standards, will shift
learning away from what teachers are “covering” and more towards what our students
are learning. What our students are learning is what we need to develop our
assessments around.
Remember, all learning targets must be derived from, and aligned to, a state standard.
As educators begin the unwrapping process, they will quickly realize that there are five
types of standards in most curriculum documents: Knowledge standards, Reasoning
standards, Performance or Skill standards, Products standards, and Dispositions.
Knowledge targets describe facts, general concepts or procedural knowledge that
students must know. Some knowledge verbs are list, know, describe, identify...
Reasoning targets are the reasoning proficiencies that students must use and
demonstrate within a subject or content area. For example: analyze the intent of the
author in a piece of literature. Some of the verbs that ask for reasoning on the part of
the student are analyze, compare, infer and evaluate.
Performance or Skill targets describe a physical performance such as singing, measuring
with a ruler, speaking, or performing in a play.
Product targets describe an artifact or tangible product that a student must produce or
create. Some verbs used often in product target statements are create, make, produce,
and develop.
There is a journey to mastery to achieve standards; teachers deconstruct standards into
learning targets so that students know what it will take to achieve mastery. We unfold
these complex, broad standards into everyday learning targets that direct our daily

instruction and students’ learning.
The more clarity both teachers and students have about what we want students to
know and be able to do, the better the results.
When we think about quality assessments, we want to ensure that our assessments are
reliable and give us valid data. In order for these two requirements to be met,
assessment developers must pay attention in six major areas: First is target method
match. Second is standard item alignment. Third, item writers adhere to guidelines,
paying careful attention to sentence construction, specific formats for prompts and a
number of other considerations in order to achieve clarity for the purpose of eliciting
what the students know and can do.Fourth, avoiding bias is important because bias in
an assessment can mask real learning that is taking place.
Next, Scoring items particularly performance assessments rely on quality scoring
rubrics, if a rubric or scoring guide is of poor quality it can misrepresent learning or
provide inaccurate information about a student’s learning. And finally, sampling or
balance of representation. Developers need to place a similar emphasis on the
assessment to the information that was taught in the classroom.
Selected response includes true-false, multiple choice, and matching items. These
item types are best used to assess knowledge and reasoning learning targets.
Constructed response includes single sentences, a short paragraph or two in
response to a question or prompt or even finishing a thought or sentence. These item
types are best used to assess Knowledge and Reasoning targets.
Performance assessment is assessment based on observation and judgment of a
performance skill or product. These item types are best used to assess performance,
skill or product targets.
Personal communication may include questions and answers during class, journal
writing, interviews with students, or oral exams. This item type is best used to assess
Knowledge and Reasoning Targets.
Rick Stiggins: “The single-most common barrier to sound classroom assessment is the
teacher’s lack of vision of appropriate achievement targets within the subjects they are
supposed to teach.”
4. Key Messages from Selecting Appropriate Assessments

3 types of assessment in a balanced assessment system. A balanced assessment
system includes assessments that are given at different levels of frequency for varying
purposes. Summative assessments such as the M-STEP and other state or national
assessments are given annually to help determine student proficiency on state
standards and/or expectations. Formative assessment is a practice occurring during the
learning process to determine where students are within the learning progression and
what steps must be taken immediately to further their learning.
In today's climate of standards based education, interim/benchmark assessments are
used with increasing frequency. Many districts and schools are struggling to develop or
select an appropriate interim/benchmark assessment to aid in showing student growth
over time.
Marianne Perie, Scott Marion and Brian Gong: “Interim assessments can be an integral
part of any comprehensive assessment system and should be considered as a piece of a
whole, and evaluated as such.”
The essential question for this module is, “If you are looking for an already developed
or published assessment, how do you ensure you select a quality measure - one that
produces reliable and valid results?”
Use + User = Purpose
If the assessment that you are thinking about purchasing is not aligned with the
content and the curriculum your teachers are implementing within their classrooms,
then why purchase it?
When considering selecting assessments and how results will be reported it is important
to keep these overarching considerations in mind…
 Do the data reflect the primary purpose of the assessment in the report?
 Do discrete reports depict the data results accurately?
 Do the reports provide direction for specific actions?
Ultimately whoever is on your assessment selection committee must decide if it going
to be worth your time to purchase or build your own assessment. Each has its
advantages and potential challenges
5. Developing a High Quality, Balanced Assessment System
Assessments for learning: As it is occurring.

Assessment of leaning: How much have students learned?
If our mission is to support all learners to achieve 21st century skills we must use
assessment to support and increase learning. This has required a paradigm shift from
simply certifying learning to promoting learning.
Each use is important to someone. Any assessment is not useful for all purposes.
Note that while state assessments may not be that useful in guiding individual student
instruction, they can provide useful information for other purposes.
One of these is to provide overall achievement information that schools can use to
review and improve their overall instructional program for future groups of students –
which is a different use of the same information.
Since several uses are important, and one test probably can’t meet all purposes, a
system of assessments is required, with different assessments used to meet the needs
of different users.
Assessment for learning is the first type of assessment. This type of assessment should
occur daily, embedded in instruction. This type of assessment can provide immediate
information to teachers that they can use to adjust instruction, within the current class
period or soon thereafter. These assessment strategies can also be used by students to
adjust their learning tactics.
The second type of assessment, called assessment of learning, occurs at the end of
instruction. “End of instruction” may be at the end of an instructional unit, the end of a
marking period, the end of a semester, or the end of the school year. The key is that
these assessments determine what students know and can do when instruction is
completed, at the end of the period of instruction. Because these assessments occur at
the end of instruction, they summarize student performance, thus are summative in
nature.
Teachers may ask several questions of themselves during instruction. For example,
what does each student need to continue learning? Or, am I going too fast or too slow?
Teachers may have other questions after learning opportunities have concluded such
as, what grades should I assign to each student?
Parents may have several questions they may be thinking about and asking themselves
or the teacher during learning. For example, is my child keeping up? Or, how can I help
my child if he/she is struggling? Parents may have other questions after learning
opportunities have concluded. The principal may have several questions he or she may
be thinking about during learning. For example, are the students being taught and are

they learning what they should be?
The curriculum director may have several questions he or she may be thinking about
during learning, as well. For example, are teachers addressing all important learning
targets? The curriculum director may have other questions after learning opportunities
have concluded.
The superintendent may have several questions he or she may be thinking about during
learning, as well. For example, does the district have a policy to promote balanced
approaches to assessment?
Citizens may have questions after opportunities to learn have concluded, as well. For
example, are our schools doing better or worse than last year? Why or why not?
The state department of education may have several questions to think about during
learning. For example, how can more teachers be taught to use formative assessment
practices?
The legislature may have questions after learning opportunities have concluded. For
example, what policies should be put in place to improve student achievement?
Three different criteria for determining whether balance exists in an assessment system
are shown in this slide.
The three C’s include:
 Comprehensive.
 Coherent, and
 Continuous.
The fourth concept addressed in this module is how you can develop your district’s
assessment plan.
developing your district’s assessment plan is to inventory the assessments currently in
use by the district and in each school.
 What is the minimum number of assessments of each type necessary to meet the assessment
information needs of all users?

 Which assessments can be eliminated, since they are redundant or are not being used?
 Which assessments need to be added, because no currently-used assessment provides the
information needed to a user?
What professional learning is required? How can such learning opportunities be
provided?
6. Making Meaning from Student Assessments
In this module, we will explore 6 key concepts that are essential in translating student
assessment evidence in ways that are useful to students, teachers, administrators,
parents, and other necessary parties.
Assessment evidence is a foundational piece of making meaning from student
assessment and must become part of the teaching and learning cycle. Evidence should
not be ignored. If we take the time to collect it, we should take the time to analyze,
reflect on, and use it in the classroom.
When thinking about translating evidence from student assessment, there are two
essential questions that must be answered:
1.What evidence do you use? and
2.How do you take that evidence and translate it into something that students, teachers,
parents, and others can use to positively impact student learning?
Effective success criteria answers the questions, what does mastery look like, sound
like? What should I have produced at the end of this learning opportunity, that shows
my teacher that I have mastered the learning target and I am ready to move on?
That's right! Projecting a loud, clear voice, using details of support, having a thesis statement to
frame the talk and good body language and eye contact are all aligned to delivering an oral
presentation.
Susan Brookhart: “A rubric is a coherent set of criteria for students’ work that includes
descriptions of levels of performance quality on the criteria.”
Exemplars are examples that give students insight into what excellence looks like (or

doesn’t look like) when working toward mastery of a learning target. Exemplars must
be based on identified success criteria.
Inter-rater reliability attempts to capture the degree to which different raters will agree
as to the quality of the same performance.
So to summarize, inter-rater reliability refers to the degree to which multiple persons,
who evaluate the same piece of work or performance, agree in their ratings of that
work. There are multiple ways to represent inter-rater reliability both graphically and
numerically. If you find that you have a task with low inter-rater reliability, there are
probably things that can be done to improve it.
Inter-rater reliability is important because if different raters score the same performance
differently, who rates the performance may have a bigger impact on the score than the
performance itself.
Student self and peer assessment are essential skills of reflection that need to be
prevalent in every classroom.
Susan Brookhart... “Research has shown that effective feedback is not a discrete
practice, but an integral part of an instructional dialogue between teacher and student,
(or between students, or between the student and him/herself).”
Robyn Jackson....“Effective feedback, however, shows where we are in relationship to
the objectives and what we need to do to get there.”
“It helps our students see the assignments and tasks we give them as opportunities to
learn and grow rather than as assaults on their self-concept.”
“And, effective feedback allows us to tap into a powerful means of not only helping
students learn, but helping them get better at learning.”
Good feedback does not just happen. It is a skill that, like self and peer assessing, may
need to be taught to our students. Take the time upfront to teach this skill to save time
in the long run.
Clarity is key...when students and teachers are clear on what students are expected to
know and be able to do, engaging students in the use of assessment evidence becomes
much easier. It becomes part of the learning process, not an afterthought.
7. Understanding Technical Concepts Used in Student Assessment

By the end of this lesson, learners will be able to:
 Improve their understanding of assessments
 Identify how technical concepts contribute to accurate information
 Make better choices of assessment use
 and Communicate more accurately about assessments and assessment results
There are two different ways in which assessment information can be reported. They
are:
• Norm-referenced or Criterion-referenced
The big ideas are that a test, itself, is neither norm- or criterion-referenced and, that an
assessment can be reported either way - either norm- or criterion-referenced.
Each type of reporting can be useful in different situations. Understanding that test
scores can be compared against a standard, or against the scores of others, is an
important understanding for this concept.
An example of this is a teacher who wishes to look at her schools’ performance on the
state assessment.
She might do this by examining which students achieved a proficient score on the
assessment (which is a criterion-referenced interpretation).
Or, she might want to look at the percent of students judged to be proficient on the
state assessment in her school versus the overall performance of students in other
schools, other school districts, or the state as a whole. This is a norm-referenced
interpretation.
What is criterion-referenced or norm-referenced is the inference about or the
interpretation of a test-taker's score.” --W. James Popham
There are three different ways to describe the performance of a typical student - the
mean, the mode, and the median. There isn’t one best measure to use in all
circumstances. The measure of central tendency used is determined by the
circumstance.
As mentioned before, there are three different ways to describe the variability in a set

of scores:
RANGE: The range is literally the lowest to highest scores.
VARIANCE: The variance is the average of the summed differences of each score from
the mean of the set of scores, then squared.
STANDARD DEVIATION: The standard deviation is the square root of the variance.
Sometimes, we want to know the statistical relationship between two variables. Some
educational examples include:
What is the relationship between grade-point average of college freshman and their
11th grade college entrance test scores?
Or, what is the relationship between poverty and student achievement?
Or, what is the relationship between years of teaching experience and student
achievement?
A correlation coefficient is a statistical way of showing the relationship between two
variables.
Correlations are calculated from the rank orders of scores on the two variables:
There is a strong positive correlation of the performance on the two tests when the
order of scores on the two tests is similar.
There is a strong negative correlation of the performance on the two tests when the
order of scores on one test is the opposite of the other.
Traditionally, validity was thought of in several ways:
Content - How adequately does the test cover the set of standards assessed?
Concurrent - Does the test produce similar results as another test of the same
concepts?
Predictive - Does the performance on this test predict something else? For example,
college entrance test predicting freshman college grades.
Consequential - Does the use of the test and test results have positive consequences
for students, educators, and/or schools?
8. Using Assessment Data Well

This module explores three key concepts that are essential to using assessment data
well. Outcomes for participants include the following: Beliefs and Guidelines—
Recognize that a system of assessment data usage is built on foundational beliefs and
guidelines that work to support all learners. Establishing and Promoting a Strong Data
Culture---Understand and describe the components, processes and systems that
contribute to a strong data culture. Strategic Use of Assessment Data—Understand how
data used appropriately at all levels can improve student learning and strengthen
educational programs in school systems.
William A. Foster: “Quality is never an accident; it is always the result of high intention,
sincere effort, intelligent direction and skillful execution; it represents the wise choice of
many alternatives.”
There are fundamental beliefs that we, as an organization, believe are necessary for an
assessment data usage system to serve all students. In the words of the Dalai Lama,
“In order to carry a positive action we must develop here a positive vision.”
First…we believe that every educator must believe that ALL children can learn and do
everything in their power to ensure that given the proper instruction, provided under
appropriate conditions, all students have equal opportunity. For all students to have a
guaranteed right to learn, educational systems must be equitable and provide equal
access to all components of a quality educational experience working together.
Next, we believe that most educators and or lay persons within our school systems
have not been taught how to appropriately use and report assessment results and need
basic assessment literacy knowledge.
Next, we believe there are relatively easy ways of analyzing data when the proper tools
and protocols are used.
Next, we believe effective use of assessment data relies heavily on its alignment with
curriculum and instruction.
Next, we believe that it is the educators’ responsibility to ensure that data are
presented in an understandable and usable format.
We believe we should identify a limited number of priorities for student learning and the
assessment information we collect should help us understand those priorities better.
We believe that educators have a responsibility to not misuse assessment information.

Next, we believe, that when working in an educational system, we must engage in
collaborative accountability.
Finally, we believe that the public should be able to count on the assurance that
assessment data are accurate and analyzed appropriately.
These nine beliefs are essential to the creation of a data culture that promotes the use
of data in a healthy and productive manner.
Rick Stiggins followed up in 2007 with his own warning about the lack of assessment
literacy among educators. “Research suggests that teachers spend from one-quarter to
one-third of their professional time on assessment-related activities. Almost all do so
without the benefit of understanding sound assessment design.”
According to Jennifer Morrison from ASCD, “The problem is that we frame data as an
entity teachers need to meet and engage with, rather than as information that rises
organically out of teachers' work with learners.”
We commonly represent our school data in four primary types. Each data type brings
another layer of substance to the picture of how students learn and achieve. It is
important for data teams to have access to multiple data points and not assume that
one type holds all the answers. Of the 4 data types, Achievement, or assessment data
are most likely the one educators are most familiar with, but Perception, Demographic,
and Process Data, are commonly used in school improvement efforts and educational
research.
Victoria Bernhardt reminds us, “To change the results schools are getting, teachers and
school personnel must begin to document these processes and align them with the
results they are getting in order to understand what to change to get different results,
and to share their successes with others.”
Research also tells us that more effective schools typically use data differently than less
effective ones.
Good assessment begins with a strong sense of purpose defining why we are assessing.
In a balanced assessment system, the purpose of assessment varies across three levels
of assessment…Classroom, Interim/Benchmark and Annual Summative.
Why and How to Report Assessment Results to the Public? Mainly, because if school
systems don’t, someone else will and the message might be wrong or harmful.

9. Key Messages From Collaborative Inquiry
This module promotes a vision of professional learning that puts educators in the driver’s
seat of their own professional learning. This vision of professional learning is a shift from one-
size fits all, episodic and disconnected professional development that many educators
experience, toward engagement in learning processes that build the capacity of educators to
continuously learn and transfer their new knowledge and skills to the workplace. Such
learning develops educators’ ability to diagnose, adapt and solve the many challenges they
face every day.
In collaborative inquiry, the overarching questions asked are: "What is going on with
our students?" and "How do we know?" In the words of Peter Senge, “As the world
becomes more interconnected and businesses become more complex and dynamic,
work becomes more ‘learningful.’ It’s just not possible any longer to figure it out
from the top, and have everyone else following the orders of the ‘grand strategist’. . .
The organizations that will truly excel in the future will be the organizations that
discover how to tap people’s commitment and capacity to learn at all levels. . .”
Hord & Roussin write that “all change is based on learning, and improvement is based
on change”. They go on to say, “learning is a critical component embedded in the
change process. Learning enables people to discard past practices and find new
behaviors appropriate for the innovation. At the center of all successful implementation
of a change is the opportunity for adults to come together and learn”.
.Did you have something to indicate what happens in between the input and output?
: Learning is the process through which experience causes permanent change in
knowledge or behavior.
There are two key concepts embedded in this definition. First, individuals need to
actively engage in processes such as analysis, synthesis, and evaluation of the concepts
being presented. Second, through these processes, new conceptual understanding and
skills develop.
Transformative learning leads to permanent change. When the following four
ingredients are in the mix of the learning process, permanent change is likely to
happen: Dissonance, Curiosity, Collaboration and Reflection.
The four key ingredients of learning—dissonance, curiosity, collaboration, and
reflection—come together in what Halbert and Kaser describe as the inquiring mindset,
which is essential to engaging in inquiry that leads to improvement in student
outcomes.

The collaborative inquiry process is systematic and continuous, grounded in the most
current research known about the learning process. Each phase of this process
facilitates new levels of learning, which informs team decisions to implement new
practices that hold the promise of meeting the needs of their learners. Teams build
confidence as they explore ideas and expand their perspectives through dialogue. This
cycle of explore, act, and learn within each phase is what makes this such a powerful
form of relevant and meaningful job-embedded professional learning.
There are many different models of collaborative inquiry. A circle is often used to create
a mental model of the inquiry process; circular models help express inquiry as a
continuous and iterative process. However, Helen Timperley and her colleagues offer an
additional level to the cyclical process of inquiry by using a spiral as the mental model.
They describe the spiral as “systemic but not simplistic.”
The spiral of inquiry provides a framework for transforming student and professional
learning in schools. Collaborative inquiry is a recursive process of inquiry, learning, and
action, which is why it is a spiral of inquiry, not a cycle. Each phase informs the next or
raises questions that require going back to an earlier phase.
As Einstein so aptly pointed out, “The formulation of a problem is often more important
than the solution.” Inquiry teams want to avoid exerting large amounts of energy
solving the wrong problem.
In summary, new learning is:
 motivated by and connected to changing the learning experiences of learners;
 directly linked to the focus identified in the earlier phase of the spiral;
 about understanding why new ways of doing things are better than previous practices;
and
sustained and supported overtime.
In summary, taking action is:
 learning more deeply about new ways of doing things;
 informed by a deep understanding of why new practices are more effective than
others;
 about evaluating the impact on learners; and
about acknowledging feelings of vulnerability and building conditions of trust.
The ultimate goal of the spiral of inquiry is to change the learning experiences of the
learner in such a manner that it improves the learning outcomes. The purpose of this
phase is to determine “Have we made ‘enough’ of a difference?

Learning modules marketing messages.docx

Learning modules marketing messages.docx

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Learning modules marketing messages.docx