'Forming a Learning Culture'

The single greatest predictor of impact is what we call the organization?s learning culture, a broad set of practices that embed learning into teaching processes, faculty behaviours and organizational reward systems.. With learning now taking place everywhere - formally, informally, through social networks and on-demand - an organization?s ability to support and encourage learning drives best results.Research says that the single biggest driver of impact for much of its professional development is the continual reinforcement of training by management and others. We also find that R &D professionals play a pivotal role in building, supporting and enhancing a school?s learning culture. Therefore, it’s important to think beyond learning programs and consider enterprise learning in a broader context.\Today’s learning organization must focus heavily on the development of talent-driven learning programs that integrate with talent management strategies. Leadership development, career development programs and integration with performance management are critical best practices. Investments in these areas are crucial because many companies are talent-constrained by teachers? turnover, gaps in the leadership pipeline and the influx of younger workers.

Informal and collaborative learning have become as important as formal learning. Communities of practice, coaching, content authored by subject matter experts and on-demand learning are some of the biggest drivers of organizational impact. Such approaches also match the learning styles of young workers.All learning organizations must have a core expertise in e-learning. Today, much of our corporate work experience is dependent on electronic content. E-mail, audio, video, mobile devices, web casting, messaging, portals, search engines and social networks make up a huge part of almost every professional?s life. The high-impact processes identified in this research involve not only content development, but skills in information architecture, creation of content standards and implementation of processes for content reuse. Today’s modern learning organization understands how to build context, not just content.The disciplines of planning, governance, measurement and leadership continue to be tremendously important. While not all organizations can justify the role of a chief learning officer, learning must have a leader. This leader must ensure learning is integrated with the organization?s talent management strategies and aligned with curriculum planning processes. Steering committees that represent the federated learning organization also are mandatory.Globalization has become one of the top focus areas of high-impact learning. Just a few years ago, only large corporations were focused on this topic. Now, companies of all sizes have global employees, customers and partners demanding a new set of disciplines and expertise in global program development and delivery.This research clearly shows that modern learning organizations drive impact in new and exciting ways. As learning leaders and professionals, we must continuously understand how changes in technology, demographics, business and organizational structures affect high-impact best practices. We hope these findings help you set your priorities and establish investments that drive the greatest possible impact in the coming years.We all are convinced that quality education requires well qualified teachers. The development of teachers? performance is inconceivable without appropriate in-service training. The teachers have to adapt to learn to adopt new pedagogical programmes, to develop new curricula, quality assurance systems etc. These activities must be learnt in the framework of continuous training. The organisations that best cope and adapt to change will drive the highest value.

How to Reach Out to Your Adolescent

Adolescence is a difficult stage to get through; your kids are under pressure from your parents, teachers and peers alike; it’s a time when they need to keep their heads on their shoulders if they’re to escape the traps of teen pregnancies, drugs, alcohol and tobacco. And the only ones who are able to get through this stage relatively unscathed are those who have understanding and mature parents or guardians. It’s hard to establish a connection with your teen, but unless you try and keep trying, you’re at risk of losing your child. If you’re looking for guidance on the best possible way to reach out to your adolescent, read on:

• Give them the power to make the choice: Children don’t respond well to force and coercion. If you tell them they must do something, it’s highly likely that they’re going to do the exact opposite. The best thing to do is inform them of the choices that are open to them, and of the consequences and rewards that each choice leads to. So it’s not just enough to tell them to abstain from premarital sex; you must educate them about the importance of safe sex.

An episode of Boston Legal featured the case of a 15-year-old girl who wished to sue her school for failing to teach them that condoms could help prevent the spread of AIDS. The school followed an abstinence only program, and the girl insisted that the administration accept some of the blame for the fact that she was HIV-positive. Teenagers are highly prone to have sex, no matter how much we preach abstinence. It’s a time when hormones run riot and you lose control when you find yourself in a tempting situation. If you taught your child about condoms and the fact that it would definitely prevent AIDS, other sexually transmitted diseases and pregnancy, he/she would definitely insist on using it.

It’s important to stay safe, no matter if your decision is regrettable. Giving them advice on safe sex is not a sign of approval; it only means that you genuinely care about them.

• Be their best friend: While this is difficult, you need to at least get them to be honest with you. They need to know that they can come to you first with any problem they face, rather than feel the need to hide it from and find a way around it somehow. Showing your children that you understand what they’re going through is the best way of reaching out to them and forming that emotional and mental connection that’s so important during adolescence.
• Stand by them: No matter what happens, you need to stand by your children. They may have erred, but the fact remains that they’re your offspring. So rather than taking them to task and ranting and raving at them, understand why they did what they did and offer them support in any way you can. Even the most recalcitrant and stubborn kids turn around and accept your guidance when you treat them with kindness and understanding in the face of trouble.

Role of school Counsellors

Counselors Help You Cope

School counselors know how to listen and help. They’ll

take your problem seriously and work with you to find

a good solution. School counselors are trained to help 

with everything — and it doesn’t have to be just 

school stuff. A counselor can help you deal with the 

sadness when someone has died as well as advise 

you on taking the right classes to get into your dream 

college.

It takes a lot of training to be a school counselor. 

Most not only have college degrees but also master’s 

degrees, as well as special training and certification in 

counseling. One of the many good things about school

counselors is that they are up-to-date on all the top 

things that affect students, including any trends that 

might affect your school.

School counselors can give you all sorts of tips and 

support on solving problems and making good 

decisions. Chances are that whatever problem you 

have, your counselor has seen it before — and has 

lots of good advice on how to help you work through 

it. Counselors can give you tips on standing up for 

yourself if you’re being bullied, managing stress, 

talking to your parents, and dealing with anger and 

other difficult moods. Counselors also can advise you 

on problems you may have with a teacher, such as 

communication difficulties or questions over grades.

School counselors are plugged in to the rest of the 

school community and, in many cases, the outside 

community as well. So they can refer students to 

outside resources like substance abuse treatment 

centers, professional therapists, and even health 

clinics.

It can help to know the different types of support your

counselor offers — even if you don’t think you need it 

now. Some schools and school districts use their 

websites to explain what the counselor does and how 

to get a counseling appointment. You may find their 

services listed under headings like “student 

resources,” ” student services,” or “student 

counseling.”

Your school’s website may also explain the roles of 

other school staff members who can help students 

with problems or school issues. Depending on the size

of your school, these people may include school

psychologists, tutors, college or career counselors, 

and school nurses. The counselor’s role varies from 

school to school and district to district, so don’t 

assume your counselor provides the same services as

the counselor in a friend’s school.

How Do I See the Counselor?

You may have been assigned a counselor when you 

started the school year. Or your school may leave it 

up to you to go to the counseling office on your own. 

A counselor might also visit your class to talk about 

certain subjects and let you know when he or she is 

available. In some schools, teachers or school nurses 

refer students to counselors if they think there’s 

something the student needs to work through. 

Different schools have different policies on putting 

students in touch with counselors.

Your school’s website, administrator’s office, or a 

trusted teacher can also tell you how to contact the 

counselor for an appointment. In many schools, 

there’s a guidance secretary who coordinates 

appointments. Many counselors are willing to meet 

with students at times that fit into the student’s 

schedule — such as before or after school or during 

lunch.

It’s probably a good idea to visit your counselor and 

get to know him or her even if you don’t have a 

problem. This helps you feel comfortable with the 

counselor in case you ever do need to meet in a time 

of crisis. It’s usually easier to talk about a tough issue 

or a problem when you already feel comfortable with 

the counselor. Meeting your counselor when you’re 

not in the middle of a crisis also gives you a chance to

discuss such issues as what the counselor will keep 

confidential and how he or she works with a student 

to resolve a problem.

Student-Counselor Meetings

Counselors meet with students individually or in small 

groups. The most common setting for most students 

is a private meeting just between the student and the 

counselor. Most school counselors have offices where 

you can sit down and talk.

You don’t need to know exactly what’s bothering you 

when you talk with the school counselor. It’s 

perfectly OK just to make an appointment because 

you’re feeling bad or not doing as well in school as 

you’d like. It’s the school counselor’s job to help 

people figure out what’s going on. In fact, it’s often 

better to see your counselor as soon as you know 

something’s up, even if you don’t know what the 

trouble is. Chances are you’ll be able to solve a 

problem faster when you have the skill and resources 

of the counselor behind you.

How often you meet with your counselor depends on 

the issue. Some concerns are dealt with in a one-time 

meeting. Others require regular meetings for a while. 

It all depends on the topic at hand and the plan that 

you and your counselor decide on.

Counselors also sometimes meet students in groups. 

Group meetings can really help people who are 

dealing with similar issues, such as a divorce. In these

group settings, people can share their feelings and 

learn coping skills. Not only do you get great ideas in 

a group setting, but it can also help to know that 

other students are going through the same thing and 

that they understand.

Counselors often come into the classroom, too, to 

teach a class on a subject that affects everyone, such 

as good study skills.

Sometimes the counselor might meet with you and a 

teacher or you and a parent — especially if the teacher

or your parent has asked for the meeting.

How Confidential Is It?

When you meet privately with a school counselor, 

your conversation will most likely be confidential. The 

counselor isn’t going to go blabbing your business 

around school. Different schools have different 

policies, though. So talk directly with your counselor 

about what he or she considers confidential.

In very rare cases, a counselor is unable to keep 

information confidential. A counselor who thinks that 

someone is at risk of being harmed is required by law 

to share that information. Even in these rare cases, 

the counselor will share that information only with the 

people who need to know.

People sometimes worry that other students will think 

they’re seeing the counselor because they have major

problems or they’re in trouble. But in most schools the

counselor deals with lots of school issues — as well as

personal ones. So you could be meeting to get career 

counseling or advice on which classes to take for 

college. Your friends and classmates don’t need to 

know why you’re seeing the counselor unless you 

choose to tell them.

Your school counselor is someone who is separate 

from your life — a neutral adult who isn’t a parent, 

relative, or teacher. Your school counselor isn’t a 

therapist. (So if you see your counselor, it’s not the 

same as getting therapy.) If you need help in some 

way that the school counselor can’t provide, he or she

can give you information about other resources, such 

as the name of a therapist.

No matter what your problem, try to think of the 

counselor as someone who’s on your side. Even if 

you’ve had a bad experience in the past with another 

counselor or a private therapist, don’t hesitate to 

contact your school counselor — or talk to the 

counseling office about seeing someone else if you 

don’t click with your current counselor. Every 

counselor is different, and most understand that it’s 

natural for people to be more comfortable with some 

individuals than others.

Don’t be surprised if your parents know your school 

counselor. They may even be in touch with each 

other. Sometimes counselors offer workshops for 

parents, with or without their kids, about topics such 

as study skills or preventing drug abuse. It’s good for 

the counselor and your parents to know each other 

when everything is going OK. That way, if any 

problems come up — like if you’re being bullied or 

there’s a death in the family and you have to be out of

school — they’ll be able to work together comfortably.

If you’re seeing your counselor and your parents don’t

know about it, don’t worry that the counselor will talk 

to them about your meetings. Unless you’ve given the

counselor the feeling that you may harm yourself or 

others, what’s said in your meetings will stay just 

between you and the counselor.

School counselors are all about helping to make your 

school experience the best it can be. The role of the 

school counselor today is very different from what it 

was like when your parents were in school. Instead of 

just focusing on schoolwork and careers, today’s 

counselors are there for students in a broader way. 

They help students handle almost any problem that 

might get in the way of learning, guide students to 

productive futures, and try to create a positive 

environment for everyone at school. So if you need a 

counselor’s advice, just ask!

Working with Disruptive student

As teachers, we often work with students who are uncooperative or disrupt other students. If you do not address this type of behavior quickly, it can lead to many problems. Here are some quick tips when confronted with disruptive students.

1. Know Your Students- Events outside of the classroom are the cause of most problems.
2. Use a Team Approach- Talk to other staff members that work with the student. See what works for them.
3. Don't Embarrass Students- This will only lead to more problems.
4. Model Behavior- Model the behavior you expect from your students.
5. Speak with Students Privately- It's best to approach students outside of the places they are seeking attention or being disruptive.
6. Let Administrators Know- See if they have any helpful experience with the student.
7. Start a Learning Contract- Help student understanding accountability.
8. Catch Them Being Good- When students are doing well, let them know it.
9. Make them involved in Co-Cirricular activities
10. Use Life Skills for improving them.
11. Ask them more questions while teaching, give them more creative questions using Blooms taxanomy .

Intrinsic motivation in class

Student motivation, especially intrinsic motivation (the motivation that comes from within ones self), is a critical part of the education process. Motivation is a necessity so that learning becomes a continuing, improving, interesting and hopefully enjoyable process

A teacher, must develop and encourage classroom motivation, i.e. think of and find ways to motivate students to reach their potential, their goals and their dreams. Children locked into classroom discussions are no different than adults locked into boring, irrelevant meetings. If you do not understand how something relates to your goals, you will not care about that thing. If an adult cannot see the relevance of the material covered in a meeting, and has no desire to score political points, he will tune out or drop out. If a child does not understand how knowing the elements of the periodic table will help to address the concerns of his life, and he is not particularly interested in pleasing the teacher, he will do the same.

Because we do not want our children to be motivated solely by a desire to please the teacher, what we need to address is how to make the content of the curriculum fit into the concerns of the child. Sometimes, this is easy. The child who wants to design a roof for the family doghouse will gladly sit through a lesson on the Pythagorean theorem if he understands that the lesson will teach him how to calculate the dimensions of the roof he needs. If a piece of content addresses a particular concern of a student, or even a general area of interest, that student will not tune it out.

Most children, as they work through their years of school do, in fact, find areas of study they genuinely enjoy. However, these areas are different for different people. The general problem of matching individual interests to fixed curricula is one that is impossible to solve. People obviously have different backgrounds, beliefs, and goals. What is relevant for one will not be relevant to another. Of course, we can force something to be relevant to students–we can put it on the test. However, this only makes it have the appearance of significance, it does not make it interesting.

Some children decide not to play the game that our rigid education system offers. Instead, they continue to search for ways in which what is taught makes sense in their day-to-day lives, becoming frustrated as they realize that much of what is covered is irrelevant to them. If children are unwilling to believe that their own questions do not matter, then they can easily conclude that it is the material covered in class that does not matter.

What is left, then, if the content has no intrinsic value to a student? Any teacher knows the answer to this question. Tests. Grades. When students do not care about what they are learning, tests and grades force them to learn what they do not care about knowing. Of course, students can win this game in the long run by instantly forgetting the material they crammed into their heads the night before the test. Unfortunately, this happens nearly every time. What is the point of a system that teaches students to temporarily memorize facts? The only facts that stay are the ones we were forced to memorize repeatedly, and those we were not forced to memorize at all but that we learned because we truly needed to know them, because we were motivated to know them. Motivation can be induced artificially, but its effects then are temporary.

Create Student Motivation in the Classroom

1. Encourage students to set goals.

2. Give students more control - a chance to create their own personal choices. Establishing their own rights, is a very resourceful motivational technique.

3. As much as possible relate assignments and class projects to real life situations.

4. Practice the assertive discipline (positive discipline) techniques.

5. Most teachers come across students who are difficult to motivate and who do not care about what happens in school. For this teacher needs to create incentives. There are ways to motivate students. Doing unique activities, creating situations where they can work in small groups, creating a reward system are just a few ideas. Colourful certificates, stickers,  awards and school passes are some examples of rewards for students of primary grade.

6. Having students help with some of the many jobs that need to be done in the classroom, will not only help a teacher but classroom jobs are also a great student motivational tool.

7. Games are fabulous classroom team building activities that are great for creating motivation in the classroom. It is amazing how it does wonders for students’ self-esteem and camaraderie.

8. Another classroom activity for team building is a classroom meeting between teacher and students where held a Special talk and teacher and students together choose Student of the Week. Students will loveit! This is another excellent student motivational tool.

Two important thoughts to keep in mind by a Teacher:

1. Always display care, concern and encouragement for your students.

2. Never give up on any unmotivated students or they will give up on themselves.

Creative Thinking and Lateral Thinking techniques

(To use this page you first need to learn how creative thinking techniques work, so click here if you do not already.)

The green Advanced Brainstorming tour will move steadily through the training material for the following creative techniques. You can press the button with the green door at the bottom of this screen to start the training material on the Random Word technique and work through to the end. If you do not read anything else, the most comprehensive training material is used on the Random Word technique.

If you do not want to read the material on all of the techniques just yet then pick them out individually, return to this page and then CTRL + click here to move past the technique training section and on to learn how to use these techniques within your brainstorming sessions. You can always return to this page later.

All of these techniques will make the generation of original ideas easier so let’s start learning about them now:

Creative Technique	Training and tutorial page	Try technique now	Download software
Random Word	CTRL + Click here	CTRL + Click here	Brainstorming Toolbox CTRL + Click here for information CTRL + Click here to download
Random Picture	CTRL + Click here	CTRL + Click here
False Rules	CTRL + Click here	CTRL + Click here
Random Website	CTRL + Click here	CTRL + Click here
SCAMPER	CTRL + Click here
Search & Reapply	CTRL + Click here
Role Play	CTRL + Click here
Challenge Facts	CTRL + Click here
Escape	CTRL + Click here
Analogies	Click here
Wishful Thinking	Click here

When you have now read the training on each of the techniques and want to read about how to use these techniques within your brainstorming sessions,CTRL +  click here. Otherwise keep on reading through the techniques …..

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To move to the first of these techniques and to follow a path through the training on each technique, click on the green door to continue the green (Advanced Brainstorming) tour.

How Research Can Improve Teaching for the 21st Century

The world seems to divide good teachers into two categories. Some people see teaching as an art, where a teacher with innate talent develops her gift as if by some genetic predisposition. Other people place emphasis on knowledge of content, where any teacher can teach—as long as he knows his subject area. These biases seem to leave little room for teachers to look closely at how they teach in the classroom.

“Discussions about research on instructional practices are not sought after and not well received,” says Robert Marzano, coauthor of the ASCD book Classroom Instruction That Works: Research-Based Strategies for Increasing Student Achievement.

But the definition of content standards and the public pressures of the accountability movement are encouraging more districts and teachers to take a closer look at research-based instructional practices that improve student motivation and achievement, say researchers.

Oddly enough, some of these teaching strategies don’t seem particularly new—identifying similarities and differences, note taking, and homework and practice, for example. The cumulative knowledge of more than 30 years of research, however, is what “validates their usefulness,” insists Marzano.

Converging Evidence

Professors of education like Michael Dickmann at Cardinal Stritch University in Milwaukee find that when teachers gain a deeper understanding of old and new instructional strategies, they tend to use them more.

“For a long time, teachers had the models of instruction, but they didn’t know the ‘why?’” says Dickmann, co-author with Nancy Stanford-Blair of Connecting Leadership to the Brain.

The evidence from neuroscience, cognitive science, and clinical studies as well as theoretical constructs from evolutionary biology, archaeology, and philosophy converge in support of certain instructional practices, says Dickmann. “You put all that together and the black box opens up,” he suggests.

Dickmann points to cooperative learning as an example. “Hard research now enables educators to look through the lenses of physiological, social, emotional, constructive, reflective, and dispositional dimensions of the way the brain learns,” he says.

Cooperative learning physiologically engages more of the brain’s neural networks through the stimulation of sensory information from kinesthetic, visual, and auditory input. A teacher who studies the research would also better understand how cooperative learning taps into students’ “natural capacities to be engaged socially and emotionally” and supports their efforts to construct knowledge and apply it in problem solving, says Dickmann.

Ultimately, research on the subject can enlighten teachers about how cooperative learning can foster learning dispositions or mental habits that can help students throughout their lives, he adds.

Dickmann likens the “breakthrough in knowledge” about instructional practices to the work of Louis Pasteur, the microbiologist famed for his discovery in 1857 that infectious diseases are caused by germs. It is not enough for such new knowledge to be available, explains Dickmann; “there has to be a perceptual shift” so such discoveries might be practically applied. Often there is a lag time between great scientific theories and their application in everyday situations. For example, Pasteur’s findings were not immediately used to prevent wounded soldiers from contracting fatal infections. Similarly, some teachers hesitate to tap into the practical benefits of research-based strategies.

Putting Research to Work

Although years of evidence points to certain instructional practices as keys to promoting student achievement, sustaining such strategies in the classroom is an arduous process that calls for commitment on every level. In northeast Iowa, a group of school districts serving 38,000 students has been hard at work for 10 years crafting and refining a plan that promotes the latest research-based instructional strategies. The districts use the strategies as a key component of a larger vision of well-planned curriculum alignment that can increase student achievement.

Administrators in the region wanted an alternative to the kind of professional development that entailed having a “big inspirational speaker” descend in August—just when teachers need to be preparing to teach, says Nancy Lockett, staff development coordinator for Iowa’s Area Education Agency 7. AEA7, which oversees 26 independent school districts, including Waterloo, Cedar Falls, and surrounding rural areas, wanted to cultivate a “common language and critical mass” of research-based best practices that would “hit all administrators, teachers, and counselors.”

The plan calls for a sea change in how teachers approach classroom instruction, student engagement, and lesson planning. Over the years, staff in participating school districts have learned about the latest research on brain-based learning, student assessment, and standards and benchmarks. After taking all this information in, teachers complained that it was difficult to incorporate strategies into lesson planning because the information was never at hand, Lockett recalls. Looking up the right strategy in books, notebooks, binders, file folders, and old workshop handouts was too time consuming. To help solve the difficulty of a wealth of strategies, the agency created a 30-page booklet of strategies it called the “skinny book” to help teachers plan lessons.

Consultants also advised school districts to reduce the number of standards and benchmarks for each subject area, so teachers would concentrate lessons on what students needed to know most to be successful.

Finally, the area education agency developed the Linking Learning, Teaching and Curriculum (LLTC) program to assist teachers with aligning the selection of strategies with curriculum, assessment, and broader educational goals. This program also allowed teachers and administrators from different districts to coordinate professional development that addressed common concerns.

Teachers from the 18 districts that have signed on to the agency’s LLTC program set their own training agendas by identifying the strategies they want to master. Lockett recently led a group of 60 middle school teachers who wanted to enhance their use of cooperative learning. Teachers arrived with baseline data about the current level of “engaged behavior” in their classrooms’ cooperative learning groups, then experimented with a variety of strategies to improve their use of the groups. These teachers’ ultimate goal, says Lockett, is “to help kids learn to think deeply, work together better, and organize learning visually.”

Tailoring Teaching

Over the years, teachers have been exposed to a variety of strategies from experts—such as Marzano or Patricia Wolfe, who specializes in brain-compatible instructional practices—who have developed strong professional relationships with the teaching staff, says Edward Redalen, director of educational services for AEA7.

“An external consultant with expertise and charisma can unlock things for you,” says Redalen. “And experts say they like coming back because we follow up on using the strategies.”

After an inservice session has given teachers the “basic chocolate cake recipe,” they are encouraged to adapt a variety of strategies into a rich combination that meets their specific classroom needs, says Lockett.

Of the numerous instructional strategies available, lateral thinking expert Edward de Bono’s Plus, Minus, Interesting approach (PMI) has worked well to open up brainstorming sessions in teacher Pattie Bailey’s gifted and regular classrooms. PMI, which looks at pros, cons, and interesting aspects of an idea or proposal, has proved useful in Bailey’s social studies classes and even in her reading curriculum.

“Students will often come up with a statement that begins, ‘What if this happened . . .?’ so we can apply PMI to foster discussion” about some line of thought that intrigues them, says Bailey.

Another strategy she has used with 4th graders is Consequences and Sequel (C&S), which prods students to focus on the immediate, short-term, medium-term, and long-term consequences of actions taken by a story character or historical figure.

Bailey, who teaches math for 5th graders and gifted students at Reinbeck Elementary School and gifted students at Gladbrook-Reinbeck High School, advises that no single strategy is going to meet the needs of all students. Bailey has to do “lots of pre-testing,” she says, and work with students to get to know their optimum learning styles.

For example, some of Bailey’s gifted high school students want to try out many scenarios when deciding what to write for a Future Problem Solving essay, an international program for creative thinking that involves a changing roster of topics—from education to virtual corporations. Other students “need time to think the whole period,” she says. Recognizing such student differences, Bailey allows for a variety of approaches.

Dan Flaharty, who teaches math and health at Jesup High School in Jesup, Iowa, has found visual organizers, such as a table of rubrics, helpful. At the beginning of the year, Flaharty and students together develop a rubric about expectations and goals for class learning. In terms of content, for instance, he uses rubrics to help students monitor whether they’ve correctly carried out all the steps for solving an algebraic equation.

“They acquire higher-order thinking skills because they evaluate themselves. There’s no doubt about it that those students who are using the algebra rubric are achieving at a higher level,” notes Flaharty.

In geometry class, a kinesthetic learner would be given the option to construct different triangle models in wood, or an artistic student could create an art project to demonstrate her knowledge of geometric concepts.

Still, there are challenges. “We learn all of these strategies in an inservice, and try them the next day,” says Flaharty. But then it can be easy to “fall back into the old ways of the lecture rut. It just takes a long time to change.”

Learning Teams

To keep teachers from backsliding and to entice other districts into the program, the education agency’s LLTC Online at http://edservices.aea7.k12.ia.us/lltc/index.html offers detailed resources and guidelines to help them align their teaching strategies to curriculum and assessment goals. Although avid users of research-based strategies, Flaharty and Bailey have joined learning teams, which are cross-curricular groups of teachers from multiple grade levels who meet periodically to monitor how specific instructional strategies are helping them reach achievement goals.

For example, Flaharty wanted to improve his students’ ability to solve math story problems, so he is giving them strategies for analyzing common words that appear. Using a math word bank, Flaharty helps his students break these words into prefixes, suffixes, and root words to better understand their meaning. So if a student sees “colinear” on a test, she’ll already understand that the prefix “co-” means “together with” and will have applied the prefix in nonmath sentences using words such as “cooperate” or “coed.” Flaharty tracks student assessments in the targeted area in the first year and makes adjustments in the following year. In monthly learning team meetings, teachers compare notes and exchange ideas about their successes and challenges.

Not surprisingly, the strategy of generating and testing hypotheses is an essential learning team strategy as teachers try out different instructional practices, explains school improvement consultant Denise Schares.

Schares is working with a team of elementary school teachers interested in helping students with reading problems. Having hypothesized that these students don’t have a bank of strategies—rereading, questioning, and so on—to get them through the sticking points, these teachers selected a handful of reading strategies to teach their struggling readers.

“I asked them to start small so they can get a sense of the process,” says Schares. “The team will now observe students and chart data for the rest of the year to determine whether their hypothesis was correct” and what revisions they’ll make to improve their use of instructional strategies.

“Implementation is key to this business,” says Redalen. “We can’t just keep adding stuff but need to get deeper penetration, and learning teams are evidence that teachers want to sustain more and better use of these strategies.”

Teachers Make the Difference

Marzano believes that even though research-based instructional strategies are not yet widely used, the scientific evidence about their effectiveness will mount so that more teachers will see their value.

In the current age of measuring achievement, some district administrators are taking notice of practices proven to show percentile gains of 26–37 points in research studies. For example, students tend to flourish when a classroom atmosphere reinforces effort or a teacher encourages them to analyze their thinking and self-motivation.

Perhaps researchers’ long-standing claims that even one teacher armed with effective strategies—even in a mediocre school environment—can make a profound difference in a student’s learning will end up becoming the one piece of research that ushers in a new era of teaching.