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Setting standards in education is a difficult task, but an important one. Standards are not a new idea; they have been around since the first classroom was established. Over the years, standards have been developed for teacher education candidates and different content areas. It is important for future teachers to know which standards are used in the public school system in which they plan to teach.
EDUCATIONAL STANDARDS & IMPORTANCE
Educational standards are academic benchmarks that students must attain in different subject areas from Kindergarten to 12th grade. They have been developed both at the national or state level.
According to Marzano and Kendall (1996), there are five reasons for establishing standards in education. Standards:
- Provide a starting point for articulating goals for student performance
- Provide a basis for developing curriculum benchmarks that will help students meet specific levels of content knowledge
- Should be written in a way that they include the content knowledge and skills necessary for applying that knowledge
- Form the basis for developing assessments to measure whether they have been met
- Should represent a recognizable progression from one level to another
Educational standards have also been developed for pre-professional teachers setting minimal competencies that need to be demonstrated prior to entering the teaching profession in different states around the nation.
CONTENT AREA STANDARDS
Educational standards have also been developed to guide curriculum development in different disciplines. They have been developed at the district, state, and national levels. Some standards were developed for grades K-12 while others were developed for different grade levels (e.g., K-4, 5-8, and 9-12). In the State of Florida, the educational standards used are called the Sunshine State Standards. Teachers use these to develop their lesson plans and teach the benchmarks that students are supposed to master in different content areas.
STANDARDS FOR TEACHER EDUCATION CANDIDATES
Most states around the nation require teacher education candidates to pass standards-based examinations in order to teach in public school settings. These examinations require pre-professional educators to demonstrate subject area knowledge, as well as pedagogical knowledge. This helps to ensure that teachers are proficient in their subject and in pedagogy.
CURRICULA
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Which courses do students take in U.S. schools? How are these courses taught? It is imperative that future teachers familiarize themselves with the school curricula taught and teaching methods typically used in school districts in the United States if they are to create learning environments that are conducive to learning and allow students to make connections between different subject areas.
TRADITIONAL U.S. CURRICULA
Although the curriculum for elementary and secondary education is determined by individual states and therefore may entail variations with respect to general education requirements and electives, there are common courses that students take in every state across the nation.
At the elementary level (grades K-5), some of the subjects typically taught are: reading, writing, arithmetic, physical education, art, and music.
At the secondary level, students typically take courses at the middle school level (grades 6-8), junior high school level (grades 7-9), and senior high school level (grades 10-12). Students are required to take mandatory subjects, as well as electives. The number of mandatory subjects and electives varies from state to state but across the nation, students generally take courses in English, math, science, social studies, physical education, and health. In addition, they also take elective courses in foreign languages, technology, visual and performing arts, journalism, and athletics. In many states, these courses are offered as advanced placement courses (i.e., they teach a more advanced level and are more challenging to students).
COMMONLY USED INSTRUCTIONAL STRATEGIES
There are many instructional strategies that teachers use today. Among these are cooperative learning, project-based learning, contextualized learning, and culturally responsive teaching. Many of today's teachers also integrate technology into the teaching and learning process.
Cooperative Learning
Cooperative learning is a teaching strategy that requires students to complete classroom work in small groups that are heterogeneous in terms of gender, culture, and ability level. In each group, students are individually accountable for the success of their group. This means that each student is expected to master material and to help other group members learn the same material. Students achieve this by explaining the material to each other and contributing to a group project.
As a teaching strategy, cooperative learning is most appropriate for in-class and out-of-class projects, as well as lab work. It requires teachers to carefully plan all cooperative learning activities. Sometimes, it is not well accepted by students who prefer to work independently.
Two commonly used cooperative learning techniques are:
- The Jigsaw Puzzle method. This teaching strategy requires students to work in groups of 5. Each student in a group is assigned individual material to learn and is expected to teach the material to the other members in the group. Next, all students in the class who were assigned the same material are asked to form expert groups to review the material and plan how to teach the material to their home group. The students then return to their original groups and teach the material to their peers, after which every student completes various assessments to demonstrate mastery.
- Think-Pair-Share. This strategy involves three steps. In step 1, students are asked to think silently about a question. In step 2, students pair up with another student and share their thoughts. In step 3, each pair of students share their responses with other students in the class. Information on other cooperative learning strategies can be found at this website. Research shows that cooperative learning is an effective instructional strategy that improves motivation, self-esteem, academic performance, school retention, and intercultural relations among students.
Watch a movie about cooperative learning:
Project-Based Learning
Project-based learning (also called problem-based learning) is a teaching strategy that requires students to collaborate in groups, investigate and solve real-life problems, create a product (e.g., video) that illustrates what students learned, and share the product with the rest of the class.
As a strategy, project-based learning is most effective when it is aligned with educational standards and requires students to use higher-order thinking and make real-world connections. It also requires teachers to change their role as teacher and to become more of a guide on the side.
This technique has been shown to improve students' motivation, critical thinking, decision-making, and retention of concepts. It also addresses the different learning styles and forms of intelligence of students.
Contextualized Learning
Contextualized learning is based on the premise that students will learn best when they are interested in a subject or topic, have some knowledge about the subject or topic, and can apply their previously acquired knowledge and skills in new situations in the real world. This teaching strategy thus requires teachers to relate what they teach to real-life situations and to engage students in learning activities where they have to apply what they learn in the real world.
As a teaching method, contextualized learning is well-suited for addressing the learning preferences and needs of all students in a class but requires teachers to effectively plan for instruction.
Research indicates that contextualized learning increases students' motivation, active participation in the learning process, engagement, problem-solving skills, and retention of concepts.
Culturally Responsive Teaching
Culturally responsive teaching is a teaching strategy that builds on the cultural knowledge and experiences of students to teach content and make learning more appropriate for them. This strategy requires teachers to reflect multiple world views and everyday-life concepts from different cultural groups and to address students' learning styles through varied classroom activities.
As a teaching strategy, culturally responsive teaching is especially well-suited to address the needs of culturally diverse students. It requires teachers to increase their knowledge of different cultural groups and to carefully plan activities.
Research shows that this method improves students' initiative, self-efficacy, interpersonal skills, and academic performance.
Technology
U.S. teachers also tend to integrate technology into teaching and learning. Technology allows teachers to use a variety of teaching techniques and assessment methods, to deliver instruction through different sensory channels using text, audio, video, and hands-on activities, and to engage students in meaningful activities that require them to think critically, apply concepts, work collaboratively, and demonstrate learning through a variety of assessments. Technology also allows teachers to enhance instruction with different theoretical perspectives, real-life examples, and resources while individualizing instruction and using assistive devices to address special needs.
The chart below summarizes some of the instructional media that today's teachers use in conjunction with different instructional methods such as problem-based learning, cooperative learning, contextualized learning, and culturally responsive teaching:
For example, in a cooperative learning activity on mammals, some teachers require students to use multimedia cds, real objects, graphics, the Internet and video clips to research different types of mammals and their habitat. These instructional media are also used for student discussions in groups, as well as for group investigations and discovery learning.
In U.S. schools, testing is an integral part of students' educational experiences. To this end, teachers use a variety of assessment methods, including standardized tests and alternative assessments. For example, more than 40 states around the nation currently administer standardized tests to students every year to determine students' academic placement, assess learning, and compare the performance of teachers, schools, districts, and states. In addition, while in some states, alternative assessments are used for part or all of their statewide assessments of students, in most states, teachers use alternative assessments on a daily basis to evaluate students' mastery of concepts. As future teachers, it is important that you develop an understanding of the different types of assessments that teachers can use to obtain information about students' performance.WHAT ARE THE DIFFERENT TYPES OF ASSESSMENT METHODS USED IN U.S. SCHOOLS?
There are two main types of assessments used in U.S. schools, namely standardized tests and alternative assessments.
Standardized Tests
What is a standardized test? It is a test that is widely administered to students across U.S. school districts and scored using standardized or uniform procedures. When standardized tests are developed, they typically are administered to a large group of students who are representative of the general student population (normative sample) in order to develop test questions that are appropriate for different content areas and grade levels and to obtain comparisons for scoring the tests. This ensures that all students who take a given standardized test have a similar experience with the test. Teacher-made tests are different from standardized tests because they usually are developed by individual teachers for a limited number of students and scored according to individual teachers' scoring guidelines.
There are two types of standardized tests, namely norm-referenced tests and criterion-referenced tests. What is the difference between the two?
Norm-referenced tests compare the individual test scores of students against the scores of students in the normative sample. Criterion-referenced tests, on the other hand, compare students' performance with pre-specified content standards or what students should know and be able to do in a given content area.
Alternative Assessments
In the past decade, one of the major trends in alternative assessment has been the development of authentic assessments. Authentic assessments are tests that allow students to demonstrate what they know in real-life contexts. These tests differ from multiple-choice tests or true/false tests in that they do not ask students to recall information but to apply what they know. There are different forms of authentic assessments, including performance tests, portfolios, and exhibitions. Performance tests are tests that require students to solve problems by doing (e.g., performing a science experiment). Portfolios, on the other hand, require students to assemble a collection of their best work in order to demonstrate the competencies, efforts, accomplishments, and growth that they have experienced in a given subject. Exhibitions are public performances that students have to render in front of an audience (e.g., oral book report). Usually, the scoring of authentic assessments is criterion-based. It is based on pre-established scoring criteria called rubrics about the specific standards of performance that students should demonstrate.
Authentic assessments typically engage students in activities that require them to think at various levels of complexity from lower-order to higher-order thinking. Many authentic assessments are based on Bloom's taxonomy of cognitive behaviors and equip students with critical thinking skills that are essential for today's society. Benjamin Bloom (1913-1999) was an education professor at the University of Chicago who developed a classification of the different cognitive behaviors that are important during the learning process. This classification includes 6 levels of cognitive skills:
- Knowledge: recalling information
- Comprehension: interpreting information
- Application: applying information
- Analysis: identifying components of information
- Synthesis: generating new ideas
- Evaluation: deriving thoughtful value judgments
In Bloom's taxonomy, each level of cognitive skills is associated with a list of action verbs that teachers can use to write their learning objectives and design their assessments:
REFERENCES
Ormrod, J. & Jones, B. (2018). Essentials of educational psychology: Big ideas to guide teaching (5th ed.). Boston: Pearson.
Parkay, F. (2020). Becoming a teacher (11th ed.). Boston: Pearson.
Santrock, J. (2018). Educational psychology (5th ed.). Boston: McGraw Hill.
