Instruction in Education Reform

Many education reform efforts focus on instruction; the ways we expect teachers to teach and students to learn. Since teachers are the key to success of any changes, many projects provide opportunities to increase teachers' knowledge and skills. Instruction reform efforts also change the ways we expect students to learn based on psychological research as well as new tools through technology. Some of the most important trends in instruction based education reform include:

• Teachers as Professionals. Teachers often lack many of the basic tools and learning opportunities that are generally associated with professional occupations. Many reform efforts emphasize increasing the requirements to be certified as a teacher and providing high quality continuing professional development opportunities for teachers to update their knowledge and skills in content and instruction.
  • Improving America's Schools newsletter issues on PD, Preservice
  • National Board for Professional Teaching Standards
  • CSU Institute for Education Reform Review of teacher training programs in California, and the pressing issue of emergency-credentialed teachers in California schools.

• Multidisciplinary/Team Teaching. Traditional classrooms isolate teachers from each other and fragment learning into separate compartments labeled English, history, science, math, etc. Some reform instructional strategies take advantage of the fact that topics in the real world naturally involve linkages among the different disciplines. Multidisciplinary lessons enable teachers to work together as a team.
  • Profiles of Promising Practices Clusters and Team Teaching: Building Connections Between Students and Teachers
  • Productive Use of Time and Space from Educational Leadership - Articles include ideas for innovative scheduling to allow for team teaching and multidisciplinary instruction.

• Constructivist/Student Centered. Rather than treat students as passive learners who absorb information provided by lecturing teachers and textbooks, some reform efforts focus on enabling the student to take a more active responsibility for her learning. Constructivism, in particular, emphasizes the students' existing knowledge and experience base and the role of the teacher as a guide helping the learner to construct and apply new understandings.
  • Constructivist Teaching and Learning Models Constructivist teaching is based on recent research about the human brain and what is known about how learning occurs. Caine and Caine (1991) suggest that brain-compatible teaching is based on 12 principles, explained in this site.
  • Institute for Learning Technologies from Teachers College Columbia University. This site includes a WWW Constructivist Project Design Guide, as well as model programs such as the Harlem Environmental Access Project.
  • The Institute for Constructivist Theories of Learning An on-going INSTITUTE for practitioners engaged in restructuring who are striving to fulfill the vision of a Learning Centered educational environment for all children. Includes a listserv and discussion group.

• Active/Collaborative Learning Strategies. These efforts promote "hands-on" instruction and students working in cooperative groups.
  • Cooperative Learning: What Is It? from the Office of Educational Research and Improvement (ED), Washington, DC, Stephen Balkcom, Author.
  • Cooperative Learning from Living Laboratory Curriculum. Over 122 studies provide clear evidence that cooperative learning experiences promote higher achievement than their competitive or individualistic counterparts. Cooperative activities also tend to promote the development of higher-order levels of thinking, essential communication skills, improved motivation, positive self-esteem, social awareness, and tolerance for individual differences.
  • Reconnecting the Sciences from Educational Leadership. Science teachers at the Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy reconnected the sciences into one course, as a means of creating a learner-centered institution, where both adults and children pursue useful knowledge.

• Technology. The explosive growth of the Internet and other communications technologies provides new opportunities.
  • Technology and Education Reform A Research Project Sponsored by the USDOE Office of Educational Research and Improvement conducted by SRI International. A look at nine school sites where school staff were active participants in incorporating technology in ways that support education reform. These pages report on the experiences of the teachers and students at these schools.
  • Possibilities: Integrating the Internet Into the Science Classroom
  • WebQuests A WebQuest is an inquiry-oriented activity in which some or all of the information that learners interact with comes from resources on the internet, optionally supplemented with videoconferencing. This site details the how and why of using WebQuests for instruction.
  • Tales From the Electronic Frontier Teachers' stories of using the Internet in the classroom for mathematics and science instruction.
  • Quest Project NASA's K-12 Internet Initiative.