Inspiring Values of Unforgettable Teachers
by Steve Brunkhorst
By Steve Brunkhorst
http://www.AchieveEzine.comAll of us recall special teachers — people who not only taught us but inspired us in ways that changed our lives. William Arthur Ward once said, "The mediocre teacher tells. The good teacher explains. The superior teacher demonstrates. The great teacher inspires."
Here are five life-changing values inspired by unforgettable teachers.
The Teachers I Will Always Remember...
... Taught the Value of Learning and Knowledge
They were enthusiastic about their subject. However, they gave more than knowledge. They showed how learning could enhance creativity, spark interests, and uncover talents. They instilled in students a curiosity to learn and an undying passion to keep learning.
... Taught the Value of RespectThey treated others with honor. They explained how kind words, and sometimes silence, could prevent hurtful confrontations and turn enemies into friends. They taught the value of respect for the community as well as the individual.
... Taught the Value of IntegrityThey demonstrated empathy for those who were ill or suffering from personal loss. They would go the extra mile to offer support. Their ethics inspired students to live with courage and approach life with honesty, dignity, and self-worth.
... Taught the Value of ResponsibilityThey taught that personal actions have consequences and that the individual must be accountable for his or her choices. They emphasized that when people think others are to blame for problems, that very thought is the real problem. They taught that each student was ultimately responsible for his or her learning and its impact on their future.
... Taught the Value of PerseveranceThey taught that education continues until our last breath. They told stories about the hard times they had faced, and how God had often turned difficulties into blessings. They refused to let students quit after repeated failures. They demonstrated that "Faith is the assurance of things not yet seen."
Not all of these teachers taught in formal classrooms. Nor did they all have a formal education. Some of them are still teaching, and the education they provide is priceless.
I believe that the greatest gifts we can give our children are the same kind of values these teachers demonstrate. Then our children can also become unforgettable teachers, sharing values that will inspire happiness and faith for future generations.
About the Author
© Copyright 2005 by Steve Brunkhorst. Steve is a professional life success coach, motivational author, and the editor of Achieve! 60-Second Nuggets of Inspiration, a popular mini-zine bringing great stories and inspiring thoughts to help you achieve more in your career and personal life. Get the next issue by visiting http://www.AchieveEzine.com
Truth never plays false roles of any kind, which is why people are so surprised when meeting it. Everyone must decide whether he wants the uncompromising truth or a counterfeit version of truth. Real wisdom consists of recommending the truth to yourself at every opportunity."-- Vernon Howard========================================================
Thinking Like A Farmer
by Jim Rohn
One of the difficulties we face in our industrialized age is the fact that we've lost our sense of seasons. Unlike the farmer whose priorities change with the seasons, we have become impervious to the natural rhythm of life. As a result, we have our priorities out of balance.
Let me illustrate what I mean: For a farmer, springtime is his most active time. It's then when he must work around the clock, up before the sun and still toiling at the stroke of midnight. He must keep his equipment running at full capacity because he has but a small window of time for the planting of his crop. Eventually winter comes when there is less for him to do to keep him busy.
There is a lesson here.
Learn to use the seasons of life.
Decide when to pour it on and when to ease back, when to take advantage and when to let things ride.
It's easy to keep going from nine to five year in and year out and lose a natural sense of priorities and cycles.
Don't let one year blend into another in a seemingly endless parade of tasks and responsibilities. Keep your eye on your own seasons, lest you lose sight of value and substance.
To Your Success,
Jim Rohn
Do not wait; the time will never be 'just right'. Start where you stand, and work with whatever tools you may have at your command, and better tools will be found as you go along." -- Napoleon Hill
========================================================= . Your Achievement Quotes
Trust "Few things help an individual more than to place responsibility upon him, and to let him know that you trust him." -- Booker T. Washington
"You can't shake hands with a clenched fist." -- Indira Gandhi
"You may be deceived if you trust too much, but you will live in torment if you don't trust enough." -- Frank Crane
"One must be fond of people and trust them if one is not to make a mess of life." -- E. M. Forster
Unleashing Your Genius "Neither a lofty degree of intelligence nor imagination nor both together to the making of genius. Love, love, love, that is the soul of genius." -- Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
"When Nature has work to be done, she creates a genius to do it." -- Ralph Waldo Emerson
"To see things in the seed, that is genius." -- Lao-Tzu
"Any intelligent fool can make things bigger and more complex... It takes a touch of genius --- and a lot of courage to move in the opposite direction." -- Albert Einstein
Values/Principles"The happiness and unhappiness of the rational, social animal depends not on what he feels but on what he does; just as his virtue and vice consist not in feeling but in doing." -- Marcus Aurelius Antoninus
"You can always tell your true values by looking at your behavior -- especially under pressure." -- Brian Tracy
"All virtue is summed up in dealing justly." -- Aristotle
"Try not to become a man of success but rather try to become a man of value." -- Albert Einstein
========================================================
"I never give them hell. I just tell the truth and they think it's hell." -- Harry S. Truman ======================================================== ========================================================
"Time is a fixed income and, as with any income, the real problem facing most of us is how to live successfully within our daily allotment." -- Margaret B. Johnstone====================================================
3. YAE Tips
12 Elements That Make Great Service Possibleby Jeffrey Gitomer There are 12 elements that make great service possible. None of which have ever been taught in school.
1. Establishing and maintaining a positive attitude;
2. Establishing and achieving goals;
3. Understanding yourself, your co-workers and your customer;
4. Having pride in yourself, your company and what you do;
5. Taking responsibility for your actions, what happens to you, and the success of your company;
6. Listening with the intent to understand;
7. Communicating to be understood;
8. Embracing change as a natural progression of things and of life;
9. Establishing, building and maintaining relationships;
10. Gaining the ability to make effective decisions (which means taking risks);
11. Learning to serve others in a memorable way, and,
12. Working as a team to make everyone more productive.
In order to serve -- you must be prepared to serve. How important are each of these subjects in your success? Have you ever taken a course in any of these subjects?"
-- Jeffrey Gitomer Jeffrey Gitomer is the author of The Sales Bible, Knock Your Socks off Selling and Customer Satisfaction is Worthless Customer Loyalty is Priceless.
=========================================================
"Lying makes a problem part of the future; truth makes a problem part of the past." --
Rick Pitino
=========================================================
=========================================================
"Time management is really personal management, life management, and management of yourself." -- Brian Tracy
=========================================================
Make It A Great Week!
Leadership development in European organizations:
Challenges and best practices
“Innovation at SAP…It’s the result of creative thinking on the part of everySAP employee…SAP continues to invest in the knowledge, skills, and expertise of employees worldwide.”
- Creating an Environment for Excellence, SAP 2003 Annual Report
“To achieve… all our ambitions we place great emphasis on making the most of and developing further the outstanding capabilities of our people. This is not just a current priority for us. It is fundamental to the way we have always done business.”
- Financial Statement, Cadbury Schweppes Annual Review 2003
“To achieve [our corporate goals], I believe there are… important things we need to do…Cultivate excellence in human resources and management.”
- Management Direction, Fujitsu 2004 Annual Report
Report contents
Executive summary . ..........................................4
Introduction .......................................................6
Section I – The global perspective .. …............8
o Global corporate challenges
o Global leadership development challenges and state of the industry
o Differences between European and US corporations that affect leadership
Section II – Research findings and participant data – overview .............13
IIA – Context and organisational requirements ……… 15
o The reality for leadership development professionals
o Human resources’ impact on corporate success
o Integration of leadership development with business development
IIB – Strategic issues around leadership development ........................19
o Required skills and competencies
o High-level commitment to leadership development
o Link between leadership practices and enhance financial returns
o Techniques to help gain management buy-in
o Delivery constraints
IIC – Services and operations in leadership development ....................24
o Corporate universities
o Coaching
o Mentoring
o Working with external suppliers
o New services
o Role of technology
IID – Budget and financial aspects in leadership development .................31
o Market size, structure and components
o Budget patterns - historical and future
o Budget control
IIE – Results and business impact of leadership development ................34
o Tracking the impact of leadership development solutions
o Impact metrics
o Best practices in measuring and maximising ROI
in leadership development solutions
IIF – Uniqueness, best practices and differences across Europe ..............39
o Unique programme elements
o Best practices
o Differences across Europe
Section III – Looking into the future ...........................................42
o Leadership development today and tomorrow
o Predicted changes
o Recommendations
Summary .......................................................................................................................45
Appendix section
A1 - Survey methodology .........................................................................................46
A2 - Survey participants ............................................................................................47
A3 - Questionnaire ....................................................................................................49
A4 - Bibliography and additional resources ..............................................................53
A5 - About the survey producers ................................................................................54
Executive summary
The role of leadership development in the modern corporation is evolving. Traditionally more subject to economic cycles or a particular organisation’s fortunes, leadership development activities, budgets, and its overall visibility are increasing. HR and Development professionals have asserted for many years that all corporate development, and especially leadership development, is a key driver for corporate success; management is not only listening but starting to take action and participate, invest, and make leadership development a corporate priority.
Leadership development in European organisations examines the practices in over 50 of Europe’s largest corporations. As the data shows, for leadership development professionals, there is no one single path to managing leadership development effectively in an organisation. In “best practice” organisations across the globe, the variety of practices is fairly wide, and certainly within Europe one notices clear differences as well. These regional differences are discussed in detail in the complete survey.
As we look specifically at the key findings of Leadership development in European organisations, a few themes do emerge from the survey:
• Importance of leadership development
The importance of the HR and Development functions, as well as the extent to which leadership development is blended in with the critical business development function (almost 30% of survey respondents stated that these two functions are “extremely” integrated), demonstrates a strong level of importance which is placed on leadership development. Additionally, the level of commitment at the CEO, Board, and Senior Management team is quite strong (54% cite the CEO’s commitment to leadership development as “extremely” strong). There is no doubt that leadership development is an executive management issue.
• Continued investment in leadership development
Even during the early 2000s, when much of Europe was still recovering economically, the investment in leadership development remained strong – 40% of companies experienced greater than 10% annual budget growth since year 2000. As we look out over the next few years, we see a continued pattern of increasing investments in this area (38% forecast steady investments; 53% expect budget increases.) Companies also plan to leverage internal resources more frequently in delivering leadership development, with many companies investing their own executive management in the process as both facilitators and participants.
• ROI measurement and use of technology
Despite the high level of importance and investment in leadership development, companies examined in this survey are not measuring the return on impact of leadership as much as one might expect, especially given the importance it plays and the size of the investments they are making. Despite utilising a variety of metrics to track the effectiveness of leadership development solutions, a full 63% reported that they “never” measure leadership development ROI. Similarly, they are not using technology to a great extent, neither on the delivery side nor for programme evaluations, while their transatlantic counterparts in the US do find such use of technology very helpful and more common.
It is critical that corporations understand their own needs for leadership development (a “moving target” as new individuals and new strategies are introduced all the time) and customise in a proactive fashion a solution based on these needs. Gone are the days of having a fixed competency wheel for an organisation’s leaders and simply trying, reactively, to build skills to match against its talent model over a several year period. Top performing organisations take this proactive approach to building leadership talent, as it is now recognized that leadership development is not just a tool to help the organisation achieve its strategy, but rather a process by which it can develop a strategy in the first place.
It is equally important that leadership development professionals understand the global business drivers in their organisation, as these drivers are the basis from which all solutions are ideally designed. Development professionals no longer train leaders to have a well rounded set of skills; they develop leaders to achieve business results. The global aspects are highly relevant as leaders need to know how to manage across boundaries, penetrate foreign markets, and do so with a diverse employee base.
Finally, leadership development professionals similarly are investing in their own capabilities and knowledge of their own organisation to understand the business and not simply the training and developmental challenges to maximise their impact. There is a network of internal and external resources that leadership development professionals can tap into as they develop solutions, and although there are challenges of managing such a large and dispersed network, the resources are extremely powerful when used appropriately. Most importantly, organisations are committing their senior management time and financial capital to ensure that leadership development delivers on its promise to move the corporation forward.
Introduction
The field of leadership development is dynamic in that both the demands on corporate leaders are shifting, as are the providers of leadership development services (both internal to the organisation and external) changing their tools and techniques. Companies all over the globe are looking for an edge. As the economy proves its volatile nature, organisations need to think constantly about cost cutting, productivity enhancements, as well as top line revenue growth.
Businesses have done a good job of eliminating the excess costs of their supply chain, leveraging technology to find more efficient ways of coordinating both with suppliers and customers, as well as improving internal communication. The investments in systems that optimise hard assets over the past several decades have been staggering (inventory management systems, asset management systems, etc.), yet they are just realising the potential to manage their own workforce in systematic fashion, and the impact that proper management can have.
1
Increasingly organisations do see the strong link between leadership and management practices and corporate performance, and they are investing in a strategic fashion to improve their own management. And while many studies examine the importance of leadership development, in Leadership development in European organisations we examine the overall leadership development field, as well as look into specific findings at a select group of European based multi-national organisations. Our desire is to uncover the current activities, challenges, best practices, and trends that leadership development professionals face, by combining actual first hand responses from both practitioners and industry experts, along with leading research.
The focus of this survey is on leadership development, as opposed to exclusively examining executive and management development solutions. Although the terms “manager”, “leader”, and “executive” are sometimes used interchangeably, for purposes of this report we focus on leaders (which includes both mid-level managers as well as high-level executives) and all forms of development (open enrolment educational programmes as well as highly customized in-house activities).
In the spring and summer of 2004, DIEU, The Danish Leadership Institute and The ExecSight Institute of Executive Development conducted in-person and telephone interviews with 51 corporations (referred to as the “survey participants” in this research). A variety of quantitative and qualitative questions were asked to leadership development professionals at large European based companies.
The survey participants include individuals with professional titles such as: Head of Management Training, Chief Learning Officer, and Vice President, Executive Development. (The questionnaire is located in Appendix A3). Along with the 51 organisations in the survey, we interviewed several thought leaders and researchers on the topic of leadership development. (The complete list of survey participants 1
Source: Casserley, Dominic “Helping Britons Work Smarter,” The McKinsey Quarterly, 2004 Number 3 ” is listed in Appendix A2). In addition to the primary research, a vast collection of books, articles, and industry presentations on the topic were included in the overall research process.
Businesses often treat innovation and IT as the answers to low productivity, without changing their management practices.”
Leadership development in European organisations is divided into three parts.
Section I –The global perspective is a discussion of Europe as a whole and how it differs from its trans- Atlantic neighbour, the US, and notes similarities and differences in regional leadership development.
Section II - Research findings and participant data provides a detailed look into
the survey participant responses, both in aggregate and by specific country groupings.
Section III - Looking into the future examines the future of leadership development, and provides a sense of what services we can expect to see more of in the years to come.
Summary
As the modern organisation is more and more dependent on people assets to perform, the stakes of the corporate training and development function are higher than ever before. At the same time the leadership of people as an increasingly important resource is becoming evident across regions, industries, and individual organisations, and leadership development’s strategic role is increasing beyond where it is today.
Section I demonstrated that although the global corporate challenges are similar on both sides of the Atlantic, Europe and the US have unique approaches to leadership development, which have at its roots cultural, political, and social factors. In section II we examined in great detail the specific activities, perspectives, and regional differences of leadership development in Europe.
The common thread, globally, is that the ”stakes” are higher than ever before. Leadership development, if done properly and effectively, can serve as a driver to move an organization forward. Leaders who do not have sufficient leadership development activities in their organisation risk falling behind on both a personal and organisational level relative to their peers, as there are now many well funded and managed solutions. Leadership development professionals need to lead by example and seek out new learning within their field, try new techniques, and relentlessly monitor the impact their activities are having. The process of developing people who lead the people is one of the most important corporate activities that exists.
Appendix section
A1 - Survey methodology
Leadership development in European organisations was designed by DIEU · The Danish Leadership Institute and ExecSight in the spring of 2004. A list of potential organisations to be included in the survey was compiled, and interviews were scheduled subsequently. The interviews were conducted in person and over telephone conference calls covering questions in five basic categories: Background, Strategy, Operations and Services, Budget, and Impact and ROI. In most cases, the individual interviewed was the top manager responsible for the
design and delivery of executive education solutions, such as the Head of Management Development or the Director of Management Training.
Supporting the findings from the primary research are research articles and management journals, from specialists in the leadership development field and business press.
In total 51 organisations across 9 different countries were included:
• Belgium 2
• Denmark 7
• France 7
• Germany 9
• Luxemburg 1
• Norway 1
• Sweden 1
• Switzerland 5
• United Kingdom 18
The quantitative data from the interviews was analysed, including averaging the scores, grouping the respondents into country-specific bundles, and performing correlation assessments. It is noted that the sample size for the survey of 51 organisations does not represent a statistically significant group of the Global 1000 corporations for whom the data in this report is intended to benefit most. Averages, regional groupings, and correlations are conducted within this limited sample size as a basis for discussion rather than to state definitive patterns.
A2 - Survey participants
AGA A/S Region North Europe Manager – Competence Management
Alcatel Senior Advisor, Alcatel University
Allianz Head of Leadership Development
AstraZeneca AS VP Learning and Development
Aviva plc Management Development Director
Belgacom E-HR Senior Project Manager
Boots Talent Manager, development and design of leadership development
British American Tobacco Head of Leadership and Culture
BMW Management Development
BP VP Executive Development
Cadbury Schweppes plc Group Organisation Effectiveness and Development Director
Carlsberg Breweries International Development Manager
Coca Cola Enterprises Ltd. Head of Leadership Development
Credit Agricole HR Development – Institut de Formation du Credit Agricole
Credit Suisse Manager International Leadership Programmes
CSC Consulting Group A/S Development Manager EMEA
DaimlerChrysler Services AG Chief Learning Officer
Danisco A/S Head of Executive Education
Danfoss A/S Head of Danfoss Management Institute
Danske Bank Vice President, Head of HR Development; Head of Training
Dell Computers AG HR Director for Consumer Division
Deutsche Bahn AG Managing Director, DB Akademie
Deutsche Bank AG Head of Customised Leadership Development Solutions
Dixons Stores Group Director Management Development
EIB – The European Investment Bank Senior Advisor, Head of HR Training Unit
Egmont Corporate Vice President, Human Resources; HR Consultant
Ergo Programme Manager, Ergo Management Akademie
Fujitsu Services Head of Organisation and People Development
HBOS Head of Leadership Development, Retail
Honeywell Vice President Human Resources EMEA
Hewlett-Packard Human Resources Director UK/Ireland; Learning and Development Director; EMEA Workforce Development Team
IBM Europe HR Director Learning
Lafarge Head of Management Programmes Lafarge University
Nordea Head of Executive Development
Novartis Pharmaceuticals Head Corporate Learning; Programme Director
Pearson plc Management Development Director
Rhodia Human Resources Development Director
SAP Global Head of SAP University
Siemens AG Head of Management Learning
Steria Group HR Director; Head of Training and Development
Suez Suez University
Swiss Re Senior Advisor Leadership Development; Head of Leadership Academy
Tetra Pak Director Tetra Pak Academy and Global Training and Development
The BOC Group Organisation Development Director
UBM Interim HR Director
UBS Managing Director UBS Leadership Institute
Veolia Environnement International Training Development Director
Visa Europe Head of Organisational Development
Vodafone Director of Global People and Management Development
Volkswagen AG Executive Director of Volkswagen Coaching
Zürich Financial Services Executive Development Manager
Industry Expert Interviews
Yury Boshyk Co-Founder and Director Global Executive Learning
Della Bradshaw Journalist – Business Education Financial Times
Roland Deiser Founder Corporate University Learning Network
Udo Dierk President ConEdu
Barry Leskin President TMC
Peter Lorange President IMD
Mark Nevins President Nevins Consulting
Blair Sheppard President Duke Corporate Education
A5 - About the survey producers
DIEU · The Danish Leadership Institute
DIEU ·The Danish Leadership Institute is one of Europe’s largest leadership development organisations and was founded more than 30 years ago. DIEU provides customized leadership and management development solutions from its offices in Copenhagen, Brussels and London.
DIEU has an excellent reputation for tailored, leading edge executive development solutions in both the private and the public sectors, making a beneficial impact on individuals and the organisation, all the way down to the business bottom line. Client collaboration, flexibility and choice with a consistently high standard of delivery are DIEU’s key differentiators. DIEU
operates a well-tested, unique business model, which works through long-term partnerships with its clients and suppliers.
DIEU has a permanent staff of 110 people including in-house consultants, client directors, project coordinators and administrative staff. We work with a worldwide network of more than 350 business psychologists, leadership consultants and business school professors.
In addition to collaborating with experts with a proven track record worldwide, DIEU has its own competency centres within its main business areas including business psychology, strategy, project management and surveys.
As an organisation, DIEU practises what it preaches, and won the European Quality Award in 1999 and was named the Best Place to Work in Denmark in 2001. Recently DIEU has been recognised as Business to Business Superbrand in 2005.
For more information, please contact Jørgen Thorsell, Senior General Manager on +45 45176000 or by email at jt@dieu.com or visit our website on www.dieu.com.
ExecSight and The Institute of Executive Development
The ExecSight Institute of Executive Development is an association of individuals from global companies who manage their organisation's executive development programmes, as well as recognised experts who advise, publish, and speak on industry topics. The Institute currently has over 600 members from 42 countries throughout the world and provides a common communication and collaboration platform for practitioners, service providers, and academics in executive development. Institute members share a common goal of furthering the collective knowledge of executive development best practices to help improve this highly strategic area of business activity.
There are four key components to the Institute’s services. The Directory is a master listing of all members, and provides the ability to find other members by name, organization, or geographic area. Second, there are informal Networks which are special interest groups of executive development topics or geographic focus. Next, the Resources section contains online archives of key articles, books, and research in the field of executive development, some of which is available for instant download. Finally, the Events section contains a robust collection of Internet-based seminars or “webcasts” which feature an industry luminary and are free of charge. Collectively, these services enable the members to design, deliver and evaluate highly effective executive development programmes rapidly for their organisations.
The Institute is led by Executive Director Scott Saslow, who is a researcher, publisher, speaker, and consultant in the executive development field. Saslow has authored dozens of articles on executive development, which appear in publications such as Chief Learning Officer Magazine, The Centre for Creative Learning’s Leadership in Action, ASTD’s Leadership Newsletter, Strategic HR Review, is on the Editorial Board of the Academy of Management’s Learning & Education Journal and is the author of two extensive research reports on the executive development field. For more information, please contact Scott Saslow, Executive Director or visit www.execsight.org.
© 2004, DIEU · The Danish Leadership Institute and Institute of Executive Development
Talent Management Systems Make Inroads With Employers
Next-generation software products combine learning, performance and succession-planning functions in an integrated suite. By Michelle V. Rafter
When Pitney Bowes reorganized corporate HR in the spring of 2003, learning management, performance management and succession planning moved under the same roof for the first time. It didn’t take long for managers to realize that while they thought about those processes as related, the technology they relied on to track them didn’t. In fact, the assortment of hosted systems they used to perform that work didn’t share databases or even come from the same supplier. The result: a lot of duplicate data but not a lot of shared intelligence.
Coincidentally, the aging technologies were due for an upgrade. After studying their options, officials at the $5.4 billion postage and mailing company decided that instead of upgrading individual pieces, they’d switch to an integrated system that would cover learning, performance management, succession planning and, eventually, knowledge management. Though Pitney Bowes is early into the transition, things look good. "After you make a decision and you’re in implementation, you’re training people, there’s usually a moment of fear that (the software) doesn’t do everything that was promised," says Larry Israelite, Pitney Bowes’ director of strategic learning. "We’re having the exact opposite feeling. … It’s so easy to use."
As Pitney Bowes goes, others are following. At a small but growing number of companies, stand-alone learning management systems are giving way to integrated software suites that produce a shared pool of employee data usable in multiple learning and HR functions. Using these systems, HR managers can, for example, assess which skills and training a new hire needs; sign them up for live or online classes; check test scores; create training and other job goals for performance reviews and monitor whether they’re being met; and, finally, evaluate if and when the employee is ready for a promotion.
Some suppliers have taken to calling these integrated suites "human capital management
systems," but some observers say that title is too broad. HR training and development consultant Josh Bersin prefers the term "talent management systems," saying it better describes the employee development side of the HR business that the software suites address.
Whatever you call it, the change toward more integrated learning and performance management is being driven by a surging economy, technological advances and supplier competition, according to company executives, vendors and industry analysts. As the U.S. economy improves, companies are adding jobs and looking for better, more efficient ways to maximize the talents of the people they hire. Improvements in Web-based technology and Web-based offerings mean systems are easy to use and cheaper to buy than upgrading old hardware. In some cases, companies don’t have to host or maintain the software themselves.
The biggest motivator, however, could be that companies finally have realized that learning and performance are related--and they are acting accordingly. Before, organizational boundaries existed, "but now they see a lot of interdependencies and are restructuring HR departments accordingly," says Lois Webster, CEO of LearnShare, a learning technology solutions provider run by a 36-company consortium.
"The LMS market is dead" Use of talent management systems is by no means widespread. While a handful of early adopters, like Pitney Bowes, are embracing integrated suites, a good portion of American industry is just now buying enterprise-wide learning management systems.
According to consultant Bersin, principal of Bersin & Associates in Oakland, California, 55 percent to 65 percent of U.S. companies use some type of enterprise-wide learning management system. As first-time buyers enter the market and others upgrade existing learning management systems to include talent management, LMS sales in the United States should grow 16 percent a year through 2008, to $755 million, according to research firm IDC in Framingham, Massachusetts.
Corporate interest in talent management systems is unifying what until now have been autonomous segments of a larger learning infrastructure industry. In the learning management industry, a spate of mergers and acquisitions over the past two years has trimmed the number of players to 70, analysts estimate. That’s still an overwhelming assortment for companies to choose from.
To set themselves apart, vendors are adding a talent management suite to their mainline LMS products through in-house development, acquisition or product alliances. It’s become so critical to expand that Peter McStravick, a senior research analyst with IDC’s learning services group, says one vendor recently told him, " ‘The LMS market is dead. You can’t survive in the LMS business or e-learning as a pure play.’ "
It’s no surprise, then, that vendors are taking action. SumTotal, for example, offers a talent management suite based on its LMS and performance management software from SuccessFactor. The product of the merger of Click2Learn and Docent in 2004, SumTotal recently acquired another LMS vendor, Pathlore, to strengthen its customer base and balance sheet, making it one of the largest stand-alone LMS vendors in the business. Saba, another leading stand-alone LMS vendor, is acquiring Centra Software, a maker of virtual-classroom software, to round out its online learning and talent management systems capabilities. The deal is expected to close in January.
Another vendor, Plateau Systems, introduced a homegrown talent management suite in April 2005 and has since signed contracts with the U.S. Department of Transportation, NASA and British Columbia Hydro.
One of the first into the talent management business was Cornerstone OnDemand, which first introduced an ASP-only integrated human capital management suite in 2000 and changed its name from CyberU in May to reflect its changing business.
One of the newest entrants is LearnShare, which in the summer of 2005 began selling an ASP-based learning management system with competency and other talent management components to all comers; previously, the organization had marketed its LMS and e-learning technology only to the 36-member corporate consortium that operates it.
As LMS vendors broaden their product lines, it has prodded suppliers of stand-alone performance management systems to do likewise. According to analysts, the performance management industry looks a lot like the learning management industry did five years ago: lots of young companies with more good ideas than funds to capitalize them. The smart ones will add learning management and other modules to their product lineups or risk being bought out, says Bersin, the learning analyst. "It all started (in 2004), and it will accelerate" in 2006, he says.
Tech giants in the wings Major HR technology players Oracle and SAP have learning or talent management, but aren’t market leaders. PeopleSoft, for example, was a major competitor in the LMS market and was developing a talent management suite, but that work has been on hold since the company was acquired by Oracle, which is updating its own LMS, analysts and competitors say. "That gives us a window to run while those larger entities are busy with" other things, says Paul Sparta, Plateau Systems’ chairman and CEO.
But don’t count the big guys out yet. As larger corporations consider adopting enterprise-wide learning management or talent management systems, they may want the kind of customer support and financial assurance a major supplier can offer, some analysts believe. Oracle and SAP--and possibly IBM--are bound to get more serious about the market eventually, and when that happens, it could cause even more consolidation among LMS vendors, analysts predict.
For its talent management suite, Pitney Bowes signed a five-year deal with Cornerstone OnDemand to replace separate hosted solutions for learning and performance management for the Stamford, Connecticut, company’s 33,000 employees. From RFI to going live with the first phase of the project, the process has taken more than a year. But Israelite, Pitney Bowes’ strategic learning director, says that’s to be expected given the number of processes being designed and transferred. "It’s the planning you have to do before you write the code," he says.
Israelite won’t disclose how much he’s spending to upgrade except to say the new system didn’t cost any more than the technologies it’s replacing. Cornerstone customers sign three-year contracts, with a small setup fee and monthly charges based on headcount and modules used, says Adam Miller, Cornerstone’s founder and CEO.
Typically, fees for LMS licenses run $20 to $100 per employee for an initial setup and an additional 15 percent to 20 percent of that annually for support, according to Bersin, the learning industry consultant. Fees for performance management systems are the same or a little more, he says. Fees for integrated talent management systems should run a little higher as well, he says. "If it’s $50 per employee for LMS and $50 per employee for performance management, it’ll be $75 per employee for talent management because (vendors) will discount," Bersin says.
For some companies, higher fees translate into savings. One Cornerstone client, a major staffing agency, used talent management systems to improve productivity, reduce turnover and increase sales, which the company expects will translate into an annual gain of $20 million, Miller says.
According to some industry watchers, the current integration trend won’t end with learning management, performance management and succession planning. Managers see a range of workforce management collaboration that could be included, such as recruiting and onboarding, says Sparta, Plateau Systems’ CEO. "There are a lot more synergies to come," he says. "It’s an integrated continuum of not just classic HR, of how do we pay people and give them their benefits, but of how do we improve how we’re managing people in the workforce today."
Workforce Management Online, January 2006
Challenges of Value-Added Assessment
Harold C. Doran and Steve Fleischman
In recent years, assessment data have begun to play a pivotal role in education policy and practice. No Child Left Behind (NCLB) requires states to implement standardized assessment-based systems to evaluate their schools. The NCLB approach rests on the assumption that assessment data can provide credible information to gauge how effectively schools and teachers are serving their students.
Educators, however, recognize that because students come to school with different backgrounds, one-time assessment scores are not a fair way to compare teachers with one another when they work under vastly different circumstances. We therefore need new methods for evaluating the effectiveness of teachers and schools—methods that differ from the typical NCLB approach.
The Purpose of Value-Added Assessment
Value-added assessment, a statistical process for looking at test score data, is one technique that researchers have been developing to identify effective and ineffective teachers and schools. In contrast to the traditional methods of measuring school effectiveness (including the adequate yearly progress system set up under NCLB), value-added models do not look only at current levels of student achievement. Instead, such models measure each student's improvement from one year to the next by following that student over time to obtain a gain score. The idea behind value-added modeling is to level the playing field by using statistical procedures that allow direct comparisons between schools and teachers—even when those schools are working with quite different populations of students.
The end result of value-added assessment is an estimate of teacher quality, referred to as a teacher effect in the value-added literature (Ballou, Sanders, & Wright, 2004). This measure describes how well the teacher performed in improving the achievement of the students in his or her class and how this performance compares with that of other teachers.
Value-added models have surfaced as an important topic among education policymakers, researchers, and practitioners. U.S. Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings has organized a federal working group to investigate how such models might be incorporated into NCLB. The Government Accountability Office is investigating the integration of these models into state test-based accountability systems. There is also great interest in value-added assessment at the state level, with at least three states—Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Tennessee—using value-added assessment statewide.
The Emerging Research Base
As value-added modeling assumes a larger role in education, its research base is also flourishing. The following three topics in this field are of special interest to educators.
The Complex Statistical Machinery
Ever since the inception of value-added models, educators have expressed concern that such models are too statistically complex and difficult to understand (Darlington, 1997). However, in 2004, a team of researchers at RAND brought a great deal of clarity to the value-added discussion (McCaffrey, Lockwood, Koretz, Louis, & Hamilton, 2004). Their research documented an array of statistical approaches that can be used to analyze assessment data and discussed the benefits and limitations of each model.
Some researchers have compared the results obtained from complex statistical models with those obtained from much simpler models. Tekwe and colleagues (2004) claimed that “there is little or no benefit to using the more complex model” (p. 31). However, their study relied on a narrow data structure, which may have seriously limited its conclusions. Most value-added approaches remain highly technical, and there is little conclusive evidence that simpler designs are just as efficient as more complex designs.
Although the RAND report helped clarify the statistical methods used in value-added models, and value-added software programs are becoming more widely available (Doran & Lockwood, in press), implementing such a model remains complex. For this reason, schools and school districts that are interested in value-added modeling need to collaborate with professional organizations experienced with the challenges of this method.
Test Scores and Vertical Scales
In many areas of scientific research, measuring growth is straightforward. To measure changes in temperature, we need only consult a thermometer. Measuring change in student achievement, however, is not as simple.
For value-added modeling to work, tests must be vertically scaled (Ballou et al., 2004; Doran & Cohen, 2005). Essentially, vertical scaling is a statistical process that connects different tests and places them on the same “ruler,” making it possible to measure growth over time. For example, one cannot measure a child's height in inches one year and in meters the next year without adjusting the scale.
To connect different tests and measure student growth, designers of value-added models commonly assume that the curriculum in higher grades is nothing more than a harder version of that in the previous grade; in other words, 8th grade math is the same as 7th grade math, just more difficult. Therefore, one can measure a student's increase in math knowledge by measuring his or her academic growth over time.
A large body of research, however, suggests that year-to-year curricular variation is significant (Schmidt, Houang, & McKnight, 2005). Other researchers have demonstrated that the process used to create the vertical scales is a statistical challenge in itself and can actually introduce more error in longitudinal analyses (Doran & Cohen, 2005; Michaelides & Haertel, 2004).
These findings suggest that value-added modeling may need to evolve into newer forms. The research emerging in this area is too new, however, to allow solid conclusions.
Identifying Teacher Effects
Possibly the most important question about value-added assessment is whether the estimate obtained from a value-added model can actually be called a teacher effect. Can any statistical model really sift through all the other factors that may have influenced the student's score (for example, socio-economic status or early learning environment) and isolate the learning that we can specifically attribute to the teacher's methods? As it currently stands, no empirical research validates the claim that value-added models accurately identify the most effective teachers. The many anecdotal claims have not yet been verified through experimental research.
Educators Take Note
The research base on value-added methods is growing, and researchers are developing new approaches in an effort to make this technique more credible and useful to schools. Value-added modeling is an important new area of research—one that is playing a rapidly growing role in shaping assessment and accountability programs.
References
Ballou, D., Sanders, W., & Wright, P. (2004). Controlling for student background in value-added assessment of teachers. Journal of Educational and Behavioral Statistics, 29(1), 37–65.
Darlington, R. B. (1997). The Tennessee value-added assessment system: A challenge to familiar assessment methods. In J. Millman (Ed.), Grading teachers, grading schools. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Doran, H. C., & Cohen, J. (2005). The confounding effect of linking bias on gains estimated from value-added models. In R. Lissitz (Ed.), Value-added models in education: Theory and applications. Maple Grove, MN: JAM Press.
Doran, H. C., & Lockwood, J. R. (in press). Fitting value-added models in R. Journal of Educational and Behavioral Statistics.
McCaffrey, D. F., Lockwood, J., Koretz, D., Louis, T. A., & Hamilton, L. (2004). Models for value-added modeling of teacher effects. Journal of Educational and Behavioral Statistics, 29(1), 67–101.
Michaelides, M. P., & Haertel, E. H. (2004, May). Sampling of common items: An unrecognized source of error in test equating (Technical Report). Los Angeles: Center for the Study of Evaluation & National Center for Research on Evaluation, Standards, and Student Testing.
Schmidt, W. H., Houang, R. T., & McKnight, C. C. (2005). Value-added research: Right idea but wrong solution? In R. Lissitz (Ed.), Value-added models in education: Theory and applications. Maple Grove, MN: JAM Press.
Tekwe, C. D., Carter, R. L., Ma, C.-X., Algina, J., Lucas, M., Roth, J., et al. (2004). An empirical comparison of statistical models for value-added assessment of school performance. Journal of Educational and Behavioral Statistics, 29(1), 11–36.
Harold C. Doran is a Senior Research Scientist at the American Institutes for Research (AIR). Steve Fleischman, series editor of this column, is a Principal Research Scientist at AIR; editorair@air.org.
Code of Ethics for School Board Members
As a member of my local Board of Education I will strive to improve SPB education, and to that end I will:
• attend all regularly scheduled board meetings insofar as possible, and become informed concerning the issues to be considered at those meetings;
• recognize that I should endeavor to make policy decisions only after full discussion at board meetings;
• render all decisions based on the available facts and my independent judgment, and refuse to surrender that judgment to individuals or special interest groups;
• encourage the free expression of opinion by all board members, and seek systematic communications between the board and students, staff, and all elements of the community;
• work with other board members to establish effective board policies and to delegate authority for the administration of the schools to the superintendent;
• communicate to other board members and the superintendent expression of public reaction to board policies and school programs;
• inform myself about current educational issues by individual study and through participation in programs providing needed information, such as those sponsored by my state and national school boards association;
• support the employment of those persons best qualified to serve as school staff, and insist on a regular and impartial evaluation of all staff;
• avoid being placed in a position of conflict of interest;
• take no private action that will compromise the board or administration, and respect the confidentiality of information that is privileged under applicable law; and
• remember always that my first and greatest concern must be the educational welfare of the students attending SPB school.
The Interplay of Aspirations, Enjoyment, and Work Habits in Academic Endeavors: Why Is It So Hard to Keep Long-Term Commitments?by
Diane Lemonnier Schallert,
Joylynn Hailey Reed &
Jeannine E Turner — 2004
This article describes our interest in bringing together students' emotions and their motivation for academic work as these play out across the school year. We explore three main issues. First, we consider what some view as an incompatibility between students' use of established work habits (volitional strategies) and real enjoyment of academic tasks (what we call involvement). Rather than seeing these two approaches as diametrically opposed, we show how volitional control can be useful in getting a student to experience involvement in a task. Conversely, we consider how involvement itself can be an incentive to students' use of volitional strategies. A second issue has to do with students realizing that long-term goals may require different volitional strategies than short-term goals. Finally, we discuss the need to encourage students to develop the habit of seeking enjoyment in academic tasks because the goal of enjoyment focuses them on the rewards of deep concentration rather than on the elation of having finished a task.
One of the loveliest things about academia is the rhythm of the school year. Each September, students begin anew establishing a relationship with a content area, a teacher or professor, and a community of peers in each of the courses they are taking. From middle school on, students must negotiate this process with several courses, teachers, and peer groups. Once they enter college, the number of courses may be slightly fewer, four or five instead of six or seven, but the rhythm becomes even more pronounced, with the beginnings and endings of 15-week semesters marking the progression through a course of study that culminates in a college degree. With the start of each semester, students (and their teachers) feel an optimistic rush of new beginnings, a feeling that all will be well and that things will work out better than they ever have in the past. As the semester or year unfolds, reality may dampen those optimistic expectations, but one is buoyed by the thought that an end is truly in sight and a new beginning will be available with the next term. For those who appreciate the idea of starting fresh in a new endeavor, this rhythm of academic life is truly an attraction.
And yet, although each new beginning may be an occasion for expansive feelings of hope, the demands of students’ lives, coming from personal and family responsibilities, social opportunities and obligations, health issues, and other distractions, can and often do interfere with what a student must actually do to achieve the goals so optimistically anticipated at the beginning of the term. Most directly, the demands students encounter in all of their courses compete for the precious hours they have to think, study, and write in any one of the courses they are taking. Physics interferes with doing well in psychology, and those two courses make it hard to spend the time needed to read the novels and write the papers required in contemporary English literature, let alone practice conversational Spanish and finish problem sets in calculus. In a research study we once conducted with undergraduates in a difficult, large lecture class on psychopharmacology (Schallert, Turner, & Schallert, 1995), we found that students began the semester reporting that they expected to do very well in the course, with very few students expecting a C and most students reporting they anticipated an A. However, not all students hoping for an A were willing or able to put in the effort the course required, and with the return of the first exam some students chose to revise their expectations for the final grade rather than increase the amount of time and effort they allocated to the class.
Similarly, in another study with community college students (Schallert, Reed, Turner, & McCann, 1997), we found that students’ expectations at the beginning of the semester were not highly predictive of their expectations just before the final exam or with the actual grades earned. Also, students’ interest, the amount of time they reported engaging in class activities, and the strategies they used to keep on task showed a steady decline across the semester. Although these declines at first seemed mysterious, we were not surprised by them once we took into account the number of responsibilities these community college students reported. There were enough full-time jobs, childcare duties, and heavy course loads to make us wonder when the students ever found time to sleep, let alone study.
In this article, we are interested in exploring how it is that students maintain their commitment to long-term academic goals, remaining motivated and hardworking even in the face of early disasters and competing goals. Even though many students in our studies lost their optimism as the semester progressed, a large group of them did maintain their commitment and increased their investment of effort, leading us to wonder what it was that allowed these students to reach the semester’s end having fulfilled at least some of their goals. And it is not simply that those who succeed are the academically able or well-prepared students who never encounter difficulties as the semester unfolds. As Turner and Schallert (2001) demonstrated, students can experience a deep amount of shame as they receive their first exam grades, even if the grade was relatively good, a B, say, when a student had expected and hoped for an A. These shame-experiencing students could be categorized into resilient and nonresilient groups. We were very interested in discovering what it was about those in the resilient group that allowed them to recover their emotional footing, recommit to their goals for the class, and invest even more effort to their studies. As we discuss shortly, an important part of the answer was that these students’ aspirations as expressed at the beginning of the semester had been more explicitly stated and more highly valued than those of students in the nonresilient group.
Researchers refer to aspirations as goals and give them important status in current theories of human motivation (e.g., Pintrich, 2000). We are interested here in exploring two additional processes affecting academic effort: the volitional strategies students invoke to protect their momentum in reaching goals (Corno, this issue; McCann & Turner, this issue) and the experience of feeling totally captivated by an academic task, what Csikszentmihalyi (1990) called flow and we (Reed & Schallert, 1993) refer to as involvement. Our interest in this article is to explore how students’ goals, their volitional strategies, and their experience of deep involvement in academic endeavors contribute to an understanding of the rhythm of the emotional and motivational lives of students across semesters.
This interest we have in the emotions of students, and not simply their motivation, is increasingly echoed in the work of motivation theorists. For example, Pekrun (2000) proposed a model in which emotions, motivation, and cognition are related reciprocally in academic achievement. The model describes how students are influenced by initial conditions, such as feelings of competence they bring to a learning situation and the kind of support present in the context that allows independent action with minimal interference or assistance from others. These antecedent conditions influence the student’s appraisal of particular academic tasks, such as whether the student can or cannot control the outcome and whether he or she places a high or low value on success in this task. These appraisals of control and value in turn lead to what Pekrun called academic emotions, such as excitement in learning something new, hope that outcomes will be positive, satisfaction in having done well, pride in recognized success, or a host of negative emotions, such as anxiety, boredom, despair, shame. It is these emotions that fuel the motivated recruitment of strategies and cognitive resources that then influence achievement, whether positive or negative. Pekrun has been keen to emphasize the reciprocal nature of these relationships; that is, emotions and outcomes influence students’ feelings of competence, and the more or less successful use of motivational strategies has an impact on subsequent emotions as well as on students’ appraisals of control and value.
This model is useful because it integrates emotions with motivation and cognition. Earlier expectancy-value models of motivation held that an individual’s motivation for a particular task depends on the student’s expectancy for success and the positive outcomes that it confers as well as on how much the student values the task. Pekrun’s (2000) model replaces the construct of expectancy or hope for success with the idea of whether success seems within one’s personal control. The two main appraisal questions in Pekrun’s model become ‘‘Do I have control over my success in this task?’’ and ‘‘Do I value succeeding at this task?’’ These two questions can be used to categorize most of the important motivational variables that are currently being investigated by educational psychologists. Work on explanations for success or causal attributions (Weiner, 1992), research on efficacy expectations or self-efficacy (Bandura, 1997), self-determination theory (Deci & Ryan, 2002), and self-regulated learning (Zimmerman & Schunk, 2001), for example, can all be explained within the control dimension. Conceptions of personal identification with tasks (Harter, Bresnick, Bouchey, & Whitesell, 1997), utility value (Wigfield & Eccles, 1992), and future goals (Husman & Lens, 1999) can be explained within the value dimension. For all its complexity, Pekrun’s model is useful because it explains more of what students experience in academic pursuits. His focus on the connections among appraisals, emotions, and motivational processes seems to represent the very nexus of the issues that come into play in better understanding what it is like to juggle multiple goals that extend to varying distances into the future (see also Stanford Aptitude Seminar, 2002).
To provide an even richer explanation of how students juggle the pursuit of multiple goals, we need to move beyond motivation theory into the realm of implementation or volition. In the rest of this article, we explore three issues relevant to explaining the complex interplay of processes that barrage and buoy students across the weeks and months of a course of study. First, we consider what some view as an incompatibility between students’ use of established work habits (volitional strategies) and real enjoyment of academic tasks (what we call involvement): working hard rather than enjoying the task. Rather than seeing these two approaches as diametrically opposed, we show how volitional control can be useful in getting a student to experience involvement in a task. Conversely, we see a reverse connection between volitional control and deep involvement in a task: Involvement itself can be an incentive to students’ use of volitional strategies. A second issue has to do with students realizing that long-term goals may require different volitional strategies than short-term goals. Students need to realize when they need to implement volitional strategies and to recognize that attractive temptations to fulfill short-term goals can lead them away from valued but more distant long-term goals. Finally, we discuss encouraging students to adopt the goal of enjoying an academic task, focusing on the rewards of deep concentration rather than on the elation of having finished the task. Although it is wonderfully gratifying to complete a task, to accomplish a goal, and to see a successful end to a commitment, it is possible that too much focus on the goal itself can unnecessarily reduce the enjoyment one experiences in the actual process of learning.
WORKING HARD AND ENJOYING THE WORK ARE NOT NECESSARILY INCOMPATIBLE
Enjoying one’s work is certainly a common enough occurrence. We want to begin by describing the psychological state associated with what it means to find joy in a task. Notice that we are focusing here on the process itself, on the doing of a task rather than on its completion. As Maria Montessori (1966) described, one difference between a child’s work and an adult’s work is that young children enjoy tasks for their own sake, whereas adults have been conditioned to hurry through tasks, mostly without joy, focused on producing outcomes. However, when it happens that we say we enjoy our work, we are often referring to the fact that the work itself captures our attention and engages us in activities that seem exactly suited to our level of ability, skills, knowledge, and attitudes, just challenging enough to reward us with satisfaction as the task unfolds. Enjoyable work seems to play tricks with the clock, making us feel that we have lost track of time. Finally, a characteristic of enjoyable work is that it is its own reward, not dependent on the extrinsic incentives so inherent and often expected in what it means to work.
This experience of enjoyment is what we are attempting to capture with the concept of involvement (Reed & Schallert, 1993; Schallert & Reed, 1997). Like Csikszentmihalyi (1990) and his description of flow in optimal experiences, we see involvement as a state of mind that combines deep concentration and a continuously renewed sense of comprehending and meeting task requirements: ‘‘Involvement occurs when the construction of meaning is going well’’ (Schallert & Reed, 1997, p. 78). It is a state that fluctuates throughout the doing of a task. Thus, a task that will eventually grab a student and engender deep involvement may begin rather inauspiciously. As time passes, falling into involvement may lead the student to lose track of his or her physical surroundings for minutes, even hours, while all attention is riveted on the task. When students experience involvement, there is a sense of unforced ease with the task and of joy at the challenges it offers. Students who are involved in a task lose their sense of self-conscious worries or concerns with anything else but the task. Eventually, when the task is finished or when the student is interrupted by a ringing bell signaling the end of class or by a parent announcing dinnertime, involvement is released. The student reenters the everyday world of competing goals and shallow attention.
We begin by describing the state of involvement in some detail because we see it as an important counterweight to considerations of students’ work habits and self-regulation strategies. In descriptions of motivated students, parents and teachers rarely distinguish between what it means for a student to choose on his or her own to engage in a task and what it means for a student to be intrinsically motivated to learn. In some ways, they are correct to see these as equivalent: So long as the student willingly engages in academic work, what need is there to distinguish between enjoyment of a task and motivation to choose to accomplish a task? And yet, as Deci and Ryan (2002) argued, there are many flavors of extrinsic motivation, some of which include the highly self-determined student who identifies with a task and shows a sort of extrinsic motivation that might be helpful for accomplishing the work, even though the student does not report a true intrinsic interest and love of the task. In our own research, we find these two approaches to be qualitatively different; intrinsic involvement has consequences for learning and motivation over and above what can be expected from engaging in a task without deep involvement, even if the student elects to engage in the task, as we discuss shortly.
What if a particular task for a particular student in a particular situation is simply not involving? How does that work get accomplished? This is where volitional strategies become important. Being a hard worker or a good worker means having the self-control to tackle and finish a job even when the work is not intrinsically rewarding. In her description of volition, Corno (1993) emphasized how volitional strategies help learners ‘‘protect concentration and directed effort in the face of personal and/or environmental distractions’’ (p. 17). Apart from sophisticated use of learning strategies such as organizing and using feedback, a student using volitional control is strategic about protecting his or her motivation to begin a task, to maintain effort, and to see it to completion. Kuhl (2001) mentioned that students who are adept at volitional regulation know how to arrange and control their learning environments (e.g., find a quiet place to study, log off the Instant Messaging account) as well as how to manage their concentration, control their emotions, and monitor whether they are making due progress or need to bring their attention back to the task.
Juxtaposing an involved student with a volitionally strategic student highlights nicely the contrast between these two styles of work. Though both students are engaged in the task and though the task may get done successfully by either of them, the involved student is not expending energy fighting against distractions, watching the clock go by slowly, dutifully trudging through problem after problem of math homework or sentence after sentence of a French vocabulary lesson. The two students may differ as well in the emotions they experience as they see a task successfully completed, relief in the case of the volitionally controlled student and elation in the case of the involved student who may even experience a touch of wistfulness that the task is over (see Corno, this issue, Table 2).
And yet there is at least one point from inception to completion of a task when the two students may be remarkably alike. At the very beginning of the process, when the task still looms ahead, many students experience an initial reluctance, even those who know they are likely to get involved in the task once they begin. Even if joy in doing the task is a reasonable anticipation, students can see the effort that the task will demand and can mourn over the separation they know they will experience from the rest of the world once they begin the task. In a study by Reed, Schallert, and Deithloff (2002), college students enrolled in a writing course reported that they needed to allot more time than they had expected for any one writing session to experience involvement while writing. The early stages of writing were particularly sensitive to whether students had developed ways of forcing themselves to get started. Students reported that they often experienced painful drudgery for an extended period of time before the task would take over their consciousness. When compared to the precipitous fall into involvement that a good book could engender, writing tasks took much longer to ensnare their masters. During those minutes (or hours) at the beginning of the task, volitional strategies were the salvation of students, a fallback resource that allowed involvement gradually to take over. Such strategies as making a detailed plan for finishing a task, reducing the likelihood of disruptions and distractions, and approaching a study session in good physical and psychological shape, well-fed, well-rested, and emotionally balanced, were very helpful in bridging the period from start of task to falling into flow.
Thus, rather than seeing work habits and enjoyment of work as unrelated or even antithetical to each other, we are proposing that good workers know that they may need to trick themselves into getting started on a task to let themselves experience all the processes that define involvement. The involved student and the volitionally strategic student can be and often are the same person. Especially when we think of the long-term nature of many academic endeavors, involvement cannot be the only motivational hook on which to hang one’s hat. Because it necessarily waxes and wanes, and always experiences disruption, involvement is more useful in describing students’ motivated engagement in short-term tasks. Eventually one’s physical needs, if nothing else, break through even the deepest concentration, and the period of deep involvement ends. Volitional strategies are then helpful in creating the conditions that will help a student reengage in the many tasks that make up a full commitment to a long-term goal.
Involvement can be the incentive for volitional strategies. Having accepted that it is possible for the same student to show both the effortful willing of self to begin a task as well as the effortless experience of deep involvement once the task takes over, we want to discuss one more coupling that can occur between volition and involvement. Although volition may be very helpful as an impetus to getting started, it should not be relevant once a student is deeply involved in the task. Because involvement, by definition, is a state during which a person is wholly absorbed by the task and experiences no extraneous thoughts or feelings, it follows that volitional strategies must precede but not co-occur with involvement. However, this relationship from volition to involvement does not preclude the possibility that involvement may itself act as a reward for volitional strategies and therefore as incentive in the future for the use of work habits that result in involvement.
In our research over the years, students have often reported that the aftermath of having been deeply involved in a task included strong positive emotions (e.g., Reed et al., 2002). These positive feelings, coming at the conclusion of a task, acted retrospectively, allowing students to bask in the pleasure of the experience and, prospectively, leading students to want to become involved again. The consequence of a situation in which volition has worked to get a student involved is that the student now knows and trusts that the particular volitional strategies used will work to recreate the pleasurable experience of being involved. Although volitional strategies are often presented as necessary evils, we want to argue that they may deserve a more favorable reputation. Work habits can lead one to enjoyment, and enjoyment can lead one to remember to use the same work habits to recreate the joyful experience.
Such a view of volition is consistent with Corno’s (this issue) and Kuhl’s (2001) and may lead us to consider more specifically the effects that different kinds of strategies provoke. As McCann and Turner (this issue) described, volitional strategies come in different flavors. They can be deterrents (such as the use of negative incentives or self-penance), and they can be encouragements (such as direct attempts to reduce stress or enhance self-efficacy). In terms of the reciprocal relationship between volitional strategies and involvement, it is possible that only certain kinds of strategies can be productively tied to involvement. It may be that in anticipating the positive experience of involvement, students must forgo negative-based volitional strategies such as dire predictions (e.g., ‘‘If I don’t study now, I’ll flunk the exam’’) that bring on negative emotions and use positive strategies instead (e.g., say ‘‘I’ll get involved soon if I can only focus for 5 minutes’’). This idea is ripe for future research.
KNOWING WHEN AND WHICH VOLITIONAL STRATEGIES TO USE FOR SHORT- VERSUS LONG-TERM GOALS
There are important, but often overlooked, differences required for accomplishing short-term and long-term goals. When it comes to academic goals, some students are good at getting involved in a particular task but founder in maintaining their motivation between tasks to accomplish long-term goals. Others know how to succeed at longer term goals, sometimes without ever experiencing the state of involvement in academic tasks we have described. Of course, situations in which students can do both are coveted because here we have students experiencing joy in the moment of doing a task as well as remaining strategically focused even when involvement wanes. Students who are good at short-term goals know how to harness certain volitional strategies to get them over an initial hump so they can fall into involvement. To achieve success in longer term tasks, such as writing a good term paper, these students need to know how to ride the waves of involvement without forgetting the outcomes they want eventually to achieve. Semesters are long and made up of many concerns and events that can easily derail a well-intentioned student. Different kinds of volitional strategies may be necessary in different situations to achieve short-term as opposed to long-term goals.
Where do students learn these different strategic approaches, these different work habits? To a large extent, work habits are learned by modeling what a young person sees important others doing, by the influence of explicit messages about work (yes, lectures do have an effect), and by the diffuse and yet powerful influence of one’s culture. For example, Japanese children from a very early age are encouraged in myriads of ways to persevere in the face of barriers (Shigaki, 1987). It is very possible that views of work, whether, for example, one should ever hope that it be enjoyable, are shared, reinterpreted, and eventually internalized, the result of sociocultural forces at work. A student from Taiwan once asked one of us, ‘‘Why do American teachers worry so much about whether their students will be happy when doing schoolwork?’’ To her, learning was always a struggle, and such struggling was incompatible with happiness. Happiness came after the learning had occurred, she asserted. In our informal queries of students from various programs in the college of education, we found that international students almost always saw her comment as natural and unremarkable, whereas students raised in an American educational context saw it as problematic, less than ideal, a sad result of poor instruction. As views of the educational process take on a more sociocultural cast, we realize that even volition, a construct that would seem individualistic in the extreme, needs to be reformulated to reflect these social and cultural sources of influence, as has been done most recently by Corno and Mandinach (in press).
In addition, students become more sophisticated about their volitional strategies by experimentation and self-observation, becoming selective and strategic about work habits that help them accomplish their goals. Adolescence is a crucial time for this developing sense of self-control. The more similar current tasks and goals are to previous situations, the more likely students are to use the same volitional strategies that were successful in the past. Work habits can truly become habitual to the point that students who are not very strategic or less than fully reflective may try to use volitional strategies that worked for one kind of task when a different approach is needed for a different task.
Thus, some students may decide to use volitional strategies that are helpful only for short-term goals even though they may suspect that these strategies will not lead them any closer to accomplishing their long-term goals. For example, a student may wait until the last minute to write a short one-page essay about a poem because the pressure of a looming deadline serves as a very effective volitional strategy to force engagement in the writing task. We have had students tell us that they use procrastination precisely because of the anxiety an imminent deadline produces; they become desperate and use these negative emotions to push themselves to complete the task even when the quality of the work suffers. A few have reported that the emergency of the deadline allowed them finally to focus only on the task that had to be done and that the involvement that resulted under such circumstances led to positive emotions once the task was finished. It is easy to see in such a situation how procrastination could actually be rewarded.
However, a reliance on procrastination as a volitional strategy may be disastrous for assignments that require a much longer investment of time. One of the problems many successful high school students encounter when they begin college courses is that that they are unprepared for the semester-long assignments assigned by their college professors (Cobb, 2002). In fact, students who use procrastination as a strategy for dealing with writing assignments have told us that they found themselves getting involved as they tackled their short essays as soon as they could think of what they wanted to say, whereas the organization, planning, and motivation needed for longer documents stymied them. To accomplish the longer tasks, students who can manage themselves well enough when facing shorter writing assignments must learn to use volitional strategies to help themselves begin to write, keep on writing, stop writing, and begin writing again through multiple sessions. Especially when considering the different demands that short-term and longer term assignments place on students, it is easy to appreciate how one’s repertoire of strategies needs to be augmented with the ability to diagnose the type of volitional strategies needed for different situations.
MAKING JOY THE GOAL RATHER THAN FOCUSING SIMPLY ON TASK COMPLETION
Any adult invested in the success of a young person knows the thrill of seeing that young person do well at academic endeavors. Significant points of reckoning, such as report cards that mark the end of a grading period or graduation ceremonies that mark the end of high school or college, are occasions for pride, satisfaction, and happiness. When the path of progress is less successful, these reckoning points may occasion disappointment and worry or perhaps a resolute investment in helping the young person do better in the future. In our goal-driven society, these endpoints are valued because they mark the accomplishment of tasks, the reaching of goals, the completion of an undertaking. When we are in a cynical mood, we may even speak of ‘‘just finishing that degree,’’ implying that instead of appreciating the learning that is supposed to happen, we care more about the letters after one’s name that the official degree will confer. Young students protest loudly if made to work hard on a particular assignment that is being graded simply for completion. Except for these cynical moments that may sit uneasily on our minds, we easily celebrate the accomplishments of our students, seeing in the fulfillment of their personal goals a sign that greater societal goals are being met as well.
And yet there may be a dark side to focusing so completely on the goals that motivate academic endeavors. What counts as valuable work in our society may preclude students from engaging in tasks they enjoy, in tasks that cause them to fall into involvement. Driven by the need to check off each task, each subgoal on the way to long-term accomplishments, students may lose the idea that intellectual pursuits can be enthralling and that there is joy simply in learning something new. When we see a young person become totally enthralled by intellectual work, we recognize implicitly that such experiences have their own value if only because deep involvement changes one’s consciousness, making it supercharged, more heroic than ordinary consciousness. Although such involvement may occasionally cost a student the fulfillment of a goal, as when a student misses an important graduation deadline because he or she was too enthralled in pursuing answers to intellectual questions to finish the paper necessary for that last class, we expect that involved, excited learners are likely to fulfill their goals.
Thus, when parents and educators attempt to help students maintain the motivation they need for their schoolwork, they often do not recognize the potential dangers of too much focus on goals. Motivational support usually comes in the guise of helping students identify their goals, commit to the pursuit of these goals, and value what goal accomplishment will bring. We want to propose a different approach, one that would help students enjoy academic work for its own sake rather than solely focusing on goal accomplishment. What if instead of worrying about helping students complete their academic tasks we focused our motivational support on helping students devise ways to experience deep involvement as often as humanly possible? Under such motivational scaffolding, students might develop various volitional strategies to help them get involved in their academic tasks, not because of the outcomes to which they are aspiring but simply because they want the positive experience of involvement.
CONCLUSION
The issues and situations we have described point to the idea that motivation no longer needs to be viewed simply in its role as a precursor to task completion. Instead, motivation additionally is concerned with characteristics of task engagement, with the processes that are recruited to produce task involvement. We have argued that it is crucial to interject the importance of academic emotions into the equation. Motivational processes and strategies are interwoven with emotion and fuel each other as students approach, engage, and complete academic work.
In addition, we hoped to underscore the pleasure that can happen in academic work. One of Csikszentmihalyi’s early studies (1990) concluded with the sad finding that students rarely reported involvement during the academic parts of their school day. We would like to believe it is not impossible for students to get involved in academic tasks or for teachers to make learning environments attractive. However, it may be that adolescents experience simply too many competing goals given their developmental levels and the social environments they encounter at school to find any one academic task deeply involving. If these same students were queried about involvement in any task that incorporates some of the processes required by schoolwork, such as the control over writing required when students converse with their friends online, we would find that they do in fact get involved in processes that are the same as those required in schoolwork.
Finally, we offer recommendations that teachers might use to help students acquire and use volitional strategies that will promote the enjoyment of tasks as well as help them assess the usefulness of strategies for accomplishing their goals. As Corno (this issue) points out, having students discuss how they accomplish tasks is valuable. Such discussions provide opportunities for students to share their more and less successful approaches to academic work, thus modeling volitional strategies for each other, contributing to a broader repertoire of strategies for each student, and allowing for the development of self-reflection. In addition when the teacher models and voices the way by which students might decide when particular volitional strategies should be invoked, the process is demystified. If teachers highlight possible helpful strategies and when those strategies might work or fail, students can learn options, especially those needed to manage long-term projects. Third, giving students assignments that easily involve them is valuable and can be used to help students acknowledge that successful volitional strategies can lead to enjoyment in learning. As a contrast to the Taiwanese student who believed that learning only occurs with joyless hard work, teachers can demonstrate how doing work at appropriate levels of challenge can be fun.
Ultimately, the goal ought to be to help students find more joy in the learning process. What sustains individuals through the long commitment to a course of study, be it before college or beyond, is a sense that the intellectual work required is worthwhile and that one’s goals are being reached. Developing the habit of seeing that the process of learning itself is deeply rewarding can help sustain the effort needed and bring enjoyment into learning.
References
Bandura, A. (1997). Self-efficacy: The exercise of control. New York: Freeman.
Cobb, V. V. (2002). From where they sit: Stories of students making the transition from high school writing to college writing. Unpublished dissertation, University of Texas at Austin.
Corno, L. (1993). The best-laid plans: Modern conceptions of volition and educational research. Educational Researcher, 22(2), 14–22.
Corno, L., & Mandinach, E. B. (in press). What we have learned about student engagement in the last twenty years. In D. McInerney & S. VanEtten (Eds.), Research on sociocultural influences on motivation and learning. Vol. 4: Big theories revisited (pp. 299–328). Greenwich, CT: Information Age Press.
Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1990). Flow: The psychology of optimal experience. New York: HarperCollins.
Deci, E. L., & Ryan, R. M. (Eds.). (2002). Handbook of self-determination research. Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press.
Harter, S., Bresnick, S., Bouchey, A. A., & Whitesell, N. R. (1997). The development of multiple role-related selves during adolescence. Development and Psychopathology, 9, 835–853.
Husman, J., & Lens, W. (1999). The role of the future in student motivation. Educational Psychologist, 34, 113–126.
Kuhl, J. (2001). A functional approach to motivation: The role of goal-enactment and self- regulation in current research on approach and avoidance. In A. Efklides, J. Kuhl, & R. M. Sorrentino (Eds.), Trends and prospects in motivation research (pp. 239–268). Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Kluwer.
Montessori, M. (1966). The secret of childhood. Notre Dame, IN: Fides Publishers.
Pekrun, R. (2000). A social cognitive, control-value theory of achievement emotions. In J. Heckhausen (Ed.), Motivational psychology of human development (pp. 143–163). Oxford, UK: Elsevier.
Pintrich, P. R. (2000). Multiple goals, multiple pathways: The role of goal orientation in learning and achievement. Journal of Educational Psychology, 92, 544–555.
Reed, J. H., & Schallert, D. L. (1993). The nature of involvement in academic discourse tasks. Journal of Educational Psychology, 85, 253–266.
Reed, J. R., Schallert, D. L., & Deithloff, L. F. (2002). Investigating the interface between self-regulation and involvement processes. Educational Psychologist, 37, 53–58.
Schallert, D. L., & Reed, J. H. (1997). The pull of the text and the process of involvement in one’s reading. In J.T. Guthrie & A. Wigfield (Eds.), Promoting literacy engagement: Motivational, strategic reading through integrated instruction (pp. 68–85). Newark, DL: International Reading Association.
Schallert, D. L., Reed, J. H., Turner, J. E., & McCann, E. J. (1997, March). Engagement in long-term academic tasks: The fluctuating, complementary role of involvement and volition. Paper presented at the meeting of the American Educational Research Association, Chicago.
Schallert, D. L., Turner, J. E., & Schallert, T. J. (1995, April). Effect of a daily, open-notes quiz technique on college students’ emotional and academic experiences. Paper presented at the meeting of the American Educational Research Association, San Francisco.
Shigaki, I. S. (1987). Language and the transmission of values: Implications from Japanese day care. In B. Fillion, C. N. Hedley, & E. C. DiMartino (Eds.), Home and school: Early language and reading (pp. 111–121). Norwood, NJ: Ablex.
Stanford Aptitude Seminar. (2002). Remaking the concept of aptitude: Extending the legacy of Richard E. Snow. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.
Turner, J. E., & Schallert, D. L. (2001). Expectancy-value relationships of shame reactions and shame resiliency. Journal of Educational Psychology, 93, 320–329.
Weiner, B. (1992). Human motivation: Metaphors, theories, and research. Newbury Park, CA: Sage.
Wigfield, A., & Eccles, J. (1992). The development of achievement task values: A theoretical analysis. Developmental Review, 12, 265–310.
Zimmerman, B. J., & Schunk, D. H. (Eds.). (2001). Self-regulated learning and academic achievement: Theoretical perspectives (2nd ed.). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.
Cite This Article as: Teachers College Record Volume 106 Number 9, 2004, p. 1715-1728http://www.tcrecord.org ID Number: 11667, Date Accessed: 7/19/2006 9:22:35 PM
http://www.tcrecord.org/PrintContent.asp?ContentID=11667
Seven Practices for Effective LearningJay McTighe and Ken O'ConnorTeachers in all content areas can use these seven assessment and grading practices to enhance learning and teaching.
Classroom assessment and grading practices have the potential not only to measure and report learning but also to promote it. Indeed, recent research has documented the benefits of regular use of diagnostic and formative assessments as feedback for learning (Black, Harrison, Lee, Marshall, & Wiliam, 2004). Like successful athletic coaches, the best teachers recognize the importance of ongoing assessments and continual adjustments on the part of both teacher and student as the means to achieve maximum performance. Unlike the external standardized tests that feature so prominently on the school landscape these days, well-designed classroom assessment and grading practices can provide the kind of specific, personalized, and timely information needed to guide both learning and teaching.
Classroom assessments fall into three categories, each serving a different purpose.
Summative assessments summarize what students have learned at the conclusion of an instructional segment. These assessments tend to be evaluative, and teachers typically encapsulate and report assessment results as a score or a grade. Familiar examples of summative assessments include tests, performance tasks, final exams, culminating projects, and work portfolios.
Evaluative assessments command the attention of students and parents because their results typically “count” and appear on report cards and transcripts. But by themselves, summative assessments are insufficient tools for maximizing learning. Waiting until the end of a teaching period to find out how well students have learned is simply too late.
Two other classroom assessment categories—diagnostic and formative—provide fuel for the teaching and learning engine by offering descriptive feedback along the way.
Diagnostic assessments—sometimes known as pre-assessments—typically precede instruction. Teachers use them to check students' prior knowledge and skill levels, identify student misconceptions, profile learners' interests, and reveal learning-style preferences. Diagnostic assessments provide information to assist teacher planning and guide differentiated instruction. Examples of diagnostic assessments include prior knowledge and skill checks and interest or learning preference surveys. Because pre-assessments serve diagnostic purposes, teachers normally don't grade the results.
Formative assessments occur concurrently with instruction. These ongoing assessments provide specific feedback to teachers and students for the purpose of guiding teaching to improve learning. Formative assessments include both formal and informal methods, such as ungraded quizzes, oral questioning, teacher observations, draft work, think-alouds, student-constructed concept maps, learning logs, and portfolio reviews. Although teachers may record the results of formative assessments, we shouldn't factor these results into summative evaluation and grading.
Keeping these three categories of classroom assessment in mind, let us consider seven specific assessment and grading practices that can enhance teaching and learning.
Practice 1: Use summative assessments to frame meaningful performance goals.
On the first day of a three-week unit on nutrition, a middle school teacher describes to students the two summative assessments that she will use. One assessment is a multiple-choice test examining student knowledge of various nutrition facts and such basic skills as analyzing nutrition labels. The second assessment is an authentic performance task in which each student designs a menu plan for an upcoming two-day trip to an outdoor education facility. The menu plan must provide well-balanced and nutritious meals and snacks.
The current emphasis on established content standards has focused teaching on designated knowledge and skills. To avoid the danger of viewing the standards and benchmarks as inert content to “cover,” educators should frame the standards and benchmarks in terms of desired performances and ensure that the performances are as authentic as possible. Teachers should then present the summative performance assessment tasks to students at the beginning of a new unit or course.
This practice has three virtues.
First, the summative assessments clarify the targeted standards and benchmarks for teachers and learners. In standards-based education, the rubber meets the road with assessments because they define the evidence that will determine whether or not students have learned the content standards and benchmarks. The nutrition vignette is illustrative: By knowing what the culminating assessments will be, students are better able to focus on what the teachers expect them to learn (information about healthy eating) and on what they will be expected to do with that knowledge (develop a nutritious meal plan).
Second, the performance assessment tasks yield evidence that reveals understanding. When we call for authentic application, we do not mean recall of basic facts or mechanical plug-ins of a memorized formula. Rather, we want students to transfer knowledge—to use what they know in a new situation. Teachers should set up realistic, authentic contexts for assessment that enable students to apply their learning thoughtfully and flexibly, thereby demonstrating their understanding of the content standards.
Third, presenting the authentic performance tasks at the beginning of a new unit or course provides a meaningful learning goal for students. Consider a sports analogy. Coaches routinely conduct practice drills that both develop basic skills and purposefully point toward performance in the game. Too often, classroom instruction and assessment overemphasize decontextualized drills and provide too few opportunities for students to actually “play the game.” How many soccer players would practice corner kicks or run exhausting wind sprints if they weren't preparing for the upcoming game? How many competitive swimmers would log endless laps if there were no future swim meets? Authentic performance tasks provide a worthy goal and help learners see a reason for their learning.
Practice 2: Show criteria and models in advance.
A high school language arts teacher distributes a summary of the summative performance task that students will complete during the unit on research, including the rubric for judging the performance's quality. In addition, she shows examples of student work products collected from previous years (with student names removed) to illustrate criteria and performance levels. Throughout the unit, the teacher uses the student examples and the criteria in the rubric to help students better understand the nature of high-quality work and to support her teaching of research skills and report writing.
A second assessment practice that supports learning involves presenting evaluative criteria and models of work that illustrate different levels of quality. Unlike selected-response or short-answer tests, authentic performance assessments are typically open-ended and do not yield a single, correct answer or solution process. Consequently, teachers cannot score student responses using an answer key or a Scantron machine. They need to evaluate products and performances on the basis of explicitly defined performance criteria.
A rubric is a widely used evaluation tool consisting of criteria, a measurement scale (a 4-point scale, for example), and descriptions of the characteristics for each score point. Well-developed rubrics communicate the important dimensions, or elements of quality, in a product or performance and guide educators in evaluating student work. When a department or grade-level team—or better yet, an entire school or district—uses common rubrics, evaluation results are more consistent because the performance criteria don't vary from teacher to teacher or from school to school.
Rubrics also benefit students. When students know the criteria in advance of their performance, they have clear goals for their work. Because well-defined criteria provide a clear description of quality performance, students don't need to guess what is most important or how teachers will judge their work.
Providing a rubric to students in advance of the assessment is a necessary, but often insufficient, condition to support their learning. Although experienced teachers have a clear conception of what they mean by “quality work,” students don't necessarily have the same understanding. Learners are more likely to understand feedback and evaluations when teachers show several examples that display both excellent and weak work. These models help translate the rubric's abstract language into more specific, concrete, and understandable terms.
Some teachers express concern that students will simply copy or imitate the example. A related worry is that showing an excellent model (sometimes known as an exemplar) will stultify student creativity. We have found that providing multiple models helps avoid these potential problems. When students see several exemplars showing how different students achieved high-level performance in unique ways, they are less likely to follow a cookie-cutter approach. In addition, when students study and compare examples ranging in quality—from very strong to very weak—they are better able to internalize the differences. The models enable students to more accurately self-assess and improve their work before turning it in to the teacher.
Practice 3: Assess before teaching.
Before beginning instruction on the five senses, a kindergarten teacher asks each student to draw a picture of the body parts related to the various senses and show what each part does. She models the process by drawing an eye on the chalkboard. “The eye helps us see things around us,” she points out. As students draw, the teacher circulates around the room, stopping to ask clarifying questions (“I see you've drawn a nose. What does the nose help us do?”). On the basis of what she learns about her students from this diagnostic pre-test, she divides the class into two groups for differentiated instruction. At the conclusion of the unit, the teacher asks students to do another drawing, which she collects and compares with their original pre-test as evidence of their learning.
Diagnostic assessment is as important to teaching as a physical exam is to prescribing an appropriate medical regimen. At the outset of any unit of study, certain students are likely to have already mastered some of the skills that the teacher is about to introduce, and others may already understand key concepts. Some students are likely to be deficient in prerequisite skills or harbor misconceptions. Armed with this diagnostic information, a teacher gains greater insight into what to teach, by knowing what skill gaps to address or by skipping material previously mastered; into how to teach, by using grouping options and initiating activities based on preferred learning styles and interests; and into how to connect the content to students' interests and talents.
Teachers can use a variety of practical pre-assessment strategies, including pre-tests of content knowledge, skills checks, concept maps, drawings, and K-W-L (Know-Want to learn-Learn) charts. Powerful pre-assessment has the potential to address a worrisome phenomenon reported in a growing body of literature (Bransford, Brown, & Cocking, 1999; Gardner, 1991): A sizeable number of students come into school with misconceptions about subject matter (thinking that a heavier object will drop faster than a lighter one, for example) and about themselves as learners (assuming that they can't and never will be able to draw, for example). If teachers don't identify and confront these misconceptions, they will persist even in the face of good teaching. To uncover existing misconceptions, teachers can use a short, nongraded true-false diagnostic quiz that includes several potential misconceptions related to the targeted learning. Student responses will signal any prevailing misconceptions, which the teacher can then address through instruction. In the future, the growing availability of portable, electronic student-response systems will enable educators to obtain this information instantaneously.
Practice 4: Offer appropriate choices.
As part of a culminating assessment for a major unit on their state's history and geography, a class of 4th graders must contribute to a classroom museum display. The displays are designed to provide answers to the unit's essential question: How do geography, climate, and natural resources influence lifestyle, economy, and culture? Parents and students from other classrooms will view the display. Students have some choice about the specific products they will develop, which enables them to work to their strengths. Regardless of students' chosen products, the teacher uses a common rubric to evaluate every project. The resulting class museum contains a wide variety of unique and informative products that demonstrate learning.
Responsiveness in assessment is as important as it is in teaching. Students differ not only in how they prefer to take in and process information but also in how they best demonstrate their learning. Some students need to “do”; others thrive on oral explanations. Some students excel at creating visual representations; others are adept at writing. To make valid inferences about learning, teachers need to allow students to work to their strengths. A standardized approach to classroom assessment may be efficient, but it is not fair because any chosen format will favor some students and penalize others.
Assessment becomes responsive when students are given appropriate options for demonstrating knowledge, skills, and understanding. Allow choices—but always with the intent of collecting needed and appropriate evidence based on goals. In the example of the 4th grade museum display project, the teacher wants students to demonstrate their understanding of the relationship between geography and economy. This could be accomplished through a newspaper article, a concept web, a PowerPoint presentation, a comparison chart, or a simulated radio interview with an expert. Learners often put forth greater effort and produce higher-quality work when given such a variety of choices. The teacher will judge these products using a three-trait rubric that focuses on accuracy of content, clarity and thoroughness of explanation, and overall product quality.
We offer three cautions.
First, teachers need to collect appropriate evidence of learning on the basis of goals rather than simply offer a “cool” menu of assessment choices. If a content standard calls for proficiency in written or oral presentations, it would be inappropriate to provide performance options other than those involving writing or speaking, except in the case of students for whom such goals are clearly inappropriate (a newly arrived English language learner, for example).
Second, the options must be worth the time and energy required. It would be inefficient to have students develop an elaborate three-dimensional display or an animated PowerPoint presentation for content that a multiple-choice quiz could easily assess. In the folksy words of a teacher friend, “With performance assessments, the juice must be worth the squeeze.”
Third, teachers have only so much time and energy, so they must be judicious in determining when it is important to offer product and performance options. They need to strike a healthy balance between a single assessment path and a plethora of choices.
Practice 5: Provide feedback early and often.
Middle school students are learning watercolor painting techniques. The art teacher models proper technique for mixing and applying the colors, and the students begin working. As they paint, the teacher provides feedback both to individual students and to the class as a whole. She targets common mistakes, such as using too much paint and not enough water, a practice that reduces the desired transparency effect. Benefiting from continual feedback from the teacher, students experiment with the medium on small sheets of paper. The next class provides additional opportunities to apply various watercolor techniques to achieve such effects as color blending and soft edges. The class culminates in an informal peer feedback session. Skill development and refinement result from the combined effects of direct instruction, modeling, and opportunities to practice guided by ongoing feedback.
It is often said that feedback is the breakfast of champions. All kinds of learning, whether on the practice field or in the classroom, require feedback based on formative assessments. Ironically, the quality feedback necessary to enhance learning is limited or nonexistent in many classrooms.
To serve learning, feedback must meet four criteria: It must be timely, specific, understandable to the receiver, and formed to allow for self-adjustment on the student's part (Wiggins, 1998). First, feedback on strengths and weaknesses needs to be prompt for the learner to improve. Waiting three weeks to find out how you did on a test will not help your learning.
In addition, specificity is key to helping students understand both their strengths and the areas in which they can improve. Too many educators consider grades and scores as feedback when, in fact, they fail the specificity test. Pinning a letter (B-) or a number (82%) on a student's work is no more helpful than such comments as “Nice job” or “You can do better.” Although good grades and positive remarks may feel good, they do not advance learning.
Specific feedback sounds different, as in this example:
Your research paper is generally well organized and contains a great deal of information on your topic. You used multiple sources and documented them correctly. However, your paper lacks a clear conclusion, and you never really answered your basic research question.
Sometimes the language in a rubric is lost on a student. Exactly what does “well organized” or “sophisticated reasoning” mean? “Kid language” rubrics can make feedback clearer and more comprehensible. For instance, instead of saying, “Document your reasoning process,” a teacher might say, “Show your work in a step-by-step manner so the reader can see what you were thinking.”
Here's a simple, straightforward test for a feedback system: Can learners tell specifically from the given feedback what they have done well and what they could do next time to improve? If not, then the feedback is not specific or understandable enough for the learner.
Finally, the learner needs opportunities to act on the feedback—to refine, revise, practice, and retry. Writers rarely compose a perfect manuscript on the first try, which is why the writing process stresses cycles of drafting, feedback, and revision as the route to excellence. Not surprisingly, the best feedback often surfaces in the performance-based subjects—such as art, music, and physical education—and in extracurricular activities, such as band and athletics. Indeed, the essence of coaching involves ongoing assessment and feedback.
Practice 6: Encourage self-assessment and goal setting.
Before turning in their science lab reports, students review their work against a list of explicit criteria. On the basis of their self-assessments, a number of students make revisions to improve their reports before handing them in. Their teacher observes that the overall quality of the lab reports has improved.
The most effective learners set personal learning goals, employ proven strategies, and self-assess their work. Teachers help cultivate such habits of mind by modeling self-assessment and goal setting and by expecting students to apply these habits regularly.
Rubrics can help students become more effective at honest self-appraisal and productive self-improvement.
In the rubric in Figure 1 (p. 13), students verify that they have met a specific criterion—for a title, for example—by placing a check in the lower left-hand square of the applicable box. The teacher then uses the square on the right side for his or her evaluation. Ideally, the two judgments should match. If not, the discrepancy raises an opportunity to discuss the criteria, expectations, and performance standards. Over time, teacher and student judgments tend to align. In fact, it is not unusual for students to be harder on themselves than the teacher is.
Figure 1. Analytic Rubric for Graphic Display of Data
The rubric also includes space for feedback comments and student goals and action steps. Consequently, the rubric moves from being simply an evaluation tool for “pinning a number” on students to a practical and robust vehicle for feedback, self-assessment, and goal setting.
Initially, the teacher models how to self-assess, set goals, and plan improvements by asking such prompting questions as,
What aspect of your work was most effective?
What aspect of your work was least effective?
What specific action or actions will improve your performance?
What will you do differently next time?
Questions like these help focus student reflection and planning. Over time, students assume greater responsibility for enacting these processes independently.
Educators who provide regular opportunities for learners to self-assess and set goals often report a change in the classroom culture. As one teacher put it,
My students have shifted from asking, “What did I get?” or “What are you going to give me?” to becoming increasingly capable of knowing how they are doing and what they need to do to improve.
Practice 7: Allow new evidence of achievement to replace old evidence.
A driver education student fails his driving test the first time, but he immediately books an appointment to retake the test one week later. He passes on his second attempt because he successfully demonstrates the requisite knowledge and skills. The driving examiner does not average the first performance with the second, nor does the new license indicate that the driver “passed on the second attempt.”
This vignette reveals an important principle in classroom assessment, grading, and reporting: New evidence of achievement should replace old evidence. Classroom assessments and grading should focus on how well—not on when—the student mastered the designated knowledge and skill.
Consider the learning curves of four students in terms of a specified learning goal (see fig. 2, p. 14). Bob already possesses the targeted knowledge and skill and doesn't need instruction for this particular goal. Gwen arrives with substantial knowledge and skill but has room to improve. Roger and Pam are true novices who demonstrate a high level of achievement by the end of the instructional segment as a result of effective teaching and diligent learning. If their school's grading system truly documented learning, all these students would receive the same grade because they all achieved the desired results over time. Roger and Pam would receive lower grades than Bob and Gwen, however, if the teacher factored their earlier performances into the final evaluation. This practice, which is typical of the grading approach used in many classrooms, would misrepresent Roger and Pam's ultimate success because it does not give appropriate recognition to the real—or most current—level of achievement.
Figure 2. Student Learning Curves
Not available for electronic dissemination.
Two concerns may arise when teachers provide students with multiple opportunities to demonstrate their learning. Students may not take the first attempt seriously once they realize they'll have a second chance. In addition, teachers often become overwhelmed by the logistical challenges of providing multiple opportunities. To make this approach effective, teachers need to require their students to provide some evidence of the corrective action they will take—such as engaging in peer coaching, revising their report, or practicing the needed skill in a given way—before embarking on their “second chance.”
As students work to achieve clearly defined learning goals and produce evidence of their achievement, they need to know that teachers will not penalize them for either their lack of knowledge at the beginning of a course of study or their initial attempts at skill mastery. Allowing new evidence to replace old conveys an important message to students—that teachers care about their successful learning, not merely their grades.
Motivated to Learn
The assessment strategies that we have described address three factors that influence student motivation to learn (Marzano, 1992). Students are more likely to put forth the required effort when there is
Task clarity—when they clearly understand the learning goal and know how teachers will evaluate their learning (Practices 1 and 2).
Relevance—when they think the learning goals and assessments are meaningful and worth learning (Practice 1).
Potential for success—when they believe they can successfully learn and meet the evaluative expectations (Practices 3–7).
By using these seven assessment and grading practices, all teachers can enhance learning in their classrooms.
References
Black, P., Harrison, C., Lee, C., Marshall, B., & Wiliam, D. (2004). Working inside the black box: Assessment for learning in the classroom. Phi Delta Kappan, 86(1), 8–21.
Bransford, J. D., Brown, A. L., & Cocking, R. R. (Eds.). (1999). How people learn: Brain, mind, experience, and school. Washington, DC: National Research Council.
Gardner, H. (1991). The unschooled mind. New York: BasicBooks.
Marzano, R. (1992). A different kind of classroom: Teaching with dimensions of learning. Alexandria, VA: ASCD.
Wiggins, G. (1998). Educative assessment: Designing assessments to inform and improve student performance. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Jay McTighe (jmctigh@aol.com) is coauthor of The Understanding by Design series (ASCD, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2004, 2005). Ken O'Connor is author of How to Grade for Learning: Linking Grades to Standards (Corwin, 2002).
