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Tools for Teaching Conceptual Understanding, Secondary: Designing Lessons and Assessments for Deep Learning
Students become experts and innovators through Concept-Based teaching Innovators don’t invent without a deep understanding of how the world works. With this foundation, they apply conceptual understanding to solve new problems. We want our students to not only retain ideas, but relate them to other things they encounter, using each new situation to add nuance and sophistication to their thinking. To do this, they need conceptual understanding. This book serves as a road map for Concept-Based teaching. Discover how to help students uncover conceptual relationships and transfer them to new situations. Specifically, teachers will
Strategies for introducing conceptual learning to students Four lesson frameworks to help students uncover conceptual relationships How to assess conceptual understanding, and How to differentiate concept-based instruction Look no further. For deep learning and innovative thinking, this book is the place to start. "The authors tear down the false dichotomies of traditional vs innovative education and provide a practical toolkit for developing creativity and applying knowledge through Concept-Based learning. Every practitioner needs this book to juxtapose what worked well in the 20th Century with what is essential in the 21st Century and beyond." Michael McDowell, Superintendent Ross School District, Ross, CA "While most good educators recognise the incredible value of teaching conceptually, it is challenging. The authors have created accessible, practical baby steps for every teacher to use." Dr. Vincent Chan, principal Fairview International School, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
Strategies for introducing conceptual learning to students Four lesson frameworks to help students uncover conceptual relationships How to assess conceptual understanding, and How to differentiate concept-based instruction Look no further. For deep learning and innovative thinking, this book is the place to start. "The authors tear down the false dichotomies of traditional vs innovative education and provide a practical toolkit for developing creativity and applying knowledge through Concept-Based learning. Every practitioner needs this book to juxtapose what worked well in the 20th Century with what is essential in the 21st Century and beyond." Michael McDowell, Superintendent Ross School District, Ross, CA "While most good educators recognise the incredible value of teaching conceptually, it is challenging. The authors have created accessible, practical baby steps for every teacher to use." Dr. Vincent Chan, principal Fairview International School, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
- GenresEducationNonfiction
191 pages, Kindle Edition
Published February 2, 2017
24 people are currently reading
31 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
October 14, 2019
This book is full of great ideas, but they’re ideas that anyone who has been in pedagogy training in the last fifty years is already very familiar with, slightly renamed to justify this book's existence. The book presupposes that the reason Concept-based Learning isn’t in all classrooms already is because people don’t know/understand it. I would argue that a) it’s already in a lot of classrooms, just not full-time, and b) the reason it’s not used more often has to do with outside limitations (testing, time, behavior, school policies) and not for lack of knowledge.
This is a rehashing/remixing of many existing, already very popular, very widely taught, and very widely adopted set of philosophies: Flipped Classroom // Big Ideas // Essential Questions // Inquiry-Based Learning // Active Learning // Student-Centered Classrooms
Tl;dr: lecture bad, student as audience bad, teacher as expert wise person bad - experiential inquiry assignments good, hands-on good, application good, cross-discipline good
This is a rehashing/remixing of many existing, already very popular, very widely taught, and very widely adopted set of philosophies: Flipped Classroom // Big Ideas // Essential Questions // Inquiry-Based Learning // Active Learning // Student-Centered Classrooms
Tl;dr: lecture bad, student as audience bad, teacher as expert wise person bad - experiential inquiry assignments good, hands-on good, application good, cross-discipline good
November 3, 2021
1.5/5 stars
I cannot recommend “Tools for Teaching Conceptual Understanding” (Stern, Ferraro, Mohnkern). It contains some intriguing ideas (teaching concepts, transfer of learning, giving feedback, etc.) but taken as a whole, it is out of touch with reality. Consider the following passage from the concluding chapter (worth quoting in full):
“Picture a senior who has identified politics and conflict resolution as his passion. He has chosen to analyze a nation with civil strife, the Central African Republic, and make recommendations for improving the situation. Monday morning starts off with a Skype conference call with a nongovernmental organization from Mozambique that will share lessons learned from the end of that country’s civil war in 1992.
After he finishes the call, the student and his team note down action steps and divide the tasks based on each member’s interests and expertise. They have two full weeks until the next call and before then have two scheduled team meetings and a full-day lab session to work on this project with an expert and the teacher who is mentoring the group. The project is called the Grand Challenge.”
This is how the book goes – some interesting ideas and theories, but the feasibility and worthwhileness of it all is in serious doubt.
One assumption the book seems to have is that all students are “experts”. As much as I love my students (I’m a high school history teacher), let’s be honest, our middle/high school students are NOT experts. Even the ones that will become experts have a long way to go. A true expert invests thousands of hours and many years to achieve this status. In Daniel Willingham’s 2009 book “Why Don’t Students Like School?” he states that a level of expertise often takes a decade of devoted work. Willingham goes on to propose that a more realistic goal for secondary students is knowledge comprehension. For example, in history, a student could learn about what other historians have concluded about the US Revolutionary War on deep and engaging levels. The student could then compare different historians’ views, accurately understand what happened, understand the common controversies, and more. Furthermore, this student could apply the ideas to present-day issues and find a lot of benefit in it all. The authors do not agree with this. Instead of standing on the shoulders of giants (other historians/the teacher, etc.), the authors recommend that students find the answers on their own (they must “uncover” the learning themselves, and it is always vague how exactly this will happen) and proceed to make very advanced connections and transfers with their learning, like an expert. Will this work? It might for some students, but I am very skeptical. The discovery/uncovering style of learning they push greatly changes the role of the teacher and it assumes that all students are highly motivated and organized.
In addition, the book recommends project-based learning (at least 3-4 weeks per project!). The opportunity cost for month-long projects is not out of the question, but it severely strains other standards and lessons teachers are supposed to teach. Undoubtedly there is a lot of ground that will not be covered as a result. The authors address this obvious conundrum on page 89, and they claim that it is a myth that “covering” more material is better, because if students learn things more deeply, they will remember more in the end, and this will surpass covering more topics. Yes, I agree, *to a certain extent*. Wouldn't it be possible for rigor, discovery, excitement, long-term learning and more to happen without huge student-led projects that could easily go wrong? Students in the 1920s and 1970s were given huge intellectual freedom and it massively backfired (read Diane Ravitch’s “Left Back” about these episodes in the history of US education). Call me old-fashioned, but in my experience, students benefit from structure, there is a lot of stuff we ought to teach, and sometimes projects hog up too much time. Furthermore, group projects are often worked unequally, and grading students fairly is more difficult.
Finally, the assessment chapter (chapter 5) was riddled with holes. One example on a summative assessment was for students to “research and create a historical account of a past protest movement, demonstrating their understanding of the relationship among change, power, ideology, and modes of protest.” (89) Wow! That is a lot on the table there. I am not doubting it could be done, but what are the expectations and how will it be graded? The authors do not answer this directly but they offer examples of grading rubrics. Unfortunately they are opaque at best. Their rubric on page 113 uses terms like: powerful, relevant, sufficient, complex, significant, etc., but these words are not defined by any mathematically measurable way that translates to a grade in the gradebook. Stunningly, the authors suggest that teachers should consider grading that focuses on growth and not absolute levels. What are the standards to achieve? What about high-performing students (their “growth” might be less)? What is the teacher’s role in all this? We already have IEPs (special ed students), ELL (English language learners), and Gifted students; should I make 150 rubrics for 150 students? I don’t mean to be sarcastic but some of these ideas need to be ironed out.
In closing, there are some good bits in here, but it is hard for me to take this book too seriously. It is written by three idealistic charter school advocates who are on a mission to save the world (literally; their website is www.edtosavetheworld.com). Instead of magic bullets, let’s have a more honest discussion with concrete examples. For history teachers, I would recommend Mike Maxwell’s book “Future Focused History” as one such book.
I cannot recommend “Tools for Teaching Conceptual Understanding” (Stern, Ferraro, Mohnkern). It contains some intriguing ideas (teaching concepts, transfer of learning, giving feedback, etc.) but taken as a whole, it is out of touch with reality. Consider the following passage from the concluding chapter (worth quoting in full):
“Picture a senior who has identified politics and conflict resolution as his passion. He has chosen to analyze a nation with civil strife, the Central African Republic, and make recommendations for improving the situation. Monday morning starts off with a Skype conference call with a nongovernmental organization from Mozambique that will share lessons learned from the end of that country’s civil war in 1992.
After he finishes the call, the student and his team note down action steps and divide the tasks based on each member’s interests and expertise. They have two full weeks until the next call and before then have two scheduled team meetings and a full-day lab session to work on this project with an expert and the teacher who is mentoring the group. The project is called the Grand Challenge.”
This is how the book goes – some interesting ideas and theories, but the feasibility and worthwhileness of it all is in serious doubt.
One assumption the book seems to have is that all students are “experts”. As much as I love my students (I’m a high school history teacher), let’s be honest, our middle/high school students are NOT experts. Even the ones that will become experts have a long way to go. A true expert invests thousands of hours and many years to achieve this status. In Daniel Willingham’s 2009 book “Why Don’t Students Like School?” he states that a level of expertise often takes a decade of devoted work. Willingham goes on to propose that a more realistic goal for secondary students is knowledge comprehension. For example, in history, a student could learn about what other historians have concluded about the US Revolutionary War on deep and engaging levels. The student could then compare different historians’ views, accurately understand what happened, understand the common controversies, and more. Furthermore, this student could apply the ideas to present-day issues and find a lot of benefit in it all. The authors do not agree with this. Instead of standing on the shoulders of giants (other historians/the teacher, etc.), the authors recommend that students find the answers on their own (they must “uncover” the learning themselves, and it is always vague how exactly this will happen) and proceed to make very advanced connections and transfers with their learning, like an expert. Will this work? It might for some students, but I am very skeptical. The discovery/uncovering style of learning they push greatly changes the role of the teacher and it assumes that all students are highly motivated and organized.
In addition, the book recommends project-based learning (at least 3-4 weeks per project!). The opportunity cost for month-long projects is not out of the question, but it severely strains other standards and lessons teachers are supposed to teach. Undoubtedly there is a lot of ground that will not be covered as a result. The authors address this obvious conundrum on page 89, and they claim that it is a myth that “covering” more material is better, because if students learn things more deeply, they will remember more in the end, and this will surpass covering more topics. Yes, I agree, *to a certain extent*. Wouldn't it be possible for rigor, discovery, excitement, long-term learning and more to happen without huge student-led projects that could easily go wrong? Students in the 1920s and 1970s were given huge intellectual freedom and it massively backfired (read Diane Ravitch’s “Left Back” about these episodes in the history of US education). Call me old-fashioned, but in my experience, students benefit from structure, there is a lot of stuff we ought to teach, and sometimes projects hog up too much time. Furthermore, group projects are often worked unequally, and grading students fairly is more difficult.
Finally, the assessment chapter (chapter 5) was riddled with holes. One example on a summative assessment was for students to “research and create a historical account of a past protest movement, demonstrating their understanding of the relationship among change, power, ideology, and modes of protest.” (89) Wow! That is a lot on the table there. I am not doubting it could be done, but what are the expectations and how will it be graded? The authors do not answer this directly but they offer examples of grading rubrics. Unfortunately they are opaque at best. Their rubric on page 113 uses terms like: powerful, relevant, sufficient, complex, significant, etc., but these words are not defined by any mathematically measurable way that translates to a grade in the gradebook. Stunningly, the authors suggest that teachers should consider grading that focuses on growth and not absolute levels. What are the standards to achieve? What about high-performing students (their “growth” might be less)? What is the teacher’s role in all this? We already have IEPs (special ed students), ELL (English language learners), and Gifted students; should I make 150 rubrics for 150 students? I don’t mean to be sarcastic but some of these ideas need to be ironed out.
In closing, there are some good bits in here, but it is hard for me to take this book too seriously. It is written by three idealistic charter school advocates who are on a mission to save the world (literally; their website is www.edtosavetheworld.com). Instead of magic bullets, let’s have a more honest discussion with concrete examples. For history teachers, I would recommend Mike Maxwell’s book “Future Focused History” as one such book.
June 1, 2017
An excellent follow on resource to the other books by Lynn Erickson, diving more deeply into the applications of concept based approaches. The examples where connects between concept based and inquiry models are well thought out and resonated with me. Lots of takeaway to share with others.
June 19, 2017
Practical, thorough, and realistic in acknowledging the challenges schools/staff may face when uncovering this approach.
July 28, 2020
Easy to read and assimilate this approach to a classroom.
“The question for our teachers is:‘How do we prepare young people to tackle problems we currently don’t know how to solve?’” (153)
If you're interested in answering that question, you'll enjoy this practical inquiry-based approach to learning.
Lorien Wood School in Vienna, Virgina uses this approach, and it was fun for the teachers and kids to interact this way in education. It is a challenge to both teachers and students, but the payoff lasts a lifetime. That is the point, after all.
“The question for our teachers is:‘How do we prepare young people to tackle problems we currently don’t know how to solve?’” (153)
If you're interested in answering that question, you'll enjoy this practical inquiry-based approach to learning.
Lorien Wood School in Vienna, Virgina uses this approach, and it was fun for the teachers and kids to interact this way in education. It is a challenge to both teachers and students, but the payoff lasts a lifetime. That is the point, after all.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews