As a teacher, how do you know your students are learning?
Although this question may seem simple to answer, the way a teacher or coach answers the question has profound philosophical and practical effects. Changing the answer affects what is taught (curriculum), how information is presented (instruction), and the ways students practice and perform (assessment). In addition, combining the answer to the question with how quickly the learning needs to occur changes the tempo of the learning, producing widely different learning environments.
Knowing how well your students are learning requires tracking student progress; this process can take many forms. A teacher can track student progress for every student during every class for every activity — or once for the entire course on one activity. In addition to the number of times that students progress is tracked, the intensity of individual classes can be different. The intensity can range from every class at maximum intensity to every class at low intensity; changing the intensity level gives different experiences for students and teachers.
To guide my thinking around part of this question, I’ve developed a couple of different scales — plus considered how the scales interact on a two-dimensional graph.
Here are some simple assumptions for the scales:
Tracking happens for every student.
A “course” is 15 weeks, with 3 classes per week — 45 total classes in one course.
Thoughts on the Scale for Tracking Student Progress
“Tracking Student Progress” has a couple of embedded terms: “Tracking” means recording and sharing a rating (as a score, grade, or other method) for how well a student has applied their knowledge and skills. The rating can be used as an assessment tool, providing information for learning or of learning. The rating is recorded and shared with other teachers, parents, and students. Embedded in “Student Progress” is any activity where a student applies their knowledge and skills. These activities are completed by students inside or outside the classroom, are informal or formal, and are included or not included in an assessment system.
Examples of activities are the following:
Simple activities, such as discussions with students, practice problems, or creating a concept map or model sheet.
Complex activities, such as completing discussions or problems with time pressure, writing about sets of knowledge and skills, presenting on sets of knowledge and skills, or performing physical actions to demonstrate sets of knowledge and skills.
Changing the expectations for tracking and recording actually changes the philosophy of assessments, fundamentally shifting the way that teachers implement assessment structures.
Here are a few questions to consider:
Given the constraints of your course(s), how often do you track student progress?
How often does your district or school expect educators to track students progress?
Do the answers to the first two questions match? Why or why not?
How does the expectation of real-time monitoring affect the sense of agency for students?
How does the expectation of real-time monitoring affect the mental health of students and teachers?
How do the systems for tracking and reporting intersect? If the expectation is that all teachers are tracking every activity in every class as “real-time monitoring,” teachers and students need very robust systems. If the systems are too challenging to implement or provide an overwhelming amount of data, teachers and students will not benefit from the positive aspects of providing real-time monitoring.
Are the tracking and reporting systems that you use the correct tool? Or, are there other tools that are better for tracking and reporting?
The most important question: How does tracking student progress intersect with student learning?
No “actual” course will only track one activity for the course, but there are certain events that qualify for “one activity” — for example, competitions in the Olympics. The athletes and their coaches will have checkpoints for training, but ultimately Olympic athletes are judged by their performance every four years.
My courses are on an alternating-day block schedule, meeting twice per week and occasionally three times per week. When tracking student progress, my courses toggle between the “Once per week, one activity” and “Every other week, one activity.” I feel this is a long enough time for students to learn the sets of knowledge and skills inside and outside of class, but short enough time to give students feedback on their sets of knowledge and skills. This timing also allows students to have a bad day for any reason, yet still perform well on assessments that are recorded and shared for a grade.
Thoughts on the Scale for Intensity of Individual Classes
“Intensity” goes with the expectations for students in the class. These expectations are set by the individual characteristics of the teacher, time pressure from the curriculum, general feeling within the class, and others.
On a philosophical level, what should be the intensity level for a specific course?
For an individual class, do students feel a sense of urgency to develop a set of knowledge and skills through the activity?
Are students engaged — mentally, physically, spiritually, emotionally — with the activity?
Is the teacher actively monitoring the activity?
How does the intensity of a course related to the mental health of students and teachers?
The most important question: How does the intensity of individual classes intersect with student learning?
The intensity of classes may modulate throughout a course; depending on the situation, modulation can be bad or good. Every course has a flow, but the characteristics of this flow will change with the specific circumstances of the course.
Where do teachers of a specific course rate the intensity?
Where do district and school leaders want the intensity for courses?
Do the answers to the first and second question match? Why or why not?
I am a very intense human (ha!) and my courses have time pressure associated with AP exams, so I am in the “Many classes, high intensity” category. As with every aspect of teaching, this is both bad and good: Bad because I must bring full energy and demand energy from students during every class, even if I or students are not feeling physically well; good because we accomplish a high level of learning throughout the school year. Choosing a sustainable intensity is important for both teachers and students, so this should be part of the conversation for a specific course.
Thoughts on the Grid for Tracking Student Progress and Intensity of Individual Classes
Almost all academic courses (at any level, from pre-school to doctoral level) fall in the middle section; this is noted by the purple dashed rectangle. Another interesting exercise could be mapping the perception of teachers and leaders for each course on this chart — how does the perception of teachers and leaders intersect with the chart?
If you consider athletes and artists with a yearly cycle as “students,” then they are the outliers in the first quadrant. Especially on teams that have enough coaches to maintain a very low coach-to-player ratio, every player can be tracked every “class” — a “class” is an individual training session or performance. Tracking every player during every class is useful in this scenario because players and coaches are judged quickly and harshly, plus there are enough resources to use the data from the tracking to improve performance.
The outlier in the second quadrant is tracking a bunch of information, but never doing anything with the actual information. This is the danger with tracking the exact progress of every student in every class; a bunch of data is generated, but the data does not lead to learning.
The outlier in the third quadrant is “degree mill” courses; in these courses, students do basically nothing but are awarded credit. Although students are rewarded with credit, the actual learning from the course is minimal.
If you consider athletes who compete in the Olympic sports on a four-year cycle with the outcome of their entire training resting on one performance, then they are the outlier in the fourth quadrant. Athletes and their coaches setup their training cycles to give information about performances on more regular levels, but ultimately these athletes are judged and remembered from their performances in the Olympics.
When teaching a course, we tend to focus on the concrete aspects of the course. However, the underlying philosophical ideas around tracking student progress and the intensity of the course also play a massive role in the way teachers and students experience the course. Most of the time there is no discussion of these underlying philosophical ideas because the discussions may seem like a waste of time; instead, teachers and leaders should make time for these discussions. Starting with the underlying philosophical ideas can radically change the concrete aspects of the course, leading to better learning, higher satisfaction, and better overall experiences for students and teachers.
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