Your classrooms will need the resources to help students learn content one or two grade levels higher than their current grade. Multi-age classrooms help in this regard, but teachers should perhaps also collaborate with teachers at the next-higher level. They can offer some of their resources to the next lower level and forward information about what the students have already mastered when they move to the next level. For students in their last year at your school, a teacher would need to collaborate with teachers at their next school or post-secondary institution.
How will we change the student record-keeping system for our school and district, so as not to overburden teachers with two systems?
Your team should work with stakeholders in your school, other schools in your district, and your district’s central office and school board to develop a districtwide (or at least schoolwide) competency-based record-keeping system to replace the norm-referenced report card. We recommend that this new system have two major parts: (1) a list of learning targets mastered and (2) evidence of such mastery (for example, portfolios, videos of performances, observer ratings, test scores), along with such information as date of mastery, who certified mastery, and so forth. In addition, you should consider bundling mastered learning targets into badges, certificates, certifications, licenses, or other kinds of credentials that are more useful than a huge list of individual learning targets.
What if we are unable to bring about change of that scope?
You can move toward that ideal in a single classroom or school by having teachers keep their own records of competencies mastered by each of their students, and then convert those records to the school or district format at the end of each grading period. However, the work of keeping two systems will overburden teachers, and, therefore, failure to implement competency-based student records districtwide will endanger the sustainability of your PCBE transformation.
Summary
This chapter described four principles for competency-based education that are universally helpful for maximizing student learning.
Principle A: Competency-based student progress
Principle B: Competency-based student assessment
Principle C: Competency-based learning targets
Principle D: Competency-based student records
It then offered detailed guidelines to help your team develop part of your shared ideal vision for your classrooms, school, and district.
CHAPTER 2
Learner-Centered Instruction
This chapter discusses four principles for PCBE related to learner-centered instruction. It then offers detailed guidance to help your team develop more of your shared vision for your classrooms, school, and district.
We do not offer these principles and guidelines as a blueprint for what you should do. Rather, we offer them to assist your team as you engage in rich discussions and collaborations to design an ideal PCBE system in your unique context.
Principles for Learner-Centered Instruction
Competency-based student progress requires instruction to be personalized—customized to each student’s learning needs—rather than standardized. But how can this seemingly difficult task be managed? It requires learner-centered instruction, along with new roles for teachers, students, parents, and technology (core idea 4). Learner-centered instruction has two major parts:
A focus on individual learners (their heredity, experiences, perspectives, backgrounds, talents, interests, capacities, and needs) [and] a focus on learning (the best available knowledge about learning, how it occurs, and what teaching practices are most effective in promoting the highest levels of motivation, learning, and achievement for all learners). (McCombs & Whisler, 1997, p. 11)
Four principles for learner-centered instruction have strong research support (Bransford, Brown, & Cocking, 2000; Lambert & McCombs, 1998; McCombs, 1994, 2013; McCombs & Miller, 2007; McCombs & Whisler, 1997; National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, 2018; Weimer, 2002).
Principle E: Learning by doing
Principle F: Instructional support
Principle G: Personalized learning
Principle H: Collaborative learning
These principles are highly interrelated and interdependent with each other and with the principles for competency-based education. The following is an introduction to each of these principles.
Principle E: Learning by Doing
Generally, the most effective way to learn is by doing, especially for younger students (American Psychological Association, 1993; Bransford et al., 2000; Freeman et al., 2014; National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, 2018; Newman, 2003; Preeti, Ashish, & Shriram, 2013; Schank, Berman, & Macpherson, 1999; Strobel & van Barneveld, 2009; Vega, 2012; Walker & Leary, 2009). Types of learning by doing include project-based, problem-based, inquiry-based, task-based, maker-based, and hands-on learning. We collectively refer to these forms of learning as project-based instruction, which enhances motivation, retention, and transfer to the real world.
Some people are concerned that project-based instruction may hurt students’ college admissions. However, efforts such as the Reimagining College Access project (Gewertz, 2018) are underway to change college admissions to focus more on students’ projects. Students from project-based schools, such as the Minnesota New Country School, are having great success with college admissions (Aslan & Reigeluth, 2016; Thomas et al., 2005).
In project-based instruction, each student chooses or designs a project as a vehicle to master specific content. Projects may be of many different types and scopes, as long as they are chosen or designed by the student and serve as a vehicle to master a predefined set of competencies, or learning targets. Giving students choice increases their motivation, but teachers and even parents may influence the choice or design of a project, especially for younger students. As students grow older, projects should increasingly focus on bettering the student’s world, not just the student (Prensky, 2016; Wagner, 2012)—see Principle I: Relevance to Students’ Current and Future Lives (page 58). This is sometimes referred to as community-based learning, service learning, or place-based learning.
• The projects are typically collaborative to prepare students for the way most projects are executed in the workplace, home, and community; but some are occasionally done individually.
• The projects are typically interdisciplinary because that’s what most authentic projects are like.
• They are of significant scope for the developmental level of the student, ranging from hours or days for preschoolers to months or years for high school students.
• The projects are also bound by time and space. They may be done in the classroom if they only require resources and activities available there, or they may be done in the real world (place-based and community-based learning) if they require resources and activities only available there. It seems likely that many real-world projects will eventually use augmented reality (Bower, Howe, McCredie, Robinson, & Grover, 2014), which superimposes virtual images, text, and sounds on a mobile device’s camera screen and speaker (for example, the game Pokémon GO), to support performance of the project. Projects may be done in a virtual world through computer simulations if such resources are available. The popular computer game Oregon Trail is an example of this, and schools will probably utilize virtual reality as that technology becomes less expensive and more powerful (Freina & Ott, n.d.). Presently the classroom is where most projects are conducted, and this will likely continue to be the case, especially