| Glossary |
| |
| ability-oriented learning – learning
that is accomplished by activities that tend to highlight differences
in students’ abilities and achievement. When performing
well is the goal, students often lose sight of what they are
learning – focusing instead on the easiest or shortest
way to earn the grade and be deemed successful. (Ames, 1992;
Eccles et al., 1998; Urdan 1997). |
| active in-depth learning – learning
that “begins with the disciplines” and “engages
students in doing the work of writers, scientists, mathematicians,
musicians, sculptors, and critics” (Darling-Hammond, 1997,
p. 107-108). |
| advance organizers – ideas or strategies
used at the beginning of a lesson or activity to prepare students
for new material. |
| amnesia – forgetting. It occurs when
information has not been learned in memorable, usable ways (Shulman,
2001, interview). |
| articulation – the work the teacher
does to encourage students to verbalize their own knowledge
and thinking or problem-solving strategies. |
| assessment-centered – school practices
and structures that address the question, “What kinds of
assessments will help me know what students understand and how
they learn?” |
| authentic performance – curriculum
and assessments that are integrated around meaningful performances
in real-world contexts. Performance-based assessments use multiple
criteria to determine how students are thinking and learning,
as well as what they know and can do. |
| automaticity – learning of a task
or skill so well that retrieval is automatic or requires little
conscious effort. |
| behaviorist – a description of theories
that suggest learning is based on practicing specific skills
and receiving positive reinforcement. |
| bodily-kinesthetic intelligence –
the ability to use one’s body to create products or solve
problems. |
| central modes of inquiry – how experts
in each discipline construct knowledge and critique and revise
knowledge that was once thought accurate and is now questioned.
The manner in which experts in the discipline determine if something
counts as evidence or is held to be true (Schwab, 1978; Shulman,
2001, interview). |
| coaching – a process in which the
“master” teacher guides, supports, and oversees the
work of novices in ways that help support the development of
skills and understanding. |
| cognitive apprenticeship – an instructional
paradigm (not a formal teaching method) used in teaching complex
thinking and complex skills. It is designed to make the thinking
and understanding of the “master” teacher accessible
to the novice. |
| cognitive processing – the work the
brain does to take in, organize and make sense of new information. |
| cognitive psychologists – scientists
who study how individuals process information, build knowledge,
and develop as problem solvers. |
| community-centered – school practices
and structures that address the question, “How can I construct
a community of learners in the classroom and school to support
students’ learning?” |
| conceptual understanding – understanding
of the underlying ideas and relationships in a body of knowledge
or facts. |
| constructivist – a description of
theories that suggest that learning is based on making meaningful
connections with the world, as well as interacting with other
people. |
| content integration – “the extent
to which teachers use examples, data and information from a
variety of cultures and groups to illustrate key concepts, principles,
generalizations, and theories in their subject area discipline.”
(Banks, 1993, p. 5). |
| core ideas – the central concepts
in a discipline and how they connect with one another (Schwab,
1978; Shulman, 2001, interview). |
| cultural expectations and knowledge –
prior understandings based on cultural experiences. |
| culturally responsive teaching –
practices that demonstrate:
- respect for students and belief in their potential as
learners
- caring environments and personal connection
- cultural congruity between home and school
- active, direct teaching and authentic assessment
|
| developmentally appropriate
- strategies that respond to
a student's cognitive, emotional, social, physical, or other
developmental stage. |
| developmental pathways
- ways that a child is growing: physically, socially, emotionally,
cognitively, linguistically, psychologically, and ethically/morally. |
| emotional intelligence - the ability to
manage feelings and relationships. |
| emotionally safe classroom -a classroom
in which students feel they can take intellectual risks without
harsh penalties for failure, because their teacher has structured
the learning environment to be supportive. |
| empowering school culture – “restructuring
the culture and organization of the school so that students
from diverse racial, ethnic and social-class groups will experience
educational equality and cultural empowerment.” (Banks,
1993, p. 7). |
| equity pedagogy – instructional practices
that makes knowledge accessible to all students. |
| expectations for success – the degree
to which students believe they will accomplish a task or master
a skill successfully. |
| expert knowledge – information organized
around core concepts or big ideas that guide thinking and encompass
a large number of interrelated facts and formulas. Experts are
particularly adept at recognizing patterns and recalling information
because of the ways they chunk and organize information. |
| exploration – letting students explore
open-ended topics and develop competency by choosing their own
paths toward problem solving. |
| fading – the process of removing
support structures as the novice becomes more skilled, giving
him or her more and more responsibility. |
| fantasia – a misconception or a set
of misconceptions about ideas taught; a distorted grasp of a
concept (Shulman, 2001, interview). |
| formative assessment – feedback provided
by a teacher or a learner herself in the midst of an activity. |
| general transfer – (also called far
transfer) the application of knowledge or general principles
to a more complex, novel situation. |
| graduated prompting – providing just
enough information or help to a student so she succeeds in transferring
knowledge from one situation to a new one. The fewer prompts
a student needs to apply his or her knowledge in a new situation,
the more deeply the student has understood the structure of
the knowledge domain, as well as the information or skill itself. |
| hierarchical presentation strategy –
Presenting new information beginning with simple, concrete ideas
and later advancing to more complex, abstract concepts and principles. |
| inertia – the absence of transfer;
a situation in which students understand the ideas, but they
can’t apply them outside of the immediate context in which
they learned them. (Shulman, 2001, interview). |
| interpersonal intelligence – an awareness
or sensitivity to others’ feelings and intentions. |
| intrapersonal intelligence – the
ability for people to “distinguish among their own feelings,
to build accurate mental models of themselves, and to draw on
these models to make decisions about their lives” (Kreshevsky
& Siedel, 1998, p. 20). |
| joint productive activity – a task
or tasks in which an expert and novice work together. |
| knowledge-centered – school practices
and structures that address the question, “What kind of
knowledge am I trying to develop?” |
| knowledge construction – a process
in which “teachers help students to understand how knowledge
is created and how it is influenced by the racial, ethnic, and
social-class position of individuals and groups” (Banks,
1993, p. 6). |
| learner-centered – school practices
and structures that address the question, “How am I drawing
on students’ interests and strengths?” |
| learning communities – classrooms
or schools in which students learn through carefully structured
collaboration as they participate in a shared practice, or a
group project, in a setting that resembles a real-life situation
(Wenger, 1998). It can also describe schools in which teachers
and administrators share goals of continuously improving professional
practices to raise student achievement. |
| linguistic intelligence – the ability
to communicate and use language in a variety of ways –
through speaking, writing, and reading. |
| logical-mathematical intelligence
– the ability to order objects, assess their quantity,
and make statements about the relationships among them (Gardner,
1985). |
| managed discourse – an instructional
conversation which is guided by a teacher using purposeful questions
and listening carefully to achieve an academic purpose –
providing intellectual, cognitive, social and emotional growth.
|
| mapping – the creation of graphic
organizers; visual and verbal diagrams of the knowledge to be
remembered (Lambiotte et al., 1989, cited in Gage and Berliner,
1998). |
| mediation – “the process of
creating meaningful links between apparently unrelated items
or ideas” (Gage & Berliner, 1998, pg. 288). The goal
of mediation is to help make the second idea in a pair more
memorable by linking it to the first idea in some meaningful
way. |
| mental models – the explanations
for facts that individuals carry around in their heads; they
can be described as “constructed working models of the
world used in the service of understanding” (Medin &
Ross, 1992, pg. 359). |
| metacognitive knowledge – awareness
of one’s knowledge, thinking, and thinking strategies. |
| metacognitive regulation – the use
of metacognitive knowledge to direct or regulate one’s
learning. This kind of metacognition is also referred to as
executive control. |
| modeling – a process in which teachers
and advanced students serve as models for novices working to
develop skills and understanding. |
| musical intelligence – a sensitivity
to pitch (melody), rhythm, and the qualities of a tone (Gardner,
1985). |
| naturalistic intelligence – the ability
to recognize and classify species and other aspects of their
environment. |
| neuroscientists – scientists who
study how the brain changes as individuals learn and experience
new things. |
| novices’ knowledge – information
organized around relatively unrelated facts or patterns. Novices
often get distracted by apparently important, but often irrelevant
aspects of the problem. |
| overlearning – the process of continuing
to study and practice material after it has been mastered. |
| pathway – the form of intelligence
that learners are using at any given moment to acquire knowledge
and skills. |
| pedagogical content knowledge – the
special expertise that teachers have about subject matter and
how to teach it (Shulman, 2001, interview). |
| point of entry – the way a new topic
or set of new ideas in a lesson is introduced, e.g. watching
a movie to begin a lesson about history could be considered
an aesthetic point of entry. |
| prejudice reduction – “interventions
to help students to develop more positive racial attitudes and
values” (Banks, 1993, p. 6). |
| prior knowledge – what students already
know about a topic. |
| reciprocal teaching – a specific
strategy for teaching reading comprehension that involves students
working on the deep reading of text using four expert strategies:
questioning, clarifying, summarizing, and predicting (Palinscar
& Brown, 1984). The term is also used generically to express
the idea that students can learn by taking responsibility for
acquiring knowledge and teaching it to others (e.g. the expert
jigsaw). |
| reflection – thinking about academic
work or tasks that enables students to compare their performance
or understanding with others or with their own previous performance
or understanding. |
| scaffolding – the work the “master”
teacher does to provide just enough support, depending on the
needs of the student, to move the novice student’s skills
and understanding forward. |
| schemas – an association of words,
concepts, and ideas. Schemas are general knowledge structures
used for understanding and for memory storage. Schemas consist
of information, in an abstract form, of the associations we
have with a word, concept, or idea, and they in turn connect
with other schemas. |
| self awareness -the ability to recognize
one's own thoughts and feelings, and to understand why they
are thinking or feeling a certain way. |
| self-regulation – the ability to
monitor and control one’s own thinking and learning. |
| spatial intelligence – the ability
to perceive a form or object (either visually or through touch),
remember visual or spatial information, and recognize and imagine
objects from different angles (Gardner, 1985). |
| specific transfer – (also called
near transfer) the application of knowledge to a specific, very
similar situation. |
| spiral curriculum – teaching strategies
that introduce central concepts in the disciplines early in
a child’s education and revisit these concepts again and
again in the later grades in more sophisticated ways (Bruner,
1960). |
| structure of the discipline – how
knowledge is organized and pursued in a particular subject area. |
| supportive learning environment –
a classroom that emphasizes learning and encourages risk-taking,
not just getting the right answers, stresses improvement over
time and provides opportunities for revision, and minimizes
competition and comparison (Blumenfeld, Puro, & Mergendoller).
|
| task-oriented learning – learning
that is accomplished by activities designed to help students
understand concepts, improve their thinking and analytical skills,
and concentrate on a particular topic. Students get concrete
specific feedback and revise their work until they achieve mastery
(Ames, 1992; Eccles et al., 1998; Urdan 1997). |
| theory – an idea
that is a coherent explanation of a set of relationships.
If the idea survives rigorous testing and research, that theory
is said to have empirical grounding.
- A theory is developed from practical experience as well
as research.
- A theory is modified over time based on the insights of
practioners as well as the work of researchers.
- Theories are interconnected.
|
| top-down presentation strategy –
Presenting new information with advance organizers, or a set
of general concepts describing how ideas are grouped or structured. |
| transfer – the ability to extend
what one has learned in one context to new contexts. |
| zone of proximal development
- the information or skills that
can be considered a logical "next step" for a child,
based on where she/he is developmentally . Teaching in
the zone of proximal development means giving students learning
tasks that challenge them, but are not so far beyond their present
skills that they become discouraged. |
|
| Glossary references |
Ames, C. (1990). Motivation: What teachers need
to know. Teachers College
Record, 91(3) 407-421. |
| Banks, James (1993). Multicultural education:
Historical development, dimensions, and practices. In L. Darling-Hammond
(ed.), Review of research in education, volume 19, pp. 3-49.
Washington, D.C.: American Education Research Association. |
| Blumenfeld, P., Puro, P., and Mergendoller, J.
(1992). Translating motivation into thoughtfulness. In H. Marshall
(Ed.), Redefining student learning: Roots of educational change
(pp. 207-239). Norwood, NJ: Ablex. |
| Bruner, J. (1960). The process of education.
(Chapter 2: The importance of structure (pp. 16-32). Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press. |
| Darling-Hammond, L. (1997). The right to learn.
San Francisco, CA: Jossey Bass. Chapter 4. Teaching and Learning
for Understanding. |
| Eccles, J. S., Wigfield, A., & Schiefele,
U. (1998). Motivation to succeed. In W. Damon (Ed.), Handbook
of Child Psychology Vol. 3. Social, Emotional and Personality
Development (pp. 1017-1094). |
| Gage, N.L. & Berliner, D.C. (1998). Educational
psychology. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company. Chapter 7: Cognitive
learning: Processes and strategies to make meaning. |
| Gardner, 1985 |
| Kreshevsky & Siedel, 1998 |
| Lambiotte, J.G., Dansereau, D.F., Cross, D.R.,
& Reynolds, S.B. (1989). Multirelational semantic maps.
Educational Psychology Review, 1, 331-368. |
| Medin, D.L. & Ross, B.H. (1992). Cognitive
psychology. Fort Worth: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich College Publishers. |
| Palincsar, A. & Brown, A. (1984). Reciprocal
teaching of comprehension-fostering and comprehension-monitoring
activities. Cognition and Instruction 1(2), p. 117-175. |
| Shulman, Lee, President, Carnegie Foundation
for the Advancement of Teaching. Interview on May 11, 2001. |
| Schwab, J. (1978). Education and the structure
of the disciplines. In Westbury, J. & Wilkof, N. (Eds.),
Science, curriculum, and liberal education. Chicago, IL: University
of Chicago Press. |
| Urdan, T. C. (1997). Achievement goal theory:
past results, future directions. In M. Maehr & P. Pintrich
(Eds.), Advances in motivation and achievement (Vol. 10, pp.
99-141). Greenwich, CT: JAI Press Inc. |
| Wenger, E. (1998). Communities of practice: Learning,
meaning, and identity. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press. |
