Reading Research and the UN-Common Core: A Blueprint for Teaching and Teacher Education?

1. Reading Research and the UN-Common Core: A Blueprint for Teaching and Teacher Education? P. David Pearson University of California, Berkeley Link to slides will be posted at http://www.scienceandliteracy.org/research/pdavidpearson

2. Goals for Today • Remind ourselves of what the Standards are designed to do. • Examine their potential • New possibilities: The high road on curriculum, text, and cognitive challenge • Explore their dark side: Beware the pot holes, sink holes, and black holes • Discuss some defensible positions to take on curriculum, pedagogy, and teacher education as we move into the all important implementation phase Link to slides will be posted at http://www.scienceandliteracy.org/research/pdavidpearson

3. What I could, but will NOT talk about… • Assessment: Lots to say • déjà vu all over again • Scope and Sequence of Standards • What could and should change over time • What should remain the same

4. Survey • Elementary? • Secondary? • College? • What’s the difference http://www.scienceandliteracy.org/research/pdavidpearson

5. Elementary Teachers Love • Their kids

6. Secondary Teachers Love • Their subjects

7. College Teachers Love • Themselves

8. A Confession:My Relationship with the Standards Movements • Member of the Validation Committee of the CCSS • Background work on text complexity with a grant from Gates Foundation • Long (and occasionally checkered) history with standards going back to • NBPTS: Standards for Teacher Certification • IRA/NCTE Standards for English Language Arts • Research and development work on assessment, especially the sorts of assessments that are privileged by deeper learning

9. What sold me on the standards, both CCSS and TEKS/CCRS

10. What the CCSS said about reading • Students who meet the Standards readily undertake the close, attentive, reading that is at the heart of understanding and enjoying complex works of literature. They habitually perform the critical reading necessary to pick carefully through the staggering amount of information available today in print and digitally. They actively seek the wide, deep, and thoughtful engagement with high-quality literary and informational texts that builds knowledge, enlarges experience, and broadens world views. They reflexively demonstrate the cogent reasoning and use of evidence essential to both private deliberation and responsible citizenship in a democratic republic. (CCSSO/NGA, 2010, p. 3)

11. Or from the CCRS… • Academic and business leaders emphasize the importance of being able to apply these skills across a variety of contexts and subject matter. They describe 21st century learning and work environments in which the cross-disciplinary skills are prerequisites to solving many of the most important problems students will encounter in college and the workplace. These problems increasingly require applying knowledge across disciplines and subject areas and the mastery of a base set of communication and analysis skills that span subject areas. Students, then, not only need to possess content knowledge, but also need to be able to apply key cognitive skills to the academic tasks presented to them, most of which require much more than simple recall of factual knowledge. These cross-disciplinary standards enable students to engage in deeper levels of thinking across a wide range of subjects.

12. So what’s not to Like? • Nothing • Everything I believe in about literacy learning

13. What they said about teacher choice: From the CCSS… • By emphasizing required achievements, the Standards leave room for teachers, curriculum developers, and states to determine how those goals should be reached and what additional topics should be addressed. Thus, the Standards do not mandate such things as a particular writing process or the full range of metacognitive strategies that students may need to monitor and direct their thinking and learning. Teachers are thus free to provide students with whatever tools and knowledge their professional judgment and experience identify as most helpful for meeting the goals set out in the Standards. (CCSSO/NGA, 2010, p. 4).

14. What you said in the CCRS… • In delineating the knowledge and skills necessary for college and career readiness, the CCRS do not specify the performance levels necessary to demonstrate competence. Without examples of course syllabi, assignments, and student work to illustrate when or how a standard is met, some standards could conceivably be interpreted to be at a level that would challenge graduate students. … • Examples of course material that illustrate the necessary performance level for each standard will be made available as the CCRS are implemented.

15. Just the right balance • Let the body politic at every level have a voice in the big overarching goals • At every level along the way, from the state to the district to the school to the classroom, leave a little room for each player to place his or her “signature” on the effort… • Identity, buy-in, the right kind of political negotiation among levels within the system…

16. Another Reason to Support the Standards: The Text Complexity Gap…

17. Why text complexity? The gap for college and career readiness Jack Stenner’s (lexile guy) depiction of the 200 lexile gap

19. Candidate approaches • Up the ante on text complexity and tell folks (students and teachers) to try harder • Up the ante and RAMP UP the scaffolding and instruction needed to cope with the additional challenge • Engineer the increase within a web-delivered program… • We’ll talk about these later…

20. Another reason to support standards… • Hobson’s Choice… • Which is worse? • A single orthodoxy adhered to across the political entity? • OR • 1,000 or 10,000 or 100,000 local orthodoxies?

21. So……. • In 2010, I signed on the dotted line to say the CCSS standards are worthy of our professional support and implementation • Ready to go on the road and seek converts. • But the road to paradise has been a little rocky… • By the way, no one has asked me to go on the road to sell the CCRS in Texas • Until today…

22. Today’s Agenda • Focus on a few important questions about standards… • What do they tell us about the level of challenge we need to provide in the texts students read? • Responsibility of readers and teachers… • What do they tell us about how students should be reading and understanding text? • Responsibility of readers and teachers… • What do they tell us about relationships of literacy to disciplinary learning— • what we are beginning to think of as disciplinary literacy? • Is there anything Texas can or should learn from the CCSS • Is there anything that the CCSS can or should learn from Texas?

23. Comprehension:How we got to where we are… • The historical pathway to Kintsch’s Construction Integration Model and the RAND report

24. Rand

25. Reader Text Reading Comprehension Context Most models of reading have tried to explain how reader factors, text factors and context factors interact when readers make meaning.

26. Bottom up and New Criticism: Text-centric Reader Text Reading Comprehension Context The bottom up cognitive models of the 60s were very text centric, as was the “new criticism” model of literature from the 40s and 50s (I.A. Richards)

27. Pedagogy for Bottom up and New Criticism: Text-centric • Since the meaning is in the text, we need to go dig it out… • Leads to Questions that • Interrogate the facts of the text • Get to the “right” interpretation • Writerly readings or textual readings

28. Reader Schema and Reader Response: Reader-centric Text Reading Comprehension Context The schema based cognitive models of the 70s and the reader response models (Rosenblatt) of the 80s focused more on reader factors--knowledge or interpretation mattered most

29. Pedagogy for Reader-centric • Since the meaning is largely in the reader, we need to go dig it out… • Spend a lot of time on • Building background knowledge • Inferences needed to build a coherent model of meaning • Readers’ impressions, expressions, unbridled response • Readerly readings

30. A few clarifications of schema theory… • Variation along a continuum of top-down vs bottom-up • Kohlers (1967): Reading is only incidentially textual • Anderson (1977): specific words/ideas instantiate general schemata: the text is the trigger to our knowledge stores • Not completely top down process

31. Critical literacy models: Context-centric Reader Text Reading Comprehension Context The sociocultural and critical literacy models of the 90s focused on the central role of context (purpose, situation, discourse community)

32. Pedagogy for Critical literacy models • Since the meaning is largely in the context, we need to go dig it out… • Questions that get at the social, political and economic underbelly of the text • Whose interests are served by this text? • What is the author trying to get us to believe? • What features of the text contribute to a particular interpretation, e.g., that money is evil?

33. CI: Balance Reader and Text: little c for context Reader Text Reading Comprehension Context In Kintsch’smodel, Reader and Text factors are balanced, and context plays a“background”role--in purpose and motivation.

34. Pedagogical implications for CI • Since the meaning is in this reader text interface, we need to go dig it out… • Query the accuracy of the text base. • What is going on in this part here where it says… • What does it mean when it says… • I was confused by this part… • Ascertain the situation model. • So what is going on here? • What do we know that we didn’t know before?

35. Context Kintchian Model Text 3 Knowledge Base Does>>>>>>>>> 1 Text Base 2 Situation Model Experience Says Means Out in the world Inside the head

36. New and different • Most important: A new model of the comprehension process • Text (what the author left on the page) • Text base (the version a reader creates on a veridical reading) • Knowledge (what the reader brings from prior experience) • Model of meaning for a text • Dubbed the Situation Model (mental model) • A model that accounts for all the facts and resources available in the current situation

37. What’s inside the Knowledge box? • World knowledge (everyday stuff, including social and cultural norms) • Topical knowledge (dogs and canines) • Disciplinary knowledge (how history or astronomy works) • Linguistic knowledge • Phonology • Lexical and morphological • Syntax • Genre • Pragmatics (how language works in the world): Discourse, register, academic language, intention • Orthography (how print relates to speech)

38. How does a reader build a text base? Excerpt from Chapter 8 of Hatchet

39. “Some of the quills were driven in deeper than others and they tore when they came out. He breathed deeply twice, let half of the breath out, and went back to work. Jerk, pause, jerk — and three more times before he lay back in the darkness, done. The pain filled his leg now, and with it came new waves of self-pity. Sitting alone in the dark, his leg aching, some mosquitoes finding him again, he started crying. It was all too much, just too much, and he couldn’t take it. Not the way it was.

40. “I can’t take it this way, alone with no fire and in the dark, and next time it might be something worse, maybe a bear, and it wouldn’t be just quills in the leg, it would be worse. I can’t do this, he thought, again and again. I can’t. Brian pulled himself up until he was sitting upright back in the corner of the cave. He put his head down on his arms across his knees, with stiffness taking his left leg, and cried until he was cried out.”

41. Building a Text Base • “Some of the quills were driven in (into what? His leg) deeper than others (other what? Quills) and they (the quills that were driven in deeper) tore when they (the deeper-in quills) came out (of his leg).He (Brian) breathed deeply twice, let half the breath out, and went back to work (work on what? Don’t know yet. Suspense. Expect to find out in next sentence). Jerk, pause, jerk (the work is jerking quills out)— and three more times (jerking quills out) he (Brian) lay back in the darkness, done (all the quills jerked out).

42. The pain filled his (Brian’s) leg now, and with it (the pain) came new waves (what were the old waves?) of self-pity. (Brian) Sitting alone in the dark, his (Brian’s)leg aching, some mosquitoes finding him (Brian) again, he (Brian) started crying. It (the whole situation Brian was in) was all too much, just too much, and he (Brian) couldn’t take it(the situation).Not the way it (the situation)was. (What way was the situation? Don’t know yet. Suspense. Expect to find out in the next paragraph.)

43. “I (Brian)can’t take it (the situation) this way (what way? Still don’t know. Suspense), alone with no fire and in the dark (now we know “this way” means “alone with no fire and in the dark”),and next time it (the next situation) might be something worse(than this situation),maybe a bear, and it(the problem that will define the situation)wouldn’t be just quills in the leg, it (the problem)would be worse (than quills in the leg).

44. I (Brian)can’t do this (deal with the problem situation), he (Brian) thought, again and again. I (Brian) can’t “do this (deal with the problem situation).” Brian pulled himself (Brian)up until he (Brian) was sitting upright back in the corner of the cave. He (Brian)put his (Brian’s) head down on his (Brian’s) arms across his (Brian’s) knees, with stiffness taking his (Brian’s) left leg, and cried until he (Brian)was cried out.”

45. Some key moves in building a text base… • Processing words and attaching meaning to them • Using syntax to solidify key relations among ideas • Microstructure • Macrostructure • Resolving reference--things that stand for other things (mainly pronouns and nouns) • Using logical connectives (before, after, because, so, then, when, while, but) to figure out the relations among ideas • Inferring omitted connectives (e.g., figuring out that A is the cause of B) based on PK about the world • Posing questions for short term resolution • Identifying ambiguities for later resolution (wait and see)

46. So how about building a situation model? • The knowledge-comprehension relationship • We use our knowledge to build a situation model for a text • The information in the situation model is now available to become part of our long term memory and store of knowledge • To assist in processing the next bit.

47. Situation Model for Hatchet Passage • Integrate • Text base • Knowledge Base • We have the text base • What might be in the knowledge for a 10-year-old?

48. The blurb from the jacket of Hatchet gives a preview of the book: Thirteen-year old Brian Robeson is on his way to visit his father when the single engine plane in which he is flying crashes. Suddenly, Brian finds himself alone in the Canadian wilderness with nothing but his clothing, a tattered windbreaker and the hatchet his mother has given him as a present — and the dreadful secret that has been tearing him apart since his parents’ divorce. But now Brian has no time for anger, self-pity or despair — it will take all his know-how and determination, and more courage than he knew he possessed, to survive.

49. What a reader knows by Chapter 8 Brian is stranded in the Canadian wilderness with a hatchet and his wits as his only tools for survival. He already has overcome several obstacles, including surviving the plane crash, building a small shelter and finding food. In chapter eight, Brian awakens in the night to realize that there is an animal in his shelter. He throws his hatchet at the animal but misses. The hatchet makes sparks when it hits the wall of the cave. Brian then feels a pain in his leg. He sees the creature scuttle out of his shelter. Brian figures out that the animal was a porcupine because there are quills in his leg.

50. Some prior knowledge that a 5th grader might bring • What sparks look like • How it feels to be scared by an animal • How big porcupines are • To survive you have to have food, water and shelter • To survive you have to be strong