From the beginning, the pioneers of Teaching for Understanding (TfU) have emphasized that the framework is not a formula or recipe. It is a set of guidelines that provides enough structure and, at the same time, enough flexibility to serve teachers' real needs. It acknowledges that educators need to adapt and personalize their classroom innovations to accommodate the diverse needs of their students, the unique physical spaces within their schools, and even the policies of their states and countries.

In this second set of reflections from abroad, we join Stone Wiske, WIDE World's co-principal investigator, in Australia and Singapore. Stone tells us about four innovative schools that she visited in these two countries that have very different educational policies and practices. All four schools are supporting school- wide implementations of TfU in distinctly different ways that respond to their individual policy contexts,

In all four locations, a local school leader connected with Harvard Graduate School of Education (HGSE) in some way, whether by attending a degree program, a summer institute, or a WIDE World course. As a means to extend and intensify the HGSE experience, they subsequently engaged their colleagues in WIDE World courses. Since, each has successfully and creatively promoted TfU as a unifying framework and a shared language for wide-scale instructional improvement.

I can't describe all the examples I saw of wonderful educational projects at the Victoria School and River Valley High School in Singapore, or Huntingtower School and A.B. Paterson College in Australia. So, I will describe a few of them that seem particularly emblematic of the way these schools have envisioned, planned, and enacted school improvement strategies with guidance from TfU.

I want to begin with a story about Victoria School in Singapore, where the Principal, Mr. Low Eng Teong, and Vice Principal, Mr. Adrian Lim (a graduate of Harvard Graduate School of Education's Technology in Education Program) have worked closely with teachers to orchestrate a wide-scale implementation of Teaching for Understanding.

They began the initiative by involving heads of departments in the WIDE World course Teaching for Understanding 1. In the course, these teacher- leaders developed curriculum units that exemplified the principles of TfU and taught them with their own students. Then, additional teachers enrolled in WIDE World's courses and have been able to adapt, teach from, and add to the repository of curriculum units.

The school's master schedule looks different now too. TfU units are distributed across the school calendar so that no student is involved in more than one at a time. The units are rich and demanding, and require extra time of students outside of class to prepare and analyze, so the teachers collaborated to design a balanced timeline for TfU projects.

The school leaders also met with teachers who use the TfU framework to talk about how they might remodel existing classrooms in ways that would support various kinds of performances and forms of interaction. How would they like the walls, spaces, furniture to look and function?

When WIDE World Research Director David Eddy Spicer returned from this year's AERA conference (April 9-13), he was recovering from a happy case of Information Overload. The rich and informative conference attracts over 15,000 educational researchers from around the globe, and still we asked him to do the impossible: share the most valuable thing he took away from the sessions he attended.

Here's what he had to say . . .


Think of the scene in the movie "Devil Wears Prada" between Meryl Streep's Miranda and Anne Hathaway's Andy when Miranda upbraids Andy for considering the fashion industry inconsequential. Miranda does so by detailing the genesis of the knock-off blue sweater Andy's wearing:

"You see that droopy sweater you're wearing? That blue was on a dress Cameron Diaz wore on the cover of Runway-shredded chiffon by James Holt. The same blue quickly appeared in eight other designers' collections, and eventually made its way to the secondary designers, the department store labels and then to some lovely Gap Outlet, where you no doubt found it. That color is worth millions of dollars and many jobs."

If you believe in the value of educational research, then your head is nodding along with this trickle-down analogy. If you're a skeptic, a compelling argument can still be made for rubbing shoulders with those teacher educator/researchers who are responsible for cultivating the current and next generation of teachers. All this is to say that however you align yourself with academia and the value of research, AERA has something of potential consequence to offer.

The theme of professional collaboration, especially through teacher teaming, was prominent for me at the conference. Part of this is my own interest in understanding the dynamics of team collaboration, which was the general area of concern of the two presentations I gave. But it was also a consistent theme in all presentations or speeches I attended that had to do with school reform, international comparisons, and teacher learning.

A seminal session in this arena was that held by a group of investigators who have established highly- regarded research programs that address professional collaboration and teacher learning- Judith Warren Little, Magdelene Lampert, Hilda Borko. This year, they presented a symposium on "The Practice of Facilitation in Content-Oriented Teacher Professional Development." In particular, I was impressed with the materials and methods from the STAAR project, which focused on teachers' algebraic reasoning and algebra instruction. The STAAR project has produced a draft facilitators' guide: http://www.colorado.edu/edu cation/staar/documents/FacilitatorsGuide.pdf.

Of particular interest to me was their characterization of a "Problem Solving Cycle" that might be used to deepen understanding of any effort to improve instruction. Methodologically, the use of classroom video to stimulate discussion and subsequent experimentation was key. In particular, Hilda Borko described her team's use of "keyhole" videos in workshops with teachers. These were short 3-5 minute clips of classroom practice that had been carefully selected and tested for the kinds of discussions they generated among workshop participants. (See p. 21 of the facilitator's guide for video selection guidelines.) The overall notion of "problem solving cycle" and the specific idea of keyhole videos offer solid guidance about the kinds of resources for professional learning that promise to make a difference in terms of ongoing teaching practice and student learning.

- David Eddy Spicer, WIDE World Research Director

In last month's newsletter, we shared a new resource website from the Harvard Graduate School of Education called, "Usable Knowledge". Many of you let us know how much you appreciated reading about the practical applications of Harvard research to classroom-based settings.

Since you last logged on to the Usable Knowledge site, a new feature article about Harvard Faculty Member and WIDE World Data Wise instructor Dr. Kathryn Boudett has been added.

The article, The Heart of Data Wise, describes Dr. Boudett's most recent insights into effective ways to help educators use the Data Wise Improvement Process to support increases in student achievement.

If your school year is winding down, it's the perfect time to take a WIDE course and get a head start on instructional planning for the new school year! If you are part way through the school year, you'll appreciate taking a WIDE course while you're actively working with students so that you can apply new concepts immediately.

Here are three bits of good news about the upcoming term, which begins on May 24:

(1) We've extended the deadline. Although the official enrollment deadline has passed, enthusiastic registrants continue to keep the WIDE World phone lines busy. We've extended the registration deadline to May 14, so don't miss out! Review our course opportunities and enroll a team today!

(2) We've extended the discount. As a complement to the new registration deadline, we've also pushed out the Differentiating Instruction and Multiple Intelligences team-based discount to May 14! For help with discounted registration, please contact min_zeng@gse.harvard.edu and reference the "DI May07 Discount."

(3) We've improved the course schedule. In response to your feedback, we have expanded the May course schedule from six weeks to twelve, giving you ample time to digest the course ideas with your teammates and consider the classroom applications!

June 11-12, 2007

Teaching for Understanding 1 instructor Mary McFarland and WIDE World Education Planner Min Zeng will co-present a session entitled "Leading, Teaching, and Learning for Understanding" at Kentucky's 2nd Annual Teacher Leadership Network Meeting. They'll describe the ways educators can use Teaching for Understanding to cultivate classrooms where students are deeply engaged, developing genuine understanding, and preparing for the challenges of the 21st century.

July 15-18, 2007

WIDE World's Research Director, David Eddy Spicer, and Colleen del Terzo, District Director of Curriculum and Instruction in Miami-Dade County Public Schools, will co-present at the NSDC Summer Conference in Denver, CO. The title of their talk is: "Cultures of Learning: The Role of Instructional Improvement and Distributed Leadership in Building Effective Communities." Join us for an illuminating session!