Both/And Club: Want to Join?

As we search for ways to help schools achieve more, it’s tempting to frame solutions as “either/or” choices. So often we take sides and expend a lot of time and energy insisting that our choice is the answer and must prevail. For example:

• Either we teach students to read using phonics OR we employ whole language.

• Either we teach kids to memorize important math facts OR we focus on the why and how of math.

• Either we teach a traditional core curriculum focused on mastery OR we teach kids how to get ready for our rapidly changing world by fully integrating technology and the Internet into our instruction.

I don’t know about you, but I’m more than a little weary with all these turf battles. I’m thinking about starting a both/and club. Want to join?!

I’m convinced that in most – if not all – of these endless debates, each side has a piece of the answer. (Maybe that’s why they’re endless.) What if we changed our strategy and routinely began our quest for solutions by searching for common ground? What if we no longer marched behind our castle walls at the first sign of disagreement?

Members of our new club can learn a lot from two education wars of the past: reading and basics-first.

The report on reading issued in 2000 by the National Reading Panel created an opportunity to put to rest the either/or debate over literacy instruction. The panel found that students need to be able to decode AND comprehend — and one powerful way to deepen their comprehension once they know how to decode is to expose them to lots of good literature. Many educators have begun to accept the good sense embedded in these findings.

The (not unrelated) basics-first battle has also begun to cool down. Cognitive scientists like David Perkins and Daniel Willingham are demonstrating through analysis of research that for students to understand and apply what they are learning, it helps if they have memorized important things like the mathematical times table or the periods during which key historical events occurred. In his recent book, Why Don’t Students Like School? A Cognitive Scientist Answers Questions about How the Mind Works and What it Means for the Classroom, Willingham writes:

“Data from the last thirty years led to a conclusion that is not scientifically challengeable: thinking well requires knowing facts, and that’s true not simply because you need something to think about. The very processes that teachers care about the most – critical thinking processes such as reasoning and problem-solving – are intimately intertwined with factual knowledge that is stored in long-term memory (not just found in the environment).” (2009, p. 22).
For the most part, teachers and principals don’t care about policy wars. They want to adopt practices that will best help their kids achieve. Schools that are embracing these both/and perspectives on reading and the basics are reaping the benefits of a sensible, blended approach to instruction.

The and/or of 21st century skills

Now comes the widely heralded new report Defining a 21st Century Education, written for the Center for Public Education by Craig Jerald, a former senior research editor at Education Week. Jerald demonstrates the value of a both/and view of 21st century learning, paying equal attention to the need for students to master the core curricula and to gain the skills necessary to command new technologies. Jerald, who has also been a principal partner at The Education Trust, writes:

“Unfortunately, too many educators assume that doing well on less demanding multiple choice tests requires teaching only the factual knowledge and routine skills such tests assess. But research shows that to be false. For example, one team of researchers in Chicago conducted a large-scale study to answer the question, “What happens to students’ scores on standardized tests of basic skills when urban teachers[…]assign work that demands complex thinking and elaborated communication”? The answer, they found, is that such students gain more and score better than students who receive mostly lower-level, multiple-choice-type assignments.

“However, it is important to avoid simplistic “either or” thinking about 21st century skills. Factual knowledge, the ability to follow directions, knowing how to find a right answer when there is one—all of these things will still be important in the 21st century. The key is to develop a curriculum that teaches students those things as well as how to apply what they learn to solve real world problems and helps them to develop the broader competencies increasingly important for success in an ever more complex and demanding world. The right word is “and,” not “or.” To that end, applied literacies and broader competencies are best taught within traditional disciplines.” (2009, p. 69, emphasis added).
Make sense? Students, whether they know it or not, have been wanting the both/and point of view in schools for years. When students ask “why do I need to know this?” or “will this be on the test?”, they are begging for teachers (and the adult world in general) to tell them how this fact, concept or idea relates to them and their future.

Reading the Jerald report, I thought back to Alabama Best Practices Center’s intense work with 20 schools during our 21st century learning project supported by Microsoft. One day during a live online session, a technology teacher was bemoaning how much she hated teaching students how to use Excel spreadsheets. She added that the only people who probably hated it more than she did were her students.

After querying this teacher about her methods, our consultant suggested that she move away from making Excel the main focus of her instruction and instead let students identify a “quantifiable” topic they enjoyed (baseball, music, movies, etc.) and build a spreadsheet using data about that topic. The following week the teacher told us that not only did the idea work, but both she and the students had fun. Thanks to a simple shift in perspective, they all learned more about the software AND their interest.

Learning by doing isn’t new. When I was back in high school, my junior English teacher drew us into Shakespeare’s Macbeth by putting the title character on trial. All of a sudden, antiquated language and traditions came to life as we prepared for our roles as attorneys, judges and witnesses. I’m sure most of you have similar stories to tell.

Here’s what I think: It’s important to assess the quality of teaching and learning, whether we’re working on the basics or letting students apply those basics through high-interest reading, in-depth projects, or the use of web-based tools that allow them to interact with the world beyond school walls. Standards and accountability matter a lot.

But educators and policy makers don’t have to pick sides. It’s possible to BOTH adhere to high standards AND to enrich learning through instruction that excites and engages kids and helps them see why the knowledge and skills matter.

Now… can I call the first meeting of the Both/And Club to order?