Module 2, Week 5

CLO 1 - Describe the diversity of students and its impacts on schools.

CLO 2 - Examine various educational models and the role of schools in communities and with government. 

CLO 3 - Analyze teacher practice and decision-making. 

CLO 4 - Explore the professional and ethical complexities of teaching. 

CLO 5 - Synthesize foundational elements of education into a personal philosophy of education and teaching. 

CLO 6 - Evaluate professional learning of pre-service and in-service teachers and educators. 

• Examine public schools' value frameworks.

• Identify indicators of values present in schools.

• Synthesize reasons for school change. 

• Analyze school values for connections to personal educational experiences. 

• Analyze school values for connections to broader social, political, historical, and economic themes. 

• Generate perceptions of school values to in-classroom expectations. 

One "top-down," heavily structural perspective on society might suggest:

Society has norms and social structures that influence communities. These communities need schools to support the learning of their members. The schools are guided by policy and money, often directly provided by the local, state, and federal government. These policies and value structures influence teachers who need to make professional and ethical decisions in classrooms with students for the purpose of learning. 

Academic Vocabulary in the Field of Education

Professional Vocabulary in Hawaiʻi Public Schools

Primary Concept - What is Education For? 

*Adapted from Sir Ken Robinson. https://www.edutopia.org/article/what-education/

People differ sharply on this question, which is known as an “essentially contested concept.” Like “democracy” and “justice,” “education” means different things to different people. 

Various factors can contribute to a person’s understanding of the purpose of education, including their background and circumstances. It is also influenced by how they view related issues such as ethnicity, gender, and social class.

We need to be clear on terms. 

A few terms are often confused or used interchangeably—“learning,” “education,” “training,” and “school,” for example—but there are essential differences between them. 

• Learning is the process of acquiring new skills and understanding. 

• Teaching is the act of influencing learning. 

• Education is an organized system of learning. 

• Training is a type of education that is focused on learning specific skills. 

• Achievement is the completion of set structures of education systems. 

• Success is the application of learning and achievement in society to reach goals (money, power, status).   

A school is a community of learners: a group that comes together to learn with and from each other. We must differentiate these terms: children love to learn and do it naturally; many have a hard time with education, and some have big problems with school.

There are many assumptions about traditional, compulsory education. 

• Young people need to know, understand, and be able to do certain things they most likely would not if they were left to their own devices. 

• Compulsory education prepares for what will come afterward, like getting a good job or going on to higher education.

So, what does it mean to be educated now? What these things are and how best to ensure students learn them are complicated and often controversial issues. 

Education should expand our consciousness, capabilities, sensitivities, and cultural understanding. It should enlarge our worldview. As we all live in two worlds—the world within you that exists only because you do and the world around you—the core purpose of education is to enable students to understand both worlds. In today’s climate, there is also a new and urgent challenge: to provide forms of education that engage young people with the global economic issues of environmental well-being.

This core purpose of education can be broken down into four primary purposes.

*Adapted from - Imagine If: Creating a Future for Us All by Sir Ken Robinson, Ph.D and Kate Robinson

Primary Concept - What should students learn? 

According to Ken Robinson...

The conventional curriculum is based on separate subjects. These are prioritized according to beliefs around the limited understanding of intelligence and what is deemed necessary later in life. 

The idea of “subjects” suggests that each subject, whether mathematics, science, art, or language, stands utterly separate from all the other subjects. This is problematic. Mathematics, for example, is not defined only by propositional knowledge; it is a combination of types of knowledge, including concepts, processes, methods, and propositional knowledge. This is also true of science, art, languages, and other subjects. It is, therefore, much more useful to focus on disciplines rather than subjects.

Disciplines are fluid; they constantly merge and collaborate. In focusing on disciplines rather than subjects, we can also explore the concept of interdisciplinary learning. This is a much more holistic approach that mirrors real life more closely—rarely, activities outside of school are as clearly segregated as conventional curriculums suggest. For example, a journalist writing an article must be able to call upon skills of conversation, deductive reasoning, literacy, and social sciences. A surgeon must understand the academic concept of the patient’s condition and the practical application of the appropriate procedure. At least, we would certainly hope this is the case should we find ourselves being wheeled into surgery.

The concept of disciplines brings us to a better starting point when planning the curriculum: to ask what students should know and be able to do due to their education. 

The four purposes above lead to eight core competencies that, if adequately integrated into education, will equip students who leave school to engage in the economic, cultural, social, and personal challenges they will inevitably face. Rather than be triggered by age, they should be interwoven and nurtured from the beginning of a student’s educational journey. These competencies (in one values framework) are:

• Curiosity, 

• Creativity, 

• Criticism, 

• Communication, 

• Collaboration, 

• Compassion, 

• Composure, and 

• Citizenship. 

Values - Human values and their functions are very relevant to the design of social and organizational structures and even play an integral and iterative (changing) role in the design process. 

On the one hand, whenever we talk about basic needs, goals, motivations, actions and behavior, decision-making, or the culture of human beings, we point to concepts that are formed and influenced by human values. 

On the other hand, products have meanings that convey the human values behind their functions. Values can be embedded in products and services, and the values expressed by the designer and leaders should be accessible or interpreted by the user. 

It is worth exploring the human values behind every human action, goal, or decision because it can provide a broad and sensitive view of important questions of purpose and reason.  This view is essential for understanding a designer's perspective of what is preferable to significant stakeholders and guiding or making appropriate decisions.

Frameworks - "What kind of vision, beyond academic achievement, does the Hawai‘i State Department of Education (HIDOE) have for their public school graduates? On their journey toward answering this question, the Board of Education (BOE), HIDOE, and an array of community partners came across answers to questions they didn’t initially expect. In the end, the Hawai‘i education community arrived at a policy to support Nā Hopena A‘o (HĀ), laying out six fundamental outcomes to strengthen connections across the entire public school system and the communities in which they exist, including students, teachers, staff, administrators, parents, and community members: a strengthened sense of belonging, responsibility, excellence, aloha, total wellbeing, and Hawai‘i.

Hawaiʻi Board of Education policy emphasized the importance of Hawaiian education for ALL students in the public school system as a foundation for college, career, and community readiness. It established the Office of Hawaiian Education (OHE). It stated that all Hawaiian Language Immersion Program (Ka Papahana Kaiapuni) teachers must be dual-qualified to teach English and Hawaiian. It also reinforces the six GLOs: self-directed learners, community contributors, complex thinkers, quality producers, effective communicators, and effective and ethical users of technology. The new amendment was intended to produce updated values-based GLOs that reflected the unique cultural context of Hawaiʻi. 

The HIDOE group used the following support frameworks:

• The existing HIDOE GLOs;  

• Reclaiming Youth at Risk: Our Hope for the Future (Brendtro, 2009);  

• Nā Honua Mauli Ola (University of Hawaiʻi at Hilo);  

• Nā Lei Naʻauao Hawaiian Focused Charter Schools Success Indicators;

• Kamehameha Schools Working Exit Outcomes Framework;  

• Native Hawaiian Education Council Common Indicators Matrix;  

• Indigenous Cultural Well-being Continuum (Demmert, 2008);  

• Dine Cultural Content Standards;  

• Jackson County Schools General Learner Outcomes;  

• The Alaska Cultural Standards for Students;  

• Partnership for 21st Century Skills 21st Century Student Outcomes; 

• Hawaiʻi P-20 Definition of College, Career, and Community Readiness in Hawaiʻi; 

• The University of Portland—International Languages & Cultures Learning Outcomes. 

Primary Concept - What Cultural or Value Frameworks Do Schools Use?

Hawaiʻi Department of Education - General Learner Outcomes (GLOs) - THE HAWAII DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION (HIDOE) HAS SIX OVERARCHING LEARNING GOALS THAT DRIVE EDUCATION IN OUR CLASSROOMS, THE GLOs.

This is the one thing that is supposed to give meaning and purpose to the school and hopefully get the administration and staff into the same mindset. These are the ideas that support the mission of a school. As far as the state of Hawai’i is concerned, the schools are developed for this purpose. See the DOE GLO Rubric.  

General Learner Outcomes (GLOs) are the overarching goals of standards-based learning for all students in all grade levels. Observable behaviors, which are demonstrated in daily classroom activities, are evidence of GLOs. Student effort, work habits, and behavior are essential, and they must be evaluated separately from academic performance in the content areas (under Board of Education Policy 4501: Assessing/Grading Student Performance).

The GLOs should be an integral part of the school culture, as the GLOs do not exist in isolation. The six GLOs are: 

1. Self-directed Learner (The ability to be responsible for one's learning)

2. Community Contributor (The understanding that human beings need to work together)

3. Complex Thinker (The ability to demonstrate critical thinking and problem-solving)

4. Quality Producer (The ability to recognize and produce quality performance and quality products)

5. Effective Communicator (The ability to communicate effectively)

6. Effective and Ethical User of Technology (The ability to use a variety of technology effectively and ethically)

GLO 1: Self‐Directed Learner - The ability to be responsible for one’s own learning

1.1 – Sets priorities and establishes achievable goals and personal plans for learning

1.2 – Plans and manages time and resources to achieve goals

1.3 – Monitors progress and evaluates learning experiences

GLO 2: Community Contributor - The understanding that it is essential for human beings to work together

2.1 – Respects people’s feelings, ideas, abilities and cultural diversity

2.2 – Cooperates with and helps and encourages others in group situations

2.3 – Understands and follows rules of conduct

2.4 – Analyzes conflict and applies methods of cooperative resolution

2.5 – Demonstrates responsible and ethical behavior in decision making

2.6 – Reasonably implements a solution

GLO 3: Complex Thinker - The ability to perform complex thinking and problem solving

3.1 – Applies prior learning experiences to new situations

3.2 – Considers multiple perspectives in analyzing a variety of problems

3.3 – Generates creative ideas and approaches to developing solutions

3.4 – Evaluates the effectiveness of solutions and make adjustments as needed

GLO 4: Quality Producer - The ability to produce quality performance and quality products

4.1 – Recognizes quality performances and products

4.2 – Sets criteria to meet or exceed general expectations and standards

4.3 – Produces evidence that meets or exceed general expectations and standards

GLO 5: Effective Communicator - The ability to communicate effectively

5.1 – Listens to, interprets, and uses information effectively

5.2 – Communicates effectively and clearly for a variety of audiences and purposes

5.3 – Reads various types of written materials and literature

5.4 – Communicates effectively through writing for a variety of audiences and purposes

5.5 – Observes and makes sense of visual information

GLO 6: Effective and Ethical User of Technology - The ability to use a variety of technologies effectively and ethically

6.1 – Uses a variety of technologies in producing an idea or a product

6.2 – Uses a variety of technologies to access and generate information

6.3 – Understands the impact of technologies

6.4 – Uses the appropriate technologies

6.5 – Understands and respects the legal and ethical issues of technology

Hawaiʻi Department of Education - Hā Cultural Framework - Over recent years, and in collaboration with Native Hawaiian Education entities, HIDOE has also integrated a more culturally relevant framework to guide students' thinking and social and emotional behavior. It is called Nā Hopena A‘o (HĀ)—the introduction to the framework known as HĀ is located here.  

The HĀ philosophy - HĀ is a set of six outcomes that are firmly rooted in Hawaiʻi. These six-outcomes contain values that are universal to all cultures. Educating students in an environment of HĀ will add value to and strengthen each and every person who engages over the course a learning journey. Department faculty and staff should also be models of behaviors that direct students to what these outcomes might look like in practice. Those who are moved by the goals and intentions of HĀ are encouraged to use it in their everyday practice. OHE would welcome any moʻolelo (stories) of best practices and successes that you would like to share as we plan forward.

Nā Hopena A‘o (“HĀ”) focuses on the following:

Frameworks will be presented through this course. Each one has its own orientation, values, history, language, purpose, creators, etc. Each of them is trying to influence thinking and learning. 

A framework is a tool for organizing information. A framework should:

• organize information around one topic or question. Frameworks should not be general tools.

• identify the necessary information by filtering out the unnecessary information

• supply information for decision making 

• increasing the ability for analysis. 

• It provides useable and practical insight

• It encourages and rewards deeper learning

• and provides opportunities for a greater understanding of a context.

• It encourages more effective communication

• organizes information so that the relationships are transparent. 

• introduce a common language and those who share it can understand each other and a situation even more rapidly.

• Imagine If: Creating a Future for Us All by Sir Ken Robinson, Ph.D., and Kate Robinson

• HĀ is located here

• DOE GLO Rubric

• Reclaiming Youth at Risk: Our Hope for the Future (Brendtro, 2009);  

• Nā Honua Mauli Ola (University of Hawaiʻi at Hilo);  

• Nā Lei Naʻauao Hawaiian Focused Charter Schools Success Indicators;

• Kamehameha Schools Working Exit Outcomes Framework;  

• Native Hawaiian Education Council Common Indicators Matrix;  

• Indigenous Cultural Well-being Continuum (Demmert, 2008);  

• Dine Cultural Content Standards;  

• Jackson County Schools General Learner Outcomes;  

• The Alaska Cultural Standards for Students;  

• Partnership for 21st Century Skills 21st Century Student Outcomes; 

 Assessment 2.2 - Hā & GLOs Analysis

Module 2, Week 6 - An Exploration of Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) Frameworks