Practice

Theory of Action

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The Model

Origins

Literacy

Bridging Research Practice andDesign Suzanne DonovanExecutive Director

Design

The Future

Going to Scale

The Work

Research

Structures

Science

Math

Organizational Change

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Origin

Related Assets

serpinstitute.org

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The Model

Bridging Research Practice and  Design

Mission Statement: To generate innovative, scalable solutions to our schools' most pressing problems through sustained collaborations among educators, researchers, and designers.

Origins

National Research Council Report (2003): Strategic Education Research Partnership

Underlying premise: “Education does not presently function like medicine or agriculture, where close linkages between research and practice have had major influences on both.”NRC recommendation: Create a national organization with the capacity to integrate research, practice and design to address urgent problems through sustained partnerships with school districts.  SERP was founded in 2003.

National Research Council Report (2003): Strategic Education Research Partnership

• National Headquarters

Structures

• District Partnerships

• Design Center

District Partnerships

Field Sites - Long-term research, development, and implementation collaborations for solving district-defined problems of practice

Other Partnerships - Taking field-site products to scale 

Crafting ideas and solutions into programs and tools for practitioners

Design Center

National Headquarters

Louis Gomez Board MemberMacArthur Chair in Digital Media and Learning Graduate School of Education and Information Studies, University of California Los Angeles Cinthia C. HaanExecutive Vice PresidentCEO, Coletti Investments, LLC Catherine SnowSecretaryPatricia Albjerg Graham ProfessorHarvard Graduate School of Education

SERP Board of Directors 

Cross-site collaboration, partnership maintenance, and quality control

Bruce AlbertsPresident and Chairman
Professor EmeritusUniversity of California San Francisco Phil DaroTreasurerIndependent Consultant Suzanne DonovanPresident Executive DirectorStrategic Education Research Partnership

Generating Improvment through Research and Development in Education Systems (Article, Science Magazine)

Theory of Action

Related Asset

The Work

• Word Generation

• STARI

Public Literacy Materials

• Expanded Word Generation

• RISE Assessment

Literacy

Word Generation Website

Randomized trial in 4 districts

Word Generation Programs

• Expanding Word Generation

Challenge posed by Boston Public Schools: Students don’t leave middle grades ready to comprehend high school texts. SERP’s response: WordGen Weeklycross-content area program for middle grades teaches academic language, argumentation, and critical reasoning in the context of high interest, socially important topics 

Randomized trial in 4 districts

Advancing Academic Language for All! ELL enhancements that include additional background knowledge and language supports

WordGen ElementaryAge-appropriate topics introduced with a video newscast engaging students in academic discussion

• Expanding Word Generation

Expanding Word Generation Programs

Advancing Academic Language for All! website

Science and Social Studies Units for grades 6-8 Six-week long units for middle grades that align with science and social studies specific Common Core literacy standards

RISE Website

Tested in 3 districts to meet ETS psychometric standards

Challenge posed by Boston Public Schools: Current assessments measure how far, but not why a student is behind in reading. SERP’s response:  Reading Inventory and Scholastic Evaluation (RISE) assessment Provides six-dimensional profiles of an individual student’s reading performance

RISE Assessment

Challenge posed by Boston Public Schools: Address the needs of the 25-30% of adolescents identified by the RISE as reading 3-4 years below grade level. SERP’s response: Strategic Adolescent Reading Intervention (STARI)Respects the ability of adolescents to deal with cognitively challenging topics while controlling for text difficultyUses partner strategies to build connections among students who have experienced persistent failure. 

STARI Website

STARI

• AlgebraByExample

• Poster Problems

Public Math Materials

• Tools for Sense-making

Mathematics

• The 5x8 Card

Related Assets

AlgebraByExample

Randomized trial across 8 districts

Challenge posed by districts in the Minority Student Achievement Network:  Students’ misconceptions in Algebra 1 undermine their success but teachers resist changing their instructional practice. SERP’s response:  AlgebraByExample42 assignments specifically designed using proven research strategies to address misconceptionscan be used with any textbook or curriculumcan be used in class or as homework

AlgebraByExample Website

Tools for Sense-making Website

Challenge posed by San Francisco and Oakland Unified:  Prevent the steep decline in mathematics achievement for students in the middle grades. SERP’s response:  A sense-making tool kit for teachersA set of strategies for shifting the focus from “answer getting” to “sense-making”Can be incorporated into any lesson

Tools for Sense-making

Poster Problems

Poster Problems Website

Challenge posed by San Francisco and Oakland Unified: Teachers need fully designed lessons to simultaneously engage students in sense-making and ensure that grade level content is learned.  SERP’s response: Poster Problems12 fully designed diagnostic lessons for 6th and 7th grade mathematicsProvides “tune-ups” for just-in time learning for targeted, grade-level mathematicsProvides a vivid “poster-child” for a type of problem students will encounter frequently

The “Deck Behind” the 5x8 Card (prototype)

The 5x8 Card Website

Challenge posed by Oakland and San Francisco Unified: Prepare principals to lead the shift to the mathematical practices required by the Common Core State Standards. SERP’s response: The 5x8 CardProvides concrete, easy-to-see targets for observationFocuses principals and teachers on student actionsDesigned to minimize the reading requirements and maximize catalytic impact

The 5x8 Card

• Focus 5

Organizational Change

• Internal Coherence Project

Challenge posed by Baltimore City Public Schools:  Students' academic performance drops once they transition to middle school.  SERP’s response: Focus 5Set of classroom-ready deep breathing exercisesEach exercise take less than 5 minutesDesigned to minimize distraction and develop a greater focus for learning

Focus 5

Focus 5 Website

Science

• Reading to Learn

• Learning Progressions

• SciGen Expansion

Reading to Learn Website

Reading to Learn in Science

Challenge posed by multiple districts: Middle school students can’t comprehend their science textbooks; teachers read to students or abandon the text entirely.  SERP’s response: Reading to Learn in Science Intensive, 2-year professional development programSensitizes teachers to specific challenges of reading science textsProvides multiple strategies for building comprehension 

Challenge posed by San Francisco Unified:  When science benchmark assessments reveal what students have not learned, teachers often reteach the same way. SERP’s response: Learning ProgressionsIdentifies the trajectory of conceptual understanding on major physical science topicsProvides assessment questions that target critical conceptsMaps student responses onto the progression so teachers can see where to go next with their instruction

Learning Progressions

AlgebraByExample

Word Generation: downloaded by disticts in all 50 states and 56 countries 5x8 Card: scaled district-wide in SFUSD and OUSD, popular across California Internal Coherence Survey and Protocol: used under contract in Central Valley, Fort Worth RISE: available for purchase through ETS  STARI: downloaded by teachers in 46 states   Poster Problems: used as exemplars on EQuIP website AlgebraByExample: 554 teachers visited the download center to access materials in March, 2017 alone

STARI

Going to Scale

Poster Problems

Click to view SERP’s planned shift in the coming years.

• SERP Research Centers

Graduate Schools of Education create independent SERP Research Centers. SERP creates networks of complementary researchers across centers, and accumulates knowledge and tools.

Function and Features:give leading institutions a prominent leadership rolelegitimize research and graduate education focused on problems of education practicelower barriers to researchers’ engagement by managing partnership connections and providing design expertisecreate venue for collaboration across departments within university schools of education

Innovation and Induction Corridors: Transforming Today’s Schools for Tomorrow’s World

• Innovation Zones

SERP works with partner districts to create innovation zones SERP, Research Centers, and innovation zone staff collaborate on coordinated programs of research, development, and implementation

Innovation and Induction Corridors: A Proposal for Integrating Research, Development, and Teacher Professional Preparation 

Function and Features: corridor of feeder schools form pre-K-12 to address problems at the start, build on gains over years, study longitudinal impactteachers who embrace innovation to work together with supportinduct new teachers in the culture of innovation and improvement~carry practices and expectations to other schools~change culturepolitical protection from opponents, since students, teachers, and administrators can go anywhere else in the district university researchers and teacher education faculty interact and collaborate

SERP expands design capacity: provides support to projects initiated in independent SERP Centers and within Innovation Zones

Challenge posed by Boston Public Schools:  There is wide variation across schools in student performance when implementing the same reform efforts. SERP’s response: Internal Coherence Assessment and Intervention ProtocolsProvides school-level measures of the research-identified contributors to school performanceProvides strategies for building coherence in response to the survey data

Internal Coherence Project

Internal Coherence Website

Science Generation

Challenge posed by the Simons Foundation:  Can Science Generation be expanded to cover new NGSS topics and provide teacher learning opportunities? SERP’s response: New curriculum for teaching about cells, waves, ecology, densityJust in time content learning resources for teachersTeacher editions on handheld devices with dynamic content and projectable assets

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