Learning Progressions
- What are learning progressions?
- Why are they important?
- What did you learn from today’s learning activity?
Learning progressions are essentially the learning of more complex skills based on past knowledge known as foundational skills. It is the continuum of learning of skills or content that is age appropriate in order to learn the more complex skills. Learning progressions are sometimes referred to as learning continua or developmental progressions. The term learning progressions is flexible because it can be used to “describe the sequence of learning in a domain over many years for “big ideas”; or just a term’s work with a greater degree of specificity.” (Kim, 2018) To help picture the importance of learning progressions I am bringing in the example of the class activity we did on Jam board. My group decided to dissect the subject of cooking, it was HARD. To try and pick learning progressions leading up to the more complex skills was difficult because we had to consider the fact that students are at different levels but must teach to the majority in that case with a refresher of “skills you should know”. It would not have been possible to go as far as we did without the help of the BC curriculum website and that activity also made me realize how helpful the website will be in future lesson planning and ability to look back on what students should know from past grades. This also lends a framework to make an assignment at the beginning of the year to assess what students remember from years past.
James Popham describes learning progressions in a way that makes complete sense to me because he uses the analogy of writing, which is my passion. He talks about how a complete learning progression for a particular skill such as writing “might include a half dozen subskills.” (Popham, 2007, P.84) This resonated with me because at an early age students learn the basics of writing, starting from word sounds, the alphabet and how to write their names. This then allows them to build and form sentences and as they go through elementary school, they gather the basic skills and then transition to the skills of lower level writing. In high school, they add to this knowledge by learning to write essays, narrative pieces and different types of writing. However, the learner would not have been able to get to the stage of essay writing without first learning how to write their name, that was the first building block to start the tower of learning.
Scaffolding and zones of proximity are important parts of learning progressions. The concept of the zones of proximal development were created by the psychologist Lev Vygotsky and include two important components: the student’s potential development and the role of interaction with others. (Kurt, 2020) This means two things, “Learning occurs in the zone of proximal development after the identification of current knowledge,” and “the potential development is simply what the student is capable of learning.” (Kurt, 2020) Vygotsky believed that there is a higher level of learning achieved when working together with peers or their teacher, therefore valuing a community based learning model in which all components of a classroom work together to achieve their educational goals. Scaffolding is described as a tool for growth in which students “complete small, manageable steps in order to reach the goal” (Kurt, 2020) and while doing this they are working with a teacher or competent peers to help. This also means that when teachers have a good grasp of a student’s ZPD then the teaching method can be adapted to them, therefore the teacher is acting as a “scaffold.”
References.
Kim, H., & Care, E. (2018, March 27). Learning progressions: Pathways for 21st century teaching and learning. Retrieved November 23, 2020, from https://www.brookings.edu/blog/education-plus-development/2018/03/27/learning-progressions-pathways-for-21st-century-teaching-and-learning/amp/
Kurt, S. (2020, August 18). Vygotsky’s Zone of Proximal Development and Scaffolding. Retrieved November 23, 2020, from https://educationaltechnology.net/vygotskys-zone-of-proximal-development-and-scaffolding/
Popham, J. W. (2007, April). All About Accountability / The Lowdown on Learning Progressions. The Prepared Graduate, 64(7), 83-84. doi:http://www.ascd.org/publications/educational-leadership/apr07/vol64/num07/The-Lowdown-on-Learning-Progressions.aspx
