Research and the Common Core: Can the Romance Survive

1. Research and the Common Core: Can the Romance Survive P. David Pearson UC Berkeley

2. Goals for Today • Review what is in and what underlies the CCSS when it comes to research foundations, especially for comprehension • Examine some emerging evidence about what comprehension in the Common Core might look like • Publisher’s Criteria • Brand new publication by the Aspen Institute: • Close Reading in the Common Core • Discuss some defensible positions to take on curriculum and pedagogy, particularly for reading comprehension instruction.

3. Parallels with Sharon • Strong Content Knowledge? Both cause and consequence of comprehension. • Diamond-Gold and werewolf examples: Close reading in the service of inference drawing: • Close reading ≠ literal comprehension • Just plain reading…Becoming a nation of readers (1984)… • Every day, read some easy text and some challenging text • Consolidate your skills, strategies, and confidence • Stretch yourself with a little help from your friends…

4. Parallels with Camille • Live in San Francisco (not Chicago) for a better experience with Sports Words • One activity maps onto many standards • One standard can map onto many activities • Also true for assessment, especially performance assessment • Close reading in the service of identifying character traits. • Close reading ≠ literal comprehension

5. Sharon is right…Vowels are important • Please excuse Johnny from school last Friday. • He had loose vowels. • Signed, Mrs. Jackson

6. Survey • Elementary? • Secondary? • College? • What’s the difference

7. Elementary Teachers Love • Their kids

8. Secondary Teachers Love • Their subjects

9. College Teachers Love • Themselves

10. What sold me on the standards

11. What they said about reading • Students who meet the Standards readily undertake the close, attentive, reading that is at the heart of understanding and enjoying complex works of literature. They habitually perform the critical reading necessary to pick carefully through the staggering amount of information available today in print and digitally. They actively seek the wide, deep, and thoughtful engagement with high-quality literary and informational texts that builds knowledge, enlarges experience, and broadens world views. They reflexively demonstrate the cogent reasoning and use of evidence essential to both private deliberation and responsible citizenship in a democratic republic. (CCSSO/NGA, 2010, p. 3)

12. Why I want these standards in place--grandchildren

13. What they said about teacher choice • By emphasizing required achievements, the Standards leave room for teachers, curriculum developers, and states to determine how those goals should be reached and what additional topics should be addressed. Thus, the Standards do not mandate such things as a particular writing process or the full range of metacognitive strategies that students may need to monitor and direct their thinking and learning. Teachers are thus free to provide students with whatever tools and knowledge their professional judgment and experience identify as most helpful for meeting the goals set out in the Standards. (CCSSO/NGA, 2010, p. 4).

14. Research Assumptions of the CCSS • We know how reading develops across levels of expertise. • Literacy is best developed and enacted in the service acquiring disciplinary expertise. • Standards establish ends or goals; teachers and schools control the means • Students read better and learn more when they experience adequate challenge in the texts they encounter. • Comprehension involves building models of what a text says, what it means, and how it can be used.

15. Claims without evidence: what I won’t talk about today.. • Assessment: The stuff coming out of SBAC and PARCC is pretty encouraging • Text complexity • Read Freddy’s stuff (go to Textproject.org to see her text complexity modules) • With greater challenge comes greater responsibility for scaffolding access (beyond doing the reading for the students) • Will the three sides of the triangle be equitably represented? • Progressions: Will stand in need of revision based upon experience over the next two years • Prerogative: Will we really deliver? Or will we take away with curriculum the degrees of freedom we offer with the standards? • Disciplinary Perspective: Here to stay for assessment and maybe instruction.

16. Comprehension:How we got to where we are… • The historical pathway to our current operative model of READING COMPREHENSION • The one underlying the Common Core

17. Reader Text Reading Comprehension Context Most models of reading have tried to explain how reader factors, text factors and context factors interact when readers make meaning.

18. Bottom up and New Criticism: Text-centric Reader Text Reading Comprehension Context The bottom up cognitive models of the 60s were very text centric, as was the “new criticism” model of literature from the 40s and 50s (I.A. Richards)

19. Pedagogy for Bottom up and New Criticism: Text-centric • Since the meaning is in the text, we need to go dig it out… • Leads to Questions that • Interrogate the facts of the text • Get to the “right” interpretation • Textual readings--exegisis

20. Reader Schema and Reader Response: Reader-centric Text Reading Comprehension Context The schema based cognitive models of the 70s and the reader response models (Rosenblatt) of the 80s focused more on reader factors--knowledge or interpretation mattered most

21. Pedagogy for Reader-centric • Since the meaning is largely in the reader, we need to go dig it out… • Spend a lot of time on • Building background knowledge • Inferences needed to build a coherent model of meaning • Readers’ impressions, expressions, unbridled response • Readerly readings

22. A few clarifications of schema theory… • Variation along a continuum of top-down vs bottom-up • Kohlers (1967): Reading is only incidentially textual • Anderson (1977): specific words/ideas instantiate general schemata: the text is the trigger to our knowledge stores • Not completely top down process

23. Critical literacy models: Context-centric Reader Text Reading Comprehension Context The sociocultural and critical literacy models of the 90s focused on the central role of context (purpose, situation, discourse community)

24. Pedagogy for Critical literacy models • Since the meaning is largely in the context, we need to go dig it out… • Questions that get at the social, political and economic underbelly of the text • Whose interests are served by this text? • What is the author trying to get us to believe? • What features of the text contribute to the interpretation that money is evil?

25. CI: Balance Reader and Text: little c for context Reader Text Reading Comprehension Context In Kintsch’s model, Reader and Text factors are balanced, and context plays a “background” role--in purpose and motivation.

26. Pedagogical implications for CI • Since the meaning is in this reader text interface, we need to go dig it out… • Query the accuracy of the text base. • What is going on in this part here where it says… • What does it mean when it says… • I was confused by this part… • Ascertain the situation model. • So what is going on here? • What do you know that we didn’t know before?

27. Context Kintchian Model Text 3 Knowledge Base Does>>>>>>>>> 1 Text Base 2 Situation Model Experience Says Means Out in the world Inside the head

28. The vision of comprehension in the CCSS maps on to important theoretical and curricular research • National Assessment of Educational Progress • Four Resources Model of Freebody and Luke • Kintsch’s Construction-Integration Model

29. Key Ideas and Details • 1. Read closely to determine what the text says explicitly and to make logical inferences from it; cite specific textual evidence when writing or speaking to support conclusions drawn from the text. • 2. Determine central ideas or themes of a text and analyze their development; summarize the key supporting details and ideas. • 3. Analyze how and why individuals, events, and ideas develop and interact over the course of a text. • Craft and Structure • 4. Interpret words and phrases as they are used in a text, including determining technical, connotative, and figurative meanings, and analyze how specific word choices shape meaning or tone. • 5. Analyze the structure of texts, including how specific sentences, paragraphs, and larger portions of the text (e.g., a section, chapter, scene, or stanza) relate to each other and the whole. • 6. Assess how point of view or purpose shapes the content and style of a text. • Integration of Knowledge and Ideas • 7. Integrate and evaluate content presented in diverse media and formats, including visually and quantitatively, as well as in words.* • 8. Delineate and evaluate the argument and specific claims in a text, including the validity of the reasoning as well as the relevance and sufficiency of the evidence. • 9. Analyze how two or more texts address similar themes or topics in order to build knowledge or to compare the approaches the authors take.

30. Common Core • Standards 1-3: Key ideas and details • Standards 4-6: Craft and structure • Standards 7-9: Integration of knowledge and ideas

31. NAEP • Locate and Recall • Interpret and Integrate • Critique and Evaluate

32. CCSS NAEP • Key ideas and details • Craft and structure • Integration of knowledge and ideas • Locate and Recall • Interpret and Integrate • Critique and Evaluate

33. Kintsch’s Construction-Integration Model • As you read, for each unit, you • Construct a Textbase • Integrate the Text and Knowledge Base to create a Situation Model • Incorporate information from the Situation Model back into your knowledge base • Use your knowledge to interact with the world. • Start all over again with the next bit of reading • C-I-C-I, anon anon Says Means Does

34. Freebody and Luke’s 4 Resources SAYS • Reader as Decoder: Get the message: • Reader as Meaning Maker: Integrate with knowledge: • Reader as Text Analyst: What’s the real message and how is it crafted • Reader as Text Critic: What’s the subtext? The hidden agenda: MEANS DOES

35. Consistent with Cognitive Views of Reading • Kintsch’s Construction-Integration Model • Build a text base • Construct a “situation” model • Put the knowledge gained to work by applying it to novel situations. Key Ideas and Details Locate and Recall What the text says Decoder Integration of Knowledge and Ideas Integrate and Interpret Meaning Maker What the text means Craft and Structure What the text does Critique and Evaluate User/Analyst/Critic

37. Context Kintchian Model Text 3 Knowledge Base Reader as Text User/Analyst/Critic Does>>>>>>>>> 1 Text Base 2 Situation Model Experience Reader as Decoder Says Reader as Meaning Maker Means Out in the world Inside the head

38. New and different • Most important: A new model of the comprehension process • Text (what the author left on the page) • Text base (the version a reader creates on a veridical reading) • Knowledge (what the reader brings from prior experience) • Model of meaning for a text • Dubbed the Situation Model (mental model) • A model that accounts for all the facts and resources available in the current situation

39. What’s inside the Knowledge box? • World knowledge (everyday stuff, including social and cultural norms) • Topical knowledge (dogs and canines) • Disciplinary knowledge (how history or astronomy works) • Linguistic knowledge • Phonology • Lexical and morphological • Syntax • Genre • Pragmatics (how language works in the world): Discourse, register, academic language, intention • Orthography (how print relates to speech)

40. How does a reader build a text base? Excerpt from Chapter 8 of Hatchet

41. “Some of the quills were driven in deeper than others and they tore when they came out. He breathed deeply twice, let half of the breath out, and went back to work. Jerk, pause, jerk — and three more times before he lay back in the darkness, done. The pain filled his leg now, and with it came new waves of self-pity. Sitting alone in the dark, his leg aching, some mosquitoes finding him again, he started crying. It was all too much, just too much, and he couldn’t take it. Not the way it was.

42. “I can’t take it this way, alone with no fire and in the dark, and next time it might be something worse, maybe a bear, and it wouldn’t be just quills in the leg, it would be worse. I can’t do this, he thought, again and again. I can’t. Brian pulled himself up until he was sitting upright back in the corner of the cave. He put his head down on his arms across his knees, with stiffness taking his left leg, and cried until he was cried out.”

43. Building a Text Base • “Some of the quills were driven in (into what? His leg) deeper than others (other what? Quills) and they (the quills that were driven in deeper) tore when they (the deeper-in quills) came out (of his leg).He (Brian) breathed deeply twice, let half the breath out, and went back to work (work on what? Don’t know yet. Suspense. Expect to find out in next sentence). Jerk, pause, jerk (the work is jerking quills out)— and three more times (jerking quills out) he (Brian) lay back in the darkness, done (all the quills jerked out).

44. The pain filled his (Brian’s) leg now, and with it (the pain) came new waves (what were the old waves?) of self-pity. (Brian) Sitting alone in the dark, his (Brian’s)leg aching, some mosquitoes finding him (Brian) again, he (Brian) started crying. It (the whole situation Brian was in) was all too much, just too much, and he (Brian) couldn’t take it(the situation).Not the way it (the situation)was. (What way was the situation? Don’t know yet. Suspense. Expect to find out in the next paragraph.)

45. “I (Brian)can’t take it (the situation) this way (what way? Still don’t know. Suspense), alone with no fire and in the dark (now we know “this way” means “alone with no fire and in the dark”),and next time it (the next situation) might be something worse(than this situation),maybe a bear, and it(the problem that will define the situation)wouldn’t be just quills in the leg, it (the problem)would be worse (than quills in the leg). I (Brian)can’t do this (deal with the problem situation), he (Brian) thought, again and again. I (Brian) can’t “do this (deal with the problem situation).” Brian pulled himself (Brian)up until he (Brian) was sitting upright back in the corner of the cave. He (Brian)put his (Brian’s) head down on his (Brian’s) arms across his (Brian’s) knees, with stiffness taking his (Brian’s) left leg, and cried until he (Brian)was cried out.”

46. Some key moves in building a text base… • Processing words and attaching meaning to them • Using syntax to solidify key relations among ideas • Microstructure—phrase by phrase, sentence by sentence, connections • Macrostructure—Genre and purpose • Resolving reference--things that stand for other things (mainly pronouns and nouns) • Using logical connectives (before, after, because, so, then, when, while, but) to figure out the relations among ideas • Inferring omitted connectives (e.g., figuring out that A is the cause of B) based on PK about the world • Posing questions for short term resolution • Identifying ambiguities for later resolution (wait and see)

47. So how about building a situation model? • The knowledge-comprehension relationship • We use our knowledge to build a situation model for a text • The information in the situation model is now available to become part of our long term memory and store of knowledge • To assist in processing the next bit.

48. Situation Model for Hatchet Passage • Integrate • Text base • Knowledge Base • We have the text base • What might be in the knowledge for a 10-year-old?

49. The blurb from the jacket of Hatchet gives a preview of the book: Thirteen-year old Brian Robeson is on his way to visit his father when the single engine plane in which he is flying crashes. Suddenly, Brian finds himself alone in the Canadian wilderness with nothing but his clothing, a tattered windbreaker and the hatchet his mother has given him as a present — and the dreadful secret that has been tearing him apart since his parents’ divorce. But now Brian has no time for anger, self-pity or despair — it will take all his know-how and determination, and more courage than he knew he possessed, to survive.

50. What a reader knows by Chapter 8 Brian is stranded in the Canadian wilderness with a hatchet and his wits as his only tools for survival. He already has overcome several obstacles, including surviving the plane crash, building a small shelter and finding food. In chapter eight, Brian awakens in the night to realize that there is an animal in his shelter. He throws his hatchet at the animal but misses. The hatchet makes sparks when it hits the wall of the cave. Brian then feels a pain in his leg. He sees the creature scuttle out of his shelter. Brian figures out that the animal was a porcupine because there are quills in his leg.