The Failure of McRel
[2,309]
"The unintended message of McRel’s books is that students are not reading content area material in any complexity or depth and that teachers need to find alternate pathways to learning. The message is also that it is possible for any teacher to stay one cool strategy ahead of student ennui if he uses their research-based theories, that students can learn in spite of their apathy, and that test score goals can be attained through the hard work and sheer will power of dedicated practitioners."
McRel stands for Mid-continent Research for Education and Learning. This is a research organization associated with ACSD, the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, which publishes most of its findings. McRel is best known for analyzing extent research, what they call meta-analysis. The McRel researchers gather up a huge number of studies on a particular subject and attempt to draw larger inferences from sometimes highly specialized local research. They like to report their results in terms of effect sizes. An effect size is a standard deviation, representing a 34% gain or loss in achievement. Thus, a gain of 17% would be reported as a .5 effect size. An effect size of .80 or more is considered large.
McRel’s work is extremely influential in today’s educational community. Robert Marzano and Deborah Pickering, two of McRel’s principal author/researchers, are frequent presenters at educational conferences all over the country. Two of McRel’s books are in wide circulation in teacher training and induction programs. The McRel authors are perhaps the most widely read and respected researchers in K-12 education at the present time.
In the BTSA Program we use Classroom Instruction That Works with our first year teachers and What Works in Schools, the follow-up text authored by Robert Marzano, with our second year teachers. I cannot underestimate how important these two books are in shaping the current state of classroom instruction. They are also deeply flawed tomes and dangerous in the hands of teachers.
Even though the title of the first book is Classroom Instruction That Works, the meta-analysis is really an exhaustive investigation of classroom strategies. The book should really be titled Classroom Strategies That Work. The end result of McRel’s work is a table of strategies arranged by effect size that clearly implies that these strategies are the most effective in terms of student learning. When the reader takes a closer look at the research, he finds that McRel compared each strategy to a classroom where that strategy was not in use. But what strategies were in use in the classrooms of the control group? Wouldn’t that matter? How can the reader evaluate the effectiveness of a given strategy unless he knows what strategy it is being compared to. The end result is a table which merely asserts that certain oral or visual, teacher-directed activities are more effective than other oral or visual activities. There is no evidence that the research compared any of these strategies to text-based ones, or independent work.
Interestingly, the word read does not appear in the table of contents or the index to the book Classroom Instruction that Works, the lead text in the series. None of the strategies explicitly discusses reading, or reading expectations, although reading is loosely implied in such strategies as “Summarizing and Note Taking” and “Homework and Practice.” The emphasis is nearly entirely on teacher-directed instructional activities such as setting objectives and cooperative learning.
Reading is discussed in the companion book What Works in Schools, but only in the context of the debate over vocabulary instruction. The authors lay out the case for wide reading as the preferred method for vocabulary development but eventually conclude that explicit instruction in vocabulary, especially academic language, should be coupled with a sustained silent reading program, one which comprises its own part of the school day and is dedicated to student reading in self-chosen texts. Marzano even references his own work at McRel:
Researchers at Mid-continent Research for Education and Learning (McRel) have identified 6,700 terms that are critical to the understanding of 14 different subject areas. . . . Two significant aspects are revealed in the McRel academic vocabulary list. First, the number of terms is small enough to make direct instruction feasible. If students were to receive instruction in about 18 words per week over the course of their K-12 schooling, they would be exposed to all 6,700 terms covering 14 subject areas. . . Second, by definition, these terms are the ones students are most likely to encounter in their subject matter classes.
The absence of any mention of critical reading, or virtually any reading activity other than SSR, gives rise to two contradictory interpretations:
1. Reading, as the gateway skill, is embedded in all of school work. It is therefore assumed by the researchers that students are reading in their classes and, thus, the focus of the research is on what strategies, either preceding or succeeding, the reading are the most effective. In other words, it is a given that all students are reading in schools. The researchers focused, then, on identifying better strategies to maximize the learning results that should accompany the reading.
2. A second interpretation is also possible. Perhaps there is a tacit understanding among practitioners and researchers that students are engaged in little or no reading in content areas, nor can they be induced to do so. However, reading, according to Gardener and his theory of multiple intelligences, is only one path to learning. The meta-analysis implies, therefore, that, utilizing Marzano’s table of effective classroom strategies, it is possible to effectively teach all relevant school content, including academic vocabulary, in the absence of virtually any reading on the part of students, other than self-chosen books in an SSR program. The very existence of the list of 6,700 academic terms appears an implicit acknowledgement that students are not reading in content area texts and will only acquire such language through teacher-directed memorization activities.
A student in a model McRel classroom will likely experience some or all of the following:
As a consultant teacher I have had the opportunity to watch scores of hours of instruction. Regardless of grade level, or content area, certain pedagogical practices, for the most part, the ones anointed by McRel, are systemic and unassailable. In addition, education is now experiencing the first generation of teachers who were themselves taught this way and who are products of teacher-training programs for whom these strategies are nearly sacrosanct.
If you are not producing 7 step lesson plans as conceived by Madeline Hunter, you are not teaching, according to some teacher-training programs. Interestingly, when Marzano discusses Hunter he offers this observation:
Historically, lesson design carried the unintended implication that all lessons should contain all components of lesson design. This was never Hunter’s intent. In fact, she specifically warned against this inference:
“One of the most typical error in supervision is that assumption that ‘all good things must be in every lesson.’ Each element must be thought about by the teacher and its exclusion is a matter of professional decision making rather than default . . . As long as that decision is thoughtful and theory based . . . then the teacher is operating as a professional.”
In spite of Hunter’s warning, her model of lesson design was frequently applied rigidly to hold teachers accountable for the inclusion of all components [pp. 81-83].
Marzano proceeds to reference Benjamin Bloom, and his work with the unit, as the basic element of design, rather than the lesson. Hunter’s elements of good lesson design can then be stretched across a unit and do not need to appear in every lesson. What Marzano fails to recognize is that even Hunter’s 7 step lesson design is a piece of scaffolding. It was her attempt to embed the cognitive steps that comprise, many, but certainly not all, good lessons. Few veteran teachers write out, or even need to write out, such plans if they have embedded the steps, or similar steps, depending on the content area. Scaffolds should always be designed for temporary use and teachers should look for the earliest opportunity to discard them, both for themselves and for their students.
Marzano presents Hunter’s design in a table, part of which is reproduced below:
Elements of Lesson Design
Anticipatory Set
A mental set that causes students to focus on what will be learned.
Objective and Purpose
Not only do students learn more effectively when they know what they’re supposed to be learning and why that learning is important to them, but teachers teach more effectively when they have that same information.
Input
Students must acquire new information about the knowledge, process, or skill they are to achieve.
Modeling
“Seeing” what is meant is an important adjunct to learning.
Checking for Understanding
Before students are expected to do something, the teacher should determine that they understand what they are supposed to do and that they have the minimum skills required.
Guided Practice
Students practice their new knowledge or skill under direct teacher supervision.
Independent Practice
Independent practice is assigned only after the teacher is reasonably sure that students will not make serious errors.
I have termed the teaching design I have advocated in this reading blog “Teaching Backwards.” I have said rather facetiously at more than one conference, and in some articles, that if you take Hunter’s lesson design and turn it on its head, it will become more what students should be doing in schools. The main purpose for teaching backwards is to elevate the role of the writer in the classroom and to privilege the main skill that students should be acquiring: critical reading.
Let’s take a look at lesson design in the teaching backwards model:
Elements of Lesson Design
Independent Practice
All Learning begins in text
The anticipatory set can be taken care of the first few days of class when teachers orient students to their class and how it will function. If done well, this should only be revisited on occasion. There is no need to deliver such motivational pieces 1-3 times a day all year. That design implies a disengaged and reluctant learner. Why assume disengagement?
As much as possible [by that I mean nearly all the time], learning should begin with students engaging text. It then becomes the writer’s responsibility to orient his reader and access his prior knowledge, if necessary. Believe it or not, even math books were originally written this way.
In the absence of suitable text, the teacher can write it. This is no small point. It is crucial for your students to glean ideas by decoding text and correctly deducing voice and tone, rather than for them to listen to these same ideas orally or visually presented by the teacher.
Guided Practice
Can you see how lesson design is turned on its head in the service of critical reading? The independent practice precedes the guided practice. Not only should all learning begin in text, but students should routinely re-read any text they have difficulty with. The guided practice begins only after teachers have given students every chance to independently master text, or, at least, to proceed as far as they can on their own.
Check for Understanding
The initial class discussion of the lesson concepts follows a student’s deep immersion in text-based learning. This is where the teacher can use questioning techniques to find out what his students understand. All discussions should be text-based. Displaying of text is more valuable than culling ideas from the text and transforming them into a visual display.
It is at this point in the lesson that the teacher offers scaffolds to the students who need them. These scaffolds should be for targeted and temporary use. The teacher should continually test for independence by attempting in future lessons to remove the scaffolds.
Modeling
Only after the teacher has pulled all he can from the students regarding their understanding of the text does he model how this might be done differently or more deeply. This modeling can be oral or visual. It can even be the sharing of a critical piece about the reading from a secondary source, or written by the teacher himself.
Application
Students are exposed to new, or similar, concepts, in new texts and asked to transfer skills acquired during the lesson. The main purpose of reading any text is to become a better reader of the next text.
Application/Independent Practice
The last step of a lesson becomes the first step of the next lesson.
The unintended message of McRel’s books is that students are not reading content area material in any complexity or depth and that teachers need to find alternate pathways to learning. The message is also that it is possible for any teacher to stay one cool strategy ahead of student ennui if he uses their research-based theories, that students can learn in spite of their apathy, and that test score goals can be attained through the hard work and sheer will power of dedicated practitioners.
Carol Jago once defined schools as “places where young people go to watch old people work.” This is more true than it used to be. The less students work and are expected to work, the harder dedicated teachers will work to compensate for this. If you really want to see teachers toil, hand them these two books. What these books mostly contain are compensatory strategies that recognize the declining work ethic of students and the diminished expectations on the part of educational researchers.
© Jack Farrell, Conejo Valley Unified School District, 2005
McRel stands for Mid-continent Research for Education and Learning. This is a research organization associated with ACSD, the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, which publishes most of its findings. McRel is best known for analyzing extent research, what they call meta-analysis. The McRel researchers gather up a huge number of studies on a particular subject and attempt to draw larger inferences from sometimes highly specialized local research. They like to report their results in terms of effect sizes. An effect size is a standard deviation, representing a 34% gain or loss in achievement. Thus, a gain of 17% would be reported as a .5 effect size. An effect size of .80 or more is considered large.
McRel’s work is extremely influential in today’s educational community. Robert Marzano and Deborah Pickering, two of McRel’s principal author/researchers, are frequent presenters at educational conferences all over the country. Two of McRel’s books are in wide circulation in teacher training and induction programs. The McRel authors are perhaps the most widely read and respected researchers in K-12 education at the present time.
In the BTSA Program we use Classroom Instruction That Works with our first year teachers and What Works in Schools, the follow-up text authored by Robert Marzano, with our second year teachers. I cannot underestimate how important these two books are in shaping the current state of classroom instruction. They are also deeply flawed tomes and dangerous in the hands of teachers.
Even though the title of the first book is Classroom Instruction That Works, the meta-analysis is really an exhaustive investigation of classroom strategies. The book should really be titled Classroom Strategies That Work. The end result of McRel’s work is a table of strategies arranged by effect size that clearly implies that these strategies are the most effective in terms of student learning. When the reader takes a closer look at the research, he finds that McRel compared each strategy to a classroom where that strategy was not in use. But what strategies were in use in the classrooms of the control group? Wouldn’t that matter? How can the reader evaluate the effectiveness of a given strategy unless he knows what strategy it is being compared to. The end result is a table which merely asserts that certain oral or visual, teacher-directed activities are more effective than other oral or visual activities. There is no evidence that the research compared any of these strategies to text-based ones, or independent work.
Interestingly, the word read does not appear in the table of contents or the index to the book Classroom Instruction that Works, the lead text in the series. None of the strategies explicitly discusses reading, or reading expectations, although reading is loosely implied in such strategies as “Summarizing and Note Taking” and “Homework and Practice.” The emphasis is nearly entirely on teacher-directed instructional activities such as setting objectives and cooperative learning.
Reading is discussed in the companion book What Works in Schools, but only in the context of the debate over vocabulary instruction. The authors lay out the case for wide reading as the preferred method for vocabulary development but eventually conclude that explicit instruction in vocabulary, especially academic language, should be coupled with a sustained silent reading program, one which comprises its own part of the school day and is dedicated to student reading in self-chosen texts. Marzano even references his own work at McRel:
Researchers at Mid-continent Research for Education and Learning (McRel) have identified 6,700 terms that are critical to the understanding of 14 different subject areas. . . . Two significant aspects are revealed in the McRel academic vocabulary list. First, the number of terms is small enough to make direct instruction feasible. If students were to receive instruction in about 18 words per week over the course of their K-12 schooling, they would be exposed to all 6,700 terms covering 14 subject areas. . . Second, by definition, these terms are the ones students are most likely to encounter in their subject matter classes.
The absence of any mention of critical reading, or virtually any reading activity other than SSR, gives rise to two contradictory interpretations:
1. Reading, as the gateway skill, is embedded in all of school work. It is therefore assumed by the researchers that students are reading in their classes and, thus, the focus of the research is on what strategies, either preceding or succeeding, the reading are the most effective. In other words, it is a given that all students are reading in schools. The researchers focused, then, on identifying better strategies to maximize the learning results that should accompany the reading.
2. A second interpretation is also possible. Perhaps there is a tacit understanding among practitioners and researchers that students are engaged in little or no reading in content areas, nor can they be induced to do so. However, reading, according to Gardener and his theory of multiple intelligences, is only one path to learning. The meta-analysis implies, therefore, that, utilizing Marzano’s table of effective classroom strategies, it is possible to effectively teach all relevant school content, including academic vocabulary, in the absence of virtually any reading on the part of students, other than self-chosen books in an SSR program. The very existence of the list of 6,700 academic terms appears an implicit acknowledgement that students are not reading in content area texts and will only acquire such language through teacher-directed memorization activities.
A student in a model McRel classroom will likely experience some or all of the following:
- Advance organizers to cue the anticipatory set. This is usually provided by the teacher.
- Direct instruction during which students will take notes. In the modern classroom, this is perhaps the most important step, followed by note-taking during review sessions before tests.
- There may be readings for students to summarize. But most students skim the reading, looking for bold-faced terms and relevant vocabulary. Most modern textbooks include ample side-bar information which largely replaces the need to read what little text there is. Students often read this material orally to their groups, or to the entire class.
- Visual representations of complex ideas.
- Cooperative grouping where tasks are often divided jig-saw style.
- Homework assignments that very often consist of answering questions, which most can do by skimming text, or filling in boxes on a graphic organizer.
As a consultant teacher I have had the opportunity to watch scores of hours of instruction. Regardless of grade level, or content area, certain pedagogical practices, for the most part, the ones anointed by McRel, are systemic and unassailable. In addition, education is now experiencing the first generation of teachers who were themselves taught this way and who are products of teacher-training programs for whom these strategies are nearly sacrosanct.
If you are not producing 7 step lesson plans as conceived by Madeline Hunter, you are not teaching, according to some teacher-training programs. Interestingly, when Marzano discusses Hunter he offers this observation:
Historically, lesson design carried the unintended implication that all lessons should contain all components of lesson design. This was never Hunter’s intent. In fact, she specifically warned against this inference:
“One of the most typical error in supervision is that assumption that ‘all good things must be in every lesson.’ Each element must be thought about by the teacher and its exclusion is a matter of professional decision making rather than default . . . As long as that decision is thoughtful and theory based . . . then the teacher is operating as a professional.”
In spite of Hunter’s warning, her model of lesson design was frequently applied rigidly to hold teachers accountable for the inclusion of all components [pp. 81-83].
Marzano proceeds to reference Benjamin Bloom, and his work with the unit, as the basic element of design, rather than the lesson. Hunter’s elements of good lesson design can then be stretched across a unit and do not need to appear in every lesson. What Marzano fails to recognize is that even Hunter’s 7 step lesson design is a piece of scaffolding. It was her attempt to embed the cognitive steps that comprise, many, but certainly not all, good lessons. Few veteran teachers write out, or even need to write out, such plans if they have embedded the steps, or similar steps, depending on the content area. Scaffolds should always be designed for temporary use and teachers should look for the earliest opportunity to discard them, both for themselves and for their students.
Marzano presents Hunter’s design in a table, part of which is reproduced below:
Elements of Lesson Design
Anticipatory Set
A mental set that causes students to focus on what will be learned.
Objective and Purpose
Not only do students learn more effectively when they know what they’re supposed to be learning and why that learning is important to them, but teachers teach more effectively when they have that same information.
Input
Students must acquire new information about the knowledge, process, or skill they are to achieve.
Modeling
“Seeing” what is meant is an important adjunct to learning.
Checking for Understanding
Before students are expected to do something, the teacher should determine that they understand what they are supposed to do and that they have the minimum skills required.
Guided Practice
Students practice their new knowledge or skill under direct teacher supervision.
Independent Practice
Independent practice is assigned only after the teacher is reasonably sure that students will not make serious errors.
I have termed the teaching design I have advocated in this reading blog “Teaching Backwards.” I have said rather facetiously at more than one conference, and in some articles, that if you take Hunter’s lesson design and turn it on its head, it will become more what students should be doing in schools. The main purpose for teaching backwards is to elevate the role of the writer in the classroom and to privilege the main skill that students should be acquiring: critical reading.
Let’s take a look at lesson design in the teaching backwards model:
Elements of Lesson Design
Independent Practice
All Learning begins in text
The anticipatory set can be taken care of the first few days of class when teachers orient students to their class and how it will function. If done well, this should only be revisited on occasion. There is no need to deliver such motivational pieces 1-3 times a day all year. That design implies a disengaged and reluctant learner. Why assume disengagement?
As much as possible [by that I mean nearly all the time], learning should begin with students engaging text. It then becomes the writer’s responsibility to orient his reader and access his prior knowledge, if necessary. Believe it or not, even math books were originally written this way.
In the absence of suitable text, the teacher can write it. This is no small point. It is crucial for your students to glean ideas by decoding text and correctly deducing voice and tone, rather than for them to listen to these same ideas orally or visually presented by the teacher.
Guided Practice
Can you see how lesson design is turned on its head in the service of critical reading? The independent practice precedes the guided practice. Not only should all learning begin in text, but students should routinely re-read any text they have difficulty with. The guided practice begins only after teachers have given students every chance to independently master text, or, at least, to proceed as far as they can on their own.
Check for Understanding
The initial class discussion of the lesson concepts follows a student’s deep immersion in text-based learning. This is where the teacher can use questioning techniques to find out what his students understand. All discussions should be text-based. Displaying of text is more valuable than culling ideas from the text and transforming them into a visual display.
It is at this point in the lesson that the teacher offers scaffolds to the students who need them. These scaffolds should be for targeted and temporary use. The teacher should continually test for independence by attempting in future lessons to remove the scaffolds.
Modeling
Only after the teacher has pulled all he can from the students regarding their understanding of the text does he model how this might be done differently or more deeply. This modeling can be oral or visual. It can even be the sharing of a critical piece about the reading from a secondary source, or written by the teacher himself.
Application
Students are exposed to new, or similar, concepts, in new texts and asked to transfer skills acquired during the lesson. The main purpose of reading any text is to become a better reader of the next text.
Application/Independent Practice
The last step of a lesson becomes the first step of the next lesson.
The unintended message of McRel’s books is that students are not reading content area material in any complexity or depth and that teachers need to find alternate pathways to learning. The message is also that it is possible for any teacher to stay one cool strategy ahead of student ennui if he uses their research-based theories, that students can learn in spite of their apathy, and that test score goals can be attained through the hard work and sheer will power of dedicated practitioners.
Carol Jago once defined schools as “places where young people go to watch old people work.” This is more true than it used to be. The less students work and are expected to work, the harder dedicated teachers will work to compensate for this. If you really want to see teachers toil, hand them these two books. What these books mostly contain are compensatory strategies that recognize the declining work ethic of students and the diminished expectations on the part of educational researchers.
© Jack Farrell, Conejo Valley Unified School District, 2005