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You
are here: Applied Learning Students Score Higher on Standardized Tests
by Dan Keller
Students learn better when they are doing project- and problem-based applied learning set in the context of the environment, according to Closing the Achievement Gap: Using the Environment as an Integrating Context for Learning. The study, conducted by the State Education and Environment Roundtable , examined 40 elementary, middle, and high schools from 13 different states. The results were clear: students experiencing environment-based Applied Learning scored better on standardized tests. There were 11 different standardized tests used for the study, including the Iowa Test of Basic Skills (ITBS) and the Stanford Nine Achievement Test (SAT9). Additional benefits included reduced discipline and classroom management problems, increased student engagement and enthusiasm for learning, and greater student pride and ownership in accomplishments. The study also found that students increased in interpersonal abilities and teachers reported feeling revitalized.
What is "Environment as an Integrating Context (EIC) for Learning?"
The report explains: "Environment as the Integrating Context for Learning designated pedagogy that employs natural and socio-cultural environments as the context for learning while taking into account the 'best practices' of successful educators." The basic concepts of EIC include:
1) Interdisciplinary Integration of Subject Matter: "Students who learn within the resulting comprehensive framework begin to recognize how seemingly disconnected elements fit together to explain the world around them."
2) Collaborative Instruction: Collaborative instruction teams typically include several teachers from different classrooms, as well as involving parents and specialists from the community, local businesses, government agencies, nature centers, zoos, and universities.
3) Emphasis on Problem Solving Projects: "Educators emphasize project- and problem-based instructional approaches that appeal to a variety of sensory processes and learning styles. These approaches combine hands-on, minds-on methods to take advantage of students cognitive, kinesthetic, affective, and sensory abilities. Such teaching more effectively engages students, who have a broad range of learning modalities, than traditional pedagogies."
4) Constructivist Approaches: "As [students] pursue their own topics of interest, answers to questions they identified, and solutions to problems they encountered, each student or group of students needs a different type of support and guidance."
EIC describes a vision consistent with Applied Learning: students do real work that really matters. "By helping students apply their classroom knowledge across a wide spectrum of academic and authentic problems, EIC approaches build bridges between theory and reality, schools and communities, children and their futures. EIC helps students make sense of their studies and their world by helping them put the pieces together."
Sources:
Liebermann, G.A., Hoody, L.L. (1998) Closing the Achievement Gap: Using the Environment as an Integrating Context for Learning. San Diego, CA: State Education and Environment Roundtable (Published by Science Wizards, Poway, CA)
You may contact Dan Keller at kellerd@edmonds.wednet.edu
Posted with permission by
New Horizons for Learning
http://www.newhorizons.org
E-mail: info@newhorizons.org
