Context: A group of new special education teachers and interventionists need to learn how to implement a new phonics program for their middle school students who are decoding significantly below grade level. The teachers would have very little understanding of phonics instruction. This learning experience would use an experiential learning approach with an authentic assessment.

Why: In this example, I wanted to build a scenario around a learning experience that normally would have the potential to be rooted in lectures and rote memorization of a scripted program into one that would engage the adult learner more and allow them to buy-in to the learning. 

Description of the Learning Scenario:

• First: The Why: The experience would begin with the learners being able to experience first-hand the importance of implementing a phonics program with students. They would listen to recordings of a class of 7th grade students reading a 7th grade level text. Each of the students would have a variety of decoding abilities. The adult learners would listen to these recording and also be able to see the students’ grades on a five question multiple choice test. Students would be labeled as “Student A”, “Student B”, “Student C”, etc.. The adult learners would then reflect on what they observed. They would generate questions about what they noticed, be asked to sort students based on what they noticed, and come up with possible instructional pathways based on their conclusions. This activity would allow teachers to experience something first-hand before diving into training around a program. Teachers would see the connection between successful decoding and comprehension scores and walk away with the understanding the importance of implementing phonics instruction for struggling middle school readers.

• Second: Observation and Analysis: The learners would then observe a veteran teacher who is effectively implementing the phonics program (or if needed, they could watch videos of their instruction). Prior to observing the teacher, the learners would be directed to consider instructional moves that this teacher makes and how students respond. They might consider:What do they do well? What parts of the lesson are especially effective? How do they address misconceptions or student errors? How do they engage and motivate students? Which areas of the lesson are more challenging for students? Is the teacher flexible? The learners would be told that after their observations, they would design a rubric that measures how effective a phonics lesson is. The adult learners would observe the teacher and would then review the teachers’ formative and summative assessments to see how students are responding to the program.

• Third: Debriefing and Rubric Creation: After observing a veteran teacher, learners would meet with their coach and other learners to debrief what they have noticed so far. They might be asked about the components of each lesson that they noticed, which activities they saw strong student engagement with, and what the teacher did to facilitate strong student engagement and proficiency. The learning coach would have the learners share the rubric that they created and have the learners work together to create a normed rubric of what excellent instruction looks like.

• Fourth: Instructional Videos and Content Knowledge: The learners would begin more formal instruction in the specifics of the scripted program. They would complete self-paced, interactive instructional videos that would assess their understanding parts of the program. These videos would be focused mainly on repetition and memorization of components of a lesson in the program along with basic understanding of terminology that they might encounter in the program. 

• Fifth: Rehearsing and Feedback: With their learning coach and peers, the learners would then take turns rehearsing a lesson that they would teach to a real group of students in a few days. Their peers would role play as students and be encouraged to make errors every so often that the teacher would respond to. This would allow the peers who are watching to also consider student misconceptions throughout the lesson. After each teacher taught their sample lesson to a group, they would reflect on their teaching and receive feedback on the normed rubric with their peers. The learner might point out which areas of the lesson were challenging for them in their facilitation and which areas they felt successful with. They might then set a goal for their first lesson with students and where they would like to score on the rubric.

Description of the Authentic Assessment and its Ties to Experiential Learning

The Authentic Assessment: The final step would be the authentic assessment. It would be where the learner would be able to showcase the skills and content that they have gathered through this learning experience. This is the part where the learner is going to “do” the subject, meaning that in this final step the learner would implement a lesson from the program with students while their learning coach observed. After the lesson, the learning coach would debrief the lesson with the learner and collaboratively score them on the rubric, which would allow the learner to reflect and the learning coach to provide targeted feedback. This assessment and learning experience ties to experiential learning because throughout this learning experience, the learners have been able to role play, reflect, observe, demonstrate, and ultimately “learn by doing.” Following this first facilitation of a phonics lesson for students, the adult learners would begin teaching regular lessons to students and would receive biweekly observations and feedback sessions with their learning coach.

Which other learning theories are present in this learning experience?

Behaviorist: The instructional videos that the learners would watch would fit the behaviorist approach. They would receive immediate feedback in the form of a green check (correct) or red X (incorrect) for answering questions that assess their understanding of the components of a lesson in the program and general phonics knowledge. There would be repetition of ideas throughout the videos and teachers would receive a certificate for completing the videos with 80% or more of the answers correct. They would be able to advance to the next portion of the training experience upon earning a certificate, which is rehearsing a lesson.

Cognitivist: Reflection and self-regulation, chunking and scaffolding, and observational learning are essential to this learning experience. This experience is scaffolded and chunked into specific steps so that learners are able to build up to teaching a lesson on their own. The experience starts with learning why decoding matters. Then, learners observe a skilled instructor teach a lesson, collaborate to create a rubric, gain knowledge through instructional videos, rehearse a lesson, teach a lesson, and finally debrief this lesson with a learning coach. This scaffolding helps learners reflect at all stages throughout the process. After each step, learners have the opportunity to self-regulate by debriefing and reflecting with peers and a learning coach. They would be able to reflect on their understanding and set learning goals during their rehearsal of the lesson. They would also self-regulate by considering which components of the lesson were challenging and which came more naturally. Lastly, observational learning plays a large role in this learning experience. Students observe a skilled teacher and then observe each other. They consider the “consequences” of the teacher and peers’ lessons by thinking about how students respond and how successful the instructors with helping students learn the material.

Constructivist: There are a couple of moments in this experience that align to the constructivist approach. The introductory activity where learners listen to recordings of readers and use these to make sense of what students need and the importance of decoding is constructivist because it is exploratory. Instead of receiving a lecture or just being told this information, learners are able to discover on their own the importance of decoding and its effect on comprehension. Another moment is when teachers are tasked to create a rubric of an excellent lesson after observing a colleague. They are not just being given a rubric, but instead are discovering what excellent instruction looks like by observing a teacher and students. They are then able to bring their self-created rubric to peers who have also created rubrics and collaborate and discuss to develop a normed rubric. This experience allows students to construct knowledge together and bring in their prior experience into a collaborative space. Each teacher might value, notice, or emphasize different components of the instruction that they observed. Learners being able to bring this variety of viewpoints together will help them to develop a meaningful rubric.

Andragogy: This learning experience is for adult learners. Above all else, this experience has immediate relevance and impact on their jobs. Each of these learners will need to teach a phonics program throughout the school year to readers who need extra decoding support. This learning experience will prepare them to do a core piece of their job. Aside from this, the learning experience is task-oriented. While the learners do need to learn some content (such as the components of a phonics lesson in this scripted program), this learning experience seeks to branch out of lectures and rote memorization and instead has learners observe, synthesize, collaborate, and reflect to solve a problem: that middle grades students are struggling decoding. The adult learners come up with rubrics through observation and are motivated to become successful because they and their peers have worked to generate the criteria for success.

Ultimately, this learning experience which is rooted in experiential learning and authentic assessment uses components of all of the learning theories to help adult learners successfully implement a phonics program for middle grade readers.

References

Center for Innovative Teaching and Learning (n.d.). Authentic assessment. Indiana University Bloomington. Retrieved February 26, from

https://citl.indiana.edu/teaching-resources/assessing-student-learning/authentic-assessment/

Bates, A.W. (2019). Teaching in a digital age: guidelines for teaching and learning. Tony Bates Associates Ltd. CC BY-NC 4.0. Retrieved February 26,

2023, from https://opentextbc.ca/teachinginadigitalage/chapter/4-4-models-for-teaching-by-doing/