Content area
Full Text
Watching your work adopted by educators across the nation is flattering, but not if it's widely misinterpreted.
Across the country there seems to be a great deal of discussion about "high-yield strategies" - classroom techniques that have research supporting their utility at enhancing student achievement.
I've seen this term in online courses, district documents, and even in state documents. It's probably safe to say that I and my colleagues have unwittingly fostered this phenomenon by our comments in at least three books: Classroom Instruction That Works (Marzano, Pickering, and Pollock 2001); Classroom Management That Works (Marzano, Marzano, and Pickering 2003), and Classroom Assessment and Grading That Work (Marzano 2006). In each book, we tried to explain that our findings and recommendations were general and there was still much to be learned about pedagogical expertise. For example, in Classroom Instruction That Works, we mentioned that a number of very important questions about the instructional strategies that we identified remained unanswered:
Are some instructional strategies more effective in certain subject areas? Are some instructional strategies more effective at certain grade levels? Are some instructional strategies more effective with students from different backgrounds? Are some instructional strategies more effective with students of different aptitudes? (p. 9)
We also cautioned that research indicates that the instructional strategies we identified might have a positive effect on student achievement in some situations, but have a negligible or even negative effect on student achievement in other situations. Our conclusion was: "Until we find the answers to the preceding questions, teachers should rely on their knowledge of their students, their subject matter, and their situations to identify the most appropriate instructional strategies" (p. 9). Finally, we emphasized that our list was highly limited in perspective. Effective pedagogy involves a variety of interacting components. We tried to make the same points in all three books.
Given the qualifiers we placed on our findings and our suggestions, we felt quite good about the initial reaction to the books. They appeared to encourage discussions about effective pedagogy in schools and districts across the country. While the positive effects of these books are gratifying, there are some negative outcomes that seem to be growing in scope and influence. Specifically, educators are making at least three mistakes...