Geoliteracy Workshops in Arizona's Underserved Schools and Districts: Addenda

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GeoLiteracy Workshops in Arizona's Underserved Schools and Districts: Addenda

Table of Contents / 1
Project Summary / 2
Project Description / 3
i. Needs / 3
ii. Intended Outcomes / 4
iii. Related Literature / 5
iv. Procedures / 7
v. Collaborations / 10
vi. Evaluation / 10
vii. Dissemination / 11
References / 11
Curriculum Vitae / 12
Appendices
Appendix 1: GeoLiteracy CD and Articulation with WWC DIAD
Appendix 2: Workshop Outline
Appendix 3: Draft Evaluation forms
Appendix 4: Binko method of teacher training
Appendix 5: GeoLiteracy team and list of piloting teachers
Appendix 6: GeoLiteracy District Partners
Appendix 7: List of on-line lessons already available / 14

PROJECT SUMMARY

Social studies standards represent the cornerstones of Arizona's citizenship education. We, thus, find it frightening that across Arizona, elementary school (K-8) classroom time spent on social studies continues to diminish in the administrative rush toward higher scores on federal and state-mandated testing for reading, writing and mathematics. In response, teachers from across the state developed the "GeoLiteracy" program (see CD in appendix 1) whereby tested language arts skills are taught in activities that also teach social studies standards. Using a variety of instructional strategies, GeoLiteracy represents the efforts of 25 teacher-authors, over 100 piloting teachers, ASU professors in education and geography, and over 20 Arizona districts. Piloting research from over 5000 K-8 students, compliant with the NCLB-WWC-DIAD, reveals the success of these lessons in teaching reading, writing and geography . This proposed grant will fund in-services to link geography standards with tested language arts skills with1000 teachers in 10 schools and districts in historically underserved settings (rural, urban, large minority). Our in-service technique, the "Binko" method, has been validated by a 2002 McREL national report on geography education. Evaluation metrics will guide post-grant ongoing support for GeoLiteracy through the Arizona Geographic Alliance, an organization supported by the Arizona Department of Education, National Geographic Society, and ASU's geography department.

Project Description

i. Needs

The Arizona State School Board adopted social studies standards, with insistence by Arizona’s Department of Education that these standards be taught. Despite this paper requirement, an alarming and spiraling trend reveals district superintendents and other administrators are urging teachers not to concentrate on social studies education until the higher priority subjects of reading, writing and math have score improvement.

The impact of accountability had been realized by school administrators well before the new requirement of identifying "failing schools" added additional pressure:

“Accountability is the buzzword in education. As schools are put under the microscope to get students to pass standardized tests [in math and language arts], the responsibility ultimately rests on the shoulders of the superintendent...administrators will increasingly see their pay linked to student performance. We’re probably getting into a time where there’ll be more and more performance pay contracts.”

Arizona School Administrators Executive Director Harold Porter, quoted in the March 21, 2001 Arizona Republic, p. B9

Although this particular quote comes from Arizona, this trend is clearly national in scope, which in turn increases pressure on Arizona administrators who attend national meetings:

“His schools, Parker says, are sacrificing important lessons in science, social studies and foreign languages to focus on concepts that will be tested. “ John Parker is Assistant Superintendent for Roanoke Rapids District, North Carolina, from Time, May 7, 2001 p. 61

K-12 administrators face the reality that accountability forces them to focus on programs targeted at helping students master test taking:

"What has happened is that standardized tests have been elevated to where they are the curriculum," said Ann Lieberman, a senior scholar at the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, an education think tank based in Palo Alto, Calif. "What we are doing is narrowing the kinds of activities and learning opportunities for students rather than broadening and deepening them." (Olson, 2000)

Moreover, testing requirements in reauthorization of the federal Elementary and Secondary Education Act covers reading, math, and eventually science, but not social studies. The net result is a dramatic loss of instruction on what it means to be an educated citizen, the essence of social studies:

"What's easiest to cut are those programs that do not have a link to accountability," said Gayle Thieman, who oversees the Fund for the Advancement of Social Studies Education. Without pressure to improve social studies instruction, Ms. Thieman said, districts are likely to spend much of their professional-development and instructional-materials budgets elsewhere. Her concerns are backed by research suggesting that teachers adjust the balance of their instruction in favor of subjects that are tested, particularly if educators are held accountable for results. "When teachers and administrators are feeling the pressure from a testing system that emphasizes reading and math, the day will be restructured so there is less time available for other subjects," said Brian M. Stecher, a senior social scientist with the RAND Corp., an independent research organization based in Santa Monica, Calif. (Manzo, 2002)

This national trend was identified in Arizona by the teacher leadership of the Arizona Geographic Alliance, an organization led by social studies teachers and supported by the Arizona Department of Education, National Geographic Society, and ASU's geography department. According to the teachers across Arizona, the problem of ignoring social studies education is most severe in K-8, and the solution was obvious to these teachers: develop a package of lessons that meet the needs of:

• teaching tested language arts skills

• teaching all of the K-8 geography social studies standards

• making sure that these lessons worked in minority and low-income groups that are historically undeserved

• being teacher friendly

and

• being self-contained short lessons that can be taught in a few hours

The Arizona Geographic Alliance applied for and received $75,662 from the Grosvenor Grant Program of the National Geographic Society. Partnering with more than 20 districts (Appendix 6), this program produced the GeoLiteracy CD found in Appendix 1. We strongly encourage each reviewer to explore this CD and especially the "about GeoLiteracy" presentation that explains how this project is thoroughly integrated with the goals of the Grosvenor Grant Program.

This grant proposal represents the next critical stage in meeting the need to integrate Language Arts and Social Studies: acquire funds to provide teacher training in schools and districts that are historically underserved. In brief , the Arizona Geographic Alliance has assembled a team of teachers trained in a nationally-recognized method of teaching social studies to teachers. We are only requesting support to take this GeoLiteracy program to high minority, poor, rural, and inner city schools across Arizona.

ii. Intended Outcomes

The overaching goal is to train 1000 teachers in 10 public schools districts with historically underserved poor, urban, rural and minority communities in the GeoLiteracy (Appendix 1) lessons. The following table articulates how our metrics will meet our program goals , while Appendix 2 explains how we try to meet the "Design and Implementation Assessment Device" (DIAD) of the "What Works Clearinghouse" of the NCLB sponsoring legislation <http://w-w-c.org/public/standards.html>.

Program Goal / What Measure / Why Outcome is Achievable
Each lesson integrates National Geography Standard, State Geography Standard, and State tested language arts standards / • All GeoLiteracy Lessons utilize standards
• We will survey teachers months after the inservice to learn how they adapted the lessons to determine if they deviated from standards-based lessons / The post-workshop surveys will not be threatening. We don't ask whether they deviated. Rather, we will extract information on how they modified the lessons
Providing the most current content and the most effective instructional strategies for dealing with student learning styles. / • Number of GeoLiteracy lessons taught to teachers
• Number of teachers taught to use the GeoLiteracy package / The instructional strategies in these GeoLiteracy lessons provide a mix of techniques, from direct instruction to kinesthetic to cooperative learning.
Assist the K-12 teachers in making systemic reform in subject learning in their classrooms. / • Survey instrument given to teachers to establish whether integration of social studies and language arts increased. / We provide the most current content and the only set of lessons that meet each K-8 geography standard in Arizona. No other instructional materials meet each of the Arizona geography standards.
Assist institutions in implementing and emphasizing teaching methods that have been proven to work. / • Number of administrators who advocate GeoLiteracy approach
• Demographics of student population of teachers trained / Administrators do not callously reject the teaching of social studies. This GeoLiteracy program creates a win-win situation. Testing skills are being taught, but so is social studies.
A plan for institutionalizing (incorporating) positive results of the project should be included / • A plan is already in place to expose future in-service teachers to Geoliteracy through the Annual GeoFest Conference of the Arizona Geographic Alliance
• We may apply for additional years of support for conducting this disadvantaged outreach, depending on survey instrument data (appendix 3) / Every year for the past eight years, the Arizona Geographic Alliance has run a "GeoFest" conference attended by some 250 teachers each year. The GeoFest is held the first Saturday in October. The plan is achievable because the GeoLiteracy package will be a part of future GeoFest trainings.
The survey instruments discussed in the evaluation section (Appendix 3) will necessarily drive exactly how the GeoLiteracy package is edited and revised further.

iii. Related Literature

The larger geography/social studies education literature dialogues extensively on relationships between instructional strategies and student performance (Englert & Barley, 2002). Although children respond to assessment in ways that are difficult to predict (Swatton, 1995) the latest research from Mid-continent Research for Education and Learning (McREL) confirms the general premise of our proposal that using master teachers to train other teachers results in improvements in student achievement.

In brief, the National Geographic Society (NGS) sponsored a $100-plus million endowment to promote geography education. The cornerstones of the NGS effort are the "geographic alliances" in each state, run by teachers, coordinated by professors, working extensively with LEAs, with the core method of master teachers training new teachers. In essence, the NGS believed the old adage that teachers learn best from colleagues. The NGS was interested in learning whether this "Binko" method of conducting teacher training translates into enhanced student performance. This is particularly critical in our proposal, because we use this method (Appendix 4) as our in-service strategy.

The methodology of the NGS-McREL study was simple. Eighth-grade "geographic alliance-trained" teachers from across the country were asked to participate in the study. The eighth-grade was selected because it represents a point in a students’ education when they have typically been exposed to geography and also matches a grade level when NAEP is administered. 62 teachers from 18 states and their students participated in the study. These students were tested on their geography knowledge using a set of items from the 2001 NAEP geography assessment. The results from this test were then compared with results of a sample of students drawn from NAEP data. The NAEP students were randomly selected from the larger dataset in order to achieve a sample whose demographic characteristics were similar to those of the students in the Alliance test-taking group.

The conclusion was clear: "students of teachers who have been involved in the NGS Alliance program have statistically significantly higher levels of achievement when compared with students of similar demographic backgrounds from a NAEP sample... Mean comparisons and corresponding significance testing were then conducted on the scores. The significance tests showed that the mean differences in the percent correct scores between the two groups of students were in fact significant, with the NGS students scoring higher (T=3.63 and p<0.001)" (Englert & Barley, 2002), as revealed in the graphic to the right. / Source: Englert & Barley (2002)
Source: Dorn et al. (2002) / Independently, Dorn et al. conducted a study on the effectiveness of Arizona alliance training methods in terms of teacher time spent on social studies (Dorn, Ekiss, Ostapuk, & Davis, 2002). Dorn et al. wondered if NGS-style training truly translates into increased time on instruction. The alternative is that teachers go to the GeoLiteracy in-service and then ignore the curriculum materials and the money is wasted. Thus, we surveyed teachers who were touched by alliance training methods and those who were not. The results, summarized to the left, are clear, that the Binko-style of geography training has a direct impact on Arizona teachers.

The next step in our research was to assess whether or not the particular lessons used in the GeoLiteracy program are effective in teaching language arts and geography. Thus, the GeoLiteracy lessons were piloted across Arizona's classrooms in over 20 districts, by over 100 teachers. The composition of students involved in the lesson piloting, in the

diagram below, reveals a close match with the overall characteristics of students in Arizona's public schools.

When the piloting teachers filled out the evaluation instrument, we learned that 81% of students scored 80% or higher in the geography assessment of the GeoLiteracy lessons. 84% of the students scored 80% or higher in the reading assessment, and 76% of students scored 80% or higher on the writing assessment. Thus, we feel confident that the materials truly integrate the teaching of social studies and language arts standards. We recognize that AIMS-like (the Arizona test required for graduation) and Stanford9-like assessments are a key element in administrative support for our program in over 20 districts that sponsored the lesson writing and lesson piloting phase.

iv. Procedures

iv. a. Participant Recruitment and Selection. We already have requests from teachers, school administrators and district administrators to conduct workshops in their inner city and rural disadvantaged schools and districts. Immediately upon learning of project funding, a letter will be sent to these districts in Arizona to participate in the in-servicing of the GeoLiteracy package at no cost to the first 10 schooll districts or combinations of districts (up to 100 teachers) for each workshop. Any "waiting list" will then serve as an indicator of demand for future grant applications from the Grosvenor program and other funding sources such as the National Science Foundation.