Relevance and Context

1. Relevance and Context Dr. James Phares, Marion County Schools July, 2007 Presentation for the West Virginia Department of Education West Virginia Institutes for 21st Century Leadership

2. Essential Questions: • Why is teaching with relevance and in context important for student achievement? • What does teaching this way mean? • How does one implement this in the school and the classroom? West Virginia Institutes for 21st Century Leadership

3. Background Informationon Context West Virginia Institutes for 21st Century Leadership

4. Change “When the rate of change on the outside of an organization exceeds the rate of change on the inside of the organization, the end of the organization is in sight.” - Jack Welch, former CEO of GE West Virginia Institutes for 21st Century Leadership

5. Elimination of Float • It took centuries for the knowledge of smelting ore to be communicated and implemented world wide. • It took decades for the knowledge of the printing press to be communicated and implemented world wide. • It took years for knowledge from the old world to be communicated and implemented in the new world. West Virginia Institutes for 21st Century Leadership

6. Elimination of Float • In 1968, it took 1.4 seconds to transfer images from the moon to the earth. • It takes about the same amount of time today to send billions of bits of data around the globe, making the virtual exchange of information instantaneous. • If we do not change our classrooms, students will find them obsolete and seek to encounter knowledge elsewhere. West Virginia Institutes for 21st Century Leadership

7. How can you eliminate float in your school’s classroom practices? West Virginia Institutes for 21st Century Leadership

8. Think – Pair - Share • Think of the practices that actually slow down learning in your school. Write them down. • Pair with another individual and compare your lists. • Share with the whole group. West Virginia Institutes for 21st Century Leadership

9. Relevance West Virginia Institutes for 21st Century Leadership

10. Relevance in Economics The economistJohn Maynard Keynes saw the importance of defining relevance to the problem of calculating risk in economic decision-making. He suggested that the relevance of a piece of evidence, such as a true proposition, should be defined in terms of the changes it produces of estimations of the probability of future events. Specifically, Keynes proposed that new evidence e is irrelevant to a proposition, p given old evidence q, if and only if p/q & e = p/q and relevant otherwise. Unfortunately, there are serious technical problems with this definition, for example the relevance of piece of evidence turns out to be sensitive to the order in which all pieces of evidence were received. West Virginia Institutes for 21st Century Leadership

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12. Relevance in Politics • During the 1960s, relevance became a fashionable buzzword, first used by a famous doctor Jordan Belanger meaning roughly 'relevance to social concerns', such as racial equality, poverty, social justice, world hunger, world economic development, and so on. The implication was that some subjects, e.g., the study of medieval poetry and the practice of corporate law, were not worthwhile because they did not address pressing social issues. West Virginia Institutes for 21st Century Leadership

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14. Relevance in Logic In formal reasoning, relevance has proved an important but elusive concept. It is important because the solution of any problem requires the prior identification of the relevant elements from which a solution can be constructed. It is elusive, because the meaning of relevance appears to be difficult or impossible to capture within conventional logical systems. The obvious suggestion that q is relevant to p if q is implied by p breaks down because under standard definitions of material implication, a false proposition implies all other propositions. However though ‘iron is a metal’ may be implied by ‘cats lay eggs’ it doesn’t seem to be relevant to it the way in which ‘cats are mammals’ and 'mammals give birth to living young’ are relevant to each other. More recently a number of theorists have sought to account for relevance in terms of “possible world logics”. Roughly, the idea is that necessary truths are true in all possible worlds, contradictions (logical falsehoods) are true in no possible worlds, and contingent propositions can be ordered in terms of the number of possible worlds in which they are true. Relevance is argued to depend upon the “remoteness relationship” between an actual world in which relevance is being evaluated and the set of possible worlds within which it is true. Interesting as this approach might be, it seems to have little to do with the relevance judgments made in practical problem solving. West Virginia Institutes for 21st Century Leadership

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16. Relevance in Law The meaning of "relevance" in U.S. law is reflected in Rule 401 of the Federal Rules of Evidence. That rule defines relevance as "having any tendency to make the existence of any fact that is of consequence to the determination of the action more probable or less probable than it would be without the evidence." In other words, if a fact were to have no bearing on the truth or falsity of a conclusion, it would be legally irrelevant. West Virginia Institutes for 21st Century Leadership

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18. Relevance in Cognitive Science In 1986, Dan Sperber and Deirdre Wilson drew attention to the central importance of relevance decisions in reasoning and communication. They proposed an account of the process of inferring relevant information from any given utterance. To do this work, they used what they called the “Principle of Relevance”: namely, the position that any utterance addressed to someone automatically conveys the presumption of its own relevance. The central idea of Sperber and Wilson’s theory is that all utterances are encountered in some context, and the correct interpretation of a particular utterance is the one that allows most new implications to be made in that context on the basis of the least amount of information necessary to convey it. For Sperber and Wilson, relevance is conceived as relative or subjective, as it depends upon the state of knowledge of a hearer when they encounter an utterance. West Virginia Institutes for 21st Century Leadership

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20. Relevance in Education Keller's ARCS Model-Relevance THE SIX RELEVANCE STRATEGIES influence how the learning task is portrayed to the learner, rather than impacting directly on the content itself. John Keller describes the relevance strategies with the following terms: • Experience • Present Worth • Future Usefulness • Needs Matching • Modeling • Choice West Virginia Institutes for 21st Century Leadership

21. Experience The first strategy to assist in relevance suggests that instruction should tell learners how the new learning will use their existing skills. Students will have an opportunity to use prior knowledge in order to comprehend the new skill(s). West Virginia Institutes for 21st Century Leadership

22. Present Worth As opposed to stressing its value in the future, the second relevance strategy suggests that instruction clearly state the current value of instruction. West Virginia Institutes for 21st Century Leadership

23. Future Usefulness The third relevance strategy suggests explicitly tying instructional goals to the learner's future activities and having learners participate in activities in which they relate the instruction to their own future goals. • Example: In hopes of obtaining useful study skills for college, students enrolled in Advanced Placement courses in high school study longer and work harder. West Virginia Institutes for 21st Century Leadership

24. Needs Matching The fourth relevance strategy is called needs matching. Needs matching may be accomplished by capitalizing on the dynamics of achievement and risk taking, power, and affiliation. West Virginia Institutes for 21st Century Leadership

25. Modeling The fifth relevance strategy is modeling. Some activities that use this strategy include use of alumni as guest speakers, and allowing students who finish self-paced work first to serve as tutors. In both cases, the learner models their instructors' beliefs or techniques West Virginia Institutes for 21st Century Leadership

26. Choice The sixth strategy that enhances relevance is choice. Choice may be implemented by allowing learners to use different methods to pursue their work or allowing learners a choice in how they organize it. West Virginia Institutes for 21st Century Leadership

27. What is the operational definition of relevance for your school? West Virginia Institutes for 21st Century Leadership

28. Roundtable • Individually list key words that describe relevance in education, as you see it. • Compose a group list of those key words on a chart so each person in the group can see – do not repeat key words on the group list. • Form an individual working definition of relevance for learning. • Share or report out. West Virginia Institutes for 21st Century Leadership

29. A Plan for Programmatic Level Implementation of Relevance and Context in 21st Century Learning. West Virginia Institutes for 21st Century Leadership

30. Three Levels of Implementation • Pre-K through 4: 21st Century Foundation Program • 5-8: 21st Century Readiness Program • 9-12: 21st Century Passport Program West Virginia Institutes for 21st Century Leadership

31. 21st Century Foundations Goal: To have all students proficient to grade level equivalent in math reading and writing by the end of the fourth grade. Strategies: • Aligned instruction with the WV Standards at each grade level. • Balanced literacy approach using differentiated instruction and appropriate interventions. • Balanced math approach using differentiated instruction and appropriate interventions. • Utilizing assessment for learning through benchmarking and formative assessment. West Virginia Institutes for 21st Century Leadership

32. 21st Century Readiness Goal: To have all students ready for high school. Strategies: • To use middle level appropriate instructional strategies that align instruction with WV Standards within the balanced literacy and math framework. • To focus on Algebra and Reading Readiness, mandated summer class prior to entering high school after 8th grade if proficiency is not met beyond WV Standards. • Career Counseling and Planning begins in earnest at the 7th grade level. • Utilizing making Middle Grade Work as a framework for improvement. • Utilizing assessment for learning through benchmarking and formative assessment West Virginia Institutes for 21st Century Leadership

33. 21st Century Passport Program Goal: To have all students ready for the world beyond high school. Strategies • Providing a rigorous and relevant curriculum that includes preparation of a senior portfolio that details work based learning experiences and research project presented in their senior year. • Mandated senior math for junior not meeting ACT math requirement. • Utilizing assessment for learning through benchmarking and formative assessment • Utilizing “High Schools that Work” framework for a model for improvement. West Virginia Institutes for 21st Century Leadership

34. How to prepare our students for the future? • Rectify – Return to Classic Virtues • Converge – Heed Community Norms • Bond – Build personal relationships • Gather – Prepare for teamwork • Root – Look to family for support • Brace – For the weakening or collapse of public support mechanisms • Hedge – Diversify everything you do West Virginia Institutes for 21st Century Leadership

35. 4 Principles of Success • Making Connections • Solving Problems • Dealing in Ambiguity • Utilizing Conviction and Courage West Virginia Institutes for 21st Century Leadership

36. Skills for Relevancy • Team Collaboration • Thinking and Reasoning • Self Directed Learning • Multi Modal Learning • Authenticity West Virginia Institutes for 21st Century Leadership

37. Group discussion West Virginia Institutes for 21st Century Leadership

38. ? What was accomplished here today? What are you going to do about it? Did we give you enough information to complete your graphic organizer? West Virginia Institutes for 21st Century Leadership

39. Contact Information jbphares@access.k12.wv.us WWW.MarionBOE.com West Virginia Institutes for 21st Century Leadership