KindlED
The KindlED Podcast explores the science of nurturing children's potential and creating empowering learning environments. Powered by Prenda, each episode offers actionable insights to help you ignite your child's love of learning. We'll dive into evidence-based tools and techniques that kindle curiosity, motivation, and well-being in young learners. Do you have a question, topic, or story you'd like to share with us? Get in touch at podcast@prenda.com.
KindlED
Episode 44: Mastery-based Learning
This week, Kaity and Adriane discuss mastery-based learning and how technology is revolutionizing personalized instruction.
Episode 44 also explores:
🔥 the risks of excessive screen time
🔥 the need for digital tools that prioritize learning
🔥 essential features of strong educational technology
🔥 the challenges of implementing mastery-based learning without technology
🔥 the benefits of a mastery-focused approach
🔥 and so much more!
This episode is a must-listen for anyone invested in children's educational well-being.
KEY TAKEAWAYS:
🔑 The application of educational technology makes a huge difference in promoting mastery-based learning.
🔑 Digital tools should focus on learning and provide multiple ways of demonstrating mastery.
🔑 Implementing mastery-based learning without technology can be challenging, but elements of it can be incorporated in a non-digital setting.
đź”— MENTIONS đź”—
- Episode 25 of The KindlED Podcast
- Benjamin Bloom
- Inquiry
- The research behind Prenda
- NWEA
- iReady
- SAMR Model
- Glow Kids by Nicholas Kardaras
- Lexia
- Mathseeds
- Aleks
Got a story to share or question you want us to answer? Send us a message!
About the podcast:
The KindlED Podcast explores the science of nurturing children's potential and creating empowering learning environments.
Powered by Prenda Microschools, each episode offers actionable insights to help you ignite your child's love of learning. We'll dive into evidence-based tools and techniques that kindle young learners' curiosity, motivation, and well-being.
Got a burning question?
We're all ears! If you have a question or topic you'd love our hosts to tackle, please send it to podcast@prenda.com. Let's dive into the conversation together!
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Essentially what happens in traditional school is that if we wanted to kind of reduce that to a pattern, it looks like expose, expose, expose, test, move on, regardless of the outcome of the test, right? So you could get 70% on that unit test and then everyone's just cool that there's a big chunk 30% of that knowledge that you were supposed to have that you don't have. So a mastery pattern to just compare that would look like expose, assess, move on if mastered, expose, assess, expose, assess until the mastery is proven right. So you're going to stay with that content. You're going to give a lesson. You're going to see if they got it. If they got it, you can move on. Hi and welcome to the Kindle podcast, where we dig into the art and science behind kindling the motivation, curiosity and mental wellbeing of the young humans in our lives.
Speaker 2:Together, we'll discover practical tools and strategies you can use to help kids unlock their full potential and become the strongest version of their future selves. Welcome to the Kindled podcast. My name is Adrienne and I'm here with Katie Broadbent, and today we are doing a deep dive and I get to interview Katie today. I'm super excited. So, katie, what are we talking about today? We are going to talk about mastery-based learning Very fun, something I don't know a whole lot about. I just know you master, you show that you have mastered the content to move forward. That's literally all I know about mastery-based learning.
Speaker 1:There you go. End of episode. You could, that's it. Yes, we don't even need to have this, this episode. So you were actually telling me a story about your son the other day and mastery and his like academic growth, so I would love for you to share that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so we I had my first IEP meeting. I have heard from other parents that IEP meetings can well, but also this has been like years of him having a 504 plan and that's, you know, accommodations in the classroom, because he has ADHD and he's gifted, and so the it just seemed like the school, too, is really set up to serve kids like him. It's not a traditional school, it's it's a hybrid virtual school, very collaborative based. They're moving into a project based learning, mastery based. So it works really well for kids like him.
Speaker 2:So we were in the meeting and the biggest difference that the admin kept telling me, or the team kept telling me, is that the student was in the meeting with us. I guess I don't know if that's just not a normal thing. Of course I wanted him in there because it's his education, it's not my education, and you know what we talk about all the time with self-determination theory. It's like he needs to show competence, he needs to have autonomy and agency. So if I'm in this meeting talking about him to all of his teachers and principal and he's not part of it, I just don't see how that's going to work and helping him with, you know, succeed in his education. And so before we went into the meeting, the two of us had a discussion of what I kept asking him like what do you want help with? What do you see? You know the supports that would be really helpful to you.
Speaker 2:He said the biggest thing is the busy work. There's so many classes, the biggest thing is the busy work. There's so many classes where there's just so much busy work. And he's like I know the content. Why do I have to write four sentences and find a picture and do the same exact thing every single day? Or why do I have to do Khan Academy and IXL? And he's like I already know the content. So in the meeting we were able to advocate for him and it was great. They would bring something up directed to me, and then I would ask him and he would answer. The team was so impressed. They're like wow, you really know what you want for your education. And they said we really wish that all IEP meetings went like this. So that's something too for admins. Maybe try to involve the child instead of just talking about the child in these meetings. And so we were able to put it in his IEP that if he shows mastery, then he does not have to do all this extra busy work.
Speaker 1:That's amazing, he was very excited.
Speaker 1:That's really cool, like, oh my gosh, I've sat through so many IEP meetings where I wish that that could have been the outcome.
Speaker 1:Where it wasn't, and just to speak to something you, you know you're talking about having your son in there and I think there's a lot of shame sometimes around not knowing things or being quote unquote behind and that is really hard for a lot of kids and that's just very reasonable that some parents don't want their kids in that room.
Speaker 1:But I think it kind of speaks to one of the main problems in education is that because we don't use a mastery based system, we kind of hide our children's data from them a little bit so it doesn't hurt their feelings, like if they're behind and I mean I even hate the word behind and we'll talk about that more later but just that he is able to have a relationship with learning and himself and a self awareness around where he's at and what he needs.
Speaker 1:That is true empowerment and I think that as we push more into a mastery-based way of doing education broadly, we'll see that. I mean when you look at a child's data you can see we'll get into this later but in any given classroom there's such a wide variety of competency levels, and so I don't see how we can move towards mastery and really provide the things that kids really need unless we get more comfortable with where kids are, if that's quote unquote behind or ahead or slower or that faster. Like we need to kind of start to break down all these ideas because they just get in the child's way, essentially like the culture and our belief that like it's bad to be behind all these ideas because they just get in the child's way, essentially like the culture and our belief that like it's bad to be behind all these things.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and if the admin is willing to look at that individual child versus looking at the classroom as a whole, I think that's a big part of it.
Speaker 2:Also, I get why some parents don't want their child in there, cause look at these labels attention deficit, hyperactivity disorder, you know, and so it's like or dyslexia disorder, which we keep telling kids that they there's something wrong with them with that language, whereas we have always told him from the very beginning, since he got the diagnosis hey, the reason why we got this is to get you the help that you need and get you the support that you need in school, because without it, guess what? They're just going to label you in other ways, as you know, a bad kid or a kid with misbehavior, and we've always said from the very, very beginning that this is your superpower. It came to a point where he was able to do some therapies and I told him essentially, we can connect these neural pathways and and essentially, you can maybe not have as many ADHD behaviors he looked at me, he's like mom remember, this is my superpower I can do way more things at one time than anyone else.
Speaker 2:So I I'm good with it. So I think it's how you frame it too and use it. You know, like, look at the strengths instead of the weaknesses. It's so hard to do because our culture really focuses on the weaknesses and how to fix. So, yeah, I am so excited to dive into this and learn more about what mastery-based learning is. So, katie, can you jump right from the beginning? What is mastery-based learning?
Speaker 1:So it's an approach to learning that allows a student to spend their learning minutes at their personal level of comprehension and then move on, as like you said, as soon as they've proven that they get it.
Speaker 1:So they don't have to wait if they're if they get it, they don't have to wait for the rest of the kids to get it, and if they don't get it, they can stay there without feeling like they're going to be left behind. When we use a mastery-based approach to learning, what we quickly realize is that, wow, there are so many different levels of comprehension in this one classroom, even though all of these kids are nine or 10, you know, we've grouped them by age so many differences in pace and level that most of the time. So we we interview all of all of the kids that come in from Prenda about their pre-Prenda experience and a third of them say like I was lost. A third of them say I was bored and a third of them say this was working for me. So if we're doing something here that's not working for two thirds of kids like we really need to start looking at that, and mastery-based learning is essentially the answer to that problem.
Speaker 2:So you said left behind, and we even mentioned this in the very beginning too. So, let's, I would like to talk a little bit about that. Where did this left behind concept come from? And so, if each child is a unique individual, why are we telling them they're ahead or behind, like? What has that done in our education system and how is you know this mastery-based mindset different from, like, this traditional mindset, and how education system has been set up thus far?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think that mastery is both a mindset and a practice. I think you're hitting the nail on the head right there. So essentially what happens in traditional school is that we do something called standardized education right, where we have taken all the things, all the what's kids should know, like what they should know when, and mapped that to a massive K through 12 learning schedule, and that curriculum schedule essentially tells us what everyone should know by when, not just like here's, you know, they're written kind of broadly to say like here's all the fifth grade standards. But then when you get into the curriculum and the district hands you a curriculum, as a teacher it's really like this week you're supposed to cover these things, and then if you don't cover all those things because someone asks a question, someone needed more time, then you're behind. And so that's kind of where the the idea of being behind comes from, because there's this standard metric that everyone's being compared to, being compared to right.
Speaker 1:So in a traditional learning model and I don't want this to sound critical, because public education and the learning environment that looks like our normal classroom with one teacher and like 25 or 30 kids, that has done like marvels for humanity, essentially like public education allows kids who would not have the money to have a private tutor or any access to any sort of educational experience, to become educated, and that has done more for America and the world than like lots of other things. And people complain about it and rip on it all the time, and that's that's hard, because it really has been a boon to humanity, and I think that we need to stop and recognize that also. It could be better now, right, like time has progressed, we have different tools and methods that we didn't have then, right. So I think, as we have this conversation, it's important to do that with a lot of compassion and appreciation for all the work that's been put in by teachers and administrators who sincerely do love kids.
Speaker 2:We also have a lot more knowledge on how the brain learns, how kids, you know what education actually means. So there's just so much more. Yes, we have all these tools, but then we also have this advancement in neuroscience. That, I think, is a really big piece of this as well.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and the psychology of motivation and what gets kids to. You know what gets the brain really engaged. We know a lot more of those things now, so, um, okay. So back to your question. How is it different than our traditional approach to education? Typically, what happens in a school is that there's one pace and one level of complexity that's determined by that curriculum schedule, the standards set by the district or the state. Can I interject?
Speaker 2:who? Who decides these standards? Who decides that you learn about butterflies morphing and first grade, that you decide osmosis? And fourth grade, who decided that that's when kids should learn that content?
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's such a good question. So it's kind of been an evolution over the last 50 or 60 years. There's been different legislation passed over the previous few decades. No Child Left Behind comes to mind in the early 2000s I think I'm going to get all of my dates wrong. I'm not an educational history expert here. But there's been legislation that essentially says you need to. It comes from state and federal legislation essentially, and they work with educational experts that essentially put together these plans and decide these things. And then they, with educational experts that essentially put together these plans and decide these things, and then they get put into state statute and passed down to districts and then curriculum programs look at the laws and say, okay, what do we need to build so that schools will buy our product? That's kind of how all of the things work.
Speaker 1:If you make an educational product and it's not standards aligned, the school will not buy it because their mandate from the state is to expose kids to the standards and help kids master the you know, the set curriculum that's been given to them. So that's kind of the equation we're working within here. So in this traditional education model where we have a teacher and a bunch of nine-year-olds we'll say there's milestones built in into this curriculum schedule and that's tied to grading, right. So essentially, if we're in fourth grade and the curriculum schedule says we're going to have a test, you know three months into school about X, y and Z, and then we're going to see how they do and then we're going to move on because the curriculum is, it moves on, right. So essentially, if we wanted to like kind of reduce that to a pattern, it looks like expose, expose, expose, test, move on regardless of the outcome of the test, right, so you could get 70% on that unit test and then everyone's just cool that there's a big chunk 30% of that knowledge that you were supposed to have, that you don't have. Yeah, and you get one chance to take that test, right, so you don't have multiple ways to show your mastery and you have, um, you know, like if you just needed three more days to stay with that material and you could have gotten it, like, if you don't have it by that on that schedule, that means it's time to move on and you're kind of out of luck. So a mastery pattern, to just compare, that would look like expose, assess, move on If mastered, expose, assess, expose, assess until the mastery is proven right. So you're going to stay with that content. You're going to give a lesson, you're going to see if they got it. If they got it, you can move on right, like your son's, like so excited to not have to sit there.
Speaker 1:Like the busy work comes from the kids who get it initially like quickly. They need to remain engaged and busy while all the other kids kind of get it Right. So we have to get things as a group instead of as individuals, which is not how learning happens. Right, a concept is learned by one individual, understood by one brain, not the collective, even though I do believe that learning is very social and we do learn from our peers. And like I'm not saying that we should put kids in a box and make them just be individualized learners. But the actual understanding, comprehension of an idea only happens in one person's brain, right. So that needs to be individualized. And just another note here this is like nearly impossible to do with a teacher and a class of 30 kids, right, the teacher can give one lesson at a time and then whatever levels of competency.
Speaker 2:If that's the way the classroom set up because in my son's school there's one teacher and you know, I don't know 25, 30 kids, maybe 25, cause they split them into two and but they're able to still do mastery based, because it's not just direct instruction. So I think, yes, it could still happen with one teacher and multiple kids, but we have to look at the way the content is being delivered. Correct, exactly, yes for sure.
Speaker 1:So in the traditional you know this question is really about, in our traditional approach, which is where the teacher is giving a live whole group instruction, like you can't. Essentially what happens is they give the whole group instruction because they have to satisfy the demands of the curriculum and the standards that they exposed all the students to, whatever the standard was. And then they have to differentiate their instruction, make it a little more complicated and advanced for those kids who already are there and need to be pushed, and to make it a little simpler and easier to understand for kids who need that extra support. And so then you get teachers doing something called ability grouping where it's like, hey, I'm going to, you know, kind of give, make some rotations and I'm going to be with this smaller group of kids giving them an individualized lesson, but it's not really individual to them. It's maybe you have eight kids, right? So now we have eight different levels of learning that are kind of like lower or higher, but it's still not super targeted at what that child needs to know next. Right, and that's the best a teacher can do.
Speaker 1:Really, if I was a teacher listening to this, listening to me talk about mastery, I would just be sitting there thinking like that's impossible, like I'm already doing the best I can, and it's like literally not humanly possible. And they're right, it is not humanly possible in many ways, in the way that the system is set up and with the tools that our teachers have been given and the expectations that are on them. So I feel you. Yes, it is very difficult. Ideally, the best form of education would be that every child would have a personalized, like one-on on one tutor sitting right there next to them teaching.
Speaker 1:But we don't have the manpower or the money to make that happen, right? So the best we can do is one teacher to 2530 kids and we see the fallout of that. Right, like two thirds of our kids in the country, according to NAEP scores, aren't proficient readers. Right, our math scores look very, very poor. Right, we're not winning this game. So that should tell us like, oh, this thing that we've been doing for 100 years has not, it's not effective, but nothing's really changing. So that's where mastery based learning can kind of come to the rescue, I feel.
Speaker 2:So let's break down what are the downfalls of the traditional approach?
Speaker 1:Yeah, so we've been talking a lot about, you know, kids feeling lost or bored. So essentially, if we don't use a mastery-based approach, we're going to get learning gaps, those 30, that 30% of material that the student demonstrated that they didn't know yet. We just move on and essentially we're building. Like if you imagine building a building and you know you're putting down the foundation and you only put 70% of this of the foundation stones in place and you're like it's cool, let's just build on top of this. And then the next layer, you only get 70% of that and it's like, all right, we don't need that full wall. Like the we'll just have 70% of the wall, is fine. Like your building's going to fall down Right. Like we would never do that in any other setting but for some reason for like, when we're talking about kids and education, we're cool with a 70, a 70% or whatever. You know, we're cool with not complete mastery or we don't even know what those learning gaps are because we're not assessing to look at that.
Speaker 2:And so I went to a micro school and there was a seventh grader who had been homeschooled and in school and they were traveling the country and so he did the assessment that we provide at Prenda to see where his learning gaps were. And he was all over the place Like he had to catch up in like second grade content and third grade content and but what was really cool is, now that he was in this environment, he was able to fill in all those gaps and be aware that he had those gaps before moving on to high school, where he probably would have really fell behind because he wanted to go to a traditional high school.
Speaker 1:Totally the traditional way we do education. Really, it not only builds learning gaps but it hides them because we use grading procedures right. Or it's like, if you're a good kid and you show up and you're not a behavior issue and you do you like turn in your assignments, you can get pretty good grades right, but that doesn't mean you understood the concepts or that you're retaining that information to build on. And so we see that a lot at Prenda. You know parents and their kids will come in and say like he's a great student, he's like always on, you know, he always gets great grades. And then we do actual diagnostics around like domain specific skills, and it's like, look, we do actual diagnostics around like domain specific skills, and it's like, look, we do have some deficits here, some learning gaps that have not been addressed. And that's shocking to them because they're so used to relying on the grading system for that like peace of mind that everything's fine. It really kind of clouds what's actually going on with the child's learning Right and so what's another downfall of traditional?
Speaker 1:So I would say teacher burnout, right, Right. And so what's? Another downfall of traditional old podcast episode? We talked to so many people who have worked so hard in the classroom and it's demoralizing, and that's because teachers are not set up for success and they're not given the tools that they need to actually teach towards mastery, Right. But all of this is really changing because I don't know how, what year this was, but Sal Khan, the guy that invented Khan Academy, he gave this very, very famous TED talk called let's teach for mastery, and that has become kind of like a pivoting point, I think, for education, where a lot of schools traditional schools, micro schools, homeschools are really starting to focus more on mastery and not just passing kids through because they got older or because they sat still long enough to earn whatever like credit was being given, Right. But the thing that really enables this is educational technology, and some people really feel strongly that we should not be using or that that it's ineffective. And I'd love to talk about all that.
Speaker 1:We'll get to it in a minute, but I want to give a little bit of historical context here. I know we've mentioned this in I think it's episode 25 with Todd Rose, when we talk about individualized learning. He talks about Benjamin Bloom. So Benjamin Bloom was a psychologist in 1984. He did this study where he discovered that the best form of education was a one-on-one tutor and that having a one-on-one tutor was able to increase student performance by two standard deviations, which is huge. And then he found that just using a mastery-based approach to learning instead of like the traditional like expose, expose, expose, assess, move on that was able to move kids one standard deviation more than than the average approach. So those are super huge gains.
Speaker 1:But the real question of how to get like that one-on-one tutor so this whole concept is called Bloom's two sigma problem. Scientists and researchers have been trying to figure out how we can get this two standard deviations of progress by using different methods right and we haven't been able to do this. We haven't been able to match that progress that was seen in the one on one tutor experiment. And essentially, just to give you a little bit more context about what this means, a two standard deviation improvement means that that 50th percentile kid, that very average kid, can now suddenly perform in the 90th percentile right. So that is a huge difference.
Speaker 1:But the thing that we've discovered in more recent years is that we can actually use educational technology to closely approximate this one-on-one tutoring experience and get I mean, I don't know of a research study that has approximated like the actual two sigma, but definitely one sigma and and close to two, and I can post in the show notes our Prenda's like a research documentation that is a really easy read. Sounds complicated to learn about all this research, but we put it together in a way that's really consumable, so I'll post that below if you're more interested in that. Um, but I really feel like educational technology can really be used to facilitate mastery and I'm not advocating for just turning kids over to computers all day, Cause I think even especially post COVID, people are very wary about computer or like online learning, and I just want to really emphasize that that's not what we're talking about. We're talking about using adaptive, diagnostic, mastery-based tools that are highly engaging to move kids forward in the subjects.
Speaker 1:We don't you wouldn't even use mastery for all of the subjects. I don't think like I like to use it for things that are super linear like math or reading or writing, things like social studies and science that can be explored more organically. I think that we should use inquiry. We talked a ton about inquiry. I think that inquiry is really well suited to take care of those subjects and that mastery should be used for things like math and reading and writing for sure.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so we were talking about teacher burnout, and just to bring this all full circle using these ed tech tools help that too, because then it's not all on the teacher. So what is this third downfall of our traditional approach?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think the third thing that our traditional approach really creates this massive disengagement, right, if you're sitting there and you're bored because you already know this, or you're lost and you feel hopeless, like that's two thirds of kids who are just disengaged, and if you are not paying attention and actively participating in that learning experience, your brain is not learning. That's not how learning works, right, your brain needs to be an active participant, constructing and creating with that new knowledge that you've been given, and that's just not happening unless we're really targeting that mastery level. That's right for every student. Okay, you?
Speaker 2:mentioned the technology and using it. You know my thoughts on technology. I know so, and I've heard, and I've read of studies where they put a bunch of technology into a classroom and guess what? They get no results. So what are you talking about?
Speaker 1:here. Yes, totally, I totally get that. And just for some context, before I met Kelly, the founder of Prenda, I didn't even allow like toys that had batteries into my house, like I was so against technology. Our TV lived under our bed, like we did no screens, like no buttons or noises, like anything, um. And then when I met Kelly, I was running it my own like educational blog at the time and he was like I agree with like 90% of your blog, but I like technology and so, um, definitely, participating in Prenda has, um, changed how I feel about this.
Speaker 1:So I'll address one of your comments was that there are studies that show, like you know, putting a bunch of technology in a classroom doesn't do anything, and I think that that's spot on, because it depends on how you define educational technology and how you're using it. So scientists who study this for a living, they have created something called the SAMIR model. Samir stands for substitution, augmentation, modification, redefinition. So let's take a simple example If I'm reading a like a paper textbook and I just move that same experience to a computer, I'm using educational technology, right. So in a study it would be like oh, this this kid is using is in the technology group, but they're still just reading a textbook, right? So we've made a substitution between an analog experience in real life and a digital experience and we're not going to see any major differences there because it's the same experience. Just putting it on a screen or putting it like in real life doesn't really make a big difference. Same thing with augmentation, the second part of SAMR. Both of these things are part of enhancing the learning experience, but you haven't really transformed it, which is what modification and redefinition are all about.
Speaker 1:So, yeah, I think you're right that there are tons of studies that say technology doesn't do anything, and I would just argue that the way that the technology is used and what the technology is really designed to accomplish makes a huge difference in how those studies are going to turn out.
Speaker 1:If you're just substituting and augmenting the same thing you're doing in life is really designed to accomplish makes a huge difference in how those studies are going to turn out. If you're just substituting and augmenting the same thing you're doing in life like, you're definitely not going to see the amazing results that we're talking about. But when you use adaptive diagnostic tools and totally change how the learning is delivered, instead of saying, okay, now I'm going to deliver this whole group instruction and then you're all going to get on your Chromebooks and read this article or something like that's the same thing as passing out a worksheet. You know there's digital worksheets you can do. What we're talking about is using computers to deeply assess domain specific knowledge and then curate for each individual a path towards gaining competency in that domain that might look different than their neighbor.
Speaker 2:So do we need to still look at the individual child and how we're using this technology? I think about when one of my kids was in Prenda and we were using a specific English language arts you know technology and he was going through all the levels really, really fast. But then when we would do it on paper he was not mastering the content. So I'm curious of, like, how important is the technology and does the individual child, as we've been talking about, like really matter to and making sure it's the right fit for them?
Speaker 1:Yeah, so that is such a good question because we like the application. How we actually use technology makes a huge difference. So we're used to this, like I'm just going to expose everyone to fifth grade and that means you're done with fifth grade, right? And so when we go through an educational technology tool that covers all of the standards and is mastery based, that's great, but it doesn't guarantee that they've actually mastered the you know it's it's more likely that they've mastered those things because, I mean, my kids will get stuck on something and they'll be doing that thing for two weeks, right. And then they'll be like, okay, now I get it, and now they'll move on.
Speaker 1:Um, so it really depends on the kid and um, we're going to get into this a little bit later, but I think it comes down to what kind of an educational technology tool you're using and the strengths and weaknesses of that tool, right? Some tools really lend themselves to breezing through things, guessing, and that's just a terribly designed educational technology tool, right? We need to have other things built into this process that really drive for that mastery and multiple ways of demonstrating that mastery, right? Edtech is not like the savior of mastery-based learning. It's a tool that we use in an effort to move towards mastery-based learning. So and I think your experience points out that really beautifully it's not just like throw them on the computer and they'll be fine.
Speaker 2:Yeah Well, you also recently shared something I saw about the modern classroom and they use technology to provide this more one-on-one education that you're talking about. And so what they do is they suggest that the teacher records like a lesson, or records what they're doing, which is still what you're saying with just that bottom one right Substitution. You're saying with just that bottom one right Substitution but then they're able to have that one-on-one instruction with that child to make sure they're actually mastering the content. So you're not just saying that substitution is bad, it's just how you utilize that Correct.
Speaker 1:Yes. So actually I like modern classroom. I think they're doing a really good job trying to get mastery-based learning into the classroom experience as it exists now. And so what you're describing is they're doing a modified flipped classroom approach where the teacher records videos. Typically you go to class and receive a lecture and then do all of the figuring out and working through problems on your own and then you turn that in and the teacher gives you feedback. But the flipped classroom approach says like, why don't we, why don't we give you the lecture to do at home? Or I think modern classroom does it in class, because elementary school where those lectures or instructions, that that direct instruction is given via video and then we can use a lot of our class time to do the application part and the teacher can be there working with them in small groups or one-on-one to help them, you know, deepen their, their mastery of those things, which is really important. I think that's a really good application of of mastery-based learning.
Speaker 1:A video can't understand what you got wrong or what you don't understand, so it relies on the child to be like I don't get it and I'm going to rewind that. Or it requires you know them to be doing their worksheet and the teacher to be like, oh, you don't get it. So you know, there's this feedback loop that is delayed sometimes and so in worst case scenario it's like I did this test and then two weeks later actually state standardized tests are kind of the worst example of this. Or actually state standardized tests are kind of the worst example of this. We're like I'm going to take this big test in April and then my mom will get the results to it in September in the mail. It's like the most disconnected experience ever.
Speaker 1:And then to like contrast that with using an adaptive digital tool where it's like I did something wrong, I know that it's wrong in milliseconds, and then the computer knows what I did wrong, and so they, the computer, can tell like, oh, it's probably because you don't understand place value. Let's talk about place value, like you know, so it can accurately diagnose what that child needs. But here's the thing All of the educational technology tools that exist now are pretty bad. Like I'll tell you. Like we'll go through, I'll tell you the good ones. Um, we use a really extensive rubric to like screen educational technology tools, but we are.
Speaker 2:I was going to ask what do we do at Prenda to find educational tools? I was really curious about that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean, there's hundreds of them and like the choice overwhelm is so real for teachers, for districts and for parents homeschooling it's crazy. So we'll definitely kind of go through our good examples and bad examples of specific things. They all have strengths and weaknesses, right, and so there isn't just one catch-all tool that's like, oh, that's just the best tool. But I think over the next five, 10 years, we will see tools be built that really incorporate all of these, you know, all of the things that we know work, and so this is going to get a lot better. We're really just at the beginning of this transformation.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I was just thinking. You said about the standardized tests. Well, in Arizona at least, we take the NWEA MAP test and I was just thinking how we could utilize that so much better. My son takes it. He gets the score right away. He sees where the deficits are. However, I feel like the school just goes oh, you're in the 90th percentile for reading. Yay, You're in the 50th percentile for math, You're on target. They're not looking at the data and going oh, here's some gaps here. This is where we need to fill in. Instead, it's just kind of going okay, as a school, do we have our kids on pace or not? We're not actually like digging in and using that tool to make sure that we're filling in those gaps, and I just thought of that as you were talking right now.
Speaker 1:That's such a good example. That's like we typically assess to compare right and all of the scoring things in those tests, like they're designed to give you a compared to everyone else. Here's where you're at, not here's what you know and here's what you need to know next. So at Prendo we we used map for a while and really didn't love it. Um, I know it's what most of the country uses to kind of do benchmark testing several times throughout the year.
Speaker 1:We prefer a tool called iReady because it tells you um per domain level, what grade level you're on, but it's not going like it's first interpretation of the data Isn't? Um, here's how you compare, compare to everyone else. It's here's how you compare to the standards and how old you are. So it still has that component, but then it's very easy to get a breakdown of what do you need to know next? And then they actually have like a really awesome instructional component that sees all of that and says like, according to your testing data, like these are the things that you need to know next and it prioritizes most severe, severe learning gaps first and prioritizes those and then catches you up Like it's very smart and, um, I love it as a tool.
Speaker 2:Uh, but what about screen time and kids being on a screen too much and overstimulating their brains to where they become?
Speaker 1:crazy, amen. Uh, I think that is a very real risk that we run um in using any sort of educational technology. One of my favorite concepts here is the concept of digital vegetables and digital candy. So there's this book called glow kids highly recommend it. It's by Nicholas Cardaris, I don't know if I'm saying that.
Speaker 1:Right, not all screens are created equal. Essentially, like, what you're doing on the screen and what it's doing to your brain has a big, big effect on whether or not it's addictive or, um you know, really affecting you negatively, especially for young kids. Right, we like to make sure all of the learning tools we connect kids and families with are digital vegetables, which means they're not overstimulating. They're very focused on learning. It's not overly gamified, like you know, you kind of hear people talk about like oh, it's so much fun, you hardly know you're learning, and I think that that can be great in some ways. But to completely turn a child's education into a video game, essentially I don't think is the way that we want to see this go. Video games and over gamification rely on, like, reward systems and stimulation that can be very addicting to the brain because they have a dopaminergic effect which triggers, like the reward and the expectation and reward loop, and that that's what builds addiction. You know you're not going to get the same effect there as, like, if you're reading a book on a Kindle or something like that. You know it's like very under stimulating. It's not like flashy, it's um. There's not like intermittent rewards built in, like in some of these games. Um, it's very different than, say, like, social media, and there's a really great book that just came out by Jonathan Haidt called the anxious generation, and he talks about screen use and, um, specifically, social media. So screens have existed for a long time and we haven't really gotten the negative mental health effects in our youth population until the invention of social media, specifically because of the way it like really hijacks the brain.
Speaker 1:But I think a really important thing to bring up here is just the opportunity cost. Right, when your child is on a screen they're not outside playing, and so I think there can be this fear that if we use computers that they're going to get addicted to the screens and then they're never going to want, they're just going to want to like play video games all day, and that really is not what happens Essentially when you use digital tools to learn. It's it is more engaging because they're the kids are able to feel challenged. The idea that kids want to like do the easiest thing and like escape, challenge, like is completely false. Like and I think video games are a really good example of that Like kids want challenge, like your brain craves it Right, and so, in some ways, using a digital tool can put you at your learning frontier, which which enables you to feel like appropriately challenged, which is really stimulating to the brain, not in like a social media, like stimulation way, but like in a really healthy way, and it makes learning so much more efficient.
Speaker 1:So you're not sitting in that classroom for seven and a half hours a day waiting for all the other kids or being there after school because you weren't able to understand the whole group instruction.
Speaker 1:It makes your learning so much more effective and efficient that you can have so much more time to go outside and play, and so my kids will, um, you know, get all of their goals done, and then they're the ones that are out the park like way, way earlier than any of the other kids are getting home from school. So I see this as a way to open up more time for creativity and connection and nature and like person to person connection, because it's so much more efficient. So I would. I have heard the argument a lot that, like you know, we don't want to. Just I don't want my kids to learn on screens and I think that we need to like weigh the. I think there's pros and cons, right, and we need to like weigh those pros and cons um really carefully and I keep circling back to this but becomes down to the individual child.
Speaker 2:Victoria Dunkley wrote a book called Reset your Child's Brain, and in there she has this whole long list of kids that are high risk for screen addiction. So if you do have a child, I have one of those kids. But we still use technology and we're using it in ways that are for diagnostics. But also he has a mentor through Curious Cardinals, which we had Audrey Wish on the podcast, and it's amazing. He's learning computer game design, video game design, from a guy who graduated from USC and he's able to still use technology in a healthy way and doing things that he's really interested in, and so, instead of just consuming, he's learning how to create and guess what? We're not seeing these big meltdowns as much as we were when he was just consuming as much that he could. So you could still, even with the high risk kids, there's a way to utilize this so that we can make sure that you know they're learning in a mastery based way. So what does a strong ed tech tool look like, katie?
Speaker 1:It's my favorite question, adrienne. So for a long time at Prenda, like I oversaw all of the learning and so I would evaluate all of these tools and helped build the team that now evaluates tools, and we built a really amazing rubric that we evaluate all these things based on. It's very fancy and scientific, just kidding. It's mostly based on six main things. It's pretty simple, but it's good to make things sound complicated, right? Yes, Okay.
Speaker 1:This is a super important question because there, like we said, like hundreds, even thousands, of educational technology tools in the marketplace. You know, if you're a homeschool mom trying to find some find like an online tool for your child, you know, just Googling online math tool is going to come up with so many different resources and a lot of them are pretty much going to be garbage. I will tell you we have looked at hundreds of them and we have a very concrete rubric that we use to evaluate these things at Prenda, and so I'm going to tell you the six things we look at and then I'll even give you examples of, like good tools and bad tools obviously not exhaustive lists, and just kind of giving the highlights for the big main tools Ready. The first one is internal diagnostics. So you want a tool to have a way that assesses the child's comprehension internally, because then that assessment is going to be tied directly to their instruction. So that is a really important element and not a lot of tools have that. So the ones that we like that have this Lexia for language, um, both their elementary school, core five and their power up program, um does this well. Math seeds another good one for littles and math, and then Alex is probably the best at this. We also use iReady, which can be used to do this, but we don't love having iReady the instructional part, be the core curriculum. We just think that there are other tools that do a slightly better job. But I do love the connection between assessment and instruction. So you can have a tool like iReady, assess and then use that data to then place a student into a learning tool, but it's just not as as specific. Another really good tool in that that does that well is Dreambox.
Speaker 1:If you're looking at math tools, a bad example of this is Zurn. Zurn is used by like a quarter of the kids in the country and there's no internal assessment. Really that like it's like you're just working from the beginning of second grade through the end of second grade, like it's very linear, it's not really adaptive. Um, so yeah, that first one internal diagnostics. You don't have to have it, but it's a huge plus, if I see it All right. So the second one is a personalized learning path, and what I mean by that is does the tool differentiate instruction for every domain within a subject area, or are the students kind of lumped into like a broad categorization, like a grade level. So, for example, we'll take Lexia again.
Speaker 1:Lexia, the core five program, the elementary program. It assesses multiple domains of language knowledge but then you're placed at a certain level. It's not necessarily like just your grade level, right. It will place you like in the middle of a certain level. It's not necessarily like just your grade level, right, it can, you can, it will place you like in the middle of a grade level, or it will adapt, but it doesn't place you per domain. So to contrast that Lexia, power up their, their middle school program you can score differently in grammar and in word study and in reading comprehension, right. So if I had really poor reading comprehension, that tool is going to find me like my third grade reading level as a seventh grader and it's going to build up my reading comprehension. And then maybe I have a strength in grammar though, and I'm at sixth grade in grammar, so I can have different diagnostic levels per domain.
Speaker 1:Dreambox is another really good example of this. We don't actually use Dreambox right now, but I think it's a really strong tool in lots of these ways, so I recommend it. Yeah, bad examples the Lexu Core 5. And anything like again Zurn. We also use CTC, math, math seeds all pretty bad examples of this. It's really like you take the diagnostic, you're placed at one level, you move through that linear progression. Yeah, it's not like they're adapting per domain.
Speaker 1:Third one data transparency. So a lot of these tools are built Like I. I mean, I have sat in hundreds of sales pitches for people trying to get their tools into Brenda Um and the first thing they say is like this makes it really easy for teachers to fill in the blank. And in when we're doing student centered learning, the ability for, like the guide or the teacher or parent to see something is not it's actually less important to me than what the student sees. So does the tool give a student a clear and obvious way to set a goal, chunk that goal into bite-sized pieces and track their progress? Can the student look at the data dashboard that's given to them and say here's where I'm at, here's what I'm working on, and is that a really empowering experience for the child? And so I think again, lexi does a great job.
Speaker 1:They have a concept of units. It's kind of like a thing that will take you 10 to 12 minutes, essentially, like you know, kind of branching out your daily work into kind of like a number of units. Or in the past we've used Khan Academy here to say, like what percentage of your grade did you improve by things like that. So we really need a concrete unit that that child can then say like here's what I'm trying to do today, right, sometimes it's just too cloudy and so then we get into. We'll see tools just tracking the child's time in there. But time does not mean learning. We don't want to use time as an indicator of mastery, because you can sit in there and click around and the computer thinks you're actively using something for a few, for 20 minutes or whatever, and really you learned nothing.
Speaker 2:Right, and just like we, I said at the very beginning, it's the child's education, not the teachers, not the parents. So as much as we can give the reins to them to be in charge of their own learning, then guess what? Like you said, they are going to be empowered, and that should be the goal. Okay, so number four yeah.
Speaker 1:So the next one is either a linear or adaptive path.
Speaker 1:So sometimes a tool can give the child and usually we're like really pro autonomy, but for mastery we actually want the child to be kind of locked in to what the tool says that they need to know next.
Speaker 1:And some tools give the kids a little too much freedom to like click past what they need to know next and try to get into something that they're not quite ready for need to know next and try to get into something that they're not quite ready for, and then that just kind of leads to the kids kind of stalling out because they'll just they just get confused and lost in there. A good example of this Zurn, alexia, dreambox they all keep kids on track CTC and Nori, nori we haven't mentioned Nori and Khan Academy and IXL. It's kind of the same thing. You either, like the kids are really able to like click around in there, which is good, it's just like it's just it can be really good, because then it just is like gives them a little bit more flexibility, but it just makes it so it's harder to tell if they've really completed that mastery track.
Speaker 2:Okay. So then, what is our fifth thing that we're looking for when we're looking at mastery-based tools?
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 1:The fifth one is internal support. So what happens when you get something wrong? Right? So is there some sort of like oh whoops, like let's try that again. Is there a reteaching? Are there tools built in where the kid can be like oh, I got that wrong three times, I need to go do something else, like Nori is one of my favorite math tools. They, you can, you can watch a video or you can click walk me through this. And so their internal supports where the child can, instead of just being like teacher, teacher, I need help. Like what can I do as a learner? Like what I, what? What resources are here for me to to really figure something out? Right, Because we don't want to create systems that have tons of busy work, because we assume all kids need a certain level of practice. Right, because some kids need less practice and some kids need more practice. Some kids need more support, some kids need less support to move through the material, right? So it's great to have these internal supports on hand so that they can use their resources and it helps them be a very proactive learner.
Speaker 1:You know, a kid gets stuck and like the prompt from the guide is like what have you already tried and they're like nothing. It's like well, I'm not here to like explain that math to you, yet you know like there are resources on the table here that you could use as an owner of your own education. So I like Nori for that. Another piece of this is what the, what the guide or teacher, sees on the back end. So if a child's really struggling, is there some sort of flag to that, to that adult that says, hey, this kid is stuck and here's what you could do. Next I will go into a more differentiated, simpler lesson. It will repeat things, but then there's a flag on the teacher side that says, hey, this student needs some attention. And then there are little mini lessons that you can print out and say, hey, why don't you like come? It looks like you're stuck. Let's do this lesson together in real life and then we'll put you back. You can try again online. And that creates a really nice balance between what's happening on on the computer and what's happening in real life, because we don't want to just turn kids over unmonitored to these tools and just trust that you know everything's going to go well.
Speaker 1:Like this requires a lot of data, monitoring and interaction from the teacher and conversation about progress and responsibility and accountability, like there's a lot of coaching that needs to be done to help students learn in this way responsibly, because they're used to just if they sit in their seat and they do their paper and they don't make any noises, like that's winning. And winning here looks very different. Right, it's a very proactive, like resourceful. It doesn't even seem quiet sometimes when I walk into a micro school where it's conquer time and all of the kids are on their tools, like they're talking about it. They, you know, they're interacting with each other, they're helping each other, they're uh, they're interacting with their guides. It's not a quiet time. Usually, depending on the guide, it definitely can be quiet. For sure. You'll see a whole spectrum for sure, and I think that that's good. There should be lots of different kinds of microscopes, absolutely.
Speaker 1:Number six is a printed companion material. So you have mentioned that your, your child, just like, runs through this and, um, I think it's so important that the digital tool also provide a print-based experience, because we need to get the child's hands and eyes using pencil and paper and applying the knowledge on a screen and off a screen, because they need to use those skills both on a computer and offline and in when I was a speech language pathologist. This is called generalization. Right, a kid can come into my speech room and he can sit down at my table and look at me and play my games and he can say his speech sounds right, but I send him out my door and all he's like, oh, I'm not at speech anymore, I'm not doing any of that, right? So we need to take the, the teaching that they receive digitally, and we need to transfer that into other situations, right? So pencil paper experience that goes along with that is huge. Um tools that do that really well are Lexi and Zern. A bad example of this is Nori. I wish that it was better. Ctc math is great.
Speaker 1:You can like create worksheets, but it's not like an automatic part of the program. You can get con worksheets, but it's like a little wonky because you don't have to go through con in like a linear fashion. So it's hard to like go find the worksheet that goes along with that. It can get a little messy. Another way we like transfer this information into another setting is to have them do a project with it or do like a um a logic game with it.
Speaker 1:Like move that knowledge into other you know other experiences, and that's when we get a real depth of learning and retention. We used to actually at Prenda, kind of track how fast kids were moving through things and it was like, oh wow, these kids are moving like three years ahead, like that's amazing. But then the retention wasn't there and so we don't want to just go for speed. You can go really fast, but that's really not the point. The point is depth of knowledge, mastery and retention, and so there's kind of your kids will like kind of settle into a sweet spot of like yeah, I'm usually able to do like 110% of a given school year. For some kids that's 80% and that's okay. Whatever is going to be the sweet spot for that student is what we should hold kids to, not some arbitrary schedule that was made by people far, far away.
Speaker 2:So it's great, we have all these tools. Part of me still is like but can we do mastery-based learning without technology?
Speaker 1:Yeah, you totally can do mastery-based learning without technology. You can't do large cohort-based learning without technology, I would say. But you can do like a micro school could be run like. In a paper version of a micro school We've had guides. Try that. It is still stressful and difficult, even with 10 kids, to do it without computers, but in a homeschool setting like that it's perfect for that right. If you had just a small group of kids, two or three learners, you could probably do it, but that is going to mean that that human is delivering those individual lessons and so as soon as you aren't using technology, that becomes very humanly stressful. Um, but you can definitely do it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I'm sure there's some tips and tricks out there too, like my son's science teacher found this tip, on TikTok actually and so she would have them take a just a blind quiz before they even like learn the content and see, like, where their knowledge is, you know, discovering what the learning gaps are. And then they, she would teach it, and then they would take that same exact thing again and see where the learning gaps are. So she was able to still do that, as you know, to one teacher to 25 students. Um, but that it's still not. She still has to move on.
Speaker 1:so there's still something like deficits with that approach as well right, you really have to disconnect the the whole mastery-based mindset from this, like we have to move on.
Speaker 1:So, just to extrapolate that experience with that or that example with your science teacher, that's beautiful.
Speaker 1:Right to give a pretest, this is called pre-test and then you, you know, expose or teach, and then you do a formative assessment to see if they got it. But yeah, then then it's like I would love to see in that experience being like, hey, now you know what you need to learn, like for this next week, like your only job is to go research those things that you don't understand quite yet and at the end of the week, like I'll interview you about it or you can give a presentation about it or give them some other way to demonstrate their knowledge, um, but or maybe they do know those things, but like they, like you know, aren't a good test taker, they got distracted, or something like that. So giving them, um, the time to go find that, like those, those that missing knowledge, and then to demonstrate it in a unique and, like you know, multifaceted way would yeah and making sure that feedback loop gets closed, kind of like what we've been talking about so the question really is, like, can you do this without computers?
Speaker 1:like that's a really beautiful experience. But then it's like, can you do that like week after week? Like pretty soon you're not moving on as a class, pretty soon, like all of the kids are doing you know they're they're filling in their learning gaps, and that takes kids some kids one week, some kids two weeks and then during that time, like, are you giving more, like direct instruction on the next thing? Like that's where it starts to break down, right? So I think there are definitely elements of mastery-based learning that can totally be brought in. You could also, you know you could set up like kind of like a station rotation where kids are doing their adaptive tools and then they come to you for like an emphasis on you know, like if you were, you'd have to. It's just tricky because at any given time in your classroom you can have people be at 30 different places, and so if you had a classroom where it's like, hey, these kids are all like in level 14 or level 15 at Lexi, in Lexi, or something like that, that's going to be my group and I'm going to go through that teaching with them and like reemphasize that and make sure that they've got it, and then you know the other station they're going to be like doing a world word building thing or, you know, interacting in some way. Um, I think you could build a classroom like that.
Speaker 1:It just is really hard to do it without technology. I'm trying to think of like a way that you could really get that without technology. Even Zurn, like that's kind of how Zurn is built, like you do adaptive technology lessons and then there are actually companion lessons that go like that the teacher does with the class and in small group and things like that. Like they've really built out a nice system to try to get more of a mastery based experience. But when you talk to Zurn they tell you like the best thing, like that the research shows that the best thing is just to expose kids and move on.
Speaker 1:And I just like cannot understand that. Like I would love to see who funded that research, cause it's just like so bizarre that we just continue to expose kids to grade level standards that eventually they'll get them without going back and filling in their learning gaps. Like it's like if you just keep talking to me about quantum mechanics, I'm never going to understand it if I don't go learn like all of the basics, right, um. So yeah, I think it can be done. It's just, uh, it's pretty tricky.
Speaker 2:That was really interesting and I feel like every time I have conversations around mastery-based learning and learning tools, I'm starting to slowly move onto the side of being okay with using technology because it is a really well. But I also have a student who has a one-on-one tutor and she comes to our house and we were able to do that, you know, through empowerment, scholarship accounts. So part of like my own, I'm like well, but I can get that, like my son can get that education. But I have to remember not every single child can, and so let's try to be as inclusive as possible and really help kids master the content before moving on. That's it for today.
Speaker 2:We hope you enjoyed this episode of the Kindle podcast. If this episode was helpful to you, please like, subscribe and follow us on social at Prenda Learn. If you enjoyed this episode of the Kindle podcast. If this episode was helpful to you, please like, subscribe and follow us on social at Prenda learn. If you have any questions that you would like to submit, all you need to do is email us at podcast at Prendacom. You can also join our Facebook group called the Kindle collective and subscribe to our weekly newsletter, the Sunday spark.
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