School Features and Student Opportunities for Deeper Learning: What Makes a Difference?

• In Event: 34.038 - Fostering Deeper Learning in High Schools and Examining Its Effects on Student Outcomes

Abstract

Introduction
This presentation focuses on the identification of specific school features that facilitate the provision of deeper learning opportunities to students. We do this by examining teacher survey data related to teachers’ own beliefs about teaching; their assessment of the professional culture; and their views of the leadership at the school. We then explore whether these features help to explain variation in students’ self-reports of opportunities to engage in deeper learning.
Data and Methods
We conducted site visits at 19 network high schools, drawn from 10 deeper learning networks. Teacher and student surveys were administered during the 2012–13 academic year at a subset of 12 of these network schools (as well as 12 matched non-network schools). We created six measures of school features based on survey responses from all core academic subject teachers within these schools. Students’ opportunities to engage in deeper learning were measured using survey responses from a sample of 11th and 12th grade students. Using student survey data, we created four broad measures of student opportunities.
To understand the relationships between school features and students’ deeper learning opportunities, we examined the correlations between each school feature measure and each student opportunity measure. We also supplemented our analysis with qualitative data from network school site visits and network leader interviews.
Results
Network schools in our sample varied with respect to the features commonly associated with effective schools (i.e., beliefs about teaching, teachers’ professional culture, and leadership). Overall, teachers in network schools reported statistically significantly higher values on all of the teacher survey constructs we examined compared to teachers in non-network schools.
Within the sample of network schools, teachers’ reports of their own student-centered beliefs about teaching and their self-efficacy for teaching were the features most strongly and consistently related to greater student opportunities to engage in deeper learning. In contrast, teacher-centered beliefs about teaching were negatively related to student opportunities for deeper learning. Other features of the school environment were inconsistently related to particular opportunities.
Through interviews, the staff in the network schools (i.e., administrators, teachers, and network staff) reported several factors that facilitated their efforts, including strong leadership that was shared among adults in the school community; strong professional communities with a shared vision for teaching and learning; and quality support from their networks. In general, conclusions from the analyses of survey data aligned with conclusions drawn from interview and site visit data. While teachers’ own beliefs seem to have the most consistent and strongest associations with the opportunities students report experiencing in the classroom, the interview data suggest that other school features and external policies can influence teachers’ beliefs about teaching and about themselves.
Significance
Our study begins to explore how schools may develop teacher beliefs that influence students’ experiences in the classroom. However, more research is needed to examine how schools can develop these teacher beliefs, how different school features interact, and whether schools that score high on both school features and student opportunities also provide students with better deeper learning outcomes.

Authors

• Mette Huberman, American Institutes for Research

• Jessica Mason, American Institutes for Research

• Jennifer A. O'Day, American Institutes for Research

• Helen M. Duffy, American Institutes for Research