Mastery Learning

Series 5 Leaders Coaching Leaders Podcast

[00:00:00.84] ANNOUNCER: Welcome to Corwin's Leaders Coaching Leaders podcast with host Peter DeWitt. This podcast is from education leaders for education leaders. Every week Peter and our guests get together to share ideas, put research into practice, and ensure every student is learning, not by chance, but by design.

[00:00:18.78] TANYA GHANS: Hi, Peter.

[00:00:20.85] PETER DEWITT: How are you?

[00:00:21.79] TANYA GHANS: I'm good. I'm good. I'm always happy when we're doing another episode together because I know I'm going to be smarter at the end of it.

[00:00:29.40] PETER DEWITT: I feel the same way. And, you know, it's funny because I don't walk into these with a set of questions. I actually just walk in as a listener and a learner. And I was very excited about today's because it's Tom Guskey. And everybody knows Tom. Everybody knows who Tom Guskey is. But his role is Professor Emeritus in the College of Education at the University of Kentucky, but he's just written numerous books on self-efficacy, on assessment. He's been all over the self-efficacy research and assessment research for decades.

[00:01:07.54] He is, in fact, one of my gurus. And I know I kind of gush. So I'm just giving people a warning because I do gush a little bit when I'm with Tom because he is probably one of the top three people who have had the most influence on me in education. And it's just because of the conversations, but he's written guest blogs for me for Education Week. He's written hundreds of articles for both research journals but also ASCD's Educational Leadership, everything.

[00:01:37.56] And so I was very excited to talk to him because Tom never disappoints.

[00:01:41.25] TANYA GHANS: Yeah, no. And he did not disappoint today. This was-- as an educator, doing it for so long, there's so many terms that I feel like I know or that I've been swimming in. But today's was like a class and just going back to the roots of terms, like formative and summative and what they actually mean. And so listeners are going to get this real like historical take on terms they might be hearing, but the roots of where they came from in this really-- again, our show is only 20 or so minutes long, so it won't be belabored. But it's going to be really, really interesting.

[00:02:19.98] And I think a couple of other things that are going to happen for listeners in this episode is that they are going to come away with some new understandings, particularly in how teacher change happens. Or even what's the most believable evidence? I have come away from listening to this I think with, yeah, really some new insights that make me want to probe further into this whole concept of mastery learning. It was a really fascinating conversation.

[00:02:52.95] PETER DEWITT: Yeah, Tom, is both masterful when it comes to research, but also he can make it very practical. But in the middle is this thoughtfulness. And I think when people are listening to this, there are a couple of things to keep in mind.

[00:03:08.26] Number one, what do you know about mastery learning? What do you know about self-efficacy? Because you're going to learn things about it today, just in this very short 30-minute conversation. But it's also about how do we-- you know, we had a good discussion about evidence, which is something he and I have talked about a lot before. And we all value different evidence.

[00:03:31.56] So what do you do about that? And that's where Tom was-- I appreciated Tom's insight where that's concerned. So, Yeah, just not surprised at all at. Tom's just brilliant. So--

[00:03:45.92] TANYA GHANS: So listeners, yes, enjoy. This is going to be a great listen. And look forward to hopefully hearing your feedback about how you felt about it. But this was a great episode. So, Peter, as always, I will see you on the other side.

[00:04:00.03] [MUSIC PLAYING]

[00:04:02.32] PETER DEWITT: Tom Guskey, welcome to the Leader Coaching Leaders podcast.

[00:04:05.83] THOMAS GUSKEY: Well, Peter, it's such an honor to be with you. Thank you for inviting me.

[00:04:09.35] PETER DEWITT: It's just always good to see you. I mean I feel very fortunate every time our paths cross. Not only are you just this amazing researcher and writer and I want to get into it all if we could even do that within 30 minutes. But you were my first guest on "A Seat at the Table" for Education Week. You write these amazing guest blogs for me for Finding Common Ground that are so interesting as well.

[00:04:35.65] And I just feel really fortunate to know. When I talk to people, I always say that you are one of the best gurus that I have in my life. And I always feel very fortunate. So I did want to start off by saying that.

[00:04:49.10] THOMAS GUSKEY: Well, thank you, Peter. And I have to tell you, I feel the same. I can't tell you how many times I go to places and people ask me, I think Peter DeWitt, isn't it great?

[00:04:58.86] PETER DEWITT: Oh. Well, that's nice. So one of the reasons why I wanted to be able to talk to you today is around the idea that you have the third edition of Implementing Mastery Learning that you published with Corwin. And I wanted to be able to talk about that because I think there are so many great implications not just for teachers and students in a K-12 setting, but also from, honestly, what I'm reading from a facilitator standpoint of professional learning with adults, there are just so many important points that you make in there that I think are valuable. So I don't want people to think that although mastery learning really important for K-12 space, I think it's also important to be modeled at the facilitator space when you're running professional learning.

[00:05:52.12] THOMAS GUSKEY: Yeah, that's certainly true. And I think that so many of our modern programs today really can trace the roots to mastery learning. But oftentimes because the years have passed, the interpretation of that gets blurred from time to time. So hopefully with this addition what we'll be able to do is take people back and help them understand the original thinking, the theory that was behind this, the early research that looked into this, and really what contributed to its contribution to education and the idea that it is such a powerful foundation for so many other educational programs and instructional strategies.

[00:06:28.46] PETER DEWITT: So let's start there. One of the things that I like to be able to do on the podcast is start with not only the common language, but a common understanding. And honestly, you are one of the influencers in why I do that because you and I have had so many conversations about how things start. I remember talking to you about, so tell me more about how the research behind self-efficacy started. So when it comes to mastery learning, when we're looking at sort of the common understanding of what that means, what is mastery learning?

[00:07:02.15] THOMAS GUSKEY: OK. Mastery learning was actually developed by Benjamin Bloom in the late 1960s. He wrote about this initially in 1968. And it was Bloom who brought to education the idea that assessments can be a part of the instructural process. Prior to this hallmark work of Bloom, we always had this idea that assessments occurred at the end of instruction. They were primarily evaluation devices to determine who had learned well and who had not. Grades were recorded. They were summarized in some later time.

[00:07:41.54] And Bloom came along in 1968 and described a process whereby assessments could actually be a learning tool and a part of the instructional process. His idea was that these should be devices that inform students about how well they're doing and inform teachers about how effective their instruction was. It was Benjamin Bloom in 1968 who brought the word formative assessment to education. He actually borrowed the term from Michael Scriven, who the year before in 1967-- Michael Scriven was writing about program evaluation.

[00:08:19.79] And he described that in program evaluation what happens is people commit at the end to just try to find out if anything has worked or not. But Scriven was recommending to program evaluators is that they actually gather information while the program is being implemented in order to provide this sort of feedback to program developers so they can make changes as the program is being implemented to be more successful when it got to the end.

[00:08:44.72] Benjamin Bloom and Michael Scriven were quite good friends. And the very next year after they had had some discussions on this, Bloom described how this could be carried over then into education. And we could use assessments actually as formative devices. In 1971, he published the very first book, handbook, On Formative and Summative Evaluation of Student Learning. So it was this idea that assessments could be learning tools that provided the basis for mastery learning.

[00:09:14.60] But Bloom also recognized that assessments alone really don't improve instruction. It's kind of like checking your blood pressure regularly or weighing yourself regularly doesn't improve your health. It's what you do with the results. So Bloom emphasized that these assessments had to be followed by what he called correctives, that the assessments provided this feedback to students, but we had to pair with this feedback guidance and direction as to how students could improve their learning.

[00:09:42.05] And Bloom emphasized, however, that this idea of correctives cannot be reteaching, that going back and repeating a process that we already know hasn't worked is unlikely to yield any better results the second time around. So Bloom re-emphasized that these correctives needed to approach instruction differently, that it had to involve a different presentation and different kind of engagement for students. And he felt that in this way we could really focus on student's individual learning difficulties to help those be remedied.

[00:10:13.91] Then Bloom suggested following that with a second assessment, a second formative assessment. And he recommended this for two reasons. First, we did want to find out if these correctives have really been successful or not at helping students remedy their learning errors. But more importantly, it served as a motivational device, an opportunity, a second opportunity, for students to really be successful and then gain the many valuable benefits of that success. So he outlined this process of formative assessments, providing feedback, paired with correctives, and a second formative assessment as a way to help remedy the problems.

[00:10:52.31] But quite amazingly, he also recognized that for some students the initial instruction is highly appropriate. And they have no need for these corrective activities. But we also don't want them just sitting around biding their time while everybody else catches up. For those students, Bloom recommended we have to provide an exciting and challenging learning opportunity to give them a chance to extend their learning, what he called enrichment.

[00:11:15.80] And so he outlined this process of this formative assessments, enrichment for those students who do well. This should be rewarding and challenging. Enrichment can't just be more harder problems. They have to be some exciting thing that students who want to engage in. He recommended that students can give them choice with regard to what enrichment activities they employ.

[00:11:38.03] Outlined this in 1968, further developed it in the early 1970s. And that was how mastery learning was born.

[00:11:45.44] PETER DEWITT: And I love that you actually focus on that within the book too because I think it's really important for people to understand. So often these days, especially with social media, I feel like sometimes people don't give credit to people who came before for them. And I think we always have to acknowledge that we stand on the shoulders of giants. And you do such a great job of that within the book.

[00:12:09.64] One of the things that I started thinking when I was reading that, and just with all the work that you do, is there seems to be a gap between what research says and the practice that's happening in the classroom. And do you think that mastery learning has kind of suffered that same fate over the years? And is that part of the reason why you wanted to write this third edition to be able to kind of keep people grounded in what mastery learning really is?

[00:12:38.77] I know that's a lot of questions that I just threw at you. But I just feel like I feel like mastery learning-- and you touched on this right at the beginning of the book-- mastery learning has really suffered this fate of it's becoming a little bit more muddy with how people think mastery learning is supposed to work. Is that true?

[00:12:58.03] THOMAS GUSKEY: Yeah, that's very accurate, Peter, actually. In fact, in the first edition of Mastery Learning, Benjamin Bloom was still alive. And he graciously accepted my invitation to write a foreword to the book. So in the very first edition the foreword was written by Benjamin Bloom. And it was an opportunity for him to reflect on how these ideas had sort of evolved over that time.

[00:13:23.77] Like I said Benjamin Bloom developed this first in 1968. He then many years later served as my advisor during my graduate studies at the University of Chicago. But it was quite some time later.

[00:13:35.92] When we were developing this third edition, we thought that the forward that he wrote that long ago was not particularly important. So what we wanted to do was provide a perspective of what was happening. So the folks there at Corwin asked if I could prepare a prologue for the book.

[00:13:54.43] In doing that, I tried to imagine what it was like in 1968 when Benjamin Bloom was writing these ideas and how he came up with it and wanted to understand the social context in which it was developed. Well, back in 1968, this was just two years after the Coleman Report, "Equality of Educational Opportunity," had been written, which basically said educators don't have a lot of influence. That whether kids learn or not in school, a lot depends on their home environment and social, economic, and demographic characteristics, and educators didn't really influence it based on the information Coleman had gathered at that time.

[00:14:35.89] Our nation was in turmoil. It was the midst of the Vietnam War. The Civil Rights Act had been passed. And we were working with desegregation, but there were riots on the streets and all these different civil rights demonstrations going on. It was a really troubled time.

[00:14:55.12] And along comes Benjamin Bloom and says, look, we are never going to accomplish anything if we talk only about equality, that people come to schools with very different kinds of backgrounds and skills. And so giving them the same opportunity isn't going to remedy the problems. We have to think about equity. We have to think about what we can do to help all students learn well.

[00:15:19.48] And Bloom started with this premise that in any subject area, any academic discipline, what you can learn is infinite. There's no limit to what you can learn in any academic subject. But a curriculum is finite.

[00:15:35.95] And when we define a curriculum, we specify within an entire domain of learning the things that we believe are most important for students to learn. And as soon as we define that finite curriculum, our job as educators becomes having all students learn that excellently-- not just some, not just the brightest. I mean why would we ever define something in a curriculum that we would expect some students not to learn well. It just doesn't make sense. And so our job is really to have all students learn that excellently.

[00:16:06.31] But Bloom also recognized that to accomplish that we had to deal with the constraints under which teachers work today. And that was that most teachers taught in an environment where as one teacher with 20, 25 or more kids at a time, fairly fixed curriculum they were expected to teach in a limited amount of time in which to teach it. So what can we do within that group-based instructional environment and adapt that to really enhance the learning of all students given the diversity of learning skills and aptitudes and backgrounds they brought to the classroom? Giving teachers a better way to individualize and diversify their instruction, differentiate their instruction within the constraints of a classroom.

[00:16:51.90] PETER DEWITT: I think in some ways-- well, obviously, in many ways that hasn't changed, right? But there are a couple of different of directions I wanted to be able to go. Earlier in the conversation, you were talking about the idea that formative assessment is really about understanding our instruction. It's not just understanding whether the kids learned it or not.

[00:17:12.67] And one of the sort of surprising conversations I've had with school leaders from time to time in just over the past year is that their teachers are involved in formative assessments, but they don't see it as feedback about their own teaching, which is really interesting to me. And why do you think that's so hard? Like it seems like it would be common sense that we're doing formative assessment. Here's what we know about how the kids learned it or whether they learned it. How do we, as adults, not see that as feedback within our instruction? Why is that so complicated?

[00:17:53.49] THOMAS GUSKEY: Well, I think a lot of it has to do with just a basic frustration that teachers experience. I mean I work at a university where we prepare a lot of new teachers. And teachers come out of our program very enthusiastic, committed to the idea that they are going to be highly effective and will be able to help every student learn excellently.

[00:18:14.43] But then they go into the classroom situation. And they see these dilemmas. They try really hard. They try other options. They try different approaches. And they're just not getting the results they want.

[00:18:26.89] And so this comes to a sense of real frustration on their part. And in order to endure that, they have to start explaining that in some way. And one of the explanations is that this is beyond my control.

[00:18:42.09] And we talk about this in terms of a sense of efficacy, as you know, to believe that what you do can really make a difference. Or is the things that students bring to the school the primary influence is whether they're going to learn or not. When we find ourselves to be less effective than what we had hoped, then we lose that sense of efficacy and start explaining results in terms of these external factors.

[00:19:07.30] But one of the nice things that we've seen and studies that I've conducted show, the studies that I've conducted actually have looked at teachers and teacher change and what prompts teachers to change and what prohibits them from change, what kinds of changes they make. And one of the things we've always been interested in is this sense of efficacy. What is it that we can really do to help teachers enhance their sense of efficacy?

[00:19:32.70] All these efforts that have tried to convince teachers they can be more influential and affect their attitudes and dispositions directly or their beliefs directly have had modest results at best. But one of the greatest impacts we've seen of the implementation of mastery learning is that when teachers see that these strategies work, when they see that what they're doing does make a difference, they become much more efficacious.

[00:19:59.19] They start thinking, wow, I did this, and it's really having an impact on kids. And then they start thinking, maybe there are more things I can do, more things I can change to really have an even stronger impact. And so when we show teachers that by using strategies that can work and do impact the learning of their children in their classrooms, then they start thinking, this is really important and I do influence this. So it restores that sense of purpose and that sense of agency or efficacy, or whatever we want to call it today, that says I control the conditions that can help my students succeed, and I'm going to take advantage of those the best I can.

[00:20:42.27] PETER DEWITT: So I mention your name a lot. And I know I said that at the beginning because I really have been deeply impacted by your research. And one of the things that I had been using lately, and Jennie Donahue, who you know very well, she has as well, is when we talk about just what you're focusing on, which is what comes first, professional learning, change in teachers' beliefs? And everybody seems to think it's a change in teachers' beliefs.

[00:21:08.31] But you actually-- and correct me if I'm wrong-- really found that professional learning-- and this is why it's impacted me because I understand the onus is on me to make sure that when we're together, I'm very, very intentional and we engage in metacognitive activities and everything we can to make sure people get it. But professional learning, it starts with professional learning. And then it goes to a change in teacher practice and then a change in student practice or behavior. And then it will change teacher beliefs. Is that correct?

[00:21:42.67] THOMAS GUSKEY: That is correct. Yeah, this is actually stems back to-- my doctoral dissertation was on the process of teacher change. And everybody agrees that there are these three major outcomes that we hope from professional learning experience for educators. We'd like to get some change in attitudes and beliefs. Want them to believe all kids can learn or believe inclusion is a good thing, or change your attitudes about working with kids who might have special needs and different things.

[00:22:10.50] We also like to get some changes in their practices, do things a little bit differently as they teach. And finally, we'd like to have some impact on student learning, broadly defined to include not only academic achievement indices, but things like a sense of personal efficacy or agency, confidence in learning such situations, believing that you can be successful in these different learning environments.

[00:22:36.54] So I was able to trace in early work this long history that we have in education, where we had the idea that the order of change was attitudes and beliefs first, leading to change in practice, result in change in student learning. And I was able to trace this back to the work of some early change theorists who wrote in the 1930s and 1940s, Kurt Lewin, for example, who based many of his ideas on psychotherapeutic models.

[00:23:01.61] But all of our evidence on teacher change was showing that that wasn't the way it happened. That the real order of change was exactly as you described. It was practices first, student learning second, and attitudes and beliefs last. The reason that was so it is experience that shapes the attitudes of beliefs. It's not the other way around. And so what we have to do is we have to make sure that we provide strategies that can lead to that kind of feedback to teachers so what they're doing does make a difference. We have to alter the experience.

[00:23:37.31] We're finding the same holds true for students. All these programs designed to enhance students self-efficacy or their sense of well-being or a sense of growth mindset on the part of kids has had modest results at best. Because to convince them they can be successful, but then have them turn around in a classroom and fail, that doesn't matter. What we need to do is show them that they can succeed in learning environments. Show them they can experience success. And that experience then leads to their confidence that they're going to be able to do it.

[00:24:12.37] PETER DEWITT: Yeah, and I think that, to me, has been so powerful. Because when you think about it from a professional learning lens, too often-- and when I'm referring to professional learning, whether we're talking about meetings at the district office or professional learning within the district or even when you're coming to a workshop or something like that, I've been amazed at how many people that are told to go to a workshop that don't even know why they're there.

[00:24:40.67] And it's happened through conversations, like just introducing myself and asking people, so tell me, why are you here? And they don't know. And they're being very open and honest. They're not being flippant about it.

[00:24:52.95] And that's where I think your work is really also very important to show that professional learning doesn't just start when they show up to the workshop. It's about-- like I'll develop success criteria, send it out to the participants ahead of time, and then ask them to come with some success criteria is modeling, how do you want to be successful?

[00:25:15.87] One of the other areas that-- and you know this because I've talked to you about it numerous times-- you've had a profound impact on some of the things that I say is still to this day we will talk to leaders who will say this is the evidence that teachers have to use. And it might be standardized assessments. Or they're not giving teachers much voice in what they're using during PLCs, or whatever.

[00:25:43.15] And one of the things that I talk about and I reference you all the time is, I remember a long time ago, I said, how do you raise somebody's self-efficacy? Something you were just talking about. And you said, it's not that easy. Like I hate to look at the effect size that you might see and think, boom, you can just raise somebody's self-efficacy. You said there are three things in place-- a protocol in place, evidence teachers trust, and the strategy needs to make a difference within weeks, and not months.

[00:26:12.84] THOMAS GUSKEY: Yes.

[00:26:13.29] PETER DEWITT: And that evidence piece is always so important because I don't always get the feeling that teachers are allowed or encouraged to kind of choose their own evidence. There's not a great dialogue about that. And I think that also goes back to what you were talking about earlier with the whole idea of the profession and just the teacher voice part of it.

[00:26:36.36] I'm not saying that everybody should have full autonomy. But I think we should have a discussion about what evidence is going to work best for us for the success criteria that we have set. Is that correct thinking?

[00:26:50.76] THOMAS GUSKEY: You're absolutely correct, Peter. And I know this is-- this actually stemmed from a study that I did some years ago where I took 15 different indicators of student learning. And these ranged from things like scores of nationally standardized tests, state assessments, end of year tests, classroom assessments, homework completion, quizzes, all these different sorts of things. I had 15 of them.

[00:27:17.19] And I gave them to groups of educators. And I said, now, we could argue that any of these could be acceptable or valid indications of student learning. How would you rank these in terms of their importance, of what you think is the most trustworthy evidence to show that students have learned well? And I did ask them to rank order them so that they can compare each one with the other.

[00:27:37.54] And after they did that, I compared to rank ordering of teachers and school administrators, school leaders. They were almost exactly reversed, almost exactly reversed. The school leaders said, whoa, it's those large-scale assessments. That's the state assessments. That's what our school is judged on. That's what the board cares about. That's what I get called on the carpet on.

[00:27:59.76] Teachers said, not all that important. We do it once a year. We don't get the results back for two or three months. By that time, my kids were off with another teacher. I trust my own evidence. I trust the evidence that I see. That's the evidence that I can use to let me know how my kids are doing.

[00:28:17.01] Well, so what does that then say if you're leading a professional learning experience? What it says is you have different stakeholders in this process who trust and believe different evidence. And so you can't trust a single source. Because you have multiple stakeholders, you need to think about multiple sources of evidence.

[00:28:34.64] I always tell the tale when I'm asked to defend any professional learning experience to a board of education, I always use testimonials. I mean I parade teachers in front of them who say, you know, I was so distraught, and I was getting ready to take early retirement. I got in this program. I'm a better teacher now than I ever was. I can't wait to get to school in the morning. I'm so excited about being a part of this profession.

[00:28:58.44] I parade kids in front of them who will say, I hated school. I was getting ready to drop out. Missing school all the time. And now, I look forward to coming to school. I do two hours of homework every night. The letter from Harvard arrived yesterday. All right? Now, from a research perspective, testimonials are a very poor source of evidence.

[00:29:17.43] PETER DEWITT: Right.

[00:29:17.94] THOMAS GUSKEY: They're very limited. They're based on highly biased perspectives. The reason I use them? It's the evidence that board members believe. I can put charts and graphs in front of them. But to have a teacher or a kid say to them this made a difference in my life, that makes a difference for them. And so what I encourage people who are engaged in professional learning to do is to think about the stakeholders in a process and what evidence they trust.

[00:29:45.52] But to get back to your other point too, when you come back to teachers, it can't be evidence that they're going to wait a year to find out about. They're not going to wait till the end of the year. It's kind of like if you start a new exercise program or a diet, you're not going to wait for three months to find any effects.

[00:30:03.52] PETER DEWITT: Yeah, exactly.

[00:30:04.81] THOMAS GUSKEY: It has to make some difference pretty quickly. And the same is true for teachers. And the thing is it's not because teachers are afraid of change. It's because teachers are so committed to the learning of their kids.

[00:30:16.45] And there is this danger that they sense that if they persist with these activities because it's different from what they've done before, their kids might learn less well. And teachers are reluctant to sacrifice their students for the sake of innovation. If they don't see it working better, they're going to revert back to tried and true things they've always done. So that's why we need to build in this mechanism whereby teachers can get that feedback pretty quickly.

[00:30:40.55] PETER DEWITT: Yeah, I remember in Bandura's research talking about with leader self-efficacy was they're going to double their efforts. But if they don't feel confident, they're going to slacken their efforts. And failure can really determine what's going to happen in that situation.

[00:30:59.14] I want to get back to when you're talking about teachers and students. And one of the things that I thought was powerful about Mastery Learning, because it really is-- it's everything. You've got the history of where it started. You've got the progression where people have kind of taken it maybe in different directions than you would have taken it. But also you give clear insight on what mastery learning looks like.

[00:31:27.53] So I guess one of my last questions for you is, you travel around the world. You work with lots of schools and organizations. Where have you seen mastery learning done well? And what does that look like in a classroom environment?

[00:31:44.41] THOMAS GUSKEY: Yeah, well, I always stress that we need to consider where Bloom drew his ideas from in developing mastery learning. And he really drew those ideas from two different sources. The first was a group of studies on tutoring because he thought of all instructional conditions that has to be best. I mean think of it. If we could provide for every student an excellent tutor who could work one on one with them the entire school day, what wonderful results we might get.

[00:32:12.43] Or consider if we could reduce class size to one. But what is it happens in that one tutor, one student interaction that really makes it so effective? And are there aspects of that we could carry over to group-based instruction?

[00:32:27.37] And then very sort of thoughtfully, but cleverly, Bloom looked at another set of studies that had analyzed the strategies of successful students in group-based classrooms. So what do successful kids do that less successful kids don't do?

[00:32:42.85] And it was from those two sources of evidence that Bloom drew is ideas for the mastery learning. If you think about mastery learning, it's exactly what teachers do when they tutor an individual student. If they're tutoring a student and the student makes a mistake, the teacher doesn't go on.

[00:33:00.43] The teacher stops, points out the mistake to the student. That's feedback. Tries to re-explain that idea or concept in a different way. That's corrective. Then asks another question or pose another problem to ensure the student understands it before going on. And all Bloom is trying to do is give us a way that we can carry over that same highly effective take to a group-based instructional environment.

[00:33:25.51] And plus, it's exactly what the very best kids have always done for themselves. I mean if you think about that, what do the very best students in any class do when the teacher hands back an assessment? Well, number one, they always save it. They go over it and look at what they got right and what they get wrong.

[00:33:43.12] For those things that go wrong, they rework those problems. They look up the answers. They ask the teacher about it so they don't make those same mistakes again.

[00:33:50.59] But how different it is from the poor students. What do they do with that assessment? Well, it's in a trash can as they're going out the door, if they wait until then.

[00:33:59.92] So the very best students have always used assessments as a way to gain feedback on their learning and to correct the learning problems. Bloom's idea was, can we help teachers structure learning environments in such a way that they can compel all of their students to do exactly what their very best ones always did for themselves?

[00:34:17.81] And so I think that in those early efforts to implement mastery learning, those were the things that were really emphasized, taking those two sources of evidence and applying it to group-based instruction, seeing what elements we could transfer that environment to lead to the very positive results we had. But it's like you said, sometimes we get away from things. And we talk about them and fail to go back and give credit to the really brilliant people that developed these ideas in the first place.

[00:34:46.84] PETER DEWITT: And we try to add to them, which can sometimes be a distraction. I think the onus is on us to make sure that we're not doing that either. You have such a great way of making the complicated less complicated, which is what I love about you, whether you're writing a blog or a book. I mean all of your books are brilliant. I love your articles.

[00:35:07.75] And I feel like I'm gushing right now, but you know this anyway. They're always powerful. And they're always very practical. And yet they're so based in research.

[00:35:19.39] And Implementing Mastery Learning, the third edition, I read a lot of books. And it is a book that as soon-- and I knew this-- but as soon as I opened it up, I just started highlighting. And I started, oh, I could use this. Oh, this is something that would be beneficial. So congratulations on yet another book.

[00:35:40.87] But, Tom Guskey, I know we covered a lot of ground. But thank you for what you do for education in general. But I just really appreciate the influence you've had in my life too. And thanks for being a part of the Leaders Coaching Leaders podcast.

[00:35:57.61] THOMAS GUSKEY: Well, thank you, Peter. And again, the same is true for you. Our conversations have always helped me see ideas more clearly. You always point out perspectives to me that I hadn't thought about that clarify my own thinking and my ideas on this. And I really appreciate all the guidance you've given me over the years of our friendship. Thank you.

[00:36:14.56] PETER DEWITT: Well, I think you're being very kind. But I'll take it.

[00:36:17.59] THOMAS GUSKEY: Of course.

[00:36:18.37] [MUSIC PLAYING]

[00:36:22.66] TANYA GHANS: Peter, that was an absolutely fantastic conversation. I feel like I learned so much. I felt like I was in a classroom, but in one of the great classrooms where you're learning from the greats. And you really the bell rings or whatever it is that tells you time is up and you're like, no, I want a little more. It was really good.

[00:36:41.84] I mean, he has given me so much food for thought in a short period of time. For example, you know, he speaks about-- there's this whole chicken and egg thing about whether it's do teachers' beliefs have to change first or is it the professional learning that they get first? And I'm sure people can argue for both sides of it. But it really resonated with me where he was like people have to have experiences that are positive to impact and affect their belief system around things.

[00:37:14.50] If you just start by asking people to change their beliefs but don't give, in this specific context, teachers exposure to those wins or successes, those beliefs really don't have anything to hold on to and change. So I think, after this short time, I'm a believer in, yeah, it's giving teachers and anyone the strategies or their skills to do something well, see that change happen, and how that fuels-- just the belief change and how it feels a change in your understanding of your own efficacy. You have to have something tangibly good happen first before that is spurred. So that is probably my biggest takeaway from this conversation.

[00:37:58.51] PETER DEWITT: Yeah, Tom-- I know this is going to sound strange, but Tom makes educational research very exciting.

[00:38:04.33] TANYA GHANS: Yeah.

[00:38:05.47] PETER DEWITT: He really does. He makes me always want to go and read more and go deeper and those kind of things. And I enjoyed the conversation because of the professional learning side of it, like people need to understand as facilitators-- whether we're talking about directors of teaching and learning within a school district or consultants who are running professional learning-- that that professional learning you are facilitating is really, really important. And Tom explains why.

[00:38:38.95] But it's also about leadership. Because when we're school leaders-- and he said it. He had a study. And leaders value different evidence than teachers do. And he talked about how the list of 15 that were completely the opposite. And that should engage us in a conversation about what are multiple-- and we're talking two, three-- pieces of evidence where people get what they want and need. Whether it's a leader, if a leader values some sort of standardized assessment, that's fine. But if a teacher values a different assessment are their voices being heard?

[00:39:23.92] And it's one thing we didn't get into. But all of what Tom talks about within this 30-minute block but also, honestly, in ways in his articles and books, we have a teacher attrition issue. We've got a teacher shortage, whatever we want to call it. We know that people are leaving the profession. And sometimes they're leaving the profession because they don't feel heard or they're not getting what they need.

[00:39:51.94] And Tom has a lot of different research and advice and insight into how to change that dynamic. So when people are looking for how do we get people to stay in the profession, quite honestly, and I'm not being overly dramatic, I find a lot of what Tom talks about and researched and writes about is exactly what we need to do to not just keep teachers in the profession, but also elevate the profession and have more of an impact on student learning.

[00:40:22.13] So I feel very fortunate just to have these podcast interviews because I feel like all of them, all of the ones on the season this year are really, really important. And they've been heavily engaging for me. But they're all different too. They all have their own nuances.

[00:40:41.32] TANYA GHANS: Yeah.

[00:40:41.67] PETER DEWITT: So very excited to talk to Tom today.

[00:40:44.02] TANYA GHANS: Yeah, it was just fantastic. And teachers absolutely need to be heard and also need to see success, right, the combination. And there's other factors. But we definitely hit on some of those pieces today.

[00:40:57.58] I've learned a lot. I was absolutely, like all conversations, a learner in this one. But lots of food for thought. I'm going to be picking up his latest addition of Mastery Learning. Right, it's the third edition.

[00:41:10.27] PETER DEWITT: Implementing Mastery Learning, Third Edition. And it's just very research-based. But it's also extremely practical for what this could look like in the classroom and in our school, and also if you facilitate professional learning. I mean I find value in it just from that space.

[00:41:29.89] But, yeah, if people like what they heard-- and I don't know how you couldn't like what you heard today-- but I'll just say, if you like what you heard today, give us some feedback and let us know-- follow the show-- and let us know what you think because we really do want to hear from you.

[00:41:46.39] But, Tanya, always good to see you.

[00:41:49.31] TANYA GHANS: Thank you for another great session. It's always great learning with you and cannot wait until next time. Listeners, stay tuned because it just keeps getting better. Bye, everyone.

[00:42:02.62] PETER DEWITT: All right, bye, everyone.