Detroit Public Schools: Equity, Student Talk, & Science Classes
Inequity persists in our schools, despite decades of efforts to create lasting change. And, despite decades of research that’s shown that student talk not only matters to student learning but to who does the learning in our classrooms.
Opportunities to engage in classroom conversation are even more important for multilingual learners, children who have persistently experienced poverty, and children with special learning needs. But these students often get least opportunities to engage in academic dialogue.
To change who does the learning, we have to increase student talk and change who does the talking in our classrooms…and that requires a change in how we teach.
When the Detroit Public Schools Community Districtʼs Office of Science – and hundreds of science teachers – set out to create change for their students, they set their focus on racial disparities endemic to science classrooms and across the curricular spectrum.
That led to a focus on student talk in science classrooms – and partnering with TeachFX.
Increasing student talk by 45% in hundreds of science classrooms
Early results of the program launched by DPSC with TeachFX were very promising.
More than 300 science teachers worked with TeachFX. And among them, we saw a 45% increase in student talk – in classrooms where over 90% of students are Black or Brown. (A case study of this program in Detroit was originally published by Learning Forward in June 2021.)
Using the TeachFX app and engaging in our personalized professional learning, teachers examined their practice through the lens of student talk and equity of voice. And the data confirmed that students in those classrooms experienced more conversational, equitable learning experiences.
What’s more, this work helped foster a culture of feedback and reflection among teachers that also helped foster a culture of collaboration. Teachers have reported developing and sharing with each other the pedagogical content knowledge they need to deeply engage students in learning. This will help teachers continue to build on changes they’ve made in their teaching practices.
Combining objective data with personalized professional learning to help teachers change practice
Research has shown that what helps teachers improve their practice is the combination of objective feedback with coaching that helps turn insights into action (TNTP).
To help teachers decide where they want to go with their teaching practice, we have to help them see exactly where they are.
TeachFX provides teachers with objective feedback and a real picture of the learning dynamics in their classroom – which often helps teachers shed assumptions and reach powerful realizations.
“The very first time I used TeachFX, I was amazed at the amount of time I was talking,” said one master teacher in the Detroit pilot.
Once teachers see exactly what’s happening during their teaching, they can reflect and turn insights into action.
In professional learning workshops with TeachFX, even when initially surprised at their classroom data, the Detroit teachers consistently made decisions to try new approaches, redesign lessons, rethink questions, remember to use think time, and encourage every student to get involved in the discussion.
Working at the district level to create the conditions for change
It’s important to recognize the foundational elements that DCPS put in place to help create conditions to support teachers in changing their practice.
1) Ensure that academic standards are clear, objective, and practical.
The Michigan Science Standards, inspired by the Next Generation Science Standards, expect students to engage in authentic scientific work as they build fundamental science knowledge and connect to concepts across curricula.
Still, teachers often find such standards to be vague and difficult to put into practice.
So Detroit developed interactive, practice-oriented professional learning that helps teachers bring scientific discussion, thinking, and inquiry to life for all students. This included two key practices:
Ask teachers to reflect on the standards: How will you know students are engaged in the kind of work that addresses the science standards? What is your evidence?
Enable collaboration among teachers to create questions, prompts, and lesson plans that generate meaningful student discourse the next day.
2) Set clear expectations for student talk.
District administrators set clear and consistent expectations for student talk as an instructional imperative among science teachers.
And those expectations were upheld with constant review of curricula, lesson plans, and instructional materials for alignment to the expectations.
Specifically, administrators look to implement curricula that anchor lessons in inquiry about scientific phenomena, review lesson plans with teachers to plan for student talk with open-ended questions, and provide posters with student talk scaffolds for students to refer to during classroom discussions. In observations requested by teachers, administrators look for the teacherʼs essential questions, probing of student thinking, and facilitation of student sense-making.
What’s more, teachers must have expectations that their students are capable of learning through discourse.
This is critical for equitable outcomes among students of color, students with disabilities, and English learners. Teachers have to believe in the power, agency, and resiliency of their students as they puzzle through understanding with greater depths of knowledge, which is often captured by student discourse. In short, we want to help shift teacher mindsets from getting through content to understanding how students grow their skills and knowledge to become adept STEM thinkers.
3) Provide effective professional learning to help teachers put standards and expectations into practice.
Detroit’s teachers were offered monthly virtual professional learning options on instructional themes of their choice. Teachers had agency to address their own immediate learning needs in alignment with the districtʼs standards.
The most popular topics zeroed in on specific practices, such as “Questioning Technique — Essential Questions,” “Relationships, Relevance, and Rigor in Science,” and “Lesson Planning for Equitable Engagement.”
These help teachers bring into the classroom discussion techniques that activate prior knowledge and get students oriented toward thinking about the next steps the teacher will take with content.
Reflecting on evidence from their teaching, often with the help of a coach, teachers could explore the effects of their modified techniques and identify new strategies to try.
4) Create a culture of feedback and reflection
Using TeachFX, the science teachers analyzed their own classroom data with a particular focus on racial equity.
TeachFX feedback is available when teachers want it, is personalized to their own instruction, and is private to them. Administrators cannot access the data for evaluative purposes, so teachers can try new instructional strategies and reflect on their own objective data without fear of being punished.
And with teacher privacy protected, Detroit’s district leaders could look across aggregated and anonymized data to visualize equity of voice, even in online classes — a great benefit during the year of remote learning. By anonymously analyzing discourse patterns by student group, grade level, and content area among volunteer teachers, administrators could reflect on where they needed to better support teachers to make science talk more equitable.
How can other districts follow Detroit’s example?
We see five key practices for instructional leaders to consider:
Make student talk and equity of voice a priority that’s central to teaching and learning, not peripheral.
Monitor student talk alongside other measures of teaching and learning. It’s not optional, it’s the integral piece that ties your curricula and initiatives together.
Support and empower teachers with objective feedback and effective, personalized professional learning that aligns teachers’ needs with district instructional goals.
Rely on the research to help everyone involved understand the case for conversational classrooms and the way increased student talk helps remove barriers to more equitable learning.
Seek out curricula that explicitly make conversational learning part of the material as teachers enact it.