What do we mean by College Readiness

Do you have the skills, tools, work habits, and determination to graduate with a 4-year degree? What is College Readiness College Readiness can be defined as the level of preparation students need in order to enter and succeed without remediation at a post secondary institution that offers a baccalaureate degree

How is College Different From High School? College Courses are Different Pace much more rapid Professors expect their students to: Make inferences Interpret Results Analyze conflicting explanation of phenomenon Support arguments with evidence Solve complex problems that have no obvious answer Reach conclusions and offer explanations Conduct research Engage in give and take of ideas

How is College Different From High School? College Courses Typically Require: Students to Read 8-10 Books Write multiple papers in a short period of time Papers must be well reasoned, well organized, and well documented with evidence from credible sources Well developed writing skills, research capabilities, high level thinking skills

How is College Different From High School? Skills Required to be Successful College Students Ability to work in small groups inside and outside of the class on complex problems and projects Ability to make presentations and explain what they have learned To be an independent/interdependent learner that is self-reliant, recognizes when they are having problems and knows when and how to seek help from professors, students and other sources A tremendous work ethic

Concerned with central problems in the discipline that challenge students’ previous concepts Able to arouse strong feelings Focused on symbols and images packed with multiple meanings What Do We Mean By Rigor Organized around complex interrelated concepts

Secondary Schools focus on skills Educational Focus Colleges/Universities focus on the Habits of mind Elementary Schools focus on skills

Habits of Mind Habits of Mind are demonstrated through learning activities and tasks that are deeply embedded in a course These habits develop over time

Habits of Mind Measurement 5 Key Dimensions Reasoning Argumentation and Proof Interpretation Precision and Accuracy Problem Solving and Research

Habits of Mind Measurement

Persistence Students often give up in despair when the answer to a problem is not immediately known They give up because they have a limited repertoire of problem solving strategies. If their strategy doesn’t work, they give up because they have no alternative

Managing Impulsivity Effective problem solvers have a sense of deliberativeness: They think before they act. They follow directions. Reflective individuals consider alternatives and consequences of several possible directions prior to taking action

Listen to Others Listening is the beginning of understanding Having the ability to listen to another person, to empathize with, and to understand their point of view is one of the highest forms of intelligent behavior

Thinking Flexibility Flexible people are the ones with the most control They consider alternative points of view or deal with several sources of information simultaneously Flexible thinkers are able to shift at will, through multiple perceptual positions Flexible thinkers display confidence in their intuition Flexible is the cradle of humor, creativity, and repertoire

Thinking About Our Thinking (Metacognition) The ability to know what we know and what we don’t know Metacognition is our ability to plan a strategy for producing what information is needed, to be conscious of our own steps and strategies during the act of problem solving, and to reflect on and evaluate the productiveness of our own thinking

Striving For Accuracy and Precision Craftsmen take pride in their work and have a desire for accuracy as they take time to check over their work Craftsmanship includes exactness, precision, accuracy, correctness, faithfulness, and fidelity Craftsmanship requires a deep personal caring about the work one produces Craftsmanship

Questioning and Posing Problems Effective problem solvers know how to ask questions to fill in the gaps between what they know and what they don’t know

Apply Past Knowledge to New Situations Intelligent human beings learn from experience. Too often students begin each new task as it were being approached for the very first time Episodic grasp of reality each experience is encapsulated and has no relationship to what has come before or what comes afterward

Thinking and Communicating With Clarity and Precision Enriching the complexity and specificity of language simultaneously produces effective thinking. Language and thinking are closely entwined, they are inseparble When you hear fuzzy language, it is a reflection of fuzzy thinking Intelligent people strive to communicate accurately in both written and oral form taking great care to use precise language

Gathering Data Through All Senses Intelligent people know that all information gets into the brain through the sensory pathways To know a role it must be acted; to know the game it must be played; to know the dance it must be moved; to know a goal it must be envisioned

Creating, Imagining, and Innovating ALL students have the capacity to generate novel, original, clever, or ingenious products, solutions, and techniques… if that capacity is developed. Creative people take risks, push the boundaries, intrinsically motivated, open to criticism, uneasy with status quo, constantly strive to make whatever is better

Responding With Wonderment and Awe Effective people not only have a “I can” attitude, but also an “I enjoy” feeling They seek problems to solve, they enjoy figuring out things by themselves, and continue o learn throughout their lifetimes Intelligent people feel compelled, enthusiastic, and passionate about learning, inquiring, and mastering

Taking Responsible Risk Flexible people seem to have an almost uncontrollable urge to go beyond established limits They are uneasy with comfort: they live on the edge of their competency They seem compelled to place themselves in situations where they do not know what the outcome will be. They view set backs as interesting, challenging and growth producing Their risks are not compulsive. Their risks are educated

Finding Humor Laughter liberates creativity, and provokes higher level thinking skills such as anticipation, finding novel relationships, visual imagery, and making analogies Having a whimsical frame of mind, they thrive on finding discontinuities and being able to laugh at situations and themselves Laughter transcends all human beings

Thinking Interdependently Problem solving has become so complex that no one person can go it alone. No one person has access to all the data needed for critical decisions; no one person can consider as many alternatives as several people can. Cooperative humans realize that all of us together are more powerful, intellectually and /or physically than any one individual Working in groups requires the ability to justify ideas and to test the feasibility of solution strategies on others

Academic Behaviors Associated With College Readiness

Self monitoring – a form of metacognition; awareness of one’s current level of mastery and understanding of a subject, including key misunderstandings and blind spots Ability to reflect on what worked and what needed improvement Ability to persist when presented with a novel, difficult or ambiguous task Ability to identify and employ a range of learning strategies Ability to monitor, regulate, evaluate, and direct their own thinking and learning Self discipline to spend significant amounts of time outside of the class to achieve academic success Study skills to encompass a range of active learning strategies that go far beyond reading the text and answering homework questions College ready students have the ability to manage their time, prepare for taking exams, use informational resources, take class notes, and communicate with professors and advisors

What Schools and Students Can Do To Foster College Readiness

Create a Culture Focused on Intellectual Development Elements of Intellectual Development 1. Students interact with appropriately important and challenging academic content. Focus on the “Big Ideas” of each content. Then teach those ideas by exposing students to a series of “enduring” and “supportive understandings” that creates an overall intellectual and cognitive structure for the content

Create a Culture Focused on Intellectual Development Elements of Intellectual Development 2. Structure the content so that it is the context in which key habits of mind are developed over a sequential more challenging progression. These cognitive skill sets will affect college success more than common knowledge

Create a Culture Focused on Intellectual Development Elements of Intellectual Development 3. The academic program should be structured to cause students to demonstrate progressively more control and responsibility for their learning. This would be observed in how well students worked independently and interdependently outside of the classroom on extremely complex projects

Reflection How can we develop this repertoire of problem solving skills in students who don’t possess them when they come to us?