Research that Underlies Facts Check

   Once upon a time, everyone agreed on what schools should be, what schools should do, and how schools should look while doing it.  Teaching was something that anyone could do.  Judging by those who practiced the craft, communities apparently preferred it to be done by lots of spinster women and a few dour men.  Although it was recognized that a few instructional magicians transmogrify children into happy and effective learners.

  At any rate, teaching was incompatible with pregnancy that showed

When Russia launched Sputnik in 1957, America panicked.  It seemed that science and technology were the tools by which the winners would rule the world, and the Russians were ahead in the race to get them.   Who was to blame?  Many in authority agreed resoundingly:  American Education!

   It became a political axiom that American education required fixing--and soon.  Beginning immediately and continuing until today, hundreds of researchers hypothesized, theorized, investigated, and published.  Upon getting mildly affirmative results, each pushed his own ideas of what's wrong with American education--trying convince everyone that they have the magic pill.  To those trying to figure out how to keep school, it was discouraging.  There were so many idease, and most were incompatible with at least some of the others.  There was no way to choose.  Each and every one had a seemingly sound philosophy.  Each and every one had at least some "research" evidence to support it. 

   They were all so different!  For decades, it seemed that flipping a coin was as good as any method for choosing an instructional model, a curricular program.

   Then a few researchers read from all the literatures.  Amazingly, it appeared that everyone had arrived at very similar answers.  The sheer fact that so many different research avenues led to the same conclusions lent a certain authenticity to their findings.  Moreover, each avenue had developed fairly rigorous research validation for its versions of the common ideas.

Now the kicker:  Those common ideas are the philosophical foundations for District 108's Best Practices:

• SAI
• I Can Do It!
• Technologically Integrated Learning Environments (For those too young in the district to remember it, TILE was the year-long study that designed our computer network and classroom technology model.
• Language Arts Best Practices
• Math Best Practices
• PDSA
• Facts Check

So what does that have to do with Facts Checks?

   OK, fair enough.  Here goes:

   First, a bit about what happens when people learn.  There is exciting brain research describing learning events in living brain tissue, events in which brain cells become connected in ways that can later be activated to "recall" what was learned.  (It's cool stuff.  If you're either interested or masochistic, you might want to pick up Synaptic Self: How Our Brains Become Who We Are by Joseph Ledoux)  However, explanations at the synaptic and molecular level are way too complex for anyone but experts to follow.  That's why normal people use metaphors to talk about what happens when people learn.  As you might expect from the table above, there are many metaphors from which to choose.  I prefer the cognitive psychology metaphors: pieces, chunks, , I think I can communicate best with its metaphorical framework: Information,