Technology Implications for Site Leaders

In support of this vision, there are several guiding principles that should be referenced in conceptualizing the ideal future of teaching and learning. In terms of a desired experience, we would suggest that learners would progress with an optimal balance of ability level and challenge. Csíkszentmihályi defines this as a flow, a state in which an individual operates with clear goals or expectations, a high degree of focus and attention, direct and immediate feedback, a sense of personal control, and intrinsic motivation to proceed (Csíkszentmihályi, 1991).

The Microsoft Partners in Learning program promotes a similar model in their custom learning program: School Leader Development: Building 21st Century Schools (Microsoft, 2010). Their model uses the term “adaptive expertise” to describe this balance between the level of challenge and the skills of the learner. Importantly, these models focus on the experience of the individual, each of which has different ability levels, skills and comfort levels with various challenges. The first guiding principle, whether it is called flow or adaptive expertise, fundamentally presupposes that differentiation occurs for each and every learner. This stands in stark contrast to our current delivery model that organizes students by birth date into similar age-groups and presumes that students will progress at more or less the same rate through a variety of academic content.

Well-designed and taught goals and objectives can increase student achievement, especially when the goals are at the right difficulty level for student achievement: not too easy to bore students, yet not too difficult to cause frustration (Marzano, 2009). Ongoing assessment and modifications are also critical in ensuring that both the instruction and the learning are truly adaptive. As we have seen, these formative assessments can provide meaningful feedback that accelerates learning by using a variety of methods (Marzano, 2010). Site leaders will be instrumental in facilitating the effective implementation of technology resources to assist staff, students, and the community in creating, communicating, and utilizing these customized goals and the abundance of achievement data to provide an optimal balance of challenge and expertise for each and every learner.

Recommendations for Site Leaders:
• Provide resources and training to assist teachers in implementing and facilitating challenge-based learning experiences for all students.
• Provide resources and training to accelerate the shift to customized learning experiences to promote flow learning and develop adaptive expertise.
• Support key site-based initiatives and promote exemplars which integrate technology applications into the standards-based curricula.