Akane Zusho, PhD, associate professor of school psychology in the Graduate School of Education (GSE), said that such diversity is something to be appreciated, not overcome.

“How do you get teachers to not teach to the middle? To differentiate their instruction so that they’re not boring the kids at the top and leaving all the kids at the bottom behind? It’s not easy,” she said.

To help teachers work with students of varying academic abilities, Zusho has partnered with Rhonda Bondie, PhD, assistant professor of curriculum and teaching at the GSE to create All-Ed (All Learners Learning Every Day), a network of instructional routines pulled from research on learning and motivation.

Motivation has long been a focus of Zusho’s research. In order to determine what motivates a student, said Zusho, a teacher needs to get to know their students’ strengths and interests and to help students understand how they think about a particular topic. But many teachers never delve deep enough.

Teachers, she said, “just assume students know something when they come in because they taught it yesterday …  they don’t reconfirm their students’ knowledge.”

“When they start a lesson, for example, do they actually get a sense of what students already know? Because from the psychological perspective, we know that makes a huge impact on how kids learn.”

One of the strategies that Zusho and Bondie recommend is continual formative assessment. Zusho said football is a good analogy, because the goal of the game is very clear—move the ball at least 10 yards at a time until you get a touchdown. Classroom instruction tends not to be as clear.

“One of the challenges is to make instruction as clear as it is on a sports playing field, so that students know exactly where they’re going,” she said.

The assessment need not be time-consuming or tedious; in one study conducted at a grammar school in Brazil, Zusho said they saw reading achievement gains after instituting a simple three-question, once-a-week reflection diary. The questions asked of the students were, ‘what did you do during an activity,’ ‘why was this your favorite activity, and ‘why did you think the teacher chose that activity for you to work on.’

Assessing performance is also easier if students take ownership of their own learning, because teachers aren’t wasting time trying to come up with individualized curriculum for every single student.

“We think in the end, [individualized curriculum]does a disservice to students. You’re not actually getting them aware of what they need to do themselves to get to that goal. Part of it all is trying to get teachers to promote self-regulated, or self-directed, learning through goal setting,” she said.

Their recommendations are informed by four pillars of motivation: Students should feel autonomous, that they belong to a group, that they feel confident, and that what they’re learning feels meaningful. These pillars, she said, are relevant to all students, regardless of their cultural background.

“I would argue no matter who you are, whether you are born and bred in the United States or even grew up in Japan, that there are elements where you want to feel like you are autonomous from others, but at the same time you also want to feel like you belong,” she said.

“When I look at All Ed, we do both individualistic things and collectivistic things. I fundamentally believe that learning is social, but I also feel that … you have to demonstrate that you’re learning at the individual level.”

Zusho said that their work has been well received by some teachers, and has failed miserably with others. Not every teacher is confident in their ability to successfully implement their recommended strategies.

Zusho and Bondie are trying to understand why there is this disconnect, and are redesigning their website and are publishing a book next year on the topic, try different techniques.

“We’ll say ‘Let’s see if you plan things differently, and do some more self-regulation,’ or have them do more goal setting, or engage them in a weekly reflection every week, because that’s not too hard to do,” she said.

“As much as what we’re asking teachers to do is big, it’s a lot of small tweaks to things they’re already doing. That, hopefully, builds competence and confidence among the teachers who want to try some of our techniques.”

Thanks to a new partnership with Fordham, they’ll learn the best ways to share that knowledge with the next generation of Army leaders.

Fordham’s Graduate School of Education (GSE) has signed a five-year agreement with the military academy to train its officers in the latest in educational curriculum and pedagogy. The five members of the first cohort, who will begin instruction in June, will earn a Master of Science in Education in Curriculum and Teaching.

Military science is a field that involves decisions such as what piece of artillery to use in a battle, or how to strategize to retake an urban area under siege. Unlike their counterparts in traditional arts and sciences fields, military science instructors haven’t been required to have education beyond a bachelor’s degree. The program will give them a chance to earn one.

“At West Point, they are developing the leaders of tomorrow’s armed forces, so you want people who are up-to-date and really top-notch in understanding their field and their work—but that doesn’t mean they’ve necessarily been trained to be teachers,” said Virginia Roach, EdD, dean of GSE.

“We have innovative pedagogies and approaches to teaching and learning that are just emerging through the research of our faculty; we are excited to implement them through this new program.”

Major John W. Spencer, strategic initiatives integrator/department strategic planner in the Department of Military Instruction at West Point, said that today’s battlefields are more complex than ever; instruction needs to reflect that.

“We’re creating people who are familiar with complexity, who can operate with complexity but still solve problems. Critical thinkers and problem-solvers are really everything. From the military domain, that has huge life-or-death consequences,” he said.

“West Point has the world’s foremost leader-development program, so we seek out partnerships with people who we know are highly respected in the domains of these topics—higher education being one of them. Fordham is the right place and [has]the right people.”

Pat Shea-Bischoff

Ciro Stefano (Chief, Military Science Division

Ciro Stefano (Chief, Military Science Division

GSE Assistant Professor Rhonda Bondie, PhD, program coordinator for the master’s in curriculum and teaching, said that the GSE-West Point program will draw heavily on psychology because its curriculum focuses on motivation and problem solving. Technology will be covered too, as the academy uses simulations in training exercises.

The partnership came about thanks to the Viola Foundation, whose work focuses on national security, education, and faith-based initiatives. (Founder Vincent Viola, a West Point graduate, is a member of the Fordham Board of Trustees and the father of two Fordham graduates.)

Spencer said the foundation had previously helped the academy convert a class curriculum, History of the Military Art (From Plato to NATO), into a digital text.

Tim Strabbing, the executive director of the foundation who helped the two institutions connect initially, said that the new collaboration should “equip young officers to be even more effective teachers” than they already are.

Roach said that having GSE professors teach experts how to share their knowledge is a model she plans to replicate with other organizations, such as the NYPD, FDNY, and private corporations. As the GSE did with West Point, she noted that the college can tailor its curriculum to meet the specific needs of a partner organization.

“There are a number of different venues in which our understanding about how to teach to the full class and make sure everybody is engaged—and how to develop that instruction and execute it—can be a great contribution to the community,” she said.

While working as an artist-in-residence in Brooklyn, Rhonda Bondie, Ph.D., then a student of educational theater, decided to tackle the subject of immigration by performing an original play with her fifth-grade students.

A thorny, though classic, problem arose.

Students who were hard of hearing or deaf were not included because there was no teacher trained to assist them. Fearing that the other children would tease them, the school’s principal decided it was best to let them forgo participation.

For Bondie, now a clinical associate professor of childhood special education in the Graduate School of Education (GSE), the incident sparked her desire to find ways for all children—regardless of ability—to achieve at their highest levels in diverse classroom settings.

Her solution: Empower students to self-educate by offering them choices in their learning.

“To help the learners have the disposition to learn for themselves: That’s what I’m really after, whether they’re my graduate students or children,” said Bondie, a 24-year public school veteran.

According to Bondie, today’s classrooms portray a tension between what students are required to learn and how they ought to learn it.

“Teachers have common goals that all students must reach, and the teacher’s pay and professional respect is contingent upon all students achieving these standards,” Bondie said, referring to trends that rely heavily on national data and test scores. “Yet students come to them with very diverse experiences and strengths and needs, so how can instruction invite and capitalize on that diversity, to make sure everyone achieves the standards and far beyond?

“It’s so much more,” she added. “We’re developing humans, not just people who need to reach a certain score … I’m interested in the teaching methods that are particularly efficient and effective at moving students at a wide range of levels.”

That method is called differentiated instruction (DI), a type of teaching that tailors educational activities to individual learners.

DI stems from the idea that students have different abilities and experiences and, therefore, learn in diverse ways. Still, students must master a core curriculum at each grade level—a challenge for students who are behind in their grade level and an impediment to those who are beyond it.

But by varying instruction methods—through group learning or using digital media, for instance—a teacher can design activities that complement individual learning styles while ensuring that the class as a whole learns the required material.

“It’s not effective and it’s not efficient if you lose the what [the content],” Bondie said. “Just because you can do [a lesson]eight different ways, doesn’t mean the kids actually need that. The kids might need just one way. So you have to know when to differentiate instruction.”

Her qualification yields the first rule of DI: Know your learners.

“We teach our teachers to learn from the learner first: What can I learn from the student about what they know and how they came to understand what they know?” Bondie said. “Then, when I understand the learner as an individual, I’m ready to help them stretch themselves and grow in different ways.”

Over the years, DI has proved successful. But despite achieving results in her own classroom, Bondie continued to observe the problem that she encountered while teaching in Brooklyn—too few teachers prepared to help students with special needs, the students who would especially benefit from DI.

“The greatest need for teachers is in grades seven through 12 special education or dually certified teachers,” she said. “There’s a huge shortage in New York City public schools.”

So last year, armed with her tried-and-true teaching method, Bondie left primary classrooms to take her message to a wider audience. In January 2011, she joined GSE’s Division of Curriculum and Teaching after teaching for many years in New York City and Arlington, Va. Now, she works to prepare future teachers for the diverse students who will populate their classrooms.

“All [special education]students at one point or another are in general education,” she said. “So we want to prepare teachers to be as effective as possible and to build their confidence in helping learners with dramatically diverse learning needs.”

Even though she arrived at Fordham only last year, her plan already is underway. A program that she launched, Education with Equity for Adolescents, prepares GSE students for dual certification in general and special education up to grade 12. Previously, Fordham’s special education certification ended at grade six.

In addition, she and Su-Je Cho, Ph.D., associate professor of childhood special education, won a $1.5 million grant to develop Project REACH (Rigor, Equity, Access and Collaboration in Higher Education), which assists GSE faculty members in improving the dual and special education programs.

What she communicates through these efforts—a message that she not only hopes to deliver to future learners through her graduate students, but also to her graduate students themselves—is that with the right tools, every person has the capacity to achieve at his or her highest levels.

“It’s based on this notion that everyone can learn in more ways than one could ever imagine,” she said. “I put a lot of responsibility for learning on the learners, so that they uncover things I couldn’t imagine them being able to do.”