Climbing the Ladder of Empirical Education

By Michael Feldstein. A while back, I wrote a post about the four levels of Empirical Education. To recap, they are as follows:

1. Intuitively empirical: Intuitively empirical educators are curious about their students and try to figure out how to help them when they see them struggling. They try different things and pick up tricks in their teaching as they become more experienced in the classroom.
2. Mindfully empirical: This means that the educators try to create as many opportunities as possible to evaluate how their students are doing and make little (or big) adjustments to her teaching strategies constantly as they get to know their students better. Intuitively empirical educators are empirical in the moment. Mindfully empirical educators are empirical by design.
3. Metacognitively empirical: Metacognitively empirical educators have made the leap from assessing their students to assessing themselves. When a class struggles with a concept semester after semester, metacognitively empirical educators don't just accept that the topic is hard. They ask whether their teaching strategies might be part of the problem. They challenge their own beliefs about good teaching.
4. Socially empirical: When educators reach the level of being socially empirical, it means that they have begun to see that testing teaching strategies and learning to improve can be a shared endeavor. It can be a discipline, with common language and standards of evidence for effectiveness. Socially empirical educators see teaching not just as an art that is personal and ineffable but as a craft that can be taught and learned, and maybe even as a science that can be advanced through shared research and peer review.

This isn't just a taxonomy. More...