Programs and Practices

One issue I hear about all the time when I speak about evidence-based reform in education relates to the question of programs vs. practices. A program is a specific set of procedures, usually with materials, software, professional development, and other elements, designed to achieve one or more important outcomes, such as improving reading, math, or science achievement. Programs are typically created by non-profit organizations, though they may be disseminated by for-profits. Almost everything in the What Works Clearinghouse (WWC) and Evidence for ESSA is a program.

A practice, on the other hand, is a general principle that a teacher can use. It may not require any particular professional development or materials.  Examples of practices include suggestions to use more feedback, more praise, a faster pace of instruction, more higher-order questions, or more technology.

In general, educators, and especially teachers, love practices, but are not so crazy about programs. Programs have structure, requiring adherence to particular activities and use of particular materials. In contrast, every teacher can use practices as they wish. Educational leaders often say, “We don’t do programs.” What they mean is, “we give our teachers generic professional development and then turn them loose to interpret them.”

One problem with practices is that because they leave the details up to each teacher, teachers are likely to interpret them in a way that conforms to what they are already doing, and then no change happens. As an example of this, I once attended a speech by the late, great Madeline Hunter, extremely popular in the 1970s and ‘80s. She spoke and wrote clearly and excitingly in a very down-to-earth way. The auditorium she spoke to was stuffed to the rafters with teachers, who hung on her every word.

When her speech was over, I was swept out in a throng of happy teachers. They were all saying to each other, “Madeline Hunter supports absolutely everything I’ve ever believed about teaching!”

I love happy teachers, but I was puzzled by their reaction. If all the teachers were already doing the things Madeline Hunter recommended to the best of their ability, then how did her ideas improve their teaching? In actuality, a few studies of Hunters’ principles found no significant effects on student learning, and even more surprising, they found few differences between the teaching behaviors of teachers trained in Hunter’s methods and those who had not been. Essentially, one might argue, Madeline Hunter’s principles were popular precisely because they did not require teachers to change very much, and if teachers do not change their teaching, why would we expect their students’ learning to change?

Another reason that practices rarely change learning is that they are usually small improvements that teachers are expected to assemble to improve their teaching. However, asking teachers to put together many pieces into major improvements is a bit like giving someone the pieces and parts of a lawnmower and asking them to put them together (see picture above). Some mechanically-minded people could do it, but why bother? Why not start with a whole lawnmower?

In the same way, there are gifted teachers who can assemble principles of effective practice into great instruction, but why make it so difficult? Great teachers who could assemble isolated principles into effective teaching strategies are also sure to be able to take a proven program and implement it very well. Why not start with something known to work and then improve it with effective implementation, rather than starting from scratch?

One problem with practices is that most are impossible to evaluate. By definition, everyone has their own interpretation of every practice. If practices become specific, with specific guides, supports, and materials, they become programs. So a practice is a practice exactly because it is too poorly specified to be a program. And practices that are difficult to clearly specify are also unlikely to improve student outcomes.

There are exceptions, where practices can be evaluated. For example, eliminating ability grouping or reducing class size or assigning (or not assigning) homework are practices that can be evaluated, and can be specified. But these are exceptions.

The squishiness of most practices is the reason that they rarely appear in the WWC or Evidence for ESSA. A proper evaluation contrasts one treatment (an experimental group) to a control group continuing current practices. The treatment group almost has to be a program, because otherwise it is impossible to tell what is being evaluated. For example, how can an experiment evaluate “feedback” if teachers make up their own definitions of “feedback”? How about higher-order questions? How about praise? Rapid pace? Use of these practices can be measured using observation, but differences between the treatment and control groups may be hard to detect because in each case teachers in the control group may also be using the same practices. What teacher does not provide feedback? What teacher does not praise children? What teacher does not use higher-order questions? Some may use these practices more than others, but the differences are likely to be subtle. And subtle differences rarely produce important outcomes.

The distinction between programs and practices has a lot to do with the practices (not programs) promoted by John Hattie. He wants to identify practices that can help teachers know about what works in instruction. That’s a noble goal, but it can rarely be done using real classroom research done over real periods of time. In order to isolate particular practices for study, researchers often do very brief, artificial lab studies that have nothing to do with classroom practices.  For example, some lab studies in Hattie’s own review of feedback contrast teachers giving feedback to teachers giving no feedback. What teacher would do that?

It is worthwhile to use what we know from research, experience, program evaluations, and theory to discuss what practices may be most useful for teachers. But claiming particular effect sizes for such studies is rarely justified. The strongest evidence for practical use in schools will almost always come from experiments evaluating programs. Practices have their place, but focusing on exposing teachers to a lot of practices and expecting them to put them together to improve student outcomes is not likely to work.

This blog was developed with support from the Laura and John Arnold Foundation. The views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of the Foundation.

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