InTASC Standards
- rhbarnes
- Apr 14, 2022
- 10 min read
Updated: Jun 19, 2022
Model standards to grow model students
The Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO), through its Interstate Teacher Assessment and Support Consortium (InTASC), crafted this set of Model Core Teaching Standards that outline what teachers should know and be able to do to ensure every PK-12 student reaches the goal of being ready to enter college or the workforce in today’s world. This “common core” outlines the principles and foundations of teaching practice that cut across all subject areas and grade levels and that all teachers share. More importantly, these Model Core Teaching Standards articulate what effective teaching and learning looks like in a transformed public education system – one that empowers every learner to take ownership of their learning, that emphasizes the learning of content and application of knowledge and skill to real world problems, that values the differences each learner brings to the learning experience, and that leverages rapidly changing learning environments by recognizing the possibilities they bring to maximize learning and engage learners.
This is the statement of purpose for the InTASC standards. The standards aim to improve education and the classroom by targeting these goals:
Personalized Learning for Diverse Learners
A Stronger Focus on Application of Knowledge and Skills
Improved Assessment Literacy
A Collaborative Professional Culture
New Leadership Roles for Teachers and Administrators
The InTASC standards as released by the CCSSO can be dense in parts, there is a lot of information being delivered as concisely and thoroughly as possible. My PLN did a deep dive to unpack the standards so we can present them to teachers who are new to the concepts in professional development trainings.
Standard #1: Learner Development: The teacher understands how learners grow and develop, recognizing that patterns of learning and development vary individually within and across the cognitive, linguistic, social, emotional, and physical areas, and designs and implements developmentally appropriate and challenging learning experiences.
This standard brings to mind my ECE studies. An important part of those studies was brain and neurological development; children’s brains develop at a generalized similar rate but with variations. This can lead to a child physically unable to do something that another child of similar age can because the brain hasn’t developed to that point yet. Later on, that child’s brain can catch up and pass the other child’s brain development leading to a reversal of roles. It is important for the teacher to be aware of current capabilities of a student and how those change in order to create learning opportunities that have the greatest impact on the student. As students get older, other factors have a greater impact on their abilities than brain development (which still has an impact): family life, social circles, physical abilities, learning environment, etc.
Something that was explicitly mentioned only briefly in the standard is that culture can have an impact on student learning. When I first started teaching in Morocco, it was very difficult to teach the conditionals and cause and effect to students. The culture is very fatalistic. Conversations frequently went along these lines:
“If I throw this rock at the window then … ?”
“...”
“...the window breaks. Repeat after me: If I throw this rock at the window, then the window breaks”
“If I throw this rock at the window, then the window breaks”
“The window breaks because …”
“God wanted the window to break!”
There was no understanding that the window breaks because of an action someone takes, it only breaks because god wanted it to because nothing happens in the universe unless god wants it to happen. After much reflection, I managed to take this impossible lesson and turn it into one of the shortest and best understood lessons. Almost every student learns French and the French conditional is identical to the English except with French words. I started eliciting the French conditional from students and then giving them the English translation for “si” and “donc”. The lesson became five minutes long because I took the holistic student into account and leveraged their previous knowledge to scaffold for new knowledge.
This is along the lines of Tony saying “Using Existing Knowledge: Usually in the start of the class teachers look at tapping into what the students already know. This can be done through 'Think-pair-share' activities, KWL charts, or brainstorming” except he’s lacking the humour of saying to teacher “make students do the work instead of you”
Standard #2: Learning Differences: The teacher uses understanding of individual differences and diverse cultures and communities to ensure inclusive learning environments that enable each learner to meet high standards.
I taught Business English at university and my students were from all over Africa. My Arab students had varying levels of Darija, French, and Fusha (; my Sub-Saharan students had good French and other L1 but low to no Darija which they needed for daily life in Morocco and university. When we came to advanced pronouns, I adapted a cooperative lesson I often use. I drew a table on the board with one column for English with the words Who, What, Where, When, Why, How, and Whose and additional columns for Darija, French, Fusha and the most common Sub-Saharan language spoken by students but I left the table blank for the corresponding words to the English ones. I then had the students go up one at a time to add a word to the chart to complete it. The students would discuss and argue about what the corresponding words were in other languages and the only hints I would give (when asked or when the discussion started to flag) were example sentences in Darija, French, or Fusha. The lesson took advantage of the students’ cultures and community to improve learning for this material for students I have taught this lesson have never forgotten the pronouns or how to use them but students who’ve learned from other teachers frequently forgot.
George Moorcroft has a good understanding of keeping diversity in mind when he talks about “Each person learns differently and responds differently to situations. We as teachers need to get to know our students and how they respond to different input. For this reason differentiating is so important. We need to teach various ways to reach all the students.” and goes on to reference multimodal learning that not only helps students who have sensory issues but only benefits all students because that is how humans experience the world: Another reason is because the more senses you use the better you will remember the concept. If a child hears, sees, and touches (playing games) he will likely remember the concept better than only using sight or only hearing.
Standard #3: Learning Environments: The teacher works with others to create environments that support individual and collaborative learning, and that encourage positive social interaction, active engagement in learning, and self motivation
A good metaphor for this standard would be modern play places/playgrounds. The area is fenced off and has a gate to keep the area safe for children to be in while simultaneously giving them the space to move around. The play structure has many activities to keep children engaged and wanting to be there while teaching them at the same time. A good classroom is like this. Students should feel safe and protected when inside while also wanting to be present where they keep busy with activities that teach them the skills and knowledge they need.
Steffi’s talk about bringing students’ cultures and language into the classroom through daily greetings, birthday songs, and the like is an excellent way to create an environment where students feel safe. This was one of the first things I started on when I took on my current job: making the students’ culture present so the students know they are relevant and have value.
Standard #4: Content Knowledge: The teacher understands the central concepts, tools of inquiry, and structures of the discipline(s) he or she teaches and creates learning experiences that make these aspects of the discipline accessible and meaningful for learners to assure mastery of the content.
The teacher should have a solid understanding of the material they shall teach. The teacher’s role is not that of a gatekeeper controlling who has access to their knowledge in order to have job security, prestige and reputation, and be the one who determines the students worthy to bask in the presence of "god". The teacher's job is to facilitate the learning and dissemination of their knowledge and to take the steps necessary to ensure that their content knowledge is passed on to as many students as possible and that the students understand it as well.
There are three main spheres of content knowledge:
The material itself The Teacher must have a sufficiently thorough understanding of the material to be able to pass on. Usually, this is along the traditional lines of a high school biology teacher who has a masters or higher in biology. This can also include a middle school maths Teacher who has never heard of calculus but fully understands the level of maths to be taught to 5th graders.
The second sphere of content knowledge is cross-disciplinary knowledge.This is how pedagogical content relates to other disciplines, what connections there are with other disciplines, and now they intersect. Budding from this synthesis of new knowledge and disciplines. A joint literature- history program where The content enhances and scaffolds each other from the two disciplines or biomedical engineering that was born from the intersection of engineering, biological sciences, and medicine to create medical devices that work with human biology to help the body are good examples.
The Third sphere of content knowledge is cross-disciplinary skills. These are sometimes called universal or transferable skills. Reading is an obvious one; The ability to read is critical to almost every discipline. another example is the number of brewers who have physics degrees; The research and self- discipline skills they gained from their work doing physics experiments transferred to the discipline of brewing and enabled them to create new flavours
Proper lesson and activity design for my specialisation are about making English communication accessible to students at a developmentally appropriate level through developmentally and culturally appropriate means one way I do this in my classroom is by using other topics as a vehicle to make English relevant one such vehicle for this is cooking. Cross-disciplinary skills that I teach through this are following and writing instructions, spontaneous verbal communication of directions, media deconstruction and analysis, video production, video/public presentation, organising information in a logical, meaningful and concise manner. Areas where I develop cross-disciplinary information in my classroom are making linguistic connections to other languages the students know and bringing cultural studies into the class so students can reflect on their own culture in comparison/contrast to other cultures and see how culture shapes language and language shapes culture.
Standard #5: Application of Content: The teacher understands how to connect concepts and use differing perspectives to engage learners in critical thinking, creativity, and collaborative problem solving related to authentic local and global issues.
The teacher creates lessons that bring students into projects and activities using interdisciplinary perspectives, available technology, and cross-disciplinary skills to foster higher order thinking and communication in students to teach them critical analysis and independent thinking.
Standard #6: Assessment: The teacher understands and uses multiple methods of assessment to engage learners in their own growth, to monitor learner progress, and to guide the teacher’s and learner’s decision making.
The teacher uses formative and summative assessments in an iterative process to ensure the lessons are following the objectives and that students are learning the material. Major areas of modifications resulting from these assessments include introducing accommodations, reteaching material, and communicating with parents and colleagues to improve outcomes.
This standard was covered extensively in Module 5 and Ben Gilbreath provided excellent graphics that sum up the standard.
Standard #7: Planning for Instruction: The teacher plans instruction that supports every student in meeting rigorous learning goals by drawing upon knowledge of content areas, curriculum, cross-disciplinary skills, and pedagogy, as well as knowledge of learners and the community context.
Lessons should be tailored to engage students (relevant to students, involves student interests) and utilises evidence based strategies.
Shirley Wang has a perfect summary: Standard 7 focuses on evidence and data driven instructional strategies with emphasis on how a teacher differentiates instruction to meet the needs of each student, and on teacher flexibility in making adjustments and revisions to lesson plans to meet students needs and challenges that may arise.
Standard #8: Instructional Strategies: The teacher understands and uses a variety of instructional strategies to encourage learners to develop deep understanding of content areas and their connections, and to build skills to apply knowledge in meaningful ways.
The teacher uses a multimodal approach to create holistic learning experiences for students. Like how TOEFL prep programs pair complementary activities to engage the whole brain in the learning experience without overwhelming or tiring anything out.
David McRitchie uses several effective strategies: I would do this in a variety of ways (strategies). Questions. formative assessments, individual, group and team activities are a few of the methods that I would employ. I would use real world examples of why maths, or whatever subject we are discussing, is important. For maths again, I can use money as a means to count, we could do shopping activities. I can also have students do strategic partnering; pairing an advanced student with a challenged student. This will facilitate peer to peer learning. We can do projects or many different applications (pear deck, Kahoot, quizlet, jamboard). Additionally, I think we need to consider differentiation and a variety of methods to ensure that we meet the needs of all of our students
Standard #9: Professional Learning and Ethical Practice: The teacher engages in ongoing professional learning and uses evidence to continually evaluate his/her practice, particularly the effects of his/her choices and actions on others (learners, families, other professionals, and the community), and adapts practice to meet the needs of each learner
This standard is the most abstract and perhaps less visible in the classroom even though it has the largest impact. Teachers need to continually develop their skills to remain effective. This can include attending conferences, professional development programs, joining PLNs, and honest reflection on one’s own courses. The teacher also needs to maintain high ethical standards for themself even when it creates more work or hurts to do so. This includes fostering diversity & equity in the classroom so everyone feels safe and students gain an understanding of people both inside and outside the classroom.
I set three guiding principles for my school: Community, Integrity, and Compassion. I try to have every decision I make follow at least one of these principles. Sometimes it hurts at the moment but it has always paid off in the long run.
Standard #10: Leadership and Collaboration: The teacher seeks appropriate leadership roles and opportunities to take responsibility for student learning, to collaborate with learners, families, colleagues, other school professionals, and community members to ensure learner growth, and to advance the profession.
Teachers and admin should look for opportunities to create collaborations or start programs in the school and/community at large. This creates support networks opportunities that benefit students in the long run.
As a director, I try to encourage my teachers and staff to design and run programs they are interested in. One of my favourite instances is when our building manager started running the Community Service Club and started a small tutoring program for the local orphanage. This program has developed into a BAC prep program that has help orphans and socio-economically disadvantaged youth earn high marks on their BAC and opened up more opportunities for them. It also serves as a teacher training program for prospective teachers to learn how to teach and for our established teachers to improve their skills.
I have found the InTASC standards to be highly beneficial for my teaching, both from observing others and being observed. This has led me to introduce the standards at my school as part of our professional development program. The standards are presented to teachers and they are proved with both a copy of them as well as observation rubrics broken down by themes so no one feels overwhelmed. We are still in the early stages of using these standards but they have been met with enthusiasm.
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