In Depth

Applied Science Approach

Our programs are competency-based, with a set of procedures and expected outcomes for both learners and teachers. We take an applied science approach to teaching our competencies. We scour the psychology and education literature, looking for effective research-based instructional materials, methods and tools. We user-test what we find, seeking quantitative evidence of their effectiveness in increasing student achievement. We also develop and user-test our own materials and methods. As such, Morningside is a laboratory school for constantly evolving powerful teaching and learning methods, in the spirit of John Dewey's schools in Chicago and New York at the beginning of the twentieth century.

A basic science of learning informs the design of protocols for each program, like a kind of engineering is informed by its parent-science, physics. Each Morningside program is a synthesis of several technologies of teaching, learning, and classroom management that have been demonstrated in data-based research studies to be effective. By technology, we mean that a method is replicable: a method that can be specified, and taught to others.

In an article for the American Psychologist, Dr. Kent Johnson and Dr. Joe Layng described this amalgamation of technologies as the Morningside Model of Generative Instruction.

In an ever-evolving expansion of best practices, Morningside's leadership continuously engages in the steps bulleted below.

• Scour the psychology and education literature, the academic and educational communities, and the education marketplace, looking for effective research-based materials, methods, and tools to use during instruction, practice, assessment, and measurement of performance. Pay particular attention to reports of learner-verified outcomes.
• Select certain research-based curricula and instructional methods to user-test at the Academy. Focus upon areas of current practice that could be improved.
• Adapt these materials, methods, and tools to Morningside's behavioral framework for teaching.
• User-test the curricula, methods, and tools at the Academy. Collect data on student and teacher performance during tryout, and collect data on final outcomes.
• If a program demonstrates better results than current practices, develop workshops to teach others how to implement it.
• User-test the workshops and program offsite, with a veteran external partner school.
• Revise the workshops and make further adaptations to the program.
• Designate the program a technology. By technology, we mean that it is replicable: A program that can be specified, and taught to others.
• Transfer the technologies by marketing & selling them to others, as part of the "Morningside Model of Generative Instruction."

These procedures make Morningside Academy a laboratory school in the spirit of John Dewey's schools in Chicago and New York at the beginning of the twentieth century. Dr. Carl Binder has described the laboratory nature of Morningside's work in more depth.

Examples of Verified Technologies for Transfer

In the last decade, we have user-tested and adapted a host of programs to meet the criteria for a Morningside technology.

Morningside also applies Dr. Susan Markle's instructional design principles to design its own instruction and fluency materials in reading, reasoning, problem solving, writing, mathematics, study skills, and test preparation.

We have also designed fluency materials for published instructional programs such as SRA/McGraw Hill's Reading Mastery, Corrective Reading & Expressive Writing, and Sopris West's Read Well, and REWARDS & REWARDS PLUS.

Each Morningside program is a synthesis of several technologies of teaching, learning, assessment, measurement, classroom implementation and management that has proved effective in data-based research studies. The ingredients for any particular mix may include particular curriculum materials that have been developed, particular instruction (i.e., teaching or practice method) that could be used with a curriculum, or a pre-existing program that combines good curriculum and instructional methods. Examples of curricula to which we have added teaching methods, including direct instruction, delayed prompting, and fluency building, are SRA/McGraw Hill's Open Court 2004, and Scott Foresman Reading 2002.

Because classrooms may differ in format and development within a given school or program, one or more curricula, instructional methods, or programs may be cobbled together as a recommended "technology package" for a particular grade level or student need. Thus, the Morningside Model is diagnostic and prescriptive and the specific mix of technologies that is selected for use in any given classroom is customized, based upon an elaborate assessment of learners' and teachers' needs and skills.

You can download the complete bibliography for this article here.