將傳統課堂翻轉過來
觀點蒂娜·羅森堡2013年11月18日
三年前，位於底特律正北面的克林頓戴爾高中(Clintondale High School)轉變成為一所「
翻轉學校」
(flipped school)——學生在家觀看教師講課，在課堂上做我們通常所稱的「家庭作業」。教師在學校的科技實驗室錄製視頻課程，讓學生在他們
的智能手機、家庭電腦上或午餐期間觀看。在課堂上，學生分成小組做項目、練習或實驗，老師則穿梭於學生之間，提供有的放矢的指導。
克林頓戴爾高中是美國第一所全面推行翻轉課堂的學校——這所學校的
每一節課都在採用這種授課方式。現在，全美各地如雨後春筍般湧現出許多翻轉課堂。在學區總監參觀了克林頓戴爾高中之後，位於伊利諾伊州皮奧里亞市郊外的哈
瓦那高中(Havana High School)也開始推行翻轉課堂。據克林頓戴爾高中校長透露，已有大約200位學校官員來該校參觀考察。
眾所周知，在線教育正在蓬勃發展。你可以在一個大規模開放式在線課程(MOOC)上免費學習任何科目，從個位數加法到中國建築史，再到飛行器空氣動力學，不一而足。現有課程的提供者既有
哈佛大學(Harvard)和麻省理工學院(MIT)等名校，也包括某個正在車庫中製作視頻的鄰家少年。其中最知名者當屬
可汗學院(Khan Academy)、
課程時代(Coursera)和
Udacity。儘管任何人只需連接互聯網，就可享受在線課程提供的高品質教育，但這種課程也有可能取代人的工作，從而對教師和學生帶來深遠影響。
如同一切顛覆性事物，在線教育備受爭議。但翻轉課堂是一項幾乎受到
所有人認同的戰略。「這是我撰寫的唯一一個受到廣泛好評的主題，」供職於哈佛大學伯克曼互聯網與社會研究中心
(Berkman Center for Internet and Society)，以研究技術和教育而著稱的學者賈斯汀·里奇
(Justin Reich)說。
翻轉課堂仍處於早期階段，大量旨在探求矯正授課方式的實驗依然在進
行中。其最重要的推廣者既不是政府官員，也不是學術專家，而是科羅拉多州森林公園市的兩位高中化學老師：亞倫·薩姆斯(Aaron Sams)和喬納森·
伯格曼(Jonathan Bergmann)。他們二人幾乎完全憑藉自身的經驗，撰寫了一本名為《翻轉你的課堂：如何在每一天的每一節課上觸及每一位學
生》(Flip Your Classroom: Reach Every Student in Every Class Every Day)的著
作。這本書並非嚴格意義上的學術成果（大多數人只引用
另一篇論文）。翻轉課堂在學校的績效記錄，雖然令人印象深刻，但軼事多多，而且時間短暫。然而，許多人正在將其推崇為一種應用技術手段讓課堂變得人性化的潛在模式。
沒有哪所學校能夠企及克林頓戴爾高中應用翻轉課堂的深度。其起因
是，該校校長格雷格·格林(Greg Green)此前一直在為他11歲兒子的球隊錄製傳授棒球技巧的視頻，並將其發佈在YouTube上。這樣做不僅可
以讓孩子們反覆觀看視頻以掌握動作要領，還給他們留下了更多實戰演練的時間。
這件事讓他萌生了一個想法。2010年春天，格林創建了一個實驗項目：他安排社會學科老師安迪·謝爾(Andy Scheel)使用相同的教材和作業帶兩個班，但其中一個班採用翻轉課堂形式。這個班有許多考試不及格的學生——一些學生在多次考試中都未達標。
格林說，20周後，儘管謝爾的翻轉班處於弱勢，但他們的成績正在超越另一個接受傳統教育的班級。在翻轉班，沒有一個學生的成績低於C+。上個學期，13%的學生不及格，但在這個學期，所有學生都通過了考試。而傳統教育班的學生成績幾乎沒有任何變化。
格林驅車前往密執根州首府蘭辛市之外的奧克莫斯社區，拜會了
TechSmith公司負責人——他製作棒球視頻時使用過該公司出品的抓屏軟件。他說：「我打算在全校推行翻轉課堂。」沒有一個人曾經這樣做過，他們指出。
「我們沒有什麼可失去的，」格林說。
的確如此。這所學校當時被歸入密歇根州最差的5%學校之列。這一年，一半以上的九年級學生未通過科學課考試，差不多一半學生的數學成績不及格。隨後，克林頓戴爾高中的九年級教師使用TechSmith公司捐贈的軟件製作視頻，開始翻轉他們的課堂。
結果是戲劇性的：英語的不及格率從52%下降至19%；數學的不及格率從44%下降至13%；科學課的不及格率從41%下降至19%；社會學科的不及格率從28%下降至9%。
第二年（即2011年）秋季，克林頓戴爾高中開始全面實施翻轉課
堂，將其推行至每個年級，每一節課。「平均來說，我們學校的不及格率接近30%，」格林說。「隨着翻轉課堂的實施，不及格率下降至10%以下。」學生的畢
業率也急劇上升，現已超過90%。大學入學率從2010年的63%，上升至2012年的80%。
學生的標準化考試成績則起伏不定，2012年有所上升，隨後又下
降。但州教育官員指出，克林頓戴爾高中去年湧入了一大批來自底特律的學生，其中許多都出身於低收入家庭（低收入學生的標準化考試成績往往要低一些）。三年
前，64%的學生來自低收入家庭，目前的比率是81%。此外，由於某種古怪的核算方式，一些好學生最近幾次的考試成績被納入一個學校聯合體，而沒有被算作
克林頓戴爾高中的績效。
翻轉課堂改變了一些事情。其一是學生在家中的行為。起初，老師布置
了20分鐘的視頻，但他們現在把視頻時長縮短至6分鐘，甚至3分鐘，以推動學生重複觀看。這所學校也使用音頻文件和文本作為家庭作業，並利用來自可汗學
院、TED和其他來源的視頻。許多學生由於害怕被其他人視為傻瓜而不願意在課堂上提問。但他們可以毫無懼色地反覆觀看視頻。
高二學生賈亞·鄧巴(Jahya Dunbar)說，媽媽陪她一起觀看數學視頻。她說：「媽媽喜歡這種技術創意，並且能夠理解我提出的問題。」
「過去在家做作業時，每每碰到一個問題，我只能幹着急，一點辦法都沒有，」高三學生盧瓦尼·哈里斯(Luwayne Harris)說。「現在，如果觀看視頻時有什麼不懂的地方，我只需倒回，一遍遍地觀看就可以了。」
一些學生不具備觀看視頻的技術條件，低收入社區尤為如此。受訪學生表示，大約10%的學生無法在家觀看，但在學校很方便。當然，僅僅因為學生可以觀看並不意味着他們會觀看（請點擊
討論頁面，瀏覽教師就如何督促學生做功課提出的建議）。
九年級物理老師羅伯特·湯森(Robert Townsend)每周安排學生觀看一套視頻，並要求他們做一些簡單的在線測試題，有時還會在課堂上檢查他們的視頻筆記。
當然，督促學生做作業並不是一個專屬於翻轉課堂的問題。連視頻都懶
得看的學生也不太可能做傳統的家庭作業題。他們在家裡也許無法獲得支持和幫助，或者生活在一個動蕩混亂的家庭。如果學生被卡在第一個問題上，他們就不夠走
運。湯森指出，在他所帶的班中，僅有一半學生做傳統的家庭作業，但觀看視頻的學生高達75%到80%。「視頻始終在那裡，隨時可以觀看，」他說。「學生已
經形成了觀看視頻的習慣。這是他們生活的世界。我們與學生相會在他們的地盤。」
可汗學院創始人薩爾曼·可汗(Salman Khan)的著作《一個世界校舍》(The One World Schoolhouse)闡述了一個很好的觀點：如果學生不打算做家庭作業，沒有觀看視頻的感覺要比沒有做習題集好得多。
翻轉課堂帶來的第二個，也是更為重要的轉變是：它釋放了大量課堂時
間讓學生動手實踐。學生通過做和提問學習新知——學校不應該是一種觀賞性運動。「許多人認為翻轉課堂只是跟技術有關，」商業和市場營銷老師吉姆·斯普里格
斯(Kim Spriggs)說。「實際上，它的意義在於讓孩子們擁有更多時間從事高階思維和動手項目。我不是在課堂上講授新知，然後要求學生在不一定能
夠獲得支持的家中做項目，而是在課堂上採用一對一或小組形式及時幫助他們。」此外，學生們也能互相幫助，這一過程不僅有益於優等生，也對後進生有利。
翻轉課堂也改變了教師的時間分配。在傳統的課堂上，教師往往與喜歡
提問的學生接觸較多，但最需要獲得關注的，恰恰是那些不提問的學生。「我們把這些學生稱為『沉默的失敗者』，」斯普里格斯說。「現在，對於學生來說，隱身
於課堂是一件比過去困難得多的事情。教師可以非常清楚地觀察每個學生的理解程度，並且知道如何幫助他們。這將對那些從不尋求額外幫助或關注，只是默不作
聲，袖手旁觀的學生產生巨大的影響。」
克林頓戴爾高中的經驗表明，受翻轉課堂影響最大的，是那些學習成績
處於最底部的學生。「翻轉課堂很難教出不及格的學生，因為學生就在你眼皮底下做功課，」英語學科主管羅布·達米隆(Rob Dameron)說。「在我以
前任教的班級中，大約有30%的學生無法通過英語考試——這些孩子大體上僅具有三四年級的閱讀水平。現在，在我的130個學生中，僅有3人不及格，主要原
因是他們經常曠課。」
湯森說，他發現學生的不及格率和課堂紀律大有改觀，但成績依然不理
想。「在應用翻轉課堂之前，我們班學生的平均測試成績是D+，現在是C或C+，」他說（其他老師則有不同的經歷，事實上，從全州標準化測試的成績來看，科
學是克林頓戴爾高中最弱的學科）。湯森目前正在重新設計視頻課程，並添加了在線討論環節，以着重培養學生的批判性思維。
無論是對於學生，還是老師而言，翻轉課堂都一種全新的體驗。正如許多教育作者所言，老師們正在從「講台上的聖人」變為「身邊的指導者」。於好老師而言，這是一種解放。「我在YouTube上發佈了一段關於主謂一致的
視頻，其瀏覽量高達5.4萬次，」達米隆說。「我可不想每年都把這個語法知識講授一遍。」
湯森說，他覺得自己就像一位「教育藝術家」，工作內容不僅僅是講課和分發資料。「我可以創建互動式課程和精彩內容。現在用來教育的時間比以前多得多！」
翻轉課堂需要老師更富創造性，更具活力。「整整一小時內，你不能坐在椅子上，你需要四處走動，」達米隆說。「許多稱不上優秀的老師非常抗拒這種上課方式——他們喜歡利用孩子們的學習時間做一些能夠消磨時光的事情，比如填填稅單或者收發一下電子郵件。」
針對翻轉課堂最嚴重的批評意見是，它帶來的變革還不夠大。經過進一步的演變，翻轉課堂不僅將促進個性化教育（即在每位學生自身層次上滿足其學習需求)，還將讓學生對自己的學習承擔起更大責任。在未來兩周的專欄中，我將報道這方面的內容，以及教師運用翻轉課堂的其他方式。
蒂娜·羅森貝格
(Tina Rosenberg)曾憑藉《鬼怪之地：面對共產主義之後的歐洲幽靈》
(The Haunted Land: Facing Europe\'s Ghosts After Communism)一書榮膺普利策獎
(Pulitzer Prize)。她是《紐約時報》前社論主筆和撰稿人。她的新作為《加入我們吧：同伴壓力如何改變世界》
(Join the Club: How Peer Pressure Can Transform the World)和二戰間諜小說《D代表欺騙》
(D for Deception)。本文最初發表於2013年10月9日。
翻譯：任文科
Turning Education Upside Down
By TINA ROSENBERGNovember 18, 2013
Three years ago, Clintondale High School, just north of Detroit, became a “flipped school”
— one where students watch teachers’ lectures at home and do what we’d
otherwise call “homework” in class. Teachers record video lessons, which
students watch on their smartphones, home computers or at lunch in the
school’s tech lab. In class, they do projects, exercises or lab
experiments in small groups while the teacher circulates.
Clintondale was the first
school in the United States to flip completely — all of its classes are
now taught this way. Now flipped classrooms are popping up all over.
Havana High School outside of Peoria, Ill., is flipping, too, after the
school superintendent visited Clintondale. The principal of Clintondale
says that some 200 school officials have visited.
It’s well known by now that
online education is booming. You can study any subject free in a MOOC — a
massive open online course — from single-digit addition to the history
of Chinese architecture to flight vehicle aerodynamics. Courses are
being offered by universities like
Harvard and M.I.T. and by the teenager next door making videos in his garage. Among the best-known sources are the
Khan Academy,
Coursera and
Udacity.
But while online courses can make high-quality education available to
anyone for the price of an Internet connection, they also have the
potential to displace humans, with all that implies for teachers and
students.
Like everything disruptive,
online education is highly controversial. But the flipped classroom is a
strategy that nearly everyone agrees on. “It’s the only thing I write
about as having broad positive agreement,” said Justin Reich, a fellow
at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard who studies
technology and education.
Flipping is still in the early
stages, with much experimentation about how to do it right. Its most
important popularizers are not government officials or academic experts,
but Aaron Sams and Jonathan Bergmann, a pair of high school chemistry
teachers in Woodland Park, Colo., who wrote a book called “Flip Your
Classroom: Reach Every Student in Every Class Every Day,” drawing almost
completely on their own experience. It hasn’t been rigorously studied
(most people cite only
this one research paper.)
Flipping’s track record in schools, while impressive, is anecdotal and
short. But many people are holding it up as a potential model of how to
use technology to humanize the classroom.
No school has taken flipping as
far as Clintondale. It began because Greg Green, the principal, had
been recording videos on baseball techniques and posting them on YouTube
for his 11-year-old son’s team. Recording the content allowed kids to
watch the videos repeatedly to grasp the ideas, and left more time for
hands-on work at practices.
It gave him an idea, and in the
spring of 2010, he set up an experiment: He had a social studies
teacher, Andy Scheel, run two classes with identical material and
assignments, but one was flipped. The flipped class had many students
who had already failed the class — some multiple times.
After 20 weeks, Green said,
Scheel’s flipped students, despite their disadvantages, were
outperforming the students in the traditional classroom. No student in
the flipped class received a grade lower than a C+. The previous
semester 13 percent had failed. This semester, none did. In the
traditional classroom, there was no change in achievement.
Green drove to Okemos, outside Lansing, to meet with
TechSmith,
a company that made the screen capture software he used for his
baseball videos. “I want to do an entire school,” he said. They said
that no one had ever done an entire school.
“We have nothing to lose,” Green said.
It was true. The school had
been designated as among the worst 5 percent in Michigan. That year,
more than half of ninth graders had failed science, and almost had half
failed math. Using TechSmith’s software — donated by the company — to
make videos, Clintondale’s ninth-grade teachers flipped their classes.
The results were dramatic: the
failure rate in English dropped from 52 percent to 19 percent; in math,
it dropped from 44 percent to 13 percent; in science, from 41 percent to
19 percent; and in social studies, from 28 percent to 9 percent.
The next year, in the fall of
2011, Clintondale flipped completely — every grade, every class. “On
average we approximated a 30 percent failure rate,” said Green. “With
flipping, it dropped to under 10 percent.” Graduation rates rose
dramatically, and are now over 90 percent. College attendance went from
63 percent in 2010 to 80 percent in 2012.
Results on standardized tests
have fluctuated; they went up in 2012 and then dropped. But state
education officials note that last year Clintondale had a large influx
of students from Detroit, many of them from low income families
(standardized test scores of poorer students tend to be lower). Three
years ago 64 percent of Clintondale students were low income, and now 81
percent are. Also due to an accounting quirk, some high-achieving
students had their most recent test scores counted as part of a school
consortium, and not as part of Clintondale.
Flipping a classroom changes
several things. One is what students do at home. At first, teachers
assigned 20-minute videos, but they now make them shorter — six minutes,
even three minutes. That promotes re-watching. The school also uses
audio files and readings as homework, and uses videos from the Khan
Academy, TED and other sources. Many students do not ask questions in
class, worried they will look dumb. But they can watch a video over and
over without fear.
Jahya Dunbar, a junior, said
her mother watches math videos with her. “She likes the idea of the
technology,” she said. “When I ask questions, she can understand it.”
“Whenever I had a problem on
the homework, I couldn’t do anything about it at home,” said Luwayne
Harris, a senior. “Now if I have a problem with a video, I can just
rewind and watch it over and over again.”
Especially in low-income
communities, some students don’t have access to the tech they need to
watch videos. Students I talked to said that about 10 percent don’t —
but they easily watch at school. Just because students can watch, of
course, doesn’t mean they do watch. (See the discussion page
here for teachers’ advice on getting students to do homework.)
Robert Townsend, who teaches
ninth-grade physical science, gives students a week to watch a package
of videos and requires students to do brief online quizzes about the
videos or take notes to show to him in class.
Getting students to do homework
is not, of course, a problem exclusive to flipping. Students who don’t
watch videos are even less likely to do traditional homework problems.
They may have no support or help at home or live in a chaotic house. If
they get stuck on the first problem they are out of luck. Townsend said
that while only half of his students did traditional homework, 75 to 80
percent watch the videos. “It’s always available to them,” he said.
“They’re used to watching. It’s the world they live in. We’re meeting
them on their ground.”
Salman Khan, founder of the
Khan academy, makes a good point in his book, “The One World
Schoolhouse”: If students are going to skip homework, it’s far better to
miss watching a video than to miss doing the problem sets.
This is the second and far more
important shift that comes with flipped classrooms: it frees up class
time for hands-on work. Students learn by doing and asking questions —
school shouldn’t be a spectator sport. ”A lot of people think it just
has to do with technology,” said Kim Spriggs, who teaches business and
marketing. “It’s actually more time for kids to do higher-order thinking
and hands-on projects. Instead of presenting the information in class
and having students work on projects at home, where they don’t
necessarily have support, here in class, one-on-one or in small groups, I
can help them immediately.” Students can also help each other, a
process that benefits both the advanced and less advanced learners.
Flipping also changes the
distribution of teacher time. In a traditional class, the teacher
engages with the students who ask questions — but it’s those who don’t
ask who tend to need the most attention. “We refer to ‘silent failers,’ ”
said Spriggs. “Now it’s a lot harder for students to hide. The teacher
can see pretty much where every student’s understanding is and how to
help them. It’s a huge difference for students who didn’t seek out extra
help and attention — who just sit back and keep silent.”
Clintondale’s experience
indicates that the biggest effect of flipping classrooms is on the
students at the bottom. “It’s tough to fail a flipped class, because
you’re doing the stuff in here,” said Rob Dameron, the head of the
English department. “I used to have about a 30 percent failure rate in
English – these kids come in a lot at third-grade, fourth-grade reading
levels. Now, out of 130 kids, I have three who are failing — mostly due
to attendance problems.”
Townsend said he has seen big
improvements in failure rates and in class discipline, but not in
grades. “Before my average test score was D+ — now it’s C or C+,” he
said. (Other teachers had a different experience, and indeed, science is
the weakest subject for students at Clintondale, and across the state
as measured on standardized tests.) He said he is now redoing his video
lessons and adding online discussion to try to incorporate more critical
thinking.
The flipped classroom is a new
experience for students — but also for teachers, who are going from
“sage on the stage” to “guide on the side,” as many education writers
put it. For good teachers, that’s liberating. “I have a
YouTube video on subject-verb agreement that has 54,000 views,” said Dameron. “I don’t want to give that lecture every year.”
Townsend said he feels like an
“educational artist” who doesn’t just talk and hand out sheets. “I can
create interactive lessons and exciting content. There’s so much more
time to educate!”
Flipped classrooms require more
creativity and energy from the teacher. “You are off your chair the
entire hour and walking around,” said Dameron. “Lots of teachers who
aren’t really good teachers are resistant to this — they like to build
time into the day when kids are working to do their taxes or catch up on
email.”.
The most serious critique of
the flipped classroom is that it’s not a big enough change. One
variation that goes further gives students more responsibility for their
own learning, while personalizing education — meeting each student at
her own level. In my next column in two weeks, I’ll report on this and
other ways teachers are using the flipped classroom.
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