ABOUT US

Barley Education Associates was started in the mid-1990s by a group of master teachers in western Massachusetts dedicated to developing the three-dimensional (3-D) model of curriculum, teaching, and learning, starting with science. The 3-D paradigm focuses on teaching all students in the classroom question-based creative problem solving and critical thinking. Its central proposal is that there are three categories of learning outcomes: content, skill, and transferable concept. The 3-D model includes the 2-D inquiry model that combines content and skill as well as the 1-D model of rote learning.

Barley has combined academic research with action research in the classroom to develop rigorous conceptual structures for K-12 science and math education, classroom materials for teaching conceptual understanding, associated professional development materials, and sophisticated web databases that enable teachers to differentiate their instruction to student needs and interests while maintaining a clear focus on conceptual understanding and inquiry-based investigations.  In the early 2000s Barley began developing and publishing lessons, units, and courses for classroom teachers through its online database. The key to making the database useful to teachers searching for the right lesson at the right time for the right student for the right purpose is its menus of selection criteria, developed with the help of over 200 practicing teachers. Barley then expanded into micro-publishing other teachers’ creative lessons by starting The Curriculum Cooperative (CCo-op; “see-see-co-op”). Membership is earned by submitting a lesson to the database. Members share lessons among themselves and the CCo-op sells site licenses to its database of lessons, access to their authors, and the expertise of its members and mentors (all new members are assigned an online member-mentor).

Barley is headed by Patrick Leighton, EdD. Born in Venezuela to American expatriates, Patrick Leighton lived in Barbados, Beirut, and Geneva before emigrating to the states as a college freshman. He majored in engineering and physics, which he taught on graduating, in 1974, in a college-town high school in western Massachusetts, where he settled and has lived ever since. His master’s thesis in education led to doctoral research on conceptual understanding, which he continued for thirty-five years across twelve schools in Massachusetts and northeastern Connecticut, teaching science and often math at every level from second grade to AP Physics. Some schools were neighborhood, charter, or magnet; some small and rural; some large and urban; some segregated, others integrated. He has served as an NEA union building rep and district president. On the administrative side, he has been a department chair, acting district curriculum director, and academic dean. As senior researcher at the Education Development Center, he worked to implement inquiry science in five hundred rural high schools spread across the country, coordinating with local, state, and national officials. He started the Center for Concept-Based Education, first training local teachers and then providing professional-development workshops nationwide. His career choices have been directed throughout at developing what have become the three innovations that make up 3-D ED.