Education professors have a clear response for how to deal with disorder and lack of discipline, which head the lists of teacher and parent concerns. It is often when teachers fail to encourage active learning, the professors say, that they face order and discipline problems in their classrooms.
About 6 in 10 education professors (61%) believe that when a public school teacher faces a disruptive class, he or she has probably failed to make lessons engaging enough to capture the students' attention. "Effective motivation that turns kids on to learning is a positive way of dealing with discipline," said a Los Angeles professor, "and I think you need to do that instead of just controlling them." A Chicago professor said much the same thing: "We teach students how to become active learners, and I think that relates to the discipline problem... When you have students engaged and not vessels to receive information, you tend to have fewer discipline problems."
Underlying these attitudes seems to be a sense that children have an innate love of learning* that can be used to harness any wayward or mischievous impulses. The belief that tapping into this innate love of learning will capture the devoted attention of students is powerful among education professors, so much so that many seem to question the need for academic sanctions. In fact, most professors of education (59%) believe that academic sanctions such as the threat of failing a course or being held back a grade are not an important part of motivating kids to learn. The age-old incentive kids have always had for studying and working hard in school - the fear of getting a bad grade - is unnecessary and inappropriate.
This reminds me of the time I went to the NYU bookstore and surveyed the ed school books (scroll down). It was all constructivism all the time, except for the one book on Techniques for Managing Verbally and Physically Aggressive Students, which explained things like what to do when a student is attempting to strangle you from behind.
I guess they had that one in there in case any of their graduates had to work in a school without fuzzy math.
* Innate love of learning, ok...possibly. Innate love of learning negative exponents: I don't think so.
Different Drummers
the struggle
gifted children and ed schools
portrait of a heterogeneous classroom
constructivism and classroom discipline
I wonder if education schools could be improved by tying them to the demands of teachers.
ReplyDeleteMy engineering school was IEE and IEEE accredited - which meant that graduates could be full members of the Institute of Electrical Engineers (UK) and the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (USA - from memory that's what IEEE stands for). The two institutes set various criteria for what was to be taught in the courses - clearly not incompatible criteria - and the degree was very useful. Obviously the incentive for the IEE and IEEE was to maintain the meaning of being an IEE/IEEE full member.
Could you do something similar with education schools - ie set it up that education schools would need to be accredited by associations of teachers. Do experienced teachers have enough of an incentive to want the new teachers to be good ones? I know experienced teachers often have mentoring roles.
If so, that would strike me as focusing education schools on things useful for the classroom.
Or is this idea completely useless for some reason? (Domain knowledge may be striking again).
Innate love of learning, ok...possibly. Innate love of learning negative exponents: I don't think so.
ReplyDeleteI think we have an innate love of success which can be destroyed if given nothing to succeed at. Working for its own sake I think is very hard to do.
Could you do something similar with education schools - ie set it up that education schools would need to be accredited by associations of teachers. Do experienced teachers have enough of an incentive to want the new teachers to be good ones?
ReplyDeleteinteresting....
I always think - without a lot of evidence, just intuition - that we're wasting our good teachers.
Supposedly about 15% of the workforce consists of fantastically good teachers - and what do they do?
They carry on teaching inside their classrooms, without being recruited as teachers-of-teachers, or mentors-of-teachers, or even as department chairs (I think)....
Mike Schmoker talks about that (Results Now).
Schools have all kinds of expertise that's not used (not shared with colleagues)...
I think we have an innate love of success which can be destroyed if given nothing to succeed at. Working for its own sake I think is very hard to do.
ReplyDeleteI'd say years of reseearch on learning pretty much shows that if you NEVER get rewards (i.e. you never succeed) you'll simply quit.
I believe the term is "extinction"...
Ordered the book IMMEDIATELY! I'm in search of scripted responses to disruptive situations. I'm currently in love with Engelmann's Direct Instruction. I'm teaching the 4 year old to read with his 100 lessons!
ReplyDeleteIt's great! There have been a few tough days...learning to rhyme and learning to sound out the word silently and then just saying the word were tough. But after the struggle (literally) the next day was like epiphany for her! She is reading better everyday!
If you know of any great books like Techniqes for managing...
Send your recommendations NOW!
Same anonymous...
ReplyDeleteI'm a teacher also. I'm not using the book for my own kid. I just wanted to point out that I enjoy the scripts and I need some scripts to handle the disruptive students.
Also, I'm a high school teacher. It's my first year. I taught younger kids before this.
Thanks for any input.