This item will amuse and delight:
24. A heterogeneous group of three to six children working together in support of their learning is called:
1. Mastery learning
2. An authentic learning group
3. A cooperative learning group
4. A think-pair-share learning group
It will come as no surprise to learn that the answer is not number 1: mastery learning.
It was quite a chore to navigate the state professional knowledge test I had to take. The rule I followed was that if a choice made sense it was almost certainly the wrong answer.
ReplyDeleteThe Chicago school system has now hired an ed guru to pilot teacher evaluation. I looked up her name and found this progression of best practices:
http://www.chss.iup.edu/jrmcdono/ED455-methods/teacher_evaluation_to_enhance_pr.htm
What do we believe good teaching looks like?
What are the processes and procedures that will best fit what we want our system to accomplish?
History
1970's Hunter model - learning styles (encouraged emphasis on teacher-centered, structured classrooms)
anticipatory set, statement of objectives, instructional input, modeling, checking for understanding guided practice and independent practice.
l980's teacher effectiveness
expectancy studies
discipline models
Hunter derivatives
effective schools research
cooperative learning
brain research
1990's critical thinking
content knowledge
content pedagogy
alternative assessment
multiple intelligence
collaborative learning
cognitive learning theory
constructivist classrooms
authentic pedagogy
engaged teaching and learning
teaching for understanding
2000's authentic pedagogy
engaged teaching and learning
teaching for understanding
In the l980's and l990's, educators felt increased pressure to help students attain more complex outcomes. They emphasized critical thinking, problem solving, lifelong learning, collaborative learning and deeper
Teacher Evaluation to Enhance Professional Practice by Charlotte Danielson & Thomas L. McGreal
When teaching was teaching.
ReplyDeleteSee the Madeline Hunter way:
http://www.humboldt.edu/~tha1/hunter-eei.html#direct
For some reason, educationists thought they needed to get away from this.
Do you know the story with Madeline Hunter??
ReplyDeleteVicki Snider has an account in her book that seems to suggest that Hunter's work was a case of "premature transfer of technology," which Temple talks about a lot.
Apparently people adopted it before it had been field-tested and validated & it didn't work.
I think Snider's attitude is that it might have or would have worked if the bugs had been fixed first....
Temple says some of the worst abuses of animals have come from the failure of technologies that were transferred to the field before the bugs were fixed.
ReplyDeleteWhen the early adopters failed, the technology died & the animals have suffered ever since.
[Apparently people adopted it before it had been field-tested and validated & it didn't work.]
ReplyDeleteThe Hunter method seems fairly straightforward to me. What could have gone wrong? Can you explain the technology part?
Why can't schools apply their own critical thinking skills? Why do they search for some sort of educational guru's "rote" pre-packaged system. They just want to buy a solution.
ReplyDeleteIRL it's called the smartest kid does the bulk of the work because he/she cares about keeping up his/her GPA while the other kids simply copy the answers...
ReplyDeleteNew to your blog. Love it!
ReplyDeleteAnd this just screamed for such a comment. Thank you for this post.
The answer is 3, right? I mean, that's what they tell me at school he is bad in; cooperative learning. And this demonstrates why he should be returned to a self-contained classroom.
Ummm... he is having trouble verbally so he needs to be in a classroom without regular education material with 12 kids who are not verbal at all?
Ahhh... I see. There is 1 child who is verbal but then they don't do cooperative learning in the class.
Yes. We know. No learning in the class. Thank you, NO.