I discovered today that the Public Agenda survey of professors in education schools is available online. From the press release:
In the first comprehensive survey of the views of education professors, Public Agenda found nearly eight in ten teachers of teachers (79%) believe the public's approach toward learning is "outmoded and mistaken," and suggest a different path for American education. In sharp contrast to the concerns expressed by typical Americans in earlier Public Agenda studies, small percentages of education professors feel maintaining discipline and order in the classroom (37%), stressing grammar as well as correct spelling and punctuation (19%), and expecting students to be on time and polite (12%) are "absolutely essential" qualities to impart to prospective teachers.
Professors of education offer an alternative set of priorities which translate into highly evolved expectations for K-12 teachers. Education professors overwhelmingly consider it "absolutely essential" to convey to prospective teachers the importance of lifelong learning (84%), teaching students to be active learners (82%), and having high expectations of all their students (72%). Their emphasis on a love of learning leads them to downplay more traditional educational practices. Fifty-nine percent, for example, think academic sanctions such as the threat of flunking or being held back are not important in motivating kids to learn. Six in ten (61%) believe when a public school teacher faces a disruptive class it probably means the teacher has failed to make lessons engaging enough.
"Professors of education have a particular vision of what teaching should be -- one that has some appealing features," said Deborah Wadsworth, Executive Director of Public Agenda. "But the disconnect between what the professors want and what most parents, teachers, business leaders and students say they need is often staggering. Their prescriptions for the public schools may appear to many Americans to be a type of rarified blindness given the public's concerns about school safety and discipline, and whether high school graduates have even basic skills," added Wadsworth.
Process Over Content
The process of learning is more important to education professors than whether or not students absorb specific knowledge. Nearly 9 in 10 (86%) say when K-12 teachers assign math or history questions, it is more important for kids to struggle with the process of finding the right answers than knowing the right answer. "We have for so many years said to kids 'What's 7+5?' as if that was the important thing. The question we should be asking is 'Give me as many questions whose answer is 12...,'" said a Chicago professor who was interviewed for this study.
Their focus on how to learn prompts a greater reliance on tools and less on teaching specific facts. For example, 57% think the use of calculators from the start will improve children's problem-solving skills. Only 10% of the general public, however, and 23% of public school teachers, agree. And only one-third of the professors (33%) would require students to know the names and geographic locations of the 50 states before getting a diploma. "Why should they know that?" a Los Angeles professor asked. "They need to know how to find out where they are. When I need to know that, I can go look it up. That's the important piece, and here is what's hard to get parents to understand."
yesirree, bob
It's damned hard to get parents to understand that.
It's damned hard to get parents to understand that because it is cracked.
I say that as a person from Illinois who once contemplated purchasing a t-shirt bearing the legend "University of Iowa, Idaho City, Ohio."
Full text of the report here (pdf file)
Different Drummers
the struggle
classroom discipline
portrait of a heterogeneous classroom
The people who pump out this mythology have never seen a child use a calculator who doesn't have the slightest clue what a correct answer might look like. For such a child, any key will do. If they happpen to pick a combination of keys when looking for 9+3=12 that gives them an answer of 4324.458975, that's what goes on the paper.
ReplyDeleteI'm exaggerating a bit but not much. As an engineer I can tell you that something like 80% of my math took place while driving, looking at the ceiling, watching tv, and otherwise being engaged with NO calculator.
The only time you use a calculator is after you've thought for hours and hours, sifting through possible paths to a solution, looking for an approach worth putting the final touches on with a calculator. Even then, you already know, within 10% or so, what the answer should be.
Calculators destroy number sense. Ed schools apparently destroy common sense.
But see, HE doesn't know the geographic location of the 50 states, and he's an ed school prof! Didn't hurt him any not to know. Therefore, no one else needs it either.
ReplyDeleteDo you think ed schools teach the word "Solipsism" anywhere?
I had one of these types (flew in as a consultant)observe me once. They used to come in on occasion to show us how to teach. I used to call these visits safaris. They come in standing in the Range Rover looking at the lions and gazelles (I was the gazelle).
ReplyDeleteAfter one of these drive bys I was told that I was too much on the discipline, too light on the love. I swear I'm not making this up. She would come back and 'model' for me to demonstrate the difference.
On the big day she arrived with a bucket full of colored markers which she intended to use as rewards when the children worked hard (these used to be called bribes but in edu land these are rewards).
Anyway, she started the lesson, having the children 'discover' common denominators. When they got rowdy she would 'quiet' them with a shhhhssssssssh, yuck. I was just observing so I did nothing to maintain order. It was just her and the shsssssh and the bribes for classroom management.
About 45 minutes in, the children were throwing the markers at her so I had to take over. She fled from the room and I never saw her again.
Also from this survey: Two-thirds (65%) say the "decline in public confidence in public schools is a result of negative press coverage."
ReplyDeleteMaybe if you would just stop blogging, things would improve!
This is very nice blog.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.blueshoots.com
It was just her and the shsssssh and the bribes for classroom management. About 45 minutes in, the children were throwing the markers at her so I had to take over. She fled from the room and I never saw her again.
ReplyDeleteJust goes to show you that these ivory-tower types have no clue what it's like teaching in the real world - all the more reason why have no business indoctrinating future teachers with their malarkey.
>>>"Why should they know that?" a Los Angeles professor asked. "They need to know how to find out where they are. When I need to know that, I can go look it up. That's the important piece, and here is what's hard to get parents to understand."
ReplyDeleteWonder what this person is a professor of? He must be well entrenched if he has the luxury of time to do all the looking up.
Our dept. chair (eng) used to tell us if you had to look up basic info, then realize the other guy was going to get and keep the job since he could communicate in real time.
Sound of vomiting.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteOK. I feel much better now.
ReplyDeleteHere's a quote, not from an ed school professor, but from a student who was taking a class in ed school on math teaching methods. Her comments reflect very much the tenor of the professor teaching the class and the subject matter for most of that semester.
Abstraction is a necessary brain activity required for algebra, but not everyone is able to do abstraction. Why is that? It might be environment or natural ability, but as teachers, we can help students come to think in the abstract by helping them see the bigger picture of the concepts as we teach them. In other subjects, working on analogies, theorizing, and drawing on symbology also enables students to begin the path towards algebraic thinking. Unfortunately, if a student is not taught to generate a big picture idea before the completion of elementary school, many times the student has so many disjointed ideas the brain is never able to compress the similar ideas into single thought.
There's no mention of the role that foundational information and skills play in generating the "big picture" concepts. Rather, there is an assumption that teaching kids analogies and how to recognize "patterns" is enough to get students to see the big picture. And we all know that Singaporean students are not good at seeing the big picture, now are they?
Release Date: Oct. 22, 1997
ReplyDeleteWell, their statute of limitations has run out on this. They have new thinking (spin). Of course they believe in balance. They require kids to learn the times table. What more do you want? Just go away and let the professionals decide on the details.
It's either that or you get the simle, head nod, and do nothing response. They have to be concerned about kids of all abilities. You just couldn't understand.
Of course they believe in balance.
ReplyDeleteYes, but would they want their daughter in a balanced math class?
"When I need to know that, I can go look it up."
ReplyDeleteI have a math problem I'd like the ed prof to look up.
This is a math problem made up by a teacher.
The idea is to find the missing legs of a triangle. What's given is the tangent (1.75) and the hypotenuse (4).
What would be the best way to solve this?
Here's a reasoned commentary from someone whom I highly respect:
ReplyDeleteDon Crawford on 'full inclusion'
(For those who don't know, Don has developed some excellent math programs for Otter Creek involving learning math facts and problem solving -- highly recommended)
I've mentored three new teachers. Only one of them continued in teaching. The other two were so shocked and distraught throughout their first years. They hadn't learned anything applicable in ed school that could help them succeed in teaching.
ReplyDeleteThis survey definitely explains why the attrition rate is so high within the first few years.
And the sad fact is that many administrators seem to think the same way when it comes to classroom discipline. (I guess that goes without saying...they've excelled in their ed school classes :)
When there's a problem, it's assumed that the teacher must not have designed a very engaging lesson. I think many young teachers may quit because they get no backup from the principals when it comes to maintaining discipline.
When I came through ed school (20 some years ago) there was still talk of discipline and time-management. Many things are severely lacking these days, but I guess they can "learn" them on the fly, right?
Crack, for a college, is research money. It's the nectar that lets professors teach a few classes per week, leaving the heaviest part of the load for the TA's (who are also made abundant by the crack). It's the holy grail.
ReplyDeleteResearch money is best obtained if one is doing science. This in turn is usually connected with solving some riddle of nature, some unfolding enigma. So if you want crack you need to be doing 'science'.
Now you could make a sound argument that we had the education thing down in the time of Socrates. True the nature or content of what you're teaching evolves but the pedagogy is not 'unfolding'.
Unless of course you want research money. Then you need to turn the settled into the unsettled. You have to make up some science. You have to prepare the ground for research. You have to turn the whole endeaver into research. This happened with political science, sociology, women's studies, diversity studies, everywhere you look science is happening. Ed schools are not immune to this evolution.
So you have mathematics, where the content is extremely stable and well understood, suddenly in need of scientific treatments for how it is taught. Yet we are consuming technology today (even in the ed schools) that was developed largely by scientists and engineers without the benefit of the newest math ed school science.
What problem are they solving?
What problem(s) are they creating?
ReplyDeletehow paul b can see all this stuff
ReplyDeleteso clearly and still think i oughta
want to pay for his ferarri
(and a track to run it on)
must forever remain a mystery.
what then are we to do?
Do you actually read by the light of that flame?
ReplyDeletenot everyone is able to do abstraction
ReplyDeletesnort
I don't know about paying for Paul's Farrari, but I would definitely like someone to pay for mine
ReplyDeletebudget passed on Tuesday
$50,500,000 for 1970 pupils or thereabouts
$25,000 per pupil spending and rising
Ferrari, I mean
ReplyDeleteI don't see enough Ferraris to remember how to spell the damn things
I'm gonna have to sell my Rav4 to pay my taxes.
Also my house.
Have I mentioned we have declining enrollments?
ReplyDeleteSo you have mathematics, where the content is extremely stable and well understood, suddenly in need of scientific treatments for how it is taught.
ReplyDeleteI had the same thought this week re: Project Lead the Way, etc.
Schools are insatiably hungry for money -- my school is nowhere near ready to stop raising taxes. We have "so many things to do going forward," etc.
Once you hit $25K per pupil spending, how much of that can you spend on math, English, science, music, foreign languages, art, & AP courses?
You HAVE to start watering down your curriculum with extras. It's the only way to justify increasing the budget forever.