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At other times, the board is moved to the front of the room, and students take turns solving math problems, sorting items into groups and matching words with their meanings.In my world, the set consisting of students who spend class time "solving math problems" does not intersect with the set consisting of students whose teachers ask them to "sort items into groups."
letter to the editor quoted in:
The Great Whiteboards Debate Rages On
Anthony Reborda
Education Week
Thursday, July 1, 2010
edspeak
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8 comments:
"Our schools have always been defined by a culture of presentation: I'll stand in front of you and give you the information that you need to learn. You sit in front of me and absorb it. While IWBs might make the presentation a bit more flashy, it still doesn't change the fact that we're presenting and our kids are absorbing. ... When you drop kids who are driven by participation into classrooms that are defined by presentations, 'engagement' is unlikely at best."
If you stand up, then it's presentation? What if the person stays seated? Is it then engagement? When people "present" something, is there a time limit? Do they have to avoid any indication of knowing more that the others? Is "teach" not authentic?
Is it OK if one student teaches another, but not when the teacher does it? When students have the light bulb go on in a group learning situation, do they have to leave the group lest they spoil the discovery process for the others? Is it OK when a student with no teaching experience explains something to another student while seated in a circle?
The fact that these sorts of ed school views pass even a rudimentary sniff test is quite extraordinary. The intersection of edspeak and reality is a null set.
Steve- The issue is not so much what goes on in a classroom, as what tools the teacher has to use for teaching. In mathematics and science, successful classrooms spend more time using traditional-based textbooks. We've grown up thinking for the past 20 years that if children from low socio-economic classes can't be taught traditional algorithms, than they can be successful in school learning non-standard algorithms. Now, looking at student achievement, we know that this is all wrong-headed and worse it makes publishers and ed consultants look like third rate liars.
I am making a rare appearance here because I can't resist making a snide remark.
From today's NYT on the difficulty of finding qualified employees:
"Now they are looking to hire people who can operate sophisticated computerized machinery, follow complex blueprints and demonstrate higher math proficiency than was previously required of the typical assembly line worker."
21st century skills cultists are preparing students for jobs that don't yet exist (as they like to brag). In the meantime, real jobs go unfilled because of a failure to educate.
"We've grown up thinking for the past 20 years that if children from low socio-economic classes can't be taught traditional algorithms, ..."
Who is "we?" I've never heard this argument. The claim is that the traditional algorithms are fundamentally bad for all.
I didn't grow up with a culture of presentation. I grew up with real teachers with content knowledge, who were responsible to ensure that learning occured. No passing the buck to a specialist. No rTi remediation protocol chain. No copy 'notes' from the board. No movies. No art projects in middle school - we wrote essays. Very little homework. These teachers seem to have graduated in the early 60s or prior and the last are retiring now.
The NYT article was a bit vague. It sounded to me as if they were making the operator jobs into technician jobs, but not increasing the salary to go with the skills.
Tasking an operator with monitoring (vacuum pressure and temperatures on a color-coded computer screen with flashing numbers) makes me think that the process and its controls are not well developed. The fellow may well be doing what used to be the engineering technicians's job or he may just have very simple equipment that necessitates a lot of human intervention.
In my world, the set consisting of students who spend class time "solving math problems" does not intersect with the set consisting of students whose teachers ask them to "sort items into groups."
What about a paint-by-numbers worksheet with division problems whose remainders sort the areas into groups of the same color?
Hee hee.
instructivist!
You're back!
You must not be rare!
Ed pointed that article out to me first thing this morning.
The article was vague - definitely.
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