Liam Julian, who writes for the Fordham-sponsored Education Gadfly, has an editorial in the 20 December issue that amounts to a call for employing Direct Instruction. In “Check yourself before you wreck yourself,” Mr. Julian writes about the utility of checklists. He explains that when doctors use specific, scripted methods they are not criticized for doing so, but that many educators complain about scripted instructional methods.
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Archive for December, 2007
TMAO, who blogs at Teaching in the 408, has a post discussing the semi-professional position into which many teachers feel they are pushed. TMAO proposes that abolition of some constraints (e.g., tenure) and adoption of some form of merit pay will help professionalize teaching. To be treated like a profession, though, teaching will almost certainly have to adopt some fundamental professional behaviors. As TMAO notes, some form of accountability is required. Also, professional decision-making is needed.
I’m reminded of Doug Carnine’s paper, “Why Education Experts Resist Effective Practices (And What It Would Take to Make Education More Like Medicine),” in which similar sorts of issues are discussed. However the thrust there is more toward the decision-making side than the pay-advancement side.
Link to TMAO’s ledge post and to a PDF of Doug’s paper.
I was pleased to happen upon a Web site entitled The Concord Review. The folks there—principally Will Fitzhugh—pitch the idea that academic excellence should be treated just as well as athletic excellence, so they have a varsity team of high school history writers. According to the home page, “Varsity athletics and athletes are celebrated everywhere. We celebrate varsity academics.”
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Gül Dölen and Mark Baer
Photo by Donna Coveney
Professor Mark Baer of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), who studies how brains change as a result of experience, and his colleagues have identified bio-chemical factors (mGluR5 and FMRP) that, when re-balanced in mice bred to model Fragile-X syndrome, correct multiple defects associated with mental retardation and Autism. Here’s a snippet from the MIT press release:
Researchers at MIT’s Picower Institute for Learning and Memory have corrected key symptoms of mental retardation and autism in mice.
The work, which will be reported in the Dec. 20 issue of Neuron, indicates that a certain class of drugs could have the same effect in humans. These drugs are not yet approved by the FDA, but will soon be entering into clinical trials.
The Chronicle of Higher Education officially broke the news today of a substantial effort to bring qualified people into teaching. Under the headline “2 Fellowship Programs to Award Millions to Prospective Teachers” there is a story about a state- and a national-level program.
Let’s hope that the people who go through these programs receive preparation in how to recognize and implement effective teaching methods. It’d be shame to have them trained (arf! arf!) in the usual namby-pamby methods that have so dominated education in the 40 years I’ve been watching it.
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After a competition last spring, the US Department of Education awarded a project to AIR to host RTI4Success. The Web site for that project recently became available. It has few resources at this time, but it’s likely to grow.
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