In “Building A Better Teacher,” Elizabeth Green presents cases personifying two perspectives on teaching effectively—one we often hear referred to as “classroom management” and the other regularly called “good content.” She uses Doug Lemov and Deborah Ball, respectively, as her exemplars of the cases.
Professor Ball, dean of the University of Michigan’s school of education, is widely noted for her studies of teachers’ content knowledge in mathematics. Mr. Lemov, a consultant and promoter of charter schools, has a forth-coming book documenting concepts about teaching practices that span content areas.
Continue reading ‘Sorta building a better teacher, maybe’
Over on Bright Hub, Linda Neas has a post entitled “Coping with Multiple Intelligences in the Classroom” in which she suggests how to employ understanding of MI to adapt instruction. “When educators are able to identify the various learning styles of their students, they are better able to teach in a manner supporting success for all students. A learning style chart is an invaluable tool when developing classroom management techniques.”
After opening with a paragraph about Howard Gardner’s concept of multiple intelligences, Ms. Neas indicates that standardized testing runs counter to assessing learners’ performance. How to teach, she asks? “Perhaps the answer is as simple as the classroom management technique of identifying the various intelligences within the classroom!”
Continue reading ‘Mixed example, same bologna’
Today in Washington (DC, US) the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the University of Wisconsin Population Health Institute launch a public service Web site that allows visitors to learn about the healthiness of localities on a county-by-county basis across the US. The news got me thinking—Danger!—about the possibility of creating a similar resource for consumers of education: Providing a scientifically credible metric for the quality of teaching in each local education agency around a country.
Continue reading ‘Rating LEAs’ teaching?’
Over on Science-Based Medicine, Dr. Amy Tuteur has an entry that’s worth reading. In the piece, she exoriates the publication of medical news that amount to little more than reprints of press releases. Dr. Tuteur’s analysis serves as a worthwhile reminder for people to exercise caution when reading, watching, or hearing reports in the popular press about the benefits of medical therapies.
Even more, the analysis offers a reminder for people who consume educational research via popular media. I have repeatedly read reports of new educational and psychological research published in apparently trustworthy sources which, upon investigation, actually are just a reprint of a press release from a university or other entity with an interest in promoting the finding.
This is really problemsome when even further investigation shows that the press release may not completely accurately reflect the findings of the original research. Shoot, I suspect that some of what passes as content on some Web sites is actually generated by a robot that scans relevant sources (e.g., press releases) and scapes content that meets certain criteria (e.g., includes key words) into a database that can then be served according to a new style sheet.
That’s why one’s supposed to depend on a careful reading of the original report! Here on Teach Effectively, I sometimes include snippets from press releases, but I depend on my own reading of the original research when I write about a new study.
Last week I wrote about a study that purported to show that antidepressants have no effect in mild to moderate depression. A careful reading of the paper shows that the authors dramatically overstated their findings, particularly in their public statements to the media. The study has another implication beyond the misleading claims about antidepressants. It is an object lesson in an ongoing and disturbing phenomenon in mainstream journalism, the wholesale reprinting of press releases of scientific papers instead of reading and analyzing the papers themselves.
Jump to Science by press release.
Writing in the Chronicle of Higher Education under the headline “Matching Teaching Style to Learning Style May Not Help Students,” David Glenn describes the hook of a forth-coming paper the examines the popular, but unsupported, notion that instruction must be differentiated according to personal characteristics of the learners.
If you’ve ever sat through a teaching seminar, you’ve probably heard a lecture about “learning styles.” Perhaps you were told that some students are visual learners, some are auditory learners, and others are kinesthetic learners. Or maybe you were given one of the dozens of other learning-style taxonomies that scholars and consultants have developed.
Almost certainly, you were told that your instruction should match your students’ styles. For example, kinesthetic learners—students who learn best through hands-on activities—are said to do better in classes that feature plenty of experiments, while verbal learners are said to do worse.
Continue reading ‘Learning styles gets academic attention’
Over on Kitchen Table Math the contributor who identifies himself as SteveH has a delightful post about some new test results. Here’s the lead:
Recent testing has shown improvement in shoe tying by fourth and eighth graders over the past two years, although the growth has been stagnant in some districts. Urban school activists, however, can be encouraged by the statistical improvement in areas with populations of 250,000 or more. This continues an upward trend that started 6 years ago when this testing began.
Jump over to Testing Shows Improvement in Shoe Tying.
My colleague and friend, Jim Kauffman, published an editorial in the Charlottesville (VA, US) Daily Progress over the past weekend. It’s a good one.
In his view, most educational reform proposals miss the mark. They overlook the critical element. Make a note about what element you think is ignored, then read Professor Kauffman’s editorial. I suspect that many readers of Teach Effectively will have notes about the same overlooked factor that he identifies.
I’d point readers to the Daily Progress for a chance to read it, but I can’t find the article on that Web site. However, thanks to the author, I have a PDF of the editorial. Download it by clicking on the accompanying image or by following this link.
Although it’s a tad off point for Teach Effectively, I call readers’ attention (both of you!) to one of a set of articles that appeared in the Los Angeles Times as part of an examination of bogus therapies for Autism. In this article, “Autism therapies can get undeserved credit,” investigative journalists Trine Tsouderos and Patricia Callahan examine the tension between heart-felt testimonials and cold, hard scientific evidence. It’s worth a read, as are several other articles about Autism therapies that they’ve written since May of 2009.
Usually, the people who are mislead by the therapies discussed by Ms. Tsouderos and Ms. Callahan are parents. However, educators can be mislead similarly and the therapies about which they are misled do not have to be medical or specific to Autism. All one needs is a glittery idea that connects just a tad with science and personal experience and is supported by testimonials from people who seem to have authentic credentials….
Link to read “Autism therapies can get undeserved credit.” For more about the stories by Ms. Tsouderos and Ms. Callahan, see entries on EBD Blog for 23 May 2009, 21 November 2009, and 7 December 2009
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