Evidence-based teaching methods for helping students who are at risk for school failure or who have disabilities.
Well, folks, I closed the poll about bogus reasons for not teaching effectively. It was a close contest:
Now it’s time to start a new poll. This time we’ll examine bogus reasons for failing to test whether students actually learn what educators say they “teach.”
Continue reading ‘Bogus Bowl III’
Over on On Special Ed, Christina Samuels had a post entitled “Differentiated Learning” that discussed plans by some schools to employ co-teaching. Because Peggy and I studied co-teaching a few years ago and because we are privy to a Current Practice Alert on the subject, we created a comment on Christina’s blog entry, hoping to advance the discussion of this popular approach to serving students with disabilities.
In essence, we urged caution about adopting co-teaching. We predicated our reservations on the Alert by Naomi Zigmond and Kathleen Magiera in which they examined the research on co-teaching. Professor Zigmond and Magiera concluded that educators should use caution in employing co-teaching.
Rather than reiterating the content, we’ll just point to the entry differentiated instruction and the comments on it.
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Those clever folks over at Weapons of Math Destruction have stuck yet again with another witty take-down of mal-education in the mathematics area.
As much as I like this one, I think the image of the face for the child “on fuzzy math” should be different. I see fuzzy math and its cousins as resulting more in happy witlessness. That’s the idea: Make it fun and engaging; students’ll just figure it out magically…re-discovering everything from counting through Archimedian insights and onto the calculus. Shouldn’t those kids be smiling?
For those outside the US who are not familiar with the brain-vs-brain-on theme incorporated into this cartoon, here’s a hint: There was an advertisement that first appeared in the 1980s showing a man holding a chicken egg and saying “This is your brain,” then cracking the egg into a frying pan and saying, “This is your brain on drugs.” Here’s a link to a Wikipedia entry about the brain-on-drugs advertisement.
Oh Well…off to a thumbnail catalog from Weapons of Math Destruction for the big version of this cartoon.
Sphere: Related ContentTE readers will likely recognize acronyms such as BEE, CSRQ, EEPI, and WWC from previous post on this site. In addition to having been cited in posts, they (along with the Campbell Collaboration) are listed among the Web resources in a sidebar. They are there of a purpose: These sites are important sources of reasoned consideration of the evidentiary basis for teaching effectively.
Regular readers will also recall that from time to time I’ve posted concerns about the evidence that some of these sources have provided. These review houses employ different procedures in their integrations of evidence, and those differences are important to note. Though my concerns may sometimes be strongly stated, they do not negate the general good work that these organizations have done. Just as two cars with different features may both provide many miles of safe transportation, so can these projects provide very helpful guidance for improving education. Indeed, the folks who work at these places are far more capable than I in conducting and reporting reviews of research about educational matters.
Outside of my evaluation of the differences among the approaches taken in these groups’ reviews, there are also analyses of the differences by others who have much greater expertise. The January-February 2008 issue of Educational Researcher includes and article by Bob Slavin the provides just such an analysis. In it, Professor Slavin provides a very timely and coherent commentary on how differences in the methods employed in research syntheses (what others might call “integrative literature reviews,” “meta-analyses,” and etc.) of program evaluation studies affect their validity and utility.
Syntheses of research on educational programs have taken on increasing policy importance. Procedures for performing such syntheses must therefore produce reliable, unbiased, and meaningful information on the strength of evidence behind each program. Because evaluations of any given program are few in number, syntheses of program evaluations must focus on minimizing bias in reviews of each study. This article discusses key issues in the conduct of program evaluation syntheses: requirements for research design, sample size, adjustments for pretest differences, duration, and use of unbiased outcome measures. It also discusses the need to balance factors such as research designs, effect sizes, and numbers of studies in rating the overall strength of evidence supporting each program.
I encourage folks to read it. For the lay reader, there are some inevitably technical sections, to be sure; but overall the exposition is quite clear and accessible. For the professional, this is a valuable summary of current concerns and a hillock from which one can scan the unexplored territory before striking out to explore.
Slavin, R. E. (2008). What works? Issues in synthesizing educational program evaluations: Perspectives on evidence-based research in education. Educational Researcher, 37, 5–14.
Sphere: Related ContentA subcommittee in the US House of Representatives plans to hold a hearing about the effects of inadequate education on the economy. I’ve gotta wonder whether someone will be able to perform the calculus to ascertain the relative benefits of teaching effectively. Let’s see, if students on average benefit as little as 10%/year from receiving effective instruction, after 13 years—without compounding—they would have 1.3 more years of concepts and operations. I wonder what that would do to the workforce.
The House Appropriations Committee’s Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies will hold a hearing discussing the “Opportunities Lost and Costs to Society: The Social and Economic Burden of Inadequate Education, Training and Workforce Development.” The hearing is slated for 14 February at 2:00 p.m. and will be held in 2358-C Rayburn HOB. Contact Cheryl L. Smith, Subcommittee Clerk, Room 2358-B Rayburn House Office Building, Washington, DC 20515, (202) 225-3508
Sphere: Related ContentI was reading entries on the famous blog by Joanne Jacobs recently when I came across a post about content on which I’ve previously commented. I felt my super-skeptical hackles rise. Here’s Ms. Jacobs’ lead
Without school choice, high standards and good instruction aren’t enough to improve education for disadvantaged students, argues Lisa Snell in Reason. She’s responding to Sol Stern’s City Journal article, Choice Is Not Enough, which has stirred up a lively debate.
Ms. Jacobs accurately represents Lisa Snell’s argument. It’s a lengthy one and there’s a link to it later. But, it made me realize that I’ve not actually stated my view on these sorts of issues. In some senses, Ms. Snell’s argument is sensible. However, standards only provide the measuring stick; they establish the goals in that folks have agreed to those standards are important. Effective instuctional practices are only valuable if they effectively teach what we want. We could design really effective procedures to teach basketweaving underwater, but who places that high on the list of educational goals?
But, Mr. Stern has the right fundamental path: Teach what we want effectively. Don Hirsch proposed a way—community discussion—to identify what we want for goals, but he has been shouted at as if he proposed the actual goals.
In my view, the problem is relatively simple:
Those who dote on teacher empowerment, choice, vouchers, inclusion, standards, home-schooling, multi-sensory methods, etc. [please add to the list], have focused too narrowly. As important as those topics are, we will only chase our tails if we follow them to the exclusion of the bigger picture.
Link to (a) Ms. Jacobs, Mr. Stern’s, and Ms. Snell’s posts.
Sphere: Related ContentIn an entry on Life on the Other Side of the Teachers Desk, a writer who identifies her- or himself as “deltasleep” reports on experiences during student teaching. There are several posts worthy of note, but I want to call attention to one about about how inclusion is practiced in the school to which deltasleep is assigned. Deltasleep is assigned to a regular-education 5th grade classroom that includes many students with disabilities.
I’ve not even started teaching yet and I’ve already got a real curveball! “Inclusion” is a special education term used to describe the process of providing special education students with the “least restrictive environment.” This typically means that a special education student attends a “typical” class.
TN classrooms(and probably others) have found a way to circumvent this by dumping all of the special education students in a grade into one class. Teachers call this the “inclusion class.” I find this practice totally abhorrent, as it is clearly a way to circumvent a law designed to help students.
I am surprised by this policy. I have to wonder to what extent deltasleep’s characterization of the situation represents it accurately, but if there is such a policy, it doesn’t align with sensible plans about promoting students educational outcomes. I hope that deltasleep will get a chance to (a) determine whether this actually is TN policy and (b) examine the effects on student learning and behavior closely and objectively.
Read the full entry and others at i>Life on the Other Side of the Teachers Desk.
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Bogus Bowl II
O.K, folks, here’s a second installment in the Bogus Bowl. Bogus Bowl I will close Saturday night (9 Feb 08), so jump over there (click on “polls” in the top navigation element) and vote in the first one if you’ve not done so already. Then come back here and vote on this one…. Or vice versa.
In this one, we’re examing reasons that educators give for shirking what I’ve sometimes called the “instructional obligation.” It’s your chance to consider alternative rationales for not teaching.
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