Archive for the 'Musings' Category

Page 3 of 26

Pitching the usual message

Published on 3 June 2010 in Musings and News. 2 Comments Tags: , , .

In Taiwan, I have the pleasure of speaking with groups in Taitung and Kaohsiung about the importance of effective instruction. I’m posting the outline here.

The accompanying photo shows the aftermath of the talk in Taitung. Notice all the people with their heads down, sleeping.

Our hosts have been fabulous, and the questions from people in the audience have been very thoughtful. Of course, some of the same issues that arise in the US arise here. For example, there appear to be at least a few individuals who support the romantic-nativistic vision that resists assessing learning performance and emphasizes unmeasurable personal-social outcomes.

Still, this is a worthwhile activity! Here’s a link to an outline of the talk.

Sphere: Related Content

Willingham on multi-tasking

Published on 24 May 2010 in Musings, News, Research and The press. 2 Comments Tags: , , .

Teach Effectively-pal Dan Willingham has a new video that explains the fundamentals of “multi-tasking” and why promoting it among students (and just about anyone else) is probably a mistake: Willingham on multi-tasking.
Continue reading ‘Willingham on multi-tasking’

Sphere: Related Content

Secret DI?

Published on 30 April 2010 in Musings, News, Reading, Research, The press and Uncategorized. 2 Comments Tags: , , , , .

Over on the Society for Quality Education blog there is a discussion about a post entitled “The ‘Secret’ Principles of Direct Instruction” that might interest one or two (of TE‘s three or four) readers. I’m not sure what the secrets are, but the original post refers to the video from Children of the Code about which I commented recently (and less recently). However, it’s the comments on that post to which I want to point here. In particular, Mark H. comments from the perspective of a student whose teacher used DI methods to teach him to read. Mr. H. is thankful:

Thank you Dr Englemann

I can read due to a wonderful headstrong Special Ed teacher named Lois Eddy, my diligent mother and my aunt, who was the local French teacher and pulled a lot of strings.
Continue reading ‘Secret DI?’

Sphere: Related Content

Sorta building a better teacher, maybe

Published on 4 March 2010 in Administration, Musings, News, Research, Teacher education and The press. 2 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , , , .

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’

Sphere: Related Content

Mixed example, same bologna

Published on 23 February 2010 in Administration, Musings, News and The press. 0 Comments Tags: , , , .

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’

Sphere: Related Content

Rating LEAs’ teaching?

Published on 17 February 2010 in Administration, Musings, Policy and Standards. 2 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , .

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?’

Sphere: Related Content

Caveat reader

Published on 11 February 2010 in Musings, News, Research and The press. 1 Comment Tags: , , , , .

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.

Sphere: Related Content

Learning styles gets academic attention

Published on 16 December 2009 in Musings, News, Research, Teacher education and The press. 6 Comments Tags: , , , , , , .

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’

Sphere: Related Content

Bad Behavior has blocked 1044 access attempts in the last 7 days.

*/goog +1 script added 20110711 */