Archive for the 'Teacher education' Category

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IRIS fidelity Webinar

The IRIS Center at Vanderbilt University’s Peabody College (TN, US), which has produced lots of good stuff, published a module entitled “Fidelity of Implementation: Selecting and Implementing Evidence-Based Practices and Programs.” The center has now announced a 7 July, Web-mediated meeting focused on the same subject.

Fidelity of Implementation: Selecting and Implementing Evidence-Based Practices and Programs

Wednesday, July 7
10:30 a.m. – 12:00 p.m. Pacific Time (1:30 p.m. – 3:00 p.m. Eastern Time)

Fidelity of implementation is a vital component of any school improvement process. This interactive webinar will outline the “nuts and bolts” of implementation fidelity by highlighting the IRIS Center’s newly developed, free, online professional development instructional module about fidelity. This module discusses the importance of selecting evidence-based practices and programs and examines actions that school personnel can take to increase the likelihood that the practice or program is implemented as it was designed. Presenters include Larry Wexler, Director, Research to Practice Division at the U.S. Department of Education Office of Special Education Programs (OSEP); Mel Riddile, Associate Director of High School Services at the National Association of Secondary School Principals (NASSP); Silvia DeRuvo, Senior Program Associate at the California Comprehensive Center at WestEd; Naomi Tyler, Co-principal Investigator of The IRIS Center at Vanderbilt University; and Kim Skow, Project Coordinator of The IRIS Center and Fidelity of Implementation Module Co-developer.

To sign up for this webinar, please visit http://www.schoolsmovingup.net/webinars/irisfidelity

Here’s a link so one can preview the module Fidelity of Implementation: Selecting and Implementing Evidence-Based Practices and Programs.

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Chicago grading teachers down

Writing under the headline “Fewer Chicago teachers making the grade: Study shows new evaluation system rates teachers on a tougher curve” in the Chicago (IL, US) Tribune, Tara Malone and Azam Ahmed report about the two-year-old Excellence in Teaching Project that has identified 20 times as many teachers as unsatisfactory as were identified under an earlier system.

Far more Chicago schoolteachers received the worst rating under a new evaluation system intended to measure how educators connect with students, new research shows.
Continue reading ‘Chicago grading teachers down’

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Teachers are not widgets

Over on The Widget Effect, billed as “our national failure to acknowledge and act on differences in teacher effectiveness,” one can learn about an effort to alter the assessment of teachers. The project published report in 2009 about a study of teacher evaluation that people associated with the project conducted. That report describes the ways in which teachers are evaluated in four different U.S. states as well as the views of several professional (teacher or administrator) organziations.

The perspective taken in the report is captured in the following excerpt:

If teachers are so important, why do we treat them like widgets?
Continue reading ‘Teachers are not widgets’

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Going to Hong Kong

HKIE Poster
Click for really big version

I am scheduled to be in Hong Kong as a guest of the Hong Kong Institute of Education in late May of 2010 where I shall speak about the importance of educators employing evidence-based procedures in collaborative teaching procedures. I am very honored that F. C. Ho has invited me to talk about this topic. As regular readers know, it’s a foundational concept for me.

Learn more about special education and counselling at HKIE. Also, see my note from our 2006 stop to visit with FC and colleagues.

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Children of the Code posts Engelmann 2

Over on Children of the Code, David Boulton and colleagues affiliated with Learning Stewards, a non-profit organization, posted the second segment of an extended video interview entitled “Professor Siegfried Engelmann Part 2: Improving the Quality of Learning.” Here’s a snippet from the the announcement:

Siegfried “Zig” Engelmann is Professor of Education at the University of Oregon, the Director of the National Institute for Direct Instruction, and President of Engelmann-Becker Corporation, which develops instructional materials and provides educational services for students with various educational needs. The creator of “Direct Instruction”, Professor Engelmann is also the author or co-author of more than 100 articles and chapters of professional books, and more than a dozen professional books and monographs.

“It doesn’t matter what your theory of learning is, all you need to do is look at the facts of what you did and the facts of what the kids are doing.”

I like that quote. It captures the raw empiricism that undergirds Professor Engelmann’s approach to teaching and instructional design.

Siegfried Engelmann 2: Improving the Quality of Learning
Read an earlier entry from Teach Effectively that links to the first part of the interview: “Engelmann interview on instructional design.”

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Response to the de-debunkers

Over on Cedar’s Digest, the blogger by the moniker ‘Cedar’ posted a copy of a response to “The Bunk of Debunking Learning Styles” by Heather Wolpert-Gawron that appeared in Teacher. Cedar’s circumspect response is entitled “Learning Styles: What’s Being Debunked” and is worth reading.

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Sorta building a better teacher, maybe

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’

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Socrates questions educators

Over on Zig Site, Siegfried Engelmann has a new series of articles in which Socrates questions fictitious educators about educational concepts. In the first, Socrates engages one Dr. Gibbs, a “prominent professor of education.” Here’s an excerpt:

Dr. Gibbs: Learning is extremely complicated and influenced by a host of factors, including motivation and parental attitudes. The point I try to make to my students is that every child is an individual who learns according to his or her time table, and in his or her unique way.

Socrates: You give us a lot to think about. But is there some fact or rule that describes all learning?

Dr. Gibbs. Of course not. The learner is what the learner does and what the learner has inherited. Learning is not some kind of cut-and-dried process. The most specific thing one could confidently say about all learning is that it occurs in a series of predictable stages, which have been described by Piaget and others.

Just imagine the hash that Socrates makes of such bologna!

In another, Socrates and Dr. Baram Rosenthal, an “educational guru,” discuss reading instruction. Catch ‘em at Zig Site. Look in the left rail.

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