Teach Effectively!

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’

Waiting for Superman, a movie which was shown at the Sundance Film Festival in January 2010, is about education in the United States. I’m looking forward to seeing it, but I don’t have much hope that it will address the issues noted routinely here on Teach Effectively!

These are a couple of videos about the film. To see the trailer, which I couldn’t embed here, go to the Web site for the movie, Waiting for Superman.

Continue reading ‘Waiting for Waiting for Superman?’

From left: Chen Shu-Li Professor,
the old guy, Tzeng Shih-Jay Professor

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.

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’

If ya haven’t already done so, I recommend that you read Dan Willingham’s discussion about the assertion, most recently proposed by Newsweek editor Sharon Begley (“Second-Class Science: Education research gets an F.“), that educational research has little or no value. Dan, who’s no friend of schlock science, mounts a reasoned defense and then springs ahead to suggestions about how to make things better. You can read his analysis under Is education research all dreck? — Willingham in the Washington Post’s “The Answer Sheet.”

Here’s a smile for all those teachers who labor day in and day out, caring for other people’s children.

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?’

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.