Over on Children of the Code David Boulton published a transcript of an interview with Siegfried Engelmann, the primary force behind the development of the Direct Instruction methods. In “Instructional Design 101: Learn from the Learners!,” which provides only part of the material that CoC will publish, Mr. Boulton asked Mr. Engelmann a wide range of questions and recorded his answers.
Engelmann recounts how he entered education, how he came to develop scripts, and lots more. Also, there are insightful anecdotes. For example, in one segment Mr. Engelmann recounts a story about the development of the Corrective Reading Program. Continue reading ‘Engelmann interview on instructional design’
Zig Engelmann, progenitor of Direct Instruction (DI), has posted a video of a talk he gave earlier this month. The presentation is an explication of the underlying principles of DI, “Theory of Direct Instruction.”
In the presentation (video below the jump), Mr. Engelmann shows some of his chops from his undergraduate degree in philosophy. He starts with philosophers’ fundamental arguments and shows how those correspond (or don’t) with learning and teaching concepts. For example, as he works through John Stuart Mills’ five methods of induction from A System of Logic, he makes clear how each would apply to teaching. I suspect that this particular sequence will show many people why DI instruction (the examples used in the scripts, not the teaching behavior) is structured the way it is. Continue reading ‘Engelmann explains’
Joanne Jacobs covered a story about a professional development consultant advising a teacher to dodge a question about whether introducing calculators will hinder students’ acquisition of basic computation skills. There’s video! With transcription by Wayne Bishop, one of Teach Effectively’s Much Admired Folx, the inanity of the consultant’s response becomes quite clear. If the presenter wasn’t so serious, it’d be humorous, sort of like a parody.
In “Schools to Retain Controversial Math Curriculum” Michael Birmbaum reported that a local education agency has elected to continue teaching arithmetic using a curriculum that has minimal evidence of effectiveness. Mr. Birmbaum, who works for the Washington (DC, US) Post, wrote about the decision by the school system of a county that is in neighboring northern Virginia (it’s, in fact, where I attended first through third grades).
Prince William County elementary schools will continue to teach mathematics with a textbook series that has drawn parent criticism and national scrutiny, despite deep divisions in the community over whether students should be given other options.
The curriculum from Pearson Education, “Investigations in Number, Data, and Space,” which is used in thousands of classrooms nationwide, has been debated virtually since Prince William began using it three years ago under the administration of Superintendent Steven L. Walts. Critics say it fails to help students learn basic skills and facts.
After the recent posting of another Weapon of Math Destruction cartoon, I wondered how many I’d linked to from Teach Effectively, so I checked. There’ve been only seven posts. Here’s a set of links to those posts (in reverse chronological order; fifo):
Yep, those folks at “Weapons of Math Destruction” apparently do not find constructivist approaches to teaching arithmetic and mathematics palatable. In this cartoon, the school administrators have crossed out practice and skills and a parent is responding by preparing to (ahem) regurgitate or recovering from having regurgitated.
Follow this link to get to the full site where you can explore at your leisure.
Singapore Math was featured in an article by Mitchell Landsberg on the front of the Web site of the Los Angeles (CA, US) Times on 9 March 2008. To introduce his case study of the success of Singapore math, Mr. Landsberg used a clever bar-math-like lead:
Here’s a little math problem:
In 2005, just 45% of the fifth-graders at Ramona Elementary School in Hollywood scored at grade level on a standardized state test. In 2006, that figure rose to 76%. What was the difference?
If you answered 31 percentage points, you are correct. You could also express it as a 69% increase.
But there is another, more intriguing answer: The difference between the two years may have been Singapore math.
On it’s face, Singapore Math looks appealing. It has multiple strengths: teaching students algorithms; integrated and multiple repetitions; low reading load; etc. What it doesn’t really have is clear and powerful research support; in their synthesis of research on effective programs in elementary mathematics, Bob Slavin and Cynthia Lake could not find strong studies examining the effects of Singapore Math. We—educators concerned with providing effective instruction for students—need those studies.
Link to Mr. Landsberg’s article. Link to the review by Professors Slavin and Lake. Learn more about Singapore Math from a study by Alan Ginsberg and colleagues.
Among the many reporters covering the story, John Hechinger of the Wall Street Journal wrote that a US federal advisory panel will soon release a report that is supposed to put to rest contentious disagreement about the teaching of arithmetic and mathematics in our schools. Some have likened the pending report to another report on reading issued by the National Reading Panel at the turn of the millennium.
A presidential panel, warning that a “broken” system of mathematics education threatens U.S. pre-eminence, says it has found the fix: A laserlike focus on the essentials.
The National Mathematics Advisory Panel, appointed by President Bush in 2006, is expected to urge the nation’s teachers to promote “quick and effortless” recall of arithmetic facts in early grades, mastery of fractions in middle school, and rigorous algebra courses in high school or even earlier. Targeting such key elements of math would mark a sharp departure from the diverse priorities that now govern teaching of the subject in U.S. public schools.
Teach Effectively provides news and commentary about evidence-based instructional practices. We focus on educational methods that have proven track records; that focus allows us to spend time lampooning some pop-ed fads, whims, and bologna-based innovations.
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