Isabel Sawhill and Jon Baron published an editorial in Education Week calling for a new approach to the venerable Head Start program, one founded on evidence about effectiveness. They argue that in the wake of the discouraging Head Start Impact Study reported by US Department of Health & Human Services, it’s time to bring research into the nation’s play pre-schools.
A new approach is needed. One that has been suggested—defunding these programs—would amount to giving up the fight against major social problems such as educational failure and poverty that damage millions of American lives. A far better alternative is to use rigorous evidence about “what works” to evolve Head Start and other federal efforts into truly effective programs over time, and to use sophisticated models to trace their longer-term effects on children’s life prospects.
Continue reading ‘Evidence-based education in Head Start?’
Over on Facebook Martha Gabler announced the opening a private tutoring center in Silver Spring (MD, US): Kids’ Learning Workshop. The focus is on what she calls “fluent foundation skills” by which she means rapid, accurate performance on such tasks as reading aloud, writing answers for arithmetic facts, and answering questions about academic content.
Readers might wonder why I would post a note about such a private enterprise on Teach Effectively. There are at least three reasons:
Continue reading ‘Tutoring the right way’
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’
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?’
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.
Robert Slavin and colleagues reported that reading programs that provide extensive professional development on instructional strategies which promote student participation, strengthen phonics competence, and explicitly teach comprehension strategies are the best bets for improving reading achievement. The clearest examples of the programs that led to the highest achievement were Direct Instruction and Success for All.
Writing in the December 2009 issue of the Review of Educational Research, Professor Slavin and colleagues reported the results of their examination of 142 studies. They wanted to determine whether curricula, technology, instructional processes, or combinations of curricula and processes produce greater reading achievement. The curriculum group included core reading programs, such as Reading Street and Open Court Reading. The technology group included programs that employ computers or similar methods such as computer-assisted instruction, multimedia (e.g., Reading Reels, or Writing to Read). The instructional process group included approaches that provide teachers effective strategies for teaching reading, such as Peer-Assisted Learning Strategies (PALS) and Cooperative Integrated Reading and Composition (CIRC). The combined curriculum-and-instructional-process group included programs that function as core curricula and also provide detailed professional development about using instructional strategies, such as Direct Instruction and Success for All. The researchers separated the studies into two groups: those with outcomes at the (a) beginning reading level vs. upper elementary level.
Continue reading ‘Go for DI and SFA’
Bob Dixon, an instructional designer who can run circles around just every other instructional designer whom I know, has initiated a service to which I want to refer readers: instructionalsolutions.blogspot.com. Here’s his explanation:
I’ve been reading posts about dyslexia, reading disabilities, learning disabilities, autism, and such. Many courageous people are fighting battles on large fronts on behalf of students so labeled. Here and there in these discussions, however, I see a relatively specific question about a specific problem a real student is having right now with some specific task. Such questions often get responses that are far too general to address the specific question identified. That seems to me like a small gap in the discussions that could possibly be closed. I’m going to give that a shot, using a blog in a sort of “backward” fashion. I’m hoping that parents, teachers—anyone, really—will post very specific, concrete problems on the blog. If a student is having a severe spelling problem, for example, list what the words should be and what the student wrote. If a students appears to be “dyslexic,” give a sentence and tell exactly what the student says when reading that sentence. If a student doesn’t have a clue about the first step in a simple geometric proof, post the proof and say the student writes absolutely nothing for the first or second step. If the student can’t remember a list of anything, provide the list and describe how the student studies it and what happens. You try the offered solutions and report back on their relative success.
Although it’s a tad off point for Teach Effectively, I call readers’ attention (both of you!) to one of a set of articles that appeared in the Los Angeles Times as part of an examination of bogus therapies for Autism. In this article, “Autism therapies can get undeserved credit,” investigative journalists Trine Tsouderos and Patricia Callahan examine the tension between heart-felt testimonials and cold, hard scientific evidence. It’s worth a read, as are several other articles about Autism therapies that they’ve written since May of 2009.
Usually, the people who are mislead by the therapies discussed by Ms. Tsouderos and Ms. Callahan are parents. However, educators can be mislead similarly and the therapies about which they are misled do not have to be medical or specific to Autism. All one needs is a glittery idea that connects just a tad with science and personal experience and is supported by testimonials from people who seem to have authentic credentials….
Link to read “Autism therapies can get undeserved credit.” For more about the stories by Ms. Tsouderos and Ms. Callahan, see entries on EBD Blog for 23 May 2009, 21 November 2009, and 7 December 2009
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