Tag Archive for 'evidence-based education'

More discussion of Dan’s LS video

Published
by
JohnL
on 27 August 2008
in Administration, Musings, News, Policy, Research and The press
. 3 Comments

Dan Willingham’s video about the lunchmeat “learning styles” (LS) has generated lots of discussion in the proverbial blogosphere. Matthew Tabor has a post with links to six sources. It’s pretty interesting that so much of the buzz about the video has focused on the putative auditory-visual LS. Dan pretty expressly aimed at an extended list of the things early in the video. But, A-V’s the one he used to make the points, and that’s probably good, because it’s probably the most popular of the bologna approaches.

Over on Ken’s D-Ed Reckoning, I dropped a comment on his post (and his post provides a good exposition on the subject of LS. In my comment, I promised to post an image showing the relative benefits of basing reading instruction on auditory-vs-visual LS. styles. It’s at the right. The yellow columns are standards for (left to right) weak effects (0.2), modest effects (0.3), pretty good effects (0.5), and outstanding effects (0.7). The purple bar is the effect size (0.144) that Kavale and Forness (1987) found when they analyzed 39 studies (205 effect sizes) of modality-based reading instruction.
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One best way?

Published
by
JohnL
on 31 July 2008
in Administration, Musings, News, Policy, Research and Teacher education
. 0 Comments

The current Bogus Bowl (it’s number 5) raised questions about the professorate, with one alternative mentioning the belief that there is no one best way to teach. The answer to the question, “Is there one best way to teach?,” is surely, “No.” There are actually something like, oh, a few million ways to teach. But some of them are better than others.

Better? Yes, better. That is, some ways of teaching lead to students who score higher on trustworthy measures of declarative and procedural knowledge than the students taught using some other ways of teaching. [Some people will complain that (a) declarative and procedural knowledge are not appropriate foci for education or (b) that trustworthy measurement is impossible; those are arguments for another discussion.] Of course, Teach Effectively is about identifying and employing, and preparing others to employ those methods that meet this standard.

Fortunately, TE is not alone in the quest for use of evidence-based education. Here’s a resource that some readers will find useful. It’s from the IllinoisLoop, a source that’s been over there in the blog roll for much of the tenure of TE.

Is There ONE Best Way to Run a School?

Is there only one way to run a school?

Does rhetoric about “best practices” point to a single “best” way to teach children?

Of course not.

But ed school theorists insist that there is one “best” method. Not only that, they claim that they know exactly what it is!

Consequently, most American schools have moved to that “constructivist” approach and continue to expand its usage further in their classrooms. But mounting evidence calls the whole constructivist framework into question.

The page goes on to integrate a couple of score or a few dozen sources related to the idea in the lead that I’ve reproduced here. There’s plenty of links to good sources. The page would serve admirably as a syllabus for a course on cutting through gobbledygook and identifying clearly reasoned arguments for teaching effectively. Here’s the link. Study hard. There will be quizzes.

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Moscovitch on RF

Published
by
JohnL
on 9 July 2008
in News, Policy, Reading, Research and The press
. 0 Comments

In an editorial opposite the editorial page of the Boston (MA, US) Herald, Edward Moscovitch advocated continuation of the Reading First program. Under the 8 July 2008 headline “No time to close book: Though threatened, reading program is working,” Mr. Moscovitch addresses many of the concerns discussed about Reading First. Here’s his lead:

Reading First, a major part of the No Child Left Behind law, encourages schools in low-income districts to use frequent assessments and research-based instruction to improve student reading. Report after report shows student gains.

And yet today the program is headed for the congressional chopping block - a victim of misunderstood studies and even more specious charges of insider dealings. If that happens, the nation’s children will be the real losers.

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