Teach Effectively!

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.