Why Education Research Is Failing Us – Nice way to only half understand education research
Second-Class Science
Education research gets an F.
It goes without saying that effective teaching has many components, from dedication to handling a classroom and understanding how individual students learn. But a major ingredient is the curriculum the school requires them to use. Yet in one of those you’ve-got-to-be-kidding situations, the scientific basis for specific curricular materials, and even for general approaches such as how science should be taught, is so flimsy as to be a national scandal. As pay-for-performance spreads, we will therefore be punishing teachers for, in some cases, using the pedagogic equivalent of foam bats. “There is a dearth of carefully crafted, quantitative studies on what works,” says William Cobern of Western Michigan University. “It’s a crazy situation.”
via newsweek.com
I love when I hear reports like this. Honestly, this type of trash talk has been pretty much over for years. This is the same trash talked by the old guard who honestly think that the same research done in science labs can be done in the classroom, that fallacy that you can control classroom variables enough for your results to be “pure”.
I’m not saying there isn’t a bunch of junk out there. There certainly is. But to draw this conclusion from this one researcher (where it seems she got all her info) and his one study, is just wrong. Research is like a collage, or better yet, a pointillist painting. Each study is a dot that will eventually form a piece of a grand picture.
I don’t have to see Cobern’s study to know that he couldn’t control for teacher. In addtional, there is always the issue of how one is measuring growth. Methods like inquiry-based instruction result in different learning. It is learning that is more personal and broad. How can you capture this with a multiple-choice test? You can’t.
I’m not going to say that this study is worthless. It is another point on that painting. The creation of this painting is hampered and even harmed every time one of this brainiacs decide that types of research that don’t conform to their ideal of study design (that was perfected in the early 20th century, by the way).
I’ll end by extending her baseball analogy. There is no such thing as the perfect bat. Each batter has their own ideal that is influenced by countless factors accumulated from their genes their memories of lucky bats in their past. THERE IS NO PERFECT BAT FOR EVERYONE. Do you understand?
No Grading, More Learning – I’m totally going to do this. Will it work in Korea?
No Grading, More Learning
May 3, 2010When Duke University’s Cathy Davidson announced her grading plan for a seminar she would be offering this semester, she attracted attention nationwide. Some professors cheered, others tut-tutted, and others asked “Can she do that?”
Her plan? Turn over grading to the students in the course, and get out of the grading business herself.
Now that the course is finished, Davidson is giving an A+ to the concept. “It was spectacular, far exceeding my expectations,” she said. “It would take a lot to get me back to a conventional form of grading ever again.”
Davidson is becoming a scholar of grading. She’s been observing grading systems at other colleges and in elementary and secondary schools, and she’s immersed herself in the history of grading. (If you want to know who invented the multiple choice test, she’ll brief you on how Frederick J. Kelly did so at Emporia State University and how he later renounced his technique.)
But it was her own course this semester — called “Your Brain on the Internet” — that Davidson used to test her ideas. And she found that it inspired students to do more work, and more creative work than she sees in courses with traditional grading.
Her approach — first announced on her blog — works based on contracts and “crowdsourcing.” First she announced the standards — students had to do all of the work and attend class to earn an A. If they didn’t complete all the assignments, they could get a B or C or worse, based on how many they finished. Students signed a contract to agree to the terms. But students also determined if the assignments (in this case blog posts that were mini-essays on the week’s work) were in fact meeting standards. Each week, two students led a discussion in class on the week’s readings and ideas — and those students determined whether or not their fellow students had met the standards.
I heard about this when they first posted about Davidson’s plans and I thought they were a good idea. Nothing revolutionary (though this author seems to think it is), but I like the approach that she took.
First, she establishes a general learning contract stating that students who fulfill all of the assignments get an A. Not submitting an assignment or not meeting the criteria, results in a lower grade (not set in stone).
Next, she assigned students into expert groups. Their groups are responsible for a topic, which is about a week long. The other students are then given assignments related to the content from that week (in this case, a blog posting). The expert group reads the blog posts and determines whether the student fulfilled the requirements or not.
I’ve done group grading before in which members assigned a percentage grade to their peers (I then averaged the grades and that’s what they got) as part of the total grade for the assignment. It was terrible. The biggest problem was the differences in groups. Some groups has much higher expectations than other groups. Even when performance was high, the grades were low. This was a serious point of contention among the students (as seen on end-of-course evaluations) and something I will never repeat.
Davidson’s approach does 2 things that make it much better: (1) they only judge whether the criteria were met or not (not giving a grade). A good rubric would make this a relatively easy task. (2) It focuses on frequent, smaller assignments rather than bigger projects.
I’m going to give this a try next semester, but I have to find the right class to do it with. I will teach a pedagogical English class that this might be perfect for (same class peer grading failed in last time). Smaller, bit-sized, weekly assignments graded by weekly “expert” groups.
A hole that I see in this is the way this compartmentalizes learning, though. Weekly topic groups don’t necessarily do well at synthesizing information from previous topics. These higher order assessments might be best implemented as midterm and final projects, larger assignments that require demonstration of knowledge gained throughout the semester.
In this case, there would be two parts, student-graded work and teacher-graded work. The percentage of these two would be around 80% and could be split in half (maybe), with attendance/participation rounding out the last 20%.
This is going to require a little more thought, but I like where it’s going. I want students to take more responsibility for their learning AND the learning experience their classmates have. I feel that being engaged as both producers and critics will motivate them to go beyond the simple requirements of the course and will provide the course with more diverse perspectives on teaching and learning language in Korea.
Arizona Grades Teachers on Fluency
PHOENIX—As the academic year winds down, Creighton School Principal Rosemary Agneessens faces a wrenching decision: what to do with veteran teachers whom the state education department says don’t speak English well enough.
The Arizona Department of Education recently began telling school districts that teachers whose spoken English it deems to be heavily accented or ungrammatical must be removed from classes for students still learning English.
State education officials say the move is intended to ensure that students with limited English have teachers who speak the language flawlessly. But some school principals and administrators say the department is imposing arbitrary fluency standards that could undermine students by thinning the ranks of experienced educators.
via online.wsj.com
Really, they are not grading on fluency. At least in this article, fluency is not really addressed. They are really looking at some sort of target accent and grammar use measures. I’m really wondering if the WSJ just didn’t report this with enough accuracy. I can’t imagine that they (the Arizona DoE) would be that messy in proposing evaluation measures.
Honestly, I don’t know what to think of this. The racist scumbags are out in force if you take a look at the comments section, and this is enough to make anyone thing this is a bad idea. However, it is much more than an issue of race or even language identity. This is the ongoing, knock-down, drag out fight on the issue of NESTs (native English-speaking teachers) and NNESTs (non-native English-speaking teachers) in ESL classrooms.
This debate has been hot in TESOL for many years. The growth of interest/belief in World Englishes has kept it at the forefront of criticism, theory, and practice discussions in recent years.
Ordinarily, I fall on the side of the NNESTs on this argument, but my opinion differs depending on the context and the goals of the organization. The policy, at first glance seems reasonable. Teachers with an accent or grammar that impedes communication, should be removed from the classroom (Arizona is only proposing that they are removed from ESL classrooms). This is completely reasonable, BUT….
Oops, we now have the problem of rating these teachers. Should all teachers be accessed by this measure? That would only make sense. There are plenty of native English-speaking teachers out there with terrible grammar and writing skills (also referred to in the article). We should get rid of them to. Or, should the people evaluated just have to be as good as the worse of the native English-speaking teachers? That would set a low bar, wouldn’t it?
What about a teacher with a heavy Scottish accent? I mean, have you ever seen Trainspotting? It may be English, but it’s pretty tough to understand for most Americans. I’d even venture to guess that most Americans understand English with a heavily influenced Spanish accent better. Really, we hear it much more often. So, the Scottish are out. While we are at it, the English, Australians, New Zealanders, and South Africans should be out, too. If they don’t speak American they shouldn’t be teaching our fragile children. Oh wait. Canadians. They’re out too. What’s up with that “aboot” thing. That ain’t American, ya know? They’re gone.
OK, so I lapse into a good deal of sarcasm. The question is left unanswered, though. What is the target? This is the slipperiest of slopes in a country where there is no standard. No matter where you live, everyone will insist that their English is standard. That doesn’t mean it won’t impede comprehension when interacting with students from other regions. If we have this much variability at home, what is the standard that we shoot for?
I don’t outright disagree with the Arizona policy; however, I am doubtful that they can come up with a fair assessment of these abilities that take into account the many factors that make a good teacher of English.
Class Struggle – Why waste time on a foreign language?
Why waste time on a foreign language?
[This is my Local Living section column for April 22, 2010.]
My online discussion group, Admissions 101, recently exchanged verbal blows over foreign language courses in high school. Most of us defended the conventional wisdom. Learning another language improves cognitive development, we said. It enhances academic skills, encourages a sense of the wider world and looks good to colleges.
But the dissenters scored some points. “It is a waste of time and money in our schools,” said a parent who remembered seeing empty language lab stalls. A high school teacher said that “language study is complete nonsense for most people. I’d wager close to 80.percent of kids taking foreign languages in high school do so because they have to.”
How much do they learn? There is little evidence that many students achieve much fluency in high school.
It wasn’t until I decided I wanted to be a reporter in China that I got serious about grammar, vocabulary and accent in a foreign tongue. It was very difficult, another reason why high school language students don’t get very far.
How students still look good on their report cards is easy to explain. Because much of the world is striving to learn English, Americans wonder why they should bother to learn other languages. We talk about the importance of foreign language learning to our national security, but we don’t mean it. If if we need speakers of exotic tongues, we import them.
You can tell right away this guy is in Washington, D.C. in the way that he talks out of both sides of his mouth. Take a stance, man!
He makes some great points, but let’s read around what he said to eek them out.
(1) Language learning is best accomplished when it is based on an immediate need or desire to learn (job, deployment, girlfriend/boyfriend).
(2) Isolated high school programs do little to produce “fluent” speakers of the language. Anyone will tell you that it’s a tall order for someone to become “fluent” in 4 years of minimal study. This is why feeder programs are essential. We should be teaching languages from kindergarten in K-12. Before that, parents should be teaching their kids foreign languages from birth (slight exaggeration, but only slight).
He’s overall tone is very negative towards language learning (for the general public–applying to universities). He states that we (the U.S.) imports foreign language specialists when we need them. That is absolutely true. However, he sees the past with little insight into the future (or the present). It’s not that we have to worry about who will do the language work in the States, we have to worry about marketing ourselves and getting jobs abroad. Do you really think that being monolingual (even if it is the “global language” of English) will get you very far? Hell, most of these companies are headquartered in non-English speaking countries these days.
You want to go into finance? Learn Chinese or another East Asian language.
You want to go into technology? Multilingual Eastern Europeans, Middle Easterners, and Asians are going to eat your lunch.
You want to go into science? ….ok, you can probably get by with English-only, for now.
Why waste time on a foreign language? I’ll tell you why. Even if your parents were clueless enough not to prep you early to learn a second language (any language), exposure to language learning in school can start you down the path of figuring out how to learn languages. It can plant the seed of interest, or at least, get you to better know yourself, your interests, and how you best learn.
Sometimes, I just want to smack some sense into these myopic buffoons. Maybe, just maybe, I’ll knock their blinders off so they can see that there is a world outside of their suburban hell.
Wow, that rant felt good.
The Chosun Ilbo (English Edition): Daily News from Korea – Most Office Workers’ English Studies Are Short-Lived
Most Office Workers’ English Studies Are Short-Lived
Most junior office workers decide to improve their English but give up after a while, a straw poll suggests.
Junior office workers, who accounted for 73 percent of English program participants, often stop studying soon after they start. Only 27 percent last more than three months, while the majority stopped after about a month.
Not too surprising. Learning a language is like deciding you are going to exercise more. You start out gung ho and then find other things that are more immediately important to you. You then get a notice at the end of the year to renew your membership that you utilized a dozen times or so. Then you tell yourself you’re going to really do it this time….only to fall into the same hole.
These folks take language classes (or tutoring) because they believe, in the long run, that better English skills will improve their chances of moving up. This long-term, extrinsic motivation is the least sticky. The needs and desires of the immediate world take precedence and the goal is put off until later or manifested in books, software, and classes that will gather real or virtual dust until the desire strikes us again.
The reason that upper management was better is likely because they see a greater need or immediacy for the language, for testing, interaction, or simply cache.
The Schools Our Children Deserve – C-SPAN Video Library
The Schools Our Children Deserve
Oct 27, 1999
Mr. Kohn talks about his book, The Schools Our Children Deserve: Moving Beyond Traditional Classrooms and “Tougher Standards”, published by Houghton Mifflin. The book challenges the current state of education, and proposes multi-age, interdisciplinary classrooms. After his remarks he answered questions from the audience.
I like the talk, so the book sounds interesting. If you have trouble finding the link, go here: http://www.c-spanarchives.org/program/ID/137405
His opinions closely resemble my own. While I don’t hope to see the changes that I want any time soon, given entrenched beliefs and the real pain that transformation would involve, I would like to see the current system fade away in preference of more flexible notions of schools, grades, classes, teachers, and so forth. I encourage you to see the video.
I’ve heard a lot about this book (it’s quite old by now), but I’ve never read it. Might be time to do so.
In Defense of Public School Teachers in a Time of Crisis
In Defense of Public School Teachers in a Time of Crisis
Wednesday 14 April 2010
by: Henry A. Giroux, t r u t h o u t | Op-Ed
(Image: Lance Page / t r u t h o u t; Adapted: Jose Kevo, emurray)There has been a long, though declining, tradition in the United States in which public school teaching was embraced as an important public service. It was assumed that teachers provided a crucial foundation for educating young people in the values, skills and knowledge that enabled them to be critical citizens capable of shaping and expanding democratic institutions. Since the 1980s, teachers have been under an unprecedented attack by those forces that view schools less as a public good than as a private right. Seldom accorded the status of intellectuals that they deserved, they remain the most important component in the learning process for students, while serving as a moral compass to gauge how seriously a society invests in its youth and in the future. Yet, teachers are being deskilled, unceremoniously removed from the process of school governance, largely reduced to technicians or subordinated to the authority of security guards. Underlying these transformations are a number of forces eager to privatize schools, substitute vocational training for education and reduce teaching and learning to reductive modes of testing and evaluation.
via truthout.org
I love teachers and teaching. That has to be put up front, especially since I am often quick to criticize education policy, administration, and even some groups of teachers. While I reserve the right to criticize the actions or in-actions of some, I really do respect teachers and the profession (yes, profession) of teaching.
Read the article to better understand why I worry about the profession and the teachers who make up the profession.