In other words: don’t just DO what this research tells you to do. Perhaps your school has a specific teaching philosophy (a Montessori school a military academy) that rules out these approaches. Perhaps you teach in a different cultural context - say, Korea, Cairo, or Kansas. The flipside of my last point is: this research should encourage you to adapt your teaching practices only if your classrooms look like these classrooms.ĭo you teach history? This research might not (or might) talk directly to you. AND, we should check and be sure the research aligns with our teaching context before we make drastic changes. We should be curious about and open to research-based suggestions. In other words: this specific research finding reminds us of a general lesson. Was the research done with students in different grades? In different school or community cultures? Studying different topics? With diagnosed learning differences? More generally, this study might prompt you to ask some direct questions during that mind-map session. High-school math teachers might have them create mind-maps solo students benefit from “working on their own.” High-school English teachers might have students create mind-maps together remember, students benefit from “working and talking together.” However, this study clearly reminds us that we might need to adapt that advice to our own classrooms. (I’m picking this example at random.) That session shows research about its effectiveness in helping students learn. That is: you might go to a conference session that highlights the importance of mind-maps. And, presumably, in other disciplines as well. Students benefit from different instructional activities in math and English. If you don’t fit in that teaching category, this study means that research-based teaching advice always requires translation and adaptation. That is: I’ve given an introduction - but the study includes A LOT more information that could be practically helpful to you. If you teach math or English to high-school students in England, I think you should give this study a careful look to guide your classroom practice. So, to answer the question in this post’s title: at least according to this study, we shouldn’t teach all disciplines in the same way. In English classes, however, students benefit from working and talking with each other (and the teacher). Probably the easiest way to say this is: both statisticians and the students themselves would notice the difference.) Students who engage in these activities “all or most of the time” score significantly higher than those who do so “some of the time.” (In this case, “significantly higher” is a bit hard to describe. In math classes, students benefit from a) practicing on their own, and b) teachers’ checking for understanding. Second, those different instructional activities matter. Some teachers spend much of class time using traditional direct instruction, including lecturing and the use of textbooks, while other teachers devote more class time to students working with their classmates or individual practice.įor instance: one third of teachers use “open discussion” most or all of the time, but one quarter don’t do so at all. Fascinating Resultsįirst, this research team found that teachers do different things: So, what did they find when they put all those pieces together. (This study was done in England, where most students take the GSCE when they’re 16 years old.) These observers - during more than 2500 visits! - recorded whether teachers did these 12 activities “none or very little,” “some of the time,” or “most or all of the time.”Īnd, they then looked at the students’ scores on national exams in English and math. To answer this question, researchers had observers keep track of teachers’ instructional activities. The research team asked: do students benefit from the same instructional activites in both disciplines? … open discussion among teacher and students, In this study, “instructional activities” include … I recently came across a study looking at twelve different instructional activities in English and math classrooms. In other words, we teachers always have to translate research-based advice to our own context. The more time I spend in this field, the more I doubt that logical chain. In fact, I frequently warn people against that kind of thinking. The researchers would tell me what to do. In fact, when I went to my first Learning and the Brain conference in 2008, that was exactly my plan. “ I’m honestly too busy to sort through all the options and variables just tell me what to do. Because we teachers are a busy lot, we sometimes want simplicity and clarity:
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |