Problems in American Education - Part 19: Some Good Ideas from the Recent Past
We really should not talk about the tendency to reject innovative ideas if we do not have a list of innovative ideas to promote as good ones that would represent significant progress in education if used in a widespread manner. The purpose of this essay will be to examine and summarize some of the best ones observed over the past couple of decades. All of these, if applied assiduously, consistently, and with commitment, hold promise for the future in that they fit the needs of what students will find in the world of the 21st century and because they imply the flexibility for change that has become such an important part of our lives. None of them are radical, or even very new. You will recognize most and some you will note have been around for a long time. The trick is, as asserted, to consistently apply them and to promote widespread and sincere use. These are some of the things your public schools should already be using if they are employing best practices.
Heterogeneous grouping as much as possible - especially in grades elementary through grade 9
This concept has already been beaten to death in these blogs. ‘Nuf said,’ but it is crucially important.
Performance Based Assessment
My senior project program is a great example of this, but it is something that should be employed in many other programs at all levels. It’s beauty is in its simplicity; but, unfortunately, that simplicity is still lost on some school systems. The idea stresses that students should not be evaluated only on what they know and what discrete skills they have. They also should be evaluated on how well they can apply what they know in order to get a job done. Why? Because that is the “way of the world” and that is what we should preparing students to do in order to be successful in the real world.
Cooperative Learning and Student Team Learning
The concept of cooperative learning has been around for a long time, but many teachers feel they do it when they just tell kids to break down into small groups of three or four in order to try something or work on a project. A more significant commitment to this great idea is necessary in most schools in order to gain its full benefit. As was the case with Performance Based Assessment, use of cooperative learning is based on the desire to create an environment similar to the adult work place and to encourage student interaction. In the adult work place, however, it is rare that people are asked to break down into small groups for just a few minutes, or even just for a few days. Rather, the more frequently used business model is one in which workers are assigned to teams of workers for longer periods of time in order to complete a task or to set procedures for repeated completion of similar tasks. There is very little of that kind of thing done in most schools, with the possible exception of on athletic teams.
One of the best procedures I ever used that incorporates this attempt to institutionalize teamwork was developed by a man named Robert Slavin of Johns Hopkins University back in the ‘70s. It was called Student Team Learning. Student Team Learning was orginally devised to promote racial and ethnic integration in schools, but its benefits, once developed, touched many other areas of learning. In terms of cooperative learning, what it did was structure team assignments in such a way that all the teams assigned were characterized by total heterogeneity and a mission that lasted for a while. Students were encouraged to get to know each other and were required to find ways to work with one another even if teammates were not students who would normally be in association with one another. Teachers intentionally structured teams in such a way that races, genders, and perceived ability levels would need to work together on the same team and would need to support each other as much as possible.
Differentiated Instruction
This used to be called individualized instruction. The basic idea is to assess the current needs of individual students and design instruction to flexibly meet those needs. Many teachers have feared this approach for as long as it has existed because they understandably worry about how difficult it would be to devise plans for so many different students, particularly in the kind of heterogeneous classes emphasized in these essays. This is one of those ideas that is obviously a good thing but that requires some creative thinking to employ. Passive individualization is one way to do it that gains the benefit while minimizing teacher fears.
Passive Individualization
One of the great things about Student Team Learning mentioned above is that it allowed for passive individualized. Rather than attempt to devise different programs for all students, an impossible task, Student Team Learning simply offered the same material to all students in the class, but it structured a way to individualize expectations and the pace students would learn. It was a little complicated to plan at first, and it was sometimes difficult to explain to parents in the way different results were expected from different students, but it worked beautifully. Much of the beauty came from the fact that it was unbelievably flexible. Students learned at their own rate and were challenged daily to stretch themselves to higher levels, exactly what every teacher should hope for in his or her classroom. It also took away the excuse for failing to individualize.
Block Scheduling
Ever since classes were scheduled, especially on the middle school and high school levels, there has been a debate about how long those classes should be. Compromise has almost always been the rule of the day - compromise between the opinions of the teachers and administrators involved and compromise designed to meet other scheduling priorities in the school. Seldom has the decision been made based on learning theory and the needs of students.
Predictably this has led to some of the worst possible choices in regard to the length of classes. Most middle school and high school classes are 45 to 50 minutes long, too long to sustain student interest in traditional “I talk, you listen” classes and not long enough to sustain continuity in project-oriented classes in which students learn effectively by actually doing something, sequential activities, instead of listening and taking notes. The 45-50 minute time slots allow for just enough time to squeeze in the number of courses that satisfy traditional values and political concerns, and they also satisfy the need for the unions to get their teachers into a measureable and discrete modular day that can be easily negotiated.
One of the best innovations I have seen that deals with this issue is block scheduling. When I was finishing my teaching career and just before I went into administration, I had the opportunity to participate with a team of educators who were investigating block scheduling for possible implementation in our high school. We visited two high schools on Cape Cod and found that everyone loved it. It was later implemented in my school after I left.
Block scheduling calls for a program in which students attend classes that may be as long as 1-1/2 to 2 hours long, but the classes do not meet every day. The total number of hours is about the same, but much more continuity is possible in each class because students are given the opportunity to immerse themselves in the work for substantial amounts of time. There are some shortcomings related to logistics, but the overall effect is very positive.
Perhaps the most significant consideration in moving to block scheduling is that if forces teachers to teach in a different way. Traditional teachers find it very difficult to do if they fail to make significant changes in the way they deliver their subject matter. Long lectures simply do not work because students cannot maintain focus for that length of time. Teachers, therefore, are forced to make their classes much more activity oriented and must plan for projects and for student involvement in performance-based assessments. If you think about it, that is not such a bad corollary benefit. An honest assessment here would need to admit that this perceived beneficial change is a large reason for our support of this idea. It changes teaching in a way that is much needed. You can easily predict which teachers will oppose this idea and which ones will embrace it, but there is little doubt that it is advantageous if strong school leadership can stick with it and make the necessary adjustments.
Structural Systems Approaches
Structure is a good thing. That may sound a little surprising to some coming from a writer who admits to a progressive philosophy, but that’s why labels don’t work when it comes to categorizing people.
When I first started to teach middle school in the late ‘70s, I thought I might leave the field of education at the end of the year. I tried to teach my eighth and sixth graders the same way I taught my high school students in my previous job, and it simply did not work. As so often happens in life, the trauma I experienced that year actually led to something good in that it forced me to reassess my teaching to make significant changes.
I spent a great deal of time thinking through the problem. What did my students need and how could I meet those needs in a more effective manner? Some of the answers came from ideas I have already explored in these pages; but another significant adjustment came in the form of understanding their need for structure. Like most human beings, and perhaps to a greater degree, adolescents are insecure and need the stability provided by knowing what to expect, by repetition of structured process that allows them to comfortably transition from one day to another knowing that they can be successful in what they are doing in a class. By introducing a very organized systems approach in my classes, I was able to promote that comfort level that allowed me to relate to my students and for them to relate to me in my attempts to make intellectual contact. In the eighth grade many of them were still struggling with the classic middle school transition from concrete to abstract thinking, and systemized structure and organization made that possible and comfortable.
I designed my courses in such a way that students could systematically and measureably accumulate points toward their grade. I introduced repetitive approaches to use in sequencing their work and assessments that allowed them to easily predict how to approach their study. We introduced high-interest media presentations about the subject matter and supported those presentations with consistent media evaluation tools that students could learn how to use and then use again in predictable formats. The significant impact on the classes was one in which stability and comfort were promoted and the volatility normally associated with adolescents was largely replaced with focus and purpose. It worked and, quite frankly, it helped me to become a better teacher - a fact that I am quick to use when teachers tell me that they cannot make the transition from being high school teachers to being middle school teachers. A peripheral thought here is that I sincerely believe that one of the best things that ever happened to me in my career was that I was forced to teach at so many different grade levels. That experience made me learn how to teach and afforded me the opportunity to see the big picture, something that many teachers never have the opportunity to observe.
Computer Assisted Instruction
Although this has been an important part of education for close to 30 years, it is still new in relationship to traditional approaches used for many years before computers were invented. Once again, the computer revolution was an event to which education was slow to react. As with so many other transitions, it was obvious to everyone in the late twentieth century that the computer was taking its place with telephones, radio, television, automobiles, and other advances as an instrument that would change the world; yet many educators were skeptical. Some interpreted it as a toy that would not represent substantial and meaningful progress; yet others felt that it would be counterproductive in their attempts to have children master basic skills and understand traditional subject matter. Unfortunately, these were rationalizations for inaction and only served to slow what was inevitable.
Eventually, however, the transitional importance of computer technology took on such massive proportions that virtually all educators were forced to realize that computer literacy was about as important as reading, writing, and simple computation when it came to establishing skills required for all teachers. We are still, however, sorting out how to most effectively use this technology in the classroom. Some of this indecision is due to the complexity of the technology, but a more important reason for hesitation now has to do with the need to think in different ways.
The most important understandings that need to used in meshing computer approaches with traditional curricular offerings are (1) that the computer has to be seen exclusively as a tool (or a means) to achieve goals or ends of educational programs, not as an end in itself, (2) that it should be seen as something that accelerates learning, (3) that it makes certain extended and sophisticated processes possible that would otherwise not be possible, and (4) that it creates opportunities for creativity in learning that need a kind of attention and planning never seen before.
Yes, there are great dangers associated with opening the door to cyberspace for our children. We cannot watch them every second and assure ourselves that appropriate use is always the norm. We have seen a terrible problem with the use of the Internet, for instance, that rears its ugly head almost daily in our schools and spills over back and forth between the school and the home. As a junior high assistant principal, that problem nearly drove me crazy. Nevertheless, we cannot allow these distractions to keep us from making progress in this extremely important area of 21st century education and preparation for adulthood. Children make mistakes. That is part of growing up. The computer, just by its nature, expands the playground opportunity for those mistakes to take place; but that does not give us an excuse to deny access to this critically important tool.
What many educators failed to recognize early on was that the computer actually solved one of our major problems of the 20th century - the evolution children as couch-potatoes. Another major invention of that century, the television, had nurtured generations of young people devoted to a very passive approach to life. Creativity and expanding horizons were stifled and we all felt helpless in our attempts to find a way to deal with the pervasive problem. The computer took that same window, the monitor, and turned it around, making it an active process in which young people were forced to interact with the machine and, the key, transform it into a tool for creation. As with all other aspects of life, it is our duty as adults to show children how to use this powerful tool tastefully and for positive purposes - to avoid excessive use of video games, for instance, and to create opportunities for academic and vocational project orientation instead. That is how the computer is and will best be used in education.
Heterogeneous grouping as much as possible - especially in grades elementary through grade 9
This concept has already been beaten to death in these blogs. ‘Nuf said,’ but it is crucially important.
Performance Based Assessment
My senior project program is a great example of this, but it is something that should be employed in many other programs at all levels. It’s beauty is in its simplicity; but, unfortunately, that simplicity is still lost on some school systems. The idea stresses that students should not be evaluated only on what they know and what discrete skills they have. They also should be evaluated on how well they can apply what they know in order to get a job done. Why? Because that is the “way of the world” and that is what we should preparing students to do in order to be successful in the real world.
Cooperative Learning and Student Team Learning
The concept of cooperative learning has been around for a long time, but many teachers feel they do it when they just tell kids to break down into small groups of three or four in order to try something or work on a project. A more significant commitment to this great idea is necessary in most schools in order to gain its full benefit. As was the case with Performance Based Assessment, use of cooperative learning is based on the desire to create an environment similar to the adult work place and to encourage student interaction. In the adult work place, however, it is rare that people are asked to break down into small groups for just a few minutes, or even just for a few days. Rather, the more frequently used business model is one in which workers are assigned to teams of workers for longer periods of time in order to complete a task or to set procedures for repeated completion of similar tasks. There is very little of that kind of thing done in most schools, with the possible exception of on athletic teams.
One of the best procedures I ever used that incorporates this attempt to institutionalize teamwork was developed by a man named Robert Slavin of Johns Hopkins University back in the ‘70s. It was called Student Team Learning. Student Team Learning was orginally devised to promote racial and ethnic integration in schools, but its benefits, once developed, touched many other areas of learning. In terms of cooperative learning, what it did was structure team assignments in such a way that all the teams assigned were characterized by total heterogeneity and a mission that lasted for a while. Students were encouraged to get to know each other and were required to find ways to work with one another even if teammates were not students who would normally be in association with one another. Teachers intentionally structured teams in such a way that races, genders, and perceived ability levels would need to work together on the same team and would need to support each other as much as possible.
Differentiated Instruction
This used to be called individualized instruction. The basic idea is to assess the current needs of individual students and design instruction to flexibly meet those needs. Many teachers have feared this approach for as long as it has existed because they understandably worry about how difficult it would be to devise plans for so many different students, particularly in the kind of heterogeneous classes emphasized in these essays. This is one of those ideas that is obviously a good thing but that requires some creative thinking to employ. Passive individualization is one way to do it that gains the benefit while minimizing teacher fears.
Passive Individualization
One of the great things about Student Team Learning mentioned above is that it allowed for passive individualized. Rather than attempt to devise different programs for all students, an impossible task, Student Team Learning simply offered the same material to all students in the class, but it structured a way to individualize expectations and the pace students would learn. It was a little complicated to plan at first, and it was sometimes difficult to explain to parents in the way different results were expected from different students, but it worked beautifully. Much of the beauty came from the fact that it was unbelievably flexible. Students learned at their own rate and were challenged daily to stretch themselves to higher levels, exactly what every teacher should hope for in his or her classroom. It also took away the excuse for failing to individualize.
Block Scheduling
Ever since classes were scheduled, especially on the middle school and high school levels, there has been a debate about how long those classes should be. Compromise has almost always been the rule of the day - compromise between the opinions of the teachers and administrators involved and compromise designed to meet other scheduling priorities in the school. Seldom has the decision been made based on learning theory and the needs of students.
Predictably this has led to some of the worst possible choices in regard to the length of classes. Most middle school and high school classes are 45 to 50 minutes long, too long to sustain student interest in traditional “I talk, you listen” classes and not long enough to sustain continuity in project-oriented classes in which students learn effectively by actually doing something, sequential activities, instead of listening and taking notes. The 45-50 minute time slots allow for just enough time to squeeze in the number of courses that satisfy traditional values and political concerns, and they also satisfy the need for the unions to get their teachers into a measureable and discrete modular day that can be easily negotiated.
One of the best innovations I have seen that deals with this issue is block scheduling. When I was finishing my teaching career and just before I went into administration, I had the opportunity to participate with a team of educators who were investigating block scheduling for possible implementation in our high school. We visited two high schools on Cape Cod and found that everyone loved it. It was later implemented in my school after I left.
Block scheduling calls for a program in which students attend classes that may be as long as 1-1/2 to 2 hours long, but the classes do not meet every day. The total number of hours is about the same, but much more continuity is possible in each class because students are given the opportunity to immerse themselves in the work for substantial amounts of time. There are some shortcomings related to logistics, but the overall effect is very positive.
Perhaps the most significant consideration in moving to block scheduling is that if forces teachers to teach in a different way. Traditional teachers find it very difficult to do if they fail to make significant changes in the way they deliver their subject matter. Long lectures simply do not work because students cannot maintain focus for that length of time. Teachers, therefore, are forced to make their classes much more activity oriented and must plan for projects and for student involvement in performance-based assessments. If you think about it, that is not such a bad corollary benefit. An honest assessment here would need to admit that this perceived beneficial change is a large reason for our support of this idea. It changes teaching in a way that is much needed. You can easily predict which teachers will oppose this idea and which ones will embrace it, but there is little doubt that it is advantageous if strong school leadership can stick with it and make the necessary adjustments.
Structural Systems Approaches
Structure is a good thing. That may sound a little surprising to some coming from a writer who admits to a progressive philosophy, but that’s why labels don’t work when it comes to categorizing people.
When I first started to teach middle school in the late ‘70s, I thought I might leave the field of education at the end of the year. I tried to teach my eighth and sixth graders the same way I taught my high school students in my previous job, and it simply did not work. As so often happens in life, the trauma I experienced that year actually led to something good in that it forced me to reassess my teaching to make significant changes.
I spent a great deal of time thinking through the problem. What did my students need and how could I meet those needs in a more effective manner? Some of the answers came from ideas I have already explored in these pages; but another significant adjustment came in the form of understanding their need for structure. Like most human beings, and perhaps to a greater degree, adolescents are insecure and need the stability provided by knowing what to expect, by repetition of structured process that allows them to comfortably transition from one day to another knowing that they can be successful in what they are doing in a class. By introducing a very organized systems approach in my classes, I was able to promote that comfort level that allowed me to relate to my students and for them to relate to me in my attempts to make intellectual contact. In the eighth grade many of them were still struggling with the classic middle school transition from concrete to abstract thinking, and systemized structure and organization made that possible and comfortable.
I designed my courses in such a way that students could systematically and measureably accumulate points toward their grade. I introduced repetitive approaches to use in sequencing their work and assessments that allowed them to easily predict how to approach their study. We introduced high-interest media presentations about the subject matter and supported those presentations with consistent media evaluation tools that students could learn how to use and then use again in predictable formats. The significant impact on the classes was one in which stability and comfort were promoted and the volatility normally associated with adolescents was largely replaced with focus and purpose. It worked and, quite frankly, it helped me to become a better teacher - a fact that I am quick to use when teachers tell me that they cannot make the transition from being high school teachers to being middle school teachers. A peripheral thought here is that I sincerely believe that one of the best things that ever happened to me in my career was that I was forced to teach at so many different grade levels. That experience made me learn how to teach and afforded me the opportunity to see the big picture, something that many teachers never have the opportunity to observe.
Computer Assisted Instruction
Although this has been an important part of education for close to 30 years, it is still new in relationship to traditional approaches used for many years before computers were invented. Once again, the computer revolution was an event to which education was slow to react. As with so many other transitions, it was obvious to everyone in the late twentieth century that the computer was taking its place with telephones, radio, television, automobiles, and other advances as an instrument that would change the world; yet many educators were skeptical. Some interpreted it as a toy that would not represent substantial and meaningful progress; yet others felt that it would be counterproductive in their attempts to have children master basic skills and understand traditional subject matter. Unfortunately, these were rationalizations for inaction and only served to slow what was inevitable.
Eventually, however, the transitional importance of computer technology took on such massive proportions that virtually all educators were forced to realize that computer literacy was about as important as reading, writing, and simple computation when it came to establishing skills required for all teachers. We are still, however, sorting out how to most effectively use this technology in the classroom. Some of this indecision is due to the complexity of the technology, but a more important reason for hesitation now has to do with the need to think in different ways.
The most important understandings that need to used in meshing computer approaches with traditional curricular offerings are (1) that the computer has to be seen exclusively as a tool (or a means) to achieve goals or ends of educational programs, not as an end in itself, (2) that it should be seen as something that accelerates learning, (3) that it makes certain extended and sophisticated processes possible that would otherwise not be possible, and (4) that it creates opportunities for creativity in learning that need a kind of attention and planning never seen before.
Yes, there are great dangers associated with opening the door to cyberspace for our children. We cannot watch them every second and assure ourselves that appropriate use is always the norm. We have seen a terrible problem with the use of the Internet, for instance, that rears its ugly head almost daily in our schools and spills over back and forth between the school and the home. As a junior high assistant principal, that problem nearly drove me crazy. Nevertheless, we cannot allow these distractions to keep us from making progress in this extremely important area of 21st century education and preparation for adulthood. Children make mistakes. That is part of growing up. The computer, just by its nature, expands the playground opportunity for those mistakes to take place; but that does not give us an excuse to deny access to this critically important tool.
What many educators failed to recognize early on was that the computer actually solved one of our major problems of the 20th century - the evolution children as couch-potatoes. Another major invention of that century, the television, had nurtured generations of young people devoted to a very passive approach to life. Creativity and expanding horizons were stifled and we all felt helpless in our attempts to find a way to deal with the pervasive problem. The computer took that same window, the monitor, and turned it around, making it an active process in which young people were forced to interact with the machine and, the key, transform it into a tool for creation. As with all other aspects of life, it is our duty as adults to show children how to use this powerful tool tastefully and for positive purposes - to avoid excessive use of video games, for instance, and to create opportunities for academic and vocational project orientation instead. That is how the computer is and will best be used in education.
posted by Friar4 at 4:44 AM
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