Few books on the state of Education have created as much of a stir as Daisy Christodoulou’s 2014 treatise, Seven Myths About Education. When It first appeared in July of 2013 as a short, persuasive e-book, British and American educators hailed it as a potential “game-changer” from a British schoolteacher willing to present the accumulating research evidence that challenges the prevailing “progressive education” orthodoxy.
Since its re-publication in March of 2014, the book has dominated educational discourse everywhere but here in Canada and much of the United States. In the wake of the May 2, 2015 ResearchED New York conference, that’s likely to change. Daisy Christopoulou’s workshop presentation found a new North American audience, including a few Canadians like John Mighton, Robert Craigen, and me.
When Daisy Christodoulou started teaching in September 2007 in a South East London secondary school she was immediately struck by how little her students actually knew.. In one class of 15 and 16-year-olds, she discovered children who “were barely literate and numerate” grappling with books written for eight and nine-year-olds. “Many of the pupils I taught could not place London, their home city, on a map of Britain. Plenty thought Africa was a country,” she says.
Widely regarded as “Britain’s brightest student” before entering teaching, Daisy set out to find out why students’ content knowledge had slipped so dramatically in state schools. Her research only confirmed that her experiences weren’t atypical. She stumbled upon Susan Jacoby’s 2008 book, The Age of American Unreason, which reached similar conclusions about the appalling level of students’ understanding about the core principles and foundations of the American democratic system.
Little in her British teacher’s college training prepared her for this discovery and, only when she began to look wider afield, did she discover the research and writings of two American authorities, E.D. Hirsch Jr. and Daniel T. Willingham. “It was a great relief to read Hirsch and Willingham,” she now recalls, “and to realize that the intuitions I’d had about the importance of knowledge were backed up by solid evidence. But it was also extremely frustrating, because I just couldn’t believe that all this vitally important evidence about how pupils learn hadn’t been taught to me when I was training to be a teacher.”
Then Daisy Christodoulou began to connect all the dots. “Much of what teachers are taught about education is wrong… I was not just shocked, I was angry. I felt as though I had been misled.” She then added: “I had been working furiously for 3 years, teaching hundreds of lessons, and much information that would have made my life a whole lot easier and would have helped my pupils immeasurably had just never been introduced to me. Worse, ideas that had absolutely no evidence backing them up had been presented to me as unquestionable axioms.”
Awakened to that realization, Christodoulou proceeded to identify what she terms “Seven Myths About Education”:
1. Facts prevent understanding
2. Teacher-led instruction is passive
3. The 21st century fundamentally changes everything
4. You can always just look it up
5. We should teach transferable skills
6. Projects and activities are the best way to learn
7. Teaching knowledge is indoctrination
Her book not only identifies, but documents, why these beliefs fly in the face of social-science research and the latest discoveries in cognitive psychology.
Much of the book exposes the ideological bias that informs far too much of what passes for educational discourse. “Too often, people think that teaching knowledge is somehow right wing and elitist,” Christodoulou wrote in the AFT magazine, American Educator. “But this isn’t the case. The kind of powerful knowledge that’s in the Core Knowledge† curriculum in the United States doesn’t “belong” to any class or culture. The great breakthroughs of civilization were made by a whole range of people from different classes and cultures, and if they belong to anyone, they belong to humanity. Teaching these insights to children isn’t elitist—not teaching them is!”
Christodoulou is particularly critical of British and American school systems for educating students who “lack knowledge of important fundamentals.” The education establishment, according to her, downplays the importance of knowledge. “There is general academic underachievement despite a multiplicity of reform efforts and relatively generous funding. Attention is paid to school structures over classroom practice.”
The British teacher-turned-author is difficult to label and discredit because of the soundness of her thinking and her impeccable research. Nor is she inclined to defend standardized student testing. ” The high-stakes, test-based accountability systems in both countries,” she says,” have, by and large, failed….when I advocate teaching knowledge, people assume I’m advocating high-stakes tests. That isn’t at all the case. In fact, I’d argue that a lot of the damaging test preparation we see in both systems is the result of the misconception that skills can be developed in the abstract.”
Christodoulou’s Seven Myths about Education is already one of the most talked-about books in British education over the past 20 years. A London Sunday Times book reviewer got it right in August 2013 when he commented that she had unleashed “a heat-seeking missile” at “the heart of the educational establishment” and her recent researchED Conference presentations have only enhanced her credibility among regular classroom teachers.
The book demonstrates the persuasive power of sound ideas and research-based approaches to education. “More and more teachers are realising the gap between the theory they are taught and their practical experience,” Christodoulou commented in The Spectator. “More and more books are being published which explain the insights of cognitive science and the implications they have for classroom teachers. Instead of the warmed-through fads of the past century, I think the next few years will see evidence-based reforms that lead to genuine educational improvements.”
That realization is what fuels the latest rising phoenix – the British teacher-led ResearchED movement.
What explains the dominance of certain persistent “mythologies” in the world of contemporary education? How accurate was Daisy Christodoulou’s “heat-seeking missile”? Is there a danger in restoring “content knowledge,” that pedagocial approaches other than teacher-guided instruction will be similarly discarded or devalued? What can be done to transform teaching into the art and science of combining style with substance in today’s classrooms?
Great posting Paul!
The thing I`d like to know is where is this movement in Canada?
It doesn`t seem to exist.
Hi Jo-Anne. It’s coming. You must understand that ResearchEd is a teacher-led movement. Teachers here are pretty cautious about sticking their heads above the trenches, but this movement, if it finds a foothold, has the chance of providing them with a bit of confidence that they will not be left exposed and alone on an open battlefield of ideas, with their careers in the balance. There is already talk of having a ResearchEd conference in Canada, perhaps on the West Coast. The ResearchEd folks are open to requests, and I would say evidence that teachers are interested in getting involved might just help swing them into your neck of the woods. Check ’em out at http://www.workingoutwhatworks.com
Rob Craigen (WISE Math)
Encouraging,thank you!
Jo-Anne,
We’re trying to bring Research Ed to Canada. Interesting to note though, that what we do have here in North America, are grassroot organizations such as WISE Math, which have made incredible progress in having the evidence based research brought to light behind effective math instruction. They were also in charge of making some meaningful chages to the math curriculum in Manitoba. Not a bad start. Their initiative also started parent led petitions asking that common sense math return to elementary classrooms in 3 provinces, which demonstrates there is clearly an appetite for better math instruction for our kids. And organizations such as Paul’s here, SQE and others, also help spread this message for those interested in bringing about meaningful changes in our education system. Down in the US, parents and other groups have successfully lobbied changes in legislation to have many Common Core curricula tossed out in 2 States, asking for more rigorous standards in their public school system.
I say this, because many observers in the UK and Australia, have commented that they wish there were grassroot organizations in their own countries. So while we’re looking across the pond and are so thankful for their work, they’re looking right back at us and appreciate all the work that our parents, teachers, and others are doing on the ground in getting the word out. I just look forward to having our supporters attend one of these Research Ed conferences in Canada soon, bringing with them a whole busload of our educators. Now wouldn’t THAT be something..?!?
Game-Changer — In Our Lifetime?
It was E D Hirsch who first called Daisy’s book a game changer in 2013.
I acquired my kindle because of that to get the gist of her analyses. Excellent.
But, I haven’t used my kindle since — can’t underline, annotate, write cursively and furiously all over the margins and empty spaces as I can in a book !
Just hoping to see REAL REFORM in my lifetime, my children’s lifetimes, and grandkids’ lifetimes!
The obstacles are many, insidious, devious, pervasive, self-serving, embedded and c-r-e-e-p-y !
YesTunya!
At the Society for Quality Education we’ve been talking about what works for decades. Up until now, the education establishment (except for a few brave renegade teachers) has been ignoring research especially if it comes from outside Canada and if it doesn’t support the constructivist progressive agenda. Don’t look to the CEA or the teachers’ federations for any support either.
Thanks for this posting Paul and I look forward to this movement growiing in Canada. Maybe it’s time to hold a Canadian conference.
I think much of the discussion of Daisy’s work confuses a few things.
While I agree in the main about her “myths” she notes that she is not against teaching “skills”, but wants a better balance. This is not an either-or false dichotomy.
The major error that she and many commentators and bloggers make in additional to the false dichotomies is confusing the
OFFICIAL curriculum in policy documents
with the
TAIGHT curriculum
and the LEARNED curriculum- this being the most important.
I visit dozens of classrooms every year as part of my job (teach in some of them) and get reports and accounts from colleagues (teachers and students) from hundreds more.
There is, relatively speaking, little stress on explicit skills teaching in isolation (fortunately) but also very little integration of skills and content (unfortunately).
The hundreds of teachers I see yearly and the hundreds more I email or talk to stress content almost exclusively.
The question is “Do they teach it well?”
Sadly the answer is “not nearly well enough”. In a series of columns American educator, Grant Wiggins, looked at massive survey date from teachers and students in the US and concluded, quite rightly IMHO, that teachers talk too much. This reinforces the MASSIVE data base of John Hattie and his colleague amassed over several decades that concludes.
– direct instruction counts (along with co-iperative learning the only other explicit teaching strategy deemed worthy of doing- BTW co-op learning is NOT the same of Group Work- sorry Tom Bennett)
– even within direct instruction we need more teacher student / student student dialogue and less teacher monologue: too much teacher-led instruction without student response IS PASSIVE
– while some of my colleagues may believe in some of Daisy’s myths- and myths most are to some extent, others, including me, do not
In conclusion, read and observe carefully and DO NOT STEREOTYPE teacher educators. That is an error in critical thinking due to lack of knowledge, ironically a support for Daisy’s major contention.
I would say I would be very interested in seeing what false dichotomies Daisy is guilty of. If one reviews the curriculum in the 1940’s, to the 1970’s, to the 1990’s, to today’s curriculum, there is a definite pattern of how our curriculum has definitely been “dumbing down” our students throughout the years, and our declining test scores are in correlation with this decrease in learning standards. Interesting to note that during this same time frame, is that the IBL/Discovery Based Strategies used in the classroom, have definitely INCREASED over this same time period. We are wasting millions of dollars on developing pedagogy and trying to make the teaching profession brighter and shinier rather than making the content of the actual curriculum better. The result of this is that upwards of 50% of our schoolchildren are now attending learning centres outside the school system to learn their numeracy and literacy fundamentals. Never mind “back to the basics”. I’m all about promoting us to go “forward to the fundamentals.”
The mission of Daisy’s book, was to examine the very real “myths” surrounding education, and she does so using evidence based research to support her claims. Thank goodness for that! For too long our educrats have relied on their own “studies and research” to support their pet theories on how education needs to be revolutionized. Daisy’s assumption here is that we really need to focus on examining the content of our curriculum and how it’s being delivered, rather than trying to change the structure of the education system. There’s no stereotyping here of our educators…but there is plenty of evidence to suggest that what they, and what our children are being sold, is nothing more than snake oil in a bottle. No way our children should be treated like lab rats in a failed experiment. As a parent of two school aged children, I can assure you I am fully supportive of Daisy’s mission, as I know the reality of what is being taught, and how it’s being taught in the classroom. Time to get real. Our children deserve better.
You misread my comments.
I like the fair-minded and balanced assessment you offer, John. Daisy’s book identifies Seven Myths About Education with the intent of encouraging us to look at the substantive evidence. It’s not black and white, as you observe in your comments. Incidently, in the United Kingdom,the book has been extensively reviewed and, even those who welcome her contribution acknowledge some of its limitations.
Stepping back, I’ve come to see that students have to be learning something, so why not sound content knowledge. Having said that, without student engagement it simply doesn’t stick. It’s about finding the “sweet spot” in getting through to students.
I would recommend some Educational Psychology Research to understand engagement in content learning. Top-notch reading and motivational researchers have shed light on this area. Guthrie & Wigfield’s model of student engagement in reading and content learning is four-pronged. The gist — engaged students are (i) motivated and driven by (ii) knowledge goals within a deep conceptual domain, (iii) use effective cognitive strategies, and (iv) are socially interactive in this quest. Classroom contexts that lead to all students becoming engaged learners/readers are outlined in Concept Oriented Reading Instruction (CORI)– an approach to teaching in language arts.
I post this as it is very much related to learning conceptual/content knowledge within a domain (mostly articulated for science but applicable to other domains such as social studies, geography,etc.) — The classroom conditions/contexts described within CORI have been tested and research articles in Journal of Educational Psychology, Reading Research Quarterly, among other top-notch journals. Originated in Prince George’s County Maryland, researched in large-scale studies throughout Frederick Country Maryland as well as other jurisdictions. It’s a theory and an instructional approach, not a program per se; although see units on web site (http://www.cori.umd.edu/). Increases children’s overall reading comprehension, use of strategies to build knowledge from text, internal motivations for reading/learning, as well as specific knowledge of conceptual area studied. Incorporates what is known about motivation, reading and learning into the approach. The research is largely focused on grades 3 and 5, but is applicable to higher grade levels.
This is very different than a lot of language arts approaches I am familiar with. All children reading leveled book after leveled book, no coherence in topics from one to the next, nor between what one child is reading and what the next child is reading. Very little opportunity to learn about any conceptual area/domain nor to share the excitement of learning and working together to build understanding and knowledge with classmates.
One example of how education practice ignores research is an uptake on the notion of student motivation. In our current classrooms, we frequently have a large box/pile of books at a certain level and a child can choose whatever she/he wants to read (or stare blankly at for the independent reading period). This “choice” is thought to be “motivating”. What is not acknowledged is the research knowledge (known and demonstrated for quite sometime now) that the more we learn about a topic, the more interested in it we become.
Within CORI, choice is much more constrained within a content area and to the service of the learning goals — which revolve around the main principles within the area being learned. This choice and learning IS ACTUALLY motivating for students (shown in the research). Also, incorporates hands-on exploration/observation as a component of motivating student learning. One child on the CORI website videos comments to the effect of “by bringing science and reading together, they are making it fun for us”. In current classrooms we often think of “fun” in language arts by involving ball throwing to choose a strategy, or some such unrelated-type activity). I have seen the CORI approach in classrooms in Prince George’s County, Maryland, and the children are engaged and are increasing learning skills and content knowledge (as borne out in the research studies). The students not only read widely and engage in science activities, they write extensively as well. The reading involves fiction and nonfiction around the same conceptual content; however, it is not the superficial “theme-based” learning approach which we have seen in the past.
See Motivating Research Comprehension: Concept Oriented Reading Instruction (Guthrie, Wigfield & Perencevich) to learn about the approach, it’s theoretical underpinnings, and how it is carried out in classrooms — and see journal articles for research findings. My B.Ed. students are introduced to this, but it is so different than “Readers and Writers Workshop” that is the standard approach, it is hard for them to transfer anything outside of our university classroom.
Of course, this is not the only conceptual/domain/knowledge based approach. The older Harvard-based publication “Teaching for Understanding” is something that I taught a course to B.Ed. students for language arts for the Middle Grades many years ago — and similar approaches based on moving children from novice to expertise in a content area are out there.
Recently, there has been an increased recognition that much younger children, particularly from less advantaged backgrounds, are missing out on important conceptual knowledge — our quest to build vocabulary and close achievement gaps will not happen without an early focus on teaching concepts — the organizational schemes for which to “hook” vocabulary terms onto and with which to learn new words. Again, a lot of research out there and an approach outlined in Neuman & Wright’s book, All About Words: Increasing Vocabulary in Common Core Curriculum, P-2.
Didn’t mean to write so much and hope not too far off topic. Lots of research on actual classroom based approaches — just can’t seem to get it into practice.
One thought to help advance the online discussion: The ResearchED movement is refreshing because it raises questions rather than providing definitive answers. Take note of its real mission: “Working Out What Works.” That’s critical because the answers are not definitive, but rather need to be worked out. Far too many educators think they know the answers before they actually embark on any project. If you are not prepared to look at the evidence with an objective, dispassionate eye, you are not really embracing the ResearchED spirit.
I wonder if it would be useful to look at the current “buzz” about the meta analyses of John Hattie and his colleagues. The research
– is extensive with huge numbers and sample sizes
– very good (though not perfect=- no research is)
– is confirmed by others who have tried to synthesize and summarize dozens if not hundred of studies (Hattie et al have done thousands)
– the work reinforces for the most part Daisy’s arguments
– he argues that “Working out what works” may be the wrong key question
– his key question is “How you I know that what we do in a classroom has an impact on learning?”
“Far too many educators think they know the answers before they actually embark on any project” is all too true.
Well said, Paul. Looking at the evidence ” with an objective, dispassionate eye…” Is very important if we want to truly listen to and learn from one another and from researchers. It would be one of the benefits of having a ResearchEd conference here in Canada.
Re: the 7 myths from Daisy’s book, it seems as though Myths 1 and 2 have been the basis of most of the back and forth postings in this blog, and people’s deep-seated beliefs and adherence to one camp or another gets in the way of having open-minded discourse about effective teaching and learning.
Myth 6, about project-based learning, is another one key one for me, that needs to be discussed dispassionately in the light of research into how people learn, and the complex skills required to conduct research and actually learn from what one has gathered and processed.
I hope that a teacher-initiated and led project such as a ResearchEd conference, will generate interest and concern from a wide swath of the education community, and give rise to grassroots movements that provide ways for different groups of educators to come together and have some positive influences on the education of children here in Canada.
Thanks for starting this blog.
Standard Practice VERSUS Projects
Once the “consumer voice” — the sleeping giant in education — is fully activated even the researchEd movement will be disputed. After all, the researchEd movement is just another branch of the “producer capture” pincer tactic (circle the wagons, in other words) to keep the consumer OUT of education. (See Google “education is a ‘non-family enterprise’ – Hillary Clinton”)
Simply put, I believe the consumer — parents, students, taxpayers — do not appreciate all the “projects” that are being invented, many being purely busywork or unchecked experimentation of young subjects.
What is urgent is for standard practice to be applied. As in medicine for example, where there is very little dissension about most standard procedures. In education, by contrast, there is still vicious dispute even about how to teach reading, a rather simple need that is easily addressed by standard practice.
Unfortunately, an emerging growth trend in the producer side is “leadership”, “catalyst” development, with tons of funding priorities, essentially meant to bury the consumer in collective community development. Yet another obstacle parents will have to be cautioned against. This is the strategy from the Winter Edition (2015) of Stanford Social Innovation Review http://www.ssireview.org/articles/entry/the_dawn_of_system_leadership
“About 2,500 years ago Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu eloquently expressed the idea of individuals who catalyze collective leadership:
The wicked leader is he whom the people despise.
The good leader is he whom the people revere.
The great leader is he of whom the people say, “We did it ourselves.”
What I think gets missed, and what thus renders the ResearchEd movement (and Hattie too) somewhat futile, is that the myths have not penetrated education by accident. They have been deliberately instilled and are being deliberately kept dominant, and as far as I can gather, schooling was made compulsory the better to propagate and practice those myths, my dear.
It doesn’t matter that ResearchEd is teacher-led. What matters is who will own it in the long run, and how powerful will its findings be allowed to get. The answer to (b) is, um, not much. Any efforts to instil research-based findings will simply be met by increased, and ever sneakier, waves of progressivism. The reason progressivism always wins is simple: it doesn’t respect the rule of law, so it does whatever it has to do to win, including infiltrating, sabotaging, and ultimately converting ResearchEd to a progressivist vehicle. It will either be converted/neutralized, or shut down in ten years.
Don’t think it can’t happen – it has happened to every attempt to secure a foothold for effective instruction in every public education system everywhere in the Anglosphere (and the industrialized, democratic world. Only totalitarian govs have succeeded in keeping it out).
All of this was made evident by the fact that Mary Johnson’s efforts in the 1950s in Winnipeg left not a ripple in her wake. Never heard of her? That’s my point. Every initiative since then has simply rerun the same plot. How many times do we need to see it?
No one who started or propagated those myths ever DIDN’T know about effective instruction methods, and instructing effectively is the precise opposite of their goal. That is why INFORMING people about effective instruction isn’t going to defeat them. Oh, it will get a few teachers ramped up. But the other influences on them are far stronger and far more pernicious than any conference or voluntary movement can be.
Only initiatives that take away the progressivists’ essential tools – the ability to control money, children, and teachers – will ever defeat progressivism. The battle for content doesn’t matter. The battle for control does.
The ultimate myth is that compulsory schooling confers some sort of global benefit to children and families that (a) they could not achieve some other way (b) with less downside.
We bemoan the history of forced (often but not always residential) schooling of native kids even as we ignore the fact that today’s schooling is EXACTLY THE SAME THING with exactly the same rationale. And it is doing precisely the same amount of harm. No one could have improved forced Aboriginal schooling with an argument for more pro-Aboriginal content – its objective WAS anti-Aboriginal and harm was the intended outcome. And in the same way, the purpose of today’s schools is anti-knowledge and contra-self-sufficiency, so no argument for knowledge or capacity is ever going to be allowed to triumph.
Another interesting tidbit from the history of effective instruction is that whole language was not just invented in the 1950s or whenever its most recent gurus popped up. Over the preceding 400 years, some bright spark has had the same idea about every 60 years or so. The difference was that before schooling was compulsory, no one ever had the power to make the idea STICK. On every previous occasion, the bright spark managed to convince a few teachers or clients to try it, and as the non-results became obvious, the converts moved back to working effectively. It is only now, when teachers do not see and are not vested in the ultimate outcomes of their students, that they can be permanently induced to do harm rather than good, and the host society has lost its capacity to evolve past a bad idea.
There is no point in a global war between good ideas and bad ideas, because there is no innoculant against bad ideas; they will always surface. What matters is that society retains the capacity to correct bad ideas, and we lost that the day schooling was made compulsory and teachers became captive. Daisy and ResearchEd are great information sources and doing great work – but in the long run, they are just proving that point over again.
ResearchEd is just a movement with potential. Teachers deserve a voice unencumbered by educrats and union functionaries. Replacing one ideology with another has been tried before. What excites me is that I see teachers speaking-up about popular pedagogy and practice which is actually detrimental to students and classroom learning. But then, I’m a fiercely independently-minded realist…prepared to follow the evidence to find better ways of educating kids.
A suitable stance, Paul.. The arguments raised in other posts against public education were fine in 1715.
The world has changed, largely for the better (c.f. Steven Pinker’s The Better Angels of Our Nature for one account of humankind’s trajectory).
Compulsory education, however imperfect, is better than allowing all to fend for themselves. Evidence is pretty clear on this. Just look at girl’s education in certain parts of the world today.
Public education is a public good.
Coming from an immigrant, working class background with a disability, it saved me.
I find myself in pretty tight agreement with John. I believe Daisy’s book supplies a necessary corrective but only to correct an imbalance.
I always find it passing strange that when writers that are cited by reformers also denounce standardized testing this bit is ignored.
Willingham produced one of the most sophisticated arguments complete with you tube graphics about why student test scores should NEVER be used in teacher evaluation even using VAM .
This is brushed over by reformers with a “we can’t hear you” dismissive arrogance.
Willingham is also a powerful advocate of more social science and natural science room in the curriculum as opposed to more reading/language/English time because of the language + knowledge two birds with one stone aspects of these subjects.
Reformers must learn to read ALL that their favourites have to say and not just cherry pick in an attempt to buttress weak arguments.
Doug,
I am not sure you are correct in assuming that Willingham is against Standardized testing. What he says at the end of the video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uONqxysWEk8 “Merit pay can’t work until there is a way to evaluate teacher performance that’s fair”. and makes a very compelling argument to support his assertion. However, arguing that test results shouldn’t be used as a basis to award financial bonuses for teachers is a far cry from him denouncing standardized testing. In fact, here is a brief blog post where he explicitly says: “Some form of assessment is necessary. Without it, you have no idea how things are going… People who insist on standardized assessments have a legitimate point. They are not all corporate stooges and teacher-haters. Deriding “bubble sheet” testing while offering no viable alternative method of assessment . . . that’s boring.”. It is well worth the read. http://www.danielwillingham.com/daniel-willingham-science-and-education-blog/how-to-make-edu-blogging-less-boring.
Look around Canada currently and in the past few years and you see teachers fighting to keep the educrats from dictating more and more what is happening in each individual classroom. The public response – teachers need to stay in the classroom due to the inconvenience that will occur if schools are closed. We celebrate the number of students who attend post-secondary education, but also discuss how ill-prepared they are for post-secondary education. Any reform in education also requires reforms to society.
Finland and Korea succeed not only because of the policies that exist in their education system, but also the policies and beliefs that shape their societies. As Doug mentioned, we only select the ideas that support our beliefs, while pushing the others away.
I wish people would start using terms like “educrats” it is name-calling, stereotyping, and a whole bonch of bad things we do NOT want our children to do.
I meant STOP using such terms . . .
“Educrats” is an entirely appropriate name given to those individuals who dictate policy and education babble without accepting any form of accountability. Perhaps when educrats start following the evidence based research, common sense practices, and start collaborating with other professionals, parents and other interested individuals through meaningful dialogue, and take our concerns seriously, we might be convinced they’re actually interested in making the education system better. If one is offended by the term, I am doubly offended by many of these individuals who are intent on harming my kids by creating a weak curricula and inaccurate learning strategies in the classroom. Fix this first please, that is your job, and it should be our first priority in making the system better.
In other words do it your way Tara. Not going to happen.
It’s not my way at all Doug. What I am asking for is what thousands of other Canadians are asking for. We want those employed in the education “profession”, to follow the evidence. And to stop using our children as guinea pigs in a lab experiment. Every other profession has professional “standards” in place before changing systems. They must undergo rigorous trials, massive quantitative analysis, and years of experiments before being approved and utilized on the general public. Why should education be any different? Why should I believe educrats when they tell me, “Trust me, I’m the expert”? Heard that too many times, and here we are. If they’re so right using their pet theories and trendy strategies which have no validity or credibility attached to them, why are so many kids falling through the cracks?
If those like yourselves want to make a living “selling” education practices to our educators and policy makers, be sure what you are selling is a valid product based on the evidence based research. THAT’s what being a professional, is all about.
Stereotyping a whole class of those working in education as “educrats” is as unprofessional as it is untrue. One can find individuals who exemplify the best and the worse as well as in between in looking for the best ways to educate. Stereotyping, whatever individual examples illustrating the feature that is being stereotyped exist, is still labelling- whether done by bloggers and/or people in schools and in government ministries.
Unacceptable.
Like “left” and “right” self imposed tribal straighjackets that get us nowhere.
This viewpoint came about due to the rising decline of literacy and numeracy in our schools. I find it predictable that some choose to be offended over a self deserved title, rather than being outraged that their clients they are being paid to educate, are, in fact, being failed by their own pedagogy and failed learning strategies they are implementing across the education system. Improved learning outcomes and collaboration with those who have a genuine interest in our students (i.e. parents, retired educators, professional mathematicians, to name a few etc.) will lead to a more desired effect. Until that day happens, be satisfied that a massive lawsuit launched by parents hasn’t yet been set against said educrats for failing their kids by not doing their job.
Those who continue to impose their own opinion and pedagogy upon our frontline teachers and students need to re-examine why they are more interested in pushing their own agenda, rather than follow good teaching practices. Daisy’s insistence here, along with Research Ed’s push for involving our teachers first and foremost for improved learning standards is the right direction to take.
Stop being offended by the use of the term and start being offended by the behaviours of those the term refers to. Focus your energies here in making our system better for our children. THAT’s the focus here, not anything else.
What evidence is there of a rising decline? We need a long trend line to show this for Canada.
The US has some trend lines (note we beat their scores in almost all international comparisons) but even there they are an example of
Simpson’s Paradox: a mathematical concept in which while each percentile group of a population (top 10%, 2nd 10%, 3rd 10% – – – 10th 10% of students) gains, the overall average declines because of the inclusion of more with initially low scores.
Here is the case in history (my field) where high school students in Texas
Let’s begin with a quiz question
“Surely a grade of 33 in 100 on the simplest and most obvious facts of American history is not a record in which any high school can take great pride.”
This represents the sad state of content knowledge among American students in:
a. 2015
b. 2001
c. 1987
d. 1941
e. all of the above
f. none of the above
The answer above is “f”*. based on the first large-scale test of factual knowledge in United States history and administered it to fifteen hundred Texas students in 1915-1916 (Bell and McCollum, 1917). Students in grades 5-7, grade 10, and in college. This was a time when universal high school education was far from what it is today and college students were a tiny minority. Even the college students as a group did not pass!
Among the “dismal” highlights
– Students recognized 1492 but not 1776.
– They identified Thomas Jefferson but often confused him with Jefferson Davis. – AND THAT WAS RTECENT HISTORY!
– They uprooted the Articles of Confederation from the eighteenth century and plunked them down in the Confederacy.
Here is an example closer to home.
If we take the entire University of Toronto a century ago—about 4,000 students, the wrong measure is to compare them to the 100,000 at U of T today. What if we compared them in something considered important like Science. Would the 4,000 of 1915 is as good as the top 4,000 today?
Should the remaining 96,000 undergrads be better? We should always strive for improvement and quality, but let’s get the math right.
Now I close with Sociology 101. We all belong to many groups, teachers, parents, Francophone, Aboriginal, Leaf fans, vegans, teenagers, etc. When you focus unduly on one role you automatically stereotype and in some cases, marginalize people because they belong to some specific group you don’t like. At the very least that goes against Canadian values. In addition it does not lead us towards improvement.
If all we do is fix blame, we do not fix systems. There is a wealth of evidence on this point in economics, engineering, psychology and business.
Look at our PISA, TIMSS, and other indicators such as FSA scores (for BC students) that provide ample evidence of the decline I’ve described. There’s also an increased use of tutoring services outside of the classroom so our children can learn their foundational skills. Pretty simple analogy, yet something that has resonated powerfully with thousands of parents and educators across this country. 3 provincial math petitions plus one national petition – all pointing towards declining numeracy levels by those who both teach mathematics, as well as those who employ math students, all lead to the same conclusion: Those involved with the business of selling education are motivated by profit not the long term, proven-to-be negative impacts of the snake-oil they are selling.
For all your statements above, your comments do not address the simple need for those in charge, to roll up their sleeves and get into the business of teaching kids effectively.
When snake oil salesman stop acting like educrats, I’ll stop using the term
In the words of Johnny Cash;
Ah, I’d love to wear a rainbow every day,
And tell the world that everything’s OK,
But I’ll try to carry off a little darkness on my back,
‘Till things are brighter, I’m the Man In Black.
You state “For all your statements above, your comments do not address the simple need for those in charge, to roll up their sleeves and get into the business of teaching kids effectively.”
Your interpretation of my post is quite mistaken as I said ” Should the remaining 96,000 undergrads be better? We should always strive for improvement and quality”
Back to the subject of the thread if Research Ed spurs serious dialogue and evidence based work for improvement, then I am for it.
My biggest concern is that deciphering the research and putting it into practice and showing results is harder than some of us think.
You succinctly made an excellent point, John: ” …deciphering the research and putting it into practice and showing results is harder than some of us think.”
During my 24 years of teaching, I continually read widely from research about how people learn and teaching practices that support learning, and attempted to use those ideas in my practice. I rejected ideas that were from the either/or camps- “focus mainly on content”, or ” teach mostly skills”, since those dichotomies were not supported by any well-founded research I read from cognitive science or other fields. I was heavily influenced by Robert Marzano et al and the Dimension s of Teaching concept, as well as Jay McTighe and Grant Wiggins and the Understanding By Design approach. These approaches suggested teachers need to identify the kinds of learning to be focused on during instruction- facts, concepts, skills and processes (which required curriculum analysis and interpretation), and then plan accordingly. This meant both so-called content needed to considered ( terms, concepts, principles and relationships) as well as related skills and processes such as posing questions and making hypotheses or predictions, gathering evidence, analyzing, summarizing, synthesizing, inferring, and making evidence-based conclusions. So I was always amazed and disheartened when strident calls for a focus on one form of learning over another surfaced in the media.
I agree with John and Doug that Daisy’s 7 Myths book is valuable in identifying a need for a balance in how and what we teach.
Those who care about quality teaching and learning and want to improve teaching and learning, need to first recognize and acknowledge the complexity of this task, and understand it has no easy, one- method fix. Then, there needs to be sustained dialogue with reference to a wide range of well-founded research. No cherry picking! Examine lots of different practices that seem to produce balanced, meaningful learning.
One area that is worth looking at and that has been called for by others
is to examine the relationship between private tutoring and student achievement in math. Investigating this specific issue has several aspects.
– the lack of data in Canada on any direct connection between tutoring and achievement
– the “cost” of private tutoring in Asia where math scores in international comparisons are high—not just $$ but on other key areas of schooling such as respects for diversity, open mindedness and even employment
– the social costs since the poor cannot afford such services
The key issue in the tutoring debate is why? North Americans see tutoring as a result of perceived deficiencies in its education system. Asians see tutoring as part of the process to be competitive and succeed in education. Research shows that 80 to 90 percent of children in Asia receive some form of tutoring. I don’t have figures for North America, but I’m certain that 80 to 90 percent of North American children to do receive tutoring support. Given that education systems in Asia are highly respected, most tutoring is not to address deficiencies in their system. It is competitive to attend post-secondary in Asian countries and it is something earned, in North America, students and parents see it as a right.
Parents in Asian countries spend collectively around 17 billion dollars a year on tutoring. Parents in North America spend a similar amount of money on video games for their children.
I would be surprised if more than 50% of North Americans received such support. Otherwise, an accurate post, Matt
I agree that there should be data readily available to examine these tutoring services and the correlation it may or may not have with math achievement. The gap between those that have the support for extra tutoring, and those who do not, is growing. Others have suggested a similar level of analysis …not surprisingly, they have fallen on deaf ears. Wow…to actually have accountability for our students’ achievement? The only way to make this happen is through parental pressure or, as I have suggested, a joint lawsuit launched by parents to have their tutoring costs reimbursed by the education ministry for failing to provide the necessary arithmetic fundamentals that the system is mandated to provide.
Tara makes a very interesting point. For all my years as a participant in various education arenas, from Educan in the ’90s to Twitter today, there is one thing I have never heard anyone say, namely this: “here is what I am doing today in my job to improve immediate outcomes in the area for which I am responsible.”
Invariably the discussion is confined to (a) here is what is wrong with your critical observations, (b) here is what is wrong with family/policy/society that has to change before I could POSSIBLY be EXPECTED to do anything different, much less DO anything different. and (c) here is why we are already better than anyone else. And more of the same.
The only person on this thread who is DOING something is Tara. Everyone else is just lobbying for others to do things differently. Or really, the same, which is what doing nothing amounts to.
Actually I’ll give myself a little credit too, for acting in court where the powers that be otherwise “make sure things stay as they are.”
ResearchEd is a step toward teachers taking the stance I described above. One of its weaknesses is that it is most likely to reach the few teachers in the system who already think that way. Its other is that what those teachers will actually be able to accomplish will be limited if the inertia of the whole system, and the habitual pattern of the dialogue around it does not change with them. Never underestimate the power of those who are oblivious to or profit from the fact that they are part of the problem, when they have condign power.
You claim “The only person on this thread who is DOING something is Tara. Everyone else is just lobbying for others to do things differently. Or really, the same, which is what doing nothing amounts to.”
I certainly would dispute that claim both for myself and from working with hundreds of other teachers over the decades.
The work of John Hattie and his colleagues would also cite examples.
Bloggers might also wish to read the work of Chip and Dan Heath (business world) on how to
– get people to change
and
– how to deliver messages that stick
Well, I appreciate Karin’s kind words, however my efforts pale in comparison from others on this thread. Our math initiative stemmed from Dr. Craigen and Dr. Stokke’s hard work at WISE Math. Their lobbying created meaningful change for the MB curriculum, and inspired 3 more initiatives across Canada. At the very least, they illustrated both to parents, and educators, that something was amiss, and there were way to make change happen. Jo Anne, Doretta and Paul’s work have significantly altered thousands of students lives with their successful learning/teaching interventions and programs. All of us have benefitted tremendously from their knowledge and support.
Have our researchers such as Hattie and countless others also contributed to this? Absolutely. However what is now required, are those to take their findings and have them implemented on the curricular level and in the classroom. Reading the research is one thing. What is required for meaningful change, is having individuals implement the research and use it to make meaningful changes for successful learning standards in our curricula…something that WISE Math has shown is possible.
You are all missing the key fact. . Case and point: Learning is a skill. Teaching is a gift….. as Socrates well knew. End of post. Thanks
The truly gifted teachers are maybe 20% of what we need. We need to fill out the rest of the teaching force with well educated, well trained, dedicated people who want to see young people reach their goals.
Once again I ask, where is the evidence that
– teaching is a gift
– that great teaching cannot be learned?
Is John Hattie’s research over decades with thousands of studies and teachers and millions of students wrong?
– proof, folks!
Otherwise Doug’s post above concludes with a wish we all have.
I agree, Doug. And one way to “fill out the rest of the teaching force with well -educated, well-trained, and dedicated people…” is to focus on the teachers-to-be, and the curriculum and approaches used to teach them in the faculties of education. If we graduate teachers who have developed a strong foundation in understanding evidence-based practices, and who have had opportunities to apply their understanding and assess the outcomes with students, then they are ready to continue the long, challenging yet rewarding journey of continuing to grow their practice for the rest of their careers. More difficult is to work with those who graduated some time ago, and who may, and often do, hold the stance that what they learned in their faculties of education was useless and/or “all theory”. When I hear this, I am deeply saddened, because I know from experience it doesn’t have to be that way.
Hello Lynn. I agree with you on the myths around what actually goes on at Faculties of Ed. It does vary- too much for my comfort- but there is much of quality in teacher development.
Hi John. I didn’t mean to imply there wasn’t quality teacher development happening. I know there is, and am happy that is the case. However, I have heard the lament about teacher Ed programs often from teachers, and so, unfortunately, the quality we hope for is not out there as much as we wish it were. Also, the point you raise about variance is true also. I was an Associate teacher once for a particularly brilliant, highly educated teacher candidate who was furious at what she perceived to be a lack of sufficiently challenging and relevant programming at her faculty of Ed to prepare her for the realities of planning coherent lesson sequences, then teaching, and assessing students that she observed occurring in her practicum. The one year program presented many challenges for faculty of Ed instructors, as we know. The switch to 2 year programs should provide more time for faculties of Ed to work on those issues.
I did not think you implied that there was no quality, but I sure wish we could be more coherent in articulating what works in classrooms.
Much as I approve of the longer program I am not convinced it will; be better unless we at faculties and in schools have some serious conversations.
I have asked about contributing to these conversations and perhaps something will wind up in Professionally Speaking by the Ontario College of Teachers.
We shall see.
We definitely need to speak clearly about what works in our classrooms! I too would love to participate in such discussions, John. I believe you are right in saying that the 2 year program will not guarantee more effective teacher preparation, and it would be a very positive move if we had more focused conversations among university faculty and classroom teachers about what works and the implications from research.
The questions that started this series of posts are not just about what we teach (so – called content versus skills) , but how we teach – direct instruction versus other forms such as teacher or student led inquiry or exploration, or student initiated discovery learning. In any productive discussion, the what and the how need to be considered together.
If you are the Lynn Lemieux
I used to work with, send me an email since I may be involved in a series in Toronto presenting the work of Joh Hattie et al and its implications for teacher education.
John, I am the Lynn Lemieux you used to work with. Please email me at lynnlemieux@icloud.com and I’ll reply.
Research suggests that teachers need three years in the classroom before they are considered effective. What happens for the first three years? One suggestion would be to place new teachers in high socio-economic areas since evidence suggests that family characteristics may have four to eight times the impact on student achievement than teachers. Once teachers begin to master their trade, redirect them to areas of greater need.
Teachers play a significant role when it comes to comparing school related factors. Should we be putting our time and money into analyzing what works or does not work in education or should we be putting those resources into improving the family that sends the children to our schools?
I was once engaged in a debate on the Toronto board when one of the other trustees said the teachers at Forest Hill PS must be better that the teachers at Park – Nelson Mandela PS because the results are the most polarized in the whole board.
I asked her if she was interested in a switch of the ENTIRE STAFF from principal to caretaker. By her logic the following year P-NM would move from last to first and Forest Hill would move from first to last.
Of course everyone knew this was unluckily but the other trustee needed to now contemplate the factor of SES vs “better teachers”. There is nothing wrong with improvements in teaching but until someone seriously mitigates poverty you are bailing out a row boat with a tea spoon.
Hi Matt. I was placed in a notoriously tough neighbourhood school for my first teaching placement. It was baptism by fire, to use a cliche. However, because I passionately wanted to become a good teacher, I searched for ways to teach those kids. My BEd program had not prepared me to teach these kids. I had not learned, for example, that some students need a lot of structure and very clear, step by step instructions in order to not feel overwhelmed by a learning task. When what I had been taught didn’t work, I started reading widely, and slowly began to understand the students’ needs and reasons for their behaviour, and develop a repertoire of pedagogical skills that helped me to teach and have very positive relationships with most of the students. It was difficult, and exhausting, but after 3 years there, I had learned more about classroom management, engaging students, and interacting with students on a personal level, as well as some other aspects of teaching, than I could have and would have in a community and school of children with less less challenging needs.
So I respond to your musing, by saying that we need to both address the family issues related to poverty, and to continue place new teachers in challenging schools, but the board should provide them with extra support and mentoring. Later in my career, when I taught Math and Science to classes of highly motivated, streamed students ( the old extended French), I realized the various types of attitudes, skills and background knowledge the top percentage of our students bring to the classroom, and the extent to which those factors impact teaching and learning, and change what and how I could teach.
As Doug said, family issues significantly impact student readiness to learn, and programs aimed at dealing with the effects of poverty should be in place to mitigate some of those effects. And, if we are talking about scores on standardized tests or tests such as EQAO, then yes, students from high SES areas usually do better despite the quality of teaching. But, I believe, ( since I have no statistics to refer to here) that if we consider improvement and learning from where a student starts in September to where they end up in June, effective teaching can and does make a difference to the progress students can make, and to changes in the way they perceive themselves as learners. So, we need both programs aimed at poverty, and teaching tools and strategies aimed at helping a wide range of students learn. Besides engaging in self-directed PD, or being taught in faculties of Ed., teachers need to work with challenging students, to really learn what works with them.
My only quibble Lynn is that many influential educations look at the education system and notice like all observers past and present, that the main problem in high poverty schools is POVERTY, they conclude however that “I can’t do anything about that” so we spend inordinate efforts to shift to the #2 reason for concern – the quality of teaching. I to have taught in many very difficult schools where 100% of the students lived in public housing. There I saw many of the best teachers I had ever seen. The high quality teachers in poor schools are slandered by any comments that imply that low scores = low quality teaching. It does not any more than high scores =high quality teaching.
Testing scores have little, almost nothing to do with the quality of teachers in poor schools.
The Fraser Institute labeled a certain BC school “the worst school in BC” due to low scores. It was on a 1st Nations rez.
Mark Kelly of CBC went to investigate and found 3-4 outstanding teachers. They also found abismal attendance, FAS, violence, substance abuse, and all of the social conditions of poverty.
It was painfully obvious that outstanding teachers would have almost zero effect on test scores.
Poverty is the issue – not teaching.
To say teaching is the problem is to launch an attack on the high quality of teaching in our poorest schools.
TEACHER TRAINING MUST SHIFT PRIORITIES
I’m going to go out on a limb, and am open to corrections, but here are my views about a SOURCE of much of the education problems we discuss in Canada.
1 The problem is with the Deans of Faculties of Education in Canada and their over-arching Manifesto — Accord On Initial Teacher Education http://www.csse-scee.ca/CJE/Articles/FullText/CJE32-4/CJE32-4-TeacherAccord.pdf
2 All 50 Faculties have signed this Accord.
3 Developed in 2006, this is how the Accord is described in an abstract of an article by Alice Collins and Rob Tierney (then Dean of UBC Ed Faculty):
The twelve principles advance values and ideals about the teacher as professional, life long learner and social activist; about the power of teaching and learning; about values of respect, inclusion, globalization and diversity; about collaboration with educational and public communities; and about strong content knowledge and pedagogical knowledge.
4 Principle #3 states:
An effective initial teacher education program encourages teachers to assume a social and political leadership role.
5 All 50 faculties include in their mandated or suggested reading materials — Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Paulo Freire.
6 All 50 faculties do NOT teach how to teach phonics — an essential teaching skill in the tool kit of primary teachers.
7 One in four Canadians is functionally illiterate.
8 Rob Tierney, after a stint in Australian academe is back at UBC in the Language Division of the faculty. He is decrying the high burnout rate of teachers — 30% leave within 5 years. He suggests social workers “to help build better relationships between the teachers and the community they serve.” http://news.ubc.ca/2015/04/22/why-are-so-many-new-teachers-burning-out/
My Conclusion:
a) Again — as is customary in a defensive education system — the blame on burn-out or anything else educational is placed on everything except the teaching “profession” itself and its trainers!
b) There is far too much time spent on theory, philosophy and social activism instead of teaching the essential student learning skills of reading, arithmetic and writing that are the fundamental building blocks toward academic and aptitude development.
c) There is much that is irrefutably known about good teaching (Hattie, Willingham, Lemov, etc.) that can be applied universally and today (as it is in many independent schools).
d) What will drive meaningful education reform — presently in the grip of progressive, constructivist philosophy (which is not a science) — is NOT the system reforming itself (impossible) but for consumers, bolstered with choices and funding following the student, to become more informed and assertive of their sovereign rights.
e) Seriously, urgently, review how 50 teacher training faculties in Canada contribute to or hinder our well-being.
You are quite right to raise the critical question of teacher training here in Canada. It has also been identified in several of the recent provincial education review reports ( Alberta, BC, and Nova Scotia). In my home province, for example, Education Minister Karen Casey is looking at an accreditation model, the academic credibility of the programs, and ways of ensuring some level of accountability for outcomes.
The BC review of the former College of Teachers by Ivison had observations, as did the earlier Centre for Excellence in Education study. So it’s worth pursuing.
The question is no longer how to pursue but how to accomplish. The charlatanism that is at the root of education faculties has been under pursuit for over 50 years. It is time to close the chase and put an end to them. The fact is that these charlatanistic teacher training programs have made themselves an integral part of a system that is regarded as “too big to fail.” But we’ve learned that there should be no such thing.
The people in these faculties will never change; indeed, they cannot: they made the system so that they could do what they do: try to change society into their utopia by gaining untrammelled access to its children. The system is designed to shield them from both blame and accountability, to load these things instead onto the children. There is nothing about the harm that they do that we (citizens and teachers) don’t already know.
Eliminating university teacher training could only improve public education.
The question now is, how do we GET IT DONE? How do we (citizens) get rid of schools of ed and rescue our teachers?
You make several valid points, Tunya. One thing That might be a positive step, is for faculties of Ed to more often have talented classroom teachers visit the faculty, and share their expertise with teacher candidates. I once listened to a Dean of one faculty state in a meeting words to the effect that not just anyone should be teaching teacher candidates. While I agree with that statement if it was meant to imply that we need the best educators possible, I disagree with it if it means only teachers with higher degrees such as MEds or PhDs,should be teaching in faculties of Ed. I know many outstanding teachers who have read wide and deeply and used their learning to improve their practices over many years, but who did not pursue degrees beyond their BEd. I also have met the opposite- educators who have advanced themselves with MEds or PhDs, but who lack the special combination of presentation skills along with content and pedagocical knowledge and skills needed to amply prepare teacher candidates for the profession ahead. Not having a post grad degree should not prevent exceptional teachers from contributing to teacher education. Leaving it up to Associate Teachers to help candidates during their practica, does not always work out as well as desired, as there are not enough high quality Associate Teachers to go around, and there is often too little time to delve deeply into important aspects such as selecting, grouping, and interpreting curriculum expectations to determine teaching and learning goals and then planning appropriate teaching methods and learning tasks, using varied assessments to provide feedback to students and teachers, supporting and enriching students at different stages of developing competency, and strategies to engage and hold learners’ interest, to name a few. While secondments from Boards of Ed used to occur, I am not sure if that is still the case, and if it is, what the rules for selection are.
All true, Doug, but we in classrooms do what we can. There are enough examples supported by much research (Hattie, Marzano, Dean, Darling hammond, Bransford et al that good teaching CAN and DOES make real difference to give us hope. Is good teaching enough? No. Is it MIUCH BETTER than nothing? Yes. I have enough kids from immigrant working class families (my roots) thanking me decades later as they succeed in life and career to show me that this is true.
Is it easier for the rich to do well. Yes, far easier.
But until the “revolution” we do what we can.
I agree, Doug, that to say teaching is the problem is to open the doors to attacks on good teachers in struggling schools, and the ignoring of all the other factors that impact learning. But, as I said previously, I believe teaching can have powerful and long lasting effects on students self esteem and their learning – not only of things that show up on test scores, so I don’t want to take the quality of teaching out of the equation until the issue of poverty is resolved. I acknowledge that what you said, Doug, is often true- excellent teachers can have little to no effect on scores on large scale tests. However, I believe good teachers can bring about positive changes in aspects of learning that are not revealed by test scores. I share with John experiences of students from disadvantaged backgrounds telling me years later about how I affected their lives.
With reference to the questions guiding this series of posts, your point about the deleterious effects of poverty on student learning with regards to test scores, needs to be kept in mind during discussions about whether teaching more content versus skills, or using direct instruction versus discovery lending will improve test scores. Maybe we need to ask different questions about what and how we teach.
Indeed
My experience in TDSB schools and their forerunners tells me the very best teachers I ever saw were in the lowest scoring schools. If anyone in the system was resting on their laurels it was the teachers in the highest scoring schools.
Good teachers and good EQAO results do not even know each other. They are perfectly unrelated.
The lowest performing schools in the system have never reached the point where they produce zero university entrants. It is just dramatically fewer than affluent schools. I recall data when our high schools were streamed basic general and advanced level. Regent Park sent 80% of its grade 8 grads to basic level terminal vocational programs. On the other extreme affluent John Ross Robertson sent 100% of its grade 8 grads to advanced programs at Lawrence Park and Forest Hill collegiate.
Your case is we cannot wait until the end of poverty to make substantial reforms in teaching.
My case is that the #1 reason Finland is so successful is 5% child poverty.
I am saying expect nothing more than enemic progress until poverty in Canada is 5% down for its current 12%.
No revolution necessary. A few simple social – democratic policy decisions.
People believe poverty is natural and it is hard work to eliminate it. In fact poverty is unnatural and it is hard work to keep it.
Or focus on the content of WHAT we teach, and champion effective teaching methods…which, again, is something what Daisy’s book is after. Many examples of success stories occur in poverty stricken neighbourhoods http://www.seattletimes.com/education/high-poverty-high-test-scores-auburn-school-is-a-shouting-success/, and I would warrant a guess that many here, also had financial challenges growing up, but seems that many have gone on to be very successful in their lives. We do require more insistence on creating a solid base of learning for our children. This issue is much more easily accessible, than solving the poverty issue.
Nobody in the serious reaches of education actually believes that Tara. Magical thinking.
Milwaukee now has public schools, voucher schools AND charter schools. All 3 are equally and wildly unsuccessful.
Why is that? Because Milwaukee is a classic rust belt American city. All the good brewing jobs are gone and the remaining inner city population is very poor.
Their educational situation will remain very bleak until guess what -the day that they are not poor.
Anyone who believes otherwise I am selling unicorns that will take you for a ride on rainbows.
If teaching makes NO difference why blog about it?
If all one can do is blame teachers, teacher education, government policy, etc. why blog about it?
Teaching does make a difference. Just not much. People want CHEAP results. Helping teachers or beating up teachers are both CHEAP interventions.
Reducing class sizes, ECE down to age 2, more support staff, free tuition in college tomorrow and free university phased in, are far more expensive.
You get what you pay for.
I don’t believe in silver bullets. I don’t believe in pedagogical or curriculum fixes.
They strike me as people trying to reform “on the cheap”
.
They accept it as a GIVEN “there is no more money”. Huge mistake.
In past posts you have said teaching makes
– no difference
– 10%
– 20%
if any of those are true in all cases the range is still problematic.
“assertion is not evidence”
As for magic bullets- is Finland a magic bullet?
kiitos to all
A) Finland 5% child poverty.
B) Canada 12% child poverty
C) USA 20% child poverty.
PISA results indicate A is a world leader in 15 year old reading.
StatsCan and Time Magazine says B is most educated society on Earth in terms of post secondary grads.
Apparently C is #17 in PISA and going absolutely nowhere due to RW reform with privatization testing and other old failed policies.
When anyone asks the OECD why the USA does so badly on PISA their answer is “poverty and concentrations of poverty” poverty is compounded by aggregating in a few places.
BTW OECD says privatization is a net negative for nations trying to improve.
Correlation is not causation.
Besides Finland was not such a nirvana of educational progress 40 years ago
though even then
its rate of child poverty was low
There is nobody who examines international data more than OECD. They tell the Americans that you are so far behind due to poverty and concentrations of poverty. Not because of your teaching methods.
Students are the variables in schools, not teachers.
Corelation is not causation. That is what the tobacco companies said about smoking and cancer.
Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, regardless of the order of needs, shows the role that teachers play depending on the school situation. Teachers who work in schools with lower socio-economics may spend more time addressing other issues to give students the opportunity to have some time for learning. Speak to teachers who work in these areas and the day to day challenges they face to help their children learn is what causes exhaustion, not the actual teaching.
Although strong fundamentals are important, at what point do move beyond content knowledge? How do we ensure that all students are engaged when some still require content knowledge while others (both students and parents) seek high level knowledge and thinking?
One of the greatest variables between low SES students and high SES students is attendance.
It matters very little what teaching methods you use if the students is not actually in the school. Poverty means absenteeism goes through the roof.
The work of David Berlin is very instructive. He outlines exactly HOW low SES has profound effects on educational success.
Here is Daisy talking about assessment at a researchED conference to a small group of educators: http://www.workingoutwhatworks.com/en-GB/Resource-library/Videos/2014/rED-v-daisy-christodoulou-2014
Here is Alfie Kohn speaking to a much larger group of Canadian educators about assessment (where he openly disparages the teaching of knowledge): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=blhh6W4QCoY
I see a huge difference between the two. I would describe it as a paradigm shift in focus, logic and professionalism from one extreme to another,
Before I was first told that the answer to my child’s difficulty in holding a pencil was for him to be put on a personal program that meant he would do all his work on a keyboard, before I was told that learning how to solve math problems wasn’t “real problem solving” and before I was told that testing my child or making him sit down and learn something was apparently “outdated” by people who seem to believe that they have intimate knowledge as to what the future holds, I naively assumed that educational policy was being informed by discussions like the former rather than the later. Imagine my horror to find out that it wasn’t.
My question is: Why are there more regulations, standards of evidence and rigorous oversight over what is in my child’s breakfast cereal than there is in his education?
I don’t see any big difference. I agree with both mainly.
You state above “Corelation is not causation. That is what the tobacco companies said about smoking and cancer.”- irrelevant since the links were proven a long time ago
though it begs the question
“Why is tobacco still legal?’
All claims are subject to proof.
The scientific part of this rests on the sets of rules scientists use to keep them from lying to each other.
Can science and stats answer all questions? No but their mission to to search for better answers.
There is enough “science” in education research to “prove” that good teaching counts”.
Does SES count? Unfortunately yes. We even have reasons why, some of which you have noted.
Does parental involvement and passionate teaching count? Yes on both counts though science currently lacks the tools to determine how or why or to what extent.
Too many who opine on issues of education either resort to sophistry or crude correlations, or the MSU (make stuff up) method.
“unions = bad”
“Finland = good”
Dan Willingham, supported by massive research from science, business, psychology, mathematics, and economics (including a few Nobel Laureates such as Dan Kahneman and Carl Weimans) note that thinking is hard work.
So we resort to stereotyping and labelling to make things easier.
But do they make things better?
Seems to me the history of ideologies in the last century suggest not.
If we want to continue to use correlation=causation we shall be in the same company as witch hunters in the middle ages and other disreputable folks.
Doug, if you don’t see the difference, then that- IMHO- is the issue in a nutshell.
John, Well said. Less Alchemy and more Chemistry. Maybe there is hope for you educrats after all 😉
Tremendous insight Matt. Thank you.
Hi sorry I meant to say tremendous insight Nick, thank you.
Thanks Tara. The first time you realize what the basis of some educational decisions are, there is that entire moment of disbelief. If you had told me three years ago that my jurisdiction was going to have a big meeting about how to change the curriculum that included a reading of Kohn and an afternoon of making figures out of marshmallows and toothpicks I wouldn’t have believed you (this actually happened in Calgary). I suppose if marshmallow sculptures have always been seen a vital part of of the decision making process you were used to, then you might not understand how others could even question the power of the marshmallow. Here is a blog from an British teacher that I think mirrors my own “initiation” into all this and, I would hazard to guess, might sound familiar to you as well. https://heatherfblog.wordpress.com/2014/03/01/why-i-became-radicalised-or-the-problems-with-discovery-learning/ …because it seems to always begin with the line “that isn’t real…..”
A survey of America’s top teachers agrees the family stress and poverty are the main causes of the achievement gap.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/poverty-family-stress-are-thwarting-student-success-top-teachers-say/2015/05/19/17f2e35a-fe3c-11e4-833c-a2de05b6b2a4_story.html?hpid=z11
Of course we’ll off families can have stress but any social science researcher will tell you that poor families are under enormous stress.
Why do right wing education reformers deny the overwhelming poverty analysis that any social scientist will tell them accounts for the achievement gap?
Well because the same conservatives disagree profoundly with income redistribution in any form. Spending more on poor schools is a form of redistribution requiring increased taxes- an anathema to conservatives. Allowing too many poor people to escape poverty means more demanding labour in their factories.
Education reformers seek out reforms that first of all cost no money and may in fact save money ( union bashing. Attacking teacher professionalism. ..) and they have a mistake view that the private sector by definition does a better job in all aspects of human endeavor not just some things.
As such private good public bad. Expensive bad cheap good, are the threads of conservative logic that runs through all conservative reform thinking on education.
Well every dogma has its day. The faster our American friends introduce “reforms” the faster they see that there is no ROI involved. Overall national scores do not improve SAT scores do not rise. America’s PISA rankings do not improve.
Education reform is nothing more than right wing ideology. Most of its ideas have been tried and failed many times. How many times does merit pay have to fail before someone puts a stake through its heart?
For the Willingham fans he is totally against the use of student test results to evaluate teachers particularly in VAM models.
Two side by side nations, formerly both were world leaders. Sweden went the reform route and it’s results dropped like a stone. Finland went with a 96% public high quality system and became a world leader.
Chile went the reform route and the rich/poor education gap opened up a far wider gap.
Smell the coffee.
I read some interesting statitstics in a recent blog post by Grant Wiggins entitled Some Excerpts from PISA Math Results-15 year olds. According to Grant, OECD countries with greater equity in education outcomes as measured by the strength of the relationship between performance and socio economic status, show smaller performance difference between students from different SES groups. Canada, Estomia, Finland, Hong Kong China and Maceo China combine high performance, a weak relationship between performance and SES, and relatively narrow differences across SE groups. I interpreted that to indicate that in Canada, we do a fairly good job of teaching students from all walks of life. So we must be doing some things right- it is not all doom and gloom and sinking scores.
I am on Grant’s list. I read the same column and saw a corresponding piece elsewhere that confirms your interpretation.
We ARE doing some things right.
My concern with policy folks is that they refer to score increases or decreases and too little refer to what is actually learned or not learned.
I agree Lynn. There has often been a false tension between excellence and equity. In reality equity is a precondition for excellence which is why I always tell the education reformers that they have the cart before the horse.
Little can ever be accomplished without equity. After equity excellence is easy to accomplish.
Canada has more post secondary grads than any other nation. Israel and Russia #2 and #3 lag far behind. Our excellent rating has far more to do with advanced social policy particularly with regards to the USA who can’t agree on national medicare in 2015. What a backwards country.
Healthcare itself = better attendance = higher education results.
Canada has overall the world’s best results however if we:
Extended free childcare in schools down to age 2
Lowered class size again
Pay teachers more
Hire more support staff
Make all post secondary free
Raise the minimum wage rapidly to $20/hr
Make unionization easy.
Build more infrastructure to create jobs
Increase all transfer payments to the poor
We would leave all education competitors in the dust.
How do we convince Canadians to do this
or at least some of it?
We convince them by showing them that it is free in the sense that the government gets back far more revenue than it coats. The savings are in welfare, EI courts cops, jails, crime ….
It is far cheaper to do it than to not do it.
It’s not doom and gloom Lynn, as you have indicated, because despite what Doug wants us to believe, poverty is not the single biggest indicator of a child’s education. Poverty has always been with us and there is no solution to eradicate it anytime soon. However i’d like to point out another correlation to conside. Our PISA scores started to decline about the same time when Western Canada entered into the WNCP agreement, which fully supported Discovery Based Learning. Most of the other Canadian provinces soon followed suit, embracing more Discovery typed learning strategies shortly after most Western provinces (and Territories) did. Except Quebec. Quebec had already experimented with IBL in the elementary classrooms, saw the dismal results and reverted back to more traditional approaches in the formative years, only introducing IBL later on when students had mastered their foundational skills. Quebec also has a much better teaching program in that province, ensuring that teaching students acquire hundreds more hours practicing their craft than any other province. And how did Quebec fare in comparison to the rest of Canada? It’s performance was HIGHER than the Canadian average and the top score in the country…and I’m sure the poverty issue in Quebec is no different than the rest of Canada.
So now we have a generation of kids who don’t know their fundamentals, textbook companies pushing IBL strategies in their publications and making millions, and teacher colleges pushing these convoluted strategies on their students. But what has changed? I think that is fairly obvious. Change THAT, and we’ll see even more improvement. Others here, as I just read some of Nick’s comments, have seen the delusional promises IBL fails to measure up to in the classroom. Let’s get back to common sense and smart teaching practices, and the rest will follow.
if only people could be convinced that it is cheaper to do those things you listed than not do them. It would take courage and vision from our political leaders.
I really don’t think our political leaders are the problem, given the system they are given to realize our collective goals – a system so corrupt that it would be political suicide for any politician to substantively alter it. And how corrupt is this system? Here’s a post from a professor of math education: https://twitter.com/delta_dc/status/601357943468990465.
The guy takes a paycheque to train teachers, and then happily blames parents for anything that ensues, and considers any query from the public (as in “public” education) an “interference.”
Members of the public have to create the conditions under which politicians can act on the problem and still stay politically alive.
The system is not
“corrupt”
it is “democratic” which has lots of problems and is messy, but preferable to any the system out there.
The Canadian version is preferable to other versions such as the American.
There are signs we are moving in the American direction, but we can fix that in the next federal election.
I agree with you Karin. Also equally disgusting that this education professor believes that parents have no right to be involved in the discussion. Considering we help fund the system, and supply the students, i’d say we have EVERY right to be involved in the consultation process.
And John…i’d like to think the next election will point us in the right direction. Given the disconnect though between Ottawa politicians and the real world, it’s a long shot with big odds that anything will really change.
Karin, this is going to be a long post, and I apologize up front. It is one that I have been wanting to make every time I read the words “discover learning” being tossed around by people whom, I suspect have limited background understanding of what that means, how it is related to other forms of effective teaching and learning, and who have likely never experienced effective learning that way themselves.
I DO think parents do need to be involved in the conversation about effective teaching; however, the same rules for discourse should apply to all participants. Each group should examine a wide range of high quality, evidence-based research from different, valid sources, such as cognitive science, social science, etc. before contributing to the discussion. The conversation will break down and become unproductive if individuals start using cherry-picked examples, or a restricted range of narrative examples, or ” that’s the way I was taught and it worked for me” kind of comments.
I am very tired and fed up with reading articles by reporters hired to cover the Education beat, and other individuals saying the Ontario Elementary Math curriculum is heavily” Discovery-based”. It is not. I cannot find the word “discovery” in it. I can, however, find “investigate” , and ” explore”. john Mighton and other respected Mathematics specialists have said that those teacher-guided aspects of inquiry learning should be part of an effective math program, along with focused direct teaching of facts and skills. The On Math curriculum does not forbid teachers to use direct instruction.
I have taught for 24 years, many of those as as a Science specialist, teaching Mathematics and Science in the Junior and Intermediate grades. I have read widely about how people learn, and the implications for effective teaching and learning. I worked for 3 years as a coordinator and instructor in an elementary teacher education program at a local university, and taught about 180 teacher candidates over the years. Many came to me paralyzed at the thought of having to teach math. Many remembered rote learning and direct instruction that they struggled to understand and remember. Yet, after experiencing a range of ways to teach and learn math that included exploration through teacher-directed/guided inquiry and direct instruction, among other things, many were amazed at what they learned and the new perspective they developed about teaching and learning math. I never once told them they should leave students free to “discover” key facts, concepts, skills, on their own.
True, open -ended Discovery Learning has not been shown to be effective at helping students learn content. It can be used to make discoveries effectively by people with a deep knowledge/ skill base. Research shows that without considerable prompting and guidance from a teacher, who has clear learning goals in mind, free discovery rarely leads to meaningful content learning, especially in Math and Science, but I suspect also in History.
Reasons for that are that it is very challenging for elementary aged learners with limited background knowledge to engage in the reasoning needed to make the necessary decisions, such as how to gather appropriate data, analyze and organize it, and then draw inferences and conclusions from that data. However, and this is very important and rarely if ever mentioned by non -educators, there is a large body of well-supported research showing the effectiveness of teacher-guided or directed Inquiry, using prompts and questions aimed at directing students’ attention towards salient features among whatever they are investigating/ exploring and observing, ( a video of WWI, the effects of adding heat to ice, what happens to the area of a rectangle when all dimensions are doubled, etc).
Then, following the initial exploration phase, students are supported in discussing the results, looking for and identifying patterns, and using the evidence they have found to develop an understanding of related clusters of facts, concepts, principles and generalizations.
The effective teaching process does not end there. Students are then given opportunities to elaborate on that initial learning through a variety of teaching methods and tasks, such as practising skills, creating memorization aids for terms/ definitions and using them to practise for tests; creating graphics and writing to explain their understanding in their own words, and along the way teachers provide specific feedback. Quizzes can be given to test for factual recall; short answer questions or prompts known as “tickets out the door” can be used to asses the degree to which students are grasping the concepts and cause and effect relationships, for example.
Further types of teaching moves, continue to deepen and hone students learning, and students are often encouraged, with varying degrees of support, to pose questions about what they have learned and seek answers in various ways. If projects are assigned, students are taught through direct instruction, the skills needed to conduct research, and teachers ensure the students have the background knowledge needed to make sense of what they are researching.
Pure discovery learning lies on one end of a continuum of ways of learning, and teacher-directed inquiry lies at the other. There are many educational texts, especially in Math and Science, that diagram that continuum, and describe the kinds of teaching and learning that goes on along the continuum.
How many non-educators have read sufficiently to know about the things I have been describing? And, unfortunately and sadly, how many educators have had a chance to learn about those aspects either.
I acknowledge that researchers such as Marzano have clearly stated that unless a teacher is experienced in using guided inquiry, students may be confused about the intended outcomes and unable to learnrelevant facts, concepts, etc from the activities. Many researchers have cautioned that activity alone does not equal learning. So, in some instances, a teacher may wisely choose to use mostly direct instruction, and little actual inquiry. That does not mean that students will not learn effectively, because well-done direct instruction can be very successful. It does not involve a teacher simply telling students things for them to do without questioning, or to record and memorize; it does not mean teachers just write notes on the board for students to copy. It does not mean endless worksheets of lack of context calculations, or rules for using operations to be memorized with no accompanying explanation of why they work.
That being said, none of this implies that inquiry should be avoided. Pure discovery probably should be unless the goal is not content learning per se but how to carry out the skills of open discovery. Once learners have a deep knowledge and skill base they can engage in open discovery more effectively. This rarely is the case in Elementary grades below 11 and 12.
So, I wish all interested parties would acknowledge the complexity of the nature of the topic of effective teaching and learning, and the need for teachers to know about and be able to use a wide range of techniques in order to meet the needs of learners. No one approach is going to solve the problems that are the focus of this discussion.
I agree that there are things that go on in the education world that do not help students to learn. I have been angry and frustrated many times over.
But, please, please stop identifying a focus on Discovery Learning or “Back to Basics” (what ever that means) as being the main culprits, and pitting them against one another as though adopting one over the other will solve the problems we are concerned about.
Lynn the biggest issue I have with your entry here, is that you aren’t giving proof of your statement “Research shows…”. I’d really like to see it. Your assessment about why children require direct instruction in their formative years, is accurate. However your assessment about how math instruction in Ontario contains no notion of discovery based strategies is inaccurate. It’s why Teresa Murray, longtime teacher and now full time math tutor, started her math petition and initiative. And if you read through the comments there, it’s the same pattern that we also see across Canada. The first step for providing a solid foundation of arithmetic skills in the formative years, is now being skipped due to the increased use of convoluted strategies in the classroom. This has to change.
And I’ll also clarify your interpretation of this back to basics movement. All our math initiatives have called on ensuring a balanced approach remain in the classroom when it comes to teaching kids. Many newer ways that have entered in the classroom over the past 2 decades have neglected this balance, instead focusing on getting kids to use these convoluted strategies when learning their math facts. We are aware the best way to teach a child to learn, is by ensuring their facts are mastered and then moving on to more guided discovery approach, all the while under the direction of a knowledgeable teacher. But this has now been replaced by having a teacher tell children to find different ways to show their work, and play minecraft to learn their multiplication tables. Your knowledge as a teacher indicates you know better. But many elementary teachers do not yet have this knowledge, and that is what we’re trying to bring awareness to. Our initiative is about following evidence based practices behind effective methods in the classroom. Common sense math must return to our classrooms, and, as you and I know, this has ALWAYS included a balanced approach. But that has been lost, so we’re trying to get it back, so we can then move forward.
Lynn, in reply to your long post (not sure where this reply will slot in as there’s no reply option on your post), I’m not quite sure why you directed it at me, but I’m probably not the only one who values the perspective, much of which I have no argument with. I’m not going to reply point for point because there is an early misapprehension that I think needs to be clarified: parents should not, in fact, be involved in “the conversation.” There should not in fact BE a conversation – there should simply be parents, teachers, and students figuring out what educational setting and approach and schedule is best for each individual child. There only IS a conversation because we lump all children together through a compulsory, age-controlled, time-based system that is run by a single agency, and then have a dogfight about who gets to control what happens to all of them.
It’s my premise that that is fundamentally illegal, and that a Charter challenge to compulsory government schooling would not stand up in court. Parents should not have to fight with all other parents, as well as a host of functionaries who are vested in failure, to provide their child with the fundamentals of Canadian citizenship.
PS John Myers, that is why the system IS corrupt. It cannot be controlled by the people, nor by elected officials responding to the people, but by functionaries who are better served by the system than are its intended beneficiaries.
Oh dear, I think I misstated my point about a Charter challenge to compulsory schooling. What I MEANT was that I do not think compulsory government schooling would survive a challenge under the Charter. And I’ll add that by my assessment there are several sets of rights, freedoms, and duties that the idea and the practice violate, so the manner of such a challenge is by no means obvious.
And I should probably add that I am not a lawyer. But then, litigants themselves rarely are, and that is whose perceptions launches most lawsuits.
Have I mentioned that Canada actually has the world’s best education system ? We are now up to over 55% with a post secondary education with an excellent blend of university and college.
No nation on Earth can even come close. No other nation is over 50%.
It is time for reformers to come forward and admit that the Canadian system is the best.
Better than USA.
Better than any nation in Europe including Finland.
Better than any nation in Asia.
This has nothing to do with the discussion Doug.
It is so funny that you find that statistic useful. The education system itself creates graduation standards, determines who meets them, and manoeuvres graduates into various post-secondary options with a strategic blend of insufficient high school content and clever marketing ploys. Pardon me if I’m unconvinced, but then I don’t buy a lot off the shopping channel either.
The Canadian system has 3 universities in the top 50. We are world ranked against schools like Oxford and Harvard. There is nothing wrong with our overall standard. Time Magazine calls Canada the world’s best system. Any system can be improved but when many international experts consider you the world’s best system it becomes increasingly difficult to improve.
It is like telling Wayne Gretzky in his prime that much more is expected !
When no system on the entire planet produces better results it is hard to improve. Most improvements cost big money. The abolition of the streaming system however is basically free and would pay huge dividends.
Doug, you have previously shown an inability to distinguish between individual and collective outcomes, and you’re doing that again here. Wayne Gretzky in his prime did not equate to the entire NHL being brilliant. There being three top teams doesn’t mean the bottom teams have no room for improvement either.
You’ve also just mixed up post-secondary and K-12, by the way, but I’ll let that go.
No system can be improved if its denizens are so caught up in self-congratulation that they resist any and all critique and innovations. And I say that as a graduate of a world-ranked school of systems analysis, since that seems so important to you.
Ok Karin
To be critical of Canadian education is to say that last year’s LA Kings Stanley Cup Champs have a lot to learn from a team who finished far down the standings the way the USA finishes #17 in PISA. Reformers want us to learn a great deal from the USA (vouchers, charters, obsessive testing, teacher testing whatever…). We have nothing what so ever to learn from the USA. They are educational laggards. If Canada has anything whatever to learn it is from Finland, Japan, Korea or other successful nations.
We don’t need to bother looking at TFA, KIPP, Milwaukee, Rhee, Waltons, Gates, DFER, Emmanuel, New Orleans, or any other American efforts. Compared to Canada they are all failures.
32 yr. veteran of elementary classroom.
Math in elementary schools in Ontario is in a horrendous state. Parents know it, students know it and so do many teachers.
John Mighton is certainly correct re. guided inquiry. And teachers have always used it; the wheel keeps turning over and over.
PD I received was more extreme than true guided inquiry and there was never any mention of the possibility of direct instruction. Fine for me, but not for younger teachers who never heard the words “direct Instruction” at numerous PD sessions. Resources were also an extreme version of inquiry. No other resources were provided. Inquiry, discovery and other similar words are interchangeable as the underlying philosophy is social constructivism. And finally, the Ontario curriculum is very poorly written, is vague and based on constructivism. No. I am not afraid to teach math at all. I am not afraid of math. There are also many parents who are not afraid of math, who have serious concerns.
Parents do not have to be well read to participate in discussion. They send us their children. When parents talk about their experiences in school, what they are often trying to say is, “There is a problem here and I am not quite sure how to articulate it”. Really good teachers listen to parents and what they have to say. We can then tease out what is valid and what is not. Expecting parents to be as articulate as someone who has lived in the system for 20 or 30 years is not reasonable.
Tara is a parent. She has not lived in the system for even one year. Perhaps instead of correcting any small errors she makes we should actually listen to her. Yet, I see her get ignored or spoken down to on this blog. Tara is a parent; she is very concerned about her children as are most parents I have ever met. They don’t know all the right words, but they sure do know a lot more than we give them credit for. The people I learned the most from in 32 yrs. were teachers (informally), some very good EAs and parents. Please notice there are groups I didn’t mention here. I learned quite a bit less from those groups.
32 yr. veteran of elementary classroom.
Guided discovery certainly is essential to education and has been for years. I certainly experienced it in my own education in the early 1960s. I still remember going into the school yard and working out the Pythagorean Theorem. Small group work. That is one example and there is nothing new here.
Parents do not have to read up on ed. before they talk. Parents need to be listened to very closely and given much more credit. When parents talk about their own schooling, often they are trying to express a valid concern that their child is experiencing. It is incumbent upon us to hear what they are actually saying, not to dismiss them.
Tara is a parent without even one year of experience in the system as opposed to the 20 or 30 some of us have. She is corrected if she makes a small error, but is she being heard on this blog or ignored? Tara is donating her time to help families, many of whom are also being dismissed by the system. Just as there are many parents who fear math, there are also many who do not fear math. They too have concerns about math education at the elementary level. Look through previous comments and find examples of how parents’ concerns are often ignored. Really fine teachers don’t dismiss parents’ concerns about their children. Parents are unable to organize themselves easily and yet have so much to say.
John Mighton is certainly correct about guided instruction. As alluded to above, teachers already know this.
All the math PD I received in the last ten years of my career was more extreme than Mighton’s guided discovery. I never once heard any mention of the possibility of “direct Instruction”. Resources were the similarly skewed. I was given nothing at all that hinted at direct instruction. As an experienced teacher, I knew all about balance and even more about what the students in front of me actually needed. Younger teachers were pressured away from a balanced approach to a more extreme inquiry type of math programme and they weren’t about to rock any boats or to speak up.
The preamble to the Ontario Math Curriculum is heavily social constructivist and as such the words, inquiry, discovery, 21st. C skills or other similar terms can be used interchangeably. There was heavy emphasis on group work and teacher guidance. Simply not enough time and no mention of direct instruction was ever given as I mentioned above. When my own daughters brought home Nelson Math, I can’t tell you how many times I nearly through it threw the window. I AM NOT AFRAID OF MATH OR PROBLEM SOLVING.
Parents know there is a huge problem:students know they are being failed by the system and so do many teachers.
My colleague and I had a retirement plan. We would make small bags of blocks to sell to the graduates of this social constructivist math. We would provide a variety of textures, colours and sizes of course. These bags would be for young adults when they went to the store as, of course they would have to go in groups. We knew they would need assistance to buy item in the store and would need counting materials. Please note, neither of us feared math or were afraid to teach it. Behind all the data and statistics, there are many disheartened children and young people. Despite all the good intentions and thousands of thousands of dollars spent they too fear math. Don’t blame their parents for that fear. That is the easy way out.
I would also like to comment that throughout my own math education, I was always given reasons and good explanations re. math. I am 59 years old and I did not experience “rote” or teachers simply giving rules. Nor, have I seen this happen. Many students do experience math this way, I agree. But I would suggest that there are many other factors at play. Obviously my own experience is anecdotal and I’m sure could have been improved upon, but my math education was most certainly not “rote” and teachers gave explanations for what they did. Class size, types of materials, lack of time are three that quickly come to mind.
Thanks, Teresa, Karin, and Tara for reading and responding to my long post. You made some thoughtful and valid comments, and I would like to respond. However, I have my 3 grandchildren for the weekend so forgive me if I don’t post again until Sunday night or Monday morning.
The lack of fundamentals have been discussed many times, but what are specifically the fundamentals that people believe that students are not acquiring in the current system?
I look at my childhood and remember the pages of rote math learning that occurred over the years. I now observe my daughter engaging in online activities that are similar to my learning except that it is online and usually game based learning and she does it at home more and less at school.
I also remember in university sitting through a math class when a guest speaker came to discuss how we could use math in his business (statistics if I remember). He looked at all our rote learning around the room and told us that we were wasting our time doing question after question. He said we need to learn how to analyse the results. A computer would handle the computation.
Matt you had the opportunity in at least having your fundamentals mastered…something that your daughter and others are missing out on. Regarding your university professors comments…at the university level, I would agree that a deeper understanding of math facts is required. I disagree with how the computer might work. What happens if the power goes out? An engineer in the field doesn’t have time to muck around with an Iphone to figure out a computation; he/she needs to have these facts mastered. At the elementary level, what we need is our kids to have those math facts mastered, so they can be transferred to our long term memory, freeing up our short term memory so it can be used to gather more data. By goofing around with convoluted strategies and not really accomplishing anything productive in the formative years, these kids are never able to transfer the data over to their long term memory, and their short term memory quickly becomes overwhelmed with all this “stuff”. Math is an incredibly abstract process which involves a huge number of steps. Skip one of those steps and disaster occurs.
If you actually took a look at the textbooks used in the 50s and 60s and 70s, you’d see that the way math was taught “back in the day”, was actually incredibly balanced between teaching the fundamentals and guided discovery. With the onslaught of IBL being preached by education gurus and in teacher colleges, the shift started to appear in textbooks, making math more language based, and demanding that kids “demonstrate” their work. This isn’t the same as mastering their math facts, and kids are definitely losing out by not first having these facts known automatically. Automaticity promotes understanding. Understanding leads to knowledge. Something our own teachers, and those before ours knew instinctively. We need to return to that philosophy, because it worked for 2 millennia, and now we also have the data, and the evidence based research to support what our forefathers already knew what worked.
Unless your daughter is very bright or she gets outside tutoring,, chances are that your daughter will not get into a university math class, like you did. She may be denied that opportunity, if she does get not get a good grasp of 4 operations, decimals, long division, percentage, simple algebra. What you did as a child was not rote learning, it was practice. Yes, you might have done too much and yes your daughter has the opportunity to play some good computer games. However, I dont know how old she is, but make sure she knows these topics well and parent to parent – you may have to take full responsibility. If she is in a younger grade, dont be fooled and heed this advice. Dont wait until it is too late. Also university students are experts and childre are novices. A huge difference between the two.You got the opportunity for a university math class, depending on a number of factors that I have hinted at, she may not.
Why is so much of it happening at home?What is really happening at school? I can guess the answer to that question.
What if folks cut back on the “value-loaded” language and used, instead of “rote learning”
“practice”?
I dont know your daughters age,but make sure that she knows 4 operations, decimals, percentage, fractions, simple algebra, long division, decimals to name some examples. Do not depend on the system for them and dont be fooled. What you got was not rote learning,it was practice and perhaps too much of it. What you also got was the opportunity to sit in a univ. math class, which your daughter may not get. If she is very bright you may not need a tutor. But be prepared to get one.
She is a novice learner; in univ. you were proficient and there is a huge difference. Parent to parent. Take full responsibility now. Dont depend on the system and dont blame the teacher.
I dont know what grade your daughter is in. But do not depend on the system for the 4 operation,decimals,percentage,fractions,simple algebra and long division. Take full responsibility for these,while not blaming the classroom teacher. Despite your tedious pages of work,which were not rote learning,but practice;you got the opportunity for a univ. math class She may not. In univ. you were a proficient learner. Your daughter is a novice, a huge difference.
Yes you may have got too much practice. Your daughter lives in a different time. Dont be fooled.
I can guess the answer. Why is she doing more of this at home and less ay school?What is she doing at school?
I apologize for multiple posts. Must be a sign of my rote education. Too much repetition and no thought.
Fundamentals or boutique learning – this is an issue that has grown in recent years and has been driven by parental demand. The media reports on the growth of IBL programs. It also discusses the extremes that parents will go to get their children enrolled in French Immersion programs. Although both programs (and other programs) have benefits, one could argue that they are reducing the opportunity for children to learn the fundamentals. In Toronto for example, parents also have the opportunity to enroll their children in a wide variety of alternative schools, from ones focused on nature to others focused on social justice. You don’t see parents lining up to ensure that their children receive the fundamentals – important to learn, but not as glamorous.
Look across the country and I would say that parent choice is evident in many places. In many places, gone are the days when students had to attend the schools in their neighbourhood. As well, parents are much more informed and interested in the “learning style” of their children. Some would argue that their child could not sit and learn the fundamentals the same way that others could learn them.
My daughter enjoys reviewing her fundamentals at home. We also know that in a class or 20 to 30 students, there will be a wide range of levels.
That is democracy, for good or ill.
Also, she may not actually be learning fundamentals at school anyway. Thousands of people want basics, but they are not getting them at school.Most Ontario children go to neighbourhood school, not alternate ones.
We have nothing to worry about. We have the world’s best results.
Don’t worry be happy.
There is no skills gap. There is no reason to be concerned about math and science scores. There is no reason to be concerned about Asian math Tigers.
There just is no problem here folks.
http://m.thestar.com/#/article/opinion/commentary/2015/05/23/the-myth-of-the-skills-gap.html
The division between academia and industry is a major cause of the problems that we face today. In the past, people could pursue a university career knowing that one the would receive on the job training for their life long career. Now, industry has left career preparation and responsibility solely on the shoulders of those seeking employment. This reality suggests that both fundamentals and “discovery learning” need to be part of our children’s education. It also shows the role that parents and the education system must assume to help children succeed. Pursuing more fundamentals may leave gaps in other areas that we are unaware of at this point.
One could also argue that we need to go backwards and reintroduce imperial measurement to children. With a large number of careers in the trades, knowledge of imperial measurements would be beneficial. It would also help to reinforce basic knowledge like fractions. Or, we could go completely metric and encourage our trades to work using the metric system.
These conversations have me wonder how much of this debate is a sign of generational differences. Our younger generations may be perceived as lacking fundamental knowledge, but who fixes the PVR box when we can’t get it to work?
I think your post has a point. In the 1960s when I was in high school most students in Canada did NOT graduate from gr 12 (or 13 in Ontario). The “good old days” were not necessarily good, but they were old.
Daniel Willingham:
“It’s easy to scoff at a knowledge-based curriculum as backward-looking. Memorization of math facts when we have calculators? Knowledge in the age of Google?
But if you mistake advocacy for a knowledge-based curriculum as wistful nostalgia for a better time, or as “old fashioned” you just don’t get it.”
http://www.danielwillingham.com/daniel-willingham-science-and-education-blog/the-science-in-goves-speech
Matt the point you continue to miss is that “back in the day”, there was always a balance of fundamentals+discovery based learning. These days most kids do not receive any firm grasp of foundational skills. They start in on computer games as early as Gr.1, and with all of these learning stations and using a teacher as a guide on the side, kids are missing out on learning their foundational facts to build upon.
There is no difference of generations here, just a difference of pedagogy and edubabble. Effective learning for all jobs, and university classes, includes good instructional practices, learning the 3 R’s, and giving kids the tools to think independently. Many of these 21st century based trends refer to these things as critical thinking and personalized learning. Poppycock. Just more junk to sell to an unsuspecting public. Good instruction and effective teachers know that these things have ALWAYS been part of good schooling, but this cannot occur until the fundamentals are mastered. The biggest lament coming from high school and middle school teachers are that their students lack foundational knowledge (i.e. basic learning skills). This is also repeated by employers. This is the biggest stumbling block our generation and those behind them, are currently facing. On the job training comes AFTER these skills are obtained, as it always has, and always will.
The fulcrum that this whole discussion rests upon is the cognative structure of the human brain. If- as described by Daisy, Hirtch, Sweller, Simon, Kitchner and Willingham- the skills we would describe as creativity and problem solving have, as their basis, mass amounts of knowledge then we are on the wrong track. If this is the case- as the science seems to suggest- then the “dumbing-down” of the curriculum that is happening in in many Canadian jurisdictions would be disastrous.
Click to access hirsch.pdf
https://thewingtoheaven.wordpress.com/2012/01/08/why-21st-century-skills-are-not-that-21st-century/
http://www.danielwillingham.com/daniel-willingham-science-and-education-blog/british-columbia-what-are-you-thinking
Click to access sweller_kirschner_clark_reply_ep07.pdf
What seems to be happening in many areas and described by many people seems to be that teaching knowledge to students about the world they live in and “the best that has been thought” takes second place to the pedagogy to be used. The method seems to have become more important than the outcome. When the conversation is based upon how much teacher talk should be allowed, the method is more important than the outcome.
And every time someone higher up the ladder describes how important the method of delivery is and then tosses out a “but of course knowledge is still important” the message received by those in the trenches is “firstly get the teaching method right… teach them some facts if there is time (which there never is)”.
On a personal note, my six year old was very excited to go to school one particular day because he was going to learn about wind and had many questions. When I picked him up at the end of the day and asked him what he learned about wind he went into a twenty minute description about how they were “forced” (his word, not mine) to make wind sculptures for most of the day and how he couldn’t get the pencil through the aluminum pie plate and how, once he bent it trying it then didn’t work. When I asked him what he learned about wind again he said “I just told you! We didn’t learn anything about wind… We made wind sculptures”. It seems like my kid sees the same thing that Daisy does.
In other news, I was told how impressed people were about the “innovative” teaching techniques being used at the school.
For those who discuss “balance” and tell me that I don’t really understand because I am not an “expert”, my simple question is: Is the teaching of knowledge more important than the techniques being used or are the techniques being used more important then the transmission of knowledge?
I would not categorize my last post as a “scoff at a knowledge-based curriculum as backward-looking”
I only note that
– dropout rates were MIUCH higher
– the level of math needed in previous generations was LESS than need3ed now
– The level math attained- barring long term trend lines in Canada but with trend lines in the US in other subjects was likely less than now
– We are all guilty from time to time of “myopic nostalgia”.
As a for knowledge-based? I support it as does overwhelming research but
– “What knowledge is of most use?” is a question first articulated in the 1850s- yes the 1850s.
The great Yin Yang of education. Knowledge vs process and skill.
Totally false dichotomy.
Does anybody know Professor Gradgrind from Dickenson ‘Bleak House’
Just the facts just the facts.
Basics or fundamentals, regardless of what you call it, are important. The question is how can the need for the basics be achieved while seeking a student who can think, process and problem solve?
There are many many students who have acquired the basics, whether through work at home, support of a tutor, learning at school or some combination. What next for them? Hopefully the quest for the basics would not lead to a slow down in learning for all children. In looking at this generation of children, a discussing of how to teach the basics would also be necessary. I know that the ways I learned the basics might not be applicable to the technology generation of today.
The focus here has been on math, but the same debate could involve spelling, reading, printing and other topics. Good discussion.
Daily practice leads to memorization. Memorization leads to understanding. Understanding leads to knowledge. Knowledge leads to critical thinking and application of these newfound skills to the task at hand. This is the key ingredient to ensure our kids leave school well equipped for higher learning and their jobs.
It’s just how it is Matt. Always has been, always will be. The most technologically demanding jobs on the planet are constantly evolving, constantly being reinvented. The same skills apply today prior to the information age. What needs to remain consistent for our kids, is to ensure they have a strong foundational base which is then translated to confident job skills for whatever area they pursue. There’s no evidence that the 21st century strategies produce results – in fact, the opposite is the case. Don’t let the edubabble about 21st century jobs sway this argument, because it’s not valid. All the research – cognitive and other, all indicate direct instruction and learning the fundamentals (in the formative years) is still the best way for our kids to learn effectively.
“Daily practice leads to memorization. Memorization leads to understanding. Understanding leads to knowledge. Knowledge leads to critical thinking and application of these newfound skills to the task at hand. This is the key ingredient to ensure our kids leave school well equipped for higher learning and their jobs.”
The line described is not as smooth or as straight as suggested. Some forms of practice are better than others; e.g., when it is distributed over time that is superior to cramming. Understanding does NOT lead to knowledge, unless it is understanding WHY we are learning something. In most cases it is knowledge that leads to understanding.
Mind you, application to tasks at hand can lead to critical thinking. The dichotomy between knowledge and skills is a false one “Always has been, always will be.”
I also agree that in many cases the phrase “21st century skills” is overhyped. But we do have some challenges in learning not present or noticed in the last century.
– more voices as to what we should learn
– the impact, for good or ill, of online tech including social media and the use of blogs
– more options both in school and out for learning
– stronger research showing the links between non academic learning and academic success
– the need to give ALL students a decent education (in the old days kids dropped out in droves but there were jobs for many of them, unlike today)
Ever since John Goodlad’s work of the early 1980s it is clear that we want schools to do it all.
– basic academic skills focused on literacy and numeracy
– vocational training of some sort
– citizenship skills and habits of mind in a diverse global world
– happy, contented, physically and emotionally healthy lives.
While direct instruction is a key element in quality learning, it is not the only element.
The future back we go the more the system resembles something Tara would like. The data , however would tell us that it was not a very good system.Dropout rates were far higher. Graduation rates far lower. Post secondary completion rates far lower.
There was no golden age.
In your words John, you misread my comments. My point is that our kids need to have a decent start. As I have repeatedly said throughout this blog, the biggest deficit our students have, is a lack of foundational skills. Solve this issue first and foremost. Technology skills change every few months and are taught on the job; they don’t have to be taught at elementary school. Kids these days are surrounded by technology and won’t learn anything additional at school to address specific skillsets for future jobs that haven’t even been created for them yet. But knowing your grammar skills and multiplication tables are still important, and something that will need to be mastered once out of elementary school. Kids are already behind if they don’t have these fundamentals mastered by Gr. 6. All the other learning concepts and abstract ideas can filter in once the fundamentals are mastered. But try and introduce these concepts too early, and their minds quickly become overwhelmed. The evidence supports that notion, as do our experienced teachers.
BTW I have yet to see any evidence of homeschooling or other inquiry based high school graduates which perform better than traditionally taught graduates. In fact, the only empirical evidence that I have read, indicates the opposite is, in fact true. Just because these new types of learning are available, doesn’t mean they’re better.
No misreading. Just a few correctives on your learning sequence. Most of the piece supports with additional historical clarification of some of your points
Tara
Most people can see through an argument that begins with well worn cliches (good start good foundation skills…) and ends with therefore you must follow my reform style formula. We did things your way in the 1950s. I was there. Results are much better now.
Nice try Doug. We don’t buy your rhetoric, which is why your particularly narrow viewpoint is inaccurate. Others would also disagree with you as well, specifically the math professionals http://www.cdhowe.org/pdf/commentary_427.pdf
The only formula I am asking for is effective instruction. Nothing wrong with that.
“Math Sense” Makes You Feel Stupid — Oh, The Irony !
Not just students feel stupid; parents trying to help with homework are made to feel stupid also. Two generations. What’s the game plan?
Isn’t education supposed to make you feel capable? Not dumbed down? Not feeling stupid?
And, let’s remember Daisy’s book — Seven Myths about Education — saying that much of 21st Century Learning is really about pushing an ideological bias into schools. These self-appointed 21st C reformers see their methods as a corrective to right wing and elitist culture. Really?
Who can find the best description of what the New Utopia would look like if 21st C initiatives in Canada and Common Core in the US were fully implemented? What is the vision?
Nonetheless: Here is a Report that should stop the Discovery Learning in Math in its tracks. See: Decline of Canadian students’ math skills the fault of ‘discovery learning’: C.D. Howe Institute http://news.nationalpost.com/news/canada/decline-of-canadian-students-math-skills-the-fault-of-discovery-learning-c-d-howe-institute
Quotes:
– Canada fell out of the top 10 countries for math in 2012.
– the curriculum balance should be tilted in favour of direct instructional methods, recommending an 80/20 split as a rule of thumb.
– elementary school teachers in training should be required to take two semester-long courses at university in math with the aim of deepening their grasp of the concepts they will be teaching.
– Provinces should also consider making elementary teachers-to-be write a test in that same content before they’re licensed.
The comments are worth reading.
The engineering schools are full and hard to get into. There is zero shortage of STEM grads. There is no math science tech shortage. There was a skilled trades shortage prompted by tar sand but that is over.
CD HOWE part of same reform Echo Chamber. Bill Gates wants government to flood the market with STEM supply to drive down wages.
No more, no less.
There are 65 countries is PISA. All of the first 5 countries are Asian nations. 3 are artificial city-state. Canada is #5 of the western nations basically tied with Finland. The decline was 1.4%. This is statistically insignificant. There simply put, is no problem in Canadian math in particular.
For those concerned I am in Asia looking at schools 3x a year. My wife has SO papers and is Chinese from Hong Kong. The one consistent phrase is math specialist teachers from grade 1 on like itinerant French teachers. One for primary classes one for senior classes unless school is very small.
Some confusion about the nature of “statistical significance”. It refers to whether or not any changes in outcome are due to chance or the actual treatment.
Educational significance is tied to two other concepts
– effect size +
– cost benefit (is the improvement worth the money, resources put into it?)
For example, if test preparation results in the same level of improvement as reducing class sizes as john Hattie suggests . . .)
And then there is the combination of factors; e.g.,
Does reducing class size matter if the teaching methods do not change?
Is there a range in which the class size can be too small or too large? For example, I might get sloppy on my assessments if I have too many papers to grade.
And finally is it fair to compare the use of very specific direct instruction- NOT to be confused with lecture- with “discovery learning” which even in the C D Howe study mixes a variety of teaching strategies with a varied range of evidence-based results. Furthermore, given the broad range of learning outcomes we desire, even in math, which methods work best for which outcomes?
It is clear that direct instruction when done properly improves learning skills and helps put math formulae into long term memory. It should be a major part in all teaching. Does direct instruction work best for ALL learning outcomes related to math or other subjects?
John you asked, “Does direct instruction work best for ALL learning outcomes related to math or other subjects?” The answer is yes. Regardless of the subject matter, Direct Instruction is the overwhelming best method for teaching kids. Tons of research on this. Also, it benefits ALL kids, but especially those who are further behind in their learning.
Class size doesn’t matter unless it’s 15 kids or less. And in our public system, no chance of that size happening anytime soon.
Be happy to provide references for my claims.
Tara claims “Does direct instruction work best for ALL learning outcomes related to math or other subjects?” The answer is yes.”
Sorry this is not correct.
While DI might be the “foundational method” it is not the only method with proven results
and when learning outcomes include
citizenship goals, respect for differences, sophisticated argumentation
there are other models with proven results
such as
co-operative learning for the citizenship and social learning goals of education
Furthermore, for those key learning outcomes involving practice including most skills development, direct instruction is the best.
Yet even within the direct instruction approach, other methods are often blended in; e.g., peer groupings are better for the checking for understanding and guided practice phase of direct instruction than whole class Q and A or even individual seat work. Peer feedback can supplement and is sometimes superior to teacher feedback.
Direct instruction also uses a “hook”, “minds on” or other form of advance organizer to set up the main learning. Sometimes we can use a whole class or small group organization to set this up.
The challenge for teachers is to blends the approaches that work in appropriate circumstance (assuming they can identify them) and be relentless to see evidence of impact on student learning.
My references include John Hattie et al, Marzano et al and Dean et al.
I have provided full citations in previous posts on this and other threads, in addition to some publications over the years and even a little research I have personally done since the late 1970s as a classroom teacher and later researcher.
Moreover, the value of direct instruction is enhanced when we apply the initial learning to new situations. For example. after teaching students how to assess the reliability of a primary source in history we often give them a set of new resources in a topic and ask them to
– determine the accuracy of their content and perspective on a person or event
– connect content to context in which the document was produced
– conclude with an assessment of the document’s significance
– compare this assessment to that provide in a secondary source such as textbook
Real historians, scientists, etc. do this through sharing with peers through purposeful talk around defensible criteria.
So should citizens in a democracy.
So if citizenship is a key purpose of public schooling we teach them how to be productive citizens and while direct instruction may teach the formal parts of government, other methods are needed to practice such behaviours to an acceptable standard.
You cannot teach by telling and you cannot learn by listening.
Tara, your claim that direct instruction is the best approach for teaching all learning outcomes regardless of subject matter is not unequivocally supported by current, credible research. Since starting to read and respond to this blog, I searched for current research ( less than 10 years old) related to the debate
about the most effective teaching methods for math and science, and found several research articles and other forms of text that directly address the controversy related to direct instruction and so-called discovery learning. Most authors directly address the claims made by proponents of the superiority of either unguided discovery learning or direct instruction, and provide solid evidence that what seems to work best is a teaching and learning sequence that includes a combination of guided, structured inquiry followed by direct instruction and then extended practice and application tasks, all accompanied by feedback. This combination of effective methods produces more long term as opposed to short term learning. All authors agree that pure, unsupported and/ or unstructured discovery learning is not effective in teaching elementary age students. Furthermore, the research suggests that certain learning outcomes are more suited to being taught through inquiry and others through direct instruction. So teachers should cluster learning outcomes to be addressed in different ways during the instructional sequences they plan.
In one paper entitled ” Dialogic ( Related to the Reform movement) and Direct Instruction:Two Distinct Models of Mathematics Instruction and the Details Surrounding anthem, the authors Munter, Stein, and Smith from the university of Pittsburgh state what I think is a very important point for all concerned to consider. They said ” In each case, participants in the debate are likely drawing comparisons between an ideal version of the model that they support and a diluted version of a model that they do not support.” In the paper, the authors refer to a 2005 report from a group of mathematicians and mathematics educators who were invited to attempt to identify “common ground” . This group articulated 7 areas of agreement , one being instructional methods and stated this about the latter:” Students can learn effectively via a mixture of direct instruction, structured investigation, and open exploration. Decisions about what is better taught through direct instruction and what might be better taught by structuring explorations, should be made on the basis of particular mathematics, the goals for learning, and the students’ present skill and knowledge.”
I read the Ontario Math curriculum introduction pages again, and found a similarly stated agreement. ( Pages 4, 5, and 12) Furthermore, in looking through specific expectations for Number Sense and numeration in Grades 2, 3, and 4 I found explicit expectations that stated students should add and subtract, and later in Grade 4 multiply using concrete materials, student-generated algorithms, and standard algorithms. No where does it state that students must generate or come up with their own algorithms. As John said in a previous post, what is intended by curriculum writers, what is inferred by teachers, and what is actually taught are not always the same. I acknowledge that since very little sustained and focused PD has been done at school level around interpreting the curriculum and discussing a range of effective teaching strategies, teachers can easily form extreme interpretations influenced by one or more focus groups with particular agendas.
From my experience, If i was introducing Gr 4 students to multiplying two digit numbers for the first time, I would use a combination of guided exploration/ problem solving and invite students to solve a given problem any way they can. I know I would see a wide range of approaches that produce a valid answer, and some that don’t. Among the ones that don’t might well be an incorrect use of the standard algorithm. That is what I infer as the intention of the wording of the expectation. It lets teachers see what students bring to the lesson, and let’s students show their competencies. Then, after letting students share their methods, I would use direct instruction to show the similarities among the methods that work, and then teach the standard algorithm, linking it to the other valid approaches so students understand the number sense and place value concepts that lie behind the algorithm. The goal is to enable students to solve math problems efficiently and accurately. Lots of contextual iced practice would follow, and I would support students as needed in gradually learning how to use the standard algorithm accurately.
We need more discussions in various contexts that avoid people taking and defending extreme positions, and that instead, examine the complexity of teaching and share ideas for how beat we can teach.
Two references you might be interested in are as follows:
1. Exploring mathematics problems prepares children to learn from instruction by Marci S DeCaro and Bethany Rittle-Johnson Journal of Experimental Child Psychology 113 (2012)
2. Does Discovery-Based Instruction Enhance Learning Louis Alfieri, Patricia J Brooks, Naomi J Aldrich Harriet R Tenenbaum Journal of Educational Psychology 2011, Vol 103 No 1
I agree, Lynn
Me 2.
And as we go once again down the wormhole, the boundaries delineating the parents’ duty, the child’s prerogative, the state’s role, and the teacher’s job are once again obliterated. Congratulations all around.
Teresa, I have been meaning to respond to an earlier post you made about your teaching experiences. I had similar experiences to yours regarding Math PD from the school board. No mention of direct instruction, and a too narrow focus on one aspect of teaching, such as the 3-part math lesson. Like you, I used my own experiences in the classroom and knowledge and understanding gained from personal research to design my math program. Nothing I heard in the PD sessions was new to me, but a lot of what I knew was not included in those sessions, such as the importance of using different approaches for different learning goals, including direct instruction, and planning sequences of lessons that built on one another, and made time for distributed practice and feedback. Some of the researchers whose work I had used to build my teaching, such as Marzano and Wiggins, were seldom mentioned. Having spent a year as a Science Insteuctional Leader at the board level, I got an insight into the complexities of the workings of a huge board, the interpersonal and interdepartmental issues around agreeing on what and how PD is to be delivered.
Highly illustrative of the problems with creating effective board- sponsored PD was one full day session by Marzano I attended about 6 years ago, to which our whole intermediate team was sent. I was very excited to be there, and hoped that finally, my school board would be asking us to consider and work with his meta research about effective instructional strategies and frameworks for planning and teaching. But no. After that day, there was no more mention of his work eanywhere in our school or from the board.
But, we were subsequently inundated with mandated PD on 3- part math lessons, etc, initiated by the Numeracy Secretariat and carried out by board instructional leaders. So I truly get your frustration with the absence of what you deem useful PD focused on helping students learn about the topics you mentioned: fractions, decimals, percentages, ratios etc.
In Grade 7 and 8, the Ontario curriculum does include expectations for understanding the relationships among those representations, and being able to work with them to solve problems. I used a lot of guided inquiry and direct instruction to assist my students.
Like you, Teresa, I knew that just putting them into heterogenous groups to solve problems and then sharing and discussing the groups’s methods would not work as the main method of instruction. They needed a lot more focused input from me. I did use that shared problem-solving method, on occasion, and also homogenous groups for differentiated work. But, that was only one small part of a range of teaching methods I used.
I support the Research Ed movement’s goal to bring teacher voices out in the open to discuss what works in our classrooms, and I hope we have a conference in Canada. Hattie’s suggestion that we question what works and what doesn’t in our classrooms, why/why not, and what can we change, would obviously be central to the conference presentations.
We would benefit from a ResearchED offshoot here in Canada, Lynn. If it happens, my guess is that most of our regular posters will be the first in line for registration.
I agree. I know I will be there.
Not one evidence based research study trumps Direct Instruction when it comes to effective instruction. Quantitative analysis suggests that other strategies might work sometimes, but not all the time. DI works all the time.
http://epa.sagepub.com/content/early/2014/06/20/0162373714536608.full.pdf+html?ijkey=J2BxFXoAWRPSo&keytype=ref&siteid=spepa
http://psych.athabascau.ca/html/387/OpenModules/Engelmann/evidence.shtml
http://www.jstor.org/stable/3202951?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents
http://lexiconic.net/pedagogy/index.html
And here’s the report which is causing all the media fuss these days
http://www.cdhowe.org/pdf/commentary_427.pdf which has many references to work done by prominent researchers Kirschner, Sweller and Clark.
Argue this point all you want, but the facts don’t lie.
“Not one evidence based research study trumps Direct Instruction when it comes to effective instruction…DI works all the time.”
Well, no.
The most popular form of direct instruction was promoted by Madelaine Hunter in the 1960s. Yet some of the studies done on the model in the early 1970s (Napa Valley) found that is effects lessened as use increased.
Why?
It could be that kids got bored with the repetition and teachers applied too rigidly to EVERYTHING.
In an article in 1985 in Education Leadership she noted this fact and the lack of consideration for the unique elements in teachers, students, classrooms and curricula by using it inflexibly lessened its impact.
In teaching teaching strategies- beginning with direction instruction- my hundreds of student teachers noted, in addition to its effectiveness, its flexibility in that key steps such as
– anticipatory set
– check for understanding
– guided practice
could be combined with other powerful and research-based strategies.
One pitfall in actually doing it in real classrooms is the temptation to have it degenerate into a cycle looking like
– lecture
– worksheet
– Q and A with the questions exclusively recall
the 21st century version of this is often called
“death by powerpoint”
As Hattie and many others have pointed out, including Hunter herself, things happen when strategies done in controlled conditions get put into real classrooms without context such as
– the “history” of students both individually and as a group”
– attitudes and perceptions students bring to a subject, peers, and teacher..
Yes, John. The teacher candidates I worked with also pulled from a wide variety of research -backed strategies and methods and used them in different ways to get the job done well. There is no prescription for good teaching, but there is a menu of methods and strategies from which knowledgeable, thoughtful teachers can choose from. The important thing is to keep reflecting on the apparent success of one’s practice, and to constantly make refinements to keep improving. Often, that is what good teachers I know do in the summer, despite the cynical claims of many outside the profession.
One summer, 3 outstanding primary teacher colleagues asked to visit me and get a crash course in teaching Science and Technology and Math through inquiry. We spent a few hours in the backyard, and they quickly picked up and adapted the framework I shared, based on their extensive collective knowledge and experiences. The next year, I was excited to see the fruits of that ongoing, personally-chosen PD. When I popped in to one class of Grade twos, they were examining materials and making predictions about the outcomes of an upcoming investigation. Then, they conducted the investigation and made observations. Afterwards, the teacher led them in sharing their results and generating statements about the properties of the materials and the effects of heating and cooling them. Following that, the students drew and labelled diagrams and wrote about what they had learned, and they also received and/or copied teacher -made notes about the facts they were expected to learn. I saw similar combinations of hands on investigations, teacher-led direct instruction, and follow up practice occurring on a regular basis in Math. The changes they made to their already outstanding program were not to throw out one method and adopt another one, but rather to tweak what had worked to try to make it even better. Aspects that didn’t work for them were discarded or altered.
Someone in this forum said they are tired of having their children used as subjects in classroom experiments of teaching and learning theories. Every day, I experimented with my students, and reflected on the results. That is how I improved and stayed responsive to the needs of my students. The alternative is for teachers to thoughtlessly deliver one ” expert’s” idea of what works, regardless of whether or not the teacher believes in it, and whether or not it seems to actually enhance student learning, and to ignore and not “experiment” with alternative, research-backed ideas.
Thanks for sharing the resources in support of DI, Tara.
The problem is that I found equally as many resources that directly addressed the claims made and supported in the research by Kirshner, Sweller, and Clark that DI is the best method to use. The conclusions drawn by these other researchers were that while DI is definitely effective in some contexts and under certain parameters, if one changes the parameters even slightly, however, different results can be obtained, and that that points to the conclusion that DI alone, or DI before other approaches is not always the most effective way to help students to learn effectively. Instead, combinations of methods should be employed.
My experiences align with the “facts” presented by researchers that suggest that there is not one right way to teach students well. There are several useful ways that will each work alone, and/ or together in different sequences of use depending on the students, and the learning goals.
That is why I am advocating against taking extreme positions.
Both the “discovery learning is best” claim and the “DI is best ” claim can be countered with valid, credible research. Neither can definitively prove that one is better than the other in all cases.
I would hope in a TeacherEd conference, that participants would have the opportunity to examine and discuss how combinations of these approaches work well to support our students in learning Math, as well as other subjects, instead of only hearing two opposing sides present arguments defending an exclusive ownership of effective teaching and learning.
The recently-released C.D. Howe Commentary “What to Do About Canada’s Declining Math Scores” , by Anna Stokke is a strongly biased piece of writing, in which the author does the following: a) Lumps all forms of discovery learning together, and claims the approach is an ineffective practice, thus ignoring the distinction made between pure discovery learning and other more directed forms, such as guided inquiry by many educators and researchers in both cognitive sciences and Mathematics.
b) supports each claim with only one or two references, a practice she criticized while participating in an online blog forum. In the blog discussions, she said she always asks for at least 5 references when anyone claims their comments are backed by research.
http://blogs.edmontonjournal.com/2014/01/24/the-great-canadian-math-debate-pt-6-math-prof-anna-stokke-responds-to-alberta-education/#__federated=1
c) Ms. Stokke claims that “worked examples, scaffolding, explicit explanations, and consistent feedback” are “direct instruction techniques” , and references a meta analysis article by Alfieri et al 2011, and Hattie and Yates 2014 in support of this assertion. While the authors of the Alfieri et al article did conclude that those strategies were effective, they did not equate those instructional techniques with direct instruction. Instead, they said that those strategies were used by both effective forms of direct instruction and effective forms of discovery they called “enhanced discovery”. The authors conclude that enhanced discovery tasks requiring learners to be actively engaged and constructive were more effective than other forms of instruction, and were the optimal approaches to use for learning. Their results suggested that discovery tasks should include at least one of these effective strategies: guidance with scaffolding; learners have to explain their ideas, and teachers ensure the explanations are accurate through feedback; worked examples are provided of how to succeed in the task.
So, Ms. Stoke referenced an article whose conclusion was that enhanced discovery was more effective than direct instruction, to support her claim that direct instruction was more effective than discovery learning.
Furthermore, in the Howe Commentary, Ms. Stoke states ” Evidence shows that direct instructional techniques work better than discovery-based techniques”, and she recommends that teachers spend 80 % of their time using direct instructional techniques and 20 % on “discovery-based techniques”. I wondered, why would she recommend any discovery-based techniques if they have been proven to be ineffective?
Most of this C.D Howe Commentary came across as a diatribe against educational approaches in Math that use any sort of student exploration/investigation/discovery, and it was supported selectively, and in at least one case inaccurately with references to suit the author’s opinion. I am disappointed that the Howe Institute’s review process did not pick up the problems inherent in this document before publication.
Gurus And Tall Poppies — part I
The National Post’s editorial writer is very perceptive about where some of the blame lies regarding Canada’s education problems. What problems? — defensive people would ask. We’re top achievers in international ratings.
But, the problems lie not just in #s but also in relationships and content and methods. Parents complain that the system is unresponsive to them, that their children are being used as guinea pigs in questionable education experiments. There are concerns that content in sex education, for example, is not what some parents feel is age appropriate. Parents are complaining about methods used in teaching reading and math that are convoluted and cause confusion and nightmares.
Here is the gem that the NP delivered yesterday about the two latest flare-ups (strikes, math decline) in the education domain in Canada: http://news.nationalpost.com/full-comment/national-post-view-teachers-want-to-teach-students-want-to-learn-unions-should-get-out-of-the-way
*** “The teachers are not without legitimate grievances. Enormous bureaucracies have been built around the education system, devoted to endless tweaking of curricula, classroom activities and the roles and duties of teachers. Governments meddle incessantly, first cutting class sizes, then increasing them, announcing programs, then squeezing them for budget reasons. Gurus come and go, advocating ground-breaking theories with students as guinea pigs. On Tuesday a C.D. Howe Institute report said “discovery learning” — the latest fad to wash through the system — had produced a decade-long decline in math skills.”
Let’s pick up on the term — gurus. Are we here dealing with experts who are recruited to solve a problem or at the other end of the spectrum are they just your common snake-oil salesmen milking a gullible public? One such education guru, Michael Fullan, has in humorous mode actually said he is called a “guru” because people can’t spell “charlatan”.
Well, such guru, Michael Fullan, along with his team (remember: NP claims gurus use children as guinea pigs) just so happens to be a frequent traveller to Alberta. Alberta, which, for decades, used to be the best performer of all 13 Canadian education jurisdictions, is now experiencing a huge backlash from over 17,000 petitioners and parent protests due to “discovery” Math and declining scores.
Gurus And Tall Poppies — part II
Alberta used to be the “tall poppy” in Canada as far as education goes. Somewhere, it was determined, Alberta had to be cut down to size. The “levelers” came to town, passionate in their proclamations to transform “good” to “great”. Well great seems to have yielded “mediocre” and parents being very upset. The Fullan team and 21st Century Learning “Inspiring Education” will now be put to further examination with a brand new, ideologically different, provincial government.
These two events — the teacher strike and the alarm bells about math decline — are more than just a flash in the pan of a system used to deal with ferment. This time the parents will gain an irreversible toehold and more voice, which may — sooner than later — yield more choice and exits.
Parents for one are fed-up with the system treating their children as captives of the state. The children are not orphans. They have parents who are fed up with the roulette game of chance, which does not reliably teach their kids the fundamental skills. They are fed up with teachers who can refuse and withhold services and student progress reports.
It’s time to send the levelers back to Square One and for parents to enjoy reliable services versus the Snakes and Ladders Games now being played.
Lynn, I agree that a variety of teaching methods should be used in classrooms to seek student achievement. There should also be opportunities for students to learn their fundamentals and apply this knowledge to different situations. In having an opportunity to look at samples of the PISA test, I noticed that questions quickly moved away from fundamental knowledge to questions that involved considerably more thinking and problem-solving. I don’t know if fundamentals should be pursued first and then opportunities provided for thinking and discovery learning in math. I see the benefits in pursuing both due to the long-term learning needed to master these skills and knowledge.
One challenge in using the PISA in determining the learning needed to improve results in this country is that there are too many other variables to consider beyond simple questions about what to teach in math. Although the debate here has turned to math, one could argue that we continue to perform well in reading despite decades of whole language learning instead of intense phonics instruction.
One thing that does stand out from the PISA is once again the Canadian education system is unfairly being compared to two systems (US and UK) that have performed lower than us. Both these countries give a greater role to the private sector in educating their children which creates inequalities in the education system. The countries that perform well seem to allow the state to play a greater role.
The seven myths are important to consider, but they may not be applicable here. Look at some of the top performers, and technology, for example, plays a significant role in the education and lives of their students. Before we truly begin to have a debate about fundamentals vs discovery learning, we need to consider other possible variables that might account for the differences in results.
Pretty clear to me. We had a recession. In USA most public school kids now poor. 2007 Canadian economy nosedive.
Test results hooked to economy like a chain on an anchor.
Well stated and largely supported by evidence, some of which you and Lynn cite.
Culture and countries differ in how they shape education in the minds of their populations.
That’s ridiculous, Doug. Canada was not as hard hit by the recession as other countries that did fine or improved on PISA. For example, the US scores were completely flat but their economy suffered far more under the recent recession and real estage bubble collapse. Is it only Canada whose “test results” are “hooked to the economy like a chain on an anchor”? Try hooking your wild speculation to something concrete. What economic data do you have showing that there is a correlation between short-term economic growth and PISA scores? Please cite so we have something to discuss.
Thoughtful comments, Matt, to bear in mind when comparing educational outcomes in Canada and UK and US. I agree with you that we need to look at how we teach the so-called fundamental skills and how and whether we provide opportunities for students to practise those skills and commit them to long term memory. And, as you said, we also need to consider whether and how we support the development of understanding (of different aspects of Mathmatics) and provide opportunities for students to apply the totality of their learning towards using mathematics to investigate and solve problems in various contexts.
Your comment wondering about the best order in which to address the direct teaching of fundamentals or to engage students in exploring/investigating activities, is important, Matt. Discussion in this blog has tended to be about the comparative values of using direct instruction or other methods that have been mistakenly conflated under the term “discovery learning”. The query you made refocuses the discussion more productively around a much more important point: not whether we should use one approach over others, but when and how we should use all kinds of proven effective methods when teaching coherent sequences of lessons focused on clusters of learning goals.
In terms of the comments made by the Direct Instruction proponents from this blog, that the ON Math curriculumm does not clearly state when students should memorize times tables, I agree. That should be made a clearly-stated expectation.
I also think, there desperately needs to be a discussion and clarification that is made public in the media about what people mean by the term “Discovery-based” curricula, and the differences between pure, unguided discovery learning which has been proven to be ineffective in helping students to learn, and other forms of scaffolded and guided “enhanced discovery” or inquiry learning which have proven to be effective.
The C.D. Howe report by Anna Stokke makes it crystal clear that people with an agenda are selectively using research data to suit their aims. ( More in another post) I want other, well-informed but unbiased people to write counter articles for the media that present valid research about the relative strengths of different ways of learning and teaching clearly to the public, in the light of different mathematical learning goals, and that clarify the differences between pure discovery learning and guided forms of inquiry or exploration.
Also, I would like to see articles in the media that present statistics of student achievement in Canada along with a discussion of all relevant factors that might account for a decline in scores, as opposed to ones that claim that the decline is primarily attributable to the introduction of “Discovery-Based” curricula.
Lynn, the real tragedy here is that I don’t even have to Goggle your name. From your response I can tell that you have made a career out of pushing this approach because of your “Dr. Skokke didn’t dot her ‘i'” response. From what I have seen in Alberta, the only people who put this much effort into defending this “Inquiry” method (or whatever you want to call your “the way we teach is more important that what the children learn” approach this week) are those who have a financial/personal stake in its continual funding.
I have watched the debate in Alberta for a couple of years now and an interesting thing I have found is that out of twenty names I have googled- from those who have defended it the way you have- only one didn’t have a professional stake in its continuation. There have been 17,000 people who have signed a petition in Alberta because of the damage they have seen done and I am one of those but 19 out of 20 who have defended it make money from it.
I am not so concerned about my own child because my wife and I are University educated and can fill in the gaps but I have seen educators nominated for awards for their “innovative methods” (note that it wasn’t for ‘effective methods’) who have presided over a school where kids who are entering into grade 3 cannot read a word. I don’t mean cannot read fluently but seriously CANNOT READ A WORD or even add 5 PLUS 7 but the administration fell over themselves to prove how much allegiance they had for the new Inquiry based regime and spent piles of public money to prove it.
Again, IMHO, I think it is very telling that you said: “One summer, 3 outstanding primary teacher colleagues asked to visit me and get a crash course in teaching Science and Technology and Math through inquiry.” When- IMHO- the question should have been ‘how can we teach Science and Math EFFECTIVELY. ‘ regardless of the method used. If, like Doug, you cannot see the difference, then I honestly do not know what to say.
Please, please, PLEASE prove me wrong Lynn and tell me that you do not have a professional/financial interest in the “whatever you want to call it where what the students learn count less than how it is done” approach but, like I said at the beginning, I think I already know the answer.
As Sweller et al. say here:
Click to access sweller_kirschner_clark_reply_ep07.pdf
“We also realize that when researchers develop specific approaches to instructional design, give that approach a label, and work with practitioners to implement the approach, the temptation is to defend the approach and resist evidence that its fundamental method may be flawed and in need of change.” ( Pg. 121).
Let’s drop the conspiracy silliness when it comes to research, even though in some cases (whole language) the support was / and is in part ideological.
One issue with interpreting research, assuming we can define criteria for “quality” which we can, is the sloppiness in language in the field. I have noted in previous posts the mismatch between comparing a specific approach such as direct instruction with the very broad term “discovery learning”.
Just as certain elements of “group work” such as
– appropriate task
– positive interdependence in which team members need to work together in order to achieve a common goal
– individual accountability for each team member
result in student achievement gains, certain elements of “inquiry” also count, in this case, generating and testing hypotheses. On the other hand, letting students muddle through problems when they lack the knowledge and skill to do so, hurts achievement.
In supporting these conclusions, John Hattie and his colleague note that even more important than any specific instructional approach is the mind frame of the teacher that has teachers looking for “impact” on student achievement. Given the diversity in ever classroom we need to be always looking for seeing what turns a student’s mind to meaningful learning. What gets a learner
– curious about the content or problem at hand
– committed to the learning
– willing to talk about what they do while they do it, instead of having teachers do all the talking
– to monitor their own progress and work towards success based on their insights (metacognition)?
So it would be useful for teachers to share how they take what Hattie calls “visible learning” to demonstrate an impact on learning
1.i realize you don’t know me, Nick, so I can only assure you that I do not nor ever have had any financial interest whatsoever in pushing a method where “what students learn counts less than how it is done”! In fact, I have never claimed that how it is done is more important than what is learned. I am passionate about helping students to learn well and to enjoy learning.My entire teaching career has been spent trying to learn and use different instructional approaches that seem to have evidence behind them that shows they support effective student learning. My teaching plans always begin with me identifying the learning goals first- what do I want students to know and understand, and what do I want them to be able to do by the end of a sequence of lessons. Then, I select from a wide range of instructional strategies and types of teaching that I think, from experience, will best help them to do that, given the students I have in front of me at that time. That has always meant using some form of guided inquiry and a lot of direct instruction, feedback, and practice, and I always use ongoing assessment to reflect on the outcomes I observe as I go, making appropriate changes as needed. I am never wedded to one method. Effective learning is my goal.
2. As for those primary teachers I mentioned- the question you state should have been asked by them actually was. They already were teaching effectively, but approached me because they wanted to try using more guided inquiry before they brought out direct instruction and practice worksheets. They knew how I taught the Grade 7 s and 8s and wanted me to help them incorporate some of what I did into their practices. That is what good teachers do. We learn from one another. We see a colleague doing something that seems to produce good learning from students, and we ask to borrow ideas. Those teachers are already skilled instructors, so they immediately understood how important it was during teacher-guided inquiry to give explicit instructions, timely prompts, and feedback to guide students as they investigated the focused inquiry questions they had selected to guide the hands on investigation part. For example, ” What do you think you will see when we heat the liquid? What do you see happening in the liquid when we heat it? Draw a picture of what you see. ” They decided to teach the required vocabulary upfront through direct instruction so the students would have a knowledge base To use to describe their observations. After the hands on learning, the teachers used the results to lead a direct teaching of the Science facts and concepts related to a liquid changing to a gas, and then assigned practice worksheets, and journal entries. In the end, what they did was make good teaching even more effective by engaging the students in different forms of learning that provided a wider range of initial input experiences to them besides pictures on paper, videos to watch, or the teacher’s words. Now, the students had their own experiences with the guided hands -on task to refer to, and from which to build their knowledge and understanding during the direct teaching phases, and from which to develop skills such as observing, and predicting. That is what good guided inquiry does.
3. Those who know me well, know that another focus of my career has been effective assessment that informs me how my students are doing so I can make timely changes, and informs the students how they are doing so they can make appropriate changes also. When I design assessments, I always make knowledge and understanding the key goals, along with the associated skills. For example, a math rubric might include a row assessing whether a student can demonstrate that she knows how find the area of a complex shape. Another row in the rubric would assess the degree of accuracy with which the student performed calculations. A third row might assess their ability to use mathematical symbols correctly, such as the equals sign. Each row assesses different aspects of the learning goals I targeted for that period of instruction. That way, feedback to a student shows her what aspects of the targeted learning goals she needs to work on, and shows me what I need to focus on to help her improve.
Lastly, to respond to your claim that I must have spent my career pushing this inquiry method and must have a vested financial interest in it, I ask you to think about Anna Stokke. She could be seen as having a vested professional interest in pushing direct instruction and the removal of discovery learning, since getting published by the Howe Institute would add to her CV , as would being interviewed by newspapers such as the National Post.
Dr.Stokke did more than not “dot her i”, Nick. I was not criticizing a typo, but a serious error in selectively and inaccurately referencing from an oft-referenced, recently published meta analysis in which the conclusion of the authors was counter to what she was trying to support in her CD Howe commentary piece. I expect an Associate Mathematics professor to not ignore credible valid research that describes effective inquiry approaches that greatly differ the ineffective unguided discovery methods she referred to throughout the paper. I expect her to at least acknowledge the differences in those approaches, and to credit people such as John Mighton for using those guided approaches in combination with direct instruction in his highly successful programs. Her report misled readers who have no knowledge of the differences between pure unassisted discovery and structured and guided inquiry, and no understanding that effective instructional strategies, such as providing worked example, giving timely explicit feedback, and asking students to explain their thinking can be used with any form of instruction other than pure discovery, which by its nature means no teacher input. Her commentary was designed to fan the flames of the fire she is helping to keep burning in an effort to have any kind of discovery learning techniques removed from Math currcicula, not to provide a thorough-researched, balanced perspective on what kinds of effective instruction might be used to counteract the decline in students’ Math scores. That was my point, Nick. That was what made me very angry.
Nick, I also want to tell you that I completely understand how angry you must be about the school situation you described in which administrators pushed for the use of an approach the outcome of which was clearly a disaster for the students’ learning. I would be too. Sometimes when people do things for reasons other than a deep passionate desire to improve teaching and learning, the end results turn out like that, since there are no appropriate checks in place to ensure the goals are actually being reached.
Well said, Lynn. The CBC program Cross Country Checkup aired yesterday (soon to be on podcast) examined the issue around math instruction. Worth reviewing.
Thanks for mentioning that program, John. Will check it out. Please contact me. I tried sending you an e mail but forget the OISE address. Please email me: lynnlemieux@icloud.com
You are really delving into the CD Howe report and some of its contentions. While I’m sympathetic to Anna Stokke’s general line of argument, I do like the way you make finer distinctions with respect to “guided learning” and counter the binary thinking.
I’m reviewing her research documentation and am glad to see her providing the actual sources. Compare that with Marian Small’s Nelson research studies which tend only to reference student engagement and social behaviour research. Anna’s sourcing needs to be scrutinized but she deserves credit for making visible her actual sources.
Nick, you are spot on. And you represent the overwhelming majority of us who know what is happening in our kids’ schools, as well as what to do about it. Don’t let the gobbledygook here discourage your message. Thanks for your support, and keep talking to other parents. They’re the ones who can apply the pressure, and they are the ones who will listen. Well done.
Tara, I have never accused you or others who claim that direct instruction is the best approach no matter what the learning goals, as talking “gobblygook”. First of all, that would be descending into disrespectful discourse, and secondly, I wouldn’t classify your words as bobbly book because I know that a good portion of what you support has been proven by research to be effective, just not the only effective method and not in all cases. i am stunned, Tara, at how my repeated posts about combining methods that have been shown to be effective, instead of taking an either/or stance has been taken as defending one side over the other, and now, by you, as talking gobblygook. The frustrations of parents, and the real problems they are describing with their children’s’ math learning, especially in primary grades, which you and others have described, need to be heard and addressed. In my former school, no such parental dissatisfaction was apparent either directly from parents, or through parent questionnaires. The students In the classrooms I now supply in are all doing paper and pencil mathematics with regrouping in addition and subtraction, as well as representing and modelling with concrete tools, diagrams, and pictures. The majority of those students could perform operations with whole numbers, decimals, fractions, and percentages by the end of the time with me and the other grade 7 and 8 teachers. The high school teachers with whom we met, did not cry foul, and complain about the students’ overall math skills. That, of course, is purely annecdotal; my story of one school. From the postings in this blog, I gather that in some other schools, (I assume in the GTA), things are different. I am sad to hear that. But surely, a reasonable approach is to examine different examples of instruction that works and that parents are happy with, and determine reasons for the success, rather than adopt a biased, silo mentality that shuts out the sharing of evidence and other useful information among all who have a vested interest in the education of students.
It is clear from your and other’s responses that no matter how much I try to explain that I do not support the use of unguided discovery learning, but I do support the use of scaffolded and guided inquiry along with explicit instruction, and that I agree that more clear specific details need to be in the ON math curriculum regarding the memorization of times tables in early grades, my words are dismissed as being gobblygook.
From what we have heard, anecdotal evidence, this sad state of affairs is happening across much of Canada. And also, anecdotal evidence, teacher autonomy has been lost, across much of Canada.We know there are some places where Jump Math is used,but from what we have heard from many places, teachers have been micromanaged so much they can no longer think.Certainly was my experience and that of my colleagues.
The PISA results and Canada’s position screams- there is no problem.
The problem may or may not be with Pisa results and yes many fine undergraduate programmes have long waiting lists. The problem is that there are thousands of parents who cannot understand the math their children do in grade 1,2 and 3.
There are math professors,engineers, scientists and computer experts who are totally bewildered by their grade 5 child’s homework. The problem is desperate parents of grade 2 children, who pay tufors so that their children can learn to subtract,because their children don’t learn it well in school. The problem is the mathematically inclined child, unable to multiply or divide, who is giving up in grade 5. The problem is the parents of the grade 1 child , who look at the grade 1 math workbook and are speechless. When I was teaching, I had no intention of being untruthful, so I was speechless in return. There nothing was remotely sensible that I could say. The problem is the parents paying for Kumon for weeks on and (and yes, Kumon has its faults) but it has saved desperate families of young children from seeing their children despair over math. Yes, we likely produce enough scientists and we do have a system with many strengths. But it is time for some compassion Doug. Do you know what families of our young children are really enduring? Might be time to listen to them. Walk a week in their shoes, as they deal with the work that comes home. And there are many very professionals with strong math backgrounds, who are shocked by what their children have to endure. And the sad fact is these children blame themselves for what they endure.
And there are parents who are willing to stand up and listen to what other parents say and some spend countless hrs. trying to fix it. Time for compassion for our young children. That is where the problem lies.
One more thing Nick. It seems that being passionate as a teacher is more important than being effective. Not to say that you can’t be both, but there is more emphasis from some on being passionate, rather than on being effective. Good teachers know what they are doing, and we are here to support their work. We all know what a tough job it is. Keep talking. Many are listening.
The CD Howe report will be extremely valuable to those of us seeking research-based analyses that move beyond the usual declarations of belief.
My main concern with the CD Howe, Paul, as I mentioned in my earlier post, apart from her reference to the Alfieri meta analysis to support he claim that direct instruction is best, is that nowhere in it does Dr. Stokke acknowledge that other forms of instruction such as guided inquiry, or as the Alfieri research called it, ” enhanced discovery” have been shown to be effective for teaching mathematics. For example, she does not mention highly credible mathematicians such as John Mighton and his very successful Jump Math program, which has been incorporated in many schools and which reportedly uses guided inquiry along with explicit instruction and practice. That program became popular, if I am correct, because teachers and parents had the very same concerns about childrens’ math learning, as described by many responders in this blog.
I agree that it is a good thing that she has provided actual sources for her claims, but isn’t that what should be done if one is writing a paper to be published in the CD Howe Institute?
Most people, Paul, don’t have the time or inclination to check and carefully read reference sources, and I assume they would trust that a writer such as Dr. Stokke would have done an unbiased search of the research, and presented any credible evidence she found related to effective math instruction. Thus my deep concern that a general public audience might read the report and end up believing that that all discovery learning has been shown to be ineffective in teaching math, and that any reference to that form of learning and the use of manipulatives and forms of representation other than symbols ( which will cause confusion during learning, among other detrimental effects) ) should therefore be removed from math curricula.
In the National Post article on May 27th , 2015, that focused on the C.D. Howe report, the reporter spoke with Ann Kajander, an Associate Professor of Math Education at Lakehead, who agreed with Dr. Fokke’s point, as I do, about the need to to improve teacher education, but strongly criticized her research basis for recommending against discovery-based instruction. Ann Kajander went on to say that no major Mathematics journals were reference, and she thought that as a researcher, that was absurd.
Your statement that this research-based report will aid in our discussion of how to deal with the decline in math scores, is true only to the extent that it provides some references for us to check and refer to in the discussion about the problems with using unguided discovery learning; however, it does nothing to help us examine other possibilities for providing other effective math instruction approaches, such as guided inquiry methods, to counter the decline. Nor does it raise the valid points related to research that shows that while manipulative a and graphic representation can be helpful learning aids they must be used carefully and correctly by teachers. Thus the importance once again of teacher education programs.
I think Ann Kajander’s statement may be a little different than in this post; “Ann Kajander went on to say that no major Mathematics journals were reference, and she thought that as a researcher, that was absurd.” If my recall is correct, she said that no “major mathematics EDUCATION journals” were referenced. I think if you look through Mighton’s article in Scientific American, you would see cognitive science articles referenced and might also not find a “mathematics education” journal referenced. Similarly, studies being carried out on JUMP in Toronto and funded by US Office of Ed. Research are being done by psychologists/cognitive psychologists and articles will appear in cognitive science journals — the poster presentation was at Society for Research in Child Development — not a meeting that would be considered a math education conference. In articles from the scientific studies of reading, I think you would also frequently not have articles from “literacy education” journals referenced. Some might consider this a strength; that is, education journal articles and review may not always be governed by the scientific method as would be found in cognitive science/psychology journals.
I also think that while Mighton may refer to “guided discovery” in the program, he also makes the point that the increments to be “discovered” are very small/manageable based on the previous lesson, and heavily scaffolded within the curriculum itself (two critical components which help most all children be successful in math). I do not know if this use of the term “guided discovery” would be generalizable to the broader literature on discovery-based learning and “guided discovery”.
Thanks for the helpful clarification, Jamie. I agree that John Mighton is perhaps the most attuned to the need for independent, validated research. It’s no accident that he was the only Canadian invited to present at the May 2 ResearchED Conference in NYC. British teachers like Tom Bennett and Carl Hendrick are very discerning fellows. They are both firmly focused on establishing a new education reform culture where teachers are involved in assessing what actually works in classrooms. When I start theorizing or resorting to ideological declarations, he’s checked me up. We need more of that kind of focused and independent thinking in the field.
Hi Jamie. You’re right about me leaving off the word ‘education’ from my quote. I apologize for that, and it does make a difference as you said, and I agree with your explanation that mathematics education journals may not have the same adherence to the scientific method as may be found in the cognitive science / psych journals.
I think that guided inquiry as an approach can and probably has been interpreted and used in different ways, and, as you said, and you are absolutely right in questioning whether, as a name for a teaching method, it might or might not generalize across a broad sample of the research to show the same small increments in investigation targets as used by Mighton’s approach. A very good point.
When I worked with teacher candidates at OISE, I brought with me a guided inquiry instructional framework that I had used to teach Science, and I adapted it for Math. It was based on the original learning cycle by Karplus, and has been modified by Science teachers, often going by the name of the 5 E or 7E Learning Cycle, to included a variety of additional stages and instructional techniques than the original 3.
Agreeing with the need to use small increments of learning so as not to overwhelm or confuse students, I formed small clusters of target learning goals from specific curriculum expectations that were the focus of each cycle of lessons. These lessons varied in intention/ content, and therefore in structure, passing through Engage, Explore, Explain, Elaborate, and Extend stages. Each stage in the learning/ teaching sequence is associated with different types of teacher and student learning, and teachers can move flexibly among the stages as needed. A new Learning Cycle is then begun with a new, small cluster of specific expectations and learning goals, that builds onto the learning developed and practised in the preceding cycle. And so on. The beauty to me of using the organizing framework was that there were explicit descriptions of the teaching and learning actions that could be used in each stage of learning, and teachers had to make very clear exactly what the targeted learning goals were for each small set of lessons. All the good teaching strategies that have been shared in this blog are part of the mix. The Explain stage always includes teachers directly teaching and guiding students in learning the math that is the focus of the lesson sequence, and the Elaborate stage has students practising and further deepening the knowledge and skills. The framework is not prescriptive, but is a way for teachers to organize their thinking across several lessons, rather than think just in terms of individual lessons that may or may not connect with one another effectively.
As part of a mini research project, while at OISE, I worked with 6 TDSB teachers who hosted our candidates, and who expressed an interest in developing ways to teach math through guided inquiry. They explored using the inquiry framework to plan and teach lessons to their students, and later supported the candidates in their efforts to do the same.
I have tutored for 3 yrs. now. Ages K-19yrs. They come from 2 different boards and many different schools I must have seen at least 50 by now. They have ranged from very mathematically capable to average to below. And they have come from a wide variety of backgrounds. All their parents know math ed. isnt working, the students think they are “dumb” and blame themselves. Always the same predictable problems. Minimal knowledge of basics. Addition onwards is simply missing. I never presume that they will be able to divide anything. These are the fortunate ones because their parents can pay a tutor. Anecdotal evidence. This is widesptead across Canada.
Teresa, I know that your experiences are similar to others who tutor, and The more I read and participate in this blog, the more I see what I believe are some main sources of this problem with ineffective education:
1. Although there is considerable research that supports effective teaching practices for Math, there is a lot of confusion over the naming of the components of effective methods. More later.
2. People in charge of education, such as those in Alberta, sometimes jump into adopting approaches, the details of which they have not sufficiently researched and understood, and which may not, as in the case of unguided discovery learning, be proven to be effective for most students. They also often implement said programs, but provide woefully inadequate, high quality teacher preparation and/or supporting instructional materials.
I have not examined the Alberta curriculum, but I can imagine what a mess it was if unguided discovery learning was the underlying methodology. I can picture teachers being made to made to feel ( as Daisy said about experiences with England’s curriculum) that they were to provide minimal instruction or guidance, and that this meant letting students use manipulatives with no scaffolding or directives, and use whatever method they wanted to solve problems with little to no teacher intervention during the learning process to discuss or teach directly the benefits of certain methods, and of the standard algorithm.
Furthermore, if the discovery methodology directed teachers that the main, and most recommended method of instruction was to put students into groups and leave them alone to come up with solutions to problems, without any use of teacher monitoring, prompts, directives, or following up direct teaching of the underlying math concepts and skills, then no wonder kids were lost and parents were furious.
But that is not what is meant by teacher guided inquiry.
In the CD Howe report, Dr. Stokke said on page 4, ” discovery-based instruction has often been repackaged under different names -such as inquiry-based instruction – which involves equivalent pedagogical techniques- indirect instruction, problem-based learning, inquiry-based instruction, experiential learning, and constructivist learning.”
That might well be the case, but it does not mean that everyone agrees that guided inquiry actually is the same as all those other methods lumped under the discovery-learning term. There is a lot of high quality research that explicitly exposes the fallacy of the error in equating all those pedagogical approaches together! Minimal involvement by teachers in the teaching and learning process is not recommended or supported by most of the research in mathematics education, including research into using guided inquiry, despite what Dr. Stokke claims.
Points made on page 7 of the document reinforce that point, and further illustrates for me the significant misconceptions and disagreements that I now see as being the main problem underlying so much of the debate about effective instruction.
On page 8, Dr Stokke refers to a survey of eight grade students from the 2010 PCAP in which students were asked to report the frequency with which their teachers used both “indirect instruction methods” and ” direct instructional techniques”. A footnote at the bottom characterizes indirect instruction techniques as “teacher’s use of hands-on materials” as well as other methods, among those, ” working in groups on investigations or to solve problems. ” direct instruction was characterized by “conventional teaching methods”, such as “watching the teacher do examples, listening to the teacher give explanations, copying notes given by the teacher, practising new skills, undertaking teacher-guided investigations, reviewing skills learned, solving problems and working individually on investigations or problems.”
That was my ah ha moment. Because all the items they list as direct instruction can be and often are part of guided inquiry, most notably, “undertaking teacher-guided instruction.” And hands-on materials and group work can be done with lots of or minimal guidance.
Carefully done, unbiased research on the part of Dr. Stokke should have revealed a large body of research that describes effective teacher guided inquiry methods that include all of the features included under the term “direct instruction” in the report, and the author could have at least acknowledged that there seems to be a lot of misunderstanding and disagreement about what constitutes methods given various names.
Given what I have shown in this post, Instead of advocating that anything related to “discovery learning” be down played or removed from curricula, all concerned parties should agree that minimal teacher involvement in teaching or learning is rarely if ever effective for most students, and call for an in depth examination and summary of what exactly is included in a wide range of valid research about effective teaching methods, without resorting to naming them or classifying those methods.
Instead, describe them – say exactly what teachers do and what students do that promotes effective learning. Let’s teach those things in teacher education faculties, and let’s include them in PD for teachers, but don’t classify them as belonging to any one form of learning. Do not, however, recommend the practices associated with unassisted unstructured discovery methods, since there is little support for that.
Sadly, Teresa, referring to what I have written above, I think that even when our ON math curriculum was revised and implemented, there was insufficient time spent examine and discussing the expectations and deciding collectively what were the implied meanings of Number Sense and Numeration expectation statements such as ” determine through investigation” or, “solve problems using a variety of tools and strategies, including estimation and algorithms”, or, as in Grade 2, ” solve problems involving…using concrete materials, student-generated algorithms, and standard algorithms”, and what research-backed methods would be best used to teach those expectations. I absolutely agree that explicit mention of memorizing times tables is missing.
On a positive note, I recently read a document from the TDSB instructional math department for 2014-2015, and it includes the following recommendation: “A balanced approach” to teaching math, “includes direct instruction, skills develop,net, the memorization of facts, inquiry, problem solving, investigation, exploration, and practice.”
Teachers need help in understanding exactly how such forms of teaching can be combined and interwoven effectively over the course of a sequence of lessons. Parents need to understand what this kind of balance of good teaching looks like and how they can help their students at home.
No more name calling like discovery learning or inquiry based or direct instruction. Just this is what good teaching looks like.
My impression is tchrs. know. This knowledge has been passed on informally for yrs. Parents know when their children are taught well They might not know the correct vocabulary,but they do know.
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You are raising the level of analysis and discussion, Lynn. Direct or teacher-guided instruction is no panacea, nor is over reliance on “discovery” methodologies. We are striving to strike a balance. That applies, as you know, to subjects other than Mathematics and is a sensible approach, tapping into what we have learned about motivating and engaging today’s students. I only wish that Anna Stokke had refrained from recommending the 80-20 guideline. That particular ratio, as you know, is probably the existing balance in most high school classrooms now. Indeed, teacher educators regularly report that 80-20 (teacher-student) talk ratios are still prevalent, even when kids are supposed to be “discovering” answers on their own.
The point being Paul, is that most kids are now learning by pure discovery concepts in our schools, and the results of this are showing. Which is why both Rob and Anna have come out publicly with this analogy. Direct instruction has always included a balanced approach. Always. Discovery based learning does not. I cannot comment about the accuracy of what teachers are reporting, but the evidence here suggests that more time needs to be spent on Direct Instruction and effective methods behind it. |We’ve also heard from many, many kids, and the reality is they are not grasping these concepts because they’re not being taught properly. Parents see their homework and what they are learning in school. Leave the Discovery stuff alone in the early years. And another recently released report indicates that Anna’s research on how Discovery Based Math is failing our kids, has determined that 40% of employees could perform better on the job if they had better foundational skills for reading, writing and mathematics.
http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/business/missing-job-skills-harming-productivity-in-western-canada-study-says-305716641.html
Clearly, no shortage of 21st century skills are required in the workforce, but a strong foundation of arithmetic is, and the best path to obtain that, is through proven, effective methods.
I appreciate the encouraging comment, Paul.
Along with other things I wish she hadn’t said, I too wish Anna Stokke had refrained from stating that 20%percent of time should be spent on the use of ” discovery” learning versus 80% spent on direct instruction methods with no justification other than the latter is more effective.
The talk ratio you mention that you think probably occurs in high schools, would perhaps be more likely to occur if little exploration occurs over the course of a program.
Ideally, if teachers used a variety of teaching methods, the talk ratio should fluctuate depending on the type of learning being focused on and goals of instruction. As you suggested, if students are trying to discover things, they are more likely to be talking together more than listening to the teacher talk.
I am thinking of a great exploration-suited set of expectations with some bright grade 8s once, but which is typically done in Grade 9. Students can be invited to explore how the height of a liquid in a jar changes as they pour in incremental volumes of liquid, and compare the results for different shapes of containers. After gathering data from the exploration, they graph the two variables, and compare the shapes of the graphs for different shaped bottles. Apart from teacher checking talk, and occasional prompting, student talk should dominate during the exploration. Following that part of the lesson, teacher talk would defintiely increase again as the teacher discusses the results, explains the relationship observed, and directly teaches the relevant mathematics concepts and skills. On other days, teacher talk might legitimately dominate across an entire lesson, for example if teachers are directly teaching concepts or procedures or explaining formula without any accompanying exploration tasks, and student talk is mostly around responding to teacher questions or asking clarification questions.
Canada is the world’s most educated country and the most educated country that has ever existed.
Before we change anything we need to be careful not to disrupt anything we are doing right.
To me the abolition of streaming/tracking and the further downward extension of the school system alongside free tuition is the best bet to improve the world’s best system.
As long as middle class parents keep running their children to tutoring programs for reading. writing and math, we should keep up our international ranking.
“As long as middle class parents keep running their children to tutoring programs for reading. writing and math…” Jamie states
I wonder, how many parents actually do this? My parents could not afford it- mind you they were immigrant working class.
So what percentage of “middle c;ass” parents- 50%, 20%, 1%? I have no clue.
Tutoring is a complex issue, rather than simply a reflection of the success of an education system. The top countries in the world also have parents running their children to tutoring programs. Data would also show that parents in these countries are even more obsessed with tutoring than Canadian parents if you look at the number of hours student spend in tutoring sessions.
Given the significant role of the state in Finland’s system, it may not be an ideal model at this time for parents who are concerned about the role of the state. Take a look at the Korean system then where students spend more days in school each year. A great idea but are we prepared as Canadians to reduce our summer holidays to one month (given the huge economic impact for tourism that exists here in currently having July and August available for holidays).
As Doug has stated, we are still considered a top nation in education. We may fluctuate, but statistically, we produce relatively similar results. I would be interested in seeing how we have performed over the course of decades – especially during the years when more fundamentals were taught.
Should the fundamentals be taught? Absolutely. Will this solve the problems we face? I don’t know. This discussion has me thinking, who is considered a more successful student? A student who reads books above grade level but has limited understanding of the book or a student who only reads at grade level but understands the book.
Good post, Matt
We need long trend data but we do not have it, especially if standards change over the decades.
In my area (history ed) there is long term data in the US that says Americans have always had difficulty retaining factual info. We have a little in Canada that says a similar thing.
If that is the case for math then the problem is different than what is often cited.
Thoughtful question, Matt: will teaching fundamentals solve the problems we face.
As Doug has claimed, poverty is probably part of the mix of causative factors. I think the misuse of discovery-based methods could have played a huge role in causing the Alberta and BC problems. The posts in this thread have repeatedly reflected how much disagreement there is among educators over what actually constitutes various methods of teaching, and how effective they are relative to each other.
Your other thoughtful query, Mattt, about who is considered a more effective student with regards to reading, is worth thinking about in the light of discussions around teaching methods and outcomes. Supporting students in being able to read a text with understanding should be one goal of instruction, followed by the other goal of supporting them in progressing so they can read a wide range of increasingly complex texts with understanding..
In my experience, in order to meet those goals, I had to use a lot of explicit, direct instruction combined with teacher-guided inquiry to help them use strategies to make sense of the texts. Direct instruction included modelling use of strategies through shared, teacher-led reading and prompts to activate student responses, followed by a mix of teacher-guided inquiry and independent practice and feedback with texts that were part of their grade level work in various subjects. The weaker readers obviously needed more teacher-guidance than the stronger ones during practice. Effective direct instruction does help students who require it to understand what they are reading. Simply providing kids with challenging texts, and asking them to read together or alone and answer questions, does not help poor readers. Strong readers, often enjoy a more open, less teacher-directed inquiry approach, however, In which they can share their abilities, amd can assist each other to understand and respond to the texts very effectively. Many kids become good readers on their own, and don’t require much direct teaching and scaffolding. It is our job as teachers to determine who needs that direct instruction and support, and who can proceed with less intervention from the teacher.
The same applies to teaching any subject. Using a balance of direct instruction and guided inquiry/ discovery is the most effective way to teach.
No one should be recommending percentages for the use of the different approaches, since it should depend on what you are trying to teach, whom you are trying to teach, and, in reality, how much time you have to teach it.
Direct Instruction does not mean the same thing to everyone; neither do the terms PBL, IBL, Discovery Learning, and 21st Centruy Learning.
Energy spent on blaming the decline in math score on Discovey learning, protesting the inclusion of “discovery-based techniques” in the math curriculum, and calling for removal or reduction of any such “ineffective pedagogical techniques”, will deprive us all of the opportunity to advocate more clearly for changes that many of us agree on: adding what we think is missing from and should be in the curriculum, moving certain expectations down a grade or two, demanding that expectations be translated into more clearly and explicitly stated learning goals, and proven effective teaching practices taken from DI, IL, PBL, etc., clearly and explicitly described for different types of learning goals.
They are both good students and they are kids; its not an either or.
They will solve the problems we face like generations before them. The amount of discovery learning they had in grade 3 is not as important as we think it is.
Children are not learning the fundamentals of math in elementary school. They feel stupid, dumb and blame themselves. Middle classes flee to tutors and learning centres in desperation; poorer people are left behind again. One more hurdle to overcome, which wasn’t there before. Young children learn math through problem solving because in 15 or 20 years they will be in the work place. Colleges teach the grade 4,5 and 6 math that was missed as children prepared for the work place. Will fundamentals be enough; it is not the role of fundamentals to solve the problems of the future. They are the building blocks of a good education, which should be balanced by discovery, interesting intellectual activities and motivating ideas and experiences.
Children are being hurt. Very much hurt. Yes, there have always been many issues in ed. but never have I seen as much hurt as I did in the last ten yrs of my career.
Research is vital. So is the lived experience of people. Read the comments on the AB BC and ON math petitions tonight.
Anguish, pain, powerlessness, tears, frustration, despair, fear and sadness. We need to stop thinking so much about the problems of the future and fix the problem going on in the present.
I must admit to concern that those in various higher positions are unaware of the realities of thousands of families across this country.
Yes, Doug. Even I still know it is a really good system. But the pain is
enormous. That is the crisis.
I don’t know how many times it has to be proven that the problem is POVERTY not what happens within schools. Until poverty is fixed any progress will be marginal at best.
With inequality actually increasing at a rapid rate as the 1% suck up all the money, I’m hardly surprised progress is difficult
80% of our schools are fine. They use the same methods as the 20% who are not.
The difference is poverty-stricken teaching methods.
Doug, the people struggling are poor, rich and very rich. Math is a mess. That is why it has hit the news, precisely because it is hurting middle class and rich kids. Math would not be in the news otherwise.
Incorrect. It would be in the news because of declining scores. However, my first point stands. And I believe we have a great system. Kids, of all kinds. are hurting on this one.
All one needs to do is look at the math scores of EQAO by school to see the wide polarization by income.
Yes there is a tiny group of affluent children who do not do well and their parents are up in arms because they want a star student for a child and want to blame the school for their problems. The usual answer in an affluent school is ‘how is it the teacher’s fault if every other kid in the class is doing fine’.
Some parents panic when told your child is not number 1 in the class. As the Asians say ‘their face’ is far too bound up in bragging about their children so even having an average child who will graduate from university is simply not enough for them. They assume (wrongly) that all future employment will involve a deep mathematical ability.
The parents look at each other and say “we both went to university. How can we have an average child? It is not acceptable. It cannot be our fault even though every other child in the class is doing well.
People find it very hard to accept that their child is not s genius. They look for someone to scape goat.
Meanwhile our system pumps out more post secondary grads than any other nation BY FAR.
I am not the least bit surprised by decline. As inequality proceeds and the 1% grab more and more, of course education will decline. More than 1/2 the kids in US public schools now qualify for free or subsidized lunch programs because they are poor. We are headed more slowly in the same direction.
As long as we elect conservatives education will decline. Is it not OBVIOUS?
I just love this set of arguments from reformies: Canada has a terrible education system!!!”
Then it is pointed out to them that it in fact is the world’s best system using PISA, TIME magazine, international experts and so on.
Now reformies say: yes Canada has the world’s best system but it is only because of immigrants and tutorial companies.
Pathetic really. Just because your child is not a star it does not mean the system is inadequate.
If your child is doing badly look inward. Don’t look for scape goats.
You didn’t read my prior comment. Yes, I agree we pump out more good grads than we need. We have a great system. My prior comment was about educated parents being baffled when they look at the home work of their grade one. That university math and science professors are perplexed ( to use a current term) by the homework of their 4th grader. That I have 2 adopted daughters, as I believe you do, and all I ever wanted to do was throw the Nelson text through the window. I am 100 % aware of the issues my daughters have, but I knew where that book belonged. That parents, 90% I would guess cannot understand the work, starting in grade 1. That has nothing to do with the intelligence of their children. I fully understand that univ. ed. parents can overestimate their childrens’ ability; that is not the issue. The issue is the math curriculum, the math texts, the indoctrination of teachers’ and the loss of teacher autonomy. I’m sure a couple of those ideas are close to your heart.
Yes, Im sure some, not all of the suggestions, you make are valid re. education, but . I am talking about the present. what ordinary families are going through, what ordinary teachers are going through. Heartache in the present, that could be quite easily addressed. Behind all the stats are real people. And what they have gone through for 10 yrs.
I would say 90% of parents get it and that is irrelevant of their social status, their biases and the intelligence or supposed intelligence of their children. Doug, I am teacher. I know how parents can think at times. I also know that the vast majority are decent, try their very best and even the ones who are interested in status do so for their own private reasons. |Don’t just dismiss their valid concerns, because they over estimate their childrens’ intelligence or are needy as parents in some way.
I look at the PISA results.
I throw out Shanghai, Macao and Hong Kong (unrepresentitive of China).
I throw out Korea (hagwons).
I throw out Singapore (atificial city state).
I look at who is ahead of up in the English speaking world (nobody)
I look at who is ahead of us in Europe. Switzerland, Estonia, Netherlands.
That hardly fills me with fear.
I look at a real economic powerhouse Germany (behind us).
I look at all of the G8 nations ahead of us
( only economically stagnant Japan).
This situation hardly fills me with fear.
PISA results 2013 last available.
http://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2013/dec/03/pisa-results-country-best-reading-maths-science
I note Canada #4 in reading. Don’t hear too much about that?
Thanks for that analysis, Doug. You are right that our relative successes don’t garner much press, so the public often does not hear about the positives in our education system, nor do they hear a balanced, informed perspective to counter criticisms raised by focus groups who in turn suggest solutions that lean to one side or the other, downplaying the huge complexity of the processes of teaching and learning, and of assessing student achievement.
Individual bad examples too easily crowd out the dozens if not hundreds of good examples.
Besides we have the phenomenon of the “confirmation bias”; namely, that once you have made up your mind about something
it is REALLY HARD to change it, even if you think you are open to change.
You overweigh supporting evidence and underwiegh counter evidence.
Math/Reading Evidence Be Damned — Agendas Come First
Studying the Reading Wars of the past 150 years indicates the same strategy is again being followed to advance the statist agenda. It’s still a binary class war — left vs right, socialism vs capitalism, strong central command vs self governing demand (market) economies, control & power vs free choice, the state knows best vs the individual.
Reading just one book — In Defense of Good Teaching: what teachers need to know about the “Reading Wars”, edited by Ken Goodman, 1998 — will get you into the “flavor” of this vicious ideological war from the Whole Language POV. One of the 11 chapters is by Carole Edelsky who is an Education Prof at Arizona State U. She succinctly capsulizes the WL agenda (vs Phonics) in her later book — Making Justice Our Project: Teachers Working Toward Critical Whole Language Practice.
Do parents send their kids to public schools to be “justice” workers?
The point I’m making about the Reading Wars is that it is an ideological battle, still raging with student collateral damage of about 25%, with an agenda in full support of government education (regardless how inefficient and ineffective it may be) and that influences the attitude of teachers who undertake the mission of rectifying conditions for victimized people. Of course, teachers consider themselves victimized and oppressed, with their trade underfunded, overburdened, unsupported and demeaned.
Do some research into the Math Takeover being now engineered, mobilized and advanced. Start with this story — http://www.therecord.com/opinion-story/5657546-d-amato-the-math-education-experts-have-failed-our-children/ — and look at the documents from the Windsor SB. Can you pick out the code words — so 21st C — that are propelling their Math Meltdown? Note, that some of their papers are secret.
– Mathematics Beliefs — http://www.wrdsb.ca/bipsa/wp-content/uploads/sites/31/Math-beliefs-final.pdf
– – Parent Support — http://www.wrdsb.ca/bipsa/wp-content/uploads/sites/31/Mathematics-Parent-Supports-Final.pdf
Are we going to allow the professors, gurus, and their political handlers to waste our children’s math opportunities such as the reading wasteland has become?
The late Jr Senator from Wisconsin Joe McCarthy will never really be gone as long as Tunya is around. A Red under every bed.
Maybe John Can Help With Some Anecdotes
” on June 1, 2015 at 8:48 am — John Myers
Let’s drop the conspiracy silliness when it comes to research, even though in some cases (whole language) the support was / and is in part ideological. “
We might need a refresher on the nature of research in education and criteria for quality work. I have no time to offer such a course on a blog.
but
A question to all of you on this blog: what evidence would be needed for you to change your minds? If the answer is “none”, you should go find a good book and read it on some beach somewhere, since “dialogue” is pointless.
The confirmation bias is a challenge for both researchers and interpreters of research.