Why another classroom focused blog? What can I possibly add to the conversation?
For all the efforts to achieve better and more equitable
educational results in our schools, we have, over the decades since I was
trained as a secondary education teacher, pressed for instruction that actively
engages students, reorganized our schools on more of a business model, thus opening
them to the marketplace, and expanded testing. The results have been disappointing to say the
least. Recently the New York Times published a story revealing that increased high
school graduation rates are actually a problem (Rich)—academic standards are
falling as we strive to get our numbers up.
Teachers are leaving the profession in droves (Strauss). Those who remain struggle to cope with
rotating changes in the structure of their work and operating philosophies and
curriculum requirements. They frequently
appeal to research to find solutions.
Unfortunately, the research is distinctly unhelpful. And the problem is systemic.
Last August we discovered that of ninety-eight psychology
studies reviewed, only thirty-nine showed statistical significance on
recalculation, meaning that the effects studied were as likely due to luck as
to the factor being studied (Baker).
In 2013 and 2014 The
Economist published articles detailing the flaws in peer review and
editorial control of research publication practices (“How”).
In 2010 Irving Kirsch demonstrated that the billions of
dollars of antidepressant drugs we consume offer no more benefit than
counseling, and that much of the benefit is the result of the placebo effect.
In August of 2005 John Ioannidis published the report, “Why
Most Research Findings are False” in the pharmaceutical industry (Ioannidis).
In 1996 physicist Alan Sokol published an article in Social Text purporting to be about
quantum gravity but in reality was a parody of post-modernist theorizing which
the editor of the journal accepted as legitimate scholarship (Sokal).
The big news for teachers: in July of 2013 the Department of Education’s
Institute for Education Sciences (IES) studied the results of ninety “well-conducted
randomized controlled trials (RCTs) done since 2002” and found that only 12% of
the interventions produced positive effects (“Randomized Controlled Trials”). After some of the studies were thrown out of
the analysis for technical reasons, the percentage of effective interventions
went to 9%.
Twenty years of research that carries the adjective
“scientific” is being questioned because of sloppy methodology, careless
calculation, misunderstanding of the limits of statistical significance, and
institutions which were intended to prevent these errors failing the process. What we have is at least a minor crisis in
scientific practice. Sloppiness and
deception pass for intellectual rigor in higher education and other research
centers.
This should be of great concern to teachers who think they
are using “research-based methods.” What
that actually means is no longer something we should take for granted. If other fields of research are struggling to
substantiate their claims, we know that, with all the possible confounding
factors in establishing causal relations between instructional practice or
textbook adoption or new paradigm and increased student achievement, there is plenty of room for error.
Given the billions of dollars at stake, the efficacy of pedagogy,
and the job satisfaction of millions of classroom teachers, who report
increasingly woeful morale, I aim in this blog to review the theoretical and
research environment that influences all stakeholders, whether they are aware
of it or not.
Because I have taught high school English and history and
now teach College Composition part-time at a couple Twin Cities community
colleges, I will be focusing my efforts on those arenas to make sense of the
issues, both pedagogical and political, facing classroom teachers. Since I teach a full load between the two schools,
and I want to write accurate and useful pieces, I will keep a more leisurely
schedule of posts, approximately twice a week.
The first order of business as I see it is to examine
prevailing paradigms in the field.
“Progressive” education has long held center stage in organizing and
articulating the mission of schools, and Diane Ravitch has examined its
precepts and practices at length. Her
book’s subtitle, A Century of Failed
School Reform, is not idle language. John
Dewey is the acknowledged prophet, and I will look at his philosophy, often
referred to as “active learning” or “learning by doing.” The latest permutation of the progressive
program is now called “constructivism,” which seems to dominate the academy,
even if secondary education teachers aren’t completely sold or interested in
it. It has many interpreters—Dewey would be astonished at what has become of his
ideas in some quarters. I’ll also look at the
current state of brain research and cognitive science to see what they are
telling educators and how we might respond.
There are other research topics of concern to classroom
teachers. The role of content in the
classroom is pushed hard by E. D. Hirsch and disparaged by many other leading
lights. That the teacher’s role in the
classroom is facilitative we’ve been told since the late 1800s, and we are
testing the effectiveness of various experiments like “flipping.” Then there are the composition-specific
issues of grammar instruction, assessment of student writing, the role of
Writing Centers, and the current nation-wide effort to accelerate so-called
developmental students’ progress through gatekeeping courses.
So I invite you to come along for the ride. I've been around long enough to have seen a
number of things come and go in this business.
I’ve also spent more time out of the field than in it, with three years
in the banking world and twenty in computers and networking. I think my corporate experience has given me
a practical bent when it comes to solving problems as well as recognizing problems
that just may not have solutions. And I
find myself on the outside looking in at the proposals coming from Dewey’s
heirs. The fairly awful results of our
continuous reform should have generated a new look at our paradigms and our
practices, but we seem to be pressing full speed ahead, unwilling to reflect on
our failures with anything like the critical analysis that we want from our
students.
So maybe there’s room for one more voice. We’ll see.
In the interests of full disclosure, I’m also the author of
a composition workbook, Copia,
available in .pdf format for $10 through DecaBooks.com; the link is on the left of the blog home page. If you teach composition and have despaired
of finding a sentence-level rhetoric, give it a look to see if it will fill the
void in current textbooks.
References
Strauss, V.
(2015, June 12). Why so many teachers leave — and how to get them to stay. Washington
Post. Retrieved December 31, 2015, from https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer-sheet/wp/2015/06/12/why-so-many-teachers-leave-and-how-to-get-them-to-stay/
|
|||||||
No comments:
Post a Comment